Neuro-Linguistic Programming Models Summary (09 of 14)

Self-integrity

Integrity – something I value very much, expect of myself, and want in others I surround myself with and choose to work with.

So what is integrity, really? Dictionary.com says this:

noun

1.

adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.

2.

the state of being whole, entire, or undiminished: to preserve the integrity of the empire.

MY Reiki master taught me a definition I prefer above all others: “Integrity, is doing what you say you’re going to do.” ~Dan Pure. This takes the relativity out of the behaviour.

IF integrity is as the dictionary defines it, then behaving with integrity is relative to one’s personal definition, moral and ethical principles, character, and honesty. Even honesty is relative to some. In this definition, the possibility of miscommunication between people is highly likely because each may have differing levels of integrity and the consequences of a miscommunication here can be disastrous. Simple example:

Someone tells you he or she will pick you up at 4:00 but failed to time manage himself or herself in some way and left you waiting for an hour. In that hour, you could have lost wages, options to do other things, or worse, could have missed an important meeting potentially changing the course of your life, all the while, the person who said “YES, I’ll pick you up at 4:00” has several “excuses” as to what prevented him or her from keeping to his or her already agreed upon promise or commitment whatever you want to call it, such as: I lost track of time, I ran out of gas in my car, someone kept me on the phone, I was in the middle of a big sale, etc. ALL of those actions amount to personal choices that overrode the previously agreed upon promise/commitment and to some, may feel justifiable. And therein lies the miscommunicated or un-communicated meaning of the promise/commitment. For one person, the promise is only a promise unless something that person wants more presents itself and for the other person, a promise is absolute and n0t relative. Now, I’m n0t talking about circumstances beyond one’s control, like a death in family, a trip to the ER, an earthquake, or the like.

IF on the other hand, we adopt my favourite and guiding definition of integrity; simply doing what you say you’re going to do, then it’s far more absolute, reliable, and “my word is golden”, with the only acceptable exception being circumstances truly and honestly beyond one’s control. With this behaviour, one’s integrity is predictable and therefore on the rare occasion when circumstances truly are beyond control and prevents the promised/committed action, a reasonable person is understanding and there was no miscommunication in the promise/commitment. This in NO WAY prevents someone from making good business / personal decisions and change in plans. It will prevent one from taking the easy way out of a promise/commitment and hold one to a personal standard. There is much to be learned from honouring a promise/commitment when it turns out you wish you hadn’t taken it on. It means next time you have more information and clarity with which to choose what kinds of things you will take on; you can learn how much time is needed for things; you can learn how much of your own time you are willing to give; and you can learn to build a strong neuro-pathway of integrity of being the person who simply, consistently, and happily does what he or she says he or she will do. Confident people have little to no struggle with integrity because they simply make the best decision to accept or deny requests and simply process the results as feedback for next time. Their word is golden and if they learned they had to fulfil their word in a way they didn’t really fully realise, or want, they learn the most valuable of things about/for themselves, and learning is taken as favourable.

WHAT is your personal standard of integrity for yourself? Is your word golden or not? If your word is golden, then it doesn’t matter if you want to keep your word, changed your mind, something causes you some hardship, etc. You simply take the necessary actions to make sure you don’t run out of gas and forward think what has to happen for you to keep your word to act with integrity. What motivates these courageous actions/behaviours? The importance of your word overrides your possible lack of planning, lack of telling the caller “I’m sorry, I have to pick up someone at 4:00 so I’ll need to call you back so I can be there on time”, and your dislike of what you’ll now have to do to keep your word.

WHAT are some of the behavioural changes you can make to amp up your integrity, if it’s important to you?

You can move the needle and find greater balance on your metaprogram of self/other directedness and learn ways to become more selfless when it’s appropriate.

You can amp up your courage to say “NO”, when something stands between you and your integrity.

You can use the motivation direction metaprogram to work with what will work for you to motivate you to change and become a person of integrity, consistently. Is it more motivating to be a person of integrity or is it more motivating to not lose the respect of yourself and/or others when you fail to act with integrity? Working with what truly motivates you may reveal the strategy of how to make changes.

