I’M A NEURO-SEMANTICIST

“Who are you?” That’s what he asked. And because I was working on an article on Neuro- Semantics, I looked up from my seat on the plane and said, “I’m a Neuro-Semanticist.”

When I said that, I didn’t know if it would be a conversation stopper or opener. I soon found out. It did not stop the conversation. He wanted to know if I was in medicine or the neuro-sciences. And so the conversation began. A bit later, he asked me why I was a Neuro-Semanticist.

I’m a Neuro-Semanticist because most essentially I’m a meaning-maker, as is every human being and as with everyone else, my life is one of creating and embodying meanings. Of these two facets, the first is that I create meaning. It is inevitable. To think is to create meaning. It is to define what things are (identification meaning), how things work (cause-effect meaning), and what results from what we do (consequential meaning). There are many other kinds of meanings, yet these are front and center to everything. To know how to respond to anything, you first have to define what it is. Then, once you know what it is, you have to know how it works, what it does. And when you know what it does, you will want to know what it leads to.

Second my life is that of embodying the meanings that I create. That is, the meanings I accept and invent become the messages I send to my body and the commands to my nervous systems. And those messages become my emotions. That’s because the human body is designed to actualize meanings and the first actualization occurs as felt meaning or emotions.

It is from my soma (body) that I receive and invent my semantics and then those semantics creates my somatic states and experiences.

All emotions make sense. They may not be useful, they may not make you or me resourceful, they may not be accurate, they make not make life pleasant, but they always make sense. They make sense because they are expressions of meanings. Yes they are influenced by many other factors; yes there are other contributing factors (eating, exercising, sleeping, health, sickness, etc.), yet primarily and essentially, you feel as you think. You create your emotions (your somatic states and experiences) and your inner semantic world (your matrix of frames).

In Neuro-Semantics one of our central models is the Meaning—Performance Axes model. This model has two axes (meaning and performance) and from it emerges another model, the Self- Actualization Quadrants. We use this for a diagnosis of both individuals and organizations (See Unleashed, Self-Actualization Psychology, and Unleashing Leadership). So when it comes to my semantics (my meanings), as a Neuro-Semanticist, I have several ways to think about and understand the range and kinds and levels of meanings that govern my life. That’s because on the Meaning Axes, there are at least three scales that you can use in thinking about meaning-

making.

1) Kinds of Meanings: This is the contribution of the NLP model. We have representational meaning, editorial (sub-modality) meaning, associative, metaphorical, intentional, evaluative, etc. There is meanings made up of beliefs, values, understandings, decisions, permissions, prohibitions, etc.

2) Number of Meanings: This refers to the quantity of meanings that you can create about any given thing. Since nothing inherently means something, it can mean a whole range of things. We can give anything 5 meanings, 10, 20, perhaps even 100. The more meanings you can give to something, the more choice you have to give it the meanings that will be empowering to you as a person and enhancing your life.

3) Quality of Meanings: This refers to the quality of meanings from meaninglessness to meaningfulness. The degrees of quality range at the bottom with futility up to triviality, then to the middle range of conventionality, and on up to the higher range of unique and individual meanings, up to the highest meanings of all, those that are special and sacred because you have now found something that is bigger than yourself, something to invest yourself into, something that will outlast you.

I am a Neuro-Semanticist because I translate from mind (meaning) to muscle (performance). I do not allow myself to know more and more and more without translating what I know into action. To do so increases the gap between knowing-and-doing. By taking what I know and doing something about it no matter how small creates a momentum of implementation and it is that habit of implementation that defines a real Neuro-Semanticist. This closes the knowing-doing gap. It creates a bias for action. It mobilizes the proactive strategy and enables people to do what they say.

I am a Neuro-Semanticist because by creating new and rich meanings and implementing them in practical and pragmatic action that makes the meanings real in real life, I can easily find, detect, and begin to suspend any meaning that is not enhancing and eliminate any performance that does not contribute to the expression of my highest meanings. This is the third thing that I do. I release and suspend meaning. I release and replace performances that do not enhance or empower.