NLP Meta Programs

People tend to operate differently in different contexts. Moreover, they change with the passage of time. They evolve and learn new and different ways of being. They operate in far too complex ways to be understood. However, NLP Meta Programs allow you to recognize the rules that direct people’s way of thinking.

If you are someone who is interested in learning NLP Meta-Programs to gain an understanding of how people actually think, feel, act, perceive, process information, etc then read further. You will gain greater access to the kind of thinking that creates people’s reality. You will develop a high-level understanding of why do people operate differently, and how to deal with people in better ways, and have much more impactful communication.

What are NLP Meta Programs?

NLP Meta Programs are the perceptual filters and mental processes. People distort, delete, and generalize information, based on these perceptual filters. They determine the attitude or orientation that people take on in various contexts and situations. Meta programs get created by using a specific way to think and feel, and then they become our normal way, or a conditioned way to filter information. Similarly, different ways of thinking/feeling become a Meta Program a perceptual filter.

Example: If a person is thinking about every situation as what is the big picture/a big take away, or summary then over a period of time, the person uses this way (Meta Program) to sort things in every aspect, the Meta Program is called (Big Chunk or Global). The person operating as Big Chunk or Global does not need too much information, a bigger picture works fine for them. So, if you know someone who does not like details, now you know why.

Similarly, some people like procedures (Meta program) in how they do things, and then some prefer to operate from choice (Meta program). Some people like to talk about things in the past (Meta program), some in the future (Meta program), and some in present (Meta program). Some people like to match (Meta program) people in terms of what is being discussed, they operate from seeking similarities, and then some people like to mismatch (Meta program), they operate from dissimilarities.

Based on the traditional conceptual categories of processing information, NLP Meta Programs are categorized into:

Cognitive Meta-Programs (thinking)
Emotional Meta-Programs (feeling),
Conative Meta-Programs (choosing / willing),
Communicational Meta-Programs (speaking / responding),
Semantic Meta-Programs (creating categories of meaning)

(The details about each category will be explained in subsequent posts)

How do you create your unique thinking and operating style using Meta programs?

NLP Meta Programs refer to the combined habitual ways in which people perceive reality (information) in a given context.

The reality is made up of billions of stimuli per second. However, your brain can handle only a limited amount of information at a time. Consciously, you can only attend to five to nine variables (7+2) at any given time {This (7+2) keeps on changing with Neuroscience research, so for the purpose of this article we will stick to the original (7+2), and treat this as an abstract}

When you are faced with more than the five to nine variables, you chose to pay selective attention. Also, you draw comparisons between the new information and previously learned similar information to avoid overload and overwhelm.

You use several Meta-Programs (unconscious filters and processes) to make your version of reality.

Very often, you develop a preference towards a few Meta-Programs. All Meta-Programs that you use repeatedly while believing in as true consequently develop your unique thinking-perceiving style.

Any thinking-perceiving style that you continually repeat in a particular context becomes a habitual or an unconscious ongoing way of processing or structuring information, i.e. your Meta-Program Patterns.

What are the Driver NLP Meta Programs?

Driver Meta-Programs are those Meta-Programs that you typically and habitually over-use. They drive your perceptual style and cause you to then lose your flexibility of perception and consciousness.

What are the characteristics of these Programs for figuring people out?

Learning and using meta-programs is the key to the skill of detecting patterns. Below mentioned are some of the distinguishing characteristics-

People operate on the continuum of Meta-Programs. Meta-Programs do not exist/operate as either/or pattern.
Meta-Programs that people use are not their permanent/static traits. People’s habituated Meta-Program patterns change over contexts and time. Also, they are greatly directed by the mental-emotional state at a given time.
Meta-Programs have nothing to do with morality. Neither they are good or bad, nor they are true or false.
NLP Meta-Programs merely provide you choices about how to process information and respond. They operate as sets of distinctions that help you identify whether your functioning is useful (or not) in a context.
Meta-Program Patterns are not a new way of labeling and categorizing people. They simply provide you with a useful tool to more productively understand yourself as well as others.

How do Meta Programs help you?

NLP Meta Programs govern your thoughts, emotions, skills, and sense of reality. Thought always comes out in some Meta-Program configuration.

Just as you tune in to different channels on a television set, NLP Meta Programs are the various channels of awareness that allow you to surf through the way you as well as others structure messages and information. They function as a focus of consciousness to give direction, or guideline by which you select the incoming information.

Meta Programs provide an insight into what people value, how they think, how they choose, etc. They provide explanations about how others can see and feel so differently. They provide a means for more accurately predicting a person’s responses.

NLP Meta Programs help you recognize that people radically differ in their habitual patterns for sorting, attending, processing, and structuring reality. As you accept NLP Meta Programs, you learn how to appreciate all of the differences that you find in others.

Additionally, you learn how to-

stop wasting energy in fighting other people’s Meta-Programs.
put an end to moralizing about the right way of thinking and being.
adopt more flexibility to communicate in a way that suits the other person’s style of understanding.
increase your empathy for other viewpoints to free yourself up from the imprisonment of restricted thinking as well as cut out most of the resistance that you encounter towards other people’s viewpoints.

Summary

NLP Meta Programs serve as a self-discovery tool to explore how people function. They allow you to understand the difference in people’s thinking as well as behavior. They allow you to play out different roles, take on different ways of thinking, feeling, and responding. Accordingly, they also help you identify how you can stop doing what doesn’t work and start doing what does. Meta programs (original 60 and their applications) are covered in detail during NLP Master Practitioner and an introduction to NLP Meta programs is there during the NLP Practitioner program.

Should you be interested in knowing more about NLP Meta-Programs, write to us at info@nlpcoach.in

NLP Meta Programs