Enhancing your life with Exquisite Superlatives

“Superlative – an adjective or adverb expressing the highest order, quality, or degree”

[Please note, this was originally an article I wrote, entitled 'Exquisite Superlatives', that was published in Anchor Point: The International Journal of NLP, September 1994]

As you are aware, the words you use and your semantic response to those words – the meaning you make from the words – inherently determines the quality of your life and your experiences. And the most exquisite thing about being human is that you get to choose! You get to choose the qualities with which you relive and represent your memories to yourself and others, and how you future-pace your ongoing actions and immediate experience.

For example, at some stage you could choose to enjoy some pleasure, or you can ferociously decide to be completely enveloped with intense and exquisite pleasure NOW!! Which would you prefer? It’s your choice! Like playing a musical instrument though, the secret to mastery is both in practice and in having a superb repertoire to choose from. Having only a few notes or chords won’t allow you to play full and melodious songs  – Won’t allow you to play those beautiful songs and music that magically lift you up and take you to the most incredible places.

Developing a magnificent repertoire

So the key is in developing a working repertoire of fantastically descriptive words – evolving and refining a list of distinctions about life and living – a set of exquisite superlatives. By producing this list of exquisite words – words that have a deep, intense, visceral and profound meaning to you, words that are juicy, ferocious and unsurpassable – you get to alert your conscious and other-than-conscious attention to these qualities of ‘being’. You get to practice them and to elegantly facilitate the submodalities of superb, ongoing experiencing.

And you know, Richard Bandler is an excellent example of someone who uses words superbly to add juice to his life and to those around him. Richard doesn’t have “curiosity” in his life, he does “wanton curiosity,” he doesn’t expect his seminar participants to have “resolve” about their learnings, he demands that they have “ferocious resolve.” And words are intensely powerful.

Create a List NOW!

I know that much of this is obvious, and yet how often is it that consistently putting the simple and obvious into practice gets over-looked? As Moshe Feldenkrais might call it: ‘The elusive obvious’.

So create a list of superlatives to enhance your languaging. Through the action of creating and using your list, you will have developed an immense repertoire of descriptive qualities you are using to directionalize your living. And to gracefully assist you in this fantastic process, I share with you the following list. Use it to form the basis of your own ultimate transformational dictionary.

The Super-duper Hyperflockulated Exquisite Word List

elegant              glorious             priceless          magnificent
keen                  amazing            tremendous     scrumptious
intense              fragrant              prime              pure
brilliant             splendiferous      sensational      fabulous
ferocious           magic                superfine         absolute
profound           exquisite            fantastic           immense
succulent           total                  utter                 gorgeous
unsurpassable    keen                 fierce               extreme
ultimate             ultra                  spectacular      captivating
consummate      wanton             delicious          thrilling
awesome           immense           transcendent    radical
tatalizing           luxuriant            sublime           wondrous
voluptuous        outrageous         splendorous    entrancing
vivacious           delightful            beautiful          stupendous

Own this list, flesh it out, add to it and enhance it. Play with categorizing it into V,A,K,O,G,Ad (Visual, Auditory, Kinaesthetic, Olfactory, Gustatory, Auditory Digital – Language) sections to gain even more distinctions. And tomorrow, don’t just get out of bed and have a shower, instead, ferociously launch yourself up and have a delicious and delight-filled shower; don’t just have breakfast, do a fabulous and incredible breakfasting; and don’t just have a nice day, do a sensational and unsurpassable day! The choice is yours.

Using your Superlatives

Let’s play with this a little to gain a deeper understanding of its usefulness. Think of something you like and notice the submodalities of the experience. Now, think if something you are absolutely ecstatic about – what are the submodality differences?

Ok, now think of some part of your day that was just average, just alright, nothing special, and as you picture it in your mind, repeat the words: “spectacular, superb, exquisite” out loud, 3 or 4 times. And say them with meaning. Notice the changes that occur in the submodalities of the experience. Powerful, wasn’t it now?

This is an example of the entrancing effect that exquisite superlatives can have on your neurology. And by the way, you also get to choose the submodality effects that the words produce. For example, you might anchor sparkle and glitter to the word “awesome,” an intense surround-sound lion’s roar to the word “ferocious,” or even a full-body, lustful flush to the word “outrageous”. Then when someone asks you how you’re feeling, tell them “outrageously, ferociously awesome” and then STAND BACK!

Just imagine what you can do with this. What amazing submodality effects would be sublime to link to the word “immense”? What about “profound”? It’s a difference that truly can make a total difference.

Congruence - Becoming a Master of the Non-verbal Superlative

As you probably realize, the way you say the words is as important as the words themselves. And as a friend of mine, who is outrageously successful in getting what he wants from life said, “You know, it’s not only the exquisite words you say, it’s also the exquisite way you say them. When you express them with all of your body, all your mind, with total glorious abandon – when all your non-verbals completely and congruently match your words – then things really start happening.”

So now practice putting “oooowwwssshhhh” into the expression of your life. Explore the quality and intensity of both your repertoire of non-verbal superlatives and the non-verbal expression of your verbal superlatives. Get that orchestra hopping, turn up the volume, and make congruence a totally happening thing!

Using your NLP Skills

Some of the other ways you may want to use your powerful NLP skills to ensure that you get more and more vivacious delight from your life are:

• New Behavior Generator

Create a powerful part to use exquisite superlatives with unconscious competence.

• Timeline Installation

Create a compelling future by placing captivating reference experiences of using superlatives to make an intense difference along your timeline.

• Submodality Facilitation

Don’t just design the submodality experiences of each superlative, go further than that and amplify and intensify the submodalities of how you are valuing these ideas. Map across to the submodalities of utter fascination or magnificent obsession.

