When the practitioner students and I were up at Stony Ranch for the Ropes course in November, we witnessed an interesting phenomenon. Stony Ranch has numerous animals and birds: miniature horses, goats, guinea hens and one peacock. This story is about the guinea hens. Right before the barn there is a fenced field holding the horses. It is rather large field enclosed by an iron fence. The fence is 6 feet high except for the gate which is 4 feet high.
As it so happened that day, the group of guineas was gathered at the fence by the gate. Two of the guineas flew up over the top of the gate and landed inside the field. The rest of the guineas looked on. For the rest of our observation time, the remaining flock of the guineas saw the other two inside the field and tried to find a way to get inside the fence with the other hens by (get this, instead of easily flying over the shorter gate) running hurriedly along the 6 foot fence away from the gate and eventually turning the corner of the fence and traveling up the far side of the field along the fence. Of course, they were never going to find an opening in the fence so they were relegated to the outside of the field while their mates were inside the field. The hens’ behavior gave a new meaning to the phrase, ‘bird brain.’
The irony of the behavior of the guinea hens struck me immediately. People behave in very much this same way. The majority of people act like the majority of the guineas. They watch what a small minority do to be successful and then choose to do something different. They think that they can get the same outcome by doing it differently but end up with a life of difficulty and struggle. They watch as others get what they want but somehow foolishly think that what they are doing will work and ignore the clues to success.
Here are the points:
• If what you are doing up until now has not yielded your goals, you may not get there by doing the same thing as you are now.
• If you do not have a clear outcome, you will not get what you want. In fact, being disappointed in your life only means that you have some expectation that is not being met. So you do have outcomes, they are not well defined.
• If you continue to do more of what doesn’t work, you will continue to get the same results.
• Large goals are the progressive realization of smaller goals.
• You have to continually monitor your thoughts to keep them in the direction you want to go.
• NLP studies what highly successful and effective people do, regardless of career or situation. NLP studies patterns of behavior, communication and language, and learning strategies. Most people get caught up in content. It is the patterns that have the clues, not the content.
• If you want stellar success and you are not addicted to mediocrity, you have to study what success is and what successful people do. If it doesn’t come naturally, then you’ll have to study what works.
• Success is not random, nor is it luck. Successful people have beliefs and values that support their behaviors.
• Successful people are great modelers of other successful people. They use people as guides. It is a waste of time and resources to “reinvent the wheel.”
• Successful people are mindful and pay attention to the correlation between their thoughts, behaviors, and actions.
• Successful people are curious.
• Successful people are risk takers.
• Successful people do not generally care that others will think they are crazy or stupid. They do what they think will work.
• Most successful people are not arrogant. They have an inner self assurance and self confidence.
• Successful people are not afraid to fail because they look at failure as feedback.
• Successful people find the ways to make it work and don’t make excuses for why they cannot do/have something.
• Successful people don’t get stuck in the “it’s the way it is or it is the way I am.”
• Successful people do not consider spending money on their own development as a loss. They consider it an investment in their future.
• Successful people compete on value not price
• Successful people use things and value people; most people use people and value things.
• Successful people receive help gratefully along the way.
2012 is rapidly approaching. Remember that if you value something you’ll find a way to make it work. If not, you’ll find an excuse.
How to change your experience:
1. Get curious
2. Change what you spend money on
3. Invest in yourself and your knowledge and skill
4. Study successful models; Choose one
5. Get help and hire an expert guide to help you AND take their advice.
6. Be fearless and take calculated risks
My brilliant friend and coach, Steve Straus, once said, “I spent years doing an inadequate job with cheap tools. I found that when I invested in better engineered tools (that cost more money) that the job took half the time and I did a much better job.” There is a reason why something cost more. A tool is skill whether it be used to mow the lawn or sell a product or service or invest money. Spend the money on what will count to get stellar results. You’ll be a lot happier and get a lot more of what you want.
In the Treasure Board workshop on January 12th we’ll discuss the 3 peak principles of high achievers and how to set goals so that they will happen. Essential Mind Power Training (Jan. 20-22) (developed from 50 years of mind research) helps you develop the skills to use your mind to create the success you want while developing your intuition. NLP Level 1 teaches you the skills to expertly and successfully communicate with anyone. Leadership Practitioner teaches you the skills to get clear about what you want and get out of your own way. Mastery gives you the skills to manage every aspect of your life and communicate like the most persuasive and influential people in the world. Are you ready to leave the flock and fly with the eagles?
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
What is your behavior communicating?
Last night, I watched Masterpiece Contemporary. In one scene, a 22 year old daughter asks her dad what he thought of her artwork. Her father replied his truth…that her art demonstrated despair, (which, in my opinion it did.) Her father then said, “If this is coming from inside of you, you must feel this despair and this makes me, as your father, upset because you feel this way. If this isn’t how you feel inside, then you are a fake.” Then the daughter got angry at her father and told him to get away from her and leave her alone.
Point: I got to thinking how incongruent this was. Ask someone for their opinion, then get angry at what they said and reject the person. Hummm….if she didn’t want the truth and value her dad’s opinion enough to ask for it, then why did she ask? She got her answer. And it was the truth. She was feeling despair. I suppose blaming other person and getting angry was showing her desperation. This is a prime example of incongruent behavior. Consider your behavior as your own personal artwork. What is your artwork telling the world?
One of the presuppositions of NLP is “Behavior is the highest form of communication. “ Most people have experienced some form of someone telling us one thing and then doing another. It is the ol’ “You are talking so loud I can’t hear what you are saying.” “Practice what you preach.” The human mind is much more capable of understanding what it is seeing than what it is hearing.
There are two sides to consider when faced with incongruous behavior.
1. What do I do when someone is telling me one thing and doing another?
2. What is my behavior telling someone when I say one thing and then do another?
In either case you are dealing with incongruous behavior. Incongruous behavior undermines your business and your personal life.
Incongruent means incompatible with (what is suitable) or inappropriate. ….Containing disparate or discordant elements or parts. It basically means saying one thing and doing another or your mouth and body are doing two different things.
What others are communicating:
In business we deal with people everyday who are communicating with us. The most prized client is the one who tells us they are going to do something AND THEY DO IT! Generally speaking, these people have a high level of congruency. It is a high level of congruency that maintains their success. No one has to call them multiple times to get a response. They take responsibility to follow up without prodding. They are never too busy to make that call and let you know when something changes. People do not have to guess the answers to their own questions because they are upfront about where they stand while maintaining rapport. Regardless of the outcome, everyone feels good about the interaction.
When someone says they are going to do something, we have been taught that people keep their word and that what they are saying is the truth. When they fail to do what they say, then what do we believe, the communication or the behavior? The behavior. People’s true intentions are demonstrated through their behavior. As much as we want to believe people and give them the benefit of the doubt, the real communication is their behavior. I know that I have fallen for this in my 22 official years in business. I want to believe that people have the best intentions and when they tell me that they will do something and then don’t do it, for whatever reason, it starts to dismantle the trust in the relationship. Both sides start feeling bad. No one wants to maintain a relationship that makes us feel bad.
What you are communicating:
The flip side of this coin is what are you communicating? Are you congruent in your behavior? When you tell someone you will do something, do you follow through? In the many years of teaching NLP, I have found that the most congruent people are the ones who are most successful in business and their personal relationships.
Congruency means that you are doing what you are saying you are doing.
For example, as a profession:
When you help someone invest money, you also invest wisely. You save consistently and you maintain control over your finances. You pay your debts.
When you help someone get control of their physical well being and weight, you maintain a healthy physique and eat a balanced, healthy diet.
When you consul someone to help them with some problem, you get professional help when you yourself need it.
As a decorator, you home is beautiful and is the best representation of what you do to help others with their home.
(My own) As a trainer and educator, I keep up with my own growth and take training to improve my skills. I use NLP in my personal as well as business relationships. I know the presuppositions by rote and engage them when appropriate. I use the outcome frame consistently.
People do look for people to help them who are congruent. CONGRUENCY SETS UP TRUST. People who trust you will do business with you if it is appropriate for them. If people do not trust you, they will not do business with you.
Incongruent behavior is tantamount to LYING. Lying becomes a habit. Liars do not prosper.
Here are some of the ways people create distrust and destroy their own success:
• Talk about family values as being prized while having an affair outside marriage.
• Tell someone you don’t want to get married and then dump them and marry someone else.
• Tell someone you don’t have the money for something and then spend a greater amount of money on something else.
• Treat strangers better than you do your own family.
• Form agreements, then ignore them.
• Don’t pay or ignore your debts.
• Say you will call, then forget to follow up.
• You are not accountable. Make a commitment, then don’t follow through.
• A minister or preacher who tells their parishioners how to live a Godly life, while doing the opposite.
• You ask for an opinion and then get mad when they don’t tell you what you want to hear.
• You join a group, then never attend.
• Don’t think that your personal life and business life are separate. They are in a system and affect each other. I talked to a banker who said that she and her husband treat each other like they would their customers. They have a great marriage and very successful businesses.
• Cheating the government is the same as cheating yourself. You may think it doesn’t matter but all cheating no matter how justified weakens the fabric you are made of.
The list goes on and on.
We are human beings and as such there are things we all have some incongruous behavior because none of us are perfect. There are simple things that we can do to be congruent develop and maintain trust in people. Trust builds mutually beneficial relationships.
• Always tell the truth. If you are not interested in someone personal or business, tell them. You’ll both feel better for it and you can save them the time and effort it takes to win you as a client. I think people lie to people because they want to avoid confrontation or think they are hurting someone. The far greater hurt is to string someone along.
• Ask for what you want and then be ok with what you get. If you ask for feedback and the feedback is not what you wanted to hear, don’t get upset and blame the other person. If you want feedback, be prepared to listen and accept it. After all, you are only asking for someone’s map.
• If you have money problems, hit it head on. Avoiding it will not make it go away. The sooner it is dealt with, the sooner you can move on with your life. I’ve known people who have paid off hundreds of thousands of dollars. It didn’t happen overnight, put contacting your creditors and making arrangements and following through with the arrangement is the best medicine for good mental and financial health.
• Instead of asking your husband if you look ok, which usually comes from not feeling 100% sure yourself, say, “I’m not feeling 100% with this outfit or my size (or whatever it is). Could you help me by giving me some feedback? I’m willing to listen to what you have to say.” AND THEN LISTEN AND BE OK. If you don’t want to know, don’t ask.
• If someone is complaining to you, ask if they want you to help them solve it or just listen.
• If you are feeling resentment, figure out what you did to cause it. Resentment is usually caused by unmet expectations.
• Know yourself and be willing to look at the behavioral feedback you are getting. Do something if appropriate.
• Tell people up front what you expect. For years I would go into my hairdresser and think she is the expert and she would know best. Then I would be upset when I didn’t like what she did. Excuse me? You should be your own expert on you. Tell people what you want. You’ll have a higher probability of getting it. If you truly don’t know, then rely on their expertise and accept what they give you.