You can learn more self-discipline by finding the strategy in areas you are highly disciplined or if you have none of those areas, you can elicit the strategy of people who are highly disciplined and model it until it becomes your new behaviour.

You can learn how to make well formed goals so you can decide in advance if you should make the promise/commitment in the first place so you can easily have the integrity you want to be respected for and meet your own standards and feel good about yourself.

ON the other side of the coin, you can learn to recognise when others don’t have these types of hardwiring in their character and avoid the miscommunication that’s likely to happen with these people. They won’t have the integrity you want in your interactions. Plan for that – so if you really want to be picked up by 4:00, have your list of go-to people that have the brand of integrity you want to associate with and you have sensory based evidence of it. They are on time because their word is golden and it’s consistent.

SO, behaving with this brand of integrity is a win-win-win situation. THEY win because you did what you said you would do for them. YOU win because you strengthen your neuro-pathway of behaving with integrity and possibly learned new things about you and life in general, enabling more confidence. THE WORLD wins because things move forward and advance in harmony.

INTEGRITY. What’s your brand?

Past / Present / Future

The NLP time line technique is a psychological tool that allows you to effectively rewrite your past and pre-write your future. It does this by providing you with a mechanism to change the meanings and associations of past bad experiences as well as install useful, positive beliefs for your future.

Whether we are aware of how we do or not, we all represent our experiences as taking place along a timeline of our lives. These internal representations of the past, present and future will be slightly different from individual too individual, but they will have a lot in common.

To find out how you represent your own time line, close your eyes for a moment and think of something that happened to you quite recently, after a few seconds switch to thinking of an experience that happened many years ago. Notice where that experience seems to be relative to your position, a good indication is if slightly turn your head or look towards. Now repeat the same thing for an imagined future experience.

This should have given you a rough idea of your internal time line. Many people experience the past as behind them while the future is in front, others the timeline runs from one side to the other, and these are by no means the only options. It doesn’t matter how your mind represents the timeline idea just try to notice how it does.

Using the NLP timeline

The use of NLP time line will amplify the effect of any visualisations by strengthening the association between your real experiences and those you are visualising. This in effect makes the visualised experiences more real, which gives them more power to change any feelings or behaviour that you want to change.

As an example let’s say you had some bad experiences or mistakes that you made in your past, which make you feel bad whenever you think of them, and so you want to strip away these negative feelings and leave behind only the lessons you learned from the experiences.

To begin, think of the experience you want to change, don’t worry about all the details of the experience, just a rough idea of what happened. Next close your eyes and take a few deep breaths.

With your eyes closed imagine yourself floating up out of your body, so that you above your timeline, looking down on it. Now begin moving in the direction of your past along your timeline. Keep moving back into your past until you feel that you are at the exact time of that particular experience.

As you look down on this experience, start to drain all the negative associations from the experience, you can do this by literally visualising washing away any anger or pain with some water flowing through the location on the timeline, many people find changing the colour of the experience can also help. Next take the positive lessons learned and intensify them, you can do by shining a bright glowing light onto or out of them. Using the anchoring technique, to link a positive learning experience from somewhere else in your life is very effective.

When you are finished (take as much time as you need) allow yourself to drift back to the present. Take a moment to notice how you now feel differently about the past experience which had been causing you trouble and then open your eyes.

The new associations you have created for this experience will slowly integrate themselves into your perspective, this can happen fairly quickly or take a few days to weeks depending on how significant the experience you changed was to you.

The technique works in basically exactly the same way for future experiences too, here you simply move along in the opposite direction to a future point in your timeline, and visualise yourself being the person you want to be, and achieving your desired outcomes, for example, being more confident in new situations. Stacking up a few of these experiences in your future timeline can help to amplify any effect.

You can make timeline experiences more intense by floating down into each of the experiences. This can bring up all the thoughts and feelings associated with the experience, so is particularly useful when amplifying positive experiences, but you may prefer the additional distance and control that is provided by looking down on them when dealing with a more negative experience.

In-Time / Through-Time

In-time is a common time line type. With this time sort, a person experiences being in the present moment. Their sense of time passes through their body at some point. There is little awareness of time passing. Usually some part of the person’s history or future is unavailable unless they turn their head.

