The User's Manual for the Brain Volume I

by Bob G Bodenhamer

  Figure 5:1 Cartesian Coordinates

  Overdurf and Silverthorn (1996) in Beyond Words provide a couple of excellent metaphors in explaining Cartesian Logic. They utilize the analogy of a glove and suggest that the inverse of the glove would consist of the glove turned inside out. The converse of the glove would comprise the other glove or its opposite.

  The non-mirror image reverse of the glove would include everything else in existence other than the glove. Another way of viewing the non-mirror image reverse in the context of the theorem of a problem would involve saying that the non-mirror image reverse of the problem includes everything the problem does not consist of. The power of this? Once we impose the non-mirror image reverse on the problem, the problem cannot hold up. This results because “the everything else” of the non-mirror image reverse engulfs the problem. That which defined the problem disappears.

  Julie Silverthorn gives another example to provide a visual metaphor. She talks about preparing Jell-O. Consider having a Jell-O mold inside a larger and deeper pan or dish. If you poured Jell-O into the mold you would have a Jell-O form. But if upon pouring the Jell-O inside the mold, you then discover that the mold has a leak, then all of the Jell-O would first go into the mold. Then it would flow out and into the inside of the larger dish. Eventually, the mold and the dish would both fill up, and in doing so, the Jell-O inside the larger dish would engulf the Jell-O mold. The Jell-O mold would then, in effect, disappear and essentially serve no purpose.

  In the non-mirror image reverse pattern, the “everything else” engulfs the theorem and if the theorem holds no purpose for the individual, it will disappear as a problem. In addition to the above questions, these additional questions can also assist in formulating a well-formed desired outcome:

  Can I test the outcome?

  Can I chunk down the outcome into achievable pieces?

  We should give special care to avoid making our outcomes too global. In a well-formed outcome, we need to break the outcome down into a step-by-step procedure. Such will then allow us to achieve the outcome via a systematic, patterned and teachable way.

  Do I know the first step to take?

  Do I feel I can achieve the first step?

  If I reached the outcome would it fit with my values?

  Can I find more than one way to achieve the outcome?

  What appropriate personal anchors exist in the context in which I desire the outcome?

  Do I have sufficient information about the internal state necessary for reaching the outcome?

  Do I have the image of the outcome firmly in my mind?

  Do I have the sounds, pictures, words and feelings of the desired outcome in mind?

  Does my internal state drive my behavior in the direction of obtaining the outcome?

  Peter Young provides the following Well-Formed Outcome visual:

  Figure 5:2 Well-Formed Outcomes

  6.5 Well-Formed Outcome Exercises

  6.5.0.39 Exercise 1

  You will do this exercise by yourself. Begin to look around the room. Look at the physical structure of the room, furniture and other people. Notice four or five different colors and name them to yourself. After noticing colors, notice the different geometric shapes within the room. Do you see squares? Rectangles? Circles? Pyramids? Triangles? Name these shapes to yourself. Listen to the different sounds both within the room and outside. Do you hear people talking? Do you hear any appliances humming? Can you hear automobiles outside? Name the sounds you hear. How many did you hear? How do you feel today? How does your head feel? Stomach? Lower back? What tastes do you experience? Do you notice any odors in the room? How would you gauge your overall emotional state today?

  6.5.0.40 Exercise 2

  Form a group of three and choose “A,” “B” and “C.” “C” will serve as the meta-person or observer. “A” chooses an outcome relating to the study of NLP. “B” will serve as the operator. “B” takes “A’s” outcome through each step of the well-formed outcome outline. “B” asks “A” each question under each step. You make no other intervention. Keep your exercise to asking the questions from the Well-Formed Outcome model. Notice the changes in “A” as “A” processes each question. Did “A’s” outcome change any during the questioning? When “B” finishes with “A,” do a round robin. “A” becomes “B.” “B” becomes “C.” And “C” becomes “A,” etc. After completing a round robin with an outcome relating to your study of NLP, choose an outcome of your choice and repeat.

  6.6 Overview of the NLP Communication Model

  If we break down the term “communication,” we discover that it involves a “communing” (“co”-with; “union”-coming together) of meanings. This noun-like word (communication) then actually refers to a process, namely, the ongoing feedback process of clarifying messages sent and messages received between two or more persons attempting to relate and understand each other. In this process, it takes two persons who keep relating (sending) back and forth their meanings by means of their words and gestures until they begin to share meanings with each other (whether they agree with them or not). Ultimately, they co-create a phenomenon that we call “a state of understanding.” The communication process thus involves a relational and interactive phenomenon.

  “Talking” thus radically differs from “communicating.” While it takes only one to “talk”(!), it takes at least two people to “communicate.” Most people can easily “talk.” All they need do involves opening their mouth and letting a flow of words gush forth! After we have “said words” to or at another person, we can know what we said and even how we said it by simply having some recording device to pick up the signals we sent out. That holds true for “talking.” It does not hold true for “communication.” In “communication” we never know what we have communicated! Why? Because we never know what the other person heard!

