[Neurons] 2020 Neurons #19 WAKING UP FROM THE TRANCE

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall 

2020 Neurons #19

April 20, 2020

Thinking for a Living Series #6

 

 

 

WAKING UP FROM THE TRANCE

 

In Brain Camp (the Neuro-Semantic Training that teaches Executive Thinking),
the first and main point I seek to drive home is the shocking realization
that - most of the time we are not thinking.  Oh, the mind might be  active
and engaged in something, but it is not engaged in the task of the actual
skill of "thinking."  And we all know this- well, we come to know it after
it is mentioned, although we may not know it when we first hear it.

 

The reason is because anything repeatedly practiced eventually becomes
routine and automatic.  Autonomous.  Oh yes, of course!  We call this habit
formation.  Do anything repeatedly and eventually it "drops out of
consciousness and into the unconscious mind."  If you are reading this, what
was once (when you were 5 or 6 years old) a really difficult task (reading)
is now so easy.  Today reading is even inescapable for you.  Today you
cannot not read.  See word -the meaning pops into your mind.  It has become
automatic.  It operates as an autonomous program.

 

And like reading, most of the practiced actions of your life have now moved
to become automatic.  And the result of that is that now you are not
thinking.  Instead you are just responding (or worse, reacting).  In fact,
thinking about what you are doing may mess them up.

 

With habit formation, you turn something difficult and challenging into a
skillful set of actions that are smooth, easy, and that can be performed
inattentively.  You do that when you type, drive, rollerblade, ski, get
dressed, cook breakfast, and a thousand other things.  With conscious
attending and thinking, you learned how to do something and that "learning"
is now integrated into your mind-body system.  We say that you now "know" it
unconsciously or that "your unconscious mind" knows it.  Now the behavior is
integrated as a unit or as a whole, so that the components of the activity
can now occur outside of conscious attention.

 

This is both good and a challenge.  It's good because it frees the higher
levels of your nervous system, brain, and frontal cortex for new and
exciting next-level challenges.  It's a challenge because your attention is
so easily lulled into relaxing and not engaging in the effortfulness of
actually thinking.  Now you can default to not-thinking.  You can default to
your previous thinking and go on automatic.  And while being on automatic
has its benefits- when you are there, you are non-attentive, programmed by
your past experiences, not-learning, not in sensory awareness, drifting, and
in an unconscious trance.

 

There are numerous ways of being on automatic.  In Brain Camp we list-
reactionary thinking, borrowed thinking, lazy thinking, agenda thinking, and
being "sure" (knowledge thinking).  In all of these semi-conscious states,
while you brain is working- you are not mindful.  You are unconscious.
Think about it as being in a trance that you need to wake up from- because
only then can thinking truly begin.

 

Sometimes what we learned becomes outdated.  The activity, as such, no
longer works due to a change in context, the environment, our stage of life,
or other factors.  Now we need to update what is out-of-date.  And that
requires becoming consciously mindful once again so that you can unpack the
pieces and establish a new level of learning.  This is the unlearning
process.  To break the habit that was formed, you have to come back to
awareness.  You can't change what you're not aware of.  You could also think
of this as waking up from the trance you've been in.

 

Fritz Perls had another way of describing it.  He said we need to "lose our
mind and come back to our senses."  Here he was speaking about the "mind"
that encodes the old program but which is no longer effective.  That "mind"
is the mind that holds an old belief, decision, understanding, knowledge,
identity, etc. which imprisons one in the old learning, the old program for
functioning.

 

"Coming back to your senses" refers to identifying the building blocks of
the old learning so that you can re-arrange things and construct a new
learning-a new program.  We do this in NLP in numerous ways.  We model out
the sensory components of a behavior, experience, or skill which then
reveals the old TOTE (test-operate-test-exit) program- the strategy we have
been using.  This deframes the old learning.   It is the fragmentation
pattern that Milton Erickson so frequently used with clients. 

 

All of these are ways of talking about unlearning- waking up from the
trance, coming back to your senses, breaking down the strategy, deframing,
fragmenting the old pattern, etc.  It is to shake yourselves free from the
old automatic program so that you can re-think about what you are doing, and
why, and how.  It is about becoming mindful again so that you can learn
afresh and stay current in an ever-changing world.   And if you are someone
who needs to "think for a living" this is crucial.

 

For more about all of this, see Executive Thinking (2019), Mind-Lines
(2005), Winning the Inner Game (2007).   <http://www.neurosemantics.com/>
www.neurosemantics.com 

 

 

 

 

 

 




 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Neuro-Semantics

P.O. Box 8

Clifton CO. 81520 USA

www.neurosemantics.com   

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20200419/79c81cc7/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 137551 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20200419/79c81cc7/attachment-0001.png>