Other Ideas

You may also wish to place your list in a position where you will read it again and again – especially in a place that is unconsciously linked to important values in your life or living. For example, eating is an important and deeply salient (to the gut and heart brains) life function, so paste your list brightly and boldly next to the kitchen table, and peruse it as you eat breakfast each day. Preparing your mind for the delicious day that lies ahead.

Try watching some Bandler videos to note how Richard uses words exquisitely and to such great effect. Or gather some friends and have a superlative word party.

Use your words to profoundly enhance the music of your life.

And finally, play with these words, explore them, make them your magnificent obsession. They truly are superlatively exquisite.

life enhancing thoughts,

Grant

De-nominalising your world

"The ancestor of every action is a thought"

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Incorrect use of language leads to incorrect thinking"

Buckminster Fuller

When the developers of NLP, Dr Richard Bandler & Dr John Grinder, were both asked separately if there was anything that would improve every person's life and mental wellbeing. Both said the same thing:

De-nominalise!

What are nominalisations?

In English, there are two main noun forms -- proper nouns and nominalisations. Proper nouns are persons, places and things i.e. objects you can experience directly. Nominalisations are disguised verbs; processes that we represent as things, as nouns.

For example, the word 'relationship' is a nominalisation of the process of relating. A relationship is not a real thing -- you can't hold one in your hand, you can't buy one from the shopping mall, and you certainly can't fix one with sticky tape or glue when it's broken. The word 'relationship' is a conceptual descriptor of the process of relating. It's a cognitive shortcut we use, where we take a process that is distributed and varying in space and time, and we reify it into a fixed object that we can get a handle on. You can't see a relationship, you can only see the process of two people relating. When people are relating poorly, you can't fix it with glue. The two people need to get clear about their outcomes and then do the behaviours and processes of relating well, for the 'relationship' to be good again.

De-nominalising for sanity

De-nominalising is the process of taking the nominalised noun form (the sneaky disguised verb) and relanguaging it into its true verb form. The import of this is what Korzybski spent his lifetime attempting to explain and share through the deeply insightful field of General Semantics that he created. And I've personally found the insights from General Semantics and from the child it spawned (NLP) to be incredibly powerful and life enhancing.

According to Korzybski, un-sane use of language leads to un-sane thinking and behaviour. When we use words and abstractions that are not well-aligned with the underlying reality they are attempting to represent, we end up making less than sane choices and decisions.

(And please note the number of nominalisations in that last sentence!!! Our everyday language is replete with nominalising!!!)

You'd be surprised I think, how powerful it can be to shift behaviour, by reconnecting how you (or anyone else) is creating their reality and meaning through language, ideas, symbols and words. Words are very much the tools we use to construct, explain and promulgate our model of the world, our reality tunnel. And when we shift how someone is languaging, and connect the tools -- the maps that we use -- to be more aligned with reality, to be more sane, you shift the sequence of meaning at a very deep level in the unconscious mind.

An amazing and true story

I'd like to share with you now a very sad, but amazing story...

I was running a workshop on Conflict Resolution for a large Government department, and as key to this, was explaining the power and import of nominalisation to the participants, in order to denominalise 'Conflict' and 'Resolution' into their more sane and accurate verb forms. You see there is no such thing as 'Conflict' -- there are just people relating and communicating in ways that lead them to conflicting with each other. When you understand this, you get clarity on the underlying processes and issues and open up the possibility of doing the converse, which is 'high quality relating'. However, the details of these life enhancing skills are the topic of a future blog. For the moment, let's return to our story...

At the morning break, one of the participants came up to me and asked if she could share a personal experience with me that related deeply to what we had been covering in the workshop. What she told me was both sad and fascinating.

Approximately 2 years before, her mother had one afternoon developed a herpes 'cold sore' lesion on her back, and the virus had travelled up her nerve pathways and into her brain. Within 24 hours, she was hospitalised and suffering from herpes simplex encephalitis, a dangerous and debilitating condition. During the attack, parts of her brain were damaged, and she lost the ability to understand, communicate or express noun forms. Literally overnight, this normal, vibrant and intelligent woman had her world turned upside down. Before the attack she lead a normal life. After the attack, she could no longer comprehend nouns and the objects they represented -- she could no longer function normally, was unable to work, and had to be guided when she went out of the house. The virus had selectively attacked the part of her brain responsible for noun-ing. She was left with only the ability to do verb-ing.

What an incredible story! I spoke at length with the participant about her mother, asking about what it was like to live and interact with her. For example, we discussed what was it like to go for a walk in the park with her. According to the participant, you could not point at a flower and say "look at the beautiful flower, mum" as the poor woman just couldn't comprehend or understand the object form. But if you said "looking at the flowering" then she would do the looking and appreciating of the beauty of the flowering.

Just imagine what life would be like if you could only do, understand and communicate process... what a different world it would be!

"Our language influences our perceptions"

Peter Senge

Noun versus Verb Processing

The story lead me to researching the neuro-science and evidence for the effect on the brain of verb forms versus noun (and adjective) forms. What I found is that the research shows that very different parts of the brain are activated by nouns versus verbs. And the parts that are activated lead down different paths, open up and connect to different meanings and responses. And of course, this powerfully backs up the insights from NLP on the importance of de-nominalising.

Much of the work has come from observations of aphasic subjects who are selectively impaired in the processing of nouns or verbs due to selective damage to parts of their brains through stroke, disease or other causes. The study of lesion location in these patients has suggested that the left temporal lobe plays a crucial role in processing nouns, while the left frontal lobe is necessary for verbs.

