“Everything should be explained as simply as possible, but no simpler.” A. Einstein

This famous quote came to mind as I was preparing to write this article, and it’s not hard for me to understand why.

If it is always difficult to summarize the content of a page, all the more so without the support of direct examples—concepts and techniques that would require a whole new level of depth—today’s topic borders on the audacious: we will therefore discuss the Linguistic Metamodel, a communicative tool that has revolutionized psychotherapeutic techniques in recent years and has infinite applications in every area of daily life.

While awaiting the start of the scheduled seminar evenings, I must therefore appeal to your intuition and your ability to find examples, developments, and applications on your own from the few and concise notes that space allows me to provide.

The Map is Not the Territory: How We Shape Reality

We have already seen that our mind, based on sensory stimuli received from the surrounding environment, contains within it a map of reality that encompasses all our personal beliefs about the world. But this map is not reality; it merely has a similar structure that helps us explain what is happening.

The 3 Filters of the Human Mind

The formation of our map is subject to three distinct processes, a fact that makes it unique and different from that of other human beings:

SELECTION – because, of all the data available to us in the environment, we can select only a small portion

DISTORTION, because the data may be incorrect or altered by our biases

GENERALIZATION, when we apply what we have learned in a particular situation to similar situations.

The same mechanisms come into play when we communicate verbally with ourselves or with others, or when we try to provide a verbal description of our place in the world.
It is therefore essential to have a linguistic tool at our disposal that allows us, beyond the processes of selection, distortion, and generalization, to recover the sensory experience underlying a specific statement.
Let us not forget that these studies originated in the field of psychotherapy, where it is essential to understand what lies behind what the patient says.
When the patient uses phrases such as: “I am always depressed,” “Everyone is against me,” “My wife makes me angry,” it is clear that they are using labels that do not at all describe the type of experience they are referring to.

The Linguistic Meta-Model: Moving Beyond the Surface

In the 1960s, a group of linguists led by N. Chomsky developed a formal model of language called “Transformational Grammar.” Here is what interests us most about their work:

– language constantly operates on two levels: it has a surface structure, which is the formulation of sentences, and a deep structure, which is the actual sensory experience underlying language.
– there are rules that every speaker knows allow them to determine whether a sentence is well-formed, from a grammatical, syntactic, and semantic point of view.
– The model is violated, or the sentence is not well-formed, when it is not possible to reach the deep structure on its own.

The explanations provided by Korzybski and Chomsky were so complicated that they were nearly useless, until J. Grinder and R. Bandler (the founders of NLP) developed the Linguistic Metamodel.
However, even this is a complex tool, which takes up two volumes of *The Structure of Magic* (1975, Palo Alto, California), and requires serious study. Here we present a version of the Metamodel which, even in its simplified form, allows us to achieve results that will exceed expectations.

An axiom of communication states: “First try to understand, then make yourself understood.”

To understand something that is unclear to us, the best approach is to ask questions.
But it’s not always easy to ask the right question, especially when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for.
The Metamodel has defined several categories of words that signal to us that our conversation partner is not communicating their thoughts precisely.

These categories are: universal words, obligations, verbs, nouns, and comparatives.

Let’s look at them one by one, learning to recognize them and ask the appropriate questions.

The 5 Categories of the Meta-Model (and the right questions to ask)

UNIVERSAL WORDS
When we encounter them, it is clear that a generalization is being made. They are identified by words such as “everyone, no one, always, never,” even if these are sometimes only implied.
Universals are optimal when describing obvious truths (“all individuals need oxygen”), but they usually just support mental laziness and greatly limit the possibilities available to us.

“Young people today don’t feel like working” (implied: everyone, never).
“Starting a business requires a lot of capital” (implied: always).
“All Scots are greedy”

and the list could go on forever.

To interrupt this process, it is enough to ask a few simple questions: “Really everyone?”, “Truly always?”, “Really no one?”, exploring all possible variations, so as to define the specific case in which that statement is true (assuming it to be so).

OBLIGATIONS
Obligations are expressed with the words: “must, must not, cannot, requires, is needed,” including all equivalent expressions.
Every time we hear these words, we are faced with an obligation or limitation that may or may not be true.
Usually, people react with “Why?”, which serves only to produce justifications, rationalizations, examples of previous cases, or regulations.
Instead, the questions could be:

“What would happen if I did it? Or if I didn’t do it?”
“Who or what drives me or holds me back?”
“Who says so?”

