With this technique, it is possible to resolve calibrated loops.

Standard Steps:

• Problem
• Message Understood
• Intended Message
• Agreement
• Correction
• Test

Position 1:
In this position, you are fully associated in your own body; in other words, you see the world through your own eyes and hear through your own ears. In this position, you are strongly immersed in your own subjectivity, having full contact with your own feelings.

Position 2:
In this position, you put yourself in the other person’s place. As children, we often did this while playing. We pretended to be someone else. I, for example, liked playing “Winnetou and Old Shatterhand.” By taking on the role of another person, you see the world from their perspective. You adopt their perceptual filters and even begin to feel their bodily sensations. This is one way to see beyond another person’s behavior. If you master this ability well, you dramatically improve your communicative competence, which allows you to understand and address the other person at deeper levels.

Position 3:
This is the position of a neutral observer who sees and hears everything from the outside. This observer takes no side but remains completely neutral, trying to be as objective as possible. It can help to imagine yourself as a professor of behavioral psychology watching the interaction out of pure research interest. Alternatively, you could imagine being a Martian who has just landed and is studying human behavior for a report back home. This observer just watches, takes notes, and perhaps has an idea about what to do next.

Position 4: Meta
In the Meta-Position, you pay special attention to the exercise process itself. What did the client feel and perceive in positions 1, 2, and 3? How did it go for them? Could they take all three roles equally well? What was the outcome? Essentially, the Meta-Position reflects on the process itself. This can open up further insights—for example, into how the individual positions interact or correspond with each other and how the process unfolds. It is important here to maintain some distance from the process itself, to get an overview of all positions from a higher vantage point.
Note: Many NLP trainers or books either don’t address the Meta-Position in this format or think it is simply an extension of Position 3 with even more inner distance. In our view, the Meta-Position is qualitatively different from the other three.

Exercise for “Position 1, 2, 3, Meta”

• Recall a difficult situation with someone you have repeatedly struggled to communicate with the way you would like.
• Go into Position 1 and remember, fully associated, what you thought, said, saw, heard, and felt.
• Then shift into Position 2 and see yourself from the outside through the other person’s eyes. Hear what you just said as if from the outside and observe how you look from that viewpoint. Then say what B said and move the way B moved. Get a sense of what it’s like to be B. This is not a cold, detached state—no dissociation—but rather an association with the other person.
• Next, move to the 3rd position and observe the entire scenario from outside, in a dissociated body posture. Describe the situation as a behavioral researcher or a Martian might.
• Then go to the Meta-Meta Position and review the process you’ve experienced so far: how it developed and everything that’s happened with the other three positions up to this point.
• Using the new insights about B and about the situation as a whole, return to Position 1 and adjust your behavior accordingly. Then move on to Position 2, and so forth, until you are satisfied with the situation.
• Finally, TEST the result in real life!
• Each position can be physically marked on the floor (ground anchors).

Sometimes it may be necessary, in addition to the 3rd or Meta Position, to introduce various resource states and only then return to Position 1. The practitioner can also anchor that resource state while remaining outside Position 3 or the Meta-Position.