[Neurons] 2024 Neurons #56 NLP'S BIG FAILURE

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2024 Neurons #56

December 16, 2024

 

NLP'S BIG FAILURE

With NLP Ideally, You Learn to Think

 

Earlier this year (2024), I completed the book, Thinking for Humans: The Art
of Being Mindful.  In it I addressed a problem in the field of NLP-something
that to this day the field has still not recognized: 

"While a great many people in NLP don't know this, NLP is essentially about
thinking.  NLP begins with representational thinking (the VAK,
sensory-awareness), it then goes to associative thinking (anchoring,
cause-effect linkages), linguistic thinking (language, the Meta-Model),
evaluative thinking (values, beliefs, meta-programs), and finally
integrative thinking (state, embodiment, mind-to-muscle).  In learning NLP,
you learn to think.  Or at least you should if you learned it well.  Yet
because most trainers and educators in NLP don't know this, they do not
emphasize this.  This book is designed, in part, to change that."

 

Previous to this book on thinking, I wrote Executive Thinking: Activating
Your Highest Executive Thinking Potentials (2018).  I wrote that, in part,
because in the field of Critical Thinking I could not find a single book
anywhere that even mentioned NLP or the Meta-Model of Language.  I realized
that after reading 80 books on the subject of critical thinking.  Imagine
that!  Not a single one even mentioned NLP, let alone presented the
Meta-Model as a great tool for critical thinking.  I found that shocking!

 

Why?  Because, in my opinion, the Meta-Model is the greatest tool that's
ever been presented for clear, precise, accurate, and creative thinking.  So
in writing Executive Thinking one of my objectives was to get the Meta-Model
known in that field.  Another objective was to introduce, or perhaps
re-introduce, the Meta-Model to the field of NLP as a tremendous tool for
critical thinking.  And that's because, as noted above, ideally when you
learn NLP, you learn how to think.  But, of course, ideally implies that
'actually' many people do not.

 

Astonishing, isn't it?  While NLP is a model of thinking and learning NLP,
you should be learning how to think, many do not.  I venture to suggest that
most do not.  How can that be?  What's going on that in the teaching and
training of NLP that people are not getting a deeper learning-learning how
to think.  Anyone can teach you what to think.  That's what our schools
primarily do which is why most young people graduating from High School do
not know how to think.  Again, why is this?  What explains this?  Here's my
guesses.

 

#1: Thinking is not made the focus of the training.  Instead, NLP to
presented solely as a Communication Model or it is presented in terms of one
of its applications-sales, personal development, therapy, coaching,
consulting, hypnosis, etc.  There are also many trainers who are mostly
enthralled by the "techniques," and so all they present are the quick, easy,
and/or sensational patterns.  So people learn the techniques without
learning the thinking behind them which makes them work as they do.

 

#2: The NLP trainer him or herself has not learned how to train the
Meta-Model.  This is a really sad one.  From my experience in meeting lots
and lots of NLP trainers, most of them do not even teach the Meta-Model in
their trainings or if they do so, they devote a few hours to half a day at
best.  And why not?  Because that's how they were taught!  Obviously, if you
were not effectively taught how to think about the Meta-Model and how to
train it, you won't be able to teach it well yourself.  Worse, if you think
of it as grammar and linguistics, your mis-understanding of it will cause
you to downplay it.

 

#3: The NLP trainer him or herself has not learned how to think using NLP.
I think this is a big one.  Having not become enthralled with the power and
beauty of the Meta-Model and having really no idea how pervasive it is in
NLP, a great many trainers and leaders in the field of NLP have never
applied the critical thinking skills of the Meta-Model to themselves.  This
is obvious from reading some of the NLP books that have been written.  This
is obvious from reading the articles and promotional pieces on NLP websites.
Sometimes when I do so I wonder, "Didn't you ever learn the Meta-Model?"
"Who taught you the Meta-Model?"  That's why in a lot of NLP communications
on the internet and elsewhere you will find uncontrolled generalizations,
distortions, and deletions.  You will find mind-reading statements about
people; unfounded cause-effect beliefs, ridiculous complex equivalences, and
on and on.

 

#4: Thinking itself is devalued as 'a given,' and so little thought is given
to it.  Unless you have spent some time thinking about "thinking," the
cultural norm that we all grow up in is to take it for granted.  "Yeah,
thinking, so what?"  We consider it natural, inevitable, and sometime
everyone can do.  No wonder we do not think of it as a skill- and a skill we
need to learn.  No wonder we put all "thinking" into that one category and
don't realize that there are dozens and dozens, scores of different kinds of
thinking as well as levels of thinking skills.

 

#5: Some NLP trainers have been deluded into thinking that thinking is
conscious and the really important stuff is unconscious.  I'm now describing
the two camps that have moved away from the mainline NLP field, the Bandler
group and the Grinder group.  What a paradox!  Once Ericksonian hypnosis was
modeled, both Bandler and Grinder decided to stop addressing what they
called "the conscious mind" and focus almost exclusively on "the unconscious
mind." (Of course, there is only one mind-some content in conscious
awareness and most of it outside-of-conscious awareness.)  But thinking
itself is a dynamic that involves all aspects of our brain-body and mind and
so fluctuates in and out of conscious awareness.  If you dichotomize this,
then you set up an Either/Or limited way of thinking and dismiss "thinking"
as only the conscious stuff.

 

Recommendation 

Let's get back to NLP as a thinking model and train it or use it to enable
people to do more critical and creative thinking.  If the world needs
anything beyond love, it needs people who can actually think, and think
clearly, precisely, and accurately.  If we don't have that, we will lose our
civilization, our science, our well-being, and our sanity. 

 

They should have known because from the beginning the founders said things
like the following:

"The whole idea of the meta-model is to give you systematic control over
language.  It teaches you how to listen not only to other people, but to
yourself.  The meta-model is really simplistic, but it's still the
foundation of everything we do.  Without it, and without systematic control
over it, you will be do everything that we teach you sloppily.  The
difference between the people who do the things that we teach well and those
who don't, are people who have no control over the meta-model.  It is
literally the foundation of everything we do." (70).

 

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, ISNS

738 Beaver Lodge

Grand Jct., CO. 81505 USA

meta at acsol.net

 

 



 

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