If someone has this timeline type, they will often be late for appointments because right now is more real than the future. They dislike personal organizers, planning and being accountable for time. They will often use a simple system like a diary or calendar to remember future events.

This timeline creates highly emotional memories and is a therefore a good way to remember experiences or things you want to remember. It enables spontaneity, flexibility and creativity. Many artists experience this way of filtering time. It is not so useful for doing business in a Western Culture or other areas where deadlines are involved. It is great for being on holiday.

Concrete, Abstract, Random, and Sequential

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” — W.B. Yeats

Wanna learn more effectively or be a better teacher, or how to communicate and connect with people better, or how to influence more effectively? 

Learn to match or bridge learning styles. 

It’s one of those things you do everyday, but you might not be aware of.  It’s about how you sequence information and how you relate to it. 

The key is to first know your own preferences, and then  understand others.

Concrete, Abstract, Random, Sequential

Here are the parts that make up the styles:

• Concrete – You’re dealing with the here and now and processing information based on what you see, hear, think, feel, and taste.  "It is what it is." You want a real example.
• Abstract – You’re looking for the patterns.  You’re more cerebral in your analysis. You’re using your intuition and imagination. "Things aren’t always what they appear to be."  You abstract from the examples.
• Random – You’re processing chunks of information in a random way.  You can hop around with ease.
• Sequential – You processing chunks of information in a linear way.  You prefer a plan or set of steps to follow.

If you prefer random, you might have bounced around or skimmed the bullets.  If you prefer sequential, you may have read that line by line, building up on what you know. 

If you were looking for the example each time, you might prefer concrete.  If you were saying, ah, I can use this to improve my approach to learning or sharing information, you might prefer abstract.

Concrete Sequential, Concrete Abstract, Abstract Sequential, Abstract Random

Here’s the learning styles in a nutshell:

1. Concrete Sequential – You want your information presented sequentially with concrete facts and data.  What I’ve seen with concrete sequential learners is they learn well when one example or concept follows another in a linear way.  Hopping around is a problem and can create frustration and confusion.
2. Concrete Random – You don’t care what sequence the information comes your way, as long as it’s concrete and you can relate to it.  What I’ve seen with concrete random learners is, they can skip around pretty quickly, but they need examples to latch on to. They’re pretty effective at cutting through fog and finding where the rubber meets the road.
3. Abstract Sequential – Abstractions are great as long as they follow a sequential flow.  What I’ve seen about abstract sequential learners is 
4. Abstract Random – Abstractions are great and it doesn’t matter what sequence.  What I’ve seen is the abstract random learners have the simplest time learning because the sequence doesn’t matter, but can have a hard time sharing what they know.  I’ve also noticed they get bored when information is sequential and detailed.

We’re all a mix of styles, but we have preferences. It’s a also a continuum. 

The important point is to know yourself and to realise that other people may not be processing information the same way you do.  If they don’t like hopping around, create a path for them. 

If your going too slowly for them, try jumping to the main points, even out of sequence.  Basically, test what works for you.

Now, you have to ask yourself — is was it ever really ADD or just a different learning preference?

Back at Work

It a simple gathering of the minds and exchange of ideas, but the team was clearly talking past each other.  The one architect was painting a picture of a wonderful castle in his mind. The other architect wanted specific examples he could relate to. 

It was a deadlock.

The interesting thing I noticed is they were both sequential in how they were going through their logic.  It was one logical point followed by another, and one logical question after another, but they missed each other. 

The real difference was, the one architect prefers abstractions, while the other prefers concrete.  If they would have known this, or if I would have known this at the time, then I could have spotted it and bridged the gap.  In fact, not knowing this, I hopped from point to point, not realising they were both operating in a sequential way. 

It was a mismatch of three styles simply by a lack of awareness.

It’s a lot easier to solve a problem, when you can see what’s really going on!

Key Take Aways

Here are my key take aways:

• Know yourself first.  Figure out your own learning preferences.
• Figure out if you prefer concrete or random.
• Figure out if you prefer random or sequential.
• Adapt your approach for others.
• Test what works for you.
• Explore other styles.