More recent research has focused on using PET and fMRI imaging to examine the effects of noun and verb processing in normal subjects rather than subjects with lesions. For example, in a study by Perani et al. entitled 'The neural correlates of verb and noun processing. A PET study.', the researchers found verbs selectively activated specific left hemispheric areas, including the dorsolateral frontal and lateral temporal cortex. In addition, the study showed that abstract word processing was associated with selective activations of the right temporal pole, amygdala and bilateral inferior frontal cortex. You can see the results of the neural correlates of verb versus noun processing in the following image.

In another study of subjects with intact brains, the processing of nouns versus verbs was performed using event-related potentials and electrocortical responses. Nouns and verbs were carefully matched for various variables, including word frequency, length, arousal and valence. The study found that cortical representations of nouns elicit visual associations whereas cortical representations of verbs lead to association of body movements. These results are summarised in the following diagrams from the study.

In Summary

As we can see, evidence from both neuro-imaging studies, ERP studies and brain-damaged patients suggests that verbs and nouns are represented in different neurological substrates. Verbs are processed by areas of the brain associated with action, with agency, with purpose, with movement. Nouns on the other hand are processed by areas of the brain associated with objects, with location and with attributes such as size, shape, weight etc.

So when we use a mental representation -- an abstraction -- of an object, our brain applies and ascribes the attributes of an 'object' automatically and unconsciously to the process being represented. Linking back to our example above of the word 'relationship', when we use the verb form, we trigger parts of the brain associated with process, agency and outcomes. However if we use the nominalised form 'relationship', then we trigger and represent the action as if it is a noun. Our brain processes the relating as if it's an object. And this is why we end up taking relationships for granted. Because objects have persistence, they are always there, unchanging. Whereas in reality, the process of relating is a verb, it's an action, and requires focus and clarity of outcome and purpose. Relating is only as good as the competencies, skills and focus that is applied to it.

“Language is the means by which we organise and shape our experience" 

Dr. Annabelle Lukin,

Dep’t of Linguistics, Macquarie University

Connecting the research back to the real world

Let's use another example to wrap up and connect the insights from the research into the real world of daily life.

In the blog post I did on 'O-priming your life' I talked about the psychology of ownership and how greed and attachment are verbs. We talk about them as if they are nouns. We say things like "he has a lot of greed". But that's a very un-sane way to represent it. As indicated by the research above, when we use words as nouns, to represent what in reality are processes, we end up unconsciously applying attributes that more appropriately belong to objects and not processes. And since words organise and shape our experience, and the word forms we use determine the parts of the brain utilised in processing them and directing our decisions, thinking and actions, then we really need to ensure we are using language that is supportive of our outcomes.

So in our example, greed is a 'process'. Greed'ing is definitely an unconscious competency -- a skill. It's not a 'thing' -- a noun. Greed is a verb. It's something people do, it's a doing word. However, in our society and in English, it is 'normally' used as a noun. In the dictionary greed is listed as a noun, referring to "insatiate longing as an atribute of an individuals character". The challenge is that when this abstraction is used as an attribute, as a fixed property of the individual or their character, then the locus of control is relinquished and made external and people give away their power to change.

If you want to see greed'ing for the process and behaviour that it is, and if you'd like to support yourself to overcome that process, then you need to think about it and re-language it to the verb form. That way your brain will support you in focusing on internal locus of control, personal agency and your ability to control and change your processing.

The take home messaging

Words are powerful. They can be life enhancing or life depleting. You construct your ongoing 'reality' through the words you use, and the effects those words have on your multi-mind and on the minds of those around you.

It's vitally important that you learn to listen to the words you are using and to become life enhancingly skilled in using words sanely and wisely.

Nominalisations (verbs turned into nouns) can be very slippery and dangerous tools. Use them carefully and wisely.

According to Bandler and Grinder, the geniuses who developed the amazing field of NLP, one of the most powerful and life enhancing things you can do to improve your life and your mental well-being is to de-nominalise the words you use each and every day.

So the take home message is:

De-nominalise your life! Your sanity and happiness depends upon it.

Want to learn more, get a copy of my book: Avoiding the Enemies to HAPPINESS!

with life enhancing encouraging and wishes,
Grant


To learn more about NLP and the power of language, read these books:


Frogs into Princes - Richard Bandler & John Grinder

Using Your Brain For a Change - Richard Bandler

Reframing: Neuro-Linguistic Programming and the Transformation of Meaning - Richard Bandler & John Grinder

Trance-Formations: Neuro-Linguistic Programming and the Structure of Hypnosis

The Structure of Magic: A Book About Language and Therapy - Richard Bandler & John Grinder

The Structure of Magic II: A Book About Communication and Change - Richard Bandler & John Grinder

Future Pacing is Life Enhancing

Blu-tacked high on my bedside table, in a position I can easily see every morning when I awake and every evening before I drift off to peaceful slumber, is a delightful sign that my beloved made, that says:

"Future Pace for a life of Excellence!"

The sign is filled with stars and sparkles and beautiful artistic colours, and reminds me to do 'Future Pacing' each morning and every night.

Future Pacing is an NLP technique that is incredibly life enhancing, so it's time I shared it with you. It's also quite germane to the beginning of the New Year - a time when people do a usually ineffectual form of future pacing called the 'New Year Resolution'. Hopefully, by understanding the components and competencies involved in effective future pacing, you will be better placed to do a much more life enhancing version and begin to future pace a wonderful year ahead.

You cannot NOT Future Pace

You know... Future pacing is also an underlying and ongoing process by which we construct and create our reality. You cannot NOT future pace, you are doing it all the time...

So what is Future Pacing? Let's explore that in some detail now.

Future Pacing as Mental Rehearsal

Future Pacing is a technique of mentally rehearsing and guiding your unconscious mind to produce a desired behaviour and intended outcome in a future situation. It's a request that directs your unconscious mind to generate specific patterns, behaviours and results in your life.

