Scaling and Stretching

Scaling

In medical dramas, you might see a doctor ask a patient to rate their pain: “How much does it hurt? Zero means no pain, ten means unbearable pain.” What the doctor is doing here is called scaling. In science and technology, we scale voltage, current, distance, weight, brightness, and economic growth. But you can also scale any analog characteristic of a state: the level, degree, or depth of joy, focus, fear, happiness, resentment, trance, motivation, and many others.

Scaling helps you better understand and manage your state.

Let’s practice a bit of self-calibration using scaling.

Recall a pleasant situation and rate it from 0 to 10 in terms of how pleasant it was:

• 0 — neutral state
• 10 — the best possible, nothing could be better

You can use any scale you like: 0 to 10, 0 to 100 (if you prefer percentages), or 1 to 5. Was that situation a 3, 5, or 6 in pleasantness?

Pick another situation with a specific emotion, for example, joy. What’s your level of joy in percentage: 20%, 40%, 90%? Where 0% is neutral and 100% is the maximum possible joy.

The principle is simple: scaling is matching the intensity of a state to a number on an imaginary scale.

Assessment

Scaling can be used to better understand your state. Clearly, being interested at a level 3 and at a level 9 are very different. It gives you much more specificity. Here are some examples of how to use it:

Wheel of Life Balance

You’ve probably seen this tool in trainings, articles, blogs, or Instagram images. It was “invented” by Paul J. Meyer, but now it’s used everywhere in various interpretations and contexts.

One version: a circle divided into 6-10 sectors with scales. Each sector represents a life context: work, relationships, rest, hobbies, etc. You rate your satisfaction in each sector: work — 9, personal life — 2, rest — 1, health — 7. Then you look at the results, realize where you’re lacking, and decide which context(s) to work on. It’s a very visual way to assess your life.

Goal Setting

Scaling is also useful for setting goals. Not just “I want to be more confident,” but “I want to be 60% more confident,” or at an 8 out of 10. This is much more specific.

You get a scale of change:

• Self-confidence is currently at 3, I want it at 9
• Average anxiety is at 8, I want it at 2
• I’m 20% happy now, I want to be 100% happy

It’s often helpful to go through the scale and define what changes at each level, checking for ecological consequences (i.e., making sure the changes are healthy and sustainable). For example:

• If your confidence is at 5, how does your life change? What about at 6? At 10?

Think about which of your characteristics you’d like to change: focus, persistence, laziness, attractiveness, organization. Pick one, rate your current and desired level, break the change process into 3-4 steps, and explore them. This is a concrete way to investigate change, which can be very motivating.

For example:

• “I want to increase my organization: right now I’m at a 3, I want to be at 10. My life is a mess, I’m always late, I don’t keep promises. My relationships are chaotic.”
• “If I’m at 10, I’ll be super organized, focused, everything in its place. But I might lose spontaneity and creativity. Maybe 10 is too much. 7 or 8 is better.”
• “At 8, I’m organized but still have room for spontaneity and creativity.”
• “At 5, I’m more organized but still a bit scattered. At 6, I know what I want in each situation, maybe I find a stable relationship, dress more professionally, get a raise, and replace chaos with the ability to find new and interesting things.”
• “At 7, I’m serious but still have inner freedom and creativity. 8 is too much; 7 is optimal.”

Increasing one useful trait can decrease others, so it’s important to find the optimal level. For example, if your perseverance was always at 2, you might think 10 would make life perfect, but you might find that too much perseverance makes life boring. Maybe 6 is just right.

Next, move on to identifying resources, accessing them, and adding them to the situation, following the “9-step change model.”

Quality Equalizer

Similar to the “Wheel of Life,” you can create a “Quality Equalizer.”