What surprised me is when my colleague first pointed these styles out to me, I had a hard time figuring out what my preferences were.  Partly it had to do with how the information was presented, but is also had to do with my job context. 

What I realised is that I adapt my style a lot because as a team leader, I have a lot of different styles to match all the time. 

I also realised that it depends on the scenario and context, so the next trick for me was learning to optimise how I learn in certain scenarios.  For example, in a lot of cases, I cut to the chase and get an example and abstract from there. 

I don’t waste time trying to connect fuzzy dots up front.  This saves me a lot of time.

Ego / Strength

We first introduced the idea and terminology of ego-strength into NLP when we made it one of the higher level meta-programs in Figuring Out People. Of course, the idea has a long history in the field of psychology. We can trace the development of the concept back to Freud and his three-fold division of personality in terms of id, ego, and super-ego.

If ego is the self in contact with reality, then ego-strength refers to the strength of our sense of self or person to look face in the face without caving in or being overwhelmed. The strength of ego-strength is the power, determination, road ability to engage reality for whatever we find it to be. This highlights ego-strength as the ability to accept what is as existing and to then use our cognitive-behavioral, emotional and relational skills to deal with such. Ego-strength then is our ability to play the Game of Life according to whatever curves life throws at us. Ego-strength also refers to the inner personal strength by which we tolerate stress and frustration. It is ego-strength that allows us to deal with reality without falling back to infantile defence mechanisms.

• Now, given this definition of ego-strength—
• Do you have that kind of internal strength?
• Would you like to?
• What could you do with yourself and with life if you were to develop your ego-strength so that you could just face life on its terms without fuming and fusing?
• What focus would you develop if you had the ego-strength to not be put off by stress, frustrations, or disappointments?
• How much more peaceful and focused would you feel if you had ego-strength?

Clearing out Misconceptions about “Ego”

We are all born without any ego-strength. For that matter, we are all born without an ego. Sure we are born as a self, a human self, we just don’t know it. Being born without any sense of ego means that, at first, there is no “I.” There is only enmeshment. As babies, we grow inside our mothers—fully attached. Then comes the separation. We come into this world still attached and enmeshed with our mother and without the ability to distinguish ourselves from her. As an infant, it is all one and the same. This is the process by which we become an autonomous human being. The physiological separation of birth precedes the psychological separation and birth of the self. We call this process individuation.

“Ego” is Greek for I. In the Greek New Testament or a Greek version of Plato or Aristotle any time someone says, “I…” they utter the word ego. Thousands of years later Sigmund Freud designated ego as the sense of self, the “I” that deals with and relates to reality.

Normally our ego-strength grows and develops psychologically as we grow and develop physically. It’s part of our psycho-cognitive-social development. We develop more and more of a sense of self as we face reality. As that “I” develops the ability to see and accept reality for what it is, without the magical thinking of wishing and confusing wishing with reality, we develop more strength for coping and mastering the facts and constraints that life puts before us.

Weak ego-strength describes a person’s senses of self that doesn’t easily face, take in, and cope with what is. Instead it fights reality, hates it, and wishes it otherwise. Expectations are unrealistic and based on inadequate understanding. Reality seems too big, too frightening, too overwhelming … and so we avoid the encounter. In weak ego-strength, we don’t feel up to the task but unresourceful, weak, fragile, unable to cope, etc. The weaker the ego-strength, the less we will engage reality and the more we will flee to superstition, magic thinking and wishing, and addictions.

Strong ego-strength describes the person who first accepts whatever is as existing has raised his or her frustration tolerance, then looks at it and explores it with a view of dealing with it, coping and mastering. With strong ego-strength we do not personalize things that happen in the world or what others say. We notice and we access the necessary resources to deal with it. The strong our ego-strength grows, the more of a sense of self we develop and the greater our a sense of skills and resources, and ability to handle whatever comes.

