From Here to Where do You Want to Go

Are you ignoring clues to success?

2011-12-01T13:46:00.000-08:00

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?

What is your behavior communicating?

2011-11-09T12:09:00.000-08:00

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.

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.

Ignoring agreements and commitments makes a person highly incongruent. Incongruous behavior will not support success long term especially when agreements are ignored. They think they have gone away, but the energy of the incongruent behavior lingers like a cloud. If a person break agreements often enough, they are conning people. They are telling people what they want to hear but don’t follow up. They think they are getting away with something but eventually it catches up with them.

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.

What We Really Need!

2011-09-26T11:08:00.000-07:00

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?

Research in NLP

2011-09-08T06:00:00.000-07:00

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.

Motivation in the Workplace: How Do You Define Your Work?

2011-08-26T19:06:00.000-07:00

Motivation in the Workplace: How Do You Define Your Work?

Contagious Behavior

2011-08-25T14:41:00.000-07:00

"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

2011-07-14T13:51:00.000-07:00

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.

Bill Gates Advice to High School Students

2011-05-24T07:33:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-04-29T10:22:00.000-07:00

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.

Navy Seals and NLP

2011-02-10T10:15:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-12-24T11:52:00.000-08:00

Are you emotionally ready for the Holidays and family?

We spend a lot of time getting ready for the holidays physically - decorating, gifts, food. It would be nice if we all could take off work between Thanksgiving and New Years. It might reduce some of the stress we feel that is created by shopping for gifts (I’m never stressed when shopping for myself), planning and executing meals, cards and letters, wrapping, hiding, parties, eating and drinking too much, running around like rats on speed while keeping a big smile, great attitude and sparkling personality. AND THEN… there is dealing with family members. AAAAGGGGHHHH! For some a better bet would be watching every horror movie ever made than to spend time with family members. The only way to get through the holidays is by professionally or self medicating. It is a sad commentary on our culture when the best time of the year becomes something we dread. And it is all brought on by us and the rules we impose on ourselves or others.

Back in the old days, my old days, my husband and I would avoid all of it by taking a long vacation to a warm place. That way we could gracefully say that we would be out of the country. It worked….kind of…

Being with my family USED to be the most upsetting, depressing, agitating, frustrating, experience regardless of the time of the year. Now they have become the people I most want to be with. In fact, I feel safe being with them in times of trouble and lean on them when things don’t go right simply because I know they will love me know matter what I do. They don’t know me as NLP trainer extraordinaire. They know me as Sue, who raked up leaves in the fall and made piles of them to jump over and pretend I was on a horse, or Sue, who thinks she’s overweight when she’s the skinniest one in the family, or Sue, who makes a star-spangled desert from an online recipe on July 4th and makes everyone eat some or Sue, who insists on buying her sister hair color and helps her apply it. They all take my musings in stride. It is a wonderful thing when there is a place you can go where you feel totally accepted, not for what you do but who you are.

So what is the purpose for all this rambling?
Family—for many the curse of the holidays—the fights, the hurt feelings, the conflicts, where to go when, who will visit who, who will cook, who is buying what for whom, wishing that they had no family or pretending like they do, dealing with quirks, and power struggles. This is what makes the holidays so depressing and stressful. All because we think it should be a certain way and people should act in a certain way. This is the bad news.
The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. We make maps of all of our experience. Those maps have structure. Just like a computer program, it can be “debugged”. One of the presuppositions in NLP is that “if we change our maps, we change our emotions”. Even if you have done a lot of therapy around family of origin issues, NLP can help neurologically restructure those early experiences to make you resourceful around anyone, including family. This has been the secret that has completely and uttering change my family experience.

Bert Hellinger, a German psychologist, who developed the family constellation therapy says we take our family and carry it around in our mind so that it becomes “family mind”. Have you ever been conscious of the fact that your recreate your family situation at work? So even if you are unwilling to deal with your “DAD” issues, you can deal with your male boss instead. That way it can affect your income and your happiness as well. Or maybe you are working out your family issues in your marriage. Marry your mom or your dad? Remember that NLP is neurological restructuring, not therapy. Until the restructuring is done, you’ll be able to cope until you reach the limit of your skills and resourcefulness. Then the old pattern comes back.

Because the family ties so deeply affect us and so deeply anchored, when we get around “those” people, we simple get thrown back into old behaviors and act like we were 6 years old again. OR we emotionally detach completely so we can deal with “those” people but never really engage. It’s like going to a party where you don’t know anybody and standing there all night until it is time to go home. That’s the protection mode brought on by fear of being hurt or violated. When you are in fear, it’s not very much fun. And the holidays are fun, if you have the right combination of attitude, skills and resources.

Here is a procedure to help you with the stress:
1. Do well-formed outcomes (if you have taken classes, you have this process). What kind of experience do you want to have this season?
2. Say, “no” to invitations to events that you don’t want to do. If you don’t want to go, it just creates more stress.
3. Anchoring (another technique you know from classes). Anchoring resourceful times with friends or business associates to being with family members. This is one technique I used.
4. Reframing will change behavioral responses to things people do that don’t fit your map of reality.
5. Take more time for yourself and set boundaries. It’s ok to take a spa day or have your nails done, go play basketball with the guys, rent or go to the movies. Take a day trip out to one of the area lakes. Pack a picnic.
6. Cut back on large parties. Keep gatherings small and intimate with a minimum of complicated food. Some people host a party that is like planning a wedding every year.
7. Eat well and keep adult beverages to a minimum.
8. Use your perceptual position skills. See things from another point of view this time. What is their positive intention, what benefit are they trying to get themselves?
9. Instead of doing “my rules for me, my rules for you”, do my rules for me, your rules for you.”
10. Get agreement to stop giving gifts (the retailers won’t like this one). My family has not exchanged gifts for years. Cards and pictures are enough.
11. This is the TRUTH: if you don’t get everything done, no one will die! My cards go out in January, sometimes later, sometimes not at all. To my knowledge, no one has taken me off their card list because they didn’t hear from me. The deadlines we set are self imposed. Send Thanksgiving cards instead or Valentines cards. If people only hear from you once a year, pick another time. They’ll have more time to enjoy your correspondence and you’ll enjoy writing the note.
12. Hire people to do things: clean your house, address envelopes, grocery shop. There are people out there that do this for a reasonable charge and it’s a lot less wear and tear on you.
13. Stop living from what you think is expected of you. Do what YOU want to do. Create your own experience the way you want it. These are your rules, you are the only one that can change them.
14. When changing family set ups, make sure you use your rapport skills and match and pace. Duh.
15. Work privately with an NLP practitioner (like me) to help you restructure your “family mind”. I am available Tuesday through Friday from 11-4 through the holidays excepting Thanksgiving Day and Christmas.