• Offer compliments when you mean them.
• Avoid making observations without some compliment. Saying, “Oh, you changed your hair” is not affirming to the other person. It is ambiguous, can be unsettling to the other person and may also cause the loss of rapport. Tell the person, “I like what you did to your hair or I like how your hair is done.” If you don’t like it, keep your mouth shut.
• Be authentic. If you try to hide your insecurities it comes off as insecure. If you are out of rapport with yourself, it will come off as incongruent.
• If you screw up, admit it.
• If you don’t know, say so.
Remember, a commitment is your word and you are only as good as you make it. A little extra time spent can make a big difference in building trust in relationships and a congruent life filled with satisfaction, success and great friends.
Point: I got to thinking how incongruent this was. Ask someone for their opinion, then get angry at what they said and reject the person. Hummm….if she didn’t want the truth and value her dad’s opinion enough to ask for it, then why did she ask? She got her answer. And it was the truth. She was feeling despair. I suppose blaming other person and getting angry was showing her desperation. This is a prime example of incongruent behavior. Consider your behavior as your own personal artwork. What is your artwork telling the world?
One of the presuppositions of NLP is “Behavior is the highest form of communication. “ Most people have experienced some form of someone telling us one thing and then doing another. It is the ol’ “You are talking so loud I can’t hear what you are saying.” “Practice what you preach.” The human mind is much more capable of understanding what it is seeing than what it is hearing.
There are two sides to consider when faced with incongruous behavior.
1. What do I do when someone is telling me one thing and doing another?
2. What is my behavior telling someone when I say one thing and then do another?
In either case you are dealing with incongruous behavior. Incongruous behavior undermines your business and your personal life.
Incongruent means incompatible with (what is suitable) or inappropriate. ….Containing disparate or discordant elements or parts. It basically means saying one thing and doing another or your mouth and body are doing two different things.
What others are communicating:
In business we deal with people everyday who are communicating with us. The most prized client is the one who tells us they are going to do something AND THEY DO IT! Generally speaking, these people have a high level of congruency. It is a high level of congruency that maintains their success. No one has to call them multiple times to get a response. They take responsibility to follow up without prodding. They are never too busy to make that call and let you know when something changes. People do not have to guess the answers to their own questions because they are upfront about where they stand while maintaining rapport. Regardless of the outcome, everyone feels good about the interaction.
When someone says they are going to do something, we have been taught that people keep their word and that what they are saying is the truth. When they fail to do what they say, then what do we believe, the communication or the behavior? The behavior. People’s true intentions are demonstrated through their behavior. As much as we want to believe people and give them the benefit of the doubt, the real communication is their behavior. I know that I have fallen for this in my 22 official years in business. I want to believe that people have the best intentions and when they tell me that they will do something and then don’t do it, for whatever reason, it starts to dismantle the trust in the relationship. Both sides start feeling bad. No one wants to maintain a relationship that makes us feel bad.
What you are communicating:
The flip side of this coin is what are you communicating? Are you congruent in your behavior? When you tell someone you will do something, do you follow through? In the many years of teaching NLP, I have found that the most congruent people are the ones who are most successful in business and their personal relationships.
Congruency means that you are doing what you are saying you are doing.
For example, as a profession:
When you help someone invest money, you also invest wisely. You save consistently and you maintain control over your finances. You pay your debts.
When you help someone get control of their physical well being and weight, you maintain a healthy physique and eat a balanced, healthy diet.
When you consul someone to help them with some problem, you get professional help when you yourself need it.
As a decorator, you home is beautiful and is the best representation of what you do to help others with their home.
(My own) As a trainer and educator, I keep up with my own growth and take training to improve my skills. I use NLP in my personal as well as business relationships. I know the presuppositions by rote and engage them when appropriate. I use the outcome frame consistently.
People do look for people to help them who are congruent. CONGRUENCY SETS UP TRUST. People who trust you will do business with you if it is appropriate for them. If people do not trust you, they will not do business with you.
In personal relationships:
Trust is extremely important in maintaining healthy relationships.
When you say you will call, you call.
When you say you will do something with your child, you do it. Putting off those appointments destroys child-parent trust. Then they may learn not to trust other adults.
When a person forms agreements with someone, they keep them. If they have to change it, they take responsibility to inform of changes and make another agreement.
Incongruent behavior is tantamount to LYING. Lying becomes a habit. Liars do not prosper.
Here are some of the ways people create distrust and destroy their own success:
• Talk about family values as being prized while having an affair outside marriage.
• Tell someone you don’t want to get married and then dump them and marry someone else.
• Tell someone you don’t have the money for something and then spend a greater amount of money on something else.
• Treat strangers better than you do your own family.
• Form agreements, then ignore them.
• Don’t pay or ignore your debts.
• Say you will call, then forget to follow up.
• You are not accountable. Make a commitment, then don’t follow through.
• A minister or preacher who tells their parishioners how to live a Godly life, while doing the opposite.
• You ask for an opinion and then get mad when they don’t tell you what you want to hear.
• You join a group, then never attend.
• Don’t think that your personal life and business life are separate. They are in a system and affect each other. I talked to a banker who said that she and her husband treat each other like they would their customers. They have a great marriage and very successful businesses.
• Cheating the government is the same as cheating yourself. You may think it doesn’t matter but all cheating no matter how justified weakens the fabric you are made of.
The list goes on and on.
We are human beings and as such there are things we all have some incongruous behavior because none of us are perfect. There are simple things that we can do to be congruent develop and maintain trust in people. Trust builds mutually beneficial relationships.
• Always tell the truth. If you are not interested in someone personal or business, tell them. You’ll both feel better for it and you can save them the time and effort it takes to win you as a client. I think people lie to people because they want to avoid confrontation or think they are hurting someone. The far greater hurt is to string someone along.
• Ask for what you want and then be ok with what you get. If you ask for feedback and the feedback is not what you wanted to hear, don’t get upset and blame the other person. If you want feedback, be prepared to listen and accept it. After all, you are only asking for someone’s map.
• If you have money problems, hit it head on. Avoiding it will not make it go away. The sooner it is dealt with, the sooner you can move on with your life. I’ve known people who have paid off hundreds of thousands of dollars. It didn’t happen overnight, put contacting your creditors and making arrangements and following through with the arrangement is the best medicine for good mental and financial health.
• Instead of asking your husband if you look ok, which usually comes from not feeling 100% sure yourself, say, “I’m not feeling 100% with this outfit or my size (or whatever it is). Could you help me by giving me some feedback? I’m willing to listen to what you have to say.” AND THEN LISTEN AND BE OK. If you don’t want to know, don’t ask.
• If someone is complaining to you, ask if they want you to help them solve it or just listen.
• If you are feeling resentment, figure out what you did to cause it. Resentment is usually caused by unmet expectations.
• Know yourself and be willing to look at the behavioral feedback you are getting. Do something if appropriate.
• Tell people up front what you expect. For years I would go into my hairdresser and think she is the expert and she would know best. Then I would be upset when I didn’t like what she did. Excuse me? You should be your own expert on you. Tell people what you want. You’ll have a higher probability of getting it. If you truly don’t know, then rely on their expertise and accept what they give you.
• Offer compliments when you mean them.
• Avoid making observations without some compliment. Saying, “Oh, you changed your hair” is not affirming to the other person. It is ambiguous, can be unsettling to the other person and may also cause the loss of rapport. Tell the person, “I like what you did to your hair or I like how your hair is done.” If you don’t like it, keep your mouth shut.
• Be authentic. If you try to hide your insecurities it comes off as insecure. If you are out of rapport with yourself, it will come off as incongruent.
• If you screw up, admit it.
• If you don’t know, say so.
Remember, a commitment is your word and you are only as good as you make it. A little extra time spent can make a big difference in building trust in relationships and a congruent life filled with satisfaction, success and great friends.
Monday, September 26, 2011
What We Really Need!
I recently heard a talk about passion and mission. The talk coupled the two concepts in a way that I had not considered before.
Passion makes what you are doing worthwhile. Passion is sustained with a connection to a mission. You need passion to sustain yourself through tough times (as well as good times).
A mission directs the passion to accomplish something; mission puts passion into action. The mission, however, is given life by an achievable outcome.
The outcome is given life through action steps.
Action steps create the process by which achievement is made.
Consider this. You can have a mission without passion. You can have a goal or outcome without a mission. You can have an outcome without action steps.
The four concepts work together to create a solid ideal for success at the highest level.
For me, passion, mission and action start with an Outcome. Without a clear outcome, the other positions are like a ship without a rudder.
So what is passion? Burning desire. It is an intense, lively, eager interest in or admiration for something or someone. It is a compelling emotion or desire for something. It generally implies a deeper or greater emotion. We can have passionate relationships, a passion for an activity, a cause or idea. Passion is like the gasoline or electricity that action and mission runs on. There is no mention of mission here. Passion is simply a feeling.
Mission is now often associated with the term “mission statement.” A mission statement is a statement of purpose. Organizations use mission statements to define what they are about. In a way a mission statement is about the values that an organization or person embraces or let’s say, the values of said is the fabric by which a mission is made. A mission can be an important assignment or the act of sending or state of being sent. For centuries, the word mission has been used in reference to sending someone out with an end in mind, negotiations, religious mission, military mission. Notice, no mention of passion.
An achievable outcome or in NLP, a well-formed outcome, is the direction or focus of the passion and the mission. An outcome is what we are going to see happen, hear and feel when we have achieved our goal or completed the mission. Passion is the glue that holds the outcome together in the process of achieving it. The mission is the overall statement of operation. It is the outcome or result that gives us the means of evaluation of whether we have accomplished it. An outcome can represent a final product or experience or consequence. In NLP it is the end in mind. Without a well formed outcome, mission may not be specific enough. An outcome frame can be a goal or experience. Goals are tangible and measurable. How do you measure an experience? How do you know you are loved? How do you know when communication happens? How do you know when you are being compassionate? These are all experiences that can be framed the outcome questions.
Critical Outcome questions:
What do you want? :States your end result in positive or affirmative language
What will that do for you? Connects your outcome to a greater value or purpose. Outcome or change for what purpose?
What will you see, hear and feel when you get what you want? :You have 3 primary senses. A change or goal must be in all three for them to be permanent. Simply using visualization will not insure that your goal is ecological or real.
Is it self-initiated and maintained? You can control your behavior, actions, feelings. An outcome or goal that involves someone else changing is not well-formed and usually difficult.
Is it realistic? What contexts do you want it in? Appropriate, achievable chunk size. If the goal or outcome is big. Chunk it down into smaller goals. What specific situations do you want this?
What stops you? Chances are this is something inside of you. Look to the inside. It is easier to change than something outside of you. Is it a behavior, belief, attitude, self-talk?
What is your first step? The very next step you can take in the direction to achieve your outcome.
