My last post spawned some interesting discussions around the issue of emotional mastery.

Let me share a bit more about my experience and see if this resonates with you.

I used to believe that I SHOULDN’T feel a certain way in certain circumstances. For instance, I shouldn’t feel angry when someone criticizes me or tells me they don’t like something I’ve done.

For some reason, I believed that it’s not spiritual to feel that way, or that everyone is entitled to their opinion, or whatever else.

You have to get the message.

But the truth is that that anger is just a message. It’s a pointer.

And I only have to feel it as long as necessary for me to get the message.

Trying to repress our emotions as a form of emotional mastery is similar to try to shut down your phone system because telemarketers are bothering you.

Sure, telemarketers will call your home, but so will your best friends. If you cut off the phone, you knock out your communication with your buddies as well.

The instant you perceive emotions as a messaging system, you move on to the second step: learning to interpret the message accurately so that you can take effective action (once again, either realign your values or realign your circumstances).

What about long-lasting disempowering emotions?

Cherry commented on my previous post: “The problem is – and this is what I want to hear more about emotional mastery – is that this anger of mine won’t go away for hours. Any ideas on how to save hours and hours of negative, unproductive emotions?”

When modeling people who feel anger or resentment for long periods of time, I’ve found that this stems from a belief that has a “should” in it. “People shouldn’t do this” or “this should be different” or “I shouldn’t have to do this” and so forth and so on.

The word “should” has a peculiar effect on our nervous system. It disengages us from reality. Moreover, the problem with “should” is that we can’t do anything about it. It totally disempowers us.

Think about it for a second.

“People shouldn’t treat me this way.”

Perhaps, but they do. Whatcha gonna do about it?

“This is line shouldn’t take this long.”

Perhaps, but it is taking this long. What now?

“Shoulds” create endless loops in our nervous systems and we cycle stress through them.

So what’s the antidote?

The instant you either take action or realign your values, the loop ends. No “shoulds” anymore. All taken care of.

“Yeah, but I shouldn’t have to realign my values or take action…”

I rest my case.

My email address has been down for some time now. Just discovered that today.

And I was wondering why I was getting no email for the past couple of days…

Don’t you get pissed when that kind of stuff happens to you?

I sure do.

Which brings me to something important about learning and mastering NLP: emotional mastery.

When I first started learning NLP, I believed that from that moment on, I should be able to feel the way I wanted, whenever I wanted, and that I should have absolute control over my emotions.

As I progressed, I discovered this was the farthest thing from the truth.

In fact, whatever emotion comes up serves only as a messaging system that lets you know what you’re currently living isn’t aligned with your values.

EDIT: whatever “painful” emotion comes up. Thanks for pointing that out, Mike.

So now, when I start feeling bad, it’s only a matter of seconds before I figure out what my system is trying to tell me.

And then the solution comes easy: take action or change your values.

One or the other.

No way around it.

Let me know if you’d like to learn more about this by posting some comments here below and I’ll give you some really good stuff.

Here is an awesome pattern you can use when you want to work with analog quantities.

I’ve personally used it with greatest success in the case of relationship break-ups.

Here it goes.

Context of use: Client had a tough break up.

Timing: After rapport is established and client has had time to vent a bit.

Equipment needed: Paper cups, a felt tip marker and a jar of water

Pattern:

1. Set up a row of cups in front of your client.
2. Ask your client to write the name of the most important people in his/her life. Make sure she writes the name of the person (s)he was in a relationship with.
3. Hand your client the pitcher of water and say: “This water represents your love. I want you to pour water into each cup to show how much importance you give to each person.”
4. Allow your client to pour water into the cups at various levels. As your client reaches the cup of the ex-lover, turn the cup upside down.
5. Allow your client to react any way (s)he feels.

The key to this pattern is the anchor created between people and cups, importance and water. Once you turn the cup over, you’re conveying to your client that no importance must be given to this person. 

