[Neurons] A Second Book Review: Bandler's "Get the Life You Want"

[Dr. Hall]

Book Review

by L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.  ( <http://www.neurosemantics.com/>
www.neurosemantics.com;  <http://www.self-actualizing.org/>
www.self-actualizing.org) 

 

 

Get the Life You Want (2008)

Richard Bandler; Edited by Owen Fitzpatrick

Deerfield Beach, FL.  Health Communications, Inc.

 

 

Two new books from Richard Bandler have just appeared this year (2008), this
one and Richard Bandler's Guide to Trance-formation.  Each are edited books,
Garner Thomson edited the other one and Owen Fritzpatrick edited Get the
Life You Want.   What is similar to each is that both editors have
effectively eliminated the "voice" and "tone" of Richard Bandler from the
books.   Thomson's editing did the most neutering of the voice in Guide to
Trance-formation giving us a meek and mild Richard Bandler unlike anything
I've ever heard.  But also in Get the Life You Want the voice of the author
is quite mild and polite.

 

The two books are also similar in that they are NLP 101.  What you will find
in each book is a very simple form of NLP, almost NLP reduced to its most
basic expressions.  These are not books for anyone who knows NLP, but
apparently attempts to introduce NLP to a new mass market.

 

I picked up the books hoping to find something new in them and to find more
of the original creativity that characterized the beginning of NLP.  In that
regard, I was disappointed.  As I noted in my review of Guide to
Trance-formation there was nothing new there at all.  I cannot say the same
for Get the Life You Want.   There is one thing new in it-something that I
find troubling and problematic.

 

In identifying this new thing, I want to point out what I consider one of
the biggest problems and saboteurs in the field of NLP-the Sub-Modalities
Model.  Now Richard considers this model as "probably the best thing he ever
created," but I consider it a colossal mistake and devoted a whole book to
it (Sub-Modalities Going Meta, 2005, originally The Structure of Excellence,
1999).  And how or why does he not recognize his mistake with
sub-modalities?  My guess is that it arises from the fact that from the
beginning of NLP, both he and Grinder failed to include a model of
reflexivity, of self-reflexive consciousness (the kind of consciousness
unique to humans) in their NLP model of the mind.

 

What's new in this book?  Richard's new theory of emotions.  Here's how he
introduces it at the beginning of this book:

"So when therapists and psychiatrists says to somebody, 'How do you feel
about feeling frustrated?' or 'How do you feel about feeling disappointed?',
they miss the most important information. . . .  Our bodies are not
disconnected from our brains.  They are an extended part of the brain.  The
important question to ask people when they say 'I feel frustrated,'is
'Where?  Where does the feeling start?  Where do you feel it first in your
body?  Where does it move to?'  Feelings can't stay still. They are always
moving somewhere, in some direction." (p. 10 italics added)

 

With that paragraph he first dismisses the meta-levels by claiming that the
meta-question, "How do you feel about feeling frustrated or disappointed"
misses the most important information.  In this way, Bandler completely
ignores the frames within which the person would put their understanding of
either frustration or disappointment.  So he ignores the internal context or
frame of these states.  He ignores the meta-states that govern these
emotions.  Instead he assumes that the emotion is a simple primary emotion
and so focuses on a kinesthetic feature of the emotion, where do you feel
it?

 

Now that is important.  Where do you feel frustration or disappointment?
Finding that can be significant.  But then he introduces the idea that it
starts somewhere and goes somewhere, that it doesn't stay still, but that
these emotions are always moving and moving in a direction.  It's an
interesting theory, but it is also a questionable assumption.  And for a man
who swears off theories, he has more to say about this new theory about
emotions:

"I know people sometimes feel as if they have a knot in their gut when
they're frightened, but in fact that knot either rotates forward or rotates
backwards. .. .  I ask, 'Which way is it moving?'  It is only by having them
take their hand and rotate it forward and backwards, to the right and to the
left, that we can find out which way their feelings are moving in their
body.  These are the only dimensions really available.  ... The qualities of
your thoughts, these submodalities, determine how your thoughts affect you."
(pp. 10-11)

 

Now psychology and psychiatric textbooks have long defined an emotion as "an
action tendency," part physiology and part cognition.  And of course, this
comes from the word "emotion" itself, "e(x)-motion" which refers to the urge
of an emotion for us to "move out" from where we are.  Emotions are motions
and so naturally involve physiological motions within our bodies.  Yet as
action tendencies, emotions in the body are just tendencies- the feeling and
impulse to act, but not the action itself.  Our actions are what we do with
that energy and so differ from emotion itself.

