ALTER EGO. An NLP theory.

Introduction

I have been interested in and have practised NLP for the last 20 years. As a psychologist there were 3 things which kept me involved. One was the attention NLP paid to the unconscious, two was the focus and emphasis on what works, and 3 there is a shed load of great psychology in NLP.

ALTER EGO is the name I gave my questionnaire to help people understand how they are operating in any particular context. I ask a large proportion of my coaching and counselling clients to fill it in for a very important reason. The reason is what NLP calls ecology or to use the vernacular “are you firing on all cylinders?”

Meta Programs

In NLP we believe, like the behaviourists, we are squirming pieces of flesh at birth and very rapidly through classical conditioning we create pre-verbal meaning and become socialised. Fire hurts, water is wet and it stops you breathing if you put your head into it. Different cultures produce different associations because they value different things. Those of you who are old enough to remember Richard Harris in the film “A man called Horse”, will know if you are a Sioux male Indian you are encouraged to be suspended in the air only supported by hooks through your nipples to prove you are a man, in modern Europe you would be arrested for encouraging a young adult to undergo such a feat.

Thus people from different cultures are fundamentally different based upon the meanings emphasised in early socialisation. In NLP we believe that the way in which we are conditioned leads to a further conditioning at a higher neurological level. For instance it is believable that in order to fulfil the requirements of his culture the Sioux boy would need to delete a lot of kinaesthetic information to “shut out the pain”. This capability to delete kinaesthetic information could then be transferred into other contexts like for instance the battle field, or the sports stadium, leading to such a Meta Program as “Warrior”. A contrasting Meta Program could be “Carer” with the carer being a person who actually makes a lot of use of the kinaesthetic sense to communicate and obtain information. Psychologists for instance tell us that children who have been abused are more likely to develop a dissociative fantasy life making them excellent hypnotic subjects and these amounts to 4% of the population. This is such a stable construct that they even developed a “Meta Program” for such people calling it “fantasy prone personalities”. (Wilson and Barber 1981) Psychologists tend to be quite strict when making generalisations and say the quantitative evidence is not sufficient to substantiate the above studies, however the point is when we carve up the sensory world in a particular way at one level as a result of socialisation and no doubt personal factors as well, we create a different experience at another level and consequently we create different meanings from the same data.

Meta Programs in NLP are patterns which describe how we develop a coherence at a different neurological level to that of the sensory level. This level is called Meta as it influences the lower sensory levels. So a small chunk person may look at a cathedral and consistently hone in on the detail of the individual carvings, whilst a large chunk person, given exactly the same cathedral may focus on the overall size and proportions and relationships with other buildings in the vicinity. At the sensory level, they may both in this context use their visual sense primarily, however because they use different Meta Programs to guide the visual representational system, they experience very different things and consequently develop very different skills. In one study I profiled 20 dentists with ALTER EGO. 20 of them returned a “small chunk” Meta Program, 16 of them returned a “procedures” Meta Program and 15 of them returned a “thinking” Meta Program. So like the psychologists mentioned above, I do not have the numbers to substantiate a generalisation but maybe when you visit your dentist you might be relieved that according to my small study you will probably get someone who focuses on detail and takes both a logical and a step by step attitude to their professional practice.

Black Sheep

In a way NLP is the study of the subjective experience of black sheep. In the new film “Chappie” the robot is encouraged; “Anything you want to do in your life you can do, write poetry, have original ideas".......... However life is not plain sailing for Chappie and he is asked “do you know what’s a black sheep?” Chappie says “no” and it is explained that a black sheep is “like when you’re different to everyone else”.

Being excellent is about having the flexibility to transform in the moment

NLP encourages us not only to find our own excellence, but also to model excellence when we find it in other people. Such a characteristic in people is not normal, they sit way past the 99th percentile. By definition they are different from the rest of us who sit around the middle of the normal distribution curve. If we looked at our 20 dentists it maybe that the one who was outstanding was “large chunk” “options” and “feelings”, in other words he or she was different from the majority of the others. However in NLP it is all about results and getting results which are excellent and inevitably people who regularly do that will be black sheep, they will stick out from the rest of us.

