The Neurological Levels
The term "Neurological Levels" (also called Logical Levels), first coined by Gregory Bateson and the model was created by Robert Dilts. The logical levels are a tool which allows us to analyze our lives and situations in our life through different perspectives. Each logical level is a different point of view which is also connected to the other levels and they are arranged in a hierarchy of importance.
For many of us, the logical levels work outside of our conscious and they have a huge impact on the quality of our lives (whether we are conscious of it or not).
Every goal you want to achieve or a problem in your life bothering you is within one of those logical levels. Once we understand this model we can use it to understand where our problem standing and use different thinking levels in order to solve it.
The levels are visualized in a pyramid, from the basic and superficial at the bottom to the deepest and significant at the top. Although, a change in any of those levels can be impactful and affect the other levels. Still, the higher the level which changes happen in, usually the change is bigger.
Environment
The environment level is your surroundings. The place you are in, the people you interact with, conditions, results and basically everything from the "outside" which has some effect on us.
Imagine two situations in which you are a person trying to lose weight. In the first situation, you open the fridge and see cookies, in the second situation you open the fridge and there's only healthy food.
The person without the cookies in his fridge has a lower chance of eating a cookie at that moment right?
The change in the environment the person made led him to a change in behavior (eating healthy food). The connection between those two levels is simple and clear.
Behaviour
The Behavior level is our actions, responses and simply our behaviors with a certain content. I'm sure that I don't need to explain the importance of behavior.
Again with the example of losing weight, the person who eats healthy and goes to the gym four times a week will have much better results than a person who is lazy and eating junk right?
Our behavior eventually creates capabilities. When we do something we gain experience and knowledge which is translated to what we can and cannot do.
Capabilities
The capabilities level is our skills, abilities and everything we are able to do. Everything you have done until that day, over time, created capabilities.
Over time behaviors create capabilities. The person who trained and ate healthy learned a skill set, he has more knowledge on nutrition, health, and physical exercise which allowed him to stay healthy and lose weight again if he would like to.
There's a big importance to capabilities in our life, every goal we have demands certain capabilities to achieve. The capabilities we have, effect what we believe in. If we know what possible for us we believe we can do it.
Beliefs & Values
The Beliefs & Values level is simply what we believe and think about the world and how it operates. Sometimes people like to reference it to our map or the internal representation.
In our lives, we formed beliefs about what possible or impossible, what moral and immoral, necessary or unnecessary and so on.
Those beliefs have a direct influence on our lives. If we believe that making a lot of money is materialistic and immoral, then we will have no motivation and it will prevent us from creating behaviors and capabilities which will allow us to do so.
We can see that our beliefs affect our capabilities and also our capabilities affect our beliefs, like I said at the beginning of the post, all the levels connect and affect each other.
Identity
The Identity level is our beliefs about ourselves. It's our self-esteem, your sense of self, what you think about yourself and who you think you are.
It can be your job, roles you take in life like husband or father, religion or descriptions of your self-worth. A man who is saying to himself "Im so fat and soo lazy", will have a hard time trying to change on the other levels because in his core he will always pull himself to verify the belief.
This is what we believe we are, the impact of those beliefs is huge! Every change on this level will automatically have an effect on all the other levels. Most of the successful people identified themselves as successful, entrepreneurs and businessman before they gained huge success.
A change on this level will automatically create new beliefs which will create more capabilities which will create more behaviors...
Vision
The Vision level is our belief of what is our "purpose" or "mission", not all of us have a vision and for sure not all of us need them but the vision is the most powerful influence on our lives!
For what or for who you are doing everything?
I am sure you saw religious people who believe that the word has to be spread and they dedicate their life to it.
Or maybe a vegan which decided that every person eating meat is a murderer and dedicate his life to be a warrior protecting the animals.
Those examples are a bit negative and extreme but a vision can also be positive. A president who wants to change the world and find a way for his people to live a good life is an example of a positive vision.
A change in this level is the most powerful and impactful and once someone changes or adopt a new vision, his whole life will change dramatically! Although a change in the higher levels is more unlikely and on this level is very rare.
Question Table
Identify the level of the problem
Let's say that we want more wealth but our bank account is no very happy. We need to go over the levels and see where we are standing.
We will have to start asking ourselves questions to direct us to the level of the problem. Maybe the place where we stay is not fit for our goal, maybe the people around us do not have a positive influence on us?
No? go to the next step, what do you do? Have you the behavior of a successful person? maybe you spend too much or maybe you don't work hard enough or in the right job? what can you do?