ATTENTION: This pattern is intended to break a pattern and give the person command over the excessive feelings of importance attributed to the ex. Once you, as a practitioner, feel that your client has command over the feeling, flip the cup back up and ask him/her to pour the appropriate amount of “importance” into the ex’s cup.

A few months ago I posted a deck of cards pattern to get unstuck from a disempowering pattern of thinking.

Here’s another one that I’ve learned from Danie Beaulieu.

Context of use: Client is struggling with a personal issue and needs to access resources to overcome it.

Timing: No specific timing.

Equipment needed: Deck of cards and a black felt tip marker

Pattern:

1. Ask your client: “Remember a time when you felt successful in an area of your life.”
2. Ask your client: “Tell me about one of your qualities that you used to create that success for yourself.”
3. Listen to the client’s answer. Let’s suppose your client says: “Courage”.
4. Open your deck of cards in front of the client.
5. Ask your client: “Did you use an ace, a king, a queen or a jack of courage to achieve success in that situation?”
6. Pick your client’s answer out of the deck and write “COURAGE” in capital, bold letters on the card.
7. Go back to step 2 and repeat steps 2 to 6 for all the qualities that came into play in that situation.
8. Once your client has selected at least five strong cards, present them to your client one by one.
9. Tell your client: “Look how powerful this hand of cards is. All you have to do now is play it strategically in the situation you’re facing. Take some time to feel the power of your hand.”
10. Give the cards to the client to take home and serve as a reminder of his/her resources.

The cards then serve as powerful anchors that assist the client to access his/her resources. In addition, they serve as references for powerful identity beliefs such as: “I am powerful and can do anything I choose.”

Use it and let us know what happened in the comments.

Here’s a technique I learned from Danie Beaulieu that’s unmatched for dealing with self-esteem issues, mainly for cases of people who have been psychologically battered by others (I mean “battered” in the figurative sense).

Here’s how to run the pattern with your client:

1. Grab some cash (I personally love hundred dollar bills)
2. Show the money to your client
3. Ask: “How much is this worth?” This will interrupt the client’s pattern. Your client will say “One hundred dollars.”
4. Then, crumple up the money, spit on it, toss it behind you and then step on it.
5. Ask your client: “Do you feel like that at times?” Observe client’s reaction.
6. Pick up the money, open it up with care and attention, and show it to your client once more.
7. Ask: “How much is this worth now?”
8. Client will answer: “One hundred dollars.”
9. Hold out the bill in front of your client so (s)he can see it clearly. Future pace by saying: “And anytime you see a hundred dollar bill, no matter what’s happened to it, you’ll remember that it’s still worth a hundred dollars.”

This experiential metaphor is incredibly powerful. Allow the client to go through the experience and draw his/her own conclusions without explaining anything.

Do you know anyone who got run over by life and needs a self-esteem boost? Test this pattern and let us know in the comments how it worked out.

I’ve found this video on YouTube that sums up brilliantly NLP Modeling.

Hear it from the horse’s mouth!

Kind of a funny question to ask as a title…

And the answer is pretty straight forward:

No.

Can’t really tell you why.

Doesn’t bake my noodle all that much.

Formal or stage hypnosis, that is.

Trance phenomena continue to fascinate me. If trance = hypnosis, then I’m interested. But I believe a notable distinction exists.

Here in northern Brazil, umbanda is very much a part of people’s life. Adepts of this Afro-Brazilian religion get together in “terreiros”, where they celebrate their devotion to “orixás” and other entities. This celebration involves drumming and percussive dancing that leads most participants into trances.

Is that hypnosis?

Perhaps.

Sensory hypnosis? Or kinesthetic hypnosis?

Not sure…

But hypnotic language patterns, in my opinion, are the least interesting phenomena of trance available.

How many trances can you identify in your day-to-day life?

Tom from NLP Times published a really cool post a couple of months ago on self-mastery and change.

Go read it.

