BELONGING

In April, we make belonging the theme of the Zoom Community Meeting. In introducing the theme of belonging, I noted that as an international community, we are interested in far more than the number of people who attend trainings or conferences. We are interested in promoting the sense that people feel like a part of, and belonging to, Neuro-Semantics as a community dedicated to presenting high quality NLP—that is, NLP with integrity, in a context of collaboration, and creativity.

More recently I read about some of the studies of Prof. Carol Dwerk on the role of stereotypes with regard to females and mathematics. She had asked classes of females in math courses about their “feelings about math.” And one question she asked was, “Do you belong in math?” And, as with studies about priming, this study also showed that the more conscious a woman would be about her gender (female) the less her sense of belonging to math. And women with a “fixed mindset” suffered the most. The longer they continued in math courses, they “had a shrinking sense of belonging.”

In a way that’s a funny way to talk about belonging. “Do you belong to math?” Generally belonging speaks about a deep and intimate connection with other people. It is more about your social relations and interactions than your conceptual relationships to a course of study. And yet ... you and I do belong not only to families and friends, to associations and groups, we also belong to ideas, to beliefs, to understandings, and to courses of study. So, we might now ask, “Do you belong to Neuro- Semantics?” “Do you belong to NLP?”

One form of belonging would be a membership question. Are you a member of, or do you have a license in, a given study, like NLP? If so, you could be a certified Practitioner, or a Trainer, or a Coach, etc. That’s one way of belonging.

A deeper way of belonging, however, speaks about your heart or spirit. Do you emotionally and experientially feel that you belong to the NLP community or the Neuro-Semantic community? That’s a very different question. You could have membership in a group and not feel that you belong. Belonging in the deepest sense is, like all things most human, is inside-out. So with the female who are a part of a math course, but who did not feel like they belonged to math, so a person may be a part of something and not feel as if he belongs to it. Belonging involves a voluntary, personal, and intimate sense of connection.

Because belonging is a subjective experience and because it is an experience we have all had, think about three to five experiences that you have had in which you felt that you belonged. It could be a family group, a friend or group of friends, a team, etc. What factors contributed to that experience for you?

Behind or above the experience of belonging are beliefs. What beliefs support you feeling like you belong to something? What would you need to believe about NLP as a Communication Model, as a description of human functioning so that you felt that you belong to NLP? What values would support you in feeling that you belong to Neuro-Semantics as a NLP community? Would there by any beliefs that would hold you back from belonging?

Ultimately belonging involves relating, connecting, inter-acting, etc. So what skills do you need in order to take the initiative? What skills do you need so that the sense of belonging would feel stronger for you? What skills would someone else need that would make you feel that you are welcomed and invited in? Have you ever supported another person so that he or she felt that they belonged to something? Here’s to developing the beliefs and attitudes and skills that will empower us so that we can facilitate the sense of belonging in all those we influence.