From Logical Levels to the Experience Matrix: When Identity Calls for Another Look
How to widen our understanding of human experience without giving up anything that works
Monday morning, nine o’clock. Your first client sits down. A competent, well-paid executive of thirty-eight. And deeply unhappy.
“I don’t know where I’m going anymore,” he says. “I feel like I’m missing something, but I couldn’t tell you what.”
You reach for your favorite tool: the logical levels. Together you identify his beliefs, work on his capabilities, look at his behaviors. Then you climb toward identity and mission. “Who are you really?” “What is your mission?”
Three months later, he is back. Same fog. The questions about identity and mission led him into a dead end. Sometimes he feels more lost than before, as though he ought to be able to answer and cannot.
That is where the model reaches its limit. Not on behaviors, capabilities or beliefs — there it works. But the moment you touch identity and mission, the ground turns slippery and vague, a source of anxiety rather than clarity.
The pyramid that changed everything
For decades, Robert Dilts’s logical levels have structured how we understand human change. An elegant pyramid: environment, behaviors, capabilities, beliefs, identity, spiritual mission.
The model has allowed thousands of practitioners to bring meaning, alignment and a clear reading of what is at stake for their clients. It remains remarkably effective across many situations, particularly when the work concerns behaviors, capabilities and beliefs.
And that is exactly where its strength lies. Those three elements — behaviors, capabilities, beliefs — are solid anchor points, and the Experience Matrix keeps every one of them. They work, they are clear, they give you concrete levers.
A question of scale, not of error
Think of physics. Newton’s laws of gravity are perfectly coherent and perfectly functional at a certain scale: our daily life, the objects we handle, the movements we observe. Widen the observation — to speeds approaching that of light, to cosmic distances — and relativity becomes necessary.
Newton was not wrong. His laws simply apply to a certain class of problems.
The same holds for the logical levels. They are not mistaken. They apply to a certain class of problems: those where we work on relatively stable, definable elements — behaviors, capabilities, beliefs.
Widen the observation, though — toward the evolving and contextual nature of identity, toward temporal processes, toward the multiplicity of identifications — and you reach the edge of the model. That, in fact, is why we say “change at the identity level is difficult”: we are running into the limit of the frame.
And with reason. The logical levels lose precision at the identity level because identity is not a concept that fits into a box or a rung.
The man who navigated without a map
Let me tell you about Yancey Strickler. You may not know the name, but he co-founded Kickstarter, the platform that lets creators raise money from the public for artistic, technological or social projects. A rewards-based crowdfunding system that runs on all-or-nothing: if the target is not reached, nobody is charged. Simple, elegant, and the funding source for tens of thousands of creative projects.
In an article published in November 2024 on his own site, “How to get where you need to be when you don’t know where you’re going,” Strickler does something rare. He tells his own story honestly, without polishing it into something inspirational.
Strickler grew up isolated in a forest, literally and figuratively. No clear mission. No defined identity. Just a pull toward books and music. He escaped through imagined worlds. That pull gradually turned into making things: he wrote, made zines, made music. He became a music critic — not by design, but because it felt right. Then he started a small record label. “There was no money,” he writes. “It just felt like the thing to do.” Then he co-founded Kickstarter with two friends. Then he created A-Corps, a new kind of company structure.
At every stage, Strickler did not know where he was going. “There was no grand plan,” he writes. “No five-year vision.”
And yet, years later, when he draws his own timeline, he finds something startling: a through-line of unsettling coherence. The “dark forest” metaphor at the center of his current work? That was literally his childhood. The recursive loops between his projects? They weave a narrative “so coherent it feels premeditated.”
So what was his “identity”? Was he a critic, an entrepreneur, a maker, a facilitator?
The answer: all of those successive identifications, none of them final, each emerging in its context.
That is precisely what the logical levels cannot capture: the processual, evolving, contextual nature of identity.
What stays — and it matters
Before going further, let me be clear on one point. The Experience Matrix keeps every one of the three elements that work remarkably well in Dilts’s model.
Behaviors. What you actually do across your various contexts.
