[Neurons] COMING IN 2019 --- COGNITIVE MAKE-OVER

Sun Dec 9 11:36:21 EST 2018

From: L. Michael Hall

The Ultimate Neuro-Semantic Training

THE NEXT BIG THING

IN NEURO-SEMANTICS

I think that it will not only be the next big thing, it will also be the
most fundamentally Neuro-Semantic thing.  I'm speaking about "the art of
thinking."  This art began with NLP and with the discovery of the components
of thought- the sensory and linguistic representational systems.  That was
the discovery that Bateson noted that the researchers at MRI had been
searching for decades- a discover that was obvious when it was presented,
yet it had been hidden.

What was so amazing about the discovery of the sensory representational
systems-it gave us a way to more effectively manage thinking.  Each
representational system was like a lever by which you could turn a "thought"
up or down or change it around.  The immediate use was that it enabled
people to "run their own brain."  And once you can do that, you can manage
your states.  With regard to the meta-representational system- language- NLP
developed the Meta-Model by which we could then reformulate our thinking
(and communicating) more precisely and specifically.

It was a great beginning, but NLP did not go far enough.  It did launch the
NLP movement, but it didn't go any further.  True enough, the Meta-Model is
the best model for critical thinking in the market today and Executive
Thinking is the first and only NLP book on critical thinking.  No other
process even comes close in terms of its effectiveness.  But NLP failed to
incorporate Korzybski's warning call against cognitive fallacies or those in
Cognitive Psychology against cognitive distortions and biases.  In NLP there
was the assumption that "thinking" is obvious and unquestionable.  Today we
know better.  Thinking itself is neither obvious or unquestionable.

Neuro-Semantics took "thinking" to a new level of development with the
discovery of the Meta-States Model (1994).  That enabled us to immediately
explore "awareness of thinking" (meta-cognition) and develop systemic and
emergent thinking- central themes in Meta-States training.

I wrote the book, Executive Thinking: Activating Your Highest Executive
Thinking Potentials (2018) to develop a training process for high quality
thinking.  Some time later I ran a prototype workshop which led to an
updated manual specifically designed for training people in how to think,
how to think well, how to think critically, and how to think with your
higher executive functions.

Training in High Quality Thinking

           The training begins by learning what real thinking is.  For most
people, it is a shocker- most people do not engage in real thinking.  So we
start with a "thinking" continuum- a continuum that goes from various forms
of Non-Thinking, Mindlessness, Low level thinking to actual "thinking,"
numerous steps of higher levels of thinking and onto Mindfulness.  That
continuum is now integrated with distinctions from Korzybski, brain anatomy,
and neuro-sciences regarding the lower and higher brain functions.

           We then focus on unlearning.  This is a critical skill.  We
often cannot learn something new until we have suspended old learnings.
That makes unlearning skills as critical as learning skills.

           The training then includes the thinking dances.  There are two
of them.  First is the dance forward and back, then the dance upward and
down.  These relate to the lower and higher neurological levels.  Without
understanding this, thinking tends to become distorted by two-valued,
either/or thinking that creates false choices that prevent holistic
thinking.  To achieve that I have called into play the meta-programs.  Some
can be used for launching forward into thinking about that which is novel
and then returning to integrate it so it becomes an updated neurological
base and foundation.  All of this enables you to "learn" to face the novel
and make it familiar- what we call "learning."

           The second dance of meta-programs is used for integrating the
higher and lower brain regions- the executive functions of the cortex and
prefrontal lobes into the lower regions (the thalamus, hippocampus,
amygdala, etc.) to ground and align learnings. 

           The training in thinking inherently involves utilizing the full
range of thinking - the thinking you do at the highest levels- the executive
functions of the higher neurological levels (17 of them).  It also involves
grounding them into the lower level functions (8 of them, these are to
activate emotions, orientation, homoeostatic regulation, wakefulness, etc.).
High quality thinking orients a person to use all of the levels
integratively.

