SUPPOSE YOU COULD SEE YOUR MIND, WHAT THEN?

When doctors and medical specialists enable us to see the brain and see what is happening as it is functioning, that can let them know what to do if they find a problem. It gives them insight into what’s causing a problem and how to remedy it. When researchers develop new equipment for viewing the brain, it gives them more information about the overall functioning of the brain, how the parts are related to each other.

So it is with the mind. When you and I can peek into the theater of the mind and see what’s going on, we can know what’s working well and what’s not working well. Now we can more effectively enable the functioning of the mind. I began doing that with the Matrix Model (2002/2012). By identify seven of the key variables of the mind, the Matrix Model provides a way to sort things out and see relationships between them. The structure of the Matrix Model was very simple: Three process dimensions: meaning, intention, and state. These create all of the internal understandings, beliefs, knowledge, emotions, etc. for any experience. Five content dimensions about one’s self: you as a person (self-esteem), you as a doer (self-confidence), your social self, your temporal self, and your roles in various domains.

Essentially the Matrix Model focused on three major things which the mind does—it makes meanings, it sets intentions, and it generates a sense of self. Bob Bodenhamer and I first applied this model to the experience of stuttering. We found we could model what stuttering is and how it works in the human mind-body-emotion system using it. We found we could specify with precision the exact order, organization, and structure of that experience and knowing that, how to transform it to fluency. (See the book, In Their Own Voice, formally titled, Mastering Stuttering and Blocking with NLP and Neuro-Semantics).

For the past 20 years I have presented the Matrix Model in the Meta-Coaching course as a tool for modeling the desired and undesired experiences of coaching clients. It has provided a way to follow the person’s energy through their system (their matrix of frames). In the past few years, however, I’ve been expanding that model by adding more of what we know is in the mind. The result is now The Meta Place (see 2023 Neurons #12 and #13).

What then? What is the value of being able to see mind as a meta place? Beyond the first benefit of being able to identify what is there, you will be able to recognize and understand how your mind works. Then, from understanding how your mind works, you can first monitor its functioning and then regulate it so that it serves you. Today we talk about this in terms of EQ— emotional intelligence and/or mindfulness.

For Neuro-Semanticists including Meta-Coaches, this gives one the ability to follow a person’s energy through his or her mind-body-emotion system. This refers to following how a person takes some stimuli in the environment, builds up mental maps about it, and then how that information then integrates into the body to become the person’s dependable response patterns. And the good news is that we can do this with any and every “experience.” The end result— we can generate a dynamic process structuring of how a person does (or performs) any experience from stuttering, to depression, to optimism, resilience, over-seriousness, playfulness, etc.

Seeing your mind in action is a meta-cognitive skill. It is mindfulness and it is meta-stating. It puts you into a position where you can begin managing what you are doing and how you are doing it. This then results in a feeling of self-awareness, self-efficacy, self-trust, and self- determination. Now you know why. Now you know how to answer the question, “Suppose you could see your mind, what then?”

We are now training Meta-Coaches to do this very thing—to see a client’s mind or mind space and to do it in real time. I often demonstrate this in a step-by-step fashion as I conduct and map a conversation as the dialogue progresses. Those who know the structure of the Meta place immediately recognize the mapping as they follow the conversation. This trains their intuitions to be able to do the same.