This could be the year you gave yourself the greatest gift -- A FUN AND ENJOYABLE HOLIDAY SEASON WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS. This I wish for you.

Asking for Help and Other Differentiators that Support Success

2010-12-22T06:51:00.000-08:00

If you learn a path through a forest, you have only one way to get to the other side. If you learn about the whole forest, you will have a thousand ways.

Asking for Help and Other Differentiators that Support Success

I won't go so far as to say that people are winners or losers or successes or failures. This would go against the NLP model that says that People work perfectly to produce the results they are getting and there is failure, only feedback. As a Certified Trainer of NLP, I look at what is working or not working; getting the results wanted or not.

Asking for help:
I had a meeting with a woman the other day who is looking for a coach. In our discourse over the hour she said something to me that caught my attention.

I ask for help early and often.

This woman is a renowned expert in her field with years of experience. In an age when people, especially but not exclusively women, are taught to be independent and stand on their own; that asking for help could be construed as a sign of weakness, I thought this was very telling.
My point: we do not live in a vacuum; we do not learn in a vacuum; we do not succeed in a vacuum. Everyone I know who became an expert, a leader, a president, etc. had the help of other people. The world and universe work in a system as does everything in it, people included.

We are not our behavior, what we do for a living, or what we have.
Here are some other documented things that successful people do than others do not:

Characteristics of a successful person:
By the way, people didn't start at the top and then start doing these things. These are the things they did to become successful.

Focus on solutions – instead to focusing on the problems, which intensify the problems, they set outcomes and work at achieving those instead of solving problems.

Take responsibility – they look at the choices they have and take appropriate action when something doesn't work instead of blaming others or situations, like the ECONOMY, for what is happening to them

Find opportunities in crises – there is a silver lining in every cloud. Often challenging situations gives rise to creative ways of doing things differently

Enjoy being in the present and what it has to offer instead of dwelling in the past. "If only it could be like it was 5 years ago. I'd like to get back to the way it was." OR If I had only taken that job at ABC company, things would be different today." are "whines" of the unsuccessful. In each moment we have available choices that are creating our future. The life you have today was created years ago. If you want something different and better years from now, today you will have to make different choices.

Make commitments and keep them no matter what. Whenever we make changes, those changes can challenge us to go back to the way things were – the pain we know is somehow better than the uncertainty of what we don't know. Making commitments and keeping them come out of our value systems. If we are unable to follow through on one commitment, it generally says we will falter on others. This doesn't foster reliability in people. Make it work, if you committed to it, if you want to be seen as an outstanding business person.

Focus on outcomes and what they can achieve – rather on excuses why they can't do something.

Focus on mastery rather than performance - Attending to doing things right without any failure leads to the imposter syndrome. Performance is key and it better be perfect. If it can't be done perfectly, it won't be tried. This goes back to the fear of failure. The only way to fail is to not do something. Take the time to learn something thoroughly. My trainer taught, "train as if you will never master training."

Make personal development a priority – I've never known a successful person who used money as an excuse not to do something. They think of things in terms of possibility, choice and how (process). If you focus on the possibility of how, it is amazing HOW things come about. Using time and money as an excuse is the hallmark of a person who is struggling and not getting what they want in life. When a successful person wants something, they find a way to do it.

Face fear, accept it and take the leap – qualify: educated leap. Gather information and talk to people who have already done what you want to do. Success leaves clues. Avoid missing any.

Expand your comfort zone – the wider your comfort zone, the more flexibility and choices you have. If all you have is a muddy dirt road to travel on, the more likely you will get stuck.

Respond to new ideas with curiosity. There is always something more to learn – success is built on curiosity. Belief in knowing it all is a dead end road.

Plan and take action – action without a plan is frantic activity; can mimic ADD. Plan without action mimics 'sitting ducks.'

Realize they have a choice in strategies if something isn't working – it is not if something doesn't work, it is when. This separates the 'wheat from the chaff'. Everything changes. We live in systems. Systems are dynamic. Changing with the times doesn't mean you have to have the "latest" technology but you probably need to make some effort to upgrade occasionally. Also, if you only have one choice, you are a robot.

Learn from mistakes and take feedback as a way to adjust the next step to get results– A mistake is a miss take. Do learning in reverse and do a Retake. Being defeated by failure is the hallmark of a perfectionist. Learn to be imperfect. You'll be happier and learn more. Listen to what others are saying who know more than you (not necessarily your parents). If I had listened to my parents, I would have moved home when I lost my first job. They did give me some good suggestions also. When I wanted to quit college, my dad convinced me to stay in school. Good choice.

Persist until something works. If the outcome is achievable then all that remains is to take action and change what you are doing until it happens
Help others – share your knowledge with those who wouldn't ordinarily be exposed to it. There is great benefit from teaching others. It helps you learn at a deeper level.

Hang around people who are like minded and want success also – so many of my former NLP students are returning for 'brush ups.' Being around people who are learning and growing supports us in getting what we want. You speak a common language. With so much hopeless desperation that has infiltrated many people, it is nice to be around people who have an upbeat perspective on life. And it is a perspective. We are all in the same boat. Some of us looking at it as a yacht; some are looking at it as a row boat without a paddle.

By the way, research on optimism and pessimism shows that optimists, even though they may see things a little unrealistically good, are healthier physically and mentally than realists and pessimists.

The successful person is largely differentiated by their WAY OF THINKING! Humm…where have we heard that before? I'm talking about the way we perceive situations. It is all a perception anyway, choose one that makes you happy. Now THAT is a choice!

Life is Good.

Words are Important!

2010-10-07T08:15:00.001-07:00

Your language is the software package that runs your brain. You are always influencing and being influenced. So not only are you influencing others by your words, you are affecting yourself.

Your surface communication (what comes out of your mouth) is the end result of multi-layer thought process that begins in the deepest levels of your mind. By the time a thought is formed and that thought is expressed, it has gone through many filtering processes and much of the communication has been deleted, distorted and generalized. Then you make meaning of an experience and it is the MEANING you remember, not the actual experience. In fact, Noam Chomsky, in Transformational Grammer, stated that people communicate about 1-1/2% of the total of any experience. That's not a whole lot of information. You can see why so much miscommunication happens.