As Wikipedia describes it:

"Future pacing can be used to 'embed' change into the contexts of the future. It gives a person the experience of dealing positively with a situation before they get into that situation in reality. This is based on visualization where the mind is assumed not to be able to tell the difference between a scenario which is real and one which has been clearly visualized. The theory is that, having visualized positively, when the subject encounters the situation again in reality the visualized experience will serve as a model for how to behave, even though this experience was imagined. The mind cannot tell the difference between the visualization and reality so it accepts the visualization as reality and makes the change."

"Future Pacing gives your Unconscious mind the roadmap needed to easily accomplishyour goals and dreams."

So how do you do it?

First see a picture of yourself in the context or situation that you want a specific behaviour or outcome to occur. Notice how you look, what you are doing, how you sound, the qualities of your movements and actions that are occurring as you achieve your outcomes. Then step inside yourself and be associated into this experience, see what you'll see in the situation, hear what you'll hear, and feel what it's like to be successfully performing and achieving your desired outcome now.

The idea is to rehearse and associate your new behaviour to the external cues that naturally occur in the situation in which your change is desired. That way the environmental cue serves as a natural and unconscious anchor or trigger for your desired outcome.

It's similar to the NLP New Behaviour Generator technique and is most powerful when enhanced using the NLP model of hypnotic languaging that Bandler and Grinder, the developers of NLP, created through behavioural modelling of Dr. Milton Erickson - The Milton Model.


NLP Milton Model - Hypnotic Languaging

In a sense, every word you use is a hypnotic command to your unconscious mind to re-evoke the experience that is associated with the word. When you hear or say the word 'lemon' your brain re-evokes the full Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic (feelings), Olfactory & Gustatory (VAKOG) associations and experiences that the word represents (re-presents to you).

So you know that the set of phonemes that make up the word or label 'lemon' mean a yellow fruit, that tastes sour, has a tang and a citrus fragrance, can be used in cooking etc. You are likely to remember times when you tasted a lemon or had lemon juice on your tongue. You may also notice that just reading the above has caused you to start salivating, as your brain remembers what the sour taste of a lemon does on your tongue. The word is a powerful anchor that re-evokes the experience.

So whatever you think -- verbally, visually and kinesthetically -- acts like a future pace and embedded command to your unconscious patterning system. In that way, you cannot NOT future pace. Every thought is like a piece of programming to your unconscious mind. If you are about to hit a golf ball, and you say to yourself 'Don't choke, Don't miss, Don't stuff up' then your brain will picture the very thing you are saying you don't want to do, and it will act like an embedded command, a future pace, to produce the requested pattern...

There are a lot of distinctions in the NLP Milton Model on how certain sorts of words and ways of expressing yourself can act much more powerfully with the unconscious mind. Not all words or all ways of expressing yourself are as equally effective at programming the patterning system of the unconscious mind. And in future blog entries I'll talk more about the life enhancing details of this.

For now though, the life enhancing take home message is....

Everything you think acts as a Future Pace. It guides and requests your unconscious mind to produce the requested outcome. This means you have to listen to and watch what you say! And use your languaging carefully, thoughtfully, ecologically and powerfully to guide your life to what and how you want.

As Robert Anton Wilson points out in his wonderfully life enhancing book 'Prometheus Rising', our brains contain two powerful agents - a thinker and a prover - and:

"As the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves!"

There is a part of your unconscious mind that generates and recapitulates your thoughts. You bring forth into your world that which you think about.

Obviously there are physical constraints on this. It's not some mumbo-jumbo magic. You can't future pace an elephant into your living room just by thinking or saying the words. However, when it comes to generating mind/body states, to influencing your Psycho-Neuro-Immunology (the influence of the mind/body loop on health), to guiding the emotions you feel, to altering your moods and perceptions and the myriad other patterns that generate your phenomenological world... Then, as sages have pointed out over the ages, your thoughts are powerful!

So... Future Pace for a life of excellence! Every night and every morning, before sleep and before arising. Think through, plan, project and ask your powerful unconscious mind for what specifically and how specifically you want to generate your ongoing future.

It works!!! Well, it works for me and for those I've taught the technique to. And it really is incredibly life enhancing.

Future pace the quality of your sleeping and dreaming. Future pace your healthing. Future pace the quality of your waking and your day. Future pace your loving and interacting with those you care about. The more you future pace, the more successfully you'll continue to generate a wonderful life.

Future pace!!!! It truly is life enhancing.


Want to learn more, get a copy of my book: Avoiding the Enemies to HAPPINESS!

many smiles and great wishes for the year ahead
Grant


I highly, highly recommend reading RAW's wonderful and life enhancing book:

and if you are interested in reading about the powerful NLP Milton Model:

O-priming your life

In the field of General Semantics, there is a linguistic technique called ‘E-prime’ that involves using English in a way that excludes the use of the verb ‘to be’ and its various forms.

The idea underlying this suggests that the ‘is’ of identity and the ‘is’ of attribution can lead to unsane thinking and consequent behaviour. For example, if you say “I am stupid” you are linking the process of stupidity to your identity, rather than expressing the behaviour as one of many skills or traits that you do. This can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies that maintain an unconscious competency of doing stupidity at all levels of your life.

Since language influences perception, the use of E-prime encourages the careful choice of verbs and meanings. E-prime can also lead to a less dogmatic style of expression and reduce the possibility of misunderstanding and conflict. I'll talk more about E-prime in a future blog entry. Today, I want to introduce you to a concept and skill called O-priming that I've been exploring.

Grasping, Desire and Ownership

The ancient philosophy of Buddhism maintains that the nature of the universe is impermanence and that consequently much suffering stems from attachment and grasping. The need for ownership and attachment can lead to unhappiness.