1. Choose your relevant qualities: focus, persistence, communication, creativity, discipline, etc. It’s best to pick positive qualities you want to strengthen.
2. List them in a column, drawing a scale from 0 to 10 next to each (or any scale you prefer).
3. Mark your current and desired level for each quality.
4. Imagine yourself with these new settings, associate with the new state, and see if you like it. If not, adjust the settings.
5. Check the ecological impact of the change.
6. Move on to the next steps of the “9-step change model.”

NLP Skill Levels

You can also assess your skills in any area, such as NLP. You can draw them as a star, a circle, or a set of scales as in the previous exercise.

The “Skill Star” is organized so that each point is defined differently for different contexts. For each context, there are one or more examples to help you build the model. Choose your own NLP contexts: communication, goal setting, consulting, negotiation, personal development, education, modeling, etc.

Use the star as you would the “Wheel of Life” — rate your skill level in comparison to your desired level. Since all seven skills are interconnected, you can spot the “weakest link” that holds back the whole system. Remember the basic NLP presupposition: “The weakest element of the system determines its stability.” Focus on developing your weak points, as they create the “bottleneck.”

• Goal: Everything related to goal setting and exploring consequences. For example, in personal development, it’s the ability to set your own goals; in consulting, helping someone set session goals; in negotiations, defining the intentions of each side.
• Information Gathering: Calibration, managing focus, adjusting perception filters. In self-hypnosis, calibrating unconscious signals; in communication, calibrating another’s state; in consulting, gathering information at specific points (e.g., SCORE); in education, managing attention and perception filters for better learning.
• Information Delivery: The ability to convey information to others or yourself, including rapport and matching. In communication, demonstrating nonverbal messages; in public speaking, clarity and analog marking; in negotiations, arguing your position; in hypnosis, constructing effective suggestions.
• Assessment: Evaluating information: good, right, like, legal, and re-evaluating if needed. Also includes decision-making. In personal development, awareness of your attitude toward important things; in negotiations, evaluating offers and making decisions; in modeling, choosing the most significant pattern; in public speaking, demonstrating information assessment.
• Model: Creating useful maps. In public speaking, good metaphors and plans; in consulting, modeling the client’s problem and solution; in modeling, creating a model of success; in education, planning your learning.
• State: Calibrating and managing your own and others’ states. In personal development, controlling your emotions and self-motivation; in public speaking, managing group state; in consulting, maintaining your own resourceful state and motivating the client; in hypnosis, inducing and managing trance.
• Learning: Learning in the broad sense — creating and breaking patterns, conveying information. Most psychotherapy fits here: unlearning the unnecessary and learning the necessary. In consulting, solving client problems; in public speaking, effectively delivering information; in education, effective learning strategies; in modeling, describing mastery in a way that can be learned; in hypnosis, creating effective change metaphors.

State Characteristics

Scaling can also be used to record a state. Choose characteristics, define the maximum and minimum for each, and you have a good way to document it. You just need enough characteristics to recall the state. I recommend speed, energy, and valence (positive/negative) — for most people, these three are enough to describe and control a state. For valence, use a scale from -5 to +5.

• Focus: energy 3, speed 2, valence 0
• Happiness: energy 4, speed 5, valence +4
• Anger: energy 7, speed 6, valence -4

You can use a similar approach for submodalities: brightness 8, distance 2.5 meters, contrast 4, color saturation 5; volume 6, pitch 3, sharpness 2, speed 7.

Stretching

Now let’s briefly move away from scaling and talk about another approach — stretching.

Stretching is a way to expand your usual boundaries.

For an analog characteristic, stretching means exploring the extremes: maximum and minimum confidence, intensity, brightness, or volume. But stretching can also mean exploring different frames of a situation: sets of viewpoints, beliefs, assessments, and so on.

For example, when practicing reframing, you stretch your assessments: why you like something, why you don’t, why you’re neutral.

Look at It Differently

Consider a difficult situation from different perspectives. To help, you can use a set of “role” cards. There’s no deep meaning to the set — just nine options that came to mind quickly. You can create your own or add more.