The final concept is the action step. Outcomes do not happen by magic. (This is called ‘magical thinking’) Some action will be necessary to achieve you outcome. I generally have people create 3 steps for the outcome. More may be needed but 3 will get most outcomes underway. Action steps for selling after your outcome frame might be: 1. Learn your product and who buys it; 2. Develop list of prospective client; 3. Make calls and set appointments. You can divide these steps into smaller steps, etc.
So remember: the Outcome process is the hinge pin that holds passion, mission and action in place. Without a clear outcome, mission, passion and action have no direction and could even be a waste of time and energy. It is the outcome frame that creates direction, sharpens focus, makes it easier to communicate your mission and outcome to others, can include experience as well as goals.
I see many people in my coaching practice who are stuck because they simply do not have a clear outcome. They know what to do, they have the passion, they have the mission. No direction. One woman in my Level 1 right now does an outcome for each day. In one week, she has changed her life in the most positively miraculous way.
A couple of young architects quadrupled their business by do an outcome process before every proposal, every presentation.
Start with the end in mind. Practice on little things like a great lunch with someone or a great presentation. Teaching your mind to run the outcome frame on automatic will create more of what you want in ways you didn’t dream possible until now.
In closing, Amy Wrzesniewski, PhD, professor of management and organizational behavior at New York University examined how people whose jobs are typically "stigmatized" (low-level, menial positions) make meaning of their work.
People, she said, experience their work differently. Some see what they do for a living as just a job, others view it as a career and the rest think of it as a calling. Her research found that people who saw their job as a calling--one-third of the respondents--worked more hours, missed less work and reported higher life satisfaction than others doing similar work.
"You'd think that those who reported higher satisfaction," she said, "would have jobs associated with doing more interesting work. But when we looked closer, this was not so. These were all administrative assistants working in the same organization....It made you think: How can people doing the same work, sitting next to each other in the same organization, think so differently about their jobs?"
Dr. Wrzesniewski did a study of 300 hospital workers in Massachusetts. She found that when asked about what they did, the workers, who all took out trash, fell into three categories: a job, a career, a calling.
Jobs: no training, no control, no freedom, I cannot wait for the weekend, anyone can do
Career: I am on the way up; this is just a stepping-stone, I cannot wait for the weekend
Callings: Lots of training and expertise, lots of control and freedom, this is my mission in life; made it a calling, knew the names of the patients, made up parts of the job like changing pictures in the room. Those who saw their job as a calling, "talked about it in glowing terms, they liked what they did and described it as needing a lot of skill. They not only talked about cleaning public areas, but also about cleaning in such a way as to allow more effective running of their units...making it as smooth as possible for patients."
Those who saw their job as just a job, on their other hand, saw their work as being simple and involving no skills.
Her conclusion: People can actively shape the meaning of their work by "job crafting--devising more creative ways to do the work."
How would your passion, mission, outcomes and actions change if you looked at what you did as a CALLING?
Passion makes what you are doing worthwhile. Passion is sustained with a connection to a mission. You need passion to sustain yourself through tough times (as well as good times).
A mission directs the passion to accomplish something; mission puts passion into action. The mission, however, is given life by an achievable outcome.
The outcome is given life through action steps.
Action steps create the process by which achievement is made.
Consider this. You can have a mission without passion. You can have a goal or outcome without a mission. You can have an outcome without action steps.
The four concepts work together to create a solid ideal for success at the highest level.
For me, passion, mission and action start with an Outcome. Without a clear outcome, the other positions are like a ship without a rudder.
So what is passion? Burning desire. It is an intense, lively, eager interest in or admiration for something or someone. It is a compelling emotion or desire for something. It generally implies a deeper or greater emotion. We can have passionate relationships, a passion for an activity, a cause or idea. Passion is like the gasoline or electricity that action and mission runs on. There is no mention of mission here. Passion is simply a feeling.
Mission is now often associated with the term “mission statement.” A mission statement is a statement of purpose. Organizations use mission statements to define what they are about. In a way a mission statement is about the values that an organization or person embraces or let’s say, the values of said is the fabric by which a mission is made. A mission can be an important assignment or the act of sending or state of being sent. For centuries, the word mission has been used in reference to sending someone out with an end in mind, negotiations, religious mission, military mission. Notice, no mention of passion.
An achievable outcome or in NLP, a well-formed outcome, is the direction or focus of the passion and the mission. An outcome is what we are going to see happen, hear and feel when we have achieved our goal or completed the mission. Passion is the glue that holds the outcome together in the process of achieving it. The mission is the overall statement of operation. It is the outcome or result that gives us the means of evaluation of whether we have accomplished it. An outcome can represent a final product or experience or consequence. In NLP it is the end in mind. Without a well formed outcome, mission may not be specific enough. An outcome frame can be a goal or experience. Goals are tangible and measurable. How do you measure an experience? How do you know you are loved? How do you know when communication happens? How do you know when you are being compassionate? These are all experiences that can be framed the outcome questions.
Critical Outcome questions:
What do you want? :States your end result in positive or affirmative language
What will that do for you? Connects your outcome to a greater value or purpose. Outcome or change for what purpose?
What will you see, hear and feel when you get what you want? :You have 3 primary senses. A change or goal must be in all three for them to be permanent. Simply using visualization will not insure that your goal is ecological or real.
Is it self-initiated and maintained? You can control your behavior, actions, feelings. An outcome or goal that involves someone else changing is not well-formed and usually difficult.
Is it realistic? What contexts do you want it in? Appropriate, achievable chunk size. If the goal or outcome is big. Chunk it down into smaller goals. What specific situations do you want this?
What stops you? Chances are this is something inside of you. Look to the inside. It is easier to change than something outside of you. Is it a behavior, belief, attitude, self-talk?
What is your first step? The very next step you can take in the direction to achieve your outcome.
The final concept is the action step. Outcomes do not happen by magic. (This is called ‘magical thinking’) Some action will be necessary to achieve you outcome. I generally have people create 3 steps for the outcome. More may be needed but 3 will get most outcomes underway. Action steps for selling after your outcome frame might be: 1. Learn your product and who buys it; 2. Develop list of prospective client; 3. Make calls and set appointments. You can divide these steps into smaller steps, etc.
So remember: the Outcome process is the hinge pin that holds passion, mission and action in place. Without a clear outcome, mission, passion and action have no direction and could even be a waste of time and energy. It is the outcome frame that creates direction, sharpens focus, makes it easier to communicate your mission and outcome to others, can include experience as well as goals.
I see many people in my coaching practice who are stuck because they simply do not have a clear outcome. They know what to do, they have the passion, they have the mission. No direction. One woman in my Level 1 right now does an outcome for each day. In one week, she has changed her life in the most positively miraculous way.
A couple of young architects quadrupled their business by do an outcome process before every proposal, every presentation.
Start with the end in mind. Practice on little things like a great lunch with someone or a great presentation. Teaching your mind to run the outcome frame on automatic will create more of what you want in ways you didn’t dream possible until now.
In closing, Amy Wrzesniewski, PhD, professor of management and organizational behavior at New York University examined how people whose jobs are typically "stigmatized" (low-level, menial positions) make meaning of their work.
People, she said, experience their work differently. Some see what they do for a living as just a job, others view it as a career and the rest think of it as a calling. Her research found that people who saw their job as a calling--one-third of the respondents--worked more hours, missed less work and reported higher life satisfaction than others doing similar work.
"You'd think that those who reported higher satisfaction," she said, "would have jobs associated with doing more interesting work. But when we looked closer, this was not so. These were all administrative assistants working in the same organization....It made you think: How can people doing the same work, sitting next to each other in the same organization, think so differently about their jobs?"
Dr. Wrzesniewski did a study of 300 hospital workers in Massachusetts. She found that when asked about what they did, the workers, who all took out trash, fell into three categories: a job, a career, a calling.
Jobs: no training, no control, no freedom, I cannot wait for the weekend, anyone can do
Career: I am on the way up; this is just a stepping-stone, I cannot wait for the weekend
Callings: Lots of training and expertise, lots of control and freedom, this is my mission in life; made it a calling, knew the names of the patients, made up parts of the job like changing pictures in the room. Those who saw their job as a calling, "talked about it in glowing terms, they liked what they did and described it as needing a lot of skill. They not only talked about cleaning public areas, but also about cleaning in such a way as to allow more effective running of their units...making it as smooth as possible for patients."
Those who saw their job as just a job, on their other hand, saw their work as being simple and involving no skills.
Her conclusion: People can actively shape the meaning of their work by "job crafting--devising more creative ways to do the work."
How would your passion, mission, outcomes and actions change if you looked at what you did as a CALLING?
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Research in NLP
This is Steve Andreas' most recent blog! Excellent
Research in NLP by Steve Andreas
I am often asked whether there is any “hard science” academic research that supports NLP. There is some good news, and some bad news.
First the bad news…
(If you don’t like bad news, feel free to skip or skim this section.)
Most of the research directly on NLP concepts was done in the 1980s and 1990s; little or no research has been done directly on NLP in the last decade or so. The vast majority of studies that were done earlier addressed the concept of a primary representational system (PRS) — that people are primarily visual, auditory, or kinesthetic — or the impact of matching sensory predicates on rapport.
There’s a problem with this. Bandler and Grinder had introduced the idea of a PRS primarily as a teaching tool in the 1970s, to direct students’ attention to people’s sensory predicates and eye accessing. Soon after that, they pointed out that the idea of a PRS was a deliberate and gross oversimplification, only somewhat true in a particular problem context. Despite this, the bulk of research, supposedly “on NLP” at that time was done in an attempt to verify or disconfirm this concept.
As those of you with significant NLP Training will already know, whether or not people have a PRS is not in any way central to the field of NLP. We didn’t even mention it in our book Heart of the Mind (1989) introducing people to the field, because we didn’t consider it important or useful. PRS doesn’t really have anything to do with the effectiveness of the many methods that we have come to rely on in NLP to get results for people wanting change in their lives. When I sit down with someone to do a session, I can’t recall ever asking myself, “What is this person’s PRS?” It’s just not a useful question to ask.
t the same time, it is often useful to notice what sensory channel the client is using at the moment, or what sensory channel underlies the “problem.” For example it can be useful to notice that someone’s unpleasant feelings result from a critical inner voice, or to notice that many large and close movies of things to do leads to feeling overwhelmed.
Investigating Primary Representation System is a bit like Nasrudin looking for his lost car keys under the street lamp “because the light is better here,” even though he lost them somewhere else. PRS was perceived to be an “easy” thing to study, but the results of those studies don’t tell us anything about the field of NLP.
It’s also worth noting that the studies themselves were often full of research errors. The questionnaires used in an attempt to assess PRS often had confusing self-report questions like, “Do you see yourself as a feeling person,” or “Do you feel you are an auditory person?” As that kind of question clearly reveals, most experimenters were not trained in NLP, did not understand what they were researching, and did not use anyone trained in NLP as a consultant to review their experimental protocols. As a result, there was no control of the language used in the studies, nor control of nonverbal confounding variables such as gestures or voice tone.
