Patterns part 1

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This is the first article in a series in which I aim to focus on the concept of patterns, what they are, how to notice them and how to utilise them appropriately. Part of the reason I’m starting this series of posts on patterns is to track some of my own learning’s and ideas as well as present some of the fundamental ways of thinking in order to become better at noticing, tracking, utilising and changing patterns in human experience.

Patterns are something we find in almost all walks of life and usually without even being consciously aware. They exist in furniture design, architecture, programming, language, decision making, and just about every other activity in life.

A pattern can be described as an event or object that is recurring and can be thought of as being elements of a set (or a collection of things) that repeat in a predictable manner. It’s often said that a pattern occurs when one of these events or objects occurs five or more times. It’s possible for this number to be less than five and for the pattern noticed to stand up however what usually happens with events/objects occurring less than five times is that the persons ability to accurately predict the next outcome is usually slightly off or the pattern becomes anti-pattern (ineffective).

When Richard Bandler and John Grinder modelled people in the field of therapy, one of the first things they were looking for were patterns of behaviour that great therapists like Virginia Satir and Milton H Erickson consistently exhibited. These patterns were the first part of the models that came from them (Meta Model and Patterns of the hypnotic techniques of Milton H Erickson) and a persons ability to notice, track, sort and eliminate patterns is to me, one of the key abilities that distinguish great NLPers from mediocre ones. Virginia once told Richard that the greatest driver in human beings is not that of survival but that of familiarity. That is, people will go to extreme lengths to maintain the things that are familiar to them, sometimes even to the extent that they’d rather kill themselves rather than face a life without someone they once loved.

This is interesting to us as NLPers because it offers a kind of indication as to why people maintain the problems they often do instead of just changing them and feeling good. It’s often more familiar for a person to maintain the generalisations they do because not only are there patterns in sets but there are also patterns inside of patterns (which then makes the parent pattern the set). One of the ideas I’ve had about how people maintain their problems is to notice how the patterns in the problem a person has, mimic the overall pattern of the items in the same set and to notice how all of these things are interacting all at the same time. If you’ve ever spent much time working with people who think they have problems, you’ll probably be aware of the phenomenon where by they start with one problem which then turns into two problems and then three and before you know it, they’re overwhelming you with information about a billion problems in their life that “if only I could get over”.

To me, the issue here isn’t that a person has all these billions of problems and needs each one to be resolved for them, it’s more that the problems exhibit a specific pattern and that pattern is similar to the one holding together all of the other issues that they think they’re having.

When we talk about patterns in NLP we can do so at different scopes or chunks. Behavioural patterns can be simply patterns in large chunks of behaviour and within that there can be Meta program patterns, submodality patterns, linguistic patterns, sequencing patterns (in meta programs, submodalities etc etc). All of these are as useful as the purpose we use them for.

The first step with patterns is to be able to recognise them. Most people when they first become interested in NLP begin by noticing modality predicates or sensory based language as it’s known. What this does is start the practitioner off right away with noticing patterns. You start to ask yourself, what modality is this person mostly speaking in and how can I adjust my communication to match theirs. Personally I don’t tend to pace this way and I think this type of learning is a sneaky way of getting people to spot patterns when otherwise they might think they can’t do that kind of thing….and I like sneaky .

The more you start to notice the different patterns being presented when you talk or work with people, the more easily you’ll be able to predict what comes next, utilise the patterns or simply replace those patterns with new, more useful patterns.

When Gabe Guerrero talks about building a literal model of the person in your mind almost as if that person is a cartoon character in your mind, one of the purposes (of which there are many) of this and a real benefits is to be able to take the patterns you’ve noticed and to calculate from that, how the person might respond to certain things/contexts. This means that you can begin to simulate in your mind how the person you’re talking too or working with might respond to specific things you do and then you can test out those ideas and adjust your predictions as necessary.

Having noticed patterns and run certain simulations in your mind you can more easily begin to notice which patterns are the ones that are relevant to the behaviour and which ones are irrelevant. In modelling we have something similar called elegance, that is, reducing the number of steps to only those that are required to get the (usually) maximum result.

What Richard and John were doing when they modelled the first therapists was to distil from the patterns they observed, the ones which were relevant for the changes being made in the human being.

There are patterns in everything from language to submodalities, strategies to Meta program sequencing. The art is in being able to notice them, track them, calculate from them and utilise them in ways move in the direction you want your client to go.

This is just the first article in a series on patterns and as one of the most fundamental concepts in NLP, Architecture, Programming, Designing and Engineering, I know that the more we practice noticing what’s there and being able to calculate “what else”, the more we’re going to continue the development of something I personally have gained a lot from. As humans we have an obligation to keep improving, developing, loving and smiling and that obligation doesn’t stop at Richard Bandler and John Grinder.

What’s Next?

Love, Jamie