And, usually, the answers open up a range of possibilities you hadn’t considered.

VERBS
In this category, as in the next, the goal is to verify the meaning the speaker attributes to words, and this can be achieved simply, in the case of verbs, with one word: “How?”

“You have to trust me” (it’s unclear whether they’re offering advice or asking if you’d leave them your wallet and house keys).

Question: “How exactly? What should I do to earn your trust?”
“This year we’ll beat the competition!” (This could mean we want to increase advertising spending or that we intend to set fire to our competitors’ factories).

Question: “How exactly are we going to tackle this? What specific actions will actually be taken?”
A particular case is the verb “to try to…,” which means to already have an alibi in case of failure (“I tried everything possible, but it didn’t work”).

Once again, verify exactly how the speaker intends to act.

NAME
Here, too, it is enough to ask: “What exactly?”.
Do you remember when I quoted politicians who speak of “prosperity,” “development,” “freedom,” etc.?
The question is: “What exactly do you mean by prosperity?” and, if you’re not lacking in courage or boldness: “By what means do you intend to achieve it? And when?”

Be careful with vague nouns that immediately stifle the conversation: phrases like “they don’t understand me” or “the government isn’t helping us” are meaningless unless you define who “they” are or who “the government” is.

COMPARATIVES
In this category, we include all adjectives in the comparative degree, such as: “better,” “worse,” “too much,” “too little,” etc.

“It’s better to do it this way.”
“It’s the worst thing that could have happened to me.”
“This item is too expensive.”
“You’re learning too little.”

Here, too, we tend to react out of habit with a “why?” or by denying it, or by offering justifications. Instead, the key question is: “Compared to what, exactly?” Again, the answers will help you better assess the situation and find creative solutions.

WARNING!

Despite their apparent harmlessness, you will realize, through concrete examples, that these questions cut like swords.
If the person speaking to you is acting in bad faith, they will feel exposed; if they are acting in good faith, they will be confronted with their own confusion; in both cases, expect aggressive and hostile reactions.
Especially at the beginning, limit yourself to asking questions only when it truly seems necessary to better identify the problem or the other person’s thoughts, or to develop creative solutions; in any case, avoid asking them in an aggressive tone (unless you want to deliberately attack the other person).
Let’s remember that communication should always have a specific goal in mind.

A good way to learn these things and apply them automatically is to watch television interviews (even recording them) and imagine the most appropriate questions.

At this point, during a seminar, we could move on to examples and practical applications of what has been discussed.

Real-World Applications: Handling Objections Like a Pro

I will limit myself to providing a few examples, trusting once again in the intelligence and intuition of the readers:

Bogdan, age 7, comes home from school:
– Mom, today my classmates made fun of me all day!
– Really, all day?
– Well, no. During recess.
– All the kids who were there?
– No, Iulian and his gang.
– And are there a lot of them?
– There’s Iulian, Mihai, and George.
– And how did they make fun of you?
– They said I was a sissy!
– And the others?
– Well, they stood up for me.

How much has the situation changed from the initial statement?

An incident during a sale:
– Your seminar is too expensive!
Usually, the response here is that this isn’t true, and an attempt is made to explain why.
But the correct response is this:
– Too expensive compared to what?
– Compared to the other seminars I’ve attended.
– Which seminars have you attended?
– X, Y, Z.
– Okay. In what way were they similar to mine?
– You know, actually, they weren’t the same.
– Interesting. What would happen if you discovered that my seminar is worth the time and money?
– Then I’d find it to my liking.
– What could I do to help you think that way right away?
– Here’s what: if your seminar covered W, J, and K, I’d be satisfied.
– Perfect. You see, we can’t include everything in the brochure, but we focus on exactly what interests you.

Obviously, the contract was signed.

One last thing: the extremely productive use of the model we proposed to you, once it has been learned correctly, is its application to our inner dialogue. Let’s get into the habit of thinking, with the utmost attention to our generalizations, about the limits that WE usually set for ourselves, and we’ll discover that they often make no real sense and can be very easily overcome. The world contains far more possibilities than our little mental map can lead us to believe, and these questions can help you discover them.

I’ll conclude with a thought of my own, which I invite you to reflect on: “There are a hundred paths that lead to paradise: ninety-nine are for intelligent people, and one is for everyone else.”

See you soon!