Now, knowing how to transform little phrases is a start to transforming your communication to benefit yourself and your internal experience. Here are some examples:

Change: Try ..............to ...........Do my best
Change: Stupid .........to............ Interesting
Change: Pain............. to............ Discomfort
Change: Lost .............to............ Missplaced
Change: Hate............ to............ Dislike
Change: You can't miss it.. to....... You'll find it
Change: Please don't misunderstand me........ to......... Please understand what I am saying
Change: It is so hard to.... to........ I'll find a way
Change: You won't fail .... to ....You will succeed
Change: Don't forget ........to .....Remember
Change: Don't miss it .......to......You'll find it

These are a few examples that will clean up your communication so that the listener has a better understanding of what you are saying.

Remember that the words like don't and won't are not processed in the mind so when you tell someone "Don't miss it" you are actually telling them to "miss it." That is what they hear.

More on the deletion, distortion and generalizations later.

Take note, the the more you do delete, distort and generalize, the more we find ourselves stuck and missunderstood. That doesn't feel good.

Small changes can, through time, can create big results.

2010-07-13T12:46:00.001-07:00

Here is a testimonial from a coach who has used NLP in her coaching business.
"NLP gave me with the foundational belief system and structure I needed to grow a bigger life and a successful coaching business. No other training has proven as valuable to me in terms of my personal/professional development".

All Change is good

2010-05-13T10:42:00.000-07:00

For years, a friend of mine told me this and I would think, "Huh?" How could all change be good? It depends on how you look at CHANGE. Unfortunately, most people look and experience change as "loss."

Do this exercise. Go back through your personal history and look at all the major changes in your life. After the change, what happened next after everything settle down?

Change for me represents something "different" and something "better." Eventhough some changes have represented losses for me, the situations were always replaced by something better than what I had. If I were still in the same relationship I had when I was married I wouldn't be happy with the person I am with today, nor would I be the same unhappy person I was back then.

People make themselves miserable trying to hold on to what they have, when what they can get as a replacement would be 10x better.

The other thing to think about is that even though change may represent something that isn't useful, it at least let's us get clear about where our boundaries are and what we don't want. Change, then affords us the opportunity to develop a viable replacement. The replacement still represents a change but it is about moving towards something better rather than moving away from something that is painful. When we move away from something painful, we can never get what we want because moving away from something painful doesn't specify where we are going.

If we don't know exactly where we are going, we will end up somewhere - the same place as we were before.

Flexibility in thinking towards possibilites of what CAN happen is the hallmark of genius.

Biggest Misconception of Communication – Verbal vs. Nonverbal

2010-04-21T13:50:00.000-07:00

Have you ever sat in a seminar or talk about communication and heard the speaker use the statistics about communication?:

· 7% are the words,

· 38% is the way the words are said (paraverbals) and

· 55% of the communication is non-verbal (body language)

WRONG!

In fact, just this week, after imparting the misconception with my Level 1 class, one of my students heard a talk where the speaker cited these statistics. When I hear them, I immediately become suspect of this person’s ability to teach communication.

Not so Simple

Let me set the record straight for all you speakers out there and listeners. These often yet misquoted, out-of-context figures came out of the work of Albert Mehrabian, specifically, “Silent Messages.” Beginning the in 1960’s Mehrabian, a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at UCLA, has been known for his pioneering work in the field of nonverbal communication (body language).

His experiments helped identify nonverbal and subtle ways in which a person conveys like-dislike, power and leadership, discomfort and insecurity, social attractiveness, or persuasiveness. Mehrabian's research provides the basis for the widely misquoted and often much over-simplified statistic for the effectiveness of spoken communications.

Feelings, Ambiguity and Conflict

It is important to understand the context of Mehrabian findings. At a minimum, the formula applies to communications of feelings and attitudes (like-dislike) , not simple communication, ambiguity or incongruence.

Here is the oversimplification of the true statistics:

· 7% of meaning in the words that are spoken.

· 38% of meaning is paralinguistic (the way that the words are said).

· 55% of meaning is in facial expression.

Mehrabian did not intend the statistic to be used or applied freely to all communications and meaning.

From Professors Mehrabian’s website:

“Total Liking = 7% Verbal Liking + 38% Vocal Liking + 55% Facial Liking

Please note that this and other equations regarding relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages were derived from experiments dealing with communications of feelings and attitudes (i.e., like-dislike). Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable. Also see references 286 and 305 in Silent Messages -- these are the original sources of my findings”

For example, the spoken instruction,

"Fire! Evacuate the building!”

has 100% meaning in the words alone: “There is a fire and get out now!”

The tone and body language might additionally convey urgency in meaning. You don’t need a body language expert to give you the full meaning of the communication. You have it all in the words.

In autocratic environments, such as the armed forces, there is no need to discuss emotional attitudes and feelings. Mehrabian's theory and its implications are not especially applicable The soldier does as the officer dictates without any discussion.

The value of Mehrabian's theory relates to communications where emotional content is significant, and the need to understand it properly is great. Or where the words are ambiguous or where there is a conflict (incongruity) between the words a person uses and the non-verbals and tone (one of a class known as paraverbals). Example, saying “yes” and shaking your head “no.” People tend to rely more on the non-verbals to evaluate the emotional state of the person speaking when there is ambiguity or conflilct between the channels

This is applicable in management and business, where motivation and attitude have a crucial effect on outcomes.

Meaning and Spoken Communication.

When interpreting meaning as the listener or convey meaning as a speaker, the Mehrabian model is important but context of the communication needs to be considered. In Meharbian’s model, 93% of the meaning is inferred by nonverbal language but you cannot use it in as a general communication rule. Also take into consideration that the research involved only spoken communication.

In many instances, 100% of the words are used to convey meaning, such as in contracts, deeds and legal documents or signs, such as NO SMOKING or RESTROOMS. No attitude or emotional content is present. Books also rely on words for 100% of the communication.

So the next time you hear a speaker misquote these statistics, you can do a number of things.

1. Do nothing; just consider them ignorant and they didn’t do their homework. When I hear this from a speaker I know they heard or read about it without doing any research and thought it was impactful and decided to use it.

2. Mention to them privately that they might want to check out Mehrabian’s studies before using the statistics again. Or send them to my blog off my website.