But before you do, just check out the gist of it. Tom simply points out that, in order to effect change, you must:

1. Become aware that some pattern isn’t serving you.

2. Take complete responsibility for the pattern and changing it.

3. Have a clear outcome in mind as to what you want.

4. Get leverage on yourself to make sure that change is a must (taken from Tony Robbins).

Once and only once all these criteria are met can you apply NLP techniques to interrupt patterns and condition new ones.

But don’t take my word for it. Go check it out.

You’ve all read about them. Affirmations, incantations, self-hypnosis and so on…

Each new author brings a new label for what, in the end, proves to be the exact same activity: programming new instructions into our own subconscious mind.

So, if that’s what you’re trying to achieve, use ANY of them in varied ways until you find the specific, tailored way that works for you.

One of the critical components of calibration (yeah, I know I talk a lot about this skill) is the ability to read and interpret eye accessing cues.

Below, I’ve included a standard eye accessing cue chart that will help you record these. If you’re an advanced student of NLP, you’ve come across images similar to this one countless number of times.

Eye accessing cues are just a model. The co-founders don’t intend to make them an absolute truth in any way. 

With that said, they generally clue us in correctly in which representational system the other person is processing.

But let’s learn how to calibrate using eye accessing cues.

The way to do this is to ask questions that elicit the use of specific representational systems.

So you could ask the person:

“Remind me, what was the color of the second house we looked at?”

Pay attention to the person’s eye movements.

If the person is right-handed, (s)he will normally look up and to the left to access this visual cue.

Attention! Often times, the person might first repeat and re-hear the question in their mind prior to accessing the answer. Should (s)he follow that process, (s)he will first display a different eye movement pattern. This does not discredit the eye accessing cue model. It simply means that you need to pay close attention to all the processes that person follows before reaching an aswer.

Use questions to effectively calibrate how the person accesses specific sensory information.

So now, let’s go to the drills! Remember, you MUST practice to become proficient.

Drill 1: Come up with 5 questions you can ask to calibrate eye accessing cues for each representational system.

Drill 2: Apply! Ask each question to at least 20 people over the upcoming week and calibrate their responses.

Drill 3: Observe people’s eye accessing cues in every day conversations. 

Drill 4: Play around with eye accessing cues yourself. Try to visualize while looking down. Try talking to yourself while looking up. Try to elicit a feeling while looking sideways.

Of course, let us know how you experimented in the comments.

In Whispering In The Wind, John Grinder describes how he designed an experience to assist a woman in licking cancer.

Here’s the story in a nutshell: during his conversation with her, she repeated a few times that, for her to get over cancer, “her whole world would have to turn upside down”. Grinder then proceeded to arrange an acrobatic flight for his client with a pilot friend of his.

His client went into remission.

Now, let’s be VERY clear here…

I AM NOT SAYING THAT NLP SERVES AS A MAGIC BULLET THAT WILL SOLVE EVERY PROBLEM IN HUMANITY. IT IT NOT THE PANACEA THAT SOME PEOPLE MAKE IT OR WANT IT TO BE. THIS MIGHT NOT WORK IN EVERY CASE. IT MIGHT HAVE WORKED BY LUCK.

Now that we’re over with the NLP-religion disclaimer, let’s move on.

What I find interesting in the example is the possibility to impact neurology and belief systems through the keen design of concrete life experiences.

If you want a gajillion more examples like this one, you MUST read Phoenix, a book written by David Gordon about Milton Erickson’s behavioral patterns of intervention — which are, in my opinion, as interesting if not more than his hypnosis work.

The problem with talking in therapy is that it’s talk and it requires rapport and trust in the content and/or process being offered to you by the therapist (I know, I know, we don’t do content in NLP).

The power of real experience in NLP

Now, real experiences provide UNDENIABLE material the client is now FORCED to assimilate and process.

If someone you believe to be your enemy saves your life, the impact on your neurology will significantly differ from someone else telling you: “Deep down, he’s a good guy…”

It’s the significant difference between building products from specs vs. building products from prototypes.

