Meta-programs allow you to really understand human behavior, to learn how the person's mind is processing reality and therefore producing a certain outcome. People's behavior may sometimes seem random, spasmodic and thoughtless, but under the surface the factors influencing even a mood change are quite complex and intriguing. The next time another person snaps at you, as if they were trying to "get to you," step back and, instead of participating in the emotional roller-coaster, try to guess their meta-programs.
Meta-programs are deep structure tendencies that drive automatic behaviors and thought patterns. The meta-programs are related to all levels of a person's mind management. They relate to personality, decision-making, beliefs, values, dynamic relationships to self and others, emotions, true memories, false memories, and so on.
Meta-programs describe functions on a continuum. They do not describe personality traits, though they relate to personality. In essence, the meta-programs do not come to portray what a person IS, but how that person functions at a given moment in time in a specific context or situation (preferably, the moment you're communicating
with them).
In other words, it is not "the way I am," but it's "the way I do it." My identity is not a noun ("I am") but a continuing and dynamic process ("my current strategies"). If you say, "I am a failure," you're generalizing too much; if you say, "I failed in math 3 times in the past year," you're already taking a new perspective on those 3 events. The meta-programs are not necessarily going to show you how to succeed in math, but they are going to show you how your deep structured neurology is working perfectly, but not always towards the outcomes you envision for yourself.
Meta-programs are changeable, manageable and predictable. The person you're trying to analyze might express the same meta-program distinction, in both extremes, given different contexts and situations. People are complex, so even if you've easily identified a metaprogram distinction in someone, it does not mean that this person will hold and cherish it for a long time. It is bound to change.
What you define by working with the meta-program model is the "how," not the "is." The person you're analyzing is not a mismatcher, he's a person who's currently using the mismatch strategy, and if you change the theme or topic of your conversation, he might become a very extreme matcher! This makes the meta-programs model much more interesting and usable, because you don't need to tag people or memorize their attributes, you need to constantly shift your communication with them, according to your own outcomes, to their current influencing metaprograms and the context in which you both participate.
The meta-programs offer much more than just random analysis of people's tendencies in given contexts. The meta-programs allow you to also discover ways by which you can stop behaving in a certain way and install new ways, or strategies, for "working differently." If you find that you tend to see things in black and white terms, that may be useful in some contexts, but certainly not in your relationship with your spouse; not if you want a nurturing and loving marriage. With your spouse, you would want to hold a continuum as your perception. You would want to see all shades of gray and understand him or her from multiple viewpoints. If you only see things as "good" or "bad," every little thing about them might bother you too much. If they're late, or the dinner gets cold, or the kids didn't make it to a game because of a Yoga class, or whatever else, you might over-generalize merely because of a tiny Perception Category meta-program!
However, you do want to keep the black and white extreme when it comes to traffic rules, right? You do want to stop at a stop sign every time, drive under the maximum
allowed speed and certainly never drive after drinking alcohol. These are black and white Perception Category situations, in which the Continuum would be ineffective or even dangerous. Surely you can't argue with a policeman and say, "but there aren't any other cars around" after crossing a red light. Policemen do not care about the gray area, they want the law to be followed as is.
How Does A Meta-Program Work?
Meta-programs exist to make us more efficient. When you work with a familiar workflow, you "chunk up" and perform faster and better each time. A meta-program is kind of a set of instructions that your mind has gotten used to. In our modern and ultra-fast world, making prompt decisions is a necessity. A meta-program exists to perform even when your conscious mind is overloaded and stressed. Knowing meta-programs can help you tremendously to understand and predict other people's behaviors, and your own.
One of the most crucial elements to successful living is really just getting along with people, and especially getting along with people who can or should contribute to your achievable outcomes. Although the meta-programs can be used effectively in persuasion settings, like sales or therapy, they also serve us in other important ways.
The meta-programs give us a way to better understand another person's model of the world. We get to "read" and interpret reality through their processing preferences. As with the example I gave a few paragraphs ago, if you know that your spouse is categorizing her perception on a continuum, seeing all shades of gray, you can use language to communicate with her more effectively. You can still express your "extreme" black or white perception, but you would do so by acknowledging her way of seeing things first. Why? Because you want your relationship to work and improve, not to deteriorate because of lack of communication. And what is lack of communication if not ignoring each other's model of the world?
This is why we try to understand each other; we want to relate. Relationships are a crucial factor in any human's life (in fact, in almost any species), because there aren't many men or women who live on a deserted island. We have to communicate in order to survive, to propagate, to experience shared joy, to learn and grow and so on. There is no way around it. Either you work hard on your communication skills, or you are not going to get far on your outcomes.
When you and another person can't understand each other, you both feel misunderstood, frustrated and disconnected. Even if you discover the differences between you, you still need to come to agreement (in relevant contexts). How would you do that if you can't understand where each other is coming from and how you got there?
One of NLP's basic presuppositions, or advantageous beliefs, is that you are responsible for the results of your communication with another person. So if you and I are talking, for example, it is your responsibility to make me understand your point. The opposite is also true. As I am communicating with you, it is my responsibility to help you understand my point. Don't think of it as a shared responsibility, think of it as the responsibility of the person who's trying to convey his or her message
to others.
When you try to explain your ideas, you need to use an effective approach. This requires being in a frame of mind in which you take the responsibility for your communication. Then you are in a good position to accept and even appreciate the differences between us, and then utilize what you know to get me to understand your
message.
At this point I'd like to remind you of a commonly used NLP pattern: the Physiomental State Interruption pattern (p92/76). In order to interrupt a person's state of mind, use the opposite extreme of a meta-program you recognize in their language. If the wife from the example above is a "gray zone" advocate, send messages implicitly as black and white perception. "I love X more than anything" or "I hate X more than anything" are two examples of a Black and white style of thinking.
Using the opposite preference of a specific meta-program is a sure way to get a person agitated or a bit angry at you. But it will also break the state, and you can always smile as if you meant it as a joke, change the topic and you're off on another conversational atmosphere.
The benefit of using meta-programs, among others, is that instead of assuming and predicting another person's thoughts and behaviors, in an ineffective way, you're actually aiming for the right ones. You can never really understand what's going on in another person's mind. Each one of us is a complex individual with a whole lot
of memories and experiences that comprise a unique identity. You can't "figure out" a person, you can only assume a close guess, more or less.
Another key related to metaprograms, and NLP in general, is that each person is trying to impose his or her model of the world on the rest of us. Unless you're a well-trained NLP enthusiast, you're seeing the world through your own perceptual filters and consider it to be the only reality. You would see bad people and good people, comfortable situations and stressful events, misfortune and greed, and so on. But if you wish to master NLP, this facade is not going to fool you anymore.
You will no longer tag people for any reason. You'd be exploring their map of the world instead of judging them according to yours. You would have more curiosity and agility to help you learn HOW a person is functioning and not WHY are they "not working well"
One of the hardest stages I had to go through as a practitioner is when I received a phone call from a parole officer, asking me to work with a convicted ex-prisoner who was just released after a sentence of several years for abusing his wife. I really had to grow inside to accept such a client. I always thought that a perpetrator of a crime should keep paying so he or she won't forget to stop themselves the next time. Meeting this person has changed my way of thinking. He really needed help and he was willing to do anything and everything to "become normal," as he said. I changed my mind, accepted him, and that was one event I remember well because from then on, I started being curious about every person's HOW, regardless of the outcome.
The meta-programs are real, and you can observe them in any person. The reason that they are real lies in the essence of communication with self and communication with others. There are two modes of communication, verbal and non verbal. When it comes to your communication with yourself, you can speak to yourself (internal voice, self talk) and that's verbal communication, or you can imagine pictures or movies (mental visualization) or simply have a "feeling" or intuition, and these are non-verbal communication formats. When you communicate with other people, again you could speak to them verbally (auditory digital), or you could express nonverbally through your physiology.
At this point you still get to have control, more or less, on what you're expressing. But this is just a false sense of control. In reality, you can consciously manage around 7 items or bits of information, more or less, simultaneously. Everything else that you express, verbally and non-verbally, comes from your subconscious mind. Needless to say, your subconscious mind does not know how to lie and does not have the same objectives as your conscious mind or conscious thought process.
The subconscious mind has made it easier on itself by producing patterns. These are neurological connections, a kind of blueprint for processing, reprocessing and reproducing information. Your mind is accessing these blueprints all the time to know how to react to stimuli, how to make a decision, how to relate to the world, and so on.
These blueprints are also context-dependent. Accessing a blueprint to make a decision makes it feel "right," as a kind of intuition that relaxes you and makes you feel like you've made the best choice. And even if you have made the worst decision ever, it was still the best one your mind could produce at that given moment. You always do your best, satisfying some sort of subconscious need, even when it seems like a part of you is against improvement.
People who do not engage in studying these ideas, either investing time in acquiring knowledge from psychology or from NLP, are usually blind to these blueprints. The most they know is, that there are habits that control their thoughts and actions, but they usually claim nonsense such as, "that's just the way I am" or "I am just screwed up like this."
Meta-programs are habitual, true, but they are also easy to change. Merely by recognizing a tendency in your actions or thoughts, in a specific context, reminds you of it the next time you have a similar experience. Taking the example above, if you know that your wife is a "gray-zone" perceptual categorizer, the next time you two argue you will alread have the tools to calm down the emotional storm within you, think logically for a moment, and then reconstruct your words by taking a "middle ground" approach. You need to explain what you have to say in terms that exist in a "Continuum" style of thinking and not in your habitual black and white. This is not to say that you're wrong thinking in either/or terms, this is to say that if you want your wife to understand you, it is your responsibility to express yourself in the formats that her model of the world is working with. And no, you cannot just send her to an NLP seminar and then drop the whole deal on her.
There is another aspect to blueprint blindness. People usually think that everyone else is either working the same way they are, or they are unbearable or just strange! The fact is, that if you take the list of meta-programs and start questioning people, you will find many differences in thinking and decision-making between each and every one of the people you interview.
People are blind not only to their own blueprints, but also to everyone else's. Unless you study communication or psychology or NLP, there is a very high chance that you would find it really hard to "figure out" a person.
The meta-programs model works in such a way that you need to step out of your model of the world and observe objectively the blueprints another person is working with. Most of these blueprints are subconscious, so it makes no use to ask a person which perceptual category he's in at the moment or whether or not he chunked down a certain message you gave him. Observe! Open your eyes, ears and whatever else you need to gather knowledge objectively. The other person will offer you verbal formation (auditory digital) or non-verbal information (visual external), both of which you can use. The more useful one, of course, would be the non-verbal communication, because it is easy to lie with words, but your body language usually speaks the truth. When you observe meta-programs try not to judge the content you're hearing. The "story" is not important as much as the format of it.
How to Learn and Practice the Meta-Programs
There are many meta-programs. In this book I will list the ones that I find to be the most interesting and influential. In order to learn so many distinctions, you would need to work, first of all, slowly and methodically. Yes, of course, go ahead and read them all, no one is going to stop you. But when you go out there, to the real world, and start to practice recognizing and applying meta-programs distinctions, take them one at a time. In fact, I would recommend that you consciously work with only one metaprogram a week.
The reason is that your mind needs time to process these ideas and concepts, and since you're also applying them in numerous social situations, your mind needs to "push" them down to become unconscious competencies. To prevent overwhelm and possible failure, work slowly. It will benefit you later on when you master the meta-programs.
I also suggest that you not apply the meta-programs on everyone in every situation. This is something that new NLP learners mistakenly engage in. They apply everything they learn, on everyone, all the time and everywhere.
This is not healthy. Nothing in excess can be healthy. Stay "normal." Applying NLP 24/7 will make you a control-freak or some kind of a zombie. Now, to make it clear, I'm talking about consciously practicing the skills of Neuro Linguistic Programming. If something has become a part of you, if you do not need to "think about it" to make it work. But if you go out there, consciously trying to apply NLP on everything and everyone, you will find yourself exhausted, frustrated and with many annoyed relatives. Separate practice times from reality times. When you practice, engage with everything you can as an NLP practitioner. When you live your life, give NLP a rest. You will find that the skills you're practicing will naturally flow into your everyday actions and thoughts, so you really do not need to force this process.
Most important, remember that people's actions do not match their identity. You are not defined by your random actions. Everything you do and think about is context dependent, and every blueprint you recognize in yourself or in other people, might change drastically given different circumstances. In other words, respect your own model of the world and respect other people's models of the world. Reality is shared but not perceived the same by everyone.
As I wrote above, the metaprograms are distinguishable on a continuum. There is a sliding scale for most of them. Estimate more or less how far to an extreme a person's tendency is. You cannot be 100% accurate, but you can hit the right mark close enough. You can use the numerical grading system (1 to 10) or percentages (1-100%), or you can imagine it graphically, as I do, like an empty rectangle being filled with a color according to intensity.
When recognizing meta-programs in other people avoid the judgement. It would be counterproductive for you if you start estimating the "good" or "bad" in their preferences. There are no "right" or "wrong" tendencies, but "useful" or "non-useful," and again even this estimation is context-dependent.
Do not expect the meta-programs you elicit in others to be consistent. Even when you come across the same context, a metaprogram can change drastically. People evolve, even when they are not aware of it. Any experience, big or small, can modify a person's meta-program. To use the metaprogram model practically, you treat every interaction like a first one and re-work the meta-programs accordingly.
Finally, have fun! Exploring another person's map of the world is an exciting endeavor. Get curious and stay curious and delighted about other people. You will enjoy social interactions, you will become much more attractive to everyone, and your groupies (every person has some) will grow and grow. Your influence abilities will definitely increase and strengthen, and your days will not seem like carbon copies of each other anymore. NLP can, and should in my opinion, be practiced in a state of
joy.
Perception and Interest Styles Meta Programs
View: Global (Seeing the forest for the trees, big picture) vs. Details (detailed view, specific).
Boundary Locus: Internal (how I feel, think, etc.)
vs. External (what you're doing, what's happening).
Person locus: Self (me, number one, narcissism)
vs. Other (you, empathy, codependency).
Distinction: Match or sameness (how these things are similar or overlap, what they have in common)
vs. Mismatch or difference (how they are distinct, different, in contrast, unique).
Arousal hierarchy: The type of thing that the person finds most interesting to notice or value, can be listed in order of that person's level of interest or sequence of noticing when in a new situation.
People vs. Activities vs. Location vs. Things vs. Information
(other categories can be added as needed)
Arousal sub-hierarchies:
Same as arousal hierarchy, but for categories within the arousal hierarchy item.
Example for People: dynamics, power hierarchy position or class, motivations, usefulness, threat, individual personality characteristics, sophistication or capacity (e.g. psychological, occupational, emotional, social, motivational).
Behavior Styles Meta Programs
Immediacy: Proactive (acting in advance, being prepared)
vs.
Reactive (in the moment, immediacy, emergency)
Personal style:
Similar to Mayers Briggs.
Assertive vs. Passive.
judgmental vs. Open perception.
Thinking and Logical vs.lntuitive.
Active vs. Complacent.
Invasive vs. Tolerant
Concerned vs. Indifferent.
Developmental issues:
Developmental delays
vs.
Age-appropriate maturity (in specific areas of living such as handling authority), physical, thinking (cognitive), and emotional impairments that can affect development (such as a mental health diagnosis which can be mild, moderate or severe).
Outcomes Alignment Styles Meta Programs
Outcome Focus:
Towards (what I want, eagerness)
vs.
Away from (avoiding what I reject or fear, loathing or concern)
Time Focus:
Far vs. Distant,
Past vs. present vs. future (thoughts and reference points tend to be there)
Convincer patterns and learning preferences:
Being convinced of something or learning something most efficiently through reading, observing, doing, experiencing, etc.
McClelland's motivational preferences:
Power vs. Popularity vs. Performance
"I personally believe we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain" ~Jane Wagner
(Page 661 of "The Big Book Of NLP")
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