3. Challenge them in front of their audience. Make them look foolish.

I suggest using number 2. You’ll be doing them a favor.

The Lies about how to tell if a person is lying to you

2009-12-10T14:23:00.000-08:00

This is a second of a series of articles on misconceptions about “reading” people.

I hear this often on TV shows and from what I understand, it is generally taught to policemen. What I hear is that if a person looks up to right, they are lying. This is another myth (see November’s blog on Body Language) that originated from NLP and was taken out of context and taught wholesale to people without having the entire understanding of what they were saying.

I think what happens (I’m only guessing) that someone takes a class or read something and they extract information out the class to teach to others. This information is usually something they find relevant in their own lives or it makes sense to them. It doesn’t have anything to do with truth. In the past, I have been guilty of the same thing. Early on in my NLP career, I became a victim to this type of information extraction so that I could impress audiences or build my expertise and authority. Today, knowing what I know about speakers and trainers in general, I want to check out any information before imparting it to others. Disseminating bad information will do more harm to ones’ credibility than good. You never know who is in the audience.

NLP was originally developed to help people model excellence in human communication, learning and behavior. It helped us understand how people operated as systems. Early on in NLP, eye patterns (or eye cues) were taught to people as part of understanding internal computation (the sequence of patterning, Strategy, a person uses to do things or think, like how they make decisions). Strategies are programs that run in the mind to do everything we do. Discerning the Internal Computation was part of strategy elicitation. Eye patterns were taught to therapists to so that they would pay attention to the internal processing of the client and/or match that processing to develop rapport. NLP was also developed as a MODEL, not a theory. Models are about what works, not necessarily what is true. Theories tend to espouse truths, even though they are only theories.

When eyes go up and to the left, a person was accessing remembered information (edipic) and when eyes go up and to the right, a person was accessing constructed information. Somehow, over the years “constructed information” meant a person was making it up and therefore lying. BUT many right handed, normally organized people construct out of recall. The images are extracted out of a remembered memory. In FROGS INTO PRINCES by Richard Bandler and John Grinder (page 21), you’ll find that when Bandler and Grinder asked a number of the same questions to various participants, they go similar but not entirely the same eye movements. Some people would do one thing and another would do something else. To enhance rapport and understanding, a person would then match the words with the eye movements: visual eye movements with visual “see” predicate words and phrases. In fact, on a biochemical level, all memories are 'constructed. (1) The Psychobiology of Mind-Body Healing, Ernest Lawrence Rossi, 1986, W.W. Norton & Company, page 69. How 'constructed' a memory has to be to trigger that eye-accessing pattern isn't clear.

Then somewhere someone got the idea that if you asked a person a question and they got the answer out of visual construct that meant that they were lying. NO, NO, NO. it means nothing of the kind. The whole idea of NLP was to get people to stop generalizing about people. In fact, as I recall, someone close to Richard Bandler once stated that they were sorry that they ever taught that information to people because it was so distorted and misused.

Stever Robbins wrote a great article about NLP and Lying. He said that just because you ask a question to elicit certain eye cues doesn’t mean you are going to get them. He says, As part of the experiment, I asked, "How many chairs do you have in your living room?" expecting them to access visual information. They would have a KINESTHETIC eye-accessing cue. That counted as a non-correlation. During the debrief, the subject said, "Remember when you asked about the chairs? I suddenly remembered how wonderful it felt when my mother rocked me to sleep in those chairs." (He went on about the wonderful FEELING for a few more seconds.) Just because I wanted him to access certain information didn't mean he did. In police interrogation, I can imagine anyone--innocent or not--worrying about how their answers will be taken. If they worry by constructing scenarios in their mind, that could produce a 'constructed' accessing cue.”Accessing eye cues may also be a reference to where information is stored spatially in submodalities. Therefore, accessing memories is only the first step in using the information.

A better approach to lie detection is to learn to notice unconscious physiological responses: pupil dilation, pore size, skin flush, muscle tone changes, breathing, etc. Calibrate carefully. Ask lots of questions that you know the answers to, until you are sure you can tell what combinations of nonverbal responses correspond to truth. If they happen to lie to one of your questions and you know they're lying, you'll also have the chance to calibrate a lie. Good poker players do this when they look for a "tell" in the other players. Often times a person’s voice pitch and tone will change when they are not telling the truth or there will be voice stress. Even that isn’t accurate.

Also, unless you know someone REALLY, REALLY well, the chances that you can tell they are lying are small. The bottom line on lie detection is that you simply can't tell from any of the simply NLP observations whether or not someone's lying. You may have said something or asked a question which triggered the person thinking about a childhood trauma or a memory of a heated conversation. Or the eye movement may have had nothing whatsoever to do with your words. A person could have had an unrelated sudden thought.

Robbins says, Sometimes if I think someone's lying, I'll simply re-ask the question a couple dozen times in a couple dozen different ways. Or I'll ask, "Really? Are you sure?" Or I'll ask for details. Those aren't NLP By the way, if you really thought that they were lying with that eye movement, your suspicions may have caused you to have a pronounced nonverbal reaction. Hopefully, they interpreted that correctly.

Stever's (and Susan’s) sage advice: don't hang around with people you think lie to you. It makes life much easier.

DEBUNKING THE MYTHS ABOUT BODY LANGUAGE

2009-10-20T14:06:00.000-07:00

Well, I’ve had enough!

The Body Language Experts are coming out of the woodwork. They are blogging; they are on TV, they are giving talks. And there are still more people out there who are pretending to be body language experts. There is no end to the misinformation about body language in the media these days. So much so that certain myths have now become so widely spread that regardless of what a particular movement means, it is now accepted by the general public as truth even though it isn’t.

So I am setting the record straight at least for my corner of the world. If you are so inclined you can send this on to some of your wayward brethren who have been caught in the mythical fray. I’ll give you the most effective way to handle any body language. See below on how to handle any body language.

I got started on this one morning when one of my master practitioners sent me a link to some coach’s blog (is a coach necessarily a body language expert?). Most of them work over the phone. They don’t even get visual cues unless they have Skyp. In this person’s defense, her bringing up to awareness some of the inappropriate body language that can be used in interviews allows a person to become aware of their own body language.

So this woman, the coach says:

Leaning Back in Your Chair
When in an interview, it’s not a good idea to lean back in your chair. This gives the impression that you’re overly relaxed and disinterested in the job. It can also make you appear untidy. To remedy this, sit a little bit forward in your chair. This helps you present yourself as alert and eager to answer any questions thrown your way.

