Arslan Larik

Understanding Our World Model: The Essential Elements

Exploring the Key Components of Our World Model with Timeline Therapy

The model of the world signifies an individual’s beliefs, values, and learnings about the world. Each of us has our own bar code, our own internal map of what is real or not.
We have our own unique world model through which we perceive and understand the happenings around us. Our world model is composed of many components. Here in this blog, I will be sharing with you two out of the six essential elements characterizing our world models as suggested in the book, Strategic Family Therapy by Cloe Madanes.
1. Our core beliefs
2. Our key decisions

The first component comprises the beliefs that limit us:

We all have a system of beliefs. What is impressive is that the greater part of us never deliberately set this framework up. It has been downloaded to us over the years from our parents, teachers, peers, and the general culture.

These beliefs direct our decisions and shape our behaviors towards everything around us, including our family, work, and community. Asking the right questions is the key to becoming aware of a person’s belief system and, hence, their world view.

The one question that I feel can profoundly enable understanding a person’s belief system is asking what life is according to him or her. Some people will answer that life is a race. We’ve all heard this phrase in the movie Three Idiots, haven’t we? If a person thinks that life is just a race, they will similarly be thinking about excelling throughout everyday life and never really reflecting on or enjoying the moment at all. They will consistently be pursuing attaining better grades in education or securing more enormous salaries because, for them, life is mainly about winning and losing, passing and failing. Such individuals will mostly be afraid of failure.

Here is a drill for all those reading this blog: ask yourself:

What is life for you? And write down your answers to the question “Life is…”; I guarantee you will learn a lot about yourself from your answers.

To conclude on this point, this is something I want you to read carefully: Many people have noticed me saying, change your story, change your life.” But now I also say, Change the metaphor, and you will change your model of the world, hence your story. “We must understand the metaphors that we link to our lives, and the stories determine all the transformations in our lives. There is a big difference between saying Life is a game” and Life is suffering.”

The second component of the world model comprises the key decisions:

We make many decisions during our lives’ early or primitive years. Let me give you an example from the book.

Madanes writes:

Often, decisions that are made early in childhood persist into adulthood, long after they have become obsolete, and interfere with our relationships and our happiness. A man might decide as a boy that boys do not cry, and blocking his tears might block all his vulnerability and sensitivity. When it is time to be sensitive to his wife and his children, he may not be able to do it.

People take learnings and make decisions that repress and block certain areas of their personality while developing others. But one must understand that what may work to survive during one phase of life often becomes redundant during another stage of life and impedes constructing healthy relationships. So think about it: what is the key decision you made in your life? It may be about a job decision that you made way back, and now it is controlling every aspect of your life. As students or practitioners of NLP, you can change all of the answers and key decisions effectively by carefully implementing the interventions of Time Line Therapy.

TIMELINE THERAPY:

Your ‘Time Line’ is how you unconsciously store your memories or how you unconsciously know the difference between a memory from the past and a projection of the future. Behavioural change in an individual takes place at an unconscious level. People don’t change consciously. The Time Line Therapy process allows you to work at the unconscious level and release the effects of past negative experiences and change “inappropriate” programming in minutes rather than days, months, or years.

Time Line Therapy is a collection of techniques that allow you to gain emotional control over your life.

So think about it: What critical decision did you take as a child that still stops you from creating the life you deserve?

If you want to know more about the components of our world models, wait for the next part.

Conclusion

In the Conclusion of the understanding our world model consists of several essential elements that help us comprehend the world around us. These elements include an individual’s beliefs, values, and learnings. By developing these skills, we can better understand and navigate the complex and diverse world we live in.

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