Neuro-Linguistic Programming Models Summary (01 of 14)

Re-Imprinting

An imprint is a significant experience or period of life from the past in which a person formed a belief or cluster of beliefs, often in relationship to one's identity. An imprint experience also often involves the unconscious role-modeling of significant others. The purpose of reimprinting is to find the resources necessary to change the beliefs and update the role-models that were formed (not simply to resolve the emotional issues associated with a particular event, as in the NLP technique of change personal history).

1. Identify the specific physical manifestation of the symptoms to be addressed. Stand in the physical location on your time line representing the present and face the future direction. Focus your attention on the physical expression of your symptoms, and any beliefs associated with them, and walk slowly backwards pausing at any location that seems to be relevant to the symptom or the accompanying beliefs. Keep moving back in time until you reach the earliest experience associated with the symptoms and/or the beliefs.

Keeping in the associated or "regressed" state verbalize the cluster of generalizations or beliefs that were formed from the experience(s). Make sure you speak in first person, present tense; i.e., "I am feeling..."
Take a step backwards to a time before initial imprint experience. When you do so you should feel differently - as if the imprint had not yet effected you either mentally or physically.

2. Step off of the time-line and return to the present and look back at the imprint experience from 'meta-position'.

Notice the effect that earlier experience has had on your life. Verbalize any other generalizations or beliefs that were formed as a result of the imprint experience. (Beliefs are often formed "after the fact.") This time, speak about the events you experienced in third person, past tense; i.e., "He/She (or 'The younger me') thought that..."
Find the positive purpose or secondary gain of the symptoms or responses formed at the imprint experience. What positive function did the symptoms serve in relations to those past events?

3. Identify any significant others involved in the imprint. [Some symptoms may actually come from the role modeling of a significant other]. The significant others do not necessarily need to have been physically present during the event or period. Sometimes an imprint occurs because the significant other was somewhere else at the time of the imprinting situation (and thus became 'internalized'.

Associate into each of the significant others (2nd position) and experience the imprint situation from their perceptual position. Describe their experiences using first person language.
Step out of their perceptual position to a point off the the time line (3rd position) and find the positive intention of their actions and responses.

4. For each of the people involved in the imprint experience:

Identify the resources or choices that the person needed back then and did not have but that you do have available now. Remember that you need not limit yourself to the capabilities that you or the significant others had at that time. So long as you (not the significant others) have those resources available now you may use them to help change that experience. [Make sure the resource is at the appropriate logical level to address the needs of the person - i.e., belief, identity, spiritual.] Sometimes a single resource is needed for the whole system.
Step onto your time-line at the location where you most strongly experienced having that resource and relive as fully as possible what it feels sounds and looks like. "Anchor" this experience by symbolically representing the resource as a kind of energy, light or sound.
Still standing in the resource location, "transmit" the resource back through time to each person in the system that needed it. This may done metaphorically through the energy light or sound.
When you sense that the "associative connection" has been made through the "anchor," step off of the time-line, walk back to the imprint experience, step into the position of the person who needed the resource and relive the imprint experience from that person's point of view incorporating the needed resource. You may continue to use your symbolic "anchor" to bring the resource into that perspective.
Associate once again into your own perceptual position within the imprint experience, and update or modify the beliefs and generalizations you would now choose to make from the experience. Verbalize them from first person, present tense.

Repeat this procedure for each of the significant people involved in the imprint experience.

5. Identify the most important resource or belief that you would have needed as your younger self. "Anchor" that resource and take it back to the location on the time-line before the imprint occurred. Take the resource into your younger self and walk all the way up your time-line to the present, experiencing the changes made by the reimprinting.

2nd Position Intuitive Modeling

NLP Modeling is the process of recreating excellence. We can model any human behavior by mastering the beliefs, the physiology and the specific thought processes (that is the strategies) that underlie the skill or behavior.

It is about achieving an outcome by studying how someone else goes about it.

When Richard Bandler and John Grinder modeled the strategies of Virginia Satir, they were trying to achieve what many others before them had attempted. They wanted to duplicate her extraordinary results in family therapy.

What Bandler and Grinder did differently was to find the thinking strategies she was using, rather than merely copy behaviors. The biggest problem interviewing experts is that skills are usually unconscious. We can not explain how we walk, talk or write for instance. What makes you a successful parent or golfer? The expert’s own theories explain their success. These theories can include irrelevant habits and superstitions such as sportsmen and their lucky socks.

NLP Modeling involves transferring what an expert thinks they know and what they unconsciously know. It involves being able to produce the outcome and transferring the behavior to others.

The use of modeling in NLP does not just involve extraordinary skills. For example, you could model how someone keeps her desk clean. We can use the same key questions to find out how someone keeps himself depressed, or becomes frustrated.

There are three phases to modeling

1. Observing the model

This involves fully imagining yourself in someone else’s reality by using what NLP calls a second position shift.

The focus is on “what” the person does (behavior and physiology), “how” they do it (internal thinking strategies) and “why” they do it (supporting beliefs and assumptions).

