[Neurons] 2022 Neurons #36 THE NEURO-SEMANTIC ATTITUDE

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2022 Neurons #36

September 5, 2022

Super-charging Your Attitude #12

 

GETTING THE NEURO-SEMANTIC ATTITUDE

 

In the last Neurons I described "the spirit of NLP" and the inherent
attitudes which are presupposed from the NLP Communication Model.  Of
course, one problem with that is that so many people who have learned NLP
never learned the attitude.  Now if you ask, "So what?" the answer is that
basically NLP will not work without the attitude. 

 

Why is that?  As an explanation, remember that NLP is "the study of the
structure of subjective experience."  And subjectivity itself is inevitably
governed by factors that are not, in themselves, objective.  That's why, in
the domain of NLP, it is not a matter of mathematical formulas or rigid
procedures.  It is not "scientific" in terms of how the inorganic world of
things work and can so easily be quantified.  The ever-changing, fluid world
of living things, because they are open systems are more likely to be
qualified.  So we use the "scientific" methodology of qualitative research
when it comes to living things.

 

In the case of qualitative and phenomenological research, attitude plays a
big role.  If you are to study the subjective experience of a person, you
cannot be dispassionately objective.  Treat a person as a thing, relate with
basic kindness or respect-and you get nothing.  For human beings to open up
and reveal their structures, you have to care, be respectful, be patient, be
kind, etc.  So making NLP work for you requires the right attitude.  In the
previous article I mentioned:

Learning, openness, curiosity, questioning, flexibility, persisting,
passion, playful, skepticism, creativity.           

 

Reading that, my wife said, "All of that is also presupposed in
Neuro-Semantic NLP, but what else?  Are there any other attitudes that
really separate Neuro-Semantics from classic NLP?"  Good question.  Having
not previously entertained that thought, I began.  What I immediately said
was that there are three really unique and important attitudes required in
Neuro-Semantics that were not emphasized in classic NLP.

 

1) Apply to self.  The attitude of turning inward and first asking, "How
does this apply to me?  Am I living or doing this?  How good of an example
am I of this?"  This is the attitude of not merely wanting to be congruent,
but of taking the responsibility to be congruent.  And it is built into the
Meta-States Model since that is a model of self-reflexivity-the dynamics
that occur when you reflect back onto yourself.

 

2) Implementation.  Following directly from "apply to self" comes the
attitude of implementing what you know and closing the gap between what you
know and what you do.  This implementing attitude is one of risk-taking and
requires the "active" meta-program so that instead of over-thinking
something, philosophizing about it, collecting all the knowledge and wisdom
that you can about it-you take action.  William James called this having "a
bias for action" and not letting opportunites pass by.

 

3) Ethical commitment.  It was the unethical behaviors that I saw in the
field of NLP that led 

Bob and I to create a vision for the ethical use of NLP in our first vision
statement.   Knowing that anything powerful can be powerfully misused, we
set out a vision of men and women using NLP for the greater good and living
up to a set of professional ethics in how we treat people.  Some of the
early NLP developers had that attitude, but many did not.  We wanted to make
an ethical mind-set explicit in Neuro-Semantics.

 

After these first attitudes, several more came to mind over the next couple
days.  4) Humility. In this attitude you know that you do not know it all.
In fact, you realize that the more you learn, the more you discover that
there is more and more that you don't know.  Trainers in NLP who seem to be
afraid of that(!), adopt a know-it-all attitude that comes across as
arrogant and self-serving.   Perhaps the use of words like "mastery" or
"genius" has led to such arrogance.  The true master is the one who knows
that he or she has a lot more to learn! 

 

5) Collaboration.  Because it was the attitude of collaboration that led to
the creation of Neuro-Semantics, from the very beginning those who have
joined have tended to be the people who have a vision of a community and a
collaborative community-all working for the good for the whole.  Again, it
was the argumentative competitive attitude that we saw in the field of NLP
that we were wanting to move away from.  

 

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

ISNS Executive Director

P.O. Box 8

Clifton Colorado 81520 USA

(970) 523-7877

drhall at acsol.net 

 

The book Unleashed! (2007) which is the foundational book for the processes
of how to unleash human potentials has just been released on The Shop: 

www.neurosemantics.com/shop/page/7/ 



 

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