As the Buddha propounded in the discourse on the Four Noble Truths:

due to contact there is feeling;
due to feeling there is attachment;
due to attachment there is grasping;
due to grasping there is suffering;
suffering has ignorance-obscuration as its root cause;

There is a way out of suffering, which is to eliminate attachment and desire.

The Materialist Imperative

"We've been raised to compete, to want more! More! More! It's a way of life. It's about greed.”

Sandy Duncan

We have a long evolutionary history of hunter-gathering and an instinctual predisposition towards ownership. We love owning and gathering things. It’s the materialist imperative. We desire things: houses, cars, boats, clothes, toys and all the entrapments and enchantments of bling.

It’s also the ownership trap! Because everything you own, owns a small piece of you, and the more you own, the more it owns you. Remember this!

The psychology of ownership is fascinating and understanding it is crucial to overcoming patterns of attachment, desire and greed.

The psychology of ownership

Ownership changes perceptions. Research by Social Psychologists has shown that once a person owns an item they place higher perceived value on it than on an identical item they do not own.

Stop and think about this. The mere fact of owning something increases how much you value it!

Ownership is also linked to Loss Aversion. The research shows that people prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains. Indeed, some studies suggest that losses are twice as powerful psychologically, as gains.

So once you own something, it really does start to own you emotionally and psychologically. You become attached to it and form a relationship with it. It takes up your time, thought, energy and life.

Marketers are well aware of these traits and use them to manipulate you. Partial ownership confers similar effects on perceptions, so they encourage free 30 day trials and money back guarantees, knowing that the majority of people will grow attached to the item and not return it. Similarly, in on-line auctions, people start feeling they own the item even before the auction has completed and so drive the price higher than they would pay if they’d bought it from a shop.

Sure, owning stuff is useful. Where would we be if we owned nothing? Probably still swinging in the jungle and living from hand to mouth.

The problem occurs when we own too many things; when we get stuck in the greed of the ownership trap – of wanting more and more and more. And this problem is even more insidious when we 'own' ideas, when we grow attached to concepts, beliefs and ideologies.

Greed is a verb

Let’s get one thing sorted right away. Greed and attachment are verbs. They're processes. We often talk about greed as if it’s a noun, an object, a thing. However, people don’t ‘have’ greed. They ‘do’ greed – more accurately, they do greeding. Same with attaching. It’s an active process, a skill, an unconscious competency.

The behaviours of greeding and attaching occur naturally, use primitive biological survival circuits of the brain and body and are in large part instinctually driven. That’s why they're so insidious. Research shows that greeding is linked to hunger and sexuality, so it can be very powerful.

But the main point is that it’s a process that can be controlled and moderated. It's a skill that has counter skills that can be used to constrain and control these unconscious behaviours. Learning to notice and control the thoughts and languaging that supports greeding and attaching is one of these key skills.

O-priming

So to summarise: Everything you ‘own’ owns a piece of you, and that ownership, attaching and grasping can cost you dearly. Nothing lasts forever and everything is always in a state of flux and change. So grasping, attaching and ownership are insidious enemies to life enhancing happiness and can lead to much suffering.

Based on these deep insights from the ancient wisdom of buddhism and modern psychology, and following on from the neuro-semantic concept of E-prime, I have created the technique of ‘O-priming’.

O-priming involves the use of English in a way that excludes the use of the verbs, adjectives and predicates of ownership and attachment – especially in the case of ownership of intangible experiences. O-priming is effectively the use of english without the use of the verb ‘to have’ and other linguistic presuppositions of ownership.

O-prime is a semantic tool that helps you notice and filter for processes of attaching and ownership that can impoverish your model of the world, your experience, thinking and ultimately your behaviours. O-priming also encourages denominalising - shifting nominalised nouns (disguised verbs) back into their active verb form.

For example, if you say “I have an understanding of General Semantics” then you are indicating ownership. You are saying you ‘have’ understanding.

This suggests a grasping and need for understanding and nominalises the process of understanding into an object that you own. However, understanding is a process that can change with time, experience and knowledge.

If you feel you ‘have’ an understanding of General Semantics and then someone shows you your current understanding is not complete, how do you feel? There’s every possibility you may feel threatened since ‘your’ ownership and ‘your’ understanding is about to be ‘lost’.

Contrast this with the O-prime version that replaces ownership with process – that shifts “I have understanding” to “I do understanding”.

With O-prime, you could more accurately say “I feel I do understanding of General Semantics very well”. Or perhaps you may express it as “General Semantics is something I understand well” [though this would not be e-primed :-)].

These O-primed ways of thinking and communicating remove the semantic presuppositions of ownership and grasping.

Practical O'Priming

Removing all forms of ownership expression from your language is not really practical and not what is suggested. The key message of this deeper understanding is to note that the language of ownership can at times be pernicious and lead to unsane thinking and behaviour.

Instead, use O-prime appropriately to allow yourself to gain more choice and control over how you are modelling your world. Where useful, track for and replace the language of ownership in how you communicate and express your experiences so that the language you use supports your outcomes. This is much more life enhancing.

Stop grasping after permanence and allow yourself to flexibly flow with the ongoing processes of change. Every opportunity you can, refuse to be sucked into the ownership trap. Notice and adjust your languaging to support a more sane and life enhancing way of thinking and living.

Some Examples of Ownership Predicates

Presuppositions of ownership are indicated by words such as:

- All forms of the verb 'to have' e.g. Have, had, will have
- Get, got, own, buy, rent, contract, pay etc.
- My, mine, yours, theirs etc.
- Grasp, grab, catch, hold, take, possess, keep etc.
- Create, establish, build, make etc.


Do wording powerfully and in a way that supports enhancing your life and the lives of those you care about!

