The phrase «unprecedented opportunity» is a reframe in itself, because it directs you to search for the opportunities that always exist, even in the worst disaster.
Another reframe we're always making is «The meaning of your communication is the response that you get.» Most people don't think that way at all. They believe that they know what the meaning of their communication is, and that if somebody else doesn't realize it, it's the other person's fault. If you really believe that the meaning of your communication is the response that you get, there is no way that you can blame others. You simply keep communicating until you get the response that you want. A world without blame is a very altered state for most people!
Ben: People's beliefs, or presuppositions, often give them a lot of trouble. My question is how do you pull out a pin on someone's belief system, and will you give me an illustration of it?
Why would you want to? Let me ask you that, first… . How do you know someone will be better off without a particular belief? You're asking for a model without having an outcome… .
I only pull the pins out of someone's reality when I believe that it will take somebody somewhere useful. I don't agree that doing that with everyone in this seminar is going to be useful. There are people here whose pins I am not going to touch. That's a decision which I make, based on my sensory experience. The only basis on which I can make that decision is knowing what the ramifications of pulling that pin are going to be. Let's say we have somebody in here who bases eighty percent of her experience on certain religious beliefs. What happens if I pull the pin about good and evil? I have no way of knowing what I will end up with! And if I don't know what I am going to end up with, I don't pull pins!
Ben: Well, I'd still like to know what it's like.
Woman: I think you would certainly be safe doing it with Ben, because he is asking for it.
I still won't do it. I don't care what his conscious mind wants. Conscious minds are dumb.
Woman: What if his unconscious mind wanted you to?
Unconscious minds can be just as stupid. I don't want to pick out anybody's in particular, either!
Ben: Well, let's say a man comes to you and you listen to him and it becomes obvious to you that he believes that women are intrinsically out to control his behavior. His mother always controlled him, and now he's thirty–six years old and has never been married because of this limiting belief. It would certainly be useful for him to generalize his belief and realize that all people attempt to control the behavior of others.
Yes, of course. But that's going to be a final step. What I would do first is to metaphorically describe how much it delights me to have a woman try to control my behavior—what a compliment that is. Because if she didn't try to control me, it meant that she wasn't interested in me in any way whatsoever. That's a meaning reframe.
Woman: I assume that this man has been around men who have been trying to control him for a long time and it hasn't bothered him. That's why it doesn't seem as if that is the essential thing to reframe. I don't think he minds being controlled by a man.
Of course not.
Woman: So even if you reframe that it is good to be controlled he still might say «Well, OK, it's good to be controlled and I think I'll choose to be controlled by a man.»
Well, you give people much more credit than I do. I don't think people can usually make those kinds of distinctions. First, I doubt seriously that he would admit that men are out to control women and each other nearly as much—and it would always be as much—as women are.
Woman: But he's been experiencing that and tolerating it and not seeing it.
Yes, but that's just a lack of sensory experience. His lack of sensory experience is going to be based upon all the presuppositions in his behavior. It's like eye accessing cues: if you know about them, you are much more apt to see them. He knows that women are controlling, so he's more apt to notice it when a woman is manipulating. However, a man will be able to control his behavior like crazy, because he won't notice it.
All I want to change is his internal response. Now his response to being controlled by a woman is negative. If I can change that to a positive response, then it will be possible for me to do what I want, which is to get him to control people and to do so gracefully and expressively.
Man: Last night I was really glad I watched a show about the feminist movement. If I hadn't watched that show, I wouldn't have realized how well women can control men.
Well, I find that the more women get into the feminist movement, the less they can control men. That has been my experience. It's one of the disservices that the feminist movement has done to women. I think we're now going through a phase where women are going to keep some of the benefits that they got out of the feminist movement, like more money when they work and not having to go through certain rituals that they don't want to go through. But women are going to get back into some of the groovy stuff, like fancy clothes. They had a fashion show on television the other morning, showing all the new fashions. Women's clothes are really becoming women's clothes again—great things with capes hanging down, and feathers, and all kinds of long trailing things. Feminists can't wear those.
Now, who's limited? Whenever you say «We will not do this," then you lose. If you say «I'm going to do it when I feel like it, and when I don't feel like it, I'm not going to do it," then you've got choice and you've got some basis on which to be in control.
Man: With the man who believes that women want to control him, would it be an appropriate strategy to get him to notice the ways in which he was controlling people, even though he is a man?
No. Absolutely not. Your question is «Would it be appropriate to get this man to consciously see or feel that he is in fact controlling people, without knowing about it. So perhaps women don't know about it either.» And my answer is «Absolutely not, that's the wrong approach.» This is a choice about the syntax, the order in which you do things. If you do things in the wrong order, you make it really difficult for yourself. If you succeeded in doing it, what would be the result of convincing him that for years he had been controlling people without knowing about it?
Man: Probably guilt. He's just like his mother.
Right! Guilt. He'd go straight to a psychiatrist.
Man: Then you could reframe his belief about guilt.
You could do that. But if you change the meaning of control ahead of time, it's much easier. If you first make controlling into something good, then he'll never have to feel guilty. And it will be a lot easier to reframe controlling if it's not him doing it. If you reframe so that he begins to notice that the women who are trying to control him are after his body, then controlling becomes something that's worth having. Then later you say «By the way, this counts for you, too.» The syntax, the order of what you do makes it easy for him, and it makes it easy for you.