[Neurons] 2017 Neurons #8 It's All About Choice

[L. Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2017 “Neurons” #8

February 13 , 2017

Basic NLP Concepts #13

 

 

IT’S ALL ABOUT CHOICE

  

Central to everything we do in NLP is to increase choice.  You can find this statement repeatedly in the early NLP literature.  The things that we do in communication and in interventions are all done to give a person a greater range of choice.  Choice is indeed one of the key values within this discipline.   Statements about choice from the original NLP books include:

The person in a system who has the most flexibility has the most influence (control).

Everything we do is to increase choice.

A person with one choice is a robot, a person with two is on the horns of a dilemma, only when a person has three or more choices is a person truly free to choose.

People make the best choices that are available to them.

 

With choice, a person will feel resourceful and able to make positive changes in life.  With choice comes a sense of ownership, responsibility and that leads to a sense of self-determination. With choice also comes a basic joy of life as you feel yourself as a free agent and in charge of the meanings that you attribute to things.

 

Conversely, without choice a person will feel constrained, limited, and unresourceful.  Without choice—a person will feel less human and less able to live fully human with a sense of will and will power.  Without choice a person is likely to be easily agitated, irritated, frustrated, grumpy, unhappy, and angry.  It’s just not a good place for a human being to be.

 

Without choice a person will typically feel stuck in a problem.  He will more than likely feel that he is living as the "effect" of some "cause," rather than the cause of his life and what he does. Generally taking choice away from a person will break rapport and put her in an oppositional state.  To truly empower someone involves putting her “at cause" — responsible for what she  thinks, feels, chooses, and does.

 

Similar to the NLP basic concept that people have positive intentions (#7), this NLP concept assumes and operates from the idea that people make the best choices which are open to them at any given time.  When someone makes a choice that seems irrational, stupid, hurtful, destructive, etc., we assume that it was probably the best choice available.  The person didn’t know anything better to do and/or was operating from some limiting, or even false, maps. 

 

What we normally do, when we don’t operate from this concept, is get frustrated and angry with the person for her choices.  We do that because we don’t understand his choices.  We scratch our heads, "Doesn't she know better?  What's wrong with him?"  The person probably does not know better.  It was the best choice in her model of the world.  Nothing better was available in that model.  Conversely, starting from this basic concept that people make the best choices available to them enables a more compassion and even forgiving approach.  It fosters kindness, optimism, and hope.

   

Isn’t this true of you when you make some choice that you later look back on with regret and even disbelief? “What was I thinking?”  You acted in a manner that you now regret.  If you had a better choice for handling things back then, wouldn't you have opted for that? Of course!  Who knowingly makes a choice that he knows good and well will be to his detriment?  When a person makes a stupid or destructive choice, somehow she thinks it will make things better.  Realizing this about ourselves enables us to treat others with more kindness about this human fallibility.

   

Choice leads to responsibility.  It is out of the context of having options to choose from that the sense of responsibility arises.  This leads to another central focus of NLP— putting people at cause and enabling them to become response-able in their lives.  It was Fritz Perls who frequently spoke about responsibility as response-ability, focusing on the two words and their meanings.

 

When you have choice, and know that you have choice, then you can’t blame others or circumstances for your responses.  Sure others and circumstances can challenge you in your choices, yet whatever you choose is exactly that—your choice.  And strange enough, by accepting your responses as your choices, you empower yourself to take charge of your life and make changes by your choice.

 

In NLP this leads to the idea that every experience is not only a skill, but also a choice.  If I get discouraged and feel like giving up— that’s a skill that has an internal structure and a choice.  Recognizing how I choose to think and feel that way enables me to discover my discouragement strategy as well as the choices that inform it.  Paradoxically, that gives me leverage points for change— if I so choose to use them.

                                                                      

What are you experiencing that you may not like experiencing?  After you identify it, explore how your choices have contributed to creating it.  After all, every thought you entertain about it is a choice— no one is forcing you to think that thought.  So also with every emotional and behavioral response— no one is forcing you to so feel or act.

 

You have choice.  You have choice at the level of your thoughts (what and how you represent things), your emotions, and your actions.  Knowing that, however is not enough, now you need to take ownership of your choices and manage them so that you take control of your life.  Now isn’t that a great NLP concept?

 

Neuro-Semantic News —   Trainers’ Training in Brazil this July!

∙           Once a year we conduct Trainers’ Training (NSTT) as an international training.  This year it will be in Brazil.  The dates: July 22 through August 5.  Contact Dr. Jairo or Maira for information.  Look for a promotional ad about this tomorrow.  In 2018 we will be back in Australia.

 

Jairo:  Jairo at inaprj.com.br     

Maíra Larangeira:  maira.larangeira at gmail.com 

 

 

 

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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