Life enhancing best wishing,
Grant

And here's some Life Enhancing reading for you:

Enhancing your map of the world

In 1933, Count Alfred Korzybski wrote and published a seminal book called ‘Science and Sanity’ and founded a field of philosophy known as General Semantics. In his book, Korzybski showed how language influences our perceptions and actions and that incorrect use of language and thought can lead to what he called 'un-sane' behaviour.

Indeed, Korzybski coined the term ‘neuro-linguistics’ and created the foundation for many fields that sprang from his original insights, including the field of NLP.

Korzybski focused on the process of abstracting, of how we as humans build and evolve concepts and generalisations. He described how we build theories and maps of the world in order to make sense of our experience.

The map is NOT the territory

One of the key insights from General Semantics is that “the map can never be the territory”.

What this means is that... given that humans can never operate off and know the full and complete world – the territory – they must, and can only ever operate off a map of the territory.

And no map can ever be a full representation of the territory; therefore we will always be operating off a deleted, distorted and generalised/abstracted map of that territory.

This sounds like a very simple and obvious idea, yet it has profound implications and applications.

Thinking Tool – Mapping the world

"The map is NOT the territory. It only
represents the territory."

Most people don’t realise that their five senses do not actually provide an absolute and real experience of the world. Our senses and brains evolved to efficiently track and notice difference in the world, not to provide an absolute and accurate representation. Each of our senses tracks change rather than absolute data, and our brain then takes each of these differences and changes and does its best job at making a useful map of the territory.

For example, you probably didn’t know that your eyes are not like a camera. A digital camera has an array of pixels that take the amount of light focused on them and provides an absolute representation, a one-for-one representation of the image that the camera sees. Your eye however, has rods and cones for receptors, and these don’t measure the absolute amount of light focused on them. Instead they only give a signal when the amount of light changes; they only measure and track change and difference.

You have small muscles around your eyes called ‘micro-saccades’ and these muscles keep your eyes moving and tremoring in micro-circles. These movements ensure that the image on your retina keeps changing.

When neuro-physiologists first anesthetized these muscles, they found what was called the ‘Ganzfeld effect’ – the grey/complete field effect. When the image subtended on the retina stops moving, the eye stops sending a signal to the brain. If we anesthetized your eye muscles and kept your head still, and if there was nothing moving in your visual field, your vision would grey out and become blank. After about 5 seconds, you would see nothing.

This is because the eye and brain didn’t evolve to get an absolute image of the world. They evolved to efficiently help you survive, and the easiest and best way to do this is to only notice and respond to difference and change.

All of your senses and nervous system are ‘designed’ by evolution in the same way. You only track for difference and your unconscious mind builds a ‘best-guess’ map of the world from integrating and summing all these little changes and differences. You see, you can never ever absolutely know the world. You don’t have the sensory apparatus to experience the world absolutely.

Add to this your sensory systems only operate over small ranges of size, frequency, speed, etc. and you’ll realise that your map is certainly very, very deleted, generalised and distorted.
And as Korzybski pointed out ‘The map is NOT the territory’.

So when it comes to knowing the world, when it comes to knowing the ‘truth’ you need to be very, very careful. You can never absolutely know the ‘truth’. Your abstractions and the abstractions of your abstractions are a long way from absolute reality. That’s what science is all about, it’s a method for attempting to create accurate theories about the world; and any theory in science is always provisional and always an abstraction.

Language influences our perceptions

So what can you do with these insights? Well, Korzybski pointed out that there are certain forms of abstracting that our language and our culture encourage that are not accurate and lead to un-sane or neurotic behaviour. Language influences our perceptions. By becoming aware of how your language influences your brain, your thinking and decisions, your motivations and inevitably your actions, you can begin to consciously choose more accurate and sane languaging and abstracting.

You’ve already been introduced in this blog to some of the ideas from General Semantics and the tools developed by the fields it inspired and informed such as NLP and REBT. These tools, skills and concepts are life enhancing and can be used to generate life enhancing models or maps of your world that are more sane and more rational. Continue coming back to this blog and reading the coming entries and you’ll experience and learn many more. In coming blog entries I'll be sharing ideas and insights on two linguistic/cognitive techniques called E-prime and O-prime that are very powerful and life enhancing.

Until then, keep enhancing your map of the world :-)

best wishes and kind thoughts,

Grant

For those who are interested to learn more... Here's Korzybski's seminal book: Science and Sanity

And here's some other excellent books on General Semantics that I recommend as life and mind changing:

Life Enhancing Language

Language is a powerful tool for enhancing your life. The way we think and express ourselves is crucial to how we make meaning and how we unconsciously motivate ourselves and others.

“Our language influences our perceptions”

Peter Senge

“Incorrect use of language leads to incorrect thinking”
Buckminster Fuller

Through language we create our reality

“Language is the means by which we organise and shape our experience"
Dr. Annabelle Lukin, Dep’t of Linguistics, Macquarie University

Language is one of our key tools for thinking and making sense of our world. It’s also how we communicate between parts of our multi-mind and with other people around us.

As will be pointed many times throughout this blog, and as suggested by both the fields of NLP and General Semantics, 'unsane' use of language leads to 'unsane' thinking and this in turn leads to 'unsane' actions and outcomes in life - not very life enhancing!

As highlighted by the field of NLP, there are three basic modelling processes we use to create our maps or models of the world. These are:

• Deletion
• Generalisation
• Distortion

Each of these modelling processes has language elements that are indicators of the process. In NLP, these language distinctions are described by what is called the NLP Meta-Model.

By becoming aware of and tracking for these distinctions you can become more precise in your thinking and communicating with your self and others. You can also gain more life enhancing choice and control over how you are modelling and generating your world by choosing language that supports your outcomes.