This use of “ego” differs from how we use when we say, “He has his ego involved” in this or that. Then we are speaking about a person’s self-definition, pride, and reputation. Typically this indicates a weak ego strength and the need to boaster it up by fighting, defending, and being defensive. There’s a paradox here. The stronger our ego, the less our “ego” is involved, or “on the line” with what we do. Strengthening our ego enables us to sit our “ego” aside and to engage the world as we explore what is out there and what opportunities it offers.

How to Strengthen Your Ego-Strength

• How do we go about strengthening our ego?
• What patterns and processes allow us to do this?
• What frames, beliefs, values, expectations, etc. support this?

The following are offered as beginning guidelines—processes which we have incorporated in our basic Meta-States training, Accessing Personal Genius. If you have experienced that training, then you know these processes and can keep refreshing the meta-stating patterns until you not only strengthen your ego-strength, but actually super-charge it. This will empower you to face life on life’s terms and to develop a sense of self-efficacy in the face of changing times. It will enrich your powers of optimism, resilience, and creativity.

1st Acceptance

First and foremost, we strengthen our ego-strength by meta-stating ourselves with acceptance. Access the state of acceptance and apply that feeling to your “self.” Think of something small and simple that you simply accept. You could get yourself worked up about it, even furious and frustrated, but you have learned to just go along and accept it. It could be something like the rain, the traffic, changing the baby’s diaper, taking out the garbage, etc. Think small and simple.

What is that like when you are accepting something? Feel that and reflexively turn that feeling back onto yourself—your sense of self, life, the cards that life has dealt you, when and where you were born, your aptitudes and lack of aptitudes, etc. As you do this, you’ll experience a quiet and tender feeling, one that may not necessarily feel very positive. It’s just a feeling of welcoming something into your life but not with any particular thrill or liking. To do that is to experience appreciation. Yet acceptance also is not resignation or condoning. Acceptance is just welcoming something into your world without any negative fanfare.

In this, acceptance can be a truly magical state. In it, we simply acknowledge the world for what it is regardless of our likes or dislikes. We simply acknowledge the constraints that exist and that we have to deal with.

2nd Adjusting Expectancies

Second, look at your self-expectancies and expectancies of others, the world, work, etc. and adjust them so that you have a fairly accurate map about what is, how things work, and what you can legitimately expect. What have you mapped about yourself, people, relationships, fairness, life, etc.? Every unrealistic expectation sets us up for a cognitive and semantic jar and for a possible disappointment. If it is unrealistic, then we are trying to navigate and work in a world that is ultimately an illusion of the mind. A more effective approach is to set out to create a good and useful map that will enable us to go and experience what we desire.

This explains how learning and developing greater understandings about things increases ego-strength. Knowing what is, how things work, the rules and principles of people, relationships, careers, etc. gives us the ability to adjust our thinking-and-emoting to such and this increases our ego-strength. It takes the surprise and shock out of being caught up short. It raises our level of frustration tolerance.

3rd Stepping into Our Power Zone

Weak and strong ego-strength is related to our sense of personal power or the lack thereof. We increase ego-strength when we accept our personal powers or responses of thinking, emoting, speaking, and behaving, meta-state them with a frame of ownership and then by welcoming and practicing the use of our powers, step more and more into our power zone. This increases our self-efficacy, activity, proactivity, etc. The more resourcefulness we have, the more willing and able we are to face reality and to master our world.

4th Meta-Stating Flexibility

A fourth process for strengthening ego-strength involves replacing rigidity and closedness of mind with flexibility, willingness to accept change, and an openness to the flux and flow of life. In weak ego-strength we strongly feel a sense of insecurity. Then that we don’t want things to change we want things to stay the same. As we develop more personal security, we are more open to change and to adapting and to using our resources. Openness to change, which supports personal flexibility, enables us to face the world and our future with an optimistic attitude. Then, if things change, we feel fine because our security lies in ourselves and in our strength of ego to figure things out.

5th Optimistic Explanatory Style

A fifth thing that increases the strength of our ego to face reality is the ability and attitude of interpreting things in such a way that we put a positive spin on things. We call this attitude, optimism. It stands in contrast to pessimism.