This approach gives unique patterns for handling key executive functions
such as concepts, intentions, meta-emotions, decision-making, creativity,
responsibility, etc.  It also enables us to specify how to activate your
executive thinking and functioning skills which is what we do in the APG
Training regarding Concepts, Values, Self, Intentions, Responsibility, etc.
and opens up for new areas - Decision-making, Wisdom, Creativity, Planning,
Memory, Mindfulness, etc.

Executive Thinking - The Ultimate Cognitive Make-Over.  Presentations in
2019 will be:

              Jan.       Hong Kong / Shenzhen China (probably)

                            April     Brazil, Rio de Janiero   

              June     Mauritius 

Executive Thinking Workshop 

THE ART OF QUESTIONING

YOUR THINKING

Your thinking can go wrong and it often does!  But you are not alone.
Highly intelligent men and women at the highest levels in organizations make
critical and strategic mistakes in their thinking.  After the 2008 financial
debacle of many of the greatest companies, Paul Carroll and Chunka Mui wrote
a book documenting "the most inexcusable business failures of the last 25
years."  They tell the story of Kodack's over-dedication to the status quo
and their bankruptcy.  They tell the story of Motorola Iridium satellite
phone system and the billion dollar loss due to the confirmation bias.  They
tell of the failure of Federal Express's Zapmail, and the stories go on and
on.

The problem?  Certainly not the lack of intelligence.  Within each of these
companies there were brilliant men and women at all levels of leadership.
Yet still flawed and erroneous thinking led to fantastically poor decisions.
What happened?   They did not question their thinking!  Their
over-confidence was their blind-spot.  As a result, they did not even think
that their thinking could be wrong.

What about you?  

           Do you have the critical thinking skills required for
effectively questioning your thinking?

           Do you know meta-cognitive thinking skills so that you can
monitor and recognize when your thinking may be off, may be ignoring
critical information?

           Do you know how to access and apply your highest executive
thinking functions?

You have executive functions in your higher levels of brain neurology (your
prefrontal cortex) and you can learn to use them for meta-awareness,
mindfulness, critical thinking, insightful decision making, etc.   To do
that is to engage in a cognitive make-over and to make high quality
Executive Thinking yours.   Interested?  Then check us out. 

THE MOST CRITICAL PIECE

OF ALL

It is the primary one- the factor underlying every other factors.  It is the
essence of every skill- the foundation of all subjective experiences.  When
it is off- then every single aspect of your experience is off.  When it is
on, and operating optimally, so is all of life.  It is that primary, that
essential to human well-being and happiness.

How aware are you that I'm speaking about your most core competence?
Thinking.  Thinking lies at the heart of everything you consider important-
learning, communicating, relating, loving, parenting, changing, leading,
managing, negotiating, influencing, coaching, counseling, etc.  And the
quality of your thinking determines the quality of all these experiences.

Thinking is the underlying process that culminates in how you construct a
mental maps bout any and all of your interests and passions in life.  It is
that process that enables you to learn and develop all of the thinking
skills by which you can avoid the thinking traps.  

HOW TO OUT-THINK

THE COMPETITION

In today's world of information, accelerated change, markets appearing and
disappearing within a few short years and that means that there is a new
competitive advantage in town.  Do you know what it is?   Today your
competitive advantage is to out-think the competition.  It is to be able to
think clearly, precisely, pragmatically, creatively, and critically.  You
can't afford to do otherwise.

If you and your people are not out-thinking the competition, you and even
your company will be made redundant.  You will be blindsided by new
developments and out-paced in your industry.  To engage in executive
thinking is to tap into your highest executive functions- your prefrontal
cortex.   This kind of executive thinking is not just for those at the top,
it is for everyone.  After all, most often the best ideas come from the
front-lines, not the C-suite.

The training in Executive Thinking is designed to enable you to learn to
think like a cutting-edge executive.  It is organized so that you can learn
to use your own higher level executive neural centers - your pre-frontal
cortex to do creative, innovative, critical, and precise thinking.  To do
that you will discover how to avoid bad decisions, jumping to conclusions,
and being defeated by cognitive biases and distortions.  Learn how to lead
the minds and hearts of others through persuasive thinking that constructs
meaning and meaningfulness!

In this day of knowledge workers (Peter Drucker), those who are best able to
run their own brains and access their highest capacities for learning, are
able to make their companies learning organizations (Peter Senge).  