Wants vs Shoulds

When you create absolutist rules and generalisations about what you ‘should’ do and what you ‘have to’ do, you limit your freedom and apply pressure that can lead to parts of your multi-mind sabotaging your success.

No one likes to be pressured or forced into action. In NLP, generalisations such as ‘must’, ‘should’ and ‘have to’ are called ‘modal operators of necessity’. They indicate rules about the mode of operation you are following or requesting. Thinking that you “absolutely must do X” often leads to stress and procrastination.

A much more generative and useful way to communicate to yourself and others is to use ‘modal operators of desire’. Words such as ‘want to’, ‘like to’ and ‘desire to’ are much more compelling and are linked with life enhancing notions of value and attraction.

So when you are thinking and talking about your outcomes and goals, notice the words you are using. Practice and form habits of replacing the modal operators of necessity with modal operators of desire. For example, rather than saying something like “I should go wash the car now”, instead choose to express the statement as something like “I want to wash the car now so that it looks fantastic”. You’ll notice it has a different feel to it when expressed that way and is much more likely to lead to the intended outcome.

Powerfully using language that supports your outcomes can really make a difference to the happiness and success you are generating in your life.

Remember, words are powerful. So do languaging that aligns, encourages and supports all the parts of your multi-mind.


Cause and Effect

Cause and Effect thinking is an example of linguistic distortion.

This type of thinking is expressed in utterances that imply or presuppose belief that one thing causes another. When these beliefs don’t match the way the world really works, they are semantically ill-formed and impoverish a person’s model of the world. In this way, Cause and Effect beliefs limit your perceived choice or ability to act.

The most usual form that Cause and Effect distortions take is statements that a person’s actions or environmental circumstances ‘cause’ an emotional response in another person.

For example, the thought “My boss makes me angry” is a Cause and Effect belief that is inaccurate and not entirely rational. It doesn’t match the way the world fundamentally works.

No one can cause an emotion in another person. Your response to stimuli is effected within yourself. This is shown by the fact that a number of people can experience the exact same event and yet each of them will generate their own unique meaning and response. What one person gets angry about, another may find humorous.

This is a powerful and life enhancing insight. Emotions are not something that happen to you from external agency. Emoting is a process your mind/body does, with unconscious competence, in response to your environment. You can influence and change how you are emoting and responding.

No person or situation causes your emoting. However, if you operate from the semantically ill-formed belief that you do not have control, and that the world causes and creates your emotions, then you limit yourself and remove choice from your world. And that’s an enemy to happiness.

To counter this, listen for language, thoughts and beliefs that have the form:

X causes Y

If you hear yourself saying or thinking things such as “person X pisses me off” or “situation X depresses me” or “X causes me a lot of pain” then you are distorting your world and limiting yourself with Cause and Effect modelling.

The way to expand your choice is to turn such causal relationships around so they are more sane and rational. Put the locus of control back into the expressions by re-languaging them as “I cause Y when X”.

For example, instead of saying “My boss makes me mad”, re-language this as “I make myself mad about my boss”. Notice this now puts you at choice. You can now focus on outcomes and decide whether this is a response that is useful or whether perhaps there might not be a more generative way to respond.

Remember, choice = control.


Blaming Others

The field of Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy (REBT) has also determined a number of irrational beliefs that people use to anger themselves.

Fundamentally, REBT has shown that the process of angering occurs when we blame others for not meeting unreasonable rules or expectations that we have generated in our model of the world. Beliefs such as “people must never make mistakes or else they are totally useless”, “everyone must always treat me fairly” and “I must always be totally loved by everyone” are irrational and unrealistic. Using such language to think about people and situations can only lead to disappointment, anger and low self-esteeming.

Listen for such irrational self-talk and actively dispute it. Replace it with more useful beliefs that match the way the world works. The truth is, people are fallible and will occasionally make mistakes, treat you unfairly or not meet your expectations.

Getting angry at this is pointless and unsane. Of course you’d prefer that they not do this, but recognise this is just your preference. Don’t take yourself and your expectations so seriously. Blame is an enemy to happiness and definitely life diminishing, so listen for it in your language and challenge the irrational beliefs that underlay it.


Escalating Anger

Intelligent people do not use words that escalate anger. They understand the power of words and know that anger is an emotion that down-regulates intelligence and creativity.

Thoughts and expressions such as "How could they!!!??" and "How dare they!!!???" will only create and escalate the unconscious process of angering.

Really listen carefully to the languaging you are doing and refuse to use hateful or vengeful words or expressions that escalate anger.


Universal Frighteners

An insidious form of linguistic distortion is known in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) as 'Universal Frighteners'. These beliefs are generalisations about FUD – Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

Universal Frighteners are indicated by global qualifiers associated with generalisations about fear. Comments like “It’s totally shocking”, “That’s completely horrifying”, “It’s all really scary”.

Challenge these linguistic distortions by asking yourself and others questions like “How specifically are you scaring yourself about this?” and “What specifically about this are you fearing?”


Language is Life Enhancingly Powerful

You can gain power over your thinking and believing by listening for and questioning your use of linguistic deletions, distortions and generalisations.

Because we are habit forming creatures, you can overcome old habits and patterns of thought by using words and expressions that presuppose possibility and hope.

Language and thought really are powerful and can definitely enhance your life or diminish it - so listen to what you say and ensure you are using words that support happiness, choice and meaning in your life and the lives of those you love.


wishing you great life enhancing thoughts
smiles, Grant


And for those interested in learning more about the NLP Meta Model and other hypnotic language skills, I highly recommend the following books:

Positive Emotion Words

In one of the organisations I’m currently doing consulting in, we’ve been playing with 'Positive Emotion Theme Days'.

Each day, I randomly select a positive emotion word and then the team I’m working with do their best to enact and live the selected emotion during the work day. It really makes for a much better work environment, is great for team bonding and just plain fun. I’m sure the improved mood and state of the team also carries over into better outcomes and experiences for our clients.

