In Part 1 of this article we took an NLP based approach to explain why when you talk to another person they don’t seem to get it no matter how hard you try to explain to them your point of view. Here is more understanding of why this happens
No Wonder We Cannot Understand Each Other
But anyway, back to our multilayered meaning of words and why this is vitally important for us? Today, there are new meanings to old words you thought you knew the meaning of. Let’s take for example a little word that is so much talked about nowadays: organic.
According to Debra Van Camp Saint Joseph’s University, Haub School of Business – in her paper “Organic Paradox” – “Organic” is a process-claim that guarantees that the food has been produced, processed, and handled in accordance with specific federal regulations. It is not a product-claim, and therefore, makes no reference or guarantee of the attributes of the final product.” Did you know that????
Most of us when we think of the word “organic” we think of a product unadulterated in any form, made by Mother Nature, grown in “natural” Mother Nature conditions without added pesticides, chemicals, radioactive particles, so, nothing man made. Something that Mother Nature produces,.Boy, are we wrong!
Here is another meaning for the word “organic”: “the magic-cure all, synonymous with eating well, healthfully, sanely, even ethically”: – New York Times, Mark Bittman
Or what about organic = of a living source. Arsenic is of a living source,..
Here is an even better question: is organic “natural”? You would be tempted to say YES. But
what is considered to be “natural”? Is organic clean of chemicals and pesticides? Not necessarily, because there are a lot of chemicals and pesticides allowed in the organic products!!
What about “Organics” as a brand name which has nothing whatsoever in common with the meaning of the word organic? It’s just a name,.It is like TED, the airline part of the UNI-TED airlines, that has nothing whatsoever to do with Ted Jones.
No speaking of the fact that if you like to eat organic, and refuse to ingest McDonalds and Diet Coke you may have a psychological disorder called Orthorexia Nervosa,.. So the implication is that we have an attachment to the word organic which is now linked to a mental disease?
And this is just a few interpretations of just one little example of one little inconspicuous word,.”organic”,.
So, what we have here for most of us is the concept of “one word = one meaning” but simultaneously with our restricted experience and restricted Internal Representations, we have multiple usage of the multi-layered meanings of the words, depending on the context and intention in advertisements and public relations campaigns using a lot of what we call “double talk” – and unfortunately this is extremely misleading to our Internal Representations! This is why we learn about how an Internal Representation is made inside our heads from the first day in the NLP Practitioner Training. This is exactly WHY we do it.
Neither Admitting nor Denying,.What is That?
So, today I heard again a very interesting sentence, which belongs to this category: “The [party, institution, office, corporation, what have you] is NEITHER ADMITTING NOR DENYING the involvement or the knowledge,” STOP for a second and consider – what on earth does that mean? Neither admitting nor denying???? And if you jump to say it means X or Y, you missed the point.
The only thing we can conclude out of this sentence is that we have no clue what it means. We can speculate that something is not right, that something is confusing, that something is fishy,
Otherwise why would they not simply say: NO, we’re not involved, or NO we don’t have any knowledge, or YES, we know about this, or YES – we are aware,.
So, all is good, no problem then! Why should we be worried? In fact this is not happening in our backyard, in our houses, in our families or at our work place. And who cares about anybody’s Internal Representations, right? Because, what is happening “out there” does not affect us, right? There are multiple meanings of words? So what? I have my own, and that’s all I care about!!! WRONG!!!!!
The fundamental problem here is the fact that we don’t have any comprehension of what do
the talks we hear on TV really mean, of the slogans used by product advertisers, of the political campaigns, and of issues that concern all of us – we think we hear something, but in fact we don’t know! We just know something is “not quite clear” and not quite right”.
What do the advertisements and names of products that we buy mean? What are our cosmetics made of? What do the baby products have inside? Are you happy to hear “Don’t worry, all is good?” or do you want to know what are you actually putting in and on your body? What does the “substantially equivalent” in relation to food really mean? What is the meaning of the word “natural”? What is “organic”? What is “competitive intelligence”? You know what that means? I learned yesterday – It means industrial espionage!!! But it sounds really good – “competitive intelligence!” I’d like some of that!
And while we’re groping our way in the dark, thinking the same old ONE WORD = ONE MEANING for everybody, the multi-layered meaning of words passes by us, and it affects our work, our relationships, our health and ultimately our entire life.
In our NLPCoaching Master Practitioner trainings, we spend some time discussing this very issue – because how do you think you can assist a client if you cannot even understand his/her words but only what you think they tell you?
So, the ultimate question is: What are the consequences of this phenomenon in our Internal Representations, and how are these Internal Representations influencing how we live our lives if we don’t recognize the multiple meaning of words we encounter on our daily activities?
And we’d like to propose that these consequences are incredibly big. It is like living in a dream world of our own making while a differently encoded world is passing us by leaving us behind. Unless we learn to spot it, de-code it, and figure out what is really happening to all of us!
Until next time, be well.
Sources:
Tad James Co. – https://www.nlpcoaching.com/nlp-commmunication.html
Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word
Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_%28fruit%29
Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_%28fruit%29