‘must’, ‘should’, ‘never’, ‘ought to’, and ‘have to’ with the words
‘I choose to. . .’.
By completing this exercise you’re examining some of the types of generalisa- tions that you make (which NLP calls modal operators – as in ‘should’, ‘ought to’, and ‘have to’ – and universal quantifiers – as in ‘always’ and ‘never’. See Table 15-1). Then, in step 3, you ask the Meta Model questions to explore options for yourself. By revising the statements in step 5, you put yourself back in control of your own decisions and behaviour.
Distortion – that touch of imagination
Disraeli was right when he said, ‘Imagination governs the world.’ Distortion, the process by which you change the meaning of the experience when it comes up against your own map of reality, is one such example. Figure 15-4 shows some everyday examples of distortion.
Figure 15-4:
The language of distortion.
‘I know you’ll love this.’
‘You were
good.’ ‘I know she
doesn’t like me.’
‘You must be feeling
absolutely shattered.’ ‘They’re all thinking that I’m rubbish.’
‘When he does that, I know he’s unhappy.’
Distortion supports your ability to explore your own inner world, your dreams, and lets your imagination run wild. That’s fine when you want to explore your creativity.
The problem with distortion, however, is that most people don’t realise that the distortion doesn’t necessarily represent the truth: instead, it just represents their own perception. For example, have you ever come out of a meeting with a group of people and all had a different understanding of what happened? Or been to the cinema or theatre with a group of friends and come away with a completely different viewpoint about the film’s message when you chat to your friends about it? Distortion happens when you take one aspect of an experience and change it according to what’s happening for you in your life at that time.
Another example of distortion is attempting to read other people’s minds.
You can never know what other people are truly thinking, even though they may give out interesting clues. When negative distortion is combined with generalisation the result can be quite debilitating. For example, a child comes home from school and says: ‘Everyone stares at me every time I walk into the classroom and they all think I’m stupid.’
Beware of making judgements about what other people think until you gather specific information and review the facts.
Here are some useful questions to ask when you want to check for distorted meanings:
✓ ‘How do you know?’
✓ ‘How exactly does X lead to Y?’
✓ ‘Who says?’
Using the Meta Model
The Meta Model questions give you powerful verbal tools in business, coach- ing, education, therapy, and in life. They let you use language to gain clarity and get closer to somebody’s experience. You can adopt the Meta Model when you want to do the following:
✓ Clarify another person’s meaning: When you need to be exactly sure what the other person has in mind. Are you both on the same wave- length or making assumptions that you don’t really understand?
Tennis anyone?
At times, when people want something very badly, they believe that thing to be true even when the evidence is against them. As a tennis coach, John Woodward finds that the most frustrating people in the junior tennis leagues are the competitive parents.
‘They so desperately want their children to win that they become blind to the facts of the game.
They see what they want to see, even if it’s not true, to the extent that as they watch their
children play matches, they give faulty line calls in favour of their own budding tennis star.
Grandparents are even worse! I once saw a grandfather attack his grandson’s tennis oppo- nent with his umbrella because he was con- vinced that his grandson had won a shot that everybody else saw as out.’
Reproduced with the permission of John Woodward.
✓ Get more information: When you need to understand, for example, the objectives and scope of a new project.
✓ Open up more options: When you need to explore different ways of doing things for yourself and for others.
✓ Spot your own and other people’s limitations: When you need to work through beliefs and unhelpful habitual behaviour.
Taking two simple steps
When you use the Meta Model, challenge distortions first, and then generalisa- tions, and then deletions. If you begin with deletions, you may get more infor- mation than you can handle.
To use the Meta Model, follow these simple steps: