Category Archives: Blog

THE BIG “WHY” OF NEURO-SEMANTICS   In preparing for my next project I recently re-read Simon Sinek’s Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, 2009.  While it is a business book and a book on leadership, more than that it is a book that fits with what we do in Neuro-Semantics about intentionality.  Using the “why is that important” question, and holding each answer and then asking it repeatedly, we move a person to find or to create his or her big why.  Doing that simultaneously enables a person to discover and activate one’s highest values. … Continue reading

TRUE VULNERABILITY Be Proud, Not Ashamed   In writing about authenticity in the most recent Neuro-Semantic book, Get Real: Unleashing Authenticity (2016), I came across the work of Brené Brown and her work on vulnerability and shame.  In fact, over the past few years, several people had recommended that I look into her work.  Yet when I did, I found that I had a problem with the way she used the word “shame.” What’s the relationship between being an open and vulnerable person and shame? Are they not opposites?   In a recent copy of Psychotherapy Networker, there were a … Continue reading

PATTERNS: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY   Your brain essentially operates as a pattern-detection machine.  To make sense of the world, you look for, and you create, patterns.  It’s what the brain does.  And it is very efficient in this skill of pattern-detection and pattern-creation.  That’s why a child who grows up in a home where two or three different languages are spoken—somehow—sorts them out and eventually learns to speak two or three different languages.  Amazing!   Actually, your brain and my brain is much better at pattern creation than it is at pattern detection.  That’s why we … Continue reading

BLACK SWAN MODELING   Swans are white.  At least that’s what we all thought before the discovery of Australia.  “People in the Old World were convinced that all swans were white, an unassailable belief.”  Why?  Because it was completely confirmed by empirical evidence.  Every single swan that had ever been seen had been white.  Bingo.  So all swans are white.  Then the sighting of the first black swan— a single observation completely invalidated a general statement derived from thousands of years of sightings that had confirmed over and over and over again that swans were white.   This is the … Continue reading

A WEEK OF EXCUSES “The basis of moral and intellectual grow is the capacity to criticize oneself.” Samuel Bois, The Art of Awareness   On Saturday, at the end of the week, I heard a commentator summarize the week of news by saying, “This has been a week of excuses.”  He then talked about the interviews that Hillary Clinton did and her long list of all of the things that caused her to lose the election.  Then he talked about the news of the previous two days about Kathy Griffin and her over-the-line behavior of holding a bloody head of … Continue reading

SELLING NLP — THEN AND NOW Who Bought, Why, and the Next Big Thing   I “bought” NLP in 1986.  After I learned it, and eventually became a trainer, I began “selling” NLP along with many thousands.  I bought it as a therapeutic innovation and that’s how I first sold it.  Then, over the years, things changed.  Today I mostly sell it to business people— to leaders, managers, coaches, and consults.  Now when it comes to innovations, there is a simple model for this.  It describes who buys, when, and why.  It’s a model that’s been around for several decades … Continue reading

THE WORLD MATRIX   The final content matrix in the Matrix Model, one of the five content matrices about Self is the World matrix.  I put this together to refer to any of the thousands upon thousands “universes of meaning” (e.g., domain, field, or area) of human experience.  And there are multiple thousands.  And in each area that you have traveled and explored, you have developed your own mental maps about it as well as you have developed particular skills so that you can live and operate within it.  Each “world” is a domain, a field, an area, a dimension, … Continue reading

THE TIME MATRIX You— A Temporal Being Living in Time   In the Matrix Model, we have distinguished five aspects of self, time is one such aspect.  As a review, we first have your value or worth (i.e., self-esteem) and identity, these are in the Self matrix.  Your power, skills, abilities, assets, liabilities, etc. are in the Power matrix (self-confidence).  Your relationship to others is your social self which includes social intelligence, social skills, and social activities, these are all in the Others matrix.  Then, in the Time matrix we have you as a temporal being.  You live in time, … Continue reading

THE OTHERS MATRIX Becoming Real in Relation to Others   You are not only a human being, one with identity and value, nor are you only a doer, a person who takes action and develops skills, you are also a social being.  The sub-matrix of Self addresses your sense of value and worth (Self, self-esteem).  The sub-matrix of Power addresses your competencies, talents, skills, abilities to develop skills (Power, self-confidence).  This next sub-matrix of Others addresses your social self—your relationships to others, your social skills, your social understandings and beliefs, your social panorama and much more.   As many people … Continue reading

THE POWER MATRIX And the Foundation of all Your Skills   Are you in charge of you?  Do you have the power to take charge of your innate powers and of your choices as you move through life?  Human beings need power—the power to take control of themselves.   The term power literally, and simply, means “the ability to do” something.  The word power speaks about both the resources and the ability which is require to do things— to take effective action in the world.  So if power literally means, “to do,” then there’s nothing inherently negative about the idea of … Continue reading