[Neurons] 2019 Neurons #7 THINKING FOR A CHANGE

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2019 Neurons #7

January 24, 2019

 

THINKING FOR A CHANGE

 

I didn't know it until I began studying thinking in earnest.  I began that
study after completing the book on creativity (Creative Solutions, 2017).
For years, I had been presenting the workshop on Creativity & Innovation-the
third module in the Self-Actualization Diploma series.  Since 2007 that has
been one of my favorite trainings because of its focus on problem-solving.
I especially liked it because of the way the four critical factors of
problem-solving came together to form a united structure.  Namely, outcome,
problem, solution, innovation.

 

Prior to that I had never seen the relationship between these four
phenomenon.  I always thought of them as distinct and separate.  Then I
realized that you can't have a "problem" without an outcome.  If you don't
have an outcome- something you want that you do not currently have, then you
do not have a problem.  Problems arise when you select a goal as a desired
outcome.  A problem is the distance from now to then (present state to
desired state).  So a solution solves that gap, that difference.  It solves
the block, obstacle, or lack of resource.  But then, just because you have a
solution does not necessarily mean that you should innovate it. It may
involve too much time and too much money.  It may be unecological for your
health, relationships, etc.

 

All of that was actually a study of thinking- how we think (or don't think)
about facing some aspect of reality to get what we want and to deal with the
constraints, restraints, and challenges involved in making it happen.  What
I also found in presenting the Creativity and Innovation workshop dozens of
times, mostly to specific divisions within organizations, is that most
people do not think very clearly when it comes to problem-solving.  Even
people in R&D departments had significant problems to clearly sort out the
real problem form the many forms of pseudo-problems (symptoms, consequences,
contributing factors, riddles, etc.).  And that's why I decided to look
further and deeper into critical thinking.

 

Many, many years previously, for a short period of time, I studied critical
thinking.  A local college asked me to design a short course on critical
thinking (which I did).  As soon as I completed that, I moved on.  More
recenlty, in revisiting the field of Critical Thinking I discovered that
there had been a lot of new developments and new models, I also discovered
something that surprised me- namely, no one had ever in the past 40 years
applied NLP to Critical Thinking.  I read dozens upon dozens of books and
looked into multiple programs and not a single person so much as quoted the
Meta-Model as a critical thinking tool.

 

So that's what I did in Executive Thinking (2018).  It was (and is) the
first and only NLP book that specifically addresses the subject of critical
thinking -that is, cognitive biases, fallacies, and distortions.  And while
in many fields people use NLP without giving it credit or quoting sources,
even this has not happened in the field of Critical Thinking.  Why no one
else ever thought of applying the Meta-Model to Critical Thinking or why not
a single theorist or writer in Critical Thinking ever knew about or used the
Meta-Model, I don't know.  All I knew was that it was time!

 

What the Meta-Model does in terms of critical thinking is that it provides a
very practical and effective way to handle the vagueness and ambiguity of
language.  And given that we mostly think in language and words-the critical
thinking skill of understanding how language works and how to use it with
precision is a most foundational skill.  That's what the Meta-Model offers.
In several ways it offers you a way to distinguish your words as your mental
maps about things from the external reality (territory) that you want to
navigate.

 

Using the Meta-Model, you learn to representationally track words to your
internal mental movie (see Communication Magic, 2001).  That skill depends
on you distinguishing empirical (sensory-based) words from evaluative
language.  If you can't make a picture in your mind of what a word refers to
then you ask more questions.  You ask, "Specifically where, when, what, who,
which, etc.?"  You index specifics that allows you to extensionalize your
meanings (Korzybski).  Important?  Here's what the developers said about it
originally:

"The Meta-Model is ... the foundation of everything we do.  Without it, and
without systematic control over it, you will do everything we teach you
sloppily.  The difference between the people who do the things that we teach
well and those who don't, are people have control over the Meta-Model.  It
is literally the foundation of everything we do.  You can be b right and
witty and sharp and make the most complex metaphor in the world, but if you
can't gather information well, both internally and externally, you won't
know what to do.  The Meta-Model questions are the ones that really give you
the appropriate information immediately.  It's a great tool for that. ...
It's really important to understand that most people are very chaotically
organized on the inside." 

"By not having the Meta-Model responses systematically wired in, people get
stuck.  One of the things we noticed about Sal Minuchin, Virginia Satir,
Milton Erickson, and Fritz Perls is that they intuitively had many of those
twelve questions in the Meta-Model wired in." (Frogs into Princes, 1979, pp.
71, 77)

 

Are you ready to think for a change?  If you think sloppily, you talk in
sloppy and vague ways.  The cure?  Take a 30-minute dose of the Meta-Model
daily for 90 days.  I will do a mind good.

 

 

 

 

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
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