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Milton Erickson
Gregory Bateson
Noam Chomsky
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mains a brilliant observer of what actually works: the practices are effective in broadening perspectives, accelerating learning, and facilitating change. They are also resilient and exible. All of this effectiveness comes at a cost: relying on unconscious uptake, unconscious decisionmaking, and unconscious communication leaves the processes with serious gaps in accountability. The gaps in conscious accountability and explanation do not necessarily mean that the practices of New Code are less ecological or ethical than other therapeutic or coaching methods. In fact, Grinder says that concern for ecology is specically a reason for developing practices that ask the unconscious mind to run more complicated tests for the ecology of outcomes or change than the conscious mind will typically enact. What is missing may be the ability to consciously test for the accuracy and intention of various interventions. There is an inherent paradox in creating an epistemology (a theory of knowing) that relies heavily on the creation of a know nothing state.
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Personal Edits
Personal edits are games designed, as Grinder says in The Sins of the Fathers, to allow the client to develop a high performance state. . . that is then connected (through a version of future pacing - an extremely effective deployment of anchoring) with the context in which the client desires that the change occur. In other words, the client identies a desired outcome and codes it in sensory representations. S/he then develops a resourceful state and anchors it to this future situation in which s/he will need the resources in order to perform optimally. This involves identifying the situation or situations which would lead to less than optimal performance
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(called choice points) and using games to rst dissociate from the states associated with those situations, then scramble internal representations of those states. Often the representations are scrambled using physical movement in combination with a story or metaphor that changes the language and images attached to the situation. Resources are accessed and added (in part through the guidance of the practitioner), and the new representation is tied to the desired outcome. In other words, the practitioner and client collaborate to edit the learning that the client takes from a particular situation. Like the editor of a lm or book, they cannot change the content of the situation; they can change the perspective from which it is viewed, and the tone and atmosphere with which it presents itself to the conscious mind. They rely on the unconscious mind to select, present and anchor resources that are uniquely suited to resolve difculties and move toward achievements. Throughout, while the imagination of the client is engaged in making pictures or sounds suitable to the game, the rational faculties are relaxed and distracted, in part by the need to guide the body through physical activity. The result is that all parts of the mind are engaged simultaneously and focused on turning a situation previously identied as undesirable into a step on the road to a desired outcome.
A set of practices in New Code NLP develops the ability to notice and rely on signals physiological or sensory phenomena that represent the complex response of the unconscious mind to people, thoughts or situations. Calibration is the ability to notice difference and assign meaning to it. In calibration games, people become more aware both of how other people represent internal states through subtle physiological changes and of how their own signals allow them to respond to such signals whether or not they have been conscious of noticing them. These games are a way of training what has often been called instinct - the capacity to respond quickly and accurately to complex stimuli. This ability to instantly access good information is the subject of Malcolm Gladwells recent best-seller, blink. In NLP New Code, calibration relies on instinct and moves beyond it to the imaginative apprehension of another persons experience, including that persons physiology, point of view, and emotional state. It works from the presupposition that it is possible to imaginatively collate the multiple streams of information about another persons experience so that it becomes possible to see oneself through anothers eyes (and ears and kinaesthetics). In language, the activity of mapping someone elses experience is represented by the second person: you. In NLP New Code,practitioners work from the physiology of another person and their own unconscious collection of relevant information to gain insight into what and how someone is experiencing or behaving. A second position shift moves attention from ones own experience to the experience of someone else, as if the practitioner had become that person. There are two levels of ecology check necessary in a second position shift: both involve necessary caution in noticing and maintaining the distinction between ones own experience and that of the other person. On the one hand, it is possible to notice too little and simply attribute ones own experience to the other person. On the other hand, it is possible to take on characteristics or points of view which threaten ones own sense of integrity or purpose. As with all close observation, it is possible to learn more than someone would consciously wish to share: this is a consequence of the power of human evolution and not the power of NLP New Code. As one learns to access accurate perceptions, one can also choose not to access those perceptions. Third position is the position that allows perception of oneself and another in relationship. Sometimes inaccurately described as the objective observer position, it is more likely to represent what language creates as the rst person plural - the self in relationship with at least one other. What is perceived from third position is not ones experience or the experience of someone else, but the impact that each individual has on the connection or relationship between
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them. Third position begins from the y on the wall description of the objective observer. It develops into a more complicated experience of oneself as part of a relationship or system.
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Put another way, NLP teaches integrated thinking: the ability to pay attention to component parts and to the system itself. This thinking applies to the individual person who is a collection of multiple systems working together. It also applies to the individual person as one component of the human and ecological systems in which s/he lives and functions. Integrated thinking allows one to build strength in both the system and its component parts.
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tribute to a single understanding of a situation or concept. Integrated thinking means thinking about how language creates opportunities for collaboration between two or more individuals in the service of tangible goals. Goals are often generated through unconscious process: they are discovered in an aha! moment and stabilized through language so that they can be realized. Once given form by language, the components and implications of unconscious decisions can be understood and manipulated. Since those unconscious processes represent the strength of many thought processes acting continuously and simultaneously, they bring into being the strongest possible response to a given situation. Language is more than this: it is also the tool by which people work together to create shared purpose and shared meaning. It is the medium through which the integration of many different minds occurs, and it gives a stable form to agreement and rapport. The purpose of language is not to represent but to integrate - it works best when it allows for interaction and mutual inuence. Integrated thinking about language allows us to appreciate how the best response to any situation involves the collaboration of different parts of one individual, and the collaboration of different individuals. When all possible resources of a number of individuals are brought together through language, the results respect individual integrity and allows systems to perform optimally.
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