 

Yet it's one thing to say that we feel emotions in certainly places to
postulating that emotions move from one place to another and set up
directions, that they rotate forward or backwards, and that they have a
spin.  That's presupposing a lot, assuming a lot, and building a theory on
some questionable premises.

"Imagine taking control over the feeling and spinning it faster and faster
and stronger and stronger through your body as the feelings increase. ...
Spin these feelings throughout your body as you think about the future and
the things you are doing over the next few weeks." (p. 15)

 

Then later, almost at the end of the book, he speaks more directly to this
theory of spinning feelings.

"Spinning feelings isn't something I made up, it is something I found.  It
is something that people do naturally.  When people spin feelings faster and
faster, of course their feelings get stronger and stronger, as long as they
keep the ideas in their minds." (p. 175)

 

Well, I don't know about you, but I don't ever recall "spinning" my
feelings.  Amplifying them, yes.  Exaggerating them, yes.  Distorting them,
yes.  Minimizing them, yes.  But spinning them?  I don't think so.  Yes I
can feel "anger" as I cling my fists and I can feel fear by holding my
breath and moving back away from something.  I can feel sadness and grief in
tears, in loss of muscle tone throughout my body.  But what is this thing of
"spinning feelings" throughout the body and making them go faster and
faster?

 

That we feel emotions in our body is obvious and nothing new.  That the
motor cortex sends messages to the body to get us to act, move, and respond
to our emotions is simply a common description of how we experience our
emotions.  And that there are body parts and organs that correspond to our
emotions is also nothing new.  But spinning emotions throughout the body?
What does that mean?  Should I take my anger that generally tightens muscles
and send that (the tightening of the muscles) throughout all of my organs
and muscles?  Should I take my sadness that releases grief which I
experience as tears send that spinning and going faster throughout my body?

 

It's an interesting metaphor, and at times, might make for some good
hypnosis, but as a theory of emotions or of how to facilitate the healthy
use of our emotions, what is this "spinning" suppose to do?  Is it just an
interrupt pattern?  Is it an exaggeration pattern?  Bandler never says.  He
just wants people to "spin" feelings forward and backward, faster and
slower, to increase or decrease the emotion.  Okkkaaaayyyy.

 

The confusion I believe is that Richard confuses the qualities of our
thoughts with sub-modalities rather than meta-states:"The qualities of your
thoughts, these submodalities..." (p. 11).  But distance, size, intensity,
loudness, etc.-all of these are concepts, abstractions, categories-things of
the mind.  And they are nominalizations!

"The qualities of your thoughts, these submodalities, determine how your
thoughts affect you.  When you make big movies of things you are associated
with, generally, the feeling will be more intense.  When you make the movie
smaller and move it, disassociated, into the distance, the feeling will be
smaller." (pp. 10-11)

 

Here Richard uses size and distance: big and small, closer and further away
to illustrate.  But he is careful to add "generally."  Generally we
associate the meaning of these conceptual categories with the meta-level
frames that he mentions.  But that's the key, the meanings we associate with
these cinematic features that we use in coding our movies.  And that's
precisely what he's missing-the meta-state frame of meaning that governs the
emblem of what he calls a sub-modality (bigger, smaller, closer, etc.).


 

This confusion of sub-modalities and failure to recognize their Meta-State
structure is further distorted by his assumption that higher level complex
states and beliefs are encoded as pictures.

"Take the feeling of certainty.  Look at that picture in your mind and
double it in size...." (p. 21)

 

The problem is that "certainty" is not a primary state emotion.  Where do
you feel certain in your body?  To feel "certain" involves criteria and
standards; it is a judgment!  It is an evaluation of the mind, not a primary
feeling like anger, fear, joy, sadness, etc.  It is a meta-state.  And it
may or may not have a picture associated with it.

