Oh, I have so many favourite things! Especially when I’m talking about NLP. There are very few parts of NLP that I don’t love… well, the politics in the field I could do without, but the actual aspects of NLP… Love it!
However, if I have to chunk down to a few things – I’d have to say one of my favourite things is the Meta Model and Meta Questions.If you have studied NLP, then you know about the NLP Communication Model. In our courses, I call her Sally. What Sally tells us is that at every moment we are bringing in information to our conscious and unconscious mind. We filter this information and then distort, delete and generalise information based on our own personal model of the world.
The Meta Model is a questionning technique that was developed in the very early days of NLP. These questions dig to find more specific and qualified information – uncovering what a person has distorted, deleted and generalised. These are questions like:
- How specifically?
- What would happen if you did?
- How do you know this?
- What does that allow you?
- For what purpose?
Then, we have even deeper and more probing questions calledMeta Questions. Basically, these are Meta Model questions on steroids. Many of them have been ‘configured’ by Dr. Michael Hall. I particularly love these questions because they get even more into the deeper structure of our mind. These are questions like:
- What is important to you about that?
- What do you believe about that?
- What do you beleive about that belief?
- Do you have permission to experience that?
- What does that mean to you?
And SO many more valuable questions.
Here’s what I love about questions. We think we know so much – even about our own lives. Yet – when we are asked and answer these types of questions; and when we are open to possibilities, then we can learn even more about ourselves, where we are, how we got there and more importantly – where we are going.
I invite you to make a day of questionning (with positive intention, rapport and some permission). Leave your own model of the world at home and just ask questions. Do you have permission to do that?