Capabilities. What you know how to do, your skills, your know-how.
Beliefs. Your map of the world, your convictions, what you hold to be true.
These three spaces make up what the Matrix calls the Singularity space — your unique personal configuration of know-how, action and worldview.
Nothing disappears. The foundations hold.
But here is the shift that matters. We leave linear hierarchy behind and adopt a systemic view.
In the logical levels, these elements stack up in a hierarchy: beliefs (higher) determine capabilities, which determine behaviors. Downward causation, pyramid organization.
In the Matrix, they form a system of reciprocal influence:
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Your behaviors influence your beliefs. Act differently and you think differently.
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Your capabilities modify your behaviors. Learn to meditate and your handling of stress changes.
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Your beliefs shape your capabilities. Believe you can learn and you develop new skills.
That difference is a large one. You can intervene at any level, and the effects propagate in every direction. No more “you have to start at the top” — you start wherever the lever is most accessible for your client, and the system adjusts.
This systemic view sits closer to how change actually happens, and it is already a real gain in itself, rather as moving from Newtonian mechanics to a fuller account that includes interactions. But the real leap concerns identity.
What gets added — and it changes everything
It is at the identity level, where the logical levels go blurry, that the Matrix makes its main contribution.
Rather than leaving identity as a vague concept that resists work, the Matrix breaks it down into three precise and actionable dimensions.
1. The temporal dimension: identity as an evolving process
What the logical levels lacked. How do you work with an identity that keeps evolving? How do you support someone who is no longer who they were, without asking them to “change identity” — which we all know is the most resistant ground there is?
What the Matrix brings. An understanding of identity as temporal narration. Instead of asking “Who are you?”, the Matrix explores: “How are you building yourself through time?”
Practical tools:
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The timeline, to see recurring patterns and the through-line
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Narrative rewriting: changing the meaning without changing the facts (“I was lost for ten years” becomes “I explored for ten years”)
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Future projection aligned with the through-line once it has been found
The gain. You are no longer working on “identity” as a fixed and resistant entity. You are working on the process of identity construction. It is far more fluid, far less violent, far more respectful.
2. The social dimension: multiple identifications in context
What the logical levels lacked. We are not “one single person” — we identify differently depending on context. How do you handle that? How do you work with that multiplicity without treating it as a coherence problem?
What the Matrix brings. The concept of identifications (a process) rather than identity (a state). Strickler identifies differently depending on whether he is in his entrepreneur role, his maker role, his cultural analyst role. These identifications do not contradict each other — they coexist and activate according to context.
Practical tools:
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Mapping multiple identifications across contexts
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Exploring why certain identifications show up in certain contexts and not others
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Moving fluidly and consciously between them
The gain. You stop hunting for your client’s “real identity.” You explore how they identify, in which contexts, with what effects. It is precise, it is actionable, and above all it matches what they actually live.
3. The meta-cognitive and emotional dimension: the inner navigation system
What the logical levels lacked. How do you know you are on the right path when you cannot define the destination in advance? How do you correct course along the way?
What the Matrix brings. The recognition that we carry an internal navigation system: reflexive awareness (observing our own processes) coupled with emotions (which signal alignment or misalignment).
Strickler describes a “deep satisfaction” when he is aligned, that sense that this is the right direction. There is nothing vague about it. It is your most reliable compass.
Practical tools:
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Developing reflexive awareness to observe one’s own patterns
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Reading emotional signals as indicators of alignment
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Building the capacity to notice drift and correct it quickly
The gain. You give your client an early-warning system and a means of continuous adjustment. They do not need to “find their identity” — they learn to navigate by staying attentive to their internal signals.
Context: an actor, not a backdrop
There is another major difference between the two models, and it matters.
In the logical levels, environment sits at the bottom of the pyramid. Passive context, scenery, the level that absorbs influence from above.
In the Matrix, context becomes an actor in its own right in your experience.
Look at Strickler’s path. It was in the context of his isolation in the forest that his identification with imagined worlds appeared and grew. Change the context — he moves to a city, meets a creative community — and other identifications emerge naturally: maker, entrepreneur, facilitator.
