DISTINGUISHING CONTENT & PROCESS

Here is a distinction that is at the forefront of the NLP and Neuro-Semantic models and it is this distinction that makes both meta-fields. It is this distinction also that is key to problem-solving and transformation.

Content. Regarding whatever you are talking about, this is the story or the details. Content defines what you are talking about. Content focuses on what is immediately on “the theater of your mind,” what you represent and what you think is critically important. When we ask for more content, we need more sensory-based information: where, what, when, with whom, how, which, etc. We need the factual evidence and the contextual references.

Process. Similarly, whatever you are talking about, process refers to the structuring which governs the content. And because mental-and-emotional structures are dynamic, it refers to the controlling processes of the content. This takes us to a higher level—the hidden frames that make up the assumptions and premises governing the content. Process speaks about how the information, the data, is being formulated and interpreted.

Now both of these deal with the same message, but at different levels. One is at the primary level (content), the other is at the meta-level (process). Whenever you are not aware of the higher level structures, you can get so caught up in content that you entirely miss the hidden, and usually invisible, influence of the over-arching frames. Then you cannot discern what is going on above and beyond and behind the content. The content fills your mind and seems all controlling and dominating. Yet this actually describes the mind of a child.

Learning about the structuring of the processes above content takes you to a meta-level where you discover a great many hidden and invisible influences. Here “whoever sets the frame controls the game.” Here meaning can be formatted in many different ways. Here framing and reframing occurs. This also is the mind of an adult— someone who has learned to “step back” (go to a meta level) and pay attention to the formatting or the code that is being used.

Content is the story of the fear of a big dog that a person develops as a child. It involves the details of where one was, what happened, and how the person responded. Details. Content. Process refers to how a person encoded that memory and what he is doing with it today. If you remember it as if you are still there— you are associating into the story so that the experience seems like it is current. It is not. But you are cuing your body to respond as if it is. Process is also the place where you can make transformative changes.

Put the content of the story up on a movie screen and step back from it several rows. As you see it, feel the distance, it is about you, but a much younger and inexperienced you.

Make the picture a black-and-white snapshot. That will cue your brain that it is an old picture, not current. Index the time of that story, what you were wearing, was the sun shining or was it raining that day. Identify as much as you can about that event. Run that movie to the end .... then forward on to a time of delight and joy. Step into the movie at the scene of pleasure and rewind it backwards while you are in it and do it in two seconds. Really fast.

All of these process instructions gives you a chance to change the frames, the formatting, and the code that determines how you interpret and experience the content. The principle is simple, yet profound: Change the code and the experience changes.

And there’s always a code. That’s what the processes reveal. Changing content is much more difficult because whatever happened in the past, happened. And you can’t change what happened. But you can change how you interpret it. You can change the code and how you store it and what you use it for today.

NLP revealed the two levels in the Spelling Strategy back in the 1970s. At the content level are the details of how a word is spelled. At the meta-level are the processes: You hear the word (auditorially) and you make a picture of the letters (visually). You then compare the picture of the word you create with a memory of what the word looks like (visual remembered). If they look the same, you feel a sensation of congruence (kinesthetic positive) and you are ready to spell it. If the picture does not look the same as the remembered picture, you feel a sensation of incongruence (kinesthetic negative) and you cycle back around to try to make a better picture.

Discovering the hidden processes is in the back of your mind, or the back of someone else’s mind is not always easy. The structures hide. They are comprised of dynamic structures that are hard to see ... hard to see, that is, until you have been trained to see them. And, of course, that’s what NLP and Neuro-Semantic trainings are about—learning to see what’s invisible in the back of the mind. Then if you are running some old programs that are no longer relevant, you can upgrade your programming. Welcome to the world of transformation!