Communications #2 - The Reality Building

In my last post I concluded with arriving in the Reality Building – a building which receives the external raw data we experience through our senses and turns it into what we experience as reality. It is a building with five “senses doors” and filtering process desks some of which are labelled ‘Deletion’, ‘Distortion’ and ‘Generalization’.

Once everything we experience has come through these it gathers in the main hall – what we might call the “Hall of Now”. The “Hall of Now” is a wonderful place, a place where – if we so wish – we can stay through our entire waking consciousness. It can be a place where the ‘real’, for each one of us, exists and exists only. Everything about Now is to be found in the “Hall of Now” and nowhere else.

There is a useful thing to remember about Now - it's all that IS. The Past is gone, it was Now once, but is no longer. The Future has not happened yet. When it does happen it will be Now. The only place that is real is Now!

Everything that takes place in the “Hall of Now” is coded up and eventually sent to the “Hall of Memory” in order to make way for the constant stream of new input sensual data coming into the Reality Building. In the “Hall of Memory” it is processed with labels such as experience, knowledge, wisdom, belief, capability etc. It is held in the short term memory room, (a kind of waiting room or clearing house) before eventually being filed away in the various specific memory rooms.

In addition to the “Hall of Now” and the “Hall of Memory” there is the “Hall of the Future”. In the “Hall of the Future” all experience is imaginary, and we can programme this imaginary experience at a vast mixing console with enough choices and settings to last beyond a lifetime. Once we have programmed whatever scenario we want, then we can play it back to ourselves in the “Cinema of Attractions”.

Now these Halls I have just outlined all sound very straightforward, simple and easily recognisable. And when the atmosphere inside the Reality Building is clearer and purer – then that’s what each of the Halls is and does, plus a whole load more besides.

However this is the human mind and here nothing ever seems to work in a straightforward way!

• The “senses doors” can be wider, more open, or narrower or sometimes shut.
• The filtering process desks let some stuff through, and throw the rest out – based upon certain CRITERIA.
• The labelling and processing in the “Hall of Memory” codes and labels experiences based upon certain CRITERIA.
• The atmosphere in the Building is contaminated by dust – which we can consider as being thought. Clarity of thought = less contamination; have a lack of clarity and everything becomes clouded with too much scrambled thought.

In order to function at our best, we need to be aware of these points and recognise that most of these things are within our control.
• WE control a lot of the processes on the “senses doors”
• WE control the CRITERIA
• WE control the level of volume and activity of thought

This is very comforting and useful to know, and once we do know, everything proceeds on a much more ecological and beneficial basis.

Trouble is – our culture, our lifestyle, our upbringing, our education, everything we’ve experienced up until now has been based upon NOT knowing about the nature of the Reality Building. And so – for better or for worse – we have lived our lives at the mercy of events, at the mercy of others, and – more significantly - at the mercy of our beliefs and at the mercy of our behavioural programmes – both of which go to make up our “Maps of the World”.

One of the ‘pillars’ of NLP is the quote “The Map is not the Territory” – and it is a representation we need to understand in terms of improving our communications with both our clients, colleagues and ourselves.

For now, consider the nature of the Reality Building and how it functions, and how much control is actually within our grasp. The next Communications Model blog will look at those controls and criteria, and examine some of the Halls in more detail.

The Mindset of "Work in Progress"

Work in Progress is a very useful mindset to adopt in terms of both training our clients, and also our own training and skills acquisition. We live in a results-oriented world of instant success, instant gratification, and very often these days the judgement of whether something is working is far too premature. The resulting action is usually to scrap it, abandon it, and start something else....in the almost clairvoyant knowledge that a few weeks further down the line we are going to abandon that as well.
These are the enduring reasons why people give up on new year resolutions, diets fail, exercise plans collapse through non-attendance etc.
Its very easy to justify our inadequacies to ourselves by being perennially judgemental and perfectionist - and out of those "failures" comes lower self-esteem, depression, lack of motivation, and a miriad of negative emotions.

So part of our inter-client communication should be the preframed understanding that our clients are on a journey of rediscovering themselves, and that this journey is dynamic and progressive...and that judgements at any stage are not going to inherently benefit this progress.

As an illustration, here is a coaching article I wrote about "Work in Progress" as a mindset:-

Its a simple enough phrase..."Work in Progress"...

And yet I've discovered that when using it with sportspeople (especially the younger ones), that it actually liberates them from any performance shortcomings where (more often than not) they would hang their heads, beat themselves up, and all the other attributes that go with our culture of instant success, instant gratification, instant...you name it!!

So what is the power behind these 3 words?

1. Well, have a look at the presuppositions when the player hears my response to their assessment of how they've played.
PL: "It went X, I did Y, I didn't do Z, I forgot to do M and I made a mistake with N."
PW: "Yes - and lets be realistic now. These parts of your game - it's work in progress."

What is it? It's work > which presupposes they are putting some effort into the activity away from competition. Which means they are motivated and active towards getting to grips with these parts of their game.
What's happening to the work? It's in progress > which presupposes its on the move from A to B and is improving, getting better. This implies positive and purposeful outcomes are already taking place.

2. Liberating emotional possession of competition errors.
What is the work in progress? IT is! (a nice little impersonal IT) > which actually puts a space between (1) the errors and imperfections of the performance and (2) the player themselves, by introducing that neutral and unemotional wedge (3), IT (ie the work being done to improve those particular parts of their game).

3. No impatient time constraints.
There's no start or finish to Work In Progress either - just a plan, programme and record of improvement, accelerated or organic. These are process goals related to levels of competency, for which the acquisition timescale has never been set.

Part of the difference between my approach to young players and say those of the non-coaching fraternity (ie just adult players etc) - is this very point of detaching the emotional effect of errors of performance from the players themselves. When players are bombarded with a continual chorus of "You should do X" and "You mustn't do Y" and (perhaps the funniest of all) "Don't forget to remember to do Z" - heavens, how confusing is that - these remarks are miles away from my "Keep on with the Plan - because this is all Work In Progress."

Try it on yourself, or with the next client you see displaying "perfectionist" symptoms - and notice the effect this mindset brings about.....