Medical professionals can better treat patients when they can observe their brains in action and make decisions based on that information. They can now see clearly what’s going wrong and how to fix it. Researchers get a deeper understanding of the brain’s structure and function as they create better tools for studying the brain.
The mind is no different.
When you and I can peek into the theater of the mind and see what’s going on, we can know what’s working well and what’s not working well. Now we can more effectively enable the functioning of the mind. I began doing that with the Matrix Model (2002/2012). By identify seven of the key variables of the mind, the Matrix Model provides a way to sort things out and see relationships between them. The structure of the Matrix Model was very simple:
- Three process dimensions: meaning, intention, and state. These create all of the internal understandings, beliefs, knowledge, emotions, etc. for any experience.
- Five content dimensions about one’s self: you as a person (self-esteem), you as a doer (self-confidence), your social self, your temporal self, and your roles in various domains.
The main focus of the Matrix Model was on the three most important things that the mind does: it makes meaning, it sets intentions, and it gives us a sense of who we are. Bob Bodenhamer and Dr. Michael Hall were the first to use this model to explain what it’s like to stutter. They found that we could use it to make a model of stuttering and how it works in the mind-body-emotion system of a person. They found that we could describe with great detail the exact order, structure, and organization of that experience. Once we knew that, we could figure out how to turn it into fluency.
Why is it important to be able to see the mind as a meta place?
You will not only be able to tell what is there, but you will also be able to see and understand how your mind works. Then, if you know how your mind works, you can first watch how it works and then change it so it works for you. Today, we talk about this in terms of EQ, or emotional intelligence, and/or mindfulness.
For Neuro-Semanticists including Meta-Coaches, this gives one the ability to follow a person’s energy through his or her mind-body-emotion system. This refers to following how a person takes some stimuli in the environment, builds up mental maps about it, and then how that information then integrates into the body to become the person’s dependable response patterns. And the good news is that we can do this with any and every “experience.” The end result— we can generate a dynamic process structuring of how a person does (or performs) any experience from stuttering, to depression, to optimism, resilience, over-seriousness, playfulness, etc.
Seeing your mind in action is a meta-cognitive skill. It is mindfulness and it is meta-stating. It puts you into a position where you can begin managing what you are doing and how you are doing it. This then results in a feeling of self-awareness, self-efficacy, self-trust, and self-determination.
Now you know why. Now you know how to answer the question, “Suppose you could see your mind, what then?”
Curated by Danielle Tan.
Reference:
- [Neurons] 2023 Neuronbs #15 SUPPOSE YOU COULD SEE YOUR MIND, WHAT THEN? by L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. Executive Director, ISNS.