Every belief is grounded in references. A reference is either:

1. Real live experience
2. Hallucinated experience
3. Another set of beliefs (for which the same analysis holds)

Needless to say, beliefs built from real live experiences have infinitely more power than those of hallucinated experiences. You can use the second as a piggyback to get to the first, but nothing beats having the first.

Imagine an athlete who wants to develop the belief “I can win races”. He can visualize all day to build his confidence, but eventually, he’ll have to win a race for the belief to take root.

Why games are so effective in NLP

Another set of experiential devices you can  design to effect transformation is games.

Games offer microcosms, experiential metaphors, of real life situations in which new learnings are needed.

For instance, the game Cash Flow by Robert Kiyosaki offers a brilliant metaphor of the path to take to achieve financial independence. And all this learning happens without you having to “believe” in anything except in your ability to achieve it.

The game itself teaches you.

The same holds for the New Code games designed by John Grinder. What’s most interesting about those is that many of them generate kinesthetic learning, often lacking in our development.

Nothing beats experience

Nothing, and I mean nothing, beats real, live experience.

How can you apply this principle to your own life and in your coaching of your peers and/or children?

These two are like evil twins. 

There is a subtle line between anchoring and interrupting someone’s pattern. 

If you try to anchor too forcefully, you’ll end up breaking their pattern.

If not, you won’t set the anchor effectively.

When you start learning NLP, one of the terms that will soon come up is anchoring.

Wow!

New word!

What could this possibly mean?

John Grinder and Carmen Bostic St Clair, in their book “Whispering In The Wind”, state the following:

Grinder and Bandler were alert enough to appreciate that the choice of terms in this new universe of discourse for the meta discipline NLP had to meet certain criteria. First of all, these terms had to be relatively transparent to the user.1 Secondly, if they were to use terms already associated with some of the phenomena in psychology and more specifically, in clinical psychology, they would drag along with them unwanted and undesirable associations.

For example, we would be hard pressed to argue convincingly for the term anchoring in lieu of the term conditioning except for precisely the unwanted and undesirable theoretical baggage the term conditioning has attached to it. [[the bolding of terms is mine]]

Grinder and Bandler’s solution was the creation of a vocabulary (in some cases) wholly unassociated with previous work to allow a fresh perspective on the patterning being coded. History will determine whether this was an effective solution to the issue they confronted.

What Grinder and Bostic St Clair reveal here is that, essentially, anchoring = classic conditioning, at least in the co-founders’ minds when they set the term.

I’m sure you’ve heard of Pavlov’s famous experiment with dogs.

Anchoring works quite the same way. Perhaps a bit more sophisticated, since human beings are more sophisticated than dogs.

In a nutshell, we use anchoring in NLP to elicit desired responses from people. When I say “desired”, it can be either by the subject or by the practitioner, depending on the type of relationship developed.

OK, so what exactly is anchoring?

Anchoring, generally speaking, consists in associating an external stimulus to an internal response.

Wow, jargon. Let’s go with concrete examples…

Example 1: associating a touch on the shoulder with the person’s feeling of happiness

Example 2: associating a certain look on your face to the person’s state of laughter

Example 3: associating a certain song with a moment in a person’s life

Starting to figure it out?

External stimulus —> Internal response (which can be a feeling, a thought, a belief, and so forth)

An anchor is like a button you can push to summon back specific states. It’s kind of like an icon on the desktop of your computer. All you have to do is double-click on it to bring forth the program with which it is associated.

Same goes with a link on a webpage. Click on it and you’ll bring forth the webpage to which it links.

How does anchoring work exactly?

Anchoring happens naturally and constantly in our lives.

Stop for a second and think of a song you’ve heard a lot in your life.

If you have it, stop reading for a second, go listen to it and then come back.

What happened?

Your mind started drifting back to the times when that song was playing, didn’t it? Could you remember one of the first times you heard that song?

That’s a great example of anchoring. We do all the time. As one of my trainers said, “You cannot not anchor.”

