[Neurons] 2008 Meta Reflection #4

[meta]

From: L. Michael Hall

2008 Meta Reflections #4

January 28, 2008 



MEANING

AND YOUR MEANING INDEX

In Neuro-Semantics we centrally focus on meaning. Why? Because we know that ultimately it is all about meaning. Life is all about meaning. Lose meaning and you despair. Your job is all about meaning, lose meaning there and you become a liability to your employer. Your relationships is about meaning, lose the meaningful of the relationship and you'll look elsewhere. Your responses is all about meaning, your health, your money, your sexuality, and on and on. Everything in human experience ultimately comes down to (or up to) your semantics.

What explains this idea that life in all of its facets is all about meaning? How is it that meaning is so important? The explanation is that meaning is what enables, facilitates, and governs life, communicating, relating, creating, enjoying, etc. Meaning plays this central role because meaning determines our sense of what is, what it stands for, what it leads to, and what we're to do. Meaning is what we map as what's real, what's significant (important, valuable), and what's required.

How do you know how to respond to anything unless you know what it is and what it means to you? The question is rhetorical. Obviously you cannot. To respond to anything you first have to recognize what it is, and you have to attribute some significance to it. Until then you won't know what it is or what to do. Should you approach or avoid? Animals have this as an inherent part of their programming which we call "instincts." But we humans lack such programming. Being instinctless means that we don't know inherently what things are or what significance to attribute to them. This we have to discover in part and create in part. And that makes us menaing-makers.

Numerous things fall out because of this: the gap within us as our consciousness between stimulus and response, the gap of choice, of response-ability, the gap of meaning-making, our identity as meaning-makers, the fallibility of our responses, the possibility of being the architect of our own personalities, identities, and futures, the transcendence of our programming, our humanness, our morality, and much, much more. 

If meaning is this important, then all of the stuff you do in your heads to create meaning, represent meaning, understand meaning, evaluate meaning, suspend old meanings, etc. are part and parcel of how to live meaningfully and actualize your highest. So Neuro-Semantics, as a field about human psychology, focuses on the role of meaning in our lives and the quality of the meanings as we respond.

Over the years we have developed numerous models about meaning. It began with the Meta-States model which identifies how we create and hold in mind layers of ideas, thoughts, representations, beliefs, etc. Then the Inner Game model (Frame Games), the Mind-Lines as the structure of meaning, then the Matrix model for a system approach to the meanings we create about ourselves developmentally. Then a couple years ago the Meaning and Performance Axes of the Self-Actualization Quadrants (which you can find in Coaching Change, Meta-Coaching Volume I and Unleashed: A Guide to Your Ultimate Self-Actualization).

While thinking about these axes I began wondering about how to create a scale for each axes. This, in turn, led to two indices, the Meaning Index and the Performance Index. What do we measure on this Meaning Index? What facets of meaning will we seek to gauge to determine the level and the quality of our meaningfulness?

As I thought about this, I began making a list of the sub-skills within the process of meaning-making. What skills are involved that make us competent in creating robust meanings? What skills are involved in finding and identifying meanings? What are the skills for suspending, refusing, and negating meanings? With these facets of meaning-making, I set up a 0-to-5 scaling for each so we could scale them from 0 for meaningless up the levels to full meaningfulness.

5: Legacy or mission 

4: Unique or personal

3: Conventional

2: Trivial

1: Futile

0: Meaningless

How meaningful is your life? How skilled are you as a meaning-maker? How much power, flexibility, range, and what robust meanings inspire you? Where would you gauge yourself on the scale of meaning? Where are you in terms of creating meaning, quality controlling meanings, suspending meaning, and so on?

The sub-skills for the Meaning Scale involve not only the ability to create meaning, but to create quality meanings, to quality control the meanings, and to create specific meanings about such areas as psychological health, self, needs, time, problems, knowledge, etc.

1) Quality of Meaning

2) Psychologically Healthy Meaning

3) Power to Create Meaning

4) Self Meaning

5) Meaning about Needs

6) Meaning about Time

7) Meaning about Problems / Difficulties

8) Domain Knowledge Meaning: procedures, strategies, heuristics

Quality of meaning: What is the quality of the meanings that you create? Are your meanings inspiring, compelling, exciting, and enlivening? Do they get you up in the morning and excite you through the day? Or, are the meanings that you give to things conventional, "average," okay, but nothing special? To what degree can you sacrilize anything? This refers to looking at things in terms of them being special, delightful, wonderful, sacred, full of wonder, seen through the lens of eternity? Or, to what extent does your view of life, people, work, relationships, exercise, etc. full of de-sacrilizing and discounting? How accurate are your meanings in terms of being "maps" of the territory? How precise are they? How useful? How effective?