The game is simple. If you want to reassess a situation, relationship, or plan, draw 3-5 cards and describe the situation from each role’s point of view. You can play in a group: the leader sets the situation, and others describe it based on randomly drawn cards.

Example: A guy didn’t congratulate his girlfriend on a holiday, she’s upset but wants to work through it.

• Philosopher: “Holiday greetings are an ancient tradition. But it’s just a tradition, something without rational explanation. Someone is supposed to say certain words and give dead flowers. Don’t you find that funny?”
• Writer: “I think this could be a short story. A girl meets an interesting guy, they go out, flowers, Valentine’s Day is coming, she imagines what he’ll give her, where they’ll go. She waits all day, he doesn’t call. She dreams, then gets angry, then worries, then thinks he dumped her. She wants to call but doesn’t, gets mad at herself. Her focus shifts from him to herself, she starts self-reflecting, reassessing her life, realizes how dependent she is on others’ opinions. She calms down, decides to be independent, and then the phone rings and she runs to answer.”
• Romantic: “It’s so sweet — you’re worried, you care. He forgot, and you realize how important he is to you, that it’s real love. Then comes the argument, making up, a candlelit dinner, and beautiful sex at the end!”

Modality Shift Technique

This technique was developed for changing beliefs. The key element is stretching across modalities.

When we think about actions, we use modalities, expressed in words and phrases: can, must, able, could, would like, possible, forced, etc. Depending on the modality, the future seems more or less certain. Compare: “I must get up at 7:00 tomorrow,” “I can get up at 7:00 tomorrow,” “Maybe I’ll get up at 7:00 tomorrow.” If you think you “must,” there’s only one option and it’s hard to change. If you “can,” it’s more open. If it’s “maybe,” there are many options.

The future is different from the past because it’s not set — and how you think about it shapes your behavior. Necessity (must, have to, forced) makes you act in only one way; possibility (maybe, can, able) gives you choice. But neither way is always best; it depends on your goals and context. For example, if your goal is to get up at 7:00, thinking of it as a necessity may help. But maybe you’re more motivated by “I can get up at 7:00 and get a lot done.”

If you think others “must” do something and they don’t, you feel negative emotions — irritation, anger, resentment. These emotions signal violated expectations. Some expectations are more useful than others. One way to make life more pleasant is to learn to think about the future in a way that suits you, with the right modality.

Generally, modality expresses attitude or assessment. There are three main groups:

• Information channel: told, saw, felt, remembered
• Assessment: important, unnecessary, annoying, delighted
• Frames or boundaries: allowed, legal, exists, can, can’t, able

For working with future images, the last two are most useful.

• Assessment: important, necessary, good, bad, pleasing, delightful, disgusting, offensive — sets the attractiveness of an event but doesn’t affect its certainty.
• Necessity: must, have to, impossible, forced, necessary — increases certainty and makes the future hard to change.
• Possibility: can, able, not required, don’t have to — makes the future less certain and easier to change.

Probability also affects certainty: definitely, certainly, maybe, likely, unlikely, could be.

Take something you plan to do and think about it as:

• I must do it
• I’m forced to do it
• I can do it
• I’m able to do it
• I’d like to do it
• I will do it
• I might do it
• I definitely will do it

Notice how your feelings and inner voice change with each phrase.

1. Situation: This technique is best for “unjustified expectations”: he should have done it but didn’t; she had to be on time; he should have made that offer; I must be a real man; they should have done it well. The stricter your expectations, the greater your disappointment when they’re not met. Our sense of certainty about an event shapes our actions — if something “must” happen, why bother trying? This is especially true for expectations of others — they “must” only in our minds, and may not even know about it. If we rely on their actions being set, we don’t try to influence them, and feel anger or disappointment if they don’t meet our expectations. There’s also the variant of demands on the world: “it must be this way,” “fate owes me this time.” This usually leads to maximum disappointment — the world or fate rarely owes anyone anything.
2. Current Attitude: Think about your expectation, imagine it sensorially — as images, sounds, feelings. Say the phrase that describes your expectation: “they must love me,” “she has to care about my health.”
3. Stretching: Try different modalities for your expectation, such as: would like, forced, it’d be nice, can, maybe, definitely, will. Notice how your sensory representation of the situation changes.
4. Optimal Option: Choose the most suitable attitude.
5. Ecological Check: Consider whether the new attitude could harm you. If so, go back and pick another option.
6. Reinforcement: Integrate the new attitude into your life. See what changes, how your feelings shift.