And you keep pushing yourself to the next level to see where the problem resides. Whether it's your behaviors, capabilities or you just don't believe in yourself. Once you Identify where the problem is, you can work with the other levels to change it!
It's most effective when you do it with another person who asks you the questions because he could give you more feedback, we aren't always aware of everything and another person looking at thing is another insight.
What is NLP?
Type Of Thinkers - Which are you?
Breaking Down Reality
🙂Thank you for reading!🙂
Did you like this post?
Interested in Philosophy, Motivation, and NLP?
Want to see more content like this?
Make sure you
This is a great article and you have put in a lot of work. I think vision is critical as this will give direction to our lives.
Sometimes, and sometimes it can misdirect ^^
Thank you for the comment!
This gem of a post was discovered by the OCD Team!
Reply to this comment if you accept, and are willing to let us share your gem of a post! By accepting this, you have a chance to receive extra rewards and one of your photos in this article may be used in our compilation post!
You can follow @ocd – learn more about the project and see other Gems! We strive for transparency.
Thank you so much! :D
Thanks @paps I found this a useful introduction to the Logical levels and look forward on how you are going to expand on the subject. I think this is a good subject for personal introspection.
I have two particular areas of interest the "I am" question. I "have been" many things in the past and sometimes these roles hold me back. "I am" an engineer, but I don't do engineering. "I am" MBA but don't administer any business (other than personal budgeting)". "I am" a consultant and trainer though my jobs now are infrequent.
"I am" a photographer and traveler, though I don't really acknowledge that.
So a useful dimension in change is recognising the "I was" and managing the new "I am".
The second part of interest is the question of how other people force your perception of identity. We can see this happening all over, with the political fractionation in USA, Canada, UK, Europe and elsewhere. It seems that people are having identity programmed into them.
This identity might well then limit their vision, as described in the videos. If their vision is limited, then it seems to me that the forcing of identity onto people is enacting someone else's vision.
We shall see if this is a phase and people wake up.
On the question of belief I like to refer to Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There". A metaphor for looking at reality and personal reflection also.
"I can't believe that!" said Alice.
"Can't you?" the Queen said in a pitying tone. "Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes."
Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said: "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
How many did I believe today? Not many I suppose, I had an early breakfast.
Awesome comment! I upvoted it in order for more people to see, you should help me and upvote yourself too.
I agree with you on the first point, at the end the " I am" we hear in our brain is our identity, but sometimes it's not that easy to just change the Identity (though it's possible!). We can ask ourselves what I want to be, try to look at it like we are not a piece of art but the artist! Step by step work with our behaviours and to form believes at the end that will change our identity.
Thank you for great comment again :)
Sure. Keep posting and make it interesting and useful for everyone.
I will!
I waited until the end of the night to read this so that I could really take my time and give it my full attention. I gave it my all and I am glad that I did. This certainly is a well thought out post.
The pyramid was most excellent and admittedly, I love to read on psychology and neurology. So little is really understood by so many and it is articles like this that are friendly for understanding.
Thank you for pointing me in this direction! Unfortunately, my voting power is 30% and my vote is worth a whopping 0 but I will leave you with tip! and just know that I would have left you 100% vote if I had it.
Well done - Denise
Thank you so much, Denise! The fact you read my post makes me much happier than the fact you voted :)
You made a good point, I will reach more people as long as I can make it simple with more examples.
"Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler" - Albert Einstein
Thank you again for reading my post!! :D
The pleasure was totally mine! Keep them coming!
I will!
paps, you're gonna get on the trending page with stuff like this man, I'm serious. Really liked the vision part of the pyramid, I think I realigned my vision with some different goals and the changes have been huge. For example, joining steemit was a result of that vision change. Keep up the excellent work.
Thank you so much for the kind words, I really hope that this post will reach trending :D
For me as well, getting to steemit was a result of a change in beliefs!
@originalworks
The @OriginalWorks bot has determined this post by @paps to be original material and upvoted it!
To call @OriginalWorks, simply reply to any post with @originalworks or !originalworks in your message!
To nominate this post for the daily RESTEEM contest, upvote this comment! The user with the most upvotes on their @OriginalWorks comment will win!
For more information, Click Here!
Congratulations, you have won the @OriginalWorks daily resteem contest.
Spamming comments is frowned upon by the community.
Continued comment spamming may result in action from the cheetah bot.
YAYYY
Thank you :)
I have been educated. Thanks
This post recieved an upvote from minnowpond. If you would like to recieve upvotes from minnowpond on all your posts, simply FOLLOW @minnowpond
Great post
Thank you buddy!
wow
good post
Thank you!
