[Neurons] 2012 Meta Reflections #15

[L. Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

Meta Reflections 2012  #15

March 6, 2012

Empowerment Series #7

 

 

 

THE POWER OF RESPONSIBILITY

 

 

When you take and develop your four innate powers, you thereby develop an
authority within yourself.  No one is born with this.  This develops over
time as a person recognizes and owns their power to respond and develops
their mental, emotional, linguistic and behavioral powers.  In APG trainings
we use a simple meta-stating process for this, we invite a person to bring
awareness, acceptance, and then ownership to one's four innate powers.  We
call the result, "your power zone."

 

Developmentally, every child will go through this process as a natural
development of their cognitive and interpersonal powers.  But many do not
... and that's because their parent's didn't graduate from Parenting 101 or
because their parents never owned their own innate powers.  The result:
Children who do not know and own their inner powers.  And that then results
in children who grow into adult who have not developed their own authority
to "write the script of their own lives."  Result: Adults of all ages who
lives their lives trying to please someone else or live up to the script
that someone else has written.  Result: dis-empowerment.

 

Yet it is this power to respond and the mindfulness that you always have a
choice in how you respond to life's events and challenges that creates a
solid sense of power, authority, control, and mastery within.  We call this
"response-ability."  And it shows up in terms of a variety of states: the
state of proactivity, of taking initiative in life, of feeling in charge of
your own self (self-control), the sense of being "at cause" in life, etc.

 

Now the key is to recognize that these are meta-states and not primary
states.  After all, where in your body do you feel responsibility or
proactivity or initiative or at cause?  These are not primary feeling
states, they are evaluative meta-states.  They require rich and robust
frames of mind (meanings).  That's why if you treat responsibility as a
primary state, access it, and "anchor" it in a traditional NLP way, you
probably will not be able to set it as you could relaxation, joy, anger,
fear, or other primary states.  If you want to "anchor" responsibility, you
will have to set meta-level frames and meanings.

 

What is the mind-set in responsibility?  Typically it involves
acknowledgment of one's powers, acceptance of those powers, appreciation of
them, and a self-definition of oneself as "at cause."  This involves several
cognitive awarenesses:

"I'm the person in charge of my thinking, emoting, speaking, and acting."

"I can hold no one else responsible for what I think, believe, understand,
decide, remember, imagine, etc."

"No one makes me or forces me to think or feel anything.  My thoughts and
feelings are mine, they are created inside my body, and they are created by
the meanings that I create about things."

 

Obviously, the rich and robust meta-state of responsibility is a no-blame
state.  It is also a no-victim state.  Yes, terrible things happen in life.
Yes, challenges, problems, and undesirable events occur.  And yes, things
can go wrong, plans can fall apart, the best intentions can fail to achieve
objectives, people can trick and cheat us, rob and rape, and do all kinds of
bad things.  But to think and feel that you are a victim is a choice.  You
do not have to think that way.  You do not have to feel that way.  You do
not have to make that decision.

 

How do I know that?  By reading the biographies of those who have gone
through living hells and who intentionally claimed their powers and refused
to be seduced into the weak state of victimization.  That is, they refused
to victimize themselves with their thoughts-and-feelings.  Sure bad things
happened to them- concentration camps, murder of their lives ones, ripped
away from everything that they had created and built in life, raped, beaten,
tortured, imprisoned, and so on.  And yet, they maintained their inside-out
authority.  As Viktor Frankl said after torture and deprivation in several
concentration camps, "They cannot take away the ultimate human freedom- the
power to choose my attitude.  They cannot make me hate them."

 

Talk about living from his own Power Zone!  Talk about operating from his
own personal authority!  Talk about living above and beyond his
circumstances!  Talk about empowerment.

 

When you meta-state yourself with the required elements that make up a
healthy and robust state of responsibility you stop looking outside of
yourself for beliefs, values, direction, authority, etc.  Instead, you begin
by looking within yourself.  You begin to take charge of yourself:

What do I believe?   What do I understand?

What do I value?  What's important to me?

What are my talents, skills, possibilities?  What can I develop?

How do I want to live my life?  Relate to others?  Invest my energies?

 

As a result you create a solid sense of independence which then allows you
to be healthily related to others in an inter-dependent way (rather than
co-dependent).  Then with this core sense of responsibility, you know that
you and you only are responsible for your- 

Health: fitness, energy, vitality, etc.

            Wealth: money, saving, spending, investing, etc.

Mental health: learning, understanding, integrity to live by your values,
etc.

Emotional health: self-acceptance, appreciation, value, emotional
intelligence, etc.

Relationships: acceptance, appreciation, and value of others, social
intelligence, etc.

Work and play: investment of your energies, development of your talents into
skills, etc.

 

Responsibility is powerful, isn't it?

 

 

Neuro-Semantic News

            *** NSTT --- Trainers' Training occurs this year in Colorado

                        July 24-through August 8

                        Prerequisites: Certificates in NLP Prac., Master
Prac, and APG and 

                        recommendation by a Licensed Neuro-Semantic Trainer.

                        Early Bird prices until April 1.

                        Write Dr. Hall for Brochure and Application -
meta at acsol.net 

 

 

 

 

L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Neuro-Semantics Executive Director  ----   <http://www.neurosemantics.com/>
www.neurosemantics.com

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO.  81520 USA                              

1 970-523-7877                                               

     

What is Neuro-Semantic NLP?   Get your free subscription to "Neurons" ---
the weekly International  Newsletter of Neuro-Semantics.  Subscribe at
<http://www.neurosemantics.com/> www.neurosemantics.com.   Dr. Hall sends
out  Meta Reflections  every Monday (Colorado time).  Trainers' Reflections
occur  on Tuesdays and Meta-Coach Reflections on  Wednesdays.   Contact Dr.
Hall at  meta at acsol.net  

 

For world-class Coach Training --- see Meta-Coaching System at
<http://www.meta-coaching.org/> www.meta-coaching.org and at
www.metacoachfoundation.org  

 

Neuro-Semantics launched the New Human Potential Movement in 2007, for
information about the Self-Actualization workshops, go to
<http://www.self-actualizing.org/> www.self-actualizing.org

 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://eight.pairlist.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20120305/54b7da6c/attachment.html>