  This indefiniteness of knowing what messages get sent and heard in “communication,” leads to the frequent (usual?) experience of the mismatching of meanings between people. Meaning-sent and meaning-received fail to match. Accordingly, to become more professional and elegant in our “communicating”, we must address this mis-matching of messages. This identifies one of the central problems in the interactive process of “communicating.”

  6.7 Facets of Communication

  6.7.1 Complexities That Affect Communicating

  Basic communication theory operates from the information processing functions that we label: (1) processing—thinking, evaluating, reasoning, interpreting, etc.; (2) outputting—in language (verbal) and behavior (non-verbal); and (3) inputting—receiving data, listening, hearing, etc. This operates representationally. This means that words do not mean, people mean. Words function merely and solely as vehicles of meaning, symbols of referents other than themselves. We use words as symbols of our ideas, thoughts, beliefs, understandings, etc. We use them to transfer our ideas into the head of another human being. Language occurs in various modalities of awareness: visual, auditory, kinesthetic (sensations), smells, tastes, and words.

  Figure 5:3 Linear Model of Communication

  What problem do you see with this model? Primarily it portrays the communication process as if it operates in a linear way. What problem does this pose? It makes “communication” reductionistic and too simplistic to describe the complexity that typically occurs when we seek to “communicate.” For one thing, when someone talks, my mind doesn’t wait before I start processing! I process and output (primarily non-verbally) as the speaker continues—and if the speaker has their eyes and ears open, they will simultaneously process my response, and communicate to themselves internally about that, etc.

  # 1. Complexity # 1 that enters into this process involves how “communication” functions as a cycle of interactive events involving the speaker-listener. This means that when we communicate we inevitably generate a co-created phenomenon (or experience) of speaker-auditor in interaction, exchanging, testing, misunderstanding, giving feedback, receiving
feedback, etc.

  # 2. Nor does the complexity end there. Complexity # 2 adds one of the most basic NLP presuppositions: The meaning of your communication resides in the response you get! Or to restate it, the response you get indicates the meaning of your “communication” to the other person regardless of your intent!

  In NLP, we use this as our major communication guideline for developing our skills in becoming more professional and elegant as communicators. This guideline reveals that we never know what we communicate—until we get a response. Then that response assists us in figuring out what we must have communicated to the other person! “Tell me, what did you ‘hear’ me say? Oh, no, I didn’t mean that, let me back up and see if I can provide a different set of signals and words so that I can more accurately communicate my meanings.”

  Obviously, this approach empowers us to realize that there is no “failure” in communication, only results, responses and feedback! I don’t need to blame or accuse others of “not getting it,” “not listening,” “distorting my messages,” etc. That almost always provokes others to respond defensively. Not good. By accepting this non-blaming frame of reference, I start with the realization that others live in their own worlds (and boy, some people really live in their own worlds!). And as I adjust myself to that “reality” (even though I may not like it at all), I don’t need to go around moralizing about it!

  # 3. This brings us to adding complexity # 3 of the model: Expect yourself and others to always, inevitably, and inescapably contaminate the “communication” process! Part of what you and the other “hear” in the communication interchange involves what each brings to the communication encounter in addition to what each inputs from the other.

  NLP adds to the communication this piece—we all operate “internal filters.” Our brains and nervous systems do not see, hear, or record the information that comes to us in a “pure” form as does an audio or video recorder. We do not photographically hear “meaning” or “see” events. We see and hear in the context of our internal world—a world of meaning, values, beliefs, understandings, and experiences. In NLP we refer to this as our internal “references,” that is, those conceptual filters that determine our reality. Metaphorically, we all have our own “library of references.” To therefore “make sense” of things, we go within and use our own personal and subjective references. Linguists refer to this internal trip as a “Trans-derivational Search (TDS) to our referential index.” The referential index defines the person, place or thing doing or receiving the action of the verb. Did you do your own trans-derivational search to your referential index when you read those words?

  In the late 50s and early 60s, Noam Chomsky and his associates created the field of Transformational Grammar. This domain of knowledge sought to specify how language works in the human nervous system in terms of translating, transferring, and transforming surface sentences into the deep structures inside our neurology. Using some of the formulations of General Semantics about levels of knowledge (abstraction), the transformational grammarians created a model of deep, pre-linguistic “knowledge” inside our nervous systems and how that “knowledge” gets transformed into language and then into the surface statements that we utter as we attempt to communicate what we “sense” deep inside. Bandler and Grinder built NLP using some facets of the Transformational Grammar model.

