Hopefully some of you’ve had the chance to test the questions from Part 1 out. If you did, and you got confused at any time using the Meta Model, congratulations! I remember when I first started way back in ’97, I got a lot more misses than hits, but the experience I got learning from those mistakes was invaluable.

Ok, so what do you do if you ever feel like you get stuck at any one time? Hopefully this example will help. Like I said in the previous post, any starting question can lead you to a nice chain of questions that help you get closer to useful specifics.

Friend: “I just don’t feel motivated anymore!” (throws arms up in air)

You: “Well, what do you want to be motivated to do?” (matching tonality and rate of speaking)

Friend: “There’s this massive article I need to write for my blog, but I don’t know why, I just can’t get myself to do it.”

You (aha! The end goal is to get this article written) : “What’s stopping you from just writing it right now?”

Friend: “I told you, I don’t know.”

You (oops! Should have listened more carefully. Never mind, we still have rapport, let’s change strategy) : “Errm, what if you did know?”

Friend (thinking; ‘what a strange question, but I wonder…’) : “Well…I guess it’s because I don’t really feel like I know enough about the topic to write a good article.”

You (hmm…we seem to be getting closer to the root of the problem) : “Oh, so you feel like you need to do some research (let’s pace his need to know more about the topic and lead into a possible solution)? What could you do to learn more about the topic?”

Friend (breathing and rate of speech slowing down) : “I guess I could hit the library…grab a couple of books and start reading them.”

You (yay! A specific task at last!) : “Great! When is the earliest time you could do that?”

Friend: “Now, actually. Say, would you like to go to the library?”

You (at last! A date!) : “It’s a date!”

And you trot off happily to the library with your date who’s feeling a lot more motivated! The points to note here are that you’re aiming to get your friend to break this abstract giant called ‘motivation’ into smaller, specific tasks that have to do with the process of being motivated instead of being lost in an idea (remember we said that ‘motivation’ is not a real thing like a pen but an abstract idea in the previous post?).

Hope this little play-acting was useful. There are other compenents to an artful use of the Meta Model that will be covered in future posts, but for now, whenever & wherever you can, remember to just test it out!