Now I agree that leaning back in your chair during a job interview is probably not the best strategy for showing interest BUT leaning back in the chair could also mean that the person is thinking about what the speaker is saying (processing, if you will). It is a dissociation. It is a backing away from the conversation while processing. The person can also be disagreeing with the speaker. They’ve heard something that doesn’t resonate with one of their values or heard something they don’t like. They may be commenting (internal dialog) inside and comparing what is being said with their own beliefs. But I’ve never heard that a person is relaxed or disinterested.

Folding Your Arms
Did you know that folding your arms in any situation sends a message that you’re closing yourself off from the person you’re communicating with? This means, if you fold your arms in an interview, you’re sending the interviewer the message that you’re not inviting him or her in. In other words, you can appear to be an unfriendly person, which could potentially X you out of the job.

OH, PLEASE! NOT AGAIN!!!! This is one of the myths that have been so perpetuated by the media and so called experts that it is now accepted as fact. We fold our arms for dozens a reasons: we are cold, we listening to the speaker are a few. This myth is so wide spread that I actually uncross my arms on purpose when I am conversing with a person I don’t know because of their perception of what it means.

Crossing Your Legs
While crossing your legs during an interview seems to be a polite and professional gesture, some experts beg to differ. In fact, this action actually sends a message of complacency, which is not what you want to communicate to your interviewer. This is why it is advised that you instead plant both feet firmly on the floor. It demonstrates confidence in who you are.

Actually crossing your legs is an incongruency as is standing with the weight of the body on one leg. I agree that planting both feet on the floor is a better way of sitting because it is more balanced. Where this person got that it meant complacency, I don’t know. I have dozens of people who take training from me every month. If they are sitting crossed legged does it mean they are all complacent? For the kind of money they are paying and time they are investing, I don’t think any of them are complacent. Their hindend may be uncomfortable from the hotel chairs, but based on the skill level of the participants that come out of my trainings, I don’t think complacency is a word that I would use to describe any of them. Sitting balanced actually is not only beneficial for your body, it is also very good for your mind. It actually helps the thinking/learning process. Standing and sitting with the body weight evenly distributed on both legs helps the person with energy and accessing neurological information.

There are 6 billion people on the face of earth. There are countless cultures. And all of them (people) place meaning on everything thing that happens to them, their friends, family, city, country, world. With so many minds taking in so much information the chance that two people see or experience the same event exactly the same is almost impossible. If you have 10 eye witnesses to an accident, you will get 10 individual and different interpretations of what happened.

So take the fact that no two people experience the world alike and make their own meaning of experience and then add this to the fact that the meaning we place on experience drives our emotions, and then add the fact that emotions drive our behavior, of which our body language is derived. So is it accurate to say that when all human beings do something in their behavior (body language) that it all means the same thing? How can it? Everyone perceives the world differently so each person’s movements will have different, individual meaning. The meaning of the movement may change over time as the individual learns, grows, evolves or grows older.

Jules Collingwood, an NLP Trainer Assessor, says,
” As humans we can modify our gestures consciously, making voluntary movements as well as displaying unconscious breathing shifts, skin tone changes and micro-muscle movements. We use our bodies to convey interest or disinterest, to establish rapport with others or to stop them in their tracks. We learn cultural norms about appropriate body language for people of our gender, age and status in our daily lives and sometimes find our habitual presentations elicit markedly different responses in other parts of the world.

So what can body language teach us about other people? With sufficient exposure to another culture we can learn to recognize its members by their body language, the way they move and gesture, how close they stand to other people and how much eye contact they make and with whom. We can learn to recognize HOW the individual, whatever their origin, is thinking by watching their eye movements, breathing and posture as they interact. This will not tell us WHAT they are thinking. The subject matter of someone's thoughts remains private until they describe it.”

Until you know someone and can calibrate them through time, you don’t know when a particular person is passionate about something, bored, closed off, annoyed. They might be trying to take an insect off of their shirt or need to go to the bathroom. They may be angry but you are not necessarily the object of their wrath. Calibration is the act of observing a particular person and asking them for meaning which we can use for future reference. Just because the person does something that means _________ , doesn’t mean that everyone has the same meaning.

In NLP, making interpretations or assumptions about other people’s behavior or movements is called MIND READING. We may have some degree of accuracy when mind reading but if you miss read someone, you may have lost rapport with an important part of your future. If you use body language to calibrate someone you can use that information to form questions and calibrate for the future.

HOW TO HANDLE BODY LANGUAGE

The best way to handle body language is to look at the larger frame of what you want to accomplish. Establishing rapport by matching and pacing body language will help you succeed in accomplishing your communication outcome/goal. Making meaning about what they are doing will not. The latter seems such a waste of time. Take the fact that no communication takes place without rapport, matching and pacing any movement will help you establish a relationship of trust and comprehensive understanding.

If you are interviewing for a job, it is much preferred to match your interviewer. Your brain makes thousands of decisions every second about the person in front of you by making comparisons of similarity and differences. The more similar a person is to you or you are to a person, the more familiar you seem to them, the more comfortable you will be with each other. Respectfully aligned with another person is the most effective way to understand each other. People like people who are like themselves. But it isn’t even about liking; it is about UNDERSTANDING. YOU WILL LEARN MORE ABOUT A PERSON BY MATCHING THEIR BODY LANGUAGE THAN FIGURING OUT WHAT IT MEANS. Being conscious or unconscious (you do this anyway) about aligning with others is the key to communication success.

Stay tuned for Myths about Lying and the 7%-38%-55% Myth about what is important in communication.

It Doesn't Take a Big Miracle to Appreciate the Small Ones

2009-07-02T17:07:00.000-07:00

The most recent book I’ve read is Miracle in the Andes. It was written by one of the survivors of an airplane crash in the early 1970’s. I’ve read a number of profound books in my life, another one being Left to Tell.

What struck me about this first-person account about these young rugby players’ survival in the Andes after a plane crash for 72 days, was how it demonstrated the POWER OF THE MIND and the importance in KEEPING OUR FOCUS ON OUR HIGHEST CRITERIA. Getting distracted by negative consequences drains our energy and pulls that energy away from what we need to be doing to have a better outcome.

