From Meta-States to the Actualizing of Potential

When I began thinking about initiating the Meta-Coach Training in 2001 the thought never crossed my mind that I would have to invent some new models to handle the demands of the new field of Coaching. That idea never so much as scampered across my awareness. Nor did it arise for some time afterwards.

In fact, it wasn’t until after Michelle Duval and I began collaborating on the Meta-Coach Training system as a complete systematic system that we realized that if we were going to be consistent with our proposition that coaching is not the same as therapy, and that the two are truly very different modalities that we began to take a new and hard look at all of the “Change Models” that were in the field of Coaching. And what we discovered surprised us. Every change model was based upon some therapy model and not a single one was based upon the premises that governed coaching clients.

So it was off to the drawing boards to invent afresh a brand new model for coaching clients in contradistinction to therapy clients, and how they change. The result of that was the invention of the Axes of Change model which we put together from both the literature and research and from modeling how self-actualizing people change and how a masterful coach works with those processes. You can read all about that in Coaching Change, Meta-Coaching Volume I.

But that didn’t end the need for new models. As Michelle and I identified the minimum requirements for Coaching as a new methodology, that led us to rigorously question whether we had sufficient models and mechanisms for facilitating the unleashing of potential. So I began exploring such questions as the following:

• What actual models do we have that facilitate the self-actualization?
• What models did Maslow, Rogers, May, Assosioli, etc. create that launched t he Human Potential Movement?
• What did those leaders and developers say about the process of self-actualization?
• What has NLP contribute to self-actualization?
• Why has NLP hardly used the term “self-actualization?”
• How does Neuro-Semantics take this to yet another level?

As you can imagine, my first attempt was to put together a Self-Actualization Matrix. What are the frames of mind and meaning that best support actualizing one’s best self and becoming all one can become? Researching this led me back to the two key leaders in the Human Potential Movement—Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers. So I reread their works for such models. But they were not there. Except for Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” the Human Potential Movement did not create models of self-actualization. I thought that was strange. So I began looking for patterns and wondering what a model of the unleashing process would look like.

Eventually that led me to create the Self-Actualization Quadrants based on the two axes of Meaning and Performance, which of course, highlights Neuro-Semantics (neuro- performance and semantics meaning). From that I eventually identified 11 meta-programs that make up the meta-program continua that formulate the Meaning / Performance axis.

Then I discovered something kind of surprising. NLP was but one of the many hundreds of off- shoots of the Human Potential Movement!

I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that Fritz Perls (Gestalt Therapy) and Virginia Satir (Family Systems) were two of the people recognized as key contributors of the Human Potential Movement. And I didn’t realize that most of the presuppositions that we value in NLP were the basic premises of the Human Potential Movement that Rogers and Maslow originally invented. While I do remember hearing Bandler criticize Rogers and Maslow, somehow I never contextualized such, and so didn’t really understand it or tie some things together.

What does all of that mean? It mostly means that the grand and exciting ideas of NLP are as much the grand and exciting ideas of the Human Potential Movement as anything else. Nor did NLP initiate the idea of modeling the brightest and best. Maslow began doing that in the 1940s and 1950s! That’s right. A long, long time before the Cognitive Movement and before NLP, Maslow was studying self-actualizing people to understand their patterns. How about that!?

Ah yes, that brings us back to Isaac Newton who said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulder of giants.” So in a similar fashion, if we have seen further or developed more, it is due to the work of those giant souls who have gone before us.

So if Maslow changed the paradigm in psychology from studying broken people to studying the healthiest, those stand out as the most mature, psychologically healthy, self-actualizing, and productive, then what NLP added to it all was some of the detailing of how to elicit and describe the strategies of such, enriching those strategies with the representational systems. And that was revolutionary in its time.

Now enter Meta-States. What the Meta-States model added to all of that is the meta-levels of strategies, the way our self-reflexive consciousness creates layers of meaning frames upon meaning frames to create an entire semantic network, a matrix of frames. And if we actualize our best selves through creating rich and robust meaning which we then actualize by embodying in our neurology as peak performances, then you can count on Meta-States and Neuro-Semantics taking the process of self-actualization to the next level.

Interested? If so, then this will be my focus in the weeks to come in this new series on Self- Actualization Reflections. And for those of you attending any of the upcoming APG trainings, you will be hearing a lot of new things about Unleashing your Potentials through Accessing your personal genius states. There’s a lot more to say about all of this – and so we shall in the weeks and months to come.