[Neurons] 2011 Meta Reflections #39

[L. Michael Hall]

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Meta Reflections 2011 - #39

August 22 2011

 

 

THE META-STATE OF RESILIENCE

Part I

 

 

In life things often don't go as you want them to go.  For various reasons,
your plans don't pan out, your dreams don't become reality, your investments
don't increase in value, your relationships aren't as loving and supporting
as you want, and your career plans experience set backs.  And what about
some of the bigger problems that set us back: divorce, bankruptcy, health
crisis, robbed, attacked, etc.  Now what? 




What's your attitude when you experience one or more set-backs in life?

What state does that trigger in you?

What coping and mastering skills are you able to access when you've been
knocked down?

 

These questions explore your level of resilience-your strategy for bouncing
back when you suffer a set-back and get knocked down.  Set-backs happen.
And sets-backs are pretty democratic- they happen to all people of all ages,
races, religions, economic status, etc.  And in the last two weeks with the
US Stock Market losing between two and three trillion dollar (yes, trillion,
not billion) that loss has also shown up with a similar loss between 3 and 6
per cent of value in other Stock Markets.  So with that, lots of people have
suffered economic, personal, and relational set-backs.

 

I first took on the resilience questions after completing my master
practitioner and trainer's training in NLP.  At the time I was engaged in
two activities that brought to face to face with people suffering set-backs
and needing to cope with them.  The first activity was my psychotherapy
practice and the second was my NLP trainings.  That constantly brought me
into the presence of people who were in the throes of set-backs and I was
amazed at how some of them had such a spirit of resilience.  Nothing was
going to keep them down!  No matter how traumatic the experience, they were
going to get up again and they were going to come back.  And they did.  And
they were in therapy to develop the self-awareness and resourcefulness to
make that come back.

 

But not everyone was like that.  Sometimes I saw people in therapy who were
down and they were behaving as if they were out.  With their set-back, they
were down and were staying down for the count.  They seemed to have had the
life sucked out of them and to be without any "bounce" inside for coming
back.  And it wasn't the degree or severity of the set-back.  That wasn't
the determining factor.

"What makes the difference between someone who gets knocked down and then
gets up with an attitude of determination, persistence, and optimism from
the person who just lies there like a zombie?  What makes the difference
between the person who thinks, feels, talks, and acts like a victim of
life's fate and the person who thinks, feels, talks, and acts like the
architect of his or her life?

 

That's what I wanted to know.  So I began interviewing people who had "been
to hell and were back."  I wanted to know how they had come back.  What was
their secret?  What were the resources that enabled them to bounce back?
That led to a modeling project that lasted three years.  At that time (1990)
there was very little literature on resilience, yet what there was, I read.

 

Eventually, using the NLP Strategy model, I worked out a strategy for
resilience.  At least I thought that I had the step-by-step process for
creating a state of resilience.  What I didn't know was that resilience was
not a regular kind of state.  It is not the kind of state that you just
access a feeling or a thought, step into it, amplify it and presto! ... the
Resilience State!  That's because some states are so complex and so systemic
that they do not operate as a primary state that NLP is so excellent at
enabling you to access, amplify, anchor, and apply states.  Some states
involve levels of thoughts-and-feelings.  So states operate from the
self-reflexive consciousness that sets higher level frames and meanings
which in turn govern the state.

 

That's what I discovered about resilience.  To create this state, you not
only have to have a basic core sense that whatever happens, it is just
something to deal with, but you have to have empowering believes about
yourself as a person (your value and worth as a person), your ability to
learn and develop skills to cope with things (your self-confidence), your
relationships with others who you can depend and trust in the process, your
determination and persistence that over time you will recover and bounce
back and be as strong as ever, your meanings and intentions that keep you
inspired, hopeful, and optimistic, and your sense of self-efficacy that you
can take proactive initiative to turn things around.

 

That's a lot!  That requires layer upon layer of resourceful states about
your resourceful states.  And it is systemic, each resourceful state or
frame influencing the others so that something "more than the sum of the
parts" emerge.  And that emergent state of resilience is a state that takes
the "bad" thing of the set-back that happens and keeps it out from oneself
so that it is not personal.  It keeps it out from one's whole life so that
it is not pervasive.  And it keeps it out from one's sense of time so that
it is not permanent.

 

I found this in Martin Seligman's works, Learned Helplessness (1975) and
Learned Optimism (1990).  How you interpret a set-back is the key.  If you
take the "bad" thing and interpret it with the following three Ps, you
experience learned helplessness.  If you interpret the bad thing using the
three Ts- you experience learned optimism.

 

            Explanatory Style                    Pessimistically
Optimistically

 

                What is the source?                               It's
Personal - it's about me!               It is That - event, situation, not
me.

                How significant is this?                          It's
Pervasive- it's everywhere.            It is There - in that space and
place, not everywhere.

                How long will this last?                         It's
Permanent- it will last forever.     It is Then - at that time, not forever.

 

 
Learned Helplessness             Learned Optimism

 

 

The way to create non-resilience is to P-all over yourself, that is,
interpret any set-back as personal, pervasive, and permanent.  Do that and
you can piss all over yourself and dampen your spirit.  The cure that leads
to resilience is to T-off on the set-back, that is, interpret it as That,
There, Then.  These are the three magic words that keeps the evil outside of
you and your matrix of frames- that, there, then.  (Or if it is happening at
this moment: this, here, now.)

 

Which will you do?  It is entirely your choice.  No one can force you to
interpret a set-back (or anything else) in a particular way.  Yet how you
interpret it and the meanings that you give determine the experiences you
have and the quality of your life.

 

 

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Himmelrich).

 

 

 

 

 

L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Neuro-Semantics Executive Director  ----   <http://www.neurosemantics.com/>
www.neurosemantics.com

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO.  81520 USA                             ----
<http://www.self-actualizing.org/> www.self-actualizing.org

1 970-523-7877                                               ----
<http://www.meta-coaching.org/> www.meta-coaching.org

 

     

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