From: L. Michael Hall
Meta Reflections – 2010 – #10
March 8, 2010
THE VISION OF
ACTUALIZING EXCELLENCE
The byline for Neuro-Semantics is Actualizing Excellence. The leadership team came up with those two words in January, two words that summarize our vision and our mission. And for us it provides a very succinct code that’s full of meaning— and I’m speaking about meaning that generates a lot of energy, passion, and vitality for us. To discover that all you have to do is speak to a Neuro-Semanticist!
Actualizing
Actualizing is a special term for us because it lies at the heart of what we are seeking to do in Neuro-Semantics— actualize our highest and most valuable meanings into actual performance in everyday life. Actualizing speaks about making real what is only potential, it is making real to the point of embodying what we know in our minds conceptually so we can close the knowing-doing gap. And this comes from the Self-Actualization Psychology that informs what we are doing and our beliefs about human nature and human beings. In Neuro-Semantics we have found many, many ways to achieve peak performance and translate from mind to body. That’s what we do because if we don’t “apply to self” then it is just information, not reality.
Excellence
The goal of the actualizing is excellence and this is the very theme that initiated NLP in the beginning— when Richard and John began modeling the excellence that they found in three world-class communicators. And once they did that, that very process resulted in the Meta-Model of Language which gave them one of the central tools that allow us to then model more examples of excellence.
Neuro-Semantics started in a similar way with the modeling of resilience because out of that came the Meta-States Model, a model that took NLP to a whole new level. Whereas NLP modeled the basic structures of how we think and represent, Meta-States tapped into and modeled how our mind inherently is self-reflexive. So Meta-States model the self-reflexivity of consciousness and so mapped out, for the first time, the actual structure of the “logical levels” and the higher levels of consciousness.
Other modeling tools have emerged since then: the Matrix Model, the Self-Actualization Quadrants. And so, while modeling has mostly become a lost theme in the field of NLP, it is still very much alive in Neuro-Semantics which explains the constant development of new models and patterns in Neuro-Semantics.
And with the Meta-States Model we are now able to model excellence in complex states such as resilience —long-term and intricate experiences that do not occur in just a single moment, but occurs over time— things like leadership, coaching, a solid sense of self, proactivity, responsibility, and a thousand other of the richest states we humans can experience.
Excellence also reflects the theme of “the bright-side of human nature” that Maslow and Rogers and the others of the first Human Potential Movement launched in the 1950s through the 1980s out of which NLP itself emerged. And now in Neuro-Semantics we have launched a second Human Potential Movement — one for the twenty-first century.
The Vision of Actualizing Excellence
Our vision is to not only use this upgraded version of NLP to enable people to “run their own brains” and manage their own states (that obviously is first, self-leadership), but our vision is much bigger. We want to empower people to access their finest and highest meaning-making skills so they can rise up to become everything they can become, to unleash all of their potentials. And when they do that, we want to take that to families, schools, companies, and countries. We want to facilitate the next level development of self-actualizing leaders, companies, politicians so that we change the very structures in our world.
It’s a big vision and so we need lots and lots of visionary men and women who will help us to lead to this future. And that’s what Trainers’ Training (NSTT) is designed to facilitate— to enable those who share this vision to learn how to stand up and speak up in a way that they can empower others to actualize their excellence.
Neuro-Semantic Trainers’ Training (NSTT) first focuses on platform skills— the competencies that enable you to stand up, engage a group of people and professionally communicate in such a way that you win their minds and hearts. Here we apply the principles and tools that enable you to actualize your excellence in public speaking. We then shift to another skill-set, that of designing trainings so that people are able to experience the learnings and make them theirs. And after that, since the Meta-States Model is the flagship of Neuro-Semantics, we do three days on The Psychology of APG. This provides a solid grounding in the psychology that governs these processes of excellence.
We then end NSTT with a focus on business skills— competencies that are required to be able to turn all of this into a commercially viable business. This touches on the theme of business excellence. I say touch on it because in the past years this has been one of my themes as I’ve been working with companies and businesses apply the principles of self-actualization to self-actualizing leaders and companies.
Now if you are one of those individuals who have read or experienced a bit of Neuro-Semantics and would like to step up into leadership — then consider Neuro-Semantic Trainers’ Training (NSTT). We are looking for more men and women who will share the vision with us and collaborate with the movement of Neuro-Semantics. If this is you, let us know!