Saturday, March 10, 2007

NLP: NLP is about Thinking Part 6 - Time

Hi,

This is Part 6 of our series of NLP is about Thinking.

There are 5 factors making "Our Maps are not the Territory". Time is the 3rd factor.

There are some "old" maps inside our minds formed years ago. They can be valid at the time of their formation, but can be "outdated" at the present moment. However, we can still non-consciously use these maps in our lives.

Our maps are Static in nature. They are the snapshots of what we perceived at the moments of our perception. Unless we consciously update our maps, most of them will remain as they are forever.

Our maps can also be Passively Dynamic. They change as time goes by. They change not because of our intentional effort and will but they are updated automatically. How does this happen?

When something happens in our lives and the results do not match our original maps, we feel uneasy. For example, you believe that all bosses are bad, but now your boss is treating you really good. 2 things can happen:

1. Changing Filter. Your filter (in this case, your belief of "all bosses are bad") might be adjusted to "some bosses are bad". You feel more comfortable as your map is now matching the territory you perceived.

2. Distortion, Deletion, Generalization. Your filter does not change. You perceive the good acts of your boss is a kind of manipulation to make you working harder for him! You can then feel comfortable as your perceived territory matches your map. Our filters work for us to make us felling comfortable by distorting, deleting and/or generalizing the external reality.

If our maps are either Static or Passively Dynamic, we must Intentionally Update our maps or our Internal Reality is too far away from the External Reality. Then, we perceive, think, and act unrealistically. It is just like operating a 64-Bits Pentium PC with an age-old Windows 3.0 Operating System. We can't function at our best.

We can Intentionally Update our maps by Verifying and Backtracking our filters. This is a life-long process as we are continuous adding new filters to our minds. Our brain is already the best CPU in the world. It is already fastest and it is estimated to work at 10 Quadrillions/Second. It is faster than the fastest computer by 141 times.

We do not need to upgrade our brain, but we need to upgrade our Operating System.

Keith
Explore, Exceed & Excel