Martin Selgiman identified both the pessimistic and optimistic explanatory styles in his research with laboratory animals and then with humans. The pessimistic style consists of three P’s: personal, pervasive, and permanent. We take a “bad” thing, an unpleasant or unfortunate event and make it about ourselves (personal), about everything in our lives (pervasive) and about forever (permanent) and that’s a formula for pessimism and clinical depression.

Conversely, when we index the specifics of an event, we contain the “evil” or “badness” because then it is about the event and not us (non-personal), it is here in this situation and context (non-pervasive), and it is today (non-permanent). This frames the negative event so that it doesn’t contaminate us with the “evil” and infiltrate our mind so that’s all we can see and feel. It enables us to then think about other things, what we truly are and what we care about, what we can do and how we can take positive action to make a difference. This begins to create the attitude of optimism as it operates from a position of strength, confidence, possibilities, and taking pleasure in what is going right.

It is in this way that we develop sufficient ego-strength to face reality and to not be overwhelmed by frustration, disappointment, hurt, etc. We do what we can with what we have and we enjoy the process everyday.

6th Consciously raising our Frustration and Stress Tolerance Level

If you look around the human situation at all the things that can and does trigger “stress” in people or that frustrates them and make a list—you will eventually make a list of everything. And the very things that frustrate the hell out of some people thrill and excite others. What one experiences as a stressor, another enjoys as excitement. In this, both stress and frustration are in the eye of the beholder.

The strength of your self develops by framing things in such a way that we endow it with empowering meanings. Positive framing and reframing then allows us to take a new view of things which then effects how we actually feel about things. In this way, framing and reframing things can enhance our ego-strength to face, cope with, and even master the challenges of life. We often do this by developing the kinds of frames of mind that allow us to develop the insights, distinctions, and skills so that what would frustrate others gives us opportunities for development.

Summary

• Ego-strength as a meta-state in the matrix of your Self is also a meta-program and so governs how you sort for things and perceive information as you move through the world. As a rich and complex set of embedded frames, your ego-strength plays a significant role in the quality of your life, in your skills for making a difference, and in your ability to effectively face reality.
• Ego-strength can also be strengthened. We can develop a strong and more robust attitude about life. We can grow out of the childish wishful thinking that’s fearful, insecure, and fragile and develop a mind-set about life on its own terms that gives us a robust motivation and an optimistic attitude that allows us to sign up for life.

Morality

Conscientious, responsible and judgemental / unconscientious, sociopathic and criminal

--

The following are my observations of how a person uses meta-programs (most of the time un-consciously) in creating rapports with another person, or fails to create rapport when using the other opposite scale of the meta-programs.

The context is a person, whom we want to create rapport with, is upset, unhappy or annoyed about an event, and we are not the direct parties involved in that un-pleasant event.

How do we create rapport with that person using meta-program?

Here we assume that you are aware of your own habitual meta-programs, which you automatically or unconsciously have been using. With such awareness, you be flexible to move to the appropriate meta-programs to achieve your intended results in creating rapport with the person.

• Chunk Size: General / Specific; Global / Detail; Deductive, Inductive, Abductive

The use of the chunk size should be small, or details specific to that person’s issues at hand, not large. The problem with chunk size in global or large is in the mode of bringing in other perspectives, which is not the timing in creating rapport. The person at this moment is not ready to see the larger picture. Hence, do not try to bring in different dimensions to look at the situation.

• Relationship Sort: Matching / Mismatching; Sameness or Difference / Opposite; Agree / Disagree

Obviously, for creating rapport, we need to apply matching, and not mis-matching Though we may not agree with him or her, we do not bring in opposite views during this stage of creating rapport.

• Emotional State Sort: Associated / Dissociated: Feeling / Thinking 

To be emphatically is to be in a state of association, with feeling, not detached or trying to be objective. It is difficult to establish rapport in a dissociated or detached state.

• Representational System Sort: Visual / Auditory / Kinesthetic / Auditory-digital

This is a basic NLP practice in taking cues on that person sub-modalities and match with them

• Information Gathering Sort: Uptime / Downtime

When we are in the mode of Uptime, we are more conscious and aware of that person’s sensory experience and state of mind. Avoid Downtime or internal dialogue, that leads to all sorts of speculations or hallucination.