The author, Nando Parrado, was unconscious for 3 days before he came to and discovered that the plane crashed and his mother and sister and many of his team mates were dead or dying. It was only the beginning of 72 days of 30 below-freezing temperatures, no winter clothing, no water, no food and no way out. After 72 days of impossible conditions, it took the author and another one of the survivors 10 days to walk 45 miles over 17,000-foot mountain peeks to find a shepherd to get help.

They improvised ways of making water, fashioned snow shoes out of plane insulation and a multitude of other somewhat ingenious and horrifying ways of surviving. They found out while trying to get the plane radio to work that the search for them had been called off. Nando, an ordinary young man wanting only to survive, led an expedition up the treacherous slopes of snow-capped mountains and across 45 miles of frozen wilderness to find help.

He stayed beside his sister until she finally gave up her life. When he was told after becoming conscious that his mother had died in the crash, the tears began to well up inside of him and he heard a voice say, “Don’t cry. Tears waste salt. You will need salt to survive.” Astonished by the calmness of the voice, he was then told of the others who had died. Wanting to sob again, he heard the voice, “Do Not Cry. They are all gone. They are all part of your past. Don’t waste your energy on things you can’t control. Look forward. Think clearly. You will survive.”

And he did. In the face of death, that could come at any moment. In the face of terrifying fear which he could not ignore, he lived 72 days and walked out of the Andes to live a rich and prosperous life: a life which he dreamed up in the Andes that included a loving wife and children, seeing his dad again, telling his dad that his sister did not die alone.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in his landmark research and book, FLOW: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF OPTIMAL EXPERIENCE, says, “one common attitude shared by individuals who survived severe physical ordeals (concentration camps) was the implicit belief that their destiny was in their hands. They did not doubt that their own resources would be sufficient to allow them to determine their fate. In that sense they could be called self-assured, yet at the same time, their egos seem curiously absent. They found a way to function in their environment harmoniously. This attitude occurs when a person no longer sees himself in opposition to the environment. He feels a part of whatever goes on around him, and tries to do his best within the system in which he must operate.”

While others in the crash were blaming God and a host of others for this terrible accident, Nando was finding ways to survive and think about his future. He imagined his father suffering in agony for his loss and Nando would feel rage and hear the past words of this father during his father’s own bitter crisis, “I decided I would not quit. I decided I would suffer a little longer.” Nando would vow silently, “ I will struggle. I will come home. I will not let the bond between us [he and his dad] be broken. I promise you, I will not die here. I will not die here!

After Nando and the rest of the survivors (16 out of 45) had returned home, his father told him, “I thought that all of you were dead. I knew I would never recover from the loss. It was as if my house burned down to the ground, and I had lost everything I owned, forever. And now, to have you back, it’s as if I have stumbled on something precious in the ashes. I feel I am reborn. My life can begin again. From now on, I will try not to feel sorry for what was taken from me, but to be happy for what was given back….The sun will come up tomorrow,” he told me, “and the day after that. Don’t let this be the most important thing that ever happens to you. Look forward. You will have a future. You will have a life.”

So my thoughts for this hot summer day as I think about my trip to Iowa are as follows:

1. Know what is important to you and how much you value it. People wonder why I call going to see my family a vacation. It is the one place I know people love me for who I am and not what I do. They don’t care what I do. I’m Aunt Sue to them. Now it’s Great Aunt Sue.
2. No matter what happens, there will be another day. Don’t let circumstances deter you from what is really important to you.
3. Stay focused on something greater than yourself that is positive. Everyone will have challenging, even devastating events in their lives. Our success will be based on how we clearly we focus on a better future.
4. Regardless of what is going on, find a way to function harmoniously in your environment. As Csikszentmihalyi says, this attitude occurs when a person no longer sees himself in opposition to the environment. He feels a part of everything going on around him.
5. Focus your attention off yourself and onto helping others. There is always someone who is in worse shape.
6. It’s not about getting rid of the fear. It is about using it to survive or focusing on something that is more important. Fear has value. It is information. Work on discovering new solutions and opportunities. Csikszentmyhalyi states, “Most of us become so rigidly fixed in the ruts carved out by genetic programming and social conditioning that we ignore the options for choosing any other course of action. We will never become aware of other possibilities unless we pay attention to what is happening around us and evaluate events on the basis of their direct impact on how we feel rather than evaluating them exclusively in terms of preconceived notions.” Don’t make your happiness depend on what will happen under a certain set of rules.
7. Be grateful for what you do have. In the movie, TRANS SIBERIAN, one of the characters kept saying, “Focus on the donut, not on the hole.”
8. Learn lessons easily. Avoid waiting for a crisis to get you to wake up. A crisis isn’t the first indication that something is going wrong. Pay attention to the feedback you are getting around you.
9. Appreciate the moment but remember the moment is part of an on-going process. Your life can change in an instant. But there will be more of it. Be strong and a source of strength for those around you.
10. Avoid letting negative consequences get in the way of your happiness. In Miracle in the Andes, there are photographs taken with a disposable camera someone had in their luggage. Despite the horrific conditions and the ever presence of death, the pictures showed smiling faces. No matter what is going on, we can all take a moment to smile.

And I thought my trip up Kilimanjaro was hard. No, this was hard!

Every thing You Do Counts

2009-05-26T09:39:00.000-07:00

Over Memorial Day weekend, I thought a lot about the men and women who give up their regular lives to go and fight overseas. Some of them never come back. Some of them come back and have a troubled time readjusting to their normal life again. These are the ones I'm concerned with.

I have an extraordinary talent for helping people. It is the only way that I could do what I do for the last 20 years. There are many skills and processes in NLP that can help these young men and women reorient into society faster and smoother. One of the special processes of NLP is the Trauma Process which can also be used for phobias. In about 15 minutes, sometime less, I can help a person rid themselves of the effects of trauma.

I have worked with many people over the years whose lives were crippled by emotional and physical trauma that were healed. They went on to lead happy, well-adjusted lives. Policemen and civilians who have been shot or in car accidents, people whose spouse died or left them suddenly, people who have been in airplane crashes and survived, people with post traumatic stress disorder. Many people don't realize that PTSD can be triggered by long term domestic violence or emotional trauma or losing someone suddenly.

And then I thought, well, if I can do this so well, why not help our service men and woman who are having a tough time back in the States. I hear of so many of these young men and woman who have marriage problems, nightmares, etc. It seems to me to be unnecessary suffering.

So, I am offering to any current or recently past military service personnel my services and classes free of charge. I am in Dallas, TX. Sometimes I can work with them on the phone doing coaching.

If you know of a service person who needs help, please send them my way.

