a guest blog post by Joanna Taylor  MHS (Acc)

Joanna Taylor is a Clinical Hypnotherapist, Trainee Psychotherapist and Certified Trainer of NLP.  She provides courses and in-house training in hypnosis, communication skills and stress management, in addition to one-to-one coaching and therapy for clients suffering from stress, anxiety, phobias and low self-esteem.

How many of us find that, however much we love them, prolonged close proximity to visiting relatives can make us a little… well… fractious?  Perhaps an offer of help in the kitchen from Great Aunt Flo results in something being prepared not quite the way you would have liked it to be (“I like my vegetables so that they just melt in the mouth, dear!”), or a nephew wants to play a video game on the television when all you want is peace and quiet in front of the fire.  The fact is, we all have different ideas of what makes our leisure time perfect for us, and often fail to understand another’s behaviour (“…and he answered his mobile at the table during supper!”)  This is largely due to our own individual values, which are unique and personal to each of us.  I will never put anything down on the enamel top of my Aga, for example, in case I scratch it, but I have a close friend who slides pans off the hobs to keep warm on hers – and she doesn’t mind the scratches.

Our values are what is important to us; more than any other element in our personal and professional lives, values are the basis for, and have the most effect on, our behaviours and any changes that are made.  Our values drive our true purpose as human beings; they are those things in which we are willing to invest time, energy and resources to achieve or avoid.  Our values are, as the name suggests, an evaluation filter, operating differently in different contexts, and are used to provide motivation before we take action (“I’ve eaten far too much over the holiday; I need to go on a diet.”), and also for after-the-fact evaluation; judgements about our actions and those of other people (“Well, I wouldn’t let any child of mine behave like that!”).

Our values are the way we judge good and bad, right and wrong, and they remain for the most part unconscious; we don’t usually think about our values at all, until somebody else treads on them…

In our professional lives, too, we will all have our own, individual values.  What is important to you about your job?  When I ask this in a training session, I will receive a different list from everybody – working with people, making a difference, having fun, money, security and so on.  And your practice as a whole will have its own values; for example, at our practice we have certain values around time.  It’s really important to us that we spend plenty of time with our patients and that, as far as is possible, we run to time – we want our patients to know that we take time to listen to them and we appreciate that their time is just as important as our own.  It’s therefore important to us that our staff share those particular values – so if, for example, we were looking for an associate, we would not want somebody who took only five minutes to do a check-up and who constantly ran late.  When everyone’s values are aligned within a practice, you know you can move forward together to achieve your vision for the future, because what is important to you is also important to them.

One of the main reasons why people leave their existing job is because they don’t “feel valued”.  In other words, their own values are being violated by somebody else’s, or their values are not in alignment with those of their place of work.  Do you know what’s important to your staff or your colleagues about their work?  Have you ever asked them?

Just as in our personal life, a conflict of values at work can cause conflict between individuals.  In NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) we adopt the philosophy that everybody lives in their own “Model of the World” – that is, they have their own beliefs, values and opinions that shape their view of reality.  We all have the right to hold our own personal beliefs and values, so it can help to diffuse conflict by accepting this philosophy and respecting another person’s “Model of the World”.  We might not agree with it, but we can have total respect for their right to believe differently from ourselves.

Do you know what is really important to your patients?  Sometimes their ideas might be radically different from yours because we all have our own opinion as to what is important to us.  How useful would it be if you could discover a patient’s values just through conversation?  When you understand what is important to your patient, it means that you know exactly how to satisfy their needs, and your patient knows you are really listening to them.  You may consider that a patient with discoloured teeth would certainly be interested in a whitening treatment, but is that their value, or your own?  Respect their “Model of the World” – and in order to do that, you first need to find out what that is…

Contact details:   joanna@joanna-taylor.co.uk

01723 859147

www.joanna-taylor.co.uk

This school of thought led the athletes of the time to believe that a sub four-minute mile was impossible.

This school of thought placed a mental and physical restriction on the human body.

They said that the goal of running a mile in less than 4 min was completely unachievable and unrealistic.

Apart, that is, from one person – Roger Bannister.

He refused to accept this physical and mental restriction.

He refused to accept that the goal of running a mile in less than 4 min was unachievable or unrealistic. So after planning, training and refusing to listen to what the world said on 6th May 1954, with his heart pounding furiously in his chest, he set out on the track to prove them all wrong.