• Perceptual Categories Sort: Black-and-white Vs Continuum

Use Black-and-white, i.e. following that person’s position.

• Philosophical Direction: Why/How, Origins / Solution process 

This is not the time to deal on this philosophical direction. Just listen emphatically, ask “What, which, when”

• Epistemology Sort: Sensors / Intuitors

Use more of the sensors as your inituation may lead to wide speculation again.

• “Time” Tenses sort: Past / Present / Future

Focus on the present or past, as per the story of the person you want to create rapport with, not future. He or she may not be in the mood to talk about the future.

• “Time” Experience: In Time, Through Time; Sequential Vs Random Sorting

Be “in time” with the person’s expereince and world, no need to put in logical order of the “through time”

Avoid, switch off, or disable all the followings, some of which are not applicable or relevant, or not so useful :

• Scenario Thinking Style: Best-Case vs Worst-case Scenario Thinking; Optimists / Pessimists
• Perceptual Durability Sort: Permeable / Impermeable
• Focus Sort: Screeners / Non-screeners
• Reality Structure Sort: Aristotelian / Non-Aristotelian (Static / Process)
• Communication Channel Preference: Verbal (Digital) / Non-Verbal (Analogue), Balanced
• Emotional Coping or Stress Response Pattern: Passivity / Aggression / Assertiveness
• Frame of Reference or Authority Sort: Internal / External: Self-Referent / Other-referent
• Somatic Response Sort: Active / Reflective / Inactive
• The Convincer or Believability Sort: Looks, Sounds, or Feels Right; Make sense : Automatically, Repetition, Time Period, Never
• Emotional Direction Sort: Uni-directional / Multi-directional
• Emotional Intensity / Exuberance Sort. Desurgency / Surgency  Timidity / Boldness
• Direction Sort: Towards / Away from, Past Assurance / Future possibilities; Approach / Avoidance
• Conation Choice in Adapting: Options / Procedures
• Adaptation Sort: Judging / Perceiving, Controlling / Floating
• Reasons Sort of Modal Operations: Necessity / Possibility / Desire; Stick-carrot
• Preference Sort: Primary Interest – People / Place / Things / Activities / Information
• Goal Sort – Adapting to Expectations: Perfection / Optimisation / Skepticism
• Value Buying Sort: Cost / Convenience / Quality / Time
• Responsibilities Sort: Over-Responsibility / Under-responsibility
• People Convincer Sort Distrusting / Trusting
• Rejuvenation of Battery Sort: Extravert, Ambivert, Introvert
• Affiliation and Management Sort: Independent / Team player / Manager
• Communication Stance Sort: Blamer, Placater, Distractor, Computer, Leveller
• General Response: Congruent / Incongruent Competitive / Cooperative / Polarity / Meta
• Somatic Response Style: Active / Reflective / Both / Inactive (In social context)
• Work Preference Sort: Things / Systems / People / Information
• Comparison Sort: Quantitative / Qualitative
• Knowledge Sort: Modelling / Conceptualising / Demonstrating / Experiencing / Authorising
• Completion / Closure Sort: Closure / Non-closure
• Social Presentation: Shrewd and Artful / Genuine and Artless
• Hierarchical Dominance Sort: Power / Affiliation / Achievement
• Value sort: Emotional “Needs” / Beliefs
• Temper to Instruction sort: Strong-Will / Compliant
• Self-esteem sort: Conditional / Unconditional ; High / Low self-esteem
• Self-confidence sort: High / Low
• Self-experience sort: Mind / Emotion / Body / Role / / Position / Spirit
• Self-integrity : Conflicted Incongruity / Harmonious Integration
• “Time” Access Sort : Random / Sequential
• Ego Strength Sort: Unstable / Stable ; Reactive / Proactive
• Morality Sort: Weak / Strong Super-ego
• Causational Sort: Causeless, Linear CE (Cause-effect), Multi-CE, Personal CE, External CE, Magical, Correlational

--

New Language Rapid Learning

What is language for?