We obtain the “what” from direct observation. The “how” and “why” is gained by asking quality questions. Deep trance identification is a powerful tool to accomplish this part of the process. It involves using unconscious clues to generate more information than can be obtained logically.

NLP modeling components

The NLP Techniques, skills and Presuppositions enable success in modeling. These involve observing the model’s:

Representational Systems
NLP Strategies
Physiological components (like states and body postures)
Meta Programs, beliefs and values
Reference structures – the necessary background knowledge

2. Find the difference that makes the difference

Traditional learning adds pieces of a skill one bit at a time until we have them all. The drawback to this method is we don’t know which bits are essential. By contrast modeling which is the basis of accelerated learning, gets all the elements and then subtracts to find what is necessary.

By systematically taking out elements of the model’s behavior, we can find what pieces are essential. If the process still works without that element, it is not relevant.

The important questions are:

What are the behavioral patterns of the successful person?
How does she achieve her results?
What did she do that is different from a person who is not successful?
What is the difference that makes the difference?

When you have all the pieces, you can refine and sequence the model.

3. Design a method to teach the skill

Until you have all the relevant pieces of a skill and the necessary sequence, you cannot teach it effectively. We currently teach many skills with extra background information and pieces muddying the waters.

Rehearsal of the natural sequence of the skill is important. If you tried to make a cake by putting it in the oven before mixing the ingredients together, it would be yucky. Yet we think we can teach separate elements of skills out of sequence and out of context and succeed.

NLP Modeling is a powerful process that can accelerate learning of skills. Strong modeling practices are the basis of good NLP training.

Basic 3rd Position Modelling

Think and feel what the person being modelled is experiencing.

Basic States of Excellence Modelling

One of the major presuppositions of NLP is that we have all the resources we need. The circle of excellence technique is a way of gathering powerful internal states in our unconscious and making them available when we need them. John Grinder and Judith de Lozier original pattern was for collapsing unresourceful states.

This technique is a variation used to improve our “performance” whether in sports or personal relationships. Excellence doesn’t necessarily mean some powerful pumped up state of enthusiasm. It can be one of solid, centered stability for instance.

The circle of excellence is a powerful type of NLP Anchoring we can do for ourselves. It is a way to gain control over our emotional states. Our states of course influence our behavior and therefore the results we get in life. We cannot create wonderful results with wimpy or negative states.

You can do this process with four resourceful states of your choosing or with a single state repeated.

Keys

How well you can act “as if” and elicit the state.
How much you can intensify the resource.

Process

Decide on a resource state. Choose a resourceful state you want to experience more often.
Imagine a circle on the floor in front of you, big enough to step into. If you like, you can even mark it out in some way.
Take a moment to relax, clear your mind and breathe deeply.
Elicit a strong resource state of your choosing and intensify it. Stand, breathe as if you had that state intensely – feel the sensations.
Project those intense feelings into the circle in front of you.
What color, texture, qualities and size symbolize this state? What sounds and feelings come from the circle. Maybe there are tastes and smells.
Step into the circle when the feelings are at their peak. Intensify them even more. Feel that powerful emotion surrounding you and flowing through your body. Breathe in the feeling. Enjoy it fully and completely.
Anchor with some natural gesture that seems related to the state – a word or phrase, a facial expression, some aspect of physiology.
Before the intensity fades, step back out and shake out the feelings (return to a neutral state)
Repeat the steps with an additional resource state (or the same state). The circle becomes more and more powerfully resourceful.
How does having this resource affect all aspects of your life (or a particular context)? Notice how different your perspective is, how the feeling changes the way you go about things.

Using it for unresourceful states

The resourceful state you choose must be powerful enough to collapse the unresourceful state. Usually “strong” states such as excitement, enthusiasm, confidence work better for this than the more calm ones.

Begin with an unresourceful state in a particular context.
You need to work out what triggers that state. For instance, every time Karen looked at the want ads she felt miserable. In this case, the trigger was the jobs page. Triggers can be something you see, hear, touch, smell or taste.
Determining what triggers a state is a skill in itself sometimes. We can be unaware of what is triggering negative states, only noticing we are irritated for instance much later, and have to track back.
Anxiety is sometimes a state that seems to come from nowhere. There is however always a trigger or cue even though it is out of awareness.
At the peak of the state while in the circle, recall the trigger for the unresourceful state or have some symbol for it.

The NLP Meta-Model

This is one of the most valuable tools in NLP for understanding people and how they think.

Why? Because skill with the Meta Model is like having a stethoscope for the mind – it enables us to recognise the thoughts and feelings which lie beneath what a person is saying.