The interaction runs both ways.
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Context acts on you. It offers opportunities for identification, it constrains you, it shapes you.
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And you act on it. You sometimes choose it, you modify it, you leave it.
You are neither wholly determined by your context nor wholly free to choose it. You are in constant interaction with it.
That distinction changes practice considerably:
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You are no longer only working on “changing the environment” (bottom level)
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You explore how context and identifications shape each other
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You help your client choose or build contexts that favor the identifications they want to cultivate
That is an additional dimension of understanding and intervention, one the logical levels did not have.
The Matrix: precision where things were vague
Let me sum up what the Experience Matrix adds to the logical levels.
What stays:
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Behaviors
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Capabilities
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Beliefs
What changes shape:
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Systemic influence rather than linear hierarchy
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Context as an actor rather than a passive environment
What gets added:
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Temporal dimension: identity as evolving narration
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Social dimension: multiple identifications in context
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Meta and emotional dimension: the inner navigation system
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Two-way interaction with context
The result?
Where the logical levels said “the identity level is hard to change” — because it remained vague and conceptual — the Matrix makes that level precise and gives you concrete tools for working with it.
You no longer “change” your client’s identity, with the violence and resistance that brings. You support them in:
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Rewriting the meaning of their path (temporal dimension)
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Exploring their multiple identifications (social dimension)
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Developing reflexive awareness and an emotional compass (meta dimension)
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Understanding the mutual influence between themselves and their contexts
That is a gain. Not a replacement, not a critique — a widening that makes actionable what used to be hard.
In practice: what you get
With the logical levels (still working):
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A clear structure for intervening on behaviors, capabilities and beliefs
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An understanding of alignment between those levels
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Proven tools for change at those levels
With the Experience Matrix (added, once identity is in play):
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Precise tools for the temporal dimension (timeline, rewriting)
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A map of multiple identifications rather than a fixed identity
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Navigation by emotional compass
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An understanding of the active role of context
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A more realistic system of reciprocal influence
And your Monday morning client?
Three months later, he does not come back with the same questions. Because you never asked him to define his identity once and for all. You taught him to:
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Observe his patterns over time
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Recognize his contextual identifications
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Listen to his emotional compass
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Move consciously through his contexts
He builds his capacity to adjust instead of hunting for a final answer.
Exactly as Strickler puts it: “We wake up one day in a place we didn’t know we were going, but exactly where we need to be.”
The invitation: don’t choose, widen
Dilts’s logical levels were a major advance. They gave structure to decades of practice in NLP and coaching. That contribution remains invaluable, particularly at the levels of behavior, capability and belief.
The Experience Matrix does not ask you to choose. It invites you to widen your view, especially when you arrive at that blurry identity zone where the logical levels lose their precision.
Keep your pyramid for what it does remarkably well: structuring, aligning and clarifying behaviors, capabilities and beliefs.
Add the Matrix when identity comes into play: when your client does not know who they are, when their identity is shifting, when they feel plural, when the answers ring hollow despite good work at the other levels.
This is not a contradiction. It is an evolution. A model growing to accommodate what our clients have always shown us: that identity is not a fixed level to be defined, but a living process to be supported.
And supporting a living process takes precise tools. The Matrix gives you them.
Your clients will thank you for it, because at last you can work with the complexity of their identity without violence and without vagueness, using tools as concrete as the ones you already use for behaviors and beliefs.
The Experience Matrix was designed to move past the difficulties the logical levels run into. It keeps what works, sharpens what was vague, and adds what was missing. The result: a model that finally makes identity work as actionable as behavioral work.
It was about time.
Note. Yancey Strickler’s article “How to get where you need to be when you don’t know where you’re going” was published on 4 November 2024 on his site (https://www.ystrickler.com). Beyond his role as Kickstarter co-founder, Strickler continues to explore these questions through his work on what he calls the “dark forest” of the web and his thinking on alternative economic structures. His rare honesty about the absence of any grand plan in his own path illustrates exactly the processual, contextual nature of identity that the Experience Matrix finally lets us work with precisely.