THE RICHNESS WITHIN META-STATING

In the primary process of meta-stating you simply and elegantly bring one state to another state. Bring joy to learning and you have joyful learning. Bringing calmness to anger and you have calm anger. Whenever you bring a particular state to a given primary state that you want to influence and qualify, you set a meta-level state and so create a meta-state out of the two experiences. Bring any resource that will temper anger and you develop empowering meta- states: respectful anger, thoughtful anger, gentle anger, self-confident fear, playful seriousness, etc.

Now if you look at the list of italicized words in the previous paragraph, you’ll notice that meta- states show up as the modifiers (adjectives, adverbs). Respect for human beings as persons can be set over your anger, your fear, your confusion, your awkwardness, your embarrassment, and so on. And here’s the crazy thing, when you do that, when you make all of these primary experiences members of the class of respect. You set a category as you frame it in that way and so you create your own private psycho-logics.

Ah, yes, psycho-logics. I got this idea originally from Alfred Korzbyski (Science and Sanity) and incorporated into the Meta-States Model (1994/ 2007). What this means is that when you meta- state, you are doing many things at the same time. You are setting a frame using the thoughts- and-feelings-and-physiologies of the state (say, respect) over the primary experiences. Now the primary experiences are filtered, tempered, textured, qualified, governed, classified, and experienced through the second state. You are not doing just one thing, you are doing many things. This explains, in part, some of the complexity involved in meta-stating.

You are also creating your own private “logical level” system around that primary state. Each time you meta-state, you establish another layer or level of thought-and-emotion about the first one. This classifies the first experience. It categorizes it. It textures it. It qualifies it. It creates your internal psycho-logics in your private Matrix. Ah yes, you are now doing many things when you meta-state. A lot of NLP-trained people don’t know this. If a person thinks linearly rather than systemically, they will draw that kind of a conclusion. But it is erroneous.

So if you bringing joy to eating and that joy means “the good life” or “reward” then “eating” or “food” becomes a member of the class of “The Good Life” or “Rewards of the Good Life.” Logical? Not according to Aristotelian logic. But yes, logical to the way you are experiencing and feeling the world. So, it is psycho-logical. It makes sense from within. And it only makes sense from the outside if you and I spend time asking meta-questions about the person’s inner

structures of states-about-states so that we come to understand the states of meaning frames that the person has nestled together over eating.

In presenting all of this in this way, I hope you now see the tremendous benefit of using the Meta-States Model for modeling the invisible structures that govern an experience. And you can probably now see why we use the Matrix Model as well for modeling the higher levels of frames (meta-states, classifications, categories, logical-levels, etc.). And there’s something else. This is process the process by which we qualify our experiences— the meta-state brings a quality to the primary experience. Do that with a positive resource and that’s what you get — honorable confrontation, joyful discipline. Do that with a negative resource and that’s what you get — fearful anger, guilty anger, stressful anger, hated fear, sad sadness, etc.

Now in training Meta-States, I always say (and try to drive home the point) that the quality of your life is the quality of your primary states. For me, that explains why all people everywhere are forever seeking to have the best primary states and experiences possible, why they try to avoid and even forbid “negative” states, emotions, and experiences. But do that and you are operating at the wrong level!

Consider what happens when you avoid or forbid or hate or reject a primary experience. You are thereby meta-stating yourself with avoidance, taboo, hatred, rejection, fear, anger, etc. And when you do that, you are turning these energies against yourself and making yourself an enemy of reality! This is not good. Then, your mind, your emotions, your body will pay the price. It will create blind spots, limitations, inhibitions, repressions, body pains, ulcers, etc.

The primary experience is just that— an experience, an experience of response to something. It may be accurate or inaccurate; it may be useful or unuseful; it may be empowering or diminishing. Whatever it is, the best choice is to meta-state that experience with awareness, acceptance, acknowledgment, curiosity, learning, etc. Then you can put the experience to good use.

So — if the quality of your life is your state— then the quality of your state is the quality of your meta-state. And when you know that, you have in your hands the secret to the highest and deepest parts of your personality. You have the key to effective self-management and the way to unleash your full potentials.

Want to know more about Meta-States as a Model? Begin with Secrets of Personal Mastery (1997) or Winning the Inner Game (2007) and then progress up to Meta-States— Mastering the Higher Levels of Your Mind (2008). [You can find these on www.neurosemantics.com under products, Catalog.]