Thanks.

We Create the Response We are Eliciting

2009-05-13T20:07:00.000-07:00

We create the response we are getting. This is one of the basic tenets of communication. I've worked with couples over the years. Here is some basics that I've discovered that happen when things start to go haywire between two people.

1. Each person has their own opinion of what the other person is doing and the truth is in the middle of the two sides. Neither side is the truth. It is my job as a NLP Practitioner to help the couple get clear about what they want and develop strategies to elicit that from their partners. In other words, if we want the other person to change, then we have to understand how we elicit the behavior in the other person and change what we are doing.

2. Changing what we are doing does not mean "do the opposite." Einstein said that we can't solve problems at the same level of thinking that created the problem. We have to change the thinking (and map) that created the behavior before we can do something effective. In NLP, it means to jump "neurological levels." We may need to develop a skill in order to do another behavior or change a belief or even see ourselves differently in the relationship.

3. Whatever you want in the relationship, you have to act that way. If you want commitment, you need to be committed and act committed. If you want someone to be considerate you have to be considerate. If you want this person to make time for you then you need to make time for them. Both people have needs and expectations that need to be met.

4. If you don't know how to switch perceptual positions and see the situation from an observer of the two people relating and also from the other person's view point, you will not have balanced healthy relationships. Seeing the other person's point of view and stepping out and seeing the two as an observer is a requisite skills for great communication.

5. Talking things out is great but there has to be some type of resolution or action plan that both people are going to commit to that will help change the situation. In other words, it is nobody's fault but both of you are contributing. Therefore both have to change. None of this, "you change; then I'll be happy." If you are waiting to be happy when someone changes, then you will never be happy. Your happiness is your responsibility. No one will ever fit all of your criteria.

6. If there are not enough criteria being met, respect and honor each other by getting out and moving on. Set boundaries and then keep them. I generally find that something does not work the second time for the same reasons it didn't work the first time. Everyone is different.

Mother's Day

2009-05-05T08:24:00.001-07:00

Mother's Day is approaching. I'm gathering recent pictures of the family from kids to great grandchildren - my mom has 4 now - and 6 grandchildren. I'm putting them in a little album to send to her instead of send another card or flowers. She doesn't want "stuff." She has enough stuff and at 84 she is try to get rid of stuff. When I told her yesterday that I would send a card, she said it wasn't necessary. She had saved all the cards that I've sent her over the years. That has to be close to 30 cards. She would take on out and read it again.

My mom is a very simple person. She doesn't want fluff or flower, candles or perfume. She loves cards and calls. That is why I thought the album would be perfect. We'll see.

When I was growing up, we didn't get along very well. In fact, she said that when I was born that I wouldn't even drink her milk. I must have realized instantly that I had made mistake being born to this woman. but I couldn't go back. The die was cast. I left home when I was 18 and never went back. Even during tough years as a young adult I would ignore her plea to move home and let her take care of me. (She is a Level 1 caretaker to the point of co-dependence.) But I didn't. I let her send me money from time to time because it made her feel good. She never wanted anything in return. My sister has stopped talking to her because she does not have the skills to understand our mother and not get hooked into her drama. My mother still sends her money. She thinks my sister has had a hard life, which she has. Much harder than mine.

I never appreciated my mother and what she stood for until years later when I was in my mid-forties. It took a lot of work using therapy, NLP processes, developing understanding and skills with which to deal with her. I realized that what ever she did or said, it wasn't personal. She is coming from her point of view.

NLP has taught me a lot about how to have relationships with difficult people, especially those people in our lives to whom we are related. We often expect them to behave in certain ways because they are family, yet we don't expect our friends to behave in the same ways. Somehow we hold our families to a higher standard and maybe we should. But after all, they are just people like everyone else.

At some point in my life, I began to appreciate my mother even though she has her problems and when I did that every thing between us changed. I began seeing what she brings to the table. After all, she is one of the only people in my life twho loves me unconditionally. I know that not all moms do that or that is the report. I'm wondering if those people who think their mother is the enemy could see their mothers with positive intent. Everything we do has positive intent, why not our mothers and other family members also. Remember the NLP presupposition, "People work perfectly to produce the results they are getting" and "All behavior has positive intent" and "People make the best choices available to them based on the information they have."

I encourage my clients to heal the relationships with their family members. I notice that when we don't, we manage to create those members in the people around us, in our friends and work environment. We carry, according to Burt Hellinger, our Family Mind around in us and create it in our lives. We can have richer fuller lives when we heal those relationships and forgive (truly forgive) the past.

I feel blessed that I have a relationship with my mom. She is great person and has done a lot of good in her life. She is not the perfect mother nor the kind of mother that I would have chosen for myself had I gotten the choice. But she is one the I was born to. Whatever my perception of what she did to me when I was growing up has been changed through the miracle of NLP and other spiritual models. I am blessed that I still have her. Many of my friends do not. I'm glad that I am able to connect with her before she passes on. My favorite Irish poet, Merritt Malloy, once said, "Relationships that don't heal peacefully, don't end at all." Being angry or upset about what we think our mothers did to us only hurts us. Think about that as you approach Mothers' Day.

Be Informed

2009-04-21T14:19:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, a TV program called The Mentalist offered a story that supposedly depicted what NLP was. What garbage! For anyone who watched it and is not familiar with what NLP really is, I am very sorry.

NLP is a set of tools that helps a person get from a "present" state to a "desired" state. It is one of the fastest instruments for emotional change. In the last 30 years, it has helped millions of people world wide heal traumas, phobias, change limiting, debilitating beliefs, heal illnesses, deal effectively with people and helped them live happier, balanced lives. Nowhere in the 20 years of NLP training with the most esteemed NLP trainers (many of whom started out as therapists) did anyone mention programming other people to do things against their will. (And if there happens to be a trainer out there that is, it is a very DISTORTED model of NLP)

The study of NLP allows a person to become aware of their own patterns of thinking and behavior and how they get the results in their life and gives them the ability to change them. It came out of studying what highly effective people do and developed a methodology for modeling excellence in human behavior, communication and learning.

Where some models of change will give people awareness of what is wrong, NLP is outcome based. In other words, a person must have a clear outcome before engaging the model. As far as building trust and rapport, we, as humans, all have the ability to match others and do it often. Ultimately the use of NLP widens our internal maps of reality and helps us develop creativity and behavioral flexibility. I've never understood how helping someone get what they want, takes away their humanity. I have developed more trust and tolerance and understanding of all human beings and their behavior. Who in the world doesn't need that right now.?