Couple of days ago I was looking through the dictionary for a positive emotion word and after about 40 pages I still hadn’t found one I could use. Now I don’t know if you’ve ever tried looking through the dictionary for positive emotion words, you might want to try it… but let me tell you, there’s not a lot of them in there!

We have more negative emotion words

In fact, research shows that we have more negative emotion words in our language than we have positive words. We have approximately 50% more words to express negativity than positivity.

I know this, cause I once counted them! Yes, I actually went through the whole Shorter Oxford Dictionary and looked at every word, determined if it was a word that had emotional valence associated with it and then rated it as positive or negative (by a defined rating criteria). The graph below shows my results for each of the letters of the alphabet, indicating how many positive and negative words exist for each letter of the alphabet.



The reason I undertook this research, was that I had heard during an NLP training that we have 50% more negative words than positive words and since words are the tools we use in large measure to construct and filter our experience and reality, having more negative distinctions can lead us into seeing and generating more negative experiences in our subjective world.

This made a lot of sense to me, and I know how powerful words can be and the importance of learning to use language positively and generatively. However, being a scientist by inclination and by training, I decided I had to check these statistics. So, during a period of relatively free time, I counted every word in the dictionary.

I’ll be blogging in future entries about the power of language and how it relates to life enhancing. In today’s entry I wanted to bring to your awareness, the fact that there are more negative words than positive words, in case you didn’t already know, and to remind you that to live an enhanced life you need to track for how you are languaging your world and make sure you shift the balance from negativity to positivity.

A Blinding Flash of the Obvious

I was also motivated to write about this due to a cool BFO (Blinding Flash of the Obvious) that I discovered the other day…

So there I was at work, attempting to find a positive emotion word in the dictionary to use as our theme for the day, and after 40 odd pages of looking I still hadn’t found one. At that point I decided to throw off the old technology, and move to the electronic form. I did a google on 'Positive Emotion Words', in attempt to find a list of positive emotion words I could use.

For a start, there sure don’t seem to be a lot of them on the web… not surprising really given we have less positive emotion words than we have negatives.

Secondly, I came across a couple of lists and blogs talking about emotion words and discussing the insight that there are more negatives than positives. For example, in the blog ‘COPYWRITING KID - From 0 to 100 in whatever it takes…’ the writer decided to make a list of emotion words because of the realization of “how important it is to have a broad vocabulary of emotional words”. In pulling together this list, the blogger soon noticed the following:

“Before I show the list here, I want to share something I noticed… I kind of had
a feeling that most of the words were describing negative emotions, so I then
broke it up for me and listed the positive and negative emotions in separate
lists. The result? 147 words that describe NEGATIVE emotions. 55 that describe
POSITIVE emotions.”

Mostly though, the thing that inspired me to write this blog entry today, was the information I came across on wikepedia when I searched for a ‘positive emotion word list’. It wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen before, just the list of Plutchik’s Primary Human Emotions:

Primary Emotion

• Anticipation
• Joy
• Acceptance
• Fear
• Surprise
• Sadness
• Disgust
• Anger

Alternately, according to respected psychologist Paul Ekman, this list of primary, basic human emotions can be distilled down to: sadness, happiness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise. These emotions combine in different ways to form other more complex emotions, including compassion, boredom, embarrassment, rage, hunger, etc.

More Primary Negative Emoting

So here I was, trying to find positive emotion words when these lists of primary emotions became starkly juxtaposed against the insight that our vocabulary contains more negative than positive words… and this generated the following BFO -- if you look at the list of primary human emotions above, you’ll note that there are approx. 50% more negative primary emotions than positive emotions.

So damn obvious really… if you do more negative primary emoting — if the human evolved patterning system has a built-in propensity for more negative emoting (probably as a natural survival mechanism to move away from danger and pain quicker and more powerfully than being attracted to food and pleasure) — then the language tools for thinking and processing the world will likely reflect those underlying mechanisms and patterns.

We have 50% more negative emoting words in our language because we are optimized to do 50% more negative emoting. BFO!

Now, what can we learn from this?

For a start, we need to give positivity and positive languaging much more attention, focus, skill and salience in order to overcome the natural tendency and unconscious competency in negative emoting and negative languaging.

We also need to track for negative languaging and the tendency for negative emoting in our environment, our teams, our families, friends and society, and do our best to filter it, shift it and lead it to the more healthier positive form.

It is not generally life enhancing to be wallowing in negativity or using negative and pessimistic languaging. It is much more life enhancing and brings about wonderful self-fulfilling prophecies in life when you celebrate positivity, joy, optimism and generative languaging.

Positive languaging is a very life enhancing skill!

We’ll talk more about the various components and strategies for positive languaging in coming blogs. So stay tuned :-) And in the coming days, perhaps you may enjoy and benefit from doing what our team is doing…

Randomly select positive emotions and use them as a theme for your day.

Try doing a day of ‘Delight’ or a day of ‘Tranquility’. Perhaps you and your friends or colleagues might really get a buzz out of doing a day of ‘Fascination’ or even a day of ‘Excitement’. The other day we did ‘Buoyant’ and it was such a bouncy, bubbly and fun day. Try ‘Positive Emotion Theme Days’ you might find them truly life enhancing.

best wishes and more life enhancing smiles

Grant

PS:
In case you didn’t get it consciously, we don’t ‘have’ emotions – we ‘do’ emoting! Of course, it typically seems like we have emotions, or more to the point, emotions have us… because we do emoting with unconscious competence and without conscious deciding. The exercise described above is designed to bring to conscious awareness and build skill in choosing and doing emoting.

Choice equals control in life and is incredibly life enhancing :-)