Flow

A characteristic of excellent performance is flow. When people do amazing things they seem to do it with the utmost of ease, what this means is they are completely aligned throughout the whole of their mind and their body. What many of us do however is use the Meta Program we are operating from as an excuse not to be able to do something. "Oh I'm not that type of person", or "Oh I could never do that". When we try, because we want to be a team player, what happens is at one level we non verbally and unconsciously operate in one way and then attempt at a conscious level to adapt to the requirements of the situation in another way. We create incongruence.

The point is in order to effectively adapt to a particular circumstance we need the tools to help us change at every level, including the usually unconscious Meta Program level……in the words of Arnie Schwarzenegger and his first rule, you have to dig deep down and ask yourself “who do you want to be?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyhOmBPtGNM.

It is only when you have the tools to dig deep into your neurology and change the structure of your own experience you can then coherently demonstrate the behaviour you need to be excellent in any domain. The majority of us do not experience flow because we “try” to do one set of behaviours whilst running a contrary Meta Program at a different Neuro-Logical level. It is like the cold analytical thinker "trying" to show empathy, or dynamic forward thinking entrepreneur trying to show an interest in daily administration. The word try implies failure and this is what you will get because you are attempting to do contrary things when you operate with one Meta Program running unconsciously and then consciously trying to do something at a different neurological level that does not fit with that Meta Program.

An NLP theory of Personality.

Costa and McCrae tell us:

“Personality traits are indeed unchanging; we leave to other authors the question of whether they are unchangeable”

The reason many do not experience flow in their lives is because they mix up neurological levels, they mix up the level of Basic tendencies (Meta Program) with characteristic adaptations (situational adaptations). When we are put into a team that we don’t particularly gel with, or when we are assigned to a unit in our company where we struggle to perform, we hold on to our basic tendency with the mistaken belief….. “This is who I am”. From that point we work to develop flexibility in our adaptive capabilities to a situation, or in modern stress management parlance develop; “coping strategies”. The paradox is that this is usually good enough and therefore we stick with the inevitable conflict between basic Meta programs with which we are familiar and clunky strategic adaptations which don't fit....but with a lot of conscious effort do a good enough job.... and then complain about a lack lustre life.

NLP’s answer to Costa and McCrae is people are changeable when they did deep enough, when they congruently decide who they want to be in any particular context.

Most of the normal population however neither know who they want to be, nor what Meta Programs they are currently running. Often it is only when a crisis hits, or a key life cycle change occurs do people decide to dig deep and recognise the flexibility afforded to them at the deeper levels of our neurology.

Find out your Meta Programs

Why don’t you have a go now and discover what Meta Programs you are running? As you answer the questionnaire which only takes 10 minutes think of yourself in one particular context. Then think of your self in a totally different context and answer the items again, maybe an hour later, and notice any difference. This way you can begin to develop your flexibility at a deeper Neuro-Logical level.

ALTER EGO stands for Achieving Lives Team Effort Role………… Enhancing Generative Outcomes. What this signifies is it takes considerable effort to dig deep and fundamentally change who you are in order to fit in with a team and to achieve your personal and collective goals. However when you develop this skill you will enhance your ability to live your life in both a generative way and in a way that flows.

The questionnaire is free of charge and you will obtain a professional pdf report on 9 dimensions by return email.

https://www.achieving-lives.co.uk/free-profiler-instructions/ .

I hope you have enjoyed this blog and that you enjoy your feedback from ALTER EGO.

(P.S. Some in the NLP community do not believe Meta Programs are a part of NLP as they encourage a focus on content and reduce flexibility, in other words puts people in boxes. This is a creative tension which can hopefully and eventually lead to a more robust theory of personality than this one in due course)

Bruce Grimley

Is a Chartered Psychologist and Master Trainer of NLP. His next accredited NLP practitioner course starts on 30th May 2015. Click here for a brochure describing what's on offer. If you are interested in discovering more about NLP as an approach to professional development please contact [email protected]. www.achieving-lives.co.uk

References.

Costa,PT&McCrae,RR (1994) Set like plaster? Evidence for the stability of adult personality in Can Personality change? Heatherton,TF& Weinberger,JL. Washington. American Psychological Association.

Wilson,SC&Barber,TX (1981) Vivid fantasy and hallucinatory abilities in the life histories of excellent hypnotic subjects in E.Klinger (ed) Imagery (Vol 2) Concepts Results and applications(pp133-49.) New York, Plenum

? Bruce Grimley 2015.