"The odd thing about believing you're insecure is that people are always
secure in the knowledge that they believe their insecure." (p. 25)

 

Now if you understand Meta-States, here are several in that statement:

Belief in being insecure.

            Secure in the knowledge of believing in being insecure.

 

Decision is another state that's a meta-state, not a primary feeling.
That's why a strong decisive statement will have such words within it as,
"I'm tired of this."  "Enough" (p. 26) or "Ridiculous" (p. 49).  When you
think about a decision, it may or may not be a picture and so you may or may
not be able to double the picture or reduce the size of it (pp. 91,93).

 

So also with the state of "determination," how do you code and represent
"determination?"  It may have nothing to do with pictures and sounds, and so
may have no sub-modalities connected with it.  But determination is a
complex layered state involving concepts and criteria and so a meta-state
(p. 115).  So also with "tolerance" (p. 163).  All of these complex states
are meta-states.

 

About sub-modalities and beliefs, Bandler again relies on the old
Sub-Modality Belief Change Pattern that has been demonstrated to seldom
work.  Now in this, Bandler cheats in his illustration.  He asks, "Do you
believe the sun in coming up tomorrow?" (p. 20).  Well, duh!  Then he asks
for how to you represent that.  Of course, he's going to get a picture of
the sun rise -it's presupposed!  But are most beliefs like that one?  No.
Most beliefs are abstract.  "I believe I have low self-esteem."  "I believe
that I don't deserve to be wealthy."  "I believe I my memory will weaken as
I get older."   Most beliefs are about ideas and concepts and abstract
things, not things that we "know" like the sun rising each day.

 

In fact, people don't believe that the sun will rise tomorrow.  That's not a
belief, it is knowledge.  You know that.  After all, what would be the
opposite?  "I believe that tomorrow the sun will not rise.  But it will the
following day; just tomorrow it will not."  The fact is that you know things
from you experiences and studies, and the "rising" of the sun is not at the
belief level anyway, it is at the knowing level.  (This is the area of the
Meta-Dimensions of Neuro-Semantics.)

 

About half of the patterns in this book is contaminated with the idea of
"spinning feelings."  In the "Getting to Study" pattern, the steps are
these:

1) Imagine something you are really motivated to do and create the feeling
and spin it inside you to intensify it.

2) Imagine yourself studying and doing really well in the exams.

3) Spin the feeling of motivation faster and faster as you think about
studying and doing exams.

4) Think about not have enough time to study and spin the urgency.

5) Think about studying again and doing well in the exams as you spin the
urgency and feeling of motivation faster and faster. (p. 181)

I don't know about you, but with all of that I wouldn't be thinking about
the study or the exam!  I'd be thinking about the urgency and the
motivation.  And that would disrupt the quiet focus on the material.

 

Conclusion

Get the Life You Want is a basic Introduction book to NLP and so offers the
basics; it is NLP 101.  Here you will find a lot of the basic NLP
patterns-Feeling Wonderful, Changing Bad Feelings, Time-Lines, Overcoming
Negative Suggestions, Changing Personal History, Threshold Pattern, Phobia
Cure, Laugh away your Fears, etc.  But there's a stinginess and scarcity in
the book.  For example, in the Recommended Reading in the back, again
Bandler only refers to his books (and McKinna and Wilson) and no one else's
as if no one else in the field is worth reading.

 

Finally, while I'm all for people getting the life they want, spinning
feelings faster and faster and stronger and stronger on the assumption that
complex emotions are always and inevitably encoded as pictures and sounds
ignores the structure of how our self-reflexive consciousness can and does
create layered emotions that transcend the primary level.  If you read this
book and want to know the rest of the story, be sure to add one of the
Meta-State books to supplement it so you can deal with your higher
meta-states.  And you might just want to embrace your emotions and be with
them rather than spinning them.

 

 

 

 

 

L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

International Society of Neuro-Semantics

Meta-Coach Training System

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO.  81520 USA

1 970-523-7877

1 970-523-5790 fax

     www.neurosemantics.com 

      www.neuro-semantics-trainings.com 

      www.self-actualizing.org

      www.meta-coaching.org

      www.ns-video.com 

 

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