[Neurons] 2016 Neurons #25 Creating Meta-Perspective for Resilience

Mon May 23 19:18:26 EDT 2016

From: L. Michael Hall

2016 "Neurons" Meta Reflections - #25

May 23, 2016

Resilience Series #8

HOW TO CREATE THE META-PERSPECTIVE

ESSENTIAL FOR RESILIENCE

You now know that if the only perspective you have when life falls apart,
when you experience a set-back or a knock-down, you will have difficulty
seeing "the light at the end of the tunnel."  Instead, all you will be able
to see is the distress, pain, frustration, confusion, shock, etc.
immediately before you.  You will lack perspective.  The tunnel-vision of
your immediate experience will define everything -you, life, the future,
meaningfulness, etc.  And in addition to whatever problem the set-back gives
you, you now have a secondary problem- you feel stuck because you can't see
beyond today. 

Question: How do you get the needed meta-perspective so that you can keep
things in proportion and not become reactive and destructive to yourself and
others?  How can you raise your eyes up and see beyond the darkness and
confusion of this moment?  People may be trying to help you and they may be
saying things like: 

"You'll get through this."  "One of these days you'll look back on this and
laugh."  "Don't take yourself so serious."  "This isn't the end of the
world."

The problem is that in the middle of the set-back or in the lowest pit of
your life, all of that sounds like 

childish mumbo-jumbo unrealistic non-sense.  "Yeah, sure," you may say, but
you know that none of that advice is going to help.  So what will?

The Meta-Perspective

To attain a meta-perspective you first have to know what it is and then
actually and experientially access it.  If what it is describes a bigger,
larger, broader, and more extensive perspective about life, yourself, time,
relationships, etc., then a meta-perspective refers to the ability to hold
these many aspects in mind  at the same time.  The term meta refers to
moving to a position (literally or mentally) where you can think and feel
about the first experience.

A meta-perspective is then a layered consciousness or perhaps better, as we
say today, a systemic consciousness.  It can see and hold in mind the
relationships between the parts and the dimensions without over-simplifying
by reducing to a linear perspective only or treating different factors as
polar opposites.  Opposite to a meta-perspective is the tunnel-vision
perspective.  This arises when we zoom in so close on something that we can
no longer get enough distance to see the context. 

As a result, a meta-perspective tends to enable us to develop what the
ancients called "wisdom."  Gregory Bateson said that wisdom is the ability
to hold multiple perspectives simultaneously.  It is the ability to take
first perceptual position (seeing from your own eyes), second (imagining how
things look from another person's perspective), and third (seeing things
from the larger system).  And as we all know, such wisdom arises from
experience, and experience is what shoves us around into different places so
that we get a chance to experience life from multiple perspectives.  And
when we bring them all together without dichotomizing or over-simplifying,
wisdom emerges. 

Accessing the Meta-Perspective

If what we need is distance from the immediate, then if you step back in
your mind and start noticing the context, you begin to access a larger
perspective.  "What is the context in which X is occurring?"  "And this
context Y, what is the context in which it is operating?"  "And these
contexts X and Y, what is the larger system of activities, energies,
meanings, etc. in which all of this is operating?"  Asking these layered
questions and answering them takes you to out of the immediate tunnel vision
and enables you to begin to create a meta-perspective.

Then you won't feel stuck in a narrow tunnel vision.  Seeing the larger
picture, you will almost inevitably see areas and variables that you could
use to make a difference.  You begin seeing processes and recognize how you
can influence the system.  One of the classical studies that Bateson engaged
in was the structure of schizophrenia.  In the end he analyzed it as a
double-bind situation wherein a person is locked into a no-choice system
which he cannot escape.  And how could he escape?  How do some people
escape?  By meta-commenting about the double-bind.  That takes a person
above and beyond the conflicting frames, giving him perspective about the
situation:

"You say you love me and you want me to express my emotions, but when I do
you stiffen up and reject my hug.  So I'm confused, which do you want me to
do?" 

Similarly, to be able to step back and gain perceptual distance on ourselves
and our situation.  To see the set-back as an event occurring in time, one
event in a series of thousands of events, enables us to not over-load that
one event with too much meaning and importance.  What about the meaning and
importance of the other tens-of-thousands of events?

Resilient people do this-they keep perspective.  That's why they bounce back
quicker and with less semantic damage.  To create this for yourself, use a
series of questions to help you:

         The set-back event occurred in what domain? (Health, career,
money, relationships, etc.)

         How much importance have I or am I giving to that event? 

         Is endowing the event with that much meaning helping me to be
resilient?

         How much of a tunnel-vision is this perspective creating for me?

         While I'm seeing that one thing, what else am I not seeing?

         If you go forward in time ten years and look back, what do you
notice?

         When you step back, what parts of your life are okay or fine?

What are your Resilience Question?  

              Send to me at  <mailto:meta at acsol.net> meta at acsol.net 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

               Neuro-Semantics Executive Director 

               Neuro-Semantics International

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

               1 970-523-7877 

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