DANGER!      

IF YOU CAN'T THINK CLEARLY - THEN 

           You can't order your life, manage your choices.  You will suffer
lots of negative experiences and emotions - from disorder and confusion to
anxiety and uncertainty.

           You can't accumulate and access the situation, sort out what's
relevant from what is irrelevant, can't plan for the future.  You can't
adapt to the ever-changing contexts.

           You can't understand processes- how things work.  Events like
birth, illness, death, the rising of the sun.  yet it is via understanding
these processes that we can then control and manage them more effectively.

           You can't figure out and decide on the best choices for your
actions.  You will be reactive and engaged in random actions.  You won't be
coherently engaged in productive actions.  You won't be able to establish
effective purposeful means to your goals or make the best choices or
identify the risks involved or the potential hidden problems.

           You can't imagine and invent a realistic and achievable desired
future-one that requires   anticipation, preparation, and preventive
actions.

           You wont' be able to figure out in a methodical way to deal with
a problematic situation, how to analyze it in order to resolve it.

REAL THINKING

For Being Real & Productive

We all think, it's the one thing that we all do.  "Thinking" seems so
natural, inevitable, and effortless- how could it go wrong?  How could one
not think?  Yet thinking does go wrong and people do avoid real thinking.
In part, that's because real thinking is unnatural and has to be learned.
Actually, real thinking is a studied discipline requiring a lot of work.
That's why it is actually unusual for people to engage in real thinking.
Instead, it is more typical that people are engaged in automatic thinking,
passive thinking, and reactive thinking.  Of course, in those instances,
they are not really thinking at all- they are on automatic.  This explains
why real thinking is one of the most difficult things you will ever do.  Yet
when you do, you will distinguish yourself, it will make you effective,
productive, and creative.

Because most people do not engage in the difficult work of real thinking,
they generally seek to escape from it.  It is work and so they avoid it!  As
a result, for real thinking they substitute cliche thinking, superficial
thinking, irrational thinking, politically correct thinking, etc.   You can
hear it in their speech because as they think, so they speak.  That makes
their conversations disorderly, disorganized, inconsistent, unclear,
irrelevant, and incomplete.  No wonder so many people are unproductive, even
counter-productive.

What's needed is real thinking- thinking that is precise, clear, authentic,
and relevant.  This requires critical thinking, creative thinking, the
thinking of entrepreneurs, the thinking of business leaders, the thinking of
millionaires, the thinking of geniuses, etc.  Without this, thinking and
speaking become flawed in various ways- disorganized, irrelevant, ambiguous,
incomplete, etc.

Executive Thinking- Cognitive Make-Over is designed to enable you to learn
the discipline (science) and art of real thinking- how to use the executive
functions of your frontal cortex, how to distinguish real from
pseudo-thinking, how to recognize how thinking goes wrong (cognitive
distortions, biases, and fallacies), how to practice executive thinking, and
in the end- how to become a great thinker.

                                                        "WHAT WERE THEY
THINKING?"

IBM had 95% of the market of typewriters, electronics, and main frame
computers and just invented the personal computer.  They were on top in
their industry!  Yet within a couple years they had lost so much of the
market, they only had 5% of that market.  What were they thinking?
Amazingly, they were thinking there was much of a market for personal
computers.  Their status quo thinking prevented them from thinking outside
of the box.  What were they thinking?

Kodack owned 90% of the photography market and then invented digital
photography.  They were at the top with 90%!   Yet throughout the twentieth
century and into the twenty-first they thought that film was the way to go,
not digital.  By 2000 while they were losing a majority of the market, they
still didn't think that they need to shift their thinking.  A few years
later, they declared bankruptcy.  What were they thinking?

The success of Motorola in multiple markets made them think that the Iridium
satellite phone system would be the wave of the future even though the
phones didn't work and would not work in urban areas, underground, inside of
buildings, etc.  Yet the pursued putting satellites into space and spending
billions of dollars ... in the end they lost multiple billions of dollars.
What were they thinking?