For instance, when matching a subject’s visual predicate with a sentence like, “I see what you mean,” a higher-pitched voice, looking up, or a pointing gesture in the upper visual field will be congruent with visual processing, and be more likely to result in rapport. However, a lower-pitched voice, looking down, or a palm-up gesture in the lower visual field will be incongruent, and be less likely to lead to rapport. (Visual processing is typically accompanied by a high voice tone, looking up, and pointing gestures, while kinesthetic processing is often accompanied by a lower voice tone, looking down, and palm-up gesturing.)
As a result of these kinds of mistakes, most of the research was very poor quality. Not surprisingly, there is very little direct academic experimental support for NLP. A research committee working for the United States National Research Council in 1988 found little if any evidence to support NLP’s assumptions or to indicate that it was effective as a strategy for social influence. “It [NLP] assumes that by tracking another’s eye movements and language, an NLP trainer can shape the person’s thoughts, feelings, and opinions. There is no scientific support for these assumptions.”
To summarize, the research that has been done was on the wrong questions, by people who did not understand what they were trying to measure, ignoring linguistic and behavioral confounding variables, so of course the results were negative or inconclusive.
Although researching NLP is definitely doable, effective research in the field of NLP is a challenge for a number of reasons:
Psychological research costs quite a lot of money, which most NLPers do not have. Furthermore, if research is not done in a recognized academic institution, it is usually ignored, even if the double-blind controls and protocols are impeccable.
NLP’s focus on sensory process parameters makes it extremely hard to communicate with academics and mental health professionals, because it is so different from the typical psychiatric focus on content. For instance, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), a recognized therapy that is most similar to NLP (and which has the strongest experimental support) focuses entirely on the content of internal auditory dialogue — the words that people say to themselves. CBT ignores the volume of the internal voice, its location in personal space, its direction, its tonality, and tempo, etc. Usually changing these process parameters has a much greater impact on experience than changing the content, and it is much easier. This is something that I have explored in great detail in my e-book Help With Negative Self-talk.
Advocating rigorous research has not been easy or without resistance from within the field itself.
The original developers, and a number of others in the field — some of them widely respected — have explicitly said that NLP is inherently unverifiable by scientific research. One widely regarded leader in the field has even said that since NLP is about subjective experience, it is inherently untestable.
This ignores the fact that dreams — the most subjective experiences that most of us will ever have — have been researched scientifically for decades. A variety of new methods of brain scanning make it possible to do all sorts of experimental work on internal mental events, some of which are not even subjective experiences! For instance, brain scans have been used to detect when a decision is about to be made by a subject seven seconds before the subject becomes aware that they have made a decision.
The lack of unified support for securing research grants within the field of NLP has made it awkward to approach potential researchers. Even more of a problem in my view, many who “do NLP” have combined NLP with reflexology, remote viewing, crystal healing, aromatherapy, aura reading, and a host of other such new age methods. Most of these do not make specific claims that would be testable by the scientific method; associating NLP with them makes NLP appear to be only another get-rich-quick scam or even a cult.
Now for the good news…
All NLP processes include specific testable outcomes, detailed systematic protocols for different kinds of problems, and clear operational tests in sensory-based experience to determine when a client has reached their outcomes. In addition, many NLP processes can be completed in a single session of an hour or less. Because of this, NLP would be much easier to research than most therapies which are much less structured and usually take place during many sessions over a period of weeks or months. Scientific research needs to be done in order to confirm (or disconfirm) the various processes and understandings that are typically included in the term “NLP.”
A diverse group of dedicated NLP-trained people have joined together in establishing the NLP Research and Recognition Project in an effort to propose, develop, and support relevant research by academic institutions, with the goal of doing high-quality research that actually tests NLP principles and methods. This could do a great deal to establish the legitimacy of NLP methods, as well as advance the practice of psychotherapy generally. The director of the project, Frank Bourke, a clinical psychologist with a strong research background, has been a tireless advocate, working with those of us in the NLP community plus those in government organizations and universities, in efforts to establish studies. So far these efforts have come quite close to having funding for large scale studies several times. This is really quite a testament to Frank’s diligence and persistence, because it is not an easy thing to get through all the levels of “hoops” to gain this approval.
Although little or no research is currently being done directly on NLP processes, there is quite a lot of academic research that supports NLP indirectly. NLP methods and principles are being “rediscovered” in bits and pieces in a wide variety of research studies. Following are a few examples.
Treating PTSD and trauma using dissociation.
Sufferers who were asked to write about their traumatic memories in “third person” as if they were happening to someone else (“He was hit by a car and thrown 60 feet into a roadside ditch.”) recovered more quickly than a control group. Writing in third person requires viewing these events at a distance, as if they were happening to someone else, a way of creating dissociation.
In parallel research, Ayduk and Kross contrast two alternative ways of working through highly emotional experiences. A self-immersed perspective is one in which we try to remember the experience at the same time that we try to analyze it — for example, when we say to ourselves, ‘Why did that prejudiced comment get to me so much?’ By contrast, a self-distanced perspective analyzes the same experience as if you yourself were a third-party observer, a kind of fly on the wall — ‘Why did that prejudiced comment get to him so much?’ In both cases, you are trying to understand the emotions, but when you do this in the first person, the pull of the emotion can overwhelm understanding.
It seems amazing that a small change in the way one analyzes a painful experience (using s/he as opposed to I) can lead to such dramatic results, but the research on this is solid and clear. In one study, people who were prompted to recall a negative experience from a self-distanced perspective (why did s/he feel this way?) in the lab felt less distressed about the experience one week later compared to those who recalled a similarly negative experience from a self-immersed perspective (why did I feel this way?). In other studies, people who spontaneously self-distance have been shown to ruminate less about negative experiences and are less likely to be hostile when disagreements come up.
Timelines.
In research by Prof. Dov Shmotkin of Tel Aviv University Department of Psychology in Israel, “We discovered that overcoming trauma was related to how people organized the memory of their trauma on the larger time continuum of their life course.” In a study of Holocaust survivors, Prof. Shmotkin separated these survivors into those who considered the “Holocaust as past” and those who conceived of the “Holocaust as present.” Those in the ‘Holocaust as past” category were able to draw an effective line between the present day and the past trauma, thus allowing themselves to move forward. Those in the “Holocaust as present” category considered their traumatic experience as still existing, which indicated a difficulty in containing the trauma within a specific time limit.
Motivation, specific outcomes and behavioral change.
Recently the BPS Research Digest (well worth a free subscription) summarized a couple of recent studies done on changing behavior:
In rich countries, temptation is never far and many of us struggle to achieve our long-term aims of moderation, dedication and fidelity. An increasingly popular strategy for regaining control is to form so-called implementation intentions. Rather than having the vague goal to eat less or exercise more, you spell out when, where and how you will perform a given activity. For example, ‘When in the cafeteria at lunch I will buy orange juice rather than cola.’ A more specific variant is to form an ‘if-then’ plan, as in ‘If it is a Tuesday morning, then I will go for a run.’
Past research has found these plans to be successful, helping people to live more healthily.
There’s even evidence that they are particularly beneficial to those who have had their willpower compromised by brain damage or by taxing laboratory tasks. Two new studies add to this literature, one of them cautionary, the other more hopeful.
Sue Churchill and Donna Jessop studied 323 students tasked with eating more fruit and vegetables. They found that implementation intentions helped students achieve this task over a 7-day period, but only if they scored low on a measure of ‘urgency,’ as revealed by their agreement or not with statements like, ‘When I am upset, I often act without thinking.’ The researchers said this suggests implementation intentions may not be a panacea: ‘Ironically, people who possess poor self-regulatory skills insofar as they tend to act on impulse when distressed, who are arguably most in need of assistance in achieving their goals, may benefit least from behavior change interventions based on implementation intention formation.’ . . .
“Urgency” appears to be identical to “Impulsivity,” so it is not surprising that those people will have difficulty following through on a plan, even if the “when, where and how you will perform a given activity” is specified. Impulsivity can often be reduced by changing the timeline, or other interventions that expand the scope of what is attended to in the present when responding to temptation — for instance by including a representation of consequences in a client’s images of alternative choices.
. . . That’s the cautionary news. The good news comes from a study by Barbel Knauper and her colleagues who found that using mental imagery boosted the benefit of implementation intentions for students attempting to increase their fruit consumption over seven days. Rather than merely forming an if-then plan, such as ‘If I see orange juice at lunch, then I will buy it,’ they also imagined themselves performing this act, with as much sensory detail as possible. A promising result, and the researchers expressed their surprise that no-one had thought to investigate the combination of these two strategies before.
This result comes as no surprise to anyone with even basic training in NLP. Imagining “themselves performing this act, with as much sensory detail as possible” has been a standard and essential part of rehearsing or “future-pacing” any behavioral change. And if done well, an “impulsive” person will often “impulsively” choose what has been rehearsed. (See my blog post, Programming yourself now to remember later.) This study does not report any checking for objecting parts and satisfying them before a final future-pace, so presumably their results would have been even stronger if they had done that.
Nonverbal rapport and empathy.
Research on “mirror neurons” has established a neurological basis for nonverbal mirroring of gestures and movements, the foundation for the nonverbal rapport that has been a key feature of NLP trainings since the 1970s, as well as for compassion, and “stepping into someone else’s shoes.” Recent research in this area distinguishes between neurons that only fire when someone moves accidentally, or with deliberate intent, showing that the perception of intent (which has also been a major intervention in NLP for over 30 years) has an inherent neurological basis.
Negative reframing.
Susan Clancy’s research on people who had experienced childhood sexual abuse finds that surprisingly, the vast majority of them were not traumatized by it, and that of those who were, some were not traumatized at the time, but only years later when it was reframed as a horrible experience as a result of listening to the opinions of others who presupposed that it would have life-long harmful effects. So some of what is called PTSD is not an echo of the experience itself, but a result of evaluating the experience after the fact — sometimes years later.
Synesthesias.
John Bargh’s research focuses on “unconscious mechanisms that underlie social perception, evaluation and preferences, and motivation and goal pursuit in realistic and complex social environments.” In one example, interviewers asked interviewees to hold a cup while they asked them questions. The only difference between the experimental and control groups was that the cup held either warm coffee or a cold drink. Those holding the warm coffee expressed more positive responses than those holding the cold drink. These experiments involve synesthesias — crossover effects between different sensory modalities — in this case transforming the perception of physical warmth into interpersonal warmth. Attention to synesthesias has long been a staple of NLP training — and it is also strong support for nonverbal unconscious factors in rapport, responsiveness, and change.
Self-control and submodalities (the smaller parameters in each of the five sensory modalities).
The ability of small children to exert self-control when presented with marshmallows (If they were successful in delaying, they got two marshmallows instead of one) correlated with success later in life (age 32). When the children were asked how they were able to delay, they said that either they deliberately distracted their attention from temptation by looking somewhere else, or doing something else. Some pretended that the real marshmallow was only a flat picture of a marshmallow — an explicit submodality shift that is used in a number of NLP patterns.
