Most people confuse context with cause.
They confuse the context of events and experiences with cause. They think that when and where something begins is the cause. And while all of these factors are indeed variables within a system, they are not cause. They are simply some of the complicating or even contributing factors to a cause. It is because of that we all have a tendency to look at origins for the events, experiences, and contexts that “caused” ourselves or someone else to now have a certain experience.
But context is not cause. It is just context. Nor is an event the cause of a person’s psychological state and experience – meaning is. And that’s because you and I are meaning-makers.
We are the ones who create the meanings about what an event or experience means. And as we do, we typically use context or origin as our “explanation” as to “why” we think or feel or respond to something as we do.
To have clarity about problem and solution, we need to sort out these things. We need to clearly sort out a true cause from the variables that play a role in the creation of something. Confusion begins by how we language things, especially when we attribute cause to events, history, origins. For example:-
“My childhood is what makes me the way I am today.”
“Going through a divorce is what causes me to be afraid of commitment now.”
“Losing my job through redundancy prevents me from ever hoping to have the career I always dreamed of.”
“I’m afraid of snakes because of what my brother did to me when we were kids.”
“I could never take the risks you take, I’m just not a risk taker; it’s not in my genes.”
In these and a thousand other similar statements, people attribute the cause of their current fears, regrets, limitations, and ineffectiveness to events and sources outside of their control and response. They explain their un-resourceful states and inabilities as caused by some past event, some unchangeable factor, or some experience that they have been through. They look at the contexts and events that they have experienced and attribute control to them. It is in this way that they make themselves victims and leash themselves into a matrix of frames that prevents them from getting over the experience.
Yet in spite of all of that, there is hope. After all, if we can leash ourselves to events, experiences, concepts, and give away our power by our explanatory style, we can just as easily reclaim our power and unleash new potentials and powers within ourselves by changing our language and thus giving new meaning.
The truth is that you are the cause of your experience of reality. Reality is what it is, and your experience of it results from how you represent it, how you code it, how you frame it, the meanings you give to it, the beliefs that you develop about it, the conclusions you draw and use about it, the interpretations that you use to explain it to yourself and others. We do not deal with reality as it is, in the raw, but as filtered through our model of the world.
In Meta-Coaching, we call that model of the world our Matrix – our matrix of frames of meanings.
What causes you to feel depressed about some childhood event, to fear criticism, to give up and act like a victim, to feel out-of-control and needing to over-manage things? Your meanings! It is the meanings you create about anything and everything generates the Matrix you live in and from which you generate your explanations and computations.
That’s why we say in Neuro-Semantics, The person is never the problem; the frame is the problem.
‘Problems’ (a linguistic nominalization created by a meaning) only exist in a human mind. They exist because you have goals that differ from your present state. So the problem is created by your definition and exists first and foremost as a frame. Problems are caused by the meanings (frames) that you use to classify some action, event or experience.
In NLP we have a basic Model, the SCORE Model. In present state there are the symptoms (S) and the cause (C) then there is the desired state as indicated by the outcome (O) and effects (E) that results, and of course the resources (R) that enables us to create the solution pathway in which we move to the desired outcome. Cause is not history, not origin, not external events; it is the meanings that create the state and its symptoms.
Causation, as an experience, does exist. You do cause things to happen. You do so through the mental processes of believing, meaning-making, intent and understanding. The frames of meanings that you create cause your experience of reality.
So to change your experience of reality – you only need to create better meanings. It is that simple, it is that profound. This is the heart of Neuro-Semantics. It is at the heart of what Meta-Coaches facilitate with their clients.
(Posted on 19/05/2011)
Danny Tuckwood co-authored with Dr. L. Michael Hall
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