Actions Speak Louder than Words

We’ve known for a long time that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, but we tend to forget the wide variety of ways the saying applies. When we recognize that everything is “information,” we can begin to notice what is “high-quality” information and what information is of lower quality. The higher the quality, the greater the likelihood that the information will prove true over time. A pudding that looks really good, for example, may not taste as good as it looks. The food you see advertised on TV, is typically not edible. It’s made to look good . . . → Read More: Actions Speak Louder than Words

In My Family…

An old story whose origins are unknown to Google is about a relatively newlywed couple who wanted to divide chores evenly having weekly arguments about whose turn it was to mow the lawn. Other household tasks weren’t a problem. The husband had his responsibilities, the wife had hers, and each was comfortable with the assigned tasks with the exception of lawn mowing. They had agreed to take turns but had trouble tracking whose turn it was from week to week. After months of arguing about whose turn it was to mow the lawn, the wife blurted out, “In my family, . . . → Read More: In My Family…

Forks in the Road

I don’t very often write extended book reviews for my blog, but I am making an exception for Choice Points: When You have to Decide Which Way to Go, by Phil Hollander, Robert Reaume, and Harvey Silver. (See Amazon.com for more.) It is an excellent book in more ways than one. I will say more about those ways, but first, a bit of background:

In the interests of full disclosure, I need to say that I know one of the authors, Phil Hollander. We first met in 1994 at an NLP training with Richard Bandler in Toronto. We have . . . → Read More: Forks in the Road

Evidence Procedures

In NLP, one of the central Metamodel questions is, “How do you know?” An honest answer to the question provides information about a person’s “model of the world,” which is essentially a “reality strategy”—the way people decide what’s real. In most cases, what we think of as “real” is more accurately a “belief,” in some cases with very little in the way of supporting evidence. Most beliefs begin, of course, with some evidence in the external environment. Through the natural processes of deletion, distortion, and generalization, beliefs that have a logical beginning can become increasingly distorted over time. One of . . . → Read More: Evidence Procedures

Framing—Again

In a recent article in the Huffington Post, George Lakoff (author or co-author of numerous books and articles on metaphors and other aspects of language usage), said the following about framing:

Framing is much more than mere language or messaging. A frame is a conceptual structure used to think with. Frames come in hierarchies. At the top of the hierarchies are moral frames. All politics is moral. Politicians support policies because they are right, not wrong. The problem is that there is more than one conception of what is moral. Moreover, voters tend to vote their morality,  since it is what defines . . . → Read More: Framing—Again

What Is NLP?

Most readers of the Beyond Mastery Newsletter and this blog already know what the letters stand for: Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and most have some idea of the meaning behind the term. Our use of language, our mental “programming,” and our neurology are interrelated. When one changes, the others change as well. The interrelationship is dynamic and ongoing. A standard definition for the term is, “the study of the structure of subjective experience,” which means that those who “study” NLP are studying the various ways subjective experience is structured.

This concept presupposes that our subjective—internal—experience differs from objective—external—reality. In Korzybski’s famous . . . → Read More: What Is NLP?