Summary
This is only a very small sampling of current research studies that support various aspects of NLP practice and methodology, and more appear each week. There is a lot of research that supports NLP principles, but it is not identified as such. If all these studies were collected into a review article, it would provide quite impressive support. Meanwhile, a few of us continue to explore the boundaries of what we already know and can do.
Research in NLP by Steve Andreas
I am often asked whether there is any “hard science” academic research that supports NLP. There is some good news, and some bad news.
First the bad news…
(If you don’t like bad news, feel free to skip or skim this section.)
Most of the research directly on NLP concepts was done in the 1980s and 1990s; little or no research has been done directly on NLP in the last decade or so. The vast majority of studies that were done earlier addressed the concept of a primary representational system (PRS) — that people are primarily visual, auditory, or kinesthetic — or the impact of matching sensory predicates on rapport.
There’s a problem with this. Bandler and Grinder had introduced the idea of a PRS primarily as a teaching tool in the 1970s, to direct students’ attention to people’s sensory predicates and eye accessing. Soon after that, they pointed out that the idea of a PRS was a deliberate and gross oversimplification, only somewhat true in a particular problem context. Despite this, the bulk of research, supposedly “on NLP” at that time was done in an attempt to verify or disconfirm this concept.
As those of you with significant NLP Training will already know, whether or not people have a PRS is not in any way central to the field of NLP. We didn’t even mention it in our book Heart of the Mind (1989) introducing people to the field, because we didn’t consider it important or useful. PRS doesn’t really have anything to do with the effectiveness of the many methods that we have come to rely on in NLP to get results for people wanting change in their lives. When I sit down with someone to do a session, I can’t recall ever asking myself, “What is this person’s PRS?” It’s just not a useful question to ask.
t the same time, it is often useful to notice what sensory channel the client is using at the moment, or what sensory channel underlies the “problem.” For example it can be useful to notice that someone’s unpleasant feelings result from a critical inner voice, or to notice that many large and close movies of things to do leads to feeling overwhelmed.
Investigating Primary Representation System is a bit like Nasrudin looking for his lost car keys under the street lamp “because the light is better here,” even though he lost them somewhere else. PRS was perceived to be an “easy” thing to study, but the results of those studies don’t tell us anything about the field of NLP.
It’s also worth noting that the studies themselves were often full of research errors. The questionnaires used in an attempt to assess PRS often had confusing self-report questions like, “Do you see yourself as a feeling person,” or “Do you feel you are an auditory person?” As that kind of question clearly reveals, most experimenters were not trained in NLP, did not understand what they were researching, and did not use anyone trained in NLP as a consultant to review their experimental protocols. As a result, there was no control of the language used in the studies, nor control of nonverbal confounding variables such as gestures or voice tone.
For instance, when matching a subject’s visual predicate with a sentence like, “I see what you mean,” a higher-pitched voice, looking up, or a pointing gesture in the upper visual field will be congruent with visual processing, and be more likely to result in rapport. However, a lower-pitched voice, looking down, or a palm-up gesture in the lower visual field will be incongruent, and be less likely to lead to rapport. (Visual processing is typically accompanied by a high voice tone, looking up, and pointing gestures, while kinesthetic processing is often accompanied by a lower voice tone, looking down, and palm-up gesturing.)
As a result of these kinds of mistakes, most of the research was very poor quality. Not surprisingly, there is very little direct academic experimental support for NLP. A research committee working for the United States National Research Council in 1988 found little if any evidence to support NLP’s assumptions or to indicate that it was effective as a strategy for social influence. “It [NLP] assumes that by tracking another’s eye movements and language, an NLP trainer can shape the person’s thoughts, feelings, and opinions. There is no scientific support for these assumptions.”
To summarize, the research that has been done was on the wrong questions, by people who did not understand what they were trying to measure, ignoring linguistic and behavioral confounding variables, so of course the results were negative or inconclusive.
Although researching NLP is definitely doable, effective research in the field of NLP is a challenge for a number of reasons:
Psychological research costs quite a lot of money, which most NLPers do not have. Furthermore, if research is not done in a recognized academic institution, it is usually ignored, even if the double-blind controls and protocols are impeccable.
NLP’s focus on sensory process parameters makes it extremely hard to communicate with academics and mental health professionals, because it is so different from the typical psychiatric focus on content. For instance, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), a recognized therapy that is most similar to NLP (and which has the strongest experimental support) focuses entirely on the content of internal auditory dialogue — the words that people say to themselves. CBT ignores the volume of the internal voice, its location in personal space, its direction, its tonality, and tempo, etc. Usually changing these process parameters has a much greater impact on experience than changing the content, and it is much easier. This is something that I have explored in great detail in my e-book Help With Negative Self-talk.
Advocating rigorous research has not been easy or without resistance from within the field itself.
The original developers, and a number of others in the field — some of them widely respected — have explicitly said that NLP is inherently unverifiable by scientific research. One widely regarded leader in the field has even said that since NLP is about subjective experience, it is inherently untestable.
This ignores the fact that dreams — the most subjective experiences that most of us will ever have — have been researched scientifically for decades. A variety of new methods of brain scanning make it possible to do all sorts of experimental work on internal mental events, some of which are not even subjective experiences! For instance, brain scans have been used to detect when a decision is about to be made by a subject seven seconds before the subject becomes aware that they have made a decision.
The lack of unified support for securing research grants within the field of NLP has made it awkward to approach potential researchers. Even more of a problem in my view, many who “do NLP” have combined NLP with reflexology, remote viewing, crystal healing, aromatherapy, aura reading, and a host of other such new age methods. Most of these do not make specific claims that would be testable by the scientific method; associating NLP with them makes NLP appear to be only another get-rich-quick scam or even a cult.
Now for the good news…
All NLP processes include specific testable outcomes, detailed systematic protocols for different kinds of problems, and clear operational tests in sensory-based experience to determine when a client has reached their outcomes. In addition, many NLP processes can be completed in a single session of an hour or less. Because of this, NLP would be much easier to research than most therapies which are much less structured and usually take place during many sessions over a period of weeks or months. Scientific research needs to be done in order to confirm (or disconfirm) the various processes and understandings that are typically included in the term “NLP.”
A diverse group of dedicated NLP-trained people have joined together in establishing the NLP Research and Recognition Project in an effort to propose, develop, and support relevant research by academic institutions, with the goal of doing high-quality research that actually tests NLP principles and methods. This could do a great deal to establish the legitimacy of NLP methods, as well as advance the practice of psychotherapy generally. The director of the project, Frank Bourke, a clinical psychologist with a strong research background, has been a tireless advocate, working with those of us in the NLP community plus those in government organizations and universities, in efforts to establish studies. So far these efforts have come quite close to having funding for large scale studies several times. This is really quite a testament to Frank’s diligence and persistence, because it is not an easy thing to get through all the levels of “hoops” to gain this approval.
Although little or no research is currently being done directly on NLP processes, there is quite a lot of academic research that supports NLP indirectly. NLP methods and principles are being “rediscovered” in bits and pieces in a wide variety of research studies. Following are a few examples.
Treating PTSD and trauma using dissociation.
Sufferers who were asked to write about their traumatic memories in “third person” as if they were happening to someone else (“He was hit by a car and thrown 60 feet into a roadside ditch.”) recovered more quickly than a control group. Writing in third person requires viewing these events at a distance, as if they were happening to someone else, a way of creating dissociation.
In parallel research, Ayduk and Kross contrast two alternative ways of working through highly emotional experiences. A self-immersed perspective is one in which we try to remember the experience at the same time that we try to analyze it — for example, when we say to ourselves, ‘Why did that prejudiced comment get to me so much?’ By contrast, a self-distanced perspective analyzes the same experience as if you yourself were a third-party observer, a kind of fly on the wall — ‘Why did that prejudiced comment get to him so much?’ In both cases, you are trying to understand the emotions, but when you do this in the first person, the pull of the emotion can overwhelm understanding.
It seems amazing that a small change in the way one analyzes a painful experience (using s/he as opposed to I) can lead to such dramatic results, but the research on this is solid and clear. In one study, people who were prompted to recall a negative experience from a self-distanced perspective (why did s/he feel this way?) in the lab felt less distressed about the experience one week later compared to those who recalled a similarly negative experience from a self-immersed perspective (why did I feel this way?). In other studies, people who spontaneously self-distance have been shown to ruminate less about negative experiences and are less likely to be hostile when disagreements come up.
Timelines.
In research by Prof. Dov Shmotkin of Tel Aviv University Department of Psychology in Israel, “We discovered that overcoming trauma was related to how people organized the memory of their trauma on the larger time continuum of their life course.” In a study of Holocaust survivors, Prof. Shmotkin separated these survivors into those who considered the “Holocaust as past” and those who conceived of the “Holocaust as present.” Those in the ‘Holocaust as past” category were able to draw an effective line between the present day and the past trauma, thus allowing themselves to move forward. Those in the “Holocaust as present” category considered their traumatic experience as still existing, which indicated a difficulty in containing the trauma within a specific time limit.
Motivation, specific outcomes and behavioral change.
Recently the BPS Research Digest (well worth a free subscription) summarized a couple of recent studies done on changing behavior:
In rich countries, temptation is never far and many of us struggle to achieve our long-term aims of moderation, dedication and fidelity. An increasingly popular strategy for regaining control is to form so-called implementation intentions. Rather than having the vague goal to eat less or exercise more, you spell out when, where and how you will perform a given activity. For example, ‘When in the cafeteria at lunch I will buy orange juice rather than cola.’ A more specific variant is to form an ‘if-then’ plan, as in ‘If it is a Tuesday morning, then I will go for a run.’
Past research has found these plans to be successful, helping people to live more healthily.
There’s even evidence that they are particularly beneficial to those who have had their willpower compromised by brain damage or by taxing laboratory tasks. Two new studies add to this literature, one of them cautionary, the other more hopeful.
Sue Churchill and Donna Jessop studied 323 students tasked with eating more fruit and vegetables. They found that implementation intentions helped students achieve this task over a 7-day period, but only if they scored low on a measure of ‘urgency,’ as revealed by their agreement or not with statements like, ‘When I am upset, I often act without thinking.’ The researchers said this suggests implementation intentions may not be a panacea: ‘Ironically, people who possess poor self-regulatory skills insofar as they tend to act on impulse when distressed, who are arguably most in need of assistance in achieving their goals, may benefit least from behavior change interventions based on implementation intention formation.’ . . .
“Urgency” appears to be identical to “Impulsivity,” so it is not surprising that those people will have difficulty following through on a plan, even if the “when, where and how you will perform a given activity” is specified. Impulsivity can often be reduced by changing the timeline, or other interventions that expand the scope of what is attended to in the present when responding to temptation — for instance by including a representation of consequences in a client’s images of alternative choices.