Any external stimulus can summon back memories and associations. Songs, specific smells (like freshly baked bread or pies), temperature, textures, among others, are common examples of anchors that operate in your life.

Hmmmmm, anchoring and calibrating are really close…

Yes they are.

If you’ve read any of my previous posts on calibration, or have previous experience with NLP, you know that calibrating consists in observing the association between an external cue in someone’s behavior and an internal process.

Close, isn’t it?

Calibration enables you to take note of already established internal anchors within someone.

It also enables you to get the timing right in effectively setting an anchor.

Before you can master anchoring, you’ll need to have mastered calibration.

Some practice drills

OK, let’s try some exercises, shall we?

1. When you hang out with a friend, pay close attention to the shifting of their states. Pick one empowering state, such as laughter. When you see them laughing out loud, open your eyes, mouth and face wide open while looking at them in a playful way. Do this naturally, without really forcing it or trying to call their attention to it, otherwise you might interrupt their pattern. The next time (s)he laughs, do it again. Then a third time. Afterwards, do a quick test… Open your eyes, mouth and face widely and observe if you can get the laughter response.
2. Watch George Carlin clips on YouTube. Carlin, and many other stand-up comics for that matter of fact, use anchoring to elicit laughter from their audience. Watch a few, identify the anchors he uses and post the link and the video time when he uses an anchor in the comment section of this post.
3. Create an anchor for yourself for laughter. Figure out a way to make yourself laugh on command. Then tell us how you do it so we can make you laugh as well!

In closing…

Anchoring is an essential part of your toolkit. It takes playing around to figure out how it works.

I fidgeted a lot with anchoring at the beginning. Didn’t really get it. I tried to copy other people’s style of anchoring without success. It took me some time to understand that each of us anchors others naturally and in our own way.

Take all the time you need to figure out yours.

You’ll be glad you did.

I won’t teach you a whole bit in this one, just point you in a direction.

NLP newbies often want to start learning language patterns and hypnotic language to persuade others to do what they want.

They think that the real power lies in those language patterns.

BS.

or Caveat Emptor: Language patterns don’t top the power hierarchy.

Want to get to serious persuasion horsepower?

Learn framing.

I’ve been receiving many email from NLP newcomers who want to know which certification they should get.

I say: “Forget it…”

So what should they do?

Find a fascinating teacher/mentor, someone whose skill they find inspiring, to assist them in developing their own skillset.

And then find another one and do it again.

And again.

And practice a whole lot between trainings.

Forget the titles.

Forget the certificates.

Forget the certifications.

Only one thing counts: results.

Exquisite results come from exquisite skill.

Exquisite skill comes from exquisite teaching and exquisite practice.

Not exquisite certification.

Oh, what the hell, I feel like it, so let me add an expletive…

Fuck certification.

I just read this cool little book titled “Re-Create Your Life”, by Morty Lefkoe.

In it, Lefkoe describes a cool little pattern for changing beliefs I found worthwhile to model and present to you. Notice how simple and easy this sounds. When you apply it, you’ll understand what makes it so effective.

Here we go:

1. Identify a disempowering pattern (for example, I always snap at my kids)
2. From the pattern, derive the belief that drives it (such as, “I have too much to do and too little time.”)
3. Acknowledge the validity of your belief, and that you came up with it based on the perceptions you had at the time you created it. 
4. Notice other possible meanings you could have derived from your perceptions at that time.
5. Seek around you physical evidence of your belief. Can you find any? Of course not. It’s not tangible.
6. Neutralize the belief. Is it the absolute truth? No way. It was simply an OPTION. Look at the other options that you identified in step 4.
7. What happened to your driving belief? Still there? I didn’t think so…

Cool, huh?

Philip Farber, NLP and Meta-Magick

Philip Farber is an interesting character in NLP. I did not know him until I watched this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vqoe7N0w7c

In this lecture, Phil gives a light overview of neuro-research done on mirror neurons. I’d heard and read about this in passing, but the pieces of information he mentions are very interesting, notably when he describes how we run mirror neural patterns when we see someone else performing any activity.