  What does this have to do with an average communication event like a presentation, a conversation, therapy, telling jokes, reading a book, etc.? Everything! Because it means that neither you nor I receive any information (signals, messages) in its pure form. We contaminate everything with “our stuff.” I hear you through my belief filters, my value filters, my mental processing filters, my cognitive distortions, deletions, and generalizations.

  And because I do—you never know how I filtered your words, gestures, non-verbal movements, etc. No wonder we have to work so hard to communicate effectively! Somehow we have to take into account the “meaning systems” that others use in processing our information. Sometimes we have to stop talking about our subject, mentally step back, and talk about our process of communicating—we “meta-communicate”— talk about our talk.

  Figure 5.4 The Complexity of Communication

  Complexity # 4. We haven’t finished identifying the layers of complexity yet because all “communications” occur from within some “state” of consciousness. By “state” we refer to some mind-body or neuro-linguistic state of being. More commonly we speak about “state” as one’s “attitude, mood, feeling, place, space,” etc.

  As we learn to take our state, and the other person’s state, into consideration as we communicate, we essentially become aware that neither we nor the other exist as dead machines, but as energized beings. I suppose we could talk about the “state” of an audio recorder, the “state” of a video recorder. But the “status” of such would only comprise its mechanical condition.

  Not so with humans. What comprises a state of consciousness in a human being? Because it refers to our mood, attitude, emotion, physiology, mindset, etc., it refers to all of the things going on “mentally” in our heads and all of the things going on “physically” in our bodies. And we all “never leave home without” our heads-and-bodies! We drag them everywhere we go—and so they generate our ongoing and ever-changing states.

  The importance of this? Our states create “state-dependent” or “state-determined” communication, perception, learning, memory, behavior, and emotion. State-dependency means that how (and sometimes what) you communicate, perceive, learn, remember, emote and behave depends on your current mind-body state of consciousness. When we feel depressed we can remember, think, perceive, communicate and behave out of depressing awarenesses so easily! When we feel angry, we can see and remember other angry events with such ease. When we laugh and joke and feel pleasant, we see the world through eyes of humor and playfulness. Our states seem to open up that “library of references” inside us so that we have special access. And, when we get into one state, it often precludes us from having access to the resources of another state. When fearful or angry, we find it much more difficult to get to the resource of calmness.

  In NLP we use the communication guideline that “We never know what we have communicated.” The meaning of our communication lies in the response we get. When we do not get the response we want, we need to develop the ability to change our behavior and to continue eliciting responses until we get the one we want! NLP offers the skills necessary for flexibility of behavior in communication.

  If indeed we all live in our own unique world driven by our own meanings and history, then how can we ever really connect with another human being? What skills and tools will facilitate truly and deeply connecting? In this work we have introduced you to a major gift in NLP for just this—the NLP strategy for building and maintaining rapport, the model of Sensory Acuity and the Well-Formed Outcome model. What do we mean by rapport? Rapport refers to “a relationship of mutual trust and harmony, a feeling of connectedness, a sense of communicating on the same wavelength.”

  In NLP we analyze rapport by examining precisely how we have matched (or paced) some aspect of another person—their breathing, language, values, posture, etc. We say that we have entered into rapport with another when we speak (literally) the same language as that person. In doing so, we “enter into their model of the world.” We enter the other person’s model of the world when we use the same mental processes as the other. If they think visually, we similarly think visually. Should they process their thoughts auditorily (in sounds), we match them by thinking auditorily. If they use a lot of feeling or kinesthetic thought processes, we do the same. This enables us to enter their model of the world.

  By rapport we metaphorically enter into the other’s way of making sense of reality. It gives us access to their way of thinking and meaning-attribution. We speak of such rapport as “walking in the other person’s shoes” to thereby come to appreciate their point of view. Walking in the othe
r’s shoes may involve modeling their tonality or physiology. As we do, their speech becomes our speech; their physiology becomes our physiology.

  To establish rapport requires that we identify and then match the other’s internal processes. As a Christian minister, I (BB) sometimes find this difficult. I had a client once who desired to leave her husband and marry a younger man. She thought she loved this younger person. I could find no justification for her leaving her husband. So how could I enter her “model of the world” when I did not accept her outcome? I could, however, accept and identify with her pain. She did experience a lot of hurt, confusion, and distress. Her pain came from her childhood. So I accepted that model of the world. We can establish rapport with a person’s emotions and thought processes without accepting their behavior. Matching or pacing a person’s model of the world does not mean conceptually validating that reality model—only understanding it.

  The key lies not in preaching or becoming judgmental in cases of our perception of people’s inappropriate behavior. The key to rapport with them, and then success in leading them to a more holistic, healthy outcome, lies in first discovering the purpose behind their inappropriate behavior and matching their positive intent. The intent of the behavior will often surprise us. Once we get deep enough to the root cause of their behavior, we will find a positive intent.

  The NLP model of building rapport enables us to empathize with others. We do this by entering into their style of processing information. In that sense, we become their servant.