The entire program was defaming to all of us who are teaching others to get along better with others, heal past hurts, and become better at what they are doing in business and life.

2009-03-19T10:03:00.000-07:00

Ten Things Customers Don't Want to Hear, and What to Say Instead By Bill Lampton, Ph.D.

Think back to recent conversations you had while you were shopping. Unfortunately, chances are very good that sales people who talked with you about their product or service used language that either surprised you, bothered you slightly, or infuriated you so much that you vowed not to do business with them again.
Now, think about the words you and those you work with use when you talk with current and potential customers. What are you saying that offends buyers? What should you be saying?

Here are ten of the most common language blunders, with the comments you and your people should be making instead:

ONE: I'm surprised you haven't heard about our product.
Why that's wrong: Sounds condescending, arrogant, and insulting, implying that the prospect is ignorant.
Better statement: Since you said our product is unfamiliar to you, I'll take a couple of minutes todescribe it and answer your questions.

TWO: That's not my job.
Why that's wrong: Not only do you avoid handling a customer's problem yourself, you offer no solution from anyone.
Better statement: I know just the person who can help you with that problem, and I'll introduce you to her.

THREE: Sorry, it's closing time, so I can't talk with you now.
Why that's wrong: Indicates that you work by the clock, not by commitment to customer needs.
Better statement: As you can see, the store is closing now, but I will be glad to stay around a few minutes until we meet your need.

FOUR: To schedule delivery, let me see when I'm going to be in your neighborhood next week.
Why that's wrong: Shows that you have your convenience as the decisive factor in scheduling, not the customer's convenience.
Better statement: Yes, we can deliver this to you next week. What day and time will suit you best?

FIVE: You're the first person who has complained about our service.
Why that's wrong: Implies that the customer is a grouch and troublemaker, and that your company could not possibly be wrong.
Better statement: Even though we hear plenty of compliments about our service, we know there's always room for improvement, so I'm grateful that you reported this problem.

SIX: Tell me your name again, and what the problem is.
Why that's wrong: Shows that you didn't listen carefully, and this will infuriate a person who is dissatisfied already.
Better statement: Mr. Adams, as I understood you, your car's air conditioning isn't cooling adequately. Right?

SEVEN: If you buy this item, you'll help me meet my sales quota for the month.
Why that's wrong: Makes you sound only marginally successful, and reflects that you are using the customer instead of becoming useful for the buyer.
Better statement: This item has been quite popular this month, and we are hearing good reports from customers who have installed it.

EIGHT: Walk through that door over there, turn left, take the escalator, and you'll be on the floor where we accept returned merchandize.
Why that's wrong: Many people get confused about directions, and if the customer gets lost, you are adding to her frustration.
Better statement: Let me tell my manager that I am going to take you to the clerk who can assist you with this returned merchandize.

NINE: Gosh, I barely got here-had to drop my dog at the vet, traffic was terrible, and I've got this awful headache.
Why that's wrong: Customers aren't interested in your problems, because they are depending on you to solve their problems.
Better statement: Good morning, I'm glad to meet you.

TEN: That's against our policy.
Why that's wrong: Customers don't want to deal with inflexible bureaucrats, but with sales people who care enough to adjust to unmet needs.
Better statement: While regulations seem to indicate we can't do this, I believe we can find a way to meet your needs.

A closing suggestion: Take this list to your next staff or employee meeting. Use the list as a springboard for discussion. Challenge your group to identify other offensive statements, and agree on suitable replacements. Your customers will welcome the refreshingly new climate of courtesy and consideration that permeates your work force.

Bill Lampton, Ph.D.--author of The Complete Communicator: Change Your Communication, Change Your Life!--helps you "Learn More. . .Earn More," through his expertise in communication, motivation, customer service, and sales. His speeches, seminars, and communication coaching have benefited top-tier clients, including the Ritz-Carlton Cancun, Gillette, Duracell, Procter & Gamble, Missouri Bar, CenturyTel, British Columbia Legal Management Association, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Visit his web site to sign up for his complimentary monthly E-mail newsletter. Call Dr. Lampton to discuss how his services will benefit your organization: 678-316-4300. E-mail him: drbill@ChampionshipCommunication.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

Change and business during economic challenges

2009-02-25T14:22:00.000-08:00

According to Max DePree in LEADERSHIP JAZZ, there are two attitudes that will "guide us into constructive responses to change."
Change or the person who leads us into change is not the enemy. Abraham Lincoln did not become a leader by justifying the prevailing beliefs but by changing those beliefs. Beware of people who make change a cause for failure.
Become a frantic learner. Change will leave us in the past as the people who predicted the failure of the automobile. Learning is worthwhile and meaningful in itself. Leaders respond to change by learning something. The eager, frantic learners in life find actual joy in the process of change.

Find ways to learn and change your business and how you attract customers. Whatever worked in the past may or may not work now. What is happening now is a great opportunity to find other ways that things work.

Some things to learn or remember:

During economic downturns, the number of people looking for business or jobs increases.

Face to Face networking is a great way to find contacts. However, realize that many people in, for example, BNI groups, have built relationships over sometimes years. Face to face networking is about building relationships. Business may come later. Still those meetings can be great way to build contacts.
Never be desperate. People can sense "desperate" energy. It makes you and your service less desirable. People are looking for a sense of security. Provide it.
Increase the number of people you contact and do superb follow up. The average sale happens after 7 contacts with an individual or company. Most sales people give up after 2 contacts. It certainly is easier when the money is flowing. When the money is tighter, you have to be creative and diligent when searching for customers.
Write a description of your perfect customer and share that with other business professionals.
You may have to make deals, but do not devalue your product or service.
Provide exceptional service period. People will remember it.
Keep contacting people and call them. I'm finding that people are stressed and are not checking their emails as much. Plus, email is not reliable.

Recommended reading:

E-Myth Revisted; Leadership Jazz; Attracting Perfect Customers

A New Year

2009-01-05T14:52:00.000-08:00

This is a poem that was written by Lois Wyse in the 1970's.

PRAYER FOR A NEW YEAR

Instead of anger
Let me feel
Compassion

Instead of rage
Let me show
Concern

Instead of hate
Let me seek
Change.

For if
To a warring, wondering world
Each of us will bring

Compassion
Concern
Change,

Then perhaps there will be

Love.