. . . That’s the cautionary news. The good news comes from a study by Barbel Knauper and her colleagues who found that using mental imagery boosted the benefit of implementation intentions for students attempting to increase their fruit consumption over seven days. Rather than merely forming an if-then plan, such as ‘If I see orange juice at lunch, then I will buy it,’ they also imagined themselves performing this act, with as much sensory detail as possible. A promising result, and the researchers expressed their surprise that no-one had thought to investigate the combination of these two strategies before.
This result comes as no surprise to anyone with even basic training in NLP. Imagining “themselves performing this act, with as much sensory detail as possible” has been a standard and essential part of rehearsing or “future-pacing” any behavioral change. And if done well, an “impulsive” person will often “impulsively” choose what has been rehearsed. (See my blog post, Programming yourself now to remember later.) This study does not report any checking for objecting parts and satisfying them before a final future-pace, so presumably their results would have been even stronger if they had done that.
Nonverbal rapport and empathy.
Research on “mirror neurons” has established a neurological basis for nonverbal mirroring of gestures and movements, the foundation for the nonverbal rapport that has been a key feature of NLP trainings since the 1970s, as well as for compassion, and “stepping into someone else’s shoes.” Recent research in this area distinguishes between neurons that only fire when someone moves accidentally, or with deliberate intent, showing that the perception of intent (which has also been a major intervention in NLP for over 30 years) has an inherent neurological basis.
Negative reframing.
Susan Clancy’s research on people who had experienced childhood sexual abuse finds that surprisingly, the vast majority of them were not traumatized by it, and that of those who were, some were not traumatized at the time, but only years later when it was reframed as a horrible experience as a result of listening to the opinions of others who presupposed that it would have life-long harmful effects. So some of what is called PTSD is not an echo of the experience itself, but a result of evaluating the experience after the fact — sometimes years later.
Synesthesias.
John Bargh’s research focuses on “unconscious mechanisms that underlie social perception, evaluation and preferences, and motivation and goal pursuit in realistic and complex social environments.” In one example, interviewers asked interviewees to hold a cup while they asked them questions. The only difference between the experimental and control groups was that the cup held either warm coffee or a cold drink. Those holding the warm coffee expressed more positive responses than those holding the cold drink. These experiments involve synesthesias — crossover effects between different sensory modalities — in this case transforming the perception of physical warmth into interpersonal warmth. Attention to synesthesias has long been a staple of NLP training — and it is also strong support for nonverbal unconscious factors in rapport, responsiveness, and change.
Self-control and submodalities (the smaller parameters in each of the five sensory modalities).
The ability of small children to exert self-control when presented with marshmallows (If they were successful in delaying, they got two marshmallows instead of one) correlated with success later in life (age 32). When the children were asked how they were able to delay, they said that either they deliberately distracted their attention from temptation by looking somewhere else, or doing something else. Some pretended that the real marshmallow was only a flat picture of a marshmallow — an explicit submodality shift that is used in a number of NLP patterns.
Summary
This is only a very small sampling of current research studies that support various aspects of NLP practice and methodology, and more appear each week. There is a lot of research that supports NLP principles, but it is not identified as such. If all these studies were collected into a review article, it would provide quite impressive support. Meanwhile, a few of us continue to explore the boundaries of what we already know and can do.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Contagious Behavior
"Lie Down With Dogs, Get Up With Fleas": How our communities- of choice, birth, and chance - both form and inform us.
Remember how Mom used to tell you to choose your friends wisely. Gurus advise their devotees to form "sanghas" or spiritual communities. Now science has put some very precise numbers and reasoning behind these aphorisms and advice.
It's been said in NLP for decades that with sufficient rapport you can get almost anyone to do almost anything. The meta-message was that rapport was perhaps the easiest and most common form of manipulation.
Here's a fascinating study of the power of unconscious rapport, how it shapes and influences behavior over time both in individuals and groups.
Based on the famous 50 year Framingham study (originally done to track heart disease in a long term population) fascinating evidence is being found that behaviors are 'contagious' within a social network.
"Obesity was only the beginning. Over the next year, the sociologist and the political scientist continued to analyze the Framingham data, finding more and more examples of contagious behavior. Smoking, they discovered, also appeared to spread socially in fact, a friend taking up smoking increased your chance of lighting up by 36 percent, and if you had a three-degrees-removed friend who started smoking, you were 11 percent more likely to do the same. Drinking spread socially, as did happiness and even loneliness. And in each case ones individual influence stretched out three degrees before it faded out.
They termed this the three degrees of influence rule about human behavior: "We are tied not just to those around us, but to others in a web that stretches farther than we know."
Full article here: Are your friends making you fat?
So, you want to be happy? Find happy people and hang out with them.
With permission by Tom Dotz
Thursday, July 14, 2011
NLP is for people who have demonstrated a commitment to their growth and personal/professional development. Who, in my mind, have the capacity to help others go beyond their potential. And have the capacity to incorporate the skills that NLP has to offer to make the world a better place to live by being better themselves.
Here is what some people have said about it:
My NLP training has re-awakened my self-confidence and strengthened my inner peace. It helped me overcome my known fears and manage new ones. And most of all NLP has instilled in me the belief that I already possess the needed resources to be successful at anything. The tools learned in NLP are a lifetime resource for anyone desiring career success and healthy personal relationships with family and friends.
Thank you! I'm loving the class, I have already felt huge shifts in my mind. My flexibility is so much more than it was 2 months ago. The class is worth every penny and more!
I have received a lot of sales training in my career. It has all been helpful in learning the basics of speaking/listening/closing etc. It wasn't until I started my training with Susan and NLP that I saw fundamental shifts in the way I interact with my clients. I now ask similar questions as I always did, yet now am able to uncover hidden criteria in my clients' responses that tell me how to sell to each of them. I am no longer stuck selling in my own particular style but can be flexible and adapt to my client's style.
There are things going on under the surface of our interactions that I never knew existed until now, yet looking back they seem so elementary. I highly recommend Susan's training. FYI, I have only taken her beginning level 1 class and was able to reap big rewards from it. I can't wait to learn the advanced stuff!
[My company] has just received confirmation of the largest single consulting contract in its sixteen year history. I believe it is more than coincidental that this contract was landed after my completion of your "NLP for Consultative Sales" and during my participation in your "NLP Practitioner" course. The concepts of NLP which I learned through your leadership and which I applied during the course of the negotiations made for a most enjoyable and fruitful experience...
What is NLP?
It is the art and science of influence. It is a set of skills and processes that allows individuals to model excellence in communication, learning and behavior. It is a system for understanding human beings. When you understand the system of computers, it is easy to make changes in and fix your computer. When you understand the system of marketing, it is easy to market a product or service with success. When you understand how a car works, you can easily learn how to fix your car. Learning about people and what motivates them to do what they do and think what they think is the key to all communication and influence. There are many things we cannot control, but NLP teaches you how to control those things that are controllable with skill and elegance.
What you do want? No one said life is fair, but it can be a lot easier!
Increase in income?
Maybe you make enough money. Maybe you’d like to enjoy it more. Maybe you would like to make it more easily.
Ever wish you could be like that person where everything seems to fall into place and work out for them?
There is a reason for that. They think differently than other people do. You can learn this.
Do you have people in your life that are difficult to get along with? Or have prospects that you want to do business with but can’t seem to get them closed?
There is a reason for that also. Communicating to those people in a way that they can REALLY hear you is the key to success and win/win agreements
Or maybe there are certain situations that you don’t feel right in. Or you get nervous when you have to stand in front of an audience. Did you know that was easy to change?
Maybe you want “the good life” but cannot seem to get there. You can’t get ahead. Every time you do, something happens.
There is a reason for that. Our deep beliefs and values are not conscious to us. We have programs running in the background that stop us from the success we say we want.
Do you want to change them to get the success that you dream of? Do you just want to be happier? Live a more satisfying life?
Studying NLP can give you the tools to literally change any program that you run that stops you from being the person you want to be. You can make lasting permanent changes
Ok, so you like the person who you are. Do you want to make your life easier? Do you want to have skills that only a few people in the world have? Could you double your income and yet do less work? Are all of your relationships perfect?
In the NLP Practitioner program is designed to help you not only develop the skills to expertly handle people, it also helps you go from where you are now to where you want to go while developing tool chest that you can use for any difficult situation that you will be able to use automatically.
When I started taking NLP classes, I had no job, no income and no money. I felt out of control and in a downward spiral for which I had no skills to recover. I had done years of therapy with little results. As I took NLP and focused on my outcome of making money to support myself, I gently and without much thought let go of the patterns of thinking that kept me stuck and opened a whole new world of living for me that continues to be the hallmark of my life today. This is why I teach NLP and have for 22 years.
Do you want to lead your family members beyond where they are? You can transfer these skills to others. You cannot lead a child passed where you are. Children model all of your good and unresourceful patterns (the ones you don’t know about). If you want them to have success beyond yours, give them the kind of parenting they deserve.
I believe we can heal the world one person at a time. This is what NLP gives people.
Is it worth the time and money? Yes, it seems like a lot of money. No one has ever finished a NLP training and said it wasn’t worth it. Many people have said they wished they had taken it sooner. People spend a lot of time and money on things that will help them avoid the discomfort they find themselves in. It is a matter of priority. Doing avoidance behaviors will not solve problems or help with the difficulties that the world is presenting to us. But you can learn skills that you can easily use to resolve issues and move forward. I find that my students have a confidence about them that helps them get what they want and help the people around them with compassion.
NLP helps you get go clear about what you want, where there is no doubt or uncertain as to your ability to manifest it. Wouldn’t you like to be part of that elite group?
Here is what you can do:
Negotiate any deal
Get rid of past trauma
Get unstuck and realize when you are stuck.
Double to quadruple your income (yes, this is actually what happens)
Be more loving
Have satisfying relationships
Resolve conflict instead of avoiding it
Take control, stay in control
Be happier
Start behaviors you want to do
Stop behaviors you want to stop
Develop habits that support your success
Get rid of negative thought patterns, pictures, words
Go way beyond what you thought you were capable of
Overcome stage fright
And so much more!
I know people who didn’t have the money who had money just show up once they committed to doing the class. Commitment is the key. You have to say “yes” first. As far as time is concerned, time will open up with the commitment as well.
Here is what some people have said about it:
My NLP training has re-awakened my self-confidence and strengthened my inner peace. It helped me overcome my known fears and manage new ones. And most of all NLP has instilled in me the belief that I already possess the needed resources to be successful at anything. The tools learned in NLP are a lifetime resource for anyone desiring career success and healthy personal relationships with family and friends.
Thank you! I'm loving the class, I have already felt huge shifts in my mind. My flexibility is so much more than it was 2 months ago. The class is worth every penny and more!
