META-STATING YOUR PSYCHO-LOGICS FOR THE NEW YEAR

A New Year has arrived and with its arrival our thoughts naturally turn to what the new year holds and what we’d like to accomplish in it. Thinking about what you’d like to achieve then brings up the question of how—what skills or processes can you use to make this a fabulous year? One answer is to meta-state your psycho-logics so it serves to enhance you and all you do.

“Psycho-logics?” What is that? What does it mean to meta-state it? How do you do that? And why?

If the term is new to you, it refers to the “logic” that you use as you think and that you create by your thinking. Originally invented by Alfred Korzybski in Science and Sanity (1933), it describes human nature. You and I are psycho-logical; our lives are psycho-logical. Korzybski put a hyphen in the word “psychology” to create “psycho-logy.” In this way he distinguished two kinds of logic. One kind deals with the logic (reasoning, understanding) you study in school for mapping the external world. The second addresses the unique and idiosyncratic logic you use to map your internal world.

What then are psycho-logics? How are you and I psycho-logical? We are psycho-logical because inside we are free to set any state, thought, feeling, memory, imagination, decision, etc. as a frame for experience. If you know the Meta-States Model, this is the meta-stating process. Here, by bringing one mental-emotional state, even physiological state to another, you not only create a meta-state, you also create internal logic for your experience. The higher level thinking, feeling, and/or physiology becomes a class (classification) for the lower. It creates your particular logic or thinking.

What is your particular logic about the new year? What is your particular logic about new year’s resolutions? What’s your particular logic about setting goals?

To find out simply reflect about what do you think and feel about these ideas. What do you think and feel about the idea of a “new year?” Your thoughts-and-feelings about (i.e. your meta-state frame) any of these ideas creates your internal category/classification. It comprises your inner “logic”—your psycho-logics. If you think, “I don’t like goals setting, it just sets me up for disappointment,” you are meta-stating yourself with “anticipated disappointment tinged with dislike.” That becomes your frame- of-mind about it. It becomes the “logic” (your reasoning and meaning-making) about it— your thinking pattern.

What do you think about charting your future with some fantastic new goals? What do you think about yourself as someone who acts on and makes your goals real? What do you think and feel about the goals you sat last year?

No wonder you proliferate meta-states all over the place! This, by the way, answers the question that John Grinder once asked of me, “Why so many meta-states?” Mostly because it is inevitable! Now depending whether your thoughts-and-feelings about these things are positive and supportive or negative and limiting—so are your frames, beliefs, decisions, attitudes, and state of mind. That’s the nature of the meta-levels. When you go meta and set some thought, feeling, belief, category, decision, etc. at a higher level—it becomes your frame (as in frame-of-mind, frame-of-meaning).

It also becomes your attitude. Have you ever wondered how you create “attitudes” that predispose or set your mind, body, habits, lifestyle, etc. in a certain way? The answer is simple: You meta-state those attitudes into existence. The stuff out of which you do that is the same stuff of all meta-levels: thoughts, feelings, and physiology. In Neuro-Semantics we define “attitude” as the composite of your multiple frames of mind about something. Knowing that, you now have a clue for how to de-commission an old attitude and build up a new one (see the pattern, Super-Charging Your Attitude).

Coming back to the subject of the new year—what’s your attitude? What psycho-logics do you use? What would you like it to be? What attitude would be truly a new frame of mind for you that would support you in unleashing more of your potentials? In fact, what if you spent this year focusing more on setting attitude goals than you did on the traditional goals of more time at the gym, more time reading, more time with your loved ones, etc.?

Undoubtedly you already know the reason. To win at the outer game of health, fitness, career, relationships, wealth, etc. you first have to win the inner game. That’s what attitude is all about. Win at your attitude, super-charge your attitude, custom design the attitude that you want to empower you through the challenges of life, then as you win the inner game, the outer game becomes a cinch (see Winning the Inner Game (2007)]. All of this gives us some very different questions for this new year: What inner game are you not winning that you want to win at? What inner game do you need to win to really succeed outwardly in the external game? What frame of mind do you have about effort, discipline, patience, long-term commitment, mastery, problems, and the other facets that make up character and a winning personality?

There’s no escaping your own psycho-logics. Everywhere you go, everything you say, and every emotion you experience is a result of your inner psycho-logics. Whatever reasoning, reasons, ideas, states, thoughts, feelings, etc. that you bring to your states sets the next level of logics for your mind and your emotions. The real question is: What is the quality of your psycho-logics? This is critical. After all, the quality of your psycho-logics is the quality of your life. Your life, in fact, can be no better than the quality of the frames that you set through your meta-stating.

As you begin this new year, realize more fully than ever before that you are psycho-logical. So do you like your psycho-logics? Do your psycho-logics enhance and empower you? If not, are you ready to engage a Neuro-Semanticist for updating and enriching your psycho-logics? We have lots of coaches and trainers who can do precisely that. Here’s to the most ecological and robust psycho-logics for you so that you can live the life that fulfills your inner dreams and passions!