Edward E. Wilson

Meta skills are skills about other skills. These are the skills that form a foundation that other NLP learning is based on. The meta skills are abstract and are like a particular way of organizing your more direct skills. If you have the meta skills, acquiring sub-skills will be easier and more focused. Mastering the meta skills is a major landmark on the path to NLP mastery.

Outcome Focus

Outcome focus is going into any situation or interaction knowing what you want out of it. It is having a clear and positive intention for the interaction.If you don’t know what you want how will you know if you get it? With out this the rest falls apart. The main thing in order to get it is to think before any given interaction, what do I want from this? The next thing is to apply the wellformedness conditions for desired states. They are in brief the goal must be stated in the postitives, initiated and maintained by the person who desires it, defined and evaluated according to sensory based evidence, made to perserve the positive by-products of the present condition, and appropriate to fit your existing relationships. I like to make a picture, or movie, in my head of the outcome I want along with the sounds I’ll hear and the feelings I’ll feel.

Strategic Thinking

Strategic thinking is the ability to compare where you are now with where you want to get and have an idea about what to do in order to move you in that direction. Strategic thinking also involves an understanding of the larger process leading from the starting condition to the desired outcome. Having strategic thinking makes the process of leading situations towards your desires more directed and effective. To get strategic thinking, first you want to have your various behaviour patterns trained into unconscious competence so you don’t have to think about them. Next, you want to unpack the larger structure of what is being presented to your sensory acuity. You are building a model of that larger structure in your head. Then you compare what you are being presented with your desired outcome. Finally, with your understanding of the larger structure try a technique that might move the situation in the direction you want.

Sensory Acuity

Sensory acuity is training your senses to pick out of whatever situation you are in that which is useful to you. Having sensory acuity allows you to get the information you need from people’s communications and allows you to experience things more fully. It is a vital component of knowning if you are getting the response you want. You get sensory acuity by learning what to pay attention to. For example, learning to sort for incongruities, eye accessing cues and tonality shifts.

Behavioral Flexibility

Behavioral flexibility is having a lot of options for the actions you can take and being able to switch tactics easily and smoothly. Having behavioural flexibility allows you to more easily get to the results you want. If something you try doesn’t work, you can simply try something else. You get behaviour flexibilty by learning many skills to the point of unconscious competance and bing willing to jump in and try things. The more patterns you are comfortable using with unconscious competance, the more flexible you can be.

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