This post has received a 0.22 % upvote from @drotto thanks to: @banjo.
This post received a 10% vote by @minnowsupport courtesy of @gmuxx from the Minnow Support Project ( @minnowsupport ). Join us in Discord.
Upvoting this comment will help support @minnowsupport.
Interesting read. Unfortunately for you, my voting power is in the crapper right now, but I gave it all I had, and I agree with Muxxy, this is good stuff.
NLP always makes me think of the nam-shubs NLP "viruses" of the novel Snowcrash
Thank you! :D
I have never heard of this novel, gonna check it out!
Such a breath of fresh air to read. I will re-read later. Great post. Psychology and neurology interest me greatly.
Thank you for reading!
This is my passion :D
A pleasant post. @paps followedd
Thank you :)
Brilliant article
Thank you buddy (cool :P)
welcome
Very interesting stuff. Keep up the good work.
Thank you!
Amazingly detailed
Great content. Need time to get through this. Resteemed!
take your time ^^
Very philosophical had to cudgel my brain a little to grasp the theory :) @paps Thank you Upvoted!
Thank you very much!
You are most welcome!
A very well done post Congrats! followed, resteem and upvoted
Thank you brother!
Excellent Post! Loved it! Will be following this blog going forward!
Thank you!
Yeah, I have been checking and you denied me an upvote though you commented
Congratulations @paps!
Your post was mentioned in the hit parade in the following category:
Awesome :)
Great.
well done paps, once again!
Thank you :) I will!
Great post. Upvoted and following u as always. Regards Nainaz
Thank you!
Hi @paps! @dswigle is sending you 0.1 SBD tip and @tipU upvote
:)
@tipU - send tips by writing tip! in the comment, get share of the profit :)This is the first long post in english that kept my 100% attention and comprehension until the end. I had never heard about this and is really interesting! I will try to apply it in my life :D
Thanks for this post!
My pleasure!
Thank you for reading!
this is really nice post you are so hardworking man
I like your post. This is well explain analytical philosophy of life. Many people forget that they are the change.
Thank you for the comment and reading my post!
As I always say "You are not a piece of art, you are the artist!" - you can shape the way you think.
And what is Psychology in its base if not analytical philosophy :P
Thank you again!
great post
Very interesting and insightful post @paps - I didn't know Bateson was the one who came up with neurological levels. The map, although just a heuristic device, is an important one and to be honest it is one that really resonates a lot with me since I am working on beliefs change. What really struck me is the differentiation between beliefs about the world and the beliefs about oneself (Identity). This makes a lot of practical sense to have them defined separately when working on oneself. At first I thought that the word identity is ambiguous as clearing false identities is for me part of personal and spiritual growth. However on second thought, I quickly realised that one has to see it as getting rid of false and counter productive identities and clearing the way for a more authentic identity aligned with one's purpose. Thanks!
Yes, Bateson came up with "levels of learning" but Dilts is the one who made the "Logical Levels" model.
My next post will probably be on the "levels of learning".
BTW if you are interested in the whole "personal map" Idea you should check my post ""The map is not the territory" - Breaking Down Reality".
Thank you for reading, that means a lot!
nice!
Hi @joe.public An interesting point. It also illustrates that models are models. They are not themselves reality. Putting the hierarchy in a pyramid form tends towards the form of Maslow representation of needs. This is a useful construct. I have also seen logical levels presented in a different format, such as a series of concentric circles with vision (or spiritual focus) as the centre. This suggests that the environment can still be influencing you wherever you are at the logical level. I suppose that the model used leads on to whatever next strategy is proposed for change.
Hi, Joe, thank you for the kind words :)
You can't really change the hierarchy, it's there to show us the impact that each of those has on our lives and the connection between them. For example, enough change in our environment will have an effect on our behavior right? and with enough behavior, we start gaining experience (capabilities) right? and with enough....
You get the Idea :)
What you are trying to say is that you feel environment has a huge impact on your life and it is true and it can also be part of your values and beliefs but believe me that if you change your identity (the person you believe you are) then you will change everything from your beliefs to your environment!
For example, if you take on yourself the identity of Christian man all of the sudden, then there will be more Christian people around you and the church will become a big part of your environment.
Everything from the top can change anything at the bottom, also anything at the bottom can make a change on the levels at the top but it will take more time!
I also have a post on positive environment you might check :)
Thank you for commenting and supporting my post ^^
I'm happy you are satisfied with my response :)
Thank you for your comment, what you said right now align really good with something called the hierarchy of needs
basic survival needs are at the bottom as you can see but the other is important and without them any person can fall into harmful mindset easily.
I will!