I find fascinating that merely being in the presence of someone performing an activity immediately engages and begins to “mold” our neurology to conform to what we’re seeing.

This research backs up the NLP Modeling methodology that John Grinder espouses and fiercely advocates.

***Incidentally, it also supports the famous adage “You become who you spend time with.”***

Mirror neurons….

Who would have thought…

Mark asked:

“I’ve read about propulsion systems before but I don’t really understand what they are. Could you explain a bit more?”

Building a machine

Richard Bandler, to my knowledge, first developed the concept of a propulsion system and the pattern to install them. When asked about the difference between DHE and NLP, one of the differences he mentioned had to do with motivation. He said that, in NLP, practitioners worked to elicit and amplify motivation strategies. In DHE, practitioners installed powerful propulsion systems.

One way to hallucinate an understanding of the propulsion system is to think of those roller coaster rides we’ve been experiencing in amusement parks for about a decade now, built with electromagnets. These “new” systems make it possible for a roller coaster to get going at top speed, instead of the usual slow climb, followed by the steep downhill run.

A motivation strategy follows a step-by-step sequence that gets you from one state to a motivated state. You would follow that strategy anytime you’d like to feel motivated.

A propulsion system, on the other hand, is an installed mechanism that maintains you constantly in a state of movement - or so says its creator/developer.

So the real question for us, now, is to understand what they are and/or how they work.

The best way to do this is to actually install one and then analyze how it works. I’ve actually uploaded a little installation example for you, so you can simply click on the “Play” button below and get a feel for it.

Let’s break this down a bit…

You’ll notice in the audio that we’re working with attraction and aversion. Both are powerful forces to move human beings.

The most simple analogy I can use for the propulsion system is the following: put heaven in front of you and hell behind you.

Heaven should be enough to pull us forward. Problem is, sometimes we get lazy. As attractive as the vision of the promised land might be, we may sometimes foolishly believe that it requires too much effort to get there. So we stop.

Now, when we have hell catching up to us unless we move forward, it becomes a little less comforting to settle down. That’s why a critical piece of the propulsion system is a raging pit bull on our rear end.

My uncle once asked me: ”What’s the fastest animal on the planet?”

I answered: “The cheetah.”

He then said: “No way! Put a cheetah on my tail and you’ll see I’m the fastest animal on the planet!”

In summary…

Progress is a conquest.

It is not inevitable.

A propulsion system is a tool you can leverage to give yourself an extra “humpf!” in your quest to produce results.

I frequently conduct interviews to recruit new employees for my own and clients’s business.

One of the key NLP skills that comes into play during interviews is calibration.

I’ve discussed this critical skill in several other posts because it’s severely undervalued and undertrained.

Now, let’s talk about lying in a purely neurolinguistic context.

While Descartes has separated mind and body — and convinced Western societies of the validity of his model — the truth is that they function quite synchronistically. One cannot move without the other going along with it.

In addition, our experiences have tightly associated physiological phenomena, movements and responses.

Thereby, the act of lying or misleading, unless performed by an expert, causes incongruence. This simply means that lying disaligns the person’s physiology, intonation and message.

Because it’s nearly impossibly for someone to control the millions of micro-movements and stimuli associated to a particular experience, a change in one of the pieces of this complex puzzle throws the entire gestalt into a fit.

For instance, there are certain breathing patterns associated to witnessing car accidents, certain diaphragmal movement tied to skydiving, certain muscular responses associated to hearing and cheering in a concert.

Problem is, there are so many of them that we can’t possibly control them all!

That’s where calibration comes in.

When talking to someone, you need to quickly assess the non-verbal cues associated to alignment.

The way to do this is quite simple.

If you’re talking to Jim, for instance, ask him:

“Is your name Jim?”

Before Jim even responds “Yes”, his body language will have already answered with his non-verbal “Yes”.