For example, if a friend or colleague asks for your NLP assistance in sorting out a problem you can get a pretty clear idea of how the problem is working by listening to their description. And by then asking some of the NLP clarifying questions

Example: The Rules category

Let’s say John says to Mary: We must tidy the kitchen right away

His statement provides clues that John is likely to be

1. Thinking in Rules (which is one of the Meta Model categories)

2. Driven by his belief that tidying the kitchen is a Rule which most be followed

3. Believing that Mary must also obey this Rule

4. Unquestioningly following this Rule i.e. has never questioned it’s importance nor its relevance to the current situation

The Rules category in the Meta Model indicates that what a person is saying is probably based on a belief which they may have had for a long time. Many of our actions are based on beliefs which we picked up long ago and still questioning follow:

I must always be on time

It’s important to get it right first time

You must never upset people

I must be better than everyone else

Being able to guide a person in gently examining such beliefs can have a quite significant impact on their lives.

(Incidentally, in traditional NLP the Rules category labours under the amazing title of Model Operators of Necessity.)

Example: The Cause & Effect category

This category indicates that we believe our feelings are factors by events outside us i.e. by the behaviour of other people or by events in our lives.

Let’s say that Harry says to Kate ‘You really upset me when you said that!’

His statement provides clues that Harry believes

1. That other people can cause his feelings to change

2. People in his life should manage their behaviour so that he can feel good

3. He needs to behave in ways that cause them to make him feel good – rather than bad

4. He should be grateful to people who ‘make’ him have good feelings – and risk becoming dependent on them for good feelings

People with a strong Cause & Effect belief tend to believe in, and sometimes blame, fate. Or check their astrological prediction in the daily paper. or believe that aspects of their emotional life are outside their realm of influence?

Important: the insights into a person’s thinking which the Meta Model provides are not ‘true’. As with many of the other insights provided by NLP processes we treat them as working hypotheses or possibilities-to-be-checked.

Why develop Meta Model skill?

It improves our ability to

Better understand people and what’s behind their problem behaviours

Identify how best to motivate colleagues and customers

Communicate clearly and unambiguously

Coach people in finding their own solutions to difficult situations.

“Meta Monsters”

The Meta Model started with Richard Bandler, one of the originators of NLP, studying or ’modelling’ the communication skills of three therapists: Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, and Milton Erickson. So it started as a therapeutic technique for recognising how a person’s thinking was causing difficulties in their lives. Bandler and his colleagues Frank Pucelik and John Grinder also came up with a series of turnkey questions to ask the person in order to loosen some of their more troublesome thinking patterns.

Somewhere along the way, and despite use of warnings by Bandler, the Meta Model became a sort of interrogation technique. In fact, that is how I learned it back in the 1980s i.e. as a a set of patterns to recognise and instantly ‘challenge’ with a turnkey question.

Unfortunately that’s also how it is still taught in many NLP training programmes. One result of this is that enthusiastic NLP practitioners leave the training courses and rush out to find people who are ‘thinking wrongly”, because they are using the Meta Model patterns, and then attempt to bludgeon them into submission with the challenging questions!

This results in some quite bizarre interactions which appear to lack certain NLP basics such as rapport, respect for the other person’s Model of the World, first understand the person before you try to change them, and so on:

Casual friend: I must go home now and do this

NLP person: What would happen if you didn’t?

Casual friend: Well it’s getting late – I’d better get it done…

NLP person: “What happen if you didn’t??”

Casual friend: Look, it’s been nice talking to you but I really have to dash off…

NLP person: How do you know you have to dash off?

Yes, I know, I’m probably exaggerating… slightly.

But it’s not very different to the dozens of conversations I’ve heard in NLP gatherings and groups. This NLP person has become what Richard Bandler warned against i.e. a Meta Monster. Because of her training she is using what she thinks is the Meta Model – which, in a way, it is – but quite inappropriately. It’s embarrassing to observe.

How to use the Meta Model

Treat it as a tool for listening. Or even a stethoscope for hearing what’s going on on the inside. When someone makes a comment act as if what they are saying out loud is the tip of an iceberg – and what lies under water is a huge amount of thinking, believing, feeling, evaluating, and so on.
Determine if the situation and your relationship with the person is right for using the Meta Model – and get their permission to use it
Establish you have rapport – end of the other person perceives value for themselves in exploring the issue
Listen for which category they use most.
Now ask some loosening questions to encourage the person to explore the thinking behind what they are saying. (And if you have trained through Pegasus NLP make sure that you are using the 4R’s and Softeners to make this process go smoothly.)
Be very clear that you aim is not to get them to admit to being “wrong” in their thinking. Your aim is to get them thinking about their thinking.

As a general rule, it’s best to avoid any questions at first. Instead listen quietly while you mentally note the different Meta Model patterns which they are using. Aim to identify the pattern which they use most frequently because that’s the one to begin dealing with.

The Meta Model and your own thinking

As a general rule do not use it on your own thinking. It’s best to not use it in a conscious manner to model your on-going self talk. This tends to take you into a loop where you’re meta modelling your internal dialogue – and then meta modelling your own meta modelling and so on – into a very complex process!

However if you find yourself in a bit of a mental log-jam you could explore doing a few pages of stream-of-consciousness writing about whatever is bothering you. Then use the Meta Model on this to recognise your own patterns after you have used them.

he NLP Meta-Model