[Neurons] 2019 Neurons #30 WHEN THINKING BECOMES SERIOUSLY CONTAMINATED

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2019 Neurons #30

July 1, 2019

 

WHEN THINKING BECOMES

SERIOUSLY CONTAMINATED

 

When it comes to thinking, real thinking, thinking through a problem to a
solution, thinking up new creative ideas, thinking about a loved one and how
to connect or communicate- the problem with thinking is that all thinking is
contaminated.  And this is one, if not the, biggest problems with clear
thinking.  Our thinking is not clean.  It is muddled, convoluted, biased,
and flawed.

 

Yet for most people, most of the time, it does not seem this way.  I suppose
it is like a pair a glasses that very, very slowly gets some dust, then
becomes a tiny bit cloudy, and does so for days on end and the person
wearing the glasses does not look at the glasses, but only through them.
Eventually vision becomes a bit dull and foggy, but the person adjusts to
the film that collects on the glasses.  Their seeing is contaminated but
they don't notice.

 

So with thinking.  You think about what you have to do, the people you
encounter, driving, traveling, chores, etc.  All the while you seldom think
about your thinking.  Yet if you did step back and engaged your
meta-cognition powers, you could then become aware of your cognitive
distortions, biases, and fallacies.   You could then be in a position to
actually work on and update your very capacity to think with more clarity,
accuracy, precision, creativity, etc.

 

Picking up on Alfred Korzybski's famous quote that "the map is not the
territory," NLP framed thinking as the process by which you and I construct
mental maps or models in our heads about the world.  What we do when we
think is map out what something is, how it works, it's value or
significance, its consequences, rules, etc.  in this way we make meaning of
things.  Now isn't that an awesome insight?  By your thinking you construct
the "meanings" of anything and everything in your life.  That means that the
quality of anything and everything in your life- and how you experience it-
is ultimately a function of the quality of your thinking.

 

Wow!  Now that should give you pause.  It does me.  It is not the things out
there in the world, the people I engage with, the work I do, the traffic,
the noise, or whatever that determines my experience or the quality of my
life.  It's my thinking!  Thinking is that consequential.

 

And yes, all of your thinking (and all of my thinking) is contaminated to
some degree.  The way you have been thinking has set up thinking-filters-
perceptual patterns, meta-programs, cognitive distortions, and so on.  You
have constructed "beliefs" and "understandings" and these now contaminate
your thinking.  It's circular.  As a child when you first start to "think,"
you created ideas and beliefs and understandings which today cloud and
filter your thinking.  Your first thinking influences your second thinking.
The capacity to think, which is your medium through which you construct
mental maps about things, then becomes the filters through which you now
experience the world.

 

We sometimes say that this is "the Catch-22 of consciousness."  You have to
use your current mind (thinking capacities) to change your mind.  And this
is where your blind-spots can defeat you because it is hard to see the
frames governing your thinking when you are inside those frames.  The
question is, How can we get outside of the frames (outside of the box) to
see afresh?  How can we unlearn what we learned when we are inside of that
learning and it seems normal or natural?

 

This is not just a problem for those people who have a bad relationship with
reality (the territory) and need therapy to readjust their maps so that they
can better navigate life.  It is a problem for all of us.  For all of us our
thinking is serious contaminated by cognitive distortions, cognitive biases,
and cognitive fallacies.

 

NLP accidently came up with a great cure for this serious contamination when
the Meta-Model of Language was invented.  Given how much we think in
language and how much language itself distorts, generalizes, and deletes
vital pieces of information -the Meta-Model gives you critical questions so
that you are not so easily deceived and bamboozled by words.  Those
questions also activate your ability to think again in a fresh and
out-of-the-box way.  And when you do, you are mostly able to update your
thinking, clean out the fog, and over-ride the old thinking programs.

 

Now if that interests you, then grab a good NLP book on the Meta-Model.
Learning the Meta-Model is a great way to begin to clean up your languaging
and mental mapping- to wit, your thinking.  Recommendations:

My book is Communication Magic (2001) from Crown House Pub.  An update on
the Meta-Model commissioned originally with Bandler.

Magic De-Mystified by Bryon Lewis and Frank Pucelik, also by Crown House
Pub. Is another excellent book on the Meta-Model.

Introducing NLP by John Seymour and Joseph O'Connor is a basic NLP book,
like many others, that has a chapter on the Meta-Model that gives you a
quick introduction. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Neuro-Semantics

P.O. Box 8

Clifton CO. 81520 USA

www.neurosemantics.com   look for the special offer

 

Author of the stunning new history of NLP--- NLP Secrets.  

Investigative Journalism which has exposed what has been kept secrets for
decades. 

http://www.neurosemantics.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/NLP-Secrets-2_sml2.
png

 

 

 

 

 

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