I have received a lot of sales training in my career. It has all been helpful in learning the basics of speaking/listening/closing etc. It wasn't until I started my training with Susan and NLP that I saw fundamental shifts in the way I interact with my clients. I now ask similar questions as I always did, yet now am able to uncover hidden criteria in my clients' responses that tell me how to sell to each of them. I am no longer stuck selling in my own particular style but can be flexible and adapt to my client's style.
There are things going on under the surface of our interactions that I never knew existed until now, yet looking back they seem so elementary. I highly recommend Susan's training. FYI, I have only taken her beginning level 1 class and was able to reap big rewards from it. I can't wait to learn the advanced stuff!
[My company] has just received confirmation of the largest single consulting contract in its sixteen year history. I believe it is more than coincidental that this contract was landed after my completion of your "NLP for Consultative Sales" and during my participation in your "NLP Practitioner" course. The concepts of NLP which I learned through your leadership and which I applied during the course of the negotiations made for a most enjoyable and fruitful experience...
What is NLP?
It is the art and science of influence. It is a set of skills and processes that allows individuals to model excellence in communication, learning and behavior. It is a system for understanding human beings. When you understand the system of computers, it is easy to make changes in and fix your computer. When you understand the system of marketing, it is easy to market a product or service with success. When you understand how a car works, you can easily learn how to fix your car. Learning about people and what motivates them to do what they do and think what they think is the key to all communication and influence. There are many things we cannot control, but NLP teaches you how to control those things that are controllable with skill and elegance.
What you do want? No one said life is fair, but it can be a lot easier!
Increase in income?
Maybe you make enough money. Maybe you’d like to enjoy it more. Maybe you would like to make it more easily.
Ever wish you could be like that person where everything seems to fall into place and work out for them?
There is a reason for that. They think differently than other people do. You can learn this.
Do you have people in your life that are difficult to get along with? Or have prospects that you want to do business with but can’t seem to get them closed?
There is a reason for that also. Communicating to those people in a way that they can REALLY hear you is the key to success and win/win agreements
Or maybe there are certain situations that you don’t feel right in. Or you get nervous when you have to stand in front of an audience. Did you know that was easy to change?
Maybe you want “the good life” but cannot seem to get there. You can’t get ahead. Every time you do, something happens.
There is a reason for that. Our deep beliefs and values are not conscious to us. We have programs running in the background that stop us from the success we say we want.
Do you want to change them to get the success that you dream of? Do you just want to be happier? Live a more satisfying life?
Studying NLP can give you the tools to literally change any program that you run that stops you from being the person you want to be. You can make lasting permanent changes
Ok, so you like the person who you are. Do you want to make your life easier? Do you want to have skills that only a few people in the world have? Could you double your income and yet do less work? Are all of your relationships perfect?
In the NLP Practitioner program is designed to help you not only develop the skills to expertly handle people, it also helps you go from where you are now to where you want to go while developing tool chest that you can use for any difficult situation that you will be able to use automatically.
When I started taking NLP classes, I had no job, no income and no money. I felt out of control and in a downward spiral for which I had no skills to recover. I had done years of therapy with little results. As I took NLP and focused on my outcome of making money to support myself, I gently and without much thought let go of the patterns of thinking that kept me stuck and opened a whole new world of living for me that continues to be the hallmark of my life today. This is why I teach NLP and have for 22 years.
Do you want to lead your family members beyond where they are? You can transfer these skills to others. You cannot lead a child passed where you are. Children model all of your good and unresourceful patterns (the ones you don’t know about). If you want them to have success beyond yours, give them the kind of parenting they deserve.
I believe we can heal the world one person at a time. This is what NLP gives people.
Is it worth the time and money? Yes, it seems like a lot of money. No one has ever finished a NLP training and said it wasn’t worth it. Many people have said they wished they had taken it sooner. People spend a lot of time and money on things that will help them avoid the discomfort they find themselves in. It is a matter of priority. Doing avoidance behaviors will not solve problems or help with the difficulties that the world is presenting to us. But you can learn skills that you can easily use to resolve issues and move forward. I find that my students have a confidence about them that helps them get what they want and help the people around them with compassion.
NLP helps you get go clear about what you want, where there is no doubt or uncertain as to your ability to manifest it. Wouldn’t you like to be part of that elite group?
Here is what you can do:
Negotiate any deal
Get rid of past trauma
Get unstuck and realize when you are stuck.
Double to quadruple your income (yes, this is actually what happens)
Be more loving
Have satisfying relationships
Resolve conflict instead of avoiding it
Take control, stay in control
Be happier
Start behaviors you want to do
Stop behaviors you want to stop
Develop habits that support your success
Get rid of negative thought patterns, pictures, words
Go way beyond what you thought you were capable of
Overcome stage fright
And so much more!
I know people who didn’t have the money who had money just show up once they committed to doing the class. Commitment is the key. You have to say “yes” first. As far as time is concerned, time will open up with the commitment as well.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Bill Gates Advice to High School Students
Bill Gates advise to high school students
This should be posted in every school or kid's bedroom.
Love him or hate him , he sure hits the nail on the head with this!
Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about
eleven (11) things they did not and will not learn in school.
He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings
created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and
how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.
Rule 1 : Life is not fair - get used to it!
Rule 2 : The world doesn't care about your self-esteem.
The world will expect you to accomplish something
BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3 : You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school.
You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 4 : If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss
Rule 5 : Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity.
Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping:
They called it opportunity.
Rule 6 : If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault,
so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
Rule 7 : Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring
as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills,
cleaning your clothes and listening to you
talk about how cool you thought you were
So before you save the rain forest
from the parasites of your parent's generation,
try delousing the closet in your own room..
Rule 8 : Your school may have done away with winners and losers,
but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades
and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer.
This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
Rule 9 : Life is not divided into semesters.
You don't get summers off and very few employers
are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF.
*Do that on your own time.
Rule 10 : Television is NOT real life.
In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
Rule 11 : Be nice to nerds.
Chances are you'll end up working for one..
If you can read this... Thank a Teacher.
If you can read this in English... Thank a Soldier!
And for life and everything else you have... Thank God!!
Now... think about this and smile if you agree and please pass this on...
If you don't agree, go stick your head in the sand and take a deep breath!
This should be posted in every school or kid's bedroom.
Love him or hate him , he sure hits the nail on the head with this!
Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about
eleven (11) things they did not and will not learn in school.
He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings
created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and
how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.
Rule 1 : Life is not fair - get used to it!
Rule 2 : The world doesn't care about your self-esteem.
The world will expect you to accomplish something
BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3 : You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school.
You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 4 : If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss
Rule 5 : Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity.
Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping:
They called it opportunity.
Rule 6 : If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault,
so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
Rule 7 : Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring
as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills,
cleaning your clothes and listening to you
talk about how cool you thought you were
So before you save the rain forest
from the parasites of your parent's generation,
try delousing the closet in your own room..
Rule 8 : Your school may have done away with winners and losers,
but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades
and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer.
This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
Rule 9 : Life is not divided into semesters.
You don't get summers off and very few employers
are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF.
*Do that on your own time.
Rule 10 : Television is NOT real life.
In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
Rule 11 : Be nice to nerds.
Chances are you'll end up working for one..
If you can read this... Thank a Teacher.
If you can read this in English... Thank a Soldier!
And for life and everything else you have... Thank God!!
Now... think about this and smile if you agree and please pass this on...
If you don't agree, go stick your head in the sand and take a deep breath!
Friday, April 29, 2011
Here is a wonderful story posted yesterday by Steve Andreas' blog. Thanks, Steve.
The Pond
We thought about it for years, living in the lowlands along the creek, where the water table is close to the surface. We thought of adding fish, and maybe ice skating in the winter if we dug it large enough.
One year a backhoe was in the neighborhood, so we dug a small test hole. It quickly filled with water, and we watched the water level change through the year—lowest in fall and winter when the creek dwindled, but always only a few feet below the surface.
And then we did it; a backhoe to dig, and a loader to move. Working through most of a summer day, down through dirt, sand, gravel and boulders, down to red shale bedrock, some six feet below, the hole gradually grew and quickly filled with clear water. A huge wound in the earth, all harsh ragged edges of raw earth, with broken tree roots…. We wondered if it had been such a good idea after all.
And then healing began; the edges softening and rounding with rain, grass and weeds slowly thickening, crawling down to the water’s edge. The fish we added didn’t last long, and changes in water level flooded or stranded the ice—no good for skating…and it was too small for that anyway.
But there were so many things we didn’t think of….
The reflection, mirroring in stillness the grassy meadow in the side valley, the dark green pines of the far ridge—like the ancient pine at the valley’s mouth silhouetted now against the sky. And the sky’s many changing moods: the soft pink or yellow of early morning, held by the pines in a brief soft alpenglow, the blue of day, sometimes with clouds or early morning fog, or darkening with rain and thunder, the orange of evening sunsets, and more, all resting gently on the willing surface.
Mirroring too, the seasons; the lush green of springtime fading to tan in summer and fall, the stark white of winter. The clear image shuddering in a breeze, or shattering entirely in a stronger gust, transformed into overlapping silver circles in the rain, congealing to translucency with falling snowflakes or the first hard freeze.
Dotted with fallen golden cottonwood leaves in autumn, briefly floating, sinking slowly to enrich the bottom, nourishing the cattails growing in the shallows, seeds brought in on the feet and feathers of the travelers, thickening over the years to provide a home for nesting redwing blackbirds.
Occasionally a great blue heron, statue still, intently searching the depths, like a graying philosopher pondering the meaning of it all, leaving with slow ponderous wing strokes, gradually gaining altitude. And the dragonflies—how to describe their fragile beauty, the way they dart back and forth above the water.
And the ducks!—and later geese—announcing themselves with gack-gack and gonk-gonk, wings outspread in between the trees to land, slicing the surface in a long narrow arrowhead of water, gliding silently, ducking for food. They come in March, an early whisper of the coming spring, chasing each other in short bursts of speed along the water, courting and mating.
We tossed in some water lily seedpods, gathered on a hike, not knowing how to plant them, they rooted in the deeper water. In the early spring the dark green leaves, still curled, begin to rise from the depths—another whisper of spring. Like thoughts we don’t yet know how to think, breaking the surface like anchored sailboats, then spreading and flattening on the surface. Later, the flowers, golden globes edged with green, rising above the water, opening to reveal more yellow, ringed with sooty mascara, relaxing to the water’s surface.
All this beauty, and more, we never dreamed of….
I like to think that human beings were created with the same lack of foresight.
The Pond
We thought about it for years, living in the lowlands along the creek, where the water table is close to the surface. We thought of adding fish, and maybe ice skating in the winter if we dug it large enough.
One year a backhoe was in the neighborhood, so we dug a small test hole. It quickly filled with water, and we watched the water level change through the year—lowest in fall and winter when the creek dwindled, but always only a few feet below the surface.
And then we did it; a backhoe to dig, and a loader to move. Working through most of a summer day, down through dirt, sand, gravel and boulders, down to red shale bedrock, some six feet below, the hole gradually grew and quickly filled with clear water. A huge wound in the earth, all harsh ragged edges of raw earth, with broken tree roots…. We wondered if it had been such a good idea after all.
