THE META-LANDSCAPE OF YOUR MIND Part III

As we continue exploring the landscape of Meta Land, there’s another structure, or to be more precise, “structuring dynamic” to mention. I’m now referring to what we call in NLP, Meta- Programs. Ah yes, meta-programs. There are numerous ways to speak about this dimension. In various NLP writings these are described and labeled by a wide variety of terms: perceptual filters thinking patterns neuro-filters neuro-sorts

Metaphorically, we think of meta-programs as the kind and color of glasses that you wear as you see and perceive things. This is the most common metaphor for a meta-program. What kind of glasses are you wearing?

The simplest of all meta-programs is the classic optimist / pessimist filter, “Is the glass half empty or half full?” Which ever you see, it is just that, a way of seeing things. And in either case, the amount of liquid in the glass is the same. Yet precisely because the way you see it differs, then so does your reality. If you see it as half empty, then you are looking for what’s missing, what is not there. If you see it as half full, then you are looking at what is there. This gives us the classic pessimist and optimist in “personality.” That is, the way we filter, sort, and think about the same object creates different ways or styles of feeling, relating, talking, and behaving— the components of what we call “personality.”

Now as part of the meta landscape of the higher regions of your mind, your habitual meta- programs play a dominant and even a determining role in how you experience yourself, others, and the world at large. No wonder we often relate our meta-programs to our sense and experience of ourselves as “persons,” hence “personality.” I put these terms in quotes because they are highly liable to misled us. Without quotes, we easily fall into the seduction of to think of them as externally real, as objective things. They are not.

“Personality” is not what you are, it is how you function. It refers to how you do “personality.” This separates Neuro-Semantic NLP from all of the “typology” models (Myers Briggs, Taylor Johnson, the MMPI, the four Greek personality types, etc.). Typology assumes that people come in types or kinds. “She’s X type of person,” “He’s got Y personality.” Assuming that people are a certain way, typology presupposes that personality is fixed, determined, fated. This is actually a case of over-generalizing. We take some way of operating, turn it into a “trait” and then assume that that is all the person is and that they cannot be otherwise.

The typology approach pretty much locks out change, especially personality change or transformation. In Neuro-Semantic NLP, we start with some very different assumptions. As with classic NLP, we start with the fact that people operate in states and operate from states and that when we keep repeating a state, the habituated state becomes a way of being in the world, a way of functioning. This solidifies things so that we then operate through the lens of that state consistently and regularly.

And, when we do that for months and even years, we essentially meta-state that state with all of its ways of thinking and feeling so that it becomes our gestalted meta-state or meta-program. For example, if you keep accessing the state of looking for sameness and do so repeatedly for years, you may meta-state the sameness state so that it becomes your glasses by which you filter and sort for everything. Then the perceptual lens you use to process the information from books, conversations, work, hope, dreams, fears, etc. will be the sameness lens. We could say that you then become a sameness person. You live consistently in the sameness state and always talk about how things are “the same” or similar. Doing so makes you good with people and quick to get rapport. And personality-wise, you would probably dislike, even hate, conflict, differences, and disagreements.

Or, you could use the opposite end of that continuum, and always be access the state of looking for differences. If you meta-state differences in the meta landscape of your mind so that you only and always sort for differences, then you would develop difference glasses and that would put you in a state of differing. This would make you good at seeing what’s left out, what’s not accounted for, and how thing are not right, how people are wrong, what’s missing, etc. It’s this state that supports creativity and innovation and conflict, disagreement, and lack of rapport.

Each meta-state that has solidified into a meta-program has its strength and weakness. And each operates on a continuum. In Meta-Coaching, we have made this the very heart of self-actualizing new potentials. We do that by focusing on expanding meta-programs. This differs from merely changing a meta-program or trying to become the opposite. In expanding the meta-program in the meta landscape, you expand your perceptual range and that activates a wider range of states and possibilities.

And as a consequence of this, the expanding of meta-programs expands your sense of self and personality. At the lowest level it develops your personality and at the highest it absolutely transforms your personality. And it does so, not by eliminating any meta-program or state, but by expanding and transforming such.

In Meta Land, your meta-programs represents the ultimate coalescence of your meta-states. That is, as you set states as your frames of mind, they become your very perceptual lens so that you see the world in a certain way. With each, you thereby create strengths and competencies and limitations. That’s why expanding to the full range of a meta-program is such a generative and transformative experience. That’s why also, in the Self-Actualization Workshop one of the key ways we facilitate actualizing our highest and best is through the expanding of our meta- programs. And that’s one of the key benefits of the Ultimate Self-Actualization Workshop, the transformation of personality so that you can reach your full humanness and experience more peak experiences.