Steve Andreas > Articles > Modal Operators

2. How many kinds, or categories of MO are there, and what would you name each kind?

I would list the four categories below, grouped into two pairs (with examples):

Motivation: The first two have to do with being motivated.

Necessity: “should,” “must,” “have to,” etc.
Desire: “wish,” “want,” “need,”etc.

Options: The second two have to do with options that can be chosen in order to satisfy the motivation.

Possibility: “can,” “able to,” “capable,” etc.
Choice: “choose,” “select,” “decide,” etc.

Desire and/or necessity motivates us to act and change, and possibility and/or choice makes this possible. Grouped in this way, one can readily notice that people most often begin with motivation, and then search for options. Starting with options, and then testing for which ones are desirable is much less frequent.

Take a moment to experience this basic difference. Imagine for a moment that you always started with motivation and then scanned options...

Now imagine that you always started by scanning options, and then tested for motivation. Those are very different worlds...

MOs of necessity and (im)possibility are the ones given most emphasis in many NLP trainings, because very frequently they are the basis for significant limitations. People often feel stuck and trapped by “have to's,” and limited by “cant's,” and these are the most obvious kinds of limiting beliefs that people have.

MOs of desire and choice are often de-emphasized, or even ignored, but they are equally important, and they are a mirror-image to necessity and impossibility. For instance. when someone experiences a “have to,” usually it is unpleasant, and s/he wants to have other choices. Put another way, “have to” and “not possible” are equivalent to “not possible to choose other more desired alternatives.”

Importance: Since choosing between alternative possibilities, in alignment with our needs and desires, is fundamental to our survival and happiness, any limitation or reduction in these abilities will significantly limit our ability to live well. Every belief in our capabilities will have a MO in it, and many limitations will have either a MO of necessity or a negation of another MO.

This is the kind of difference that MOs not only describe, but also create as we talk to ourselves internally. It can be the crucial difference between someone who lives a life feeling as if they are an incapable, helpless victim of events, and one who experiences a world full of anticipation and opportunities for satisfaction of needs and desires.

Working at the level of MOs, and the beliefs that they are embedded in, is usually at a considerably larger chunk size than working at the content level of a particular limitation, and because of this, any changes that are made will generalize much more widely.

Intensity: Each of these categories includes different words that express various degrees of intensity—even though people often limit themselves by reducing this wide spectrum to a crude either/or digital distinction. In addition to the words used in each category, the nonverbal intonation can also indicate the degree of intensity, and this nonverbal message is often much more dependable than the words.

Necessity has a relatively narrow range of intensity, but there is a definite difference between “absolutely must” and “should,” or “ought to.” Since many people think they “should” do things that they seldom or never actually do, there are “necessities” that are less than absolute.
Desire has perhaps the widest range of intensity, ranging from a faint inclination to smoking lust!
Possibility is not a digital either/or distinction as it is often taught, (possible/impossible) but can vary through a wide range, from very likely (nearly certain) to very unlikely, (improbable, but still possible).
Choice, too, can be artificially reduced to a simple limiting either/or (and there are a few circumstances in which this is perhaps an accurate description of the situation). But usually there is a wide range of choices, a multiplicity of options, not only of what to do, but of how to do it, where to do it, when to do it, with whom to do it, and why to do it.