Try another obvious question:

“And you were born in Wichita, Kansas?”

Jim will give you another non-verbal “yes”. Make sure you register those cues.

Now, throw Jim a curve ball…

If you know his parents still live together, ask him:

“And your parents are divorced?”

Now, watch his body go into incongruence. Notice his response.

If you know Jim’s an only child, ask:

“Do you have brothers and sisters?”

Again, notice his non-verbal response.

If you feel you’ve figured it out, do a test on painless topic:

“Did you have a hard time finding your way here this morning?”

Pay attention to the response. Try to predict the answer before he actually says it.

If you got it, you’re ready for the hard stuff. If not, go back and calibrate some more until you get it.

Now, go for the hard stuff:

“Are you a big drinker?”

“Ever been involved in illegal activities?”

And so forth and so on.

With a little practice, you’ll be better than a lie detector.

WARNING: DON’T ASSUME ANYTHING! CALIBRATE AND TEST, TEST, TEST,TEST!

Every once in a while, I read a piece that summons the spirit of curiosity, playfulness and outrageousness that led to the founding of NLP — and, for that matter of fact, of a lot of really cool stuff. Think Richard Branson…

Tom Dotz tells a really cool story that summons up the spirit of NLP. You should read it.

It’s at http://nlpco.com/news/2009/02/05/more-money-than-god/.

Yesterday, I showed you a neat little pattern you can use any time you need to kickstart your life.

Today, I’m going to point out a few pieces of the pattern that I believe make it so effective.

The chance factor

The deck of cards introduces a critical element into our life: chance.

While it may seem trivial to most, chance serves an incredible purpose in our lives. Chance opens our life up and injects new elements into our gestalt, forcing us to rearrange our belief systems, our values and perceptions to take these new elements into account.

We get stuck, literally, because we get completely conditioned into set ways of thinking and behaving. The element of chance, providence or “divine intervention” sticks a crow bar into our experience and opens up new worlds to us. It gives control of our decisions to an other-than-conscious power and thus forces us to be alert and alive in a new and unexpected situation.

This, in turn, creates the necessary condition to overcome the stuck pattern(s).

Pattern interrupts

Shuffling the cards serves as an excellent pattern buster, as it offers physical activity, concentration and coordination.

In fact, almost ANY physical activity that demands coordination will instantly break a pattern as it engages your neurology in entirely new ways.

Other great examples are dancing, juggling or trying to balance yourself on a giant ball.

All of a sudden, your neurological resources are all engaged in the present moment, eliminating any room for superfluous worrying.

Anchors

This pattern sets cool anchors that will fire up whenever you or your client interacts with an innocuous object: a deck of cards.

The perceptual patterns associated to playing cards are present in many different settings of life. Performing this little exercise over the course of four weekends in a row will strengthen the power of the anchor. As such, the deck will become an empowering anchor for a state of resourcefulness, expectation, alertness, creativity and new possibilities.

What a great tool to have at hand at any time!

Ace in the pocket

In closing, I just gave you a few of the many different factors that make this pattern so effective.

Can you identify any others?

I figured I’d share this one with you. It’s fun, powerful and incredibly effective.

So here we go…

Context of use: You’re in a funk and need to break the pattern and turn up the engines.

Timing: No specific timing.

Equipment needed: Deck of cards

Pattern:

1. Open your deck of cards and shuffle the cards. Mix them up in as many ways as you can.
2. Choose 4 radical activities that you can perform NOW. Preferably, choose activities that would force you to get out of your home.
3. Reshuffle the cards one more time.
4. Attribute each activity to a specific suit of the deck.
5. Shuffle the cards one last time.
6. Spread the deck in your hands and then toss it in the air.
7. Close your eyes and grab a card.
8. Look at which suit it is.
9. Perform the activity assigned to that particular suit.

Variation:

You can modify the number of possibilities by associating activities to suits (4) or to number/figure (13).

