[Neurons] 2025 Neurons #11 WHO WOULD YOU LIKE TO THINK LIKE?

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2025 Neurons #11

March 17, 2025

 

WHO WOULD YOU LIKE TO THINK LIKE?

 

 

Even though no one specifically taught you to think, you have learned to
think in very specific ways.  At first you simply copied the thinking of
parents, teachers, and peers.  Later you learned to think according to the
jobs you took, the courses you took, and the books you read.  You learned to
think by the movies you watched, the games you played, and the hobbies you
engaged in.  Yet in all of this, you probably never thought, "Now who do I
want to think like?"  "Whose way of thinking attracts me so much that I want
to learn to think like him or her."

 

On the surface, thinking seems so natural, so inevitable, so unstudied that
the idea of studying hw to think, or how to think like another person never
struck your consciousness.  So you just think without considering who you
are thinking like.  But now let's raise that question.  If you were to look
around and consider the different way that people think- Who would you like
to think like?

 

After all, when it comes to modeling excellence, isn't that what we most
essentially do?  It seems simple- if you want to be a millionaire, you need
to think like a millionaire.  If you want to be an entrepreneur-you have to
learn to think like an entrepreneur. If you want to excel in area area or
profession, you have to think like the best minds in that area.  And if you
decide to do that, the next question is, "How exactly does millionaires
think or how do entrepreneurs think?"  In fact, there are books written to
those very ends.  In each case, it's the thinking that makes the difference
more than what they do.

 

So pick your poison.  Once you have a career or adventure in mind, your next
step is to learn how to think like those who are best in that career or
adventure- who is the best thinker as a business person, a musician, a
lawyer, doctor, I.T. specialist, etc.?  A few years ago I got books from
Bobby Fisher on playing chess, I wanted to know how he thought about chess.
In the first month of President Trump, people on both sides of the political
aisle were repeatedly astonished by the out-of-the-box ideas he came up
with.  And no wonder, he does not think as a politician.  Instead he thinks
as an entrepreneur, a real estate investor, and as an entertainer.  No
wonder why they can't figure him out, and no wonder they take him literally
and miss his humor- he thinks and speaks in very different terms from
political.

 

After I learned NLP I focused my attention Bateson, Korzybski, and later on
Maslow.  I wanted to know what they thought; then I went back to re-read
regarding how they thought.  In fact, I wanted to learn how to think as they
thought so I could carry on what they had started.  This actually is the
deepest modeling as it goes beyond what someone does-their expert level of
performance- to how they think that got them there in the first place.

 

After several decades of doing that, I realized this about the founders of
NLP.  Bandler modeled Perls and at the beginning began to think like Perls
as he began mimicking the tone and tempo of how Perls spoke.  But given that
Perls described himself in his biography as "a dirty old man," that tells
you a lot about Bandler.  He would have been so much better off if he had
learn to think like Virginia Satir instead!  Grinder's thinking followed
Marx (he taught Marxist economics!) and Chomsky (who gave up linguistics to
become a socialist left winger politically.  Pucelik was the founder who
thought like a therapist and ended up opening drug and alcoholic clinics in
the USA, Russia, and Ukraine thereby helping thousands of people. 

 

Who do you want to think like?  Most of us do not answer that question at
all.  Instead we end up thinking with bits and pieces mixed together from
mom and dad, a favorite teacher or author, a spiritual leader, etc.   For
most of us, our thinking is a mishmash of thoughts and ways-of-thinking from
many sources.  If you have a career, that career probably plays a big
influence on your thinking.  If you focus on and care more about family, or
your best buds, or membership in a special community-then that highly valued
group probably influences your way of thinking.

 

Who would you like to learn to think like?  Would you like to think like a
change agent, a first responder, like Elon Musk, like a character in a
movie, like Neo in The Matrix, like a famous trainer or coach?  It's your
choice ... and "as you think, so you are."   So you will become.

 

PS. By the way we have just completed the training, Thinking Like Humans
here in Mexico ... next time we do that training will be in Brazil in June.
Interested?  Let me know.

 

 

 



L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, ISNS

738 Beaver Lodge

Grand Jct., CO. 81505 USA

meta at acsol.net

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20250316/ef47d01b/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 36723 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20250316/ef47d01b/attachment-0001.jpg>