What about projects, choices, and decisions that you have made that when you
looked back on them, you asked yourself, "What was I thinking?"  How often
have you said that about friends and colleagues, "What were you thinking?"
Usually, the answer is we were not- we were reacting, we were on automatic,
we were reacting, we were following the crowd, we were mindless, etc.  

All of this highlights the importance of actual thinking.  Something that
most people do far too little of- and when they do actually think, it is of
low quality and poorly done.  So, ready for a cognitive make-over?  Ready to
take charge and run your own brain and get the best results by learning how
to think more clearly, practically, creatively, and critically?

THE ART OF

RUNNING YOUR OWN BRAIN

If you are not "running your own brain," then the question arises, Who is?
If you are not doing your own thinking- questioning, exploring, classifying,
understanding, imagining, remembering, framing, etc., then who or what is
running the show?  Perhaps you are on automatic.  Perhaps you are just
reacting?  Perhaps you have become a mental zombie?

The fact is that we humans can default on the most basic of all
competencies- thinking.  You can go on automatic and let the thinking that
you did years ago run the show or you can default to other people's views
and opinions or you can default to society, family, religion, etc.  In fact,
because real thinking involves effort- it is easier to default on thinking,
than to learn the art of thinking and running your own brain.

Many people find the question, "What do you think?" challenging rather than
an exciting opportunity.  Many more find the question, "How are you thinking
about that?" even more difficult, some even find it threatening.  That's
because they are that much unaware of their most fundamental competency for
navigating through life and relationships- how they construct their mental
maps and use them for understanding and developing.

The Solution?  Step up to use the executive functions of your brain so you
can become the CEO of your life.  Take charge of your thinking and the
direction it establishes for you.  Become a more intelligent thinker!

IF YOU WERE CEO

What would you do and what would your life be like if you were the CEO of
your mind?  Imagine that!  What would change if you accessed the executive
functions of your cortex- especially of your prefrontal cortices?  That's
where and how you could become the thinking CEO of your life.

The prefrontal cortices in your brain provides you the possibility for
managing all of the other neurological possibilities- regulating your body
energies, managing your emotions, mobilizing your motivational structures,
etc.  It is there that you could lead the other divisions of consciousness-
reflective awareness for being mindful, make sound decisions, setting up
powerful intentions for a sense of purpose and passion, putting your
mentality to good use, accelerating your learning, integrating your learning
into practical and useful actions so it closes the knowing-doing gap.

If you were CEO- how much would that enhance the quality of your life?  How
much would you effectively manage your internal board room of conflicting
wants and needs?  With Executive Thinking- the Ultimate Cognitive Make-Over
you can find out.  You can become a creative and critical thinker.  You can
radically increase your internal and external resourcefulness.

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D., Executive Director 

Neuro-Semantics 

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

               1 970-523-7877 

                    Dr. Hall's email:
<mailto:meta at acsol.net\hich\af31506\dbch\af31505\loch\f31506> meta at acsol.net

    cid:261CED33-4408-4124-862B-B9A4B37A367A

Dr. L. Michael Hall writes a post on "Neurons" each Monday.  For a free
subscription, sign up on www.neurosemantics.com.   On that website you can
click on Meta-Coaching for detailed information and training schedule.   To
find a Meta-Coach see  <http://www.metacoachfoundation.org>
www.metacoachfoundation.org.   For Neuro-Semantic Publications --- click
"Products," there is also a catalog of books that you can download.   

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20181209/19e99bc4/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.wmz
Type: application/x-ms-wmz
Size: 31594 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20181209/19e99bc4/attachment-0003.wmz>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image002.png
Type: image/png
Size: 52782 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20181209/19e99bc4/attachment-0003.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image003.wmz
Type: application/x-ms-wmz
Size: 570807 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20181209/19e99bc4/attachment-0004.wmz>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image004.png
Type: image/png
Size: 90169 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20181209/19e99bc4/attachment-0004.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image005.wmz
Type: application/x-ms-wmz
Size: 115098 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20181209/19e99bc4/attachment-0005.wmz>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image006.png
Type: image/png
Size: 200775 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20181209/19e99bc4/attachment-0005.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image007.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 4176 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20181209/19e99bc4/attachment-0001.jpg>