Answers to a Reader's Questions - Six Step Reframe, Logical Levels and Metaprograms

I received some questions from a reader recently, and my reply got so long that I thought I'd share it here.

• Six Step reframe and parts are just metaphors. How useful is the topic of parts and six step reframe?
• What do you think about logical levels? I find it bit unpractical in many areas. What do you say?
• You said that "I think metaprograms are nonsense"- I also somehow agree with you. I am currently going through DVDs of 'LAB profile program' by Shelle Rose Charvet. Where she talks about Metaprograms. I am really confused because those metaprograms are contextual. How can we understand the context fully? Am I being incompetent or is 'metaprograms' plain rubbish?

Six Step reframe and parts are just metaphors. How useful is the topic of parts and six step reframe?
I find that parts is such a universal, common metaphor that it's useful for that reason. People say that they are 'in two minds', when you ask them what they want to do, they say, "part of me wants...", so people already think in terms of parts. They have internal conversations with each other, which presupposes dissociation and therefore the metaphor of parts is useful because it ties in with how people already think about themselves.

When people try to solve problems, what often goes wrong is that their ability to be creative in finding a solution is prevented by their belief that they cannot solve the problem, so they generalise and say that they're stuck, or they are not creative.

In one situation, a person can be creative. In another, they are quite certain that they are not creative. What we need to do is create two separate contexts for solving the problem - one where they can creatively come up with ideas, and one where they can test and apply those ideas.

De Bono's 6 hats has 6 different thinking styles so that ideas aren't 'shot down' too quickly for them to be fully explored.

The 6SR does exactly the same thing. And the team problem solving exercise called 'brainstorming' is exactly the same - come up with as many ideas as possible, and only then do you evaluate those ideas.

So yes, 6SR is very useful because, really, it's just NLP's version of other well known problem solving tools.

What do you think about logical levels? I find it bit unpractical in many areas. What do you say?

Logical levels is useful to think in terms of separating a person from their behaviour, which is a central theme of Transactional Analysis and Person Centered Counselling. Having multiple levels allows you to dissociate a person's sense of self from their behaviour, in the same way that the fast phobia cure allows you to dissociate a person from an experience.

Here's an experiment. Find some friends and family who are parents and ask them, in their minds, when did they become a parent? Was it at, before or after the moment of their first child's birth? You'll hear someone say that they have children, but they don't call themselves a parent yet. In the same way, someone can fix their kitchen sink, but they're not a plumber, or they like to play the piano, but they're not a pianist.

I am really confused because those metaprograms are contextual. How can we understand the context fully? Am I being incompetent or is 'metaprograms' plain rubbish?

I think there are two types of metaprogram, those that Robert Dilts wrote about, and the others that Shelle added. I think she created many just to fill up a book. So let's look at the 'core' metaprograms.

Internal / External
Options / Procedures
Similarity/Difference
Towards/Away from

I actually think that all of these, and therefore all of Shelle's, are derived from the first one. If your focus is internal, i.e. in your memory, then you must therefore be paying attention to things that have already happened, which are procedural, because they only happened one way. Options can only be in the future - as soon as you commit to a course of action in the present, it becomes the past. When you think about what you would have done instead, you are not replaying the past, you are playing forward a past memory into a possible future. But of course, the future doesn't exist. We might even argue that the past doesn't exist either.

Similarity or difference tells us about the frame of reference for a comparison.

Look at this character: ¬

Now look at this character: ]

What do you notice?

Did you notice that you made a comparison? And to make that comparison, you had to look at one while projecting the other from your memory? So by definition, one was in the present and external, one was internal and therefore in the past.

Did you answer, "One is..." or "They both are"? And is that defined by your metaprogram, or by how similar or different to the characters are? When we move to comparisons between more complex concepts, like jobs, it is maybe not so easy to see. I don't know if focusing on the internal memory or the external visual is key to the similarity/difference metaprogram. I feel like it's the answer, but I don't know yet.

Now think of a goal that you have. Compare it to where you are now. Do you feel good about the goal? Towards. Bad? Away from. So how do you understand the context?

Isn't context just an excuse for why metaprograms are inconsistent, because they are dependent on how you feel about the thing you're focusing on.

Here's another way to think of metaprograms - perceptual filters.

The next paragraph will contain a lie, but you won't be able to find it.

We know that we delete, distort and generalise, but how? What do we delete? What do we distort, and into what? And when we generalise, what is the higher level rule or category that we generalise into? How many mistakes must a colleague make before you say, "They always make mistakes", instead of, "They never make mistakes, so they must have just had a bad day".

Did you spot the lie?

The point is that you were looking for a lie because I told you to. There wasn't really a lie. The expectation affected your perception. A metaprogram works in a similar way, but outside of your conscious awareness. You don't know that you are distorting to make a goal more compelling for the same reason that you don't notice the air you're breathing or the ground you're standing on.

There's an experience that we all have which changes the way we see the world forever. As a baby, we either had our needs met by our parents or we had to meet our own needs. We were either comforted, or we found ways to comfort ourselves. We therefore hard wired our brains to either seek comfort in others or in ourselves. The difference that this makes in our lives is huge.

If, as a child, your needs were mostly met by	Yourself	Others
Your dominant tendency is to	Compete	Accommodate
You tend to trust others	Less	More
You tend to rely on others	Less	More
Under pressure, you tend to	Blame others	Blame yourself
Under extreme pressure, you might even become	Isolated	Needy
You tend to see resources as	Limited	Abundant
You tend to believe	Yourself	Others
You tend to value	Initiative and drive	Teamwork and harmony

What if this were the only 'metaprogram'?

Could we say that the person who learns to rely on themselves has an internal reference, and the person who relies on others has an external reference?

Focusing internally means that the person thinks about procedures, because he knows the way that worked before. Focusing externally leads to options.

Similarity and difference are about classification, and therefore generalisation. If I look for similarities, I have to start with a class that includes all of the items I'm comparing, so that's an inclusive point of view. If I look for differences, I have to put the items being compared in their own classes, and that's an exclusive point of view.

I just tried this with my laptop PC and the TV remote control.

They're both electronic - puts them both in the class of 'electronic devices'.

One is a computer, the other is a remote control - puts them in separate classes.

We know that the brain organises information hierarchically, and so language is organised in the same way.

If I rely on others, I see myself as part of a social group - family, society etc.

If I rely on myself, I seem myself as an individual, separate to the group.

Does this correlate with the metaprogram? I need to think more about this.