State Management

Combining scaling and stretching gives you a powerful tool for state control. We’ve already used this when practicing managing speed and energy. Here are the general principles:

There are several approaches. You can recall situations where you experienced extreme states and create a transition scale, or gradually increase/decrease the state until you reach the extremes.

Adrenaline Barometer

The name isn’t perfect — a barometer measures pressure but doesn’t control it. “Adrenaline regulator” might be better, but the idea is the same.

This technique lets you control your level of emotional arousal or energy. You can use it for any characteristic: emotion level, trance depth, voice pitch, etc. The “adrenaline barometer” is a way to manage your “energy” level. Here’s a slightly different scaling method than with energy and speed.

1. Imaginary Scale: Imagine a scale on the floor: zero is minimum, twenty is maximum. Why twenty? Tradition. Make the scale about three to four meters long so you can walk along it comfortably.
2. Stretching: Get into the extreme states. Stand at “zero” and recall a sleepy state: you’re almost asleep, your inner voice is slow and drawn out, breathing is slow and deep, gaze is unfocused. Feel it. Now, bypassing the scale, go to the maximum point. Recall a state of extreme emotional excitement, preferably positive or neutral: a soccer fan shouting “goooal!”, the feeling during a parachute jump or roller coaster ride, or before a first date or wedding. Relive it as intensely as possible! Choose positive or neutral experiences; high adrenaline in fear isn’t a good model.
3. Smooth Transition: Now walk back and forth along the scale, making your state change smoothly from minimum to maximum. Usually, three or four passes are enough. At first, changes may be abrupt — adrenaline stays low until near the maximum, or high until near the minimum.
4. Control Metaphor: For easier management, invent a metaphor: a knob, lever, etc. Link the adrenaline level to the position of the control — minimum at zero, maximum at the end. Walk the scale, mentally turning the knob to the desired value, or just turn the knob and evoke the corresponding arousal level.
5. Practice: Practice the skill. Try moving through various states: 2, 4, 8, 5, 3, 12, 18, 1, 16, etc. Pick a number, enter the state, stay in it for ten seconds, pick the next number. Spend five to seven minutes on the whole exercise. Next, practice holding a state: pick a level (e.g., twelve) and maintain it for ten minutes. Gradually practice in more challenging contexts: first at home, then outside, then in public, then in social situations, and finally in stressful situations. This is a skill, and it needs practice. Usually, 15-20 minutes a day for a week is enough to develop it.

Emotion Scaling

Previously, we worked with extreme points; now, let’s “stretch” the level of an emotion. This method can be used for motivation, focus, pain sensitivity, and more. If you scale three to five emotions, your unconscious will likely model the general principle, and you’ll be able to “insert” any emotion into the scale and it will automatically be scaled.

1. Emotion: Identify the emotion you want to manage.
2. Scale: Imagine a scale inside yourself. Define your idea of the maximum possible level of the emotion as 100%. Determine your current level — it could be 30%, 10%, or even 1%.
3. Maximum Level: Gradually increase the intensity to the maximum. In reality, your true maximum may differ from the 100% you imagined. For some, it’s 85%; for others, 230%.
4. Management Practice: Move up and down the scale in steps of five to ten percent.
5. Control Metaphor: Create a metaphor — a knob or lever — to manage the scale.
6. Implementation: The skill is created; now reinforce it. Regularly practice entering, exiting, holding, and changing the state. Start in a calm environment (at home), then outside, then with people, then in “work” situations.