And then healing began; the edges softening and rounding with rain, grass and weeds slowly thickening, crawling down to the water’s edge. The fish we added didn’t last long, and changes in water level flooded or stranded the ice—no good for skating…and it was too small for that anyway.
But there were so many things we didn’t think of….
The reflection, mirroring in stillness the grassy meadow in the side valley, the dark green pines of the far ridge—like the ancient pine at the valley’s mouth silhouetted now against the sky. And the sky’s many changing moods: the soft pink or yellow of early morning, held by the pines in a brief soft alpenglow, the blue of day, sometimes with clouds or early morning fog, or darkening with rain and thunder, the orange of evening sunsets, and more, all resting gently on the willing surface.
Mirroring too, the seasons; the lush green of springtime fading to tan in summer and fall, the stark white of winter. The clear image shuddering in a breeze, or shattering entirely in a stronger gust, transformed into overlapping silver circles in the rain, congealing to translucency with falling snowflakes or the first hard freeze.
Dotted with fallen golden cottonwood leaves in autumn, briefly floating, sinking slowly to enrich the bottom, nourishing the cattails growing in the shallows, seeds brought in on the feet and feathers of the travelers, thickening over the years to provide a home for nesting redwing blackbirds.
Occasionally a great blue heron, statue still, intently searching the depths, like a graying philosopher pondering the meaning of it all, leaving with slow ponderous wing strokes, gradually gaining altitude. And the dragonflies—how to describe their fragile beauty, the way they dart back and forth above the water.
And the ducks!—and later geese—announcing themselves with gack-gack and gonk-gonk, wings outspread in between the trees to land, slicing the surface in a long narrow arrowhead of water, gliding silently, ducking for food. They come in March, an early whisper of the coming spring, chasing each other in short bursts of speed along the water, courting and mating.
We tossed in some water lily seedpods, gathered on a hike, not knowing how to plant them, they rooted in the deeper water. In the early spring the dark green leaves, still curled, begin to rise from the depths—another whisper of spring. Like thoughts we don’t yet know how to think, breaking the surface like anchored sailboats, then spreading and flattening on the surface. Later, the flowers, golden globes edged with green, rising above the water, opening to reveal more yellow, ringed with sooty mascara, relaxing to the water’s surface.
All this beauty, and more, we never dreamed of….
I like to think that human beings were created with the same lack of foresight.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Navy Seals and NLP
Here is a great article written by Tom Hoobyar, NLP Comprehensive. I couldn't have said it better myself.
"This is about using NLP to control stress reactions, and I'm going to use new research from our toughest military training as an example of what's possible.
Our U.S. Navy SEALs have the reputation of being the best commandos ever created. A Navy SEAL is someone who has survived the most challenging military training in the world.
SEAL stands for Sea, Air, and Land fighting, and these guys do it all, from swimming underwater to jumping out of airplanes.
Those who pass the training demonstrate an almost superhuman ability to keep functioning in very stressful situations. In other words, they can keep functioning effectively when a normal person would be totally controlled by their primitive fight, flight or freeze reactions.
Like where things are blowing up and people are shooting at you.
What has this to do with NLP? Let me give you some background and then I'll tell you how NLP can be super-useful here.
But first I have to tell you about a problem the Navy had. You see, the selection process for SEAL candidates the training was tough. But even when they had a batch of super qualified prospects, they were losing over 75% of them during the first weeks of training.
This is a very expensive situation. Navy psychologists looked at the failures and found something interesting.
The prospects who failed didn't lack physical ability. Even though the training ordeals were extreme the candidates were able to do the job.
Nope, it wasn't muscles - it was mental. And that's interesting because the average SEAL I.Q. is way above the military norm and many of them have graduate degrees.
The ones who "washed out" didn't control their instinctive reactions to stress. They simply froze or folded when the challenges got too demanding.
Mental toughness. That's what the Navy decided to research, so they could keep more of these well-qualified candidates. Learning how to use their "software" to control their bodies' "hardware".
Clearly, intelligent people get scared too. Maybe it's even a mark of thoughtful people, but fortunately smart people can learn more self-management also.
The SEAL Command Psychologist, Commander Eric Potterat, listed four key mental techniques that are now being taught to SEAL candidates. He found that these mental techniques can be taught to any willing person and they would increase an individual's performance under stress levels where most of us would just shut down.
The "mental toughness" program was so effective that it increased the Navy SEAL pass rate by over one third.
These skills are now being taught to college students facing exams, fighter pilots, and key executives in some companies.
Here are the "Big Four" mental skills taught to Navy SEALs:
1) Goal-setting. I don't mean "what are you going to do with your life". I mean, "How are you going to get through the next half hour"? Turns out that this kind of close-focused goal-setting is a key to peak performance anywhere. It doesn't matter whether a person is on a stage, in an athletic competition, or in the middle of a fire-fight. It is simple, and proven. One major way to combat stress is to NARROW YOUR FOCUS to the immediate future.
NLP skills can really enrich this technique. Just focus on what the next phase of your work will need from you - maybe just the next few minutes - and zoom in on that.
2) Mental rehearsal, or Visualization. How often do you imagine success doing something you may be anxious about? Take a moment now, and give this a try. See what it will be like when you do that thing successfully and easily. Notice how your body feels and what you hear and smell. Do this over and over again and you are providing your brain with extra experience of success.
Does this sound like an elemental NLP process? You bet. Besides increasing the SEAL graduation rate, one report I read said this simple technique raised nervous college test-takers' GRE scores by over 150 points.
3) Take Charge of Your Self Talk. We are constantly talking to ourselves, at a rate that is many times the speed of normal speech. So when you notice something negative say "Stop!" or "Cancel!" and then create your own "cheering section" to be your encouraging chorus. Have them (or your own voice, whatever works) say "You can do it" - "This is easy!" "Forget that glitch - focus on the next one!"
Again, this is something we've done dozens of times in our NLP training. Now you get to use it in life.
4) Arousal Control. This skill is used to calm the physical symptoms of a panic response. You know, the sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach, sudden cold sweats or hot spells.
You control this response with deliberate breathing.
You know your primitive brain will trigger reactions that might be useful for escaping a hungry bear, but not so useful when you're trying to talk with your boss, negotiate through traffic, or working through a family debate.
So, INHALE DEEPLY (for a count of six), hold it for a count of two, then exhale for a count of six, emptying your lungs. Do this three times.
Practice this anytime during the day. It will become your instant stress control and will lower your blood pressure and flood your brain with oxygen, increasing your ability to think and react thoughtfully.
Give this "Big Four" skills a try - and you may find that you're becoming more resilient and a little bit more of a "fearless warrior" in your personal life. "
Thanks, Tom!
"This is about using NLP to control stress reactions, and I'm going to use new research from our toughest military training as an example of what's possible.
Our U.S. Navy SEALs have the reputation of being the best commandos ever created. A Navy SEAL is someone who has survived the most challenging military training in the world.
SEAL stands for Sea, Air, and Land fighting, and these guys do it all, from swimming underwater to jumping out of airplanes.
Those who pass the training demonstrate an almost superhuman ability to keep functioning in very stressful situations. In other words, they can keep functioning effectively when a normal person would be totally controlled by their primitive fight, flight or freeze reactions.
Like where things are blowing up and people are shooting at you.
What has this to do with NLP? Let me give you some background and then I'll tell you how NLP can be super-useful here.
But first I have to tell you about a problem the Navy had. You see, the selection process for SEAL candidates the training was tough. But even when they had a batch of super qualified prospects, they were losing over 75% of them during the first weeks of training.
This is a very expensive situation. Navy psychologists looked at the failures and found something interesting.
The prospects who failed didn't lack physical ability. Even though the training ordeals were extreme the candidates were able to do the job.
Nope, it wasn't muscles - it was mental. And that's interesting because the average SEAL I.Q. is way above the military norm and many of them have graduate degrees.
The ones who "washed out" didn't control their instinctive reactions to stress. They simply froze or folded when the challenges got too demanding.
Mental toughness. That's what the Navy decided to research, so they could keep more of these well-qualified candidates. Learning how to use their "software" to control their bodies' "hardware".
Clearly, intelligent people get scared too. Maybe it's even a mark of thoughtful people, but fortunately smart people can learn more self-management also.
The SEAL Command Psychologist, Commander Eric Potterat, listed four key mental techniques that are now being taught to SEAL candidates. He found that these mental techniques can be taught to any willing person and they would increase an individual's performance under stress levels where most of us would just shut down.
The "mental toughness" program was so effective that it increased the Navy SEAL pass rate by over one third.
These skills are now being taught to college students facing exams, fighter pilots, and key executives in some companies.
Here are the "Big Four" mental skills taught to Navy SEALs:
1) Goal-setting. I don't mean "what are you going to do with your life". I mean, "How are you going to get through the next half hour"? Turns out that this kind of close-focused goal-setting is a key to peak performance anywhere. It doesn't matter whether a person is on a stage, in an athletic competition, or in the middle of a fire-fight. It is simple, and proven. One major way to combat stress is to NARROW YOUR FOCUS to the immediate future.
NLP skills can really enrich this technique. Just focus on what the next phase of your work will need from you - maybe just the next few minutes - and zoom in on that.
2) Mental rehearsal, or Visualization. How often do you imagine success doing something you may be anxious about? Take a moment now, and give this a try. See what it will be like when you do that thing successfully and easily. Notice how your body feels and what you hear and smell. Do this over and over again and you are providing your brain with extra experience of success.
Does this sound like an elemental NLP process? You bet. Besides increasing the SEAL graduation rate, one report I read said this simple technique raised nervous college test-takers' GRE scores by over 150 points.
3) Take Charge of Your Self Talk. We are constantly talking to ourselves, at a rate that is many times the speed of normal speech. So when you notice something negative say "Stop!" or "Cancel!" and then create your own "cheering section" to be your encouraging chorus. Have them (or your own voice, whatever works) say "You can do it" - "This is easy!" "Forget that glitch - focus on the next one!"
Again, this is something we've done dozens of times in our NLP training. Now you get to use it in life.
4) Arousal Control. This skill is used to calm the physical symptoms of a panic response. You know, the sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach, sudden cold sweats or hot spells.
You control this response with deliberate breathing.
You know your primitive brain will trigger reactions that might be useful for escaping a hungry bear, but not so useful when you're trying to talk with your boss, negotiate through traffic, or working through a family debate.
So, INHALE DEEPLY (for a count of six), hold it for a count of two, then exhale for a count of six, emptying your lungs. Do this three times.
Practice this anytime during the day. It will become your instant stress control and will lower your blood pressure and flood your brain with oxygen, increasing your ability to think and react thoughtfully.
Give this "Big Four" skills a try - and you may find that you're becoming more resilient and a little bit more of a "fearless warrior" in your personal life. "
Thanks, Tom!
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