Structuring Your Thoughts To Direct your Intention

“Language reflects the way we think. If language is vague, thinking will also be vague.”

(Bandler & Grinder, The Structure of Magic, Vol. I)

• It is nothing new that people communicate ineffectively
• What is propositional thinking?
• A bridge with the Meta Model
• A call to action
• Bibliographic references

It is nothing new that people communicate ineffectively

That is why it is essential to recognise one’s communication gaps and work to close them in order to achieve one’s life goals.

As the years go by, and I observe how people change their way of conveying thoughts and experiences, I perceive – in my daily work as a life coach – a growing trend: people express themselves with fewer and fewer words, with unstructured, often fragmentary thoughts.

Many of my clients communicate by using run-on sentences with no explicit subject, or resort to nominalisations that make concepts vague and impersonal. For example, when someone says: “My relationship is in danger”, they rarely specify what relationship they are in, with whom, and what “in danger” actually means. But a relationship, in itself, is not in danger: what happens is that one person’s behaviour towards the other generates dissatisfaction or frustration, to the point where the other may choose to break the link.

In my coaching work, I use the metamodel to help clients recognise inconsistencies in language. It is surprising how difficult it is today to construct clear sentences in which there is an active subject, verb, adverb, complement. And there is often a resistance to abandon adjectives that label people and their functions.

Alongside this difficulty in language, I notice an increasing difficulty in writing. Yet, many of these people spend hours connected to social networks. They tell me they look at content without interacting, except by leaving a like or an emoji. I get the impression that they are losing the desire to use their brains to make autonomous decisions, and prefer content that has already been filtered, digested, thought up elsewhere.

The ability to discern what is quality and what is not is fading. One forgets that people used to write diaries. Real, personal diaries, like the – immortal – one of Anne Frank.

What is propositional thinking?

Propositional thinking is the ability to formulate complex concepts in a structured way, by means of verbal propositions – i.e. sentences with subject, predicate and an internal logic. It is the type of thinking that enables us to construct arguments, describe events clearly and express well-founded opinions.

Its decline occurs when people get used to thinking in images, emotional shortcuts or impersonal sentences, losing the ability to construct an articulate discourse.

All the observations I shared above – nominalisations, subject omissions, judgmental expressions, passive consumption of content – are visible symptoms of this process.ed and rational decision. Only then can you truly break free, leaving no regrets or unresolved issues.

A bridge with the Meta Model

The reflections I have shared so far find a solid anchorage in the pioneering work of Richard Bandler and John Grinder, founders of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). In the 1970s, they identified three major “violations” of language structure: deletions, distortions and generalisations.

“Language reflects the way we think. If language is vague, thinking will be too.“

(Bandler & Grinder, The Structure of Magic, Vol. I)

The Meta Model helps to restore the clarity of language and, with it, the quality of thinking. It is an invitation to mental precision, awareness and expressive depth.

A call to action

Perhaps it is time to go back to writing, to thinking, to really saying what we mean, with clear subjects, active verbs and deep meanings.

I invite you to give it a try: Take pen and paper. Write down a thought, a memory, a moment of your day. Not to post it, but to inhabit the space of true thought again.

Maybe you will discover that inside you there is still a diary waiting to be opened.

And with it, a more authentic voice.

Bibliographic references

• Bandler, R. & Grinder, J. (1976). The Structure of Magic II: A Book About Communication and Change.
• Bandler, R. & Grinder, J. (1975). The Structure of Magic: A Book About Language and Therapy, Volume I.