Psychologically healthy meanings: The meanings about yourself as a person, as a living, breathing human being and your development through life, your self-actualization, the health and vitality of your mind, your emotions, your memories, your imaginations, etc. How healthy or unhealthy are the meanings that you create in this area? To what extent have you developed an awareness of your own typical cognitive distortions? To what extent have you eliminated them?

Power to create meaning: The meaning you give to your power or ability to create meaning in the first place. Do you view yourself as powerful to do so or do you view meaning as given, fated, controlled, and out of your hands? Do you know your powers of constructing meaning? Do you use these powers? To what extent? How much more could you take charge of these powers, develop them? How flexible are you in your creation of meaning? Can you give anything 3 other meanings, 7, 20? How flexible is your creativity in this?

Self Meanings: The meanings that you give to yourself. Do you love yourself, adore and appreciate yourself, see yourself as lovable, precious, sacred, etc. Or do you view yourself as nothing special, okay, average, or do you de-value yourself with judgments, contempt, hatred? The meanings you give about yourself enable you to either get over yourself and on with life or stuck so that you become your biggest problem. Do you separate self-esteem from self-confidence? What meanings do you give to your fallibility, character flaws, and errors? How well do you maintain your dignity when you make a mistake?

Meanings of needs and impulses: The meanings you give to your biological, physiological, and animal nature. Do you view your nature and human nature as good or bad; sacred or evil and depraved? What meaning do you give to your basic drives? What are these needs? How do you gratify these needs with accurate and effective gratifications? What meanings do you give when you have a basic needs that's frustrated?

Meanings about time: The meanings you give to the concept of recognizing that our lives begin at a certain time and end at a certain time. Do you construct positive meanings about time so that you enjoy and appreciate each day or do you create interpretations that make you impatient about time, skeptical, regretful, living in the past, fearful of the future? What meanings do you give to scheduling? Prioritizing? Making time for things?

Meanings about problems and difficulties: The meanings you give to the gap between your present state and your desired state. How do you think of that difference? What meanings do you give to the tasks required to move you to your goal state? Do you love the effort to reduce the difference? Is it fun? Does it mean the activation of your problem-solving skills? Or is it a bother, a nuisance, unpleasant, etc.?

Domain-knowledge Meaning: The meanings about knowledge, about learning, developing strategies, figuring out how to do something, developing procedures and heuristics. What do you think about investing time, energy, effort to understand things? What meanings do you give to learning, unlearning, and re-learning? Is learning fun, delightful, the purpose of life? Or is drudgery, hateful, boring? What do you think about not-knowing or confusion? Are these valuable or dreadful states?

---

The Ultimate Self-Actualization Workshop

At this moment, I only have one workshop scheduled for 2008. Many other Neuro-Semantic Trainers will soon be offering this workshop and when I get their schedules, I will put them here. Our launch date for the New Human Potential Movement is May when I am anticipating that one to three dozen Neuro-Semantic Trainers to be presenting.

May 17-19, 2008 

ID Com. International, Montreal Canada. Isabell David. Phone: 450-224-5398 / 514-815-5457. idcom at cgocable.ca / idcom at idcominter.com Web: www.idcominter.com. 

I will be delivering this training in English (!) and it will simultaneously be translated into French. There will be other English only speakers there. Come and enjoy a taste and feel of Europe in Montreal.


USA Meta-Coaching, July 2008
Module I:  

            April 4-6, Portland Or.  Cat Wilson and Rich Aanrich    

            Apositiva:  cat at apositivechange.com or rich at apositivechange.com

            (503) 525-0595.



Modules II and III  --- Grand Junction Colorado, Ramada Inn

        July 1-3, 2008  APG --- Accessing Personal Genius

        July 5-12, 2008   Coaching Mastery

            Sponsored by Neuro-Semantics Ltd. Colorado





L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.
Neuro-Semantics Ltd., Executive Director
ISNS - International Society of Neuro-Semantics
P.O. Box 8
Clifton, Colorado, 81520 USA
www.neurosemantics.com 
www.meta-coaching.org
www.self-actualizing.org 


Email: meta @onlinecol.com @acsol.net @mindfocus.co.za
(970) 523-7877
(970) 523-5790 FAX
(877) 686-2867 toll free in the USA only
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