It is one of the many forms of communication; one of the ways in which we inform people about what is going on inside us - from 'I am hungry' to 'our joint bank account is empty, and I want to know how and why.'

Language expresses at the deepest level how we are experiencing the world at a given moment; and how we experience the world depends, to a large extent, upon our culture, and upbringing. Cultures have been evolving over hundreds of thousands of years, and languages are rich with the differences: the sounds, the rhythms, and the phraseology - to name but a few.

Try an experiment (you might like to try this with music first, if you haven't got any foreign language speakers available): close your eyes, relax deeply and just allow yourself to drop into the sound - letting go of everything else, so that your eye movements can follow the music. (When you are really relaxed, you will find yourself producing the rapid eye movements of dreams or trance.)

What happens? For example, how do your eye movements record high and low notes? How do they record the rhythm? And do you ever find them moving in advance before a note is played? What else do you notice? The movement of your eyes is recording the sounds in your brain - and we do this in different ways. So get your friends to do this experiment as well, and discover how they record the music. Is it the same way as you do? Or do they do something completely different?

Now you can try the experiment with different languages. What do you notice? What do your eyes do? How do you record the music of different languages in your brain?

As a linguist, I find comparing languages a fascinating hobby. For example, among European languages, there are profound differences about the concept of the future: English speakers 'look forward' to things; whereas French speakers 'wait for them with impatience'; German speakers 'please themselves at them'; while Spanish speakers 'delight themselves in advance'.

And it's not only the expressions, it's the physiology. On our way home from a party in France, my husband asked crossly why I always waved my hands about when I was speaking French (he thought it was a pretty un-British way to behave). I knew, at the deepest level that - if you tied my hands behind my back - I could not speak French; but I did not think that this was the sort of answer that a British Cavalry Officer would appreciate. So I treated the question as rhetorical.

With the physiology comes the question of whereabouts in your body a word comes from, and what it feels like, as you say it. One of my favourite revelations came from Pierre Emmanuel. He was standing in an English spot, and saying 'tiger'; then he moved to a French spot, and said 'tigre'. He pronounced that, for him, 'tiger' felt long and lean and supple, as a word - whereas 'tigre' was round and solid. (Try it out, and discover what it feels like for you.)

Then, suddenly, Pierre Emmanuel saw something in his mind's eye: the English advertisement for a tiger in your tank (I can't remember which brand of petrol it was), showed a long, lean, supple leaping tiger; whereas the French version showed a round, solid tiger's head. Fascinating!

So where is all this heading? One of NLP's most useful models (developed by Robert Dilts and the late Todd Epstein from the work of the late Gregory Bateson) is the logical levels of thinking. And one day I applied it to speaking foreign languages, by asking myself some questions:

Environment - Where and when do I communicate best in a foreign language? When I'm relaxed and comfortable, etc

Behaviour - What do I do? I copy speakers of that language, etc

Capability - How do I do that? By stepping into the other person's shoes and pretending to be them, etc

Beliefs - Why?

Identity - Who?

It was at the Beliefs level that I realised that, when I was being French, I had a completely different belief system. So I created a German spot, and discovered yet another belief system. Then came the glimpse of the blindingly obvious: I had three different identities! And maybe the reason that some people are nervous about getting totally involved in learning another language is because they are terrified of losing their identities - unaware that they would, in fact, enrich them.

Let's go back to the beginning for ourselves, with some thoughts about how we learned our mother tongue.

• we needed to communicate in order to survive
• we concentrated on the message, rather than the language
• we copied other members of our family who were communicating successfully
• our strategy was trial and error - either things worked, or they didn't
• our efforts were greeted with pride and joy by our devoted families
• we were in a safe environment
• people didn't keep correcting our grammar
• we all have an innate knowledge of how language works
• we weren't made to learn irregular verbs before being allowed to communicate
• we were given the freedom to learn in our own way

Language is about concepts and ideas - it's not about the use of the subjunctive.

Let go! Have fun! Be silly! And, if you find this too much of a good thing, think of something else to do in that language, so that your conscious mind is distracted and too busy to give you a hard time. I learned most of my French on a horse or round a bridge table.

Communication is what it's all about. Everything else is irrelevant.