• Determine the desired skill or ability to model, as well as the person(s) possessing this ability.

• Create a situation or context in which you get at least three different specific examples of how the people you want to model demonstrate the desired skill.
  a) Use the following perceptual filters to find the critical factors in each example:

• Accessing cues

• Speech patterns - meta-model, predicates, etc.

• Physiology

• Representational systems, strategies and submodalities

• Meta-program patterns

• Beliefs and values

• Logical levels

b) Determine which factors are the same in all three examples.

• Find at least one counterexample - i.e., another person or others (including yourself) who cannot adequately demonstrate the skill or situations in which the model failed to adequately demonstrate the skill. Determine the critical factors of the counterexample(s) by using the same filters as in step 2a.

• Contrast the critical factors in the three successful examples with the critical factors in the counterexample(s). Pay attention to significant differences.

• Change all the significant critical factors of the counterexample(s) so that they match the significant critical factors of the successful examples until you find the desired behavior or result in the individuals or in the situations that make up the counterexample / counterexamples.
  If the change in these factors does not lead to the desired behavior or result in the person / persons or in the situation / situations, then find other more appropriate or stronger examples for modeling and repeat the process from step 4 until the desired behavior or result is achieved.

• Now start to change the critical factors that contributed to achieving the desired behavior or outcome, one at a time.
  a) Find the limit by determining how far you can change the factor before changing the result.
  b) Principle of Elegance: find the minimum number of factors necessary to achieve the desired behavior or results.