THE FAST TRAIN TO MEANING

As a Trainer, you know that Neuro-Semantics centers on the construct of meaning. Meaning is central to what we are all about—it is even in our name, Semantics. And semantics governs everything! “Everything?” You ask. Yes, everything human and everything that matters. And that’s because without a person constructing meaning in his or her mind, there is no meaning. After all, meaning does not exist apart from a meaning-maker. It takes the brain and the nervous systems of a meaning-maker to construct meaning.

This has several very serious consequences: Whatever you think something means—that is what it means to you. It is your meaning and you created it. Wow! Talk about the semantic foundation of agency and responsibility. Each person’s experience of meaning is uniquely that person’s. It belongs to him and it will govern his life. The quality of your life is the quality of your meanings. What upgrades life, or any particular experience, is actually not the external things that you have—but what they mean to you. That’s why a poor person can have a high quality life and a rich person can have a poor quality life. The quality isn’t about stuff, it is about the person’s semantics. Now isn’t that amazing? Now having things as good, and having high standard of living, all that is good, and something we want to promote, but it is not the key to high quality living. How many very, very rich people are utterly miserable on the inside? Life and everything you and I can do or experience in life is governed by our meanings. Ultimately, life is lived inside—out, not outside—in. Although we are all taught to think and operate outside—in. But everything human is inside—out. Communication is inside–out; happiness is inside–out; love is inside–out; content, peace of mind, and serenity is inside–out. A sense of wealth and inner richness is inside–out. Meaning is constructed by thinking. This is the newest and most radical understanding that we have developed in Neuro-Semantics in recent years. Ultimately, it is all about thinking. Therefore, the quality of your thinking determines the quality of your meanings which determines the quality of your life. Thinking is inevitable, quality thinking is not. You cannot not think. It’s what your brain elicits your mind to do. Your brain is like the hardware and your mind is like the software. Your brain does not determine the quality of your thinking. Take a moment to reflect on that one! Your brain has all kinds of potentials for intelligence and excellences but you have to learn it, develop it, nurture it, etc. That’s why many highly intelligent people think and act in stupid ways. Quality thinking starts with critical thinking, steps up to creative thinking, and graduates into executive thinking. If you can’t think clearly, precisely, and accurately (critical thinking), you will be (and are) severely handicapped in life. The very ways that you think will sabotage you and what you do so you will not be effective or productive. [By

the way these are the three levels of thinking skills we teach in Thinking for Humans.] Your thinking shows up in how you talk. The way you language things—yourself, others, work, exercise, food, and everything else—determines the meanings you construct and then the life you live. If your language is wrong, so will be everything else. That’s why we have to get our speech right—the very purpose of the Meta-Model. Meaning hides. It is intangible because it is what your mind does. Yet your meanings, and mine, show up and are expressed by the way you talk, act, gesture, move, etc. Therefore by paying deep attention to language, thinking patterns, neurological habits, etc. you can detect and flush out your semantics or those of another person. It’s easy to forget that behind the see-hear-feel expressions is a world of meaning which each of us has inherited and created. The quicker you can detect meaning and identify meaning, the quicker you can get to the ultimate source of problems and solutions. So we learn to go meta. We learn how to step back from the expressions of meaning to identify the meaning itself and the thinking that creates the meaning. When we do that we can then identify the interpretation behind the problem ... behind the solution. Learning to ride the fast train to meaning enables you to avoid all of the usual psychological noise, defenses, and side-trips. When you can go directly to the Source, you can check the ecology of the meaning and then know what needs to be done. Do you need to update the meaning, reframe it, or outframe it?

All of this is what enables a person to have a 5-minute problem-solving conversation. All of this allows you to have a highly focused conversation that gets to the heart of things (the meaning) so that you can more quickly solve problems and/or invent new solutions that can change the world. Therefore if you would want to learn to initiate and conduct a 5-minute conversation, we welcome to Neuro-Semantics— the fast train to meaning.