Tomorrow, I’ll explain in greater detail what makes this pattern so incredibly effective. For now, go try it on yourself or use it on a client!

This just came to me…

What kind of modeling technology and protocols would we need to model organizations?

Can an individual model an organization or would it be necessary for the entire organization to model another?

If the second option were true, how exactly can an organization model another organization?

Ripped Ken

This is particularly interesting in light of Ken Wilber’s integral model and his use of the concept of holons developed by Arthur Koestler.

According to Koestler, the universe is made up of holons, or whole-parts that form greater whole-parts. Each level transcends and includes the previous level.

You can observe the phenomenon when you go from atom to molecule, molecule to cell, cell to tissue, tissue to organ, organ to system and so forth.

Likewise, you can observe this at the social level. Individual to family, family to tribe, tribe to nation, nation to race.

And now, take it to the business or organizational level: individual to team, team to department, department to division, division to company.

Now, in light of this, is it possible for an entity at the individual level to model the company level?

Any insights on this?

What a hiatus between my last post and this one!

Got to make sure this doesn’t happen any more…

Let’s immediately get back on track discussing THE most important and pressing topic in NLP: Modeling.

I’ve discussed in previous threads the importance of modeling and how critical it is for NLP newbies to learn and master that skill.

Modeling Breakthroughs

While patterns and models such as representational systems, submodalities and the meta-model of language in therapy are useful to design change patterns such as the compulsion blowout and the swish, they are mostly useful to map out processes that are taking place in and out of awareness.

Sometimes, when reading Bandler’s or Dilts’s writings, we may get the impression that the coding of submodalities was a therapeutic breakthrough.

In my opinion, it was a modeling breakthrough.

All the models developed in NLP that make it possible to map out cognitive processes furthered the modeling technology. As such, we could also include perceptual positions in that category, as well as Michael Hall’s work with meta-states.

Taking the next step

As I see it, the most interesting next steps in the development of NLP touch upon modeling tools, technology and coding protocols. 

All of these from the standpoint of all three modeling phases:

1. Unconscious uptake of patterning to be modeled
2. Effective coding of the assimilated patterns
3. Effective installation of the coded patterns

Potentially, we could include a fourth modeling activity. This is up to debate.

• Effective uninstallation of old, obstructive patterning

As modelers, we need to develop more effective protocols for each of these activities, which are today at a craftsman’s level.

The goal is to reach industrial-strength technologies and models that we can depend upon as modelers.

In your research, have you come across cool new stuff that you can share with the rest of the reader base of HowToMasterNLP.com?

I found this post today about Obama’s use of NLP.

While I’d be very excited if Obama had studied NLP and its uses, I’m not sure I could infer this from the passages quoted in that post.

In his Denver acceptance speech, Obama used the phrases “that’s why I stand here tonight,” “now is the time,” and “this moment” 14 times. Paces are connected to the lead by words such as “and,” “as,” “because,” or “that is why.” For example, “we need change” (who could disagree?)…and…that is why I will be your next President.”

Techniques of trance induction include extra slow speech, rhythm, tonalities, vagueness, visual imagery, metaphor, and raising of emotion. Hypnotists often have patients count. In a speech after the primaries closed, Obama said: “Sixteen months have passed (paused)…Thousands (pause) of miles…(pause)…Millions of voices….”

If you’ve ever listened to Martin Luther King’s speeches (those happened before the advent of NLP), you’ll find that he uses very similar linguistic structures.

In my opinion, great orators who use those structures aren’t necessarily students of NLP. I’d venture to say that students of NLP would do well to model great orators who use those structures.

Impactful communication has existed for a long, long time. Way before NLP was tagged by Bandler and Grinder. Napoleon never studied NLP. Nor did deGaulle. Nor did Hitler. But all of them were captivating orators, who knew how to use language and intonation to penetrate their listeners’ psyche.

Personally, I think it a much more effective use of one’s time to study great orators’ speeches than NLP patterns.

Obama probably thinks the same — but then again how would I know…