On that day Roger Bannister ran the mile in 3 min 59.4 seconds, the first man alive to run a sub four-minute mile.

Suddenly the goal was achievable, it was realistic and your heart wouldn’t explode in your chest if you put it through his torture. And with these limiting belief removed, two months later during the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games  John Landy and Roger Bannister ran a mile in less than 4 min again.

The sub four-minute mile is now a standard amongst world-class athletes with the current record held by Hicham El Guerrouj, who ran a time of 3:43.13 in Rome in 1999.

So what happened? Did the physiology of all human beings change after that date?

I suggest not, but what did change was the limiting belief!

SMART Goals

So let’s look at Smart goals then:

• Specific.
• Measurable.
• Achievable.
• Realistic.
• Time bound.

Specific and measurable – these are both admirable qualities in a goal, these should absolutely be in any goal that you set yourself. You need to be absolutely specific about what you want to achieve and you need to know a way of measuring your success. In my role as a coach I often work with clients who want more confidence. When asked the question ” How will you specifically know you are as confident as you want to be, what will you be doing?” they often have no way of answering! This is then part of the problem, they simply don’t know when they are confident, and so it becomes a goal with constantly moving goalposts and they will spend their lives feeling that they are not confident.

Achievable and Realistic – OK, so now the problems start. Roger Bannister was told that running a sub 4 minute mile was neither achievable or realistic. If he had decided to listen to the prevailing wisdom and set himself a SMART goal then his target would probably to have run the mile on that day in 1954 in about 4 min and 10 seconds.

He didn’t do this, he set an unachievable and unrealistic goal.

This pushed him to a place that he’d never been before, in fact it pushed a human being to a place that we have never been before-only to find that it actually was both achievable and realistic!

Setting goals which are achievable and realistic places into your unconscious mind a limiting belief. If we have a limiting belief that we can only run a mile in 4 min and 10 seconds, then that is exactly what we’ll do. If we have a limiting belief that we can only generate £X of turnover in year one then that is what we’ll do. If we have a limiting belief that we can only lose 1lb of weight on a weight loss program in a week then that is what we’ll do.

Our beliefs about ourselves not true, however we act as if they are true. If those beliefs are positive and are affirmations then it is fine that we act as if they are true. However if those beliefs about ourselves are  negative, then we will act as if they are true until they become our own reality.

I’ll say that again. Our beliefs about ourselves are not true, however we act as if they are true and so they become our own reality.

Time bound – yep, I’m good with that part two is all goals need to have a specific time when you will achieve them.

Each time we set ourselves a goal which is achievable and realistic with create a boundary around that goal in order to make sense of it. We could even then define that goal as ‘the problem’

Once we have created a limiting belief about what we can achieve in our goal we have created a problem with the boundary. And guess where the solution to the problem lie? Yet, it’s outside the boundary.

If you really truly want to excel, if you really and truly want to become the most excellent human being that you know you are then never set SMART goals!

For further advice on how to set proper goals that will remove any of these limiting beliefs and allow you to reach your full potential please take a look at my goalsetting page. 

Or how about this one, you’re being sold something (and we all know where we are) you are offered the trial close, then the salesman goes into objection handling mode until you’ve got no more excuses, and then wait for it… Wait for it… Here comes the final “close”!

Now of course we need to work to a system when we have a client with us, we need to explain features and benefits of our product or service in a way that the other person understands. We need to build rapport with our client and understand what their problem is, however the classic SPIN selling model is based on the concept of increasing pain. The SPIN model works to understand why the client wants to solve the problem, what their pain is and then increase the pain until they either commit suicide or hand over their credit card details!

If you want to find out more about the SPIN selling technique, here was a website I found. (I do not endorse this technique or this website, this resource is simply provided to you to find out more).

The SPIN model clearly works as it has been used around the world for many years now, however I believe there is a more elegant and eloquent way of engaging and allowing your customers to buy from you, rather than using techniques in order to sell to them.

One of the other problems I encounter with this type of sales technique is the insistence that the transaction or ‘close’  happens there and then. Either signing a contract, or agreeing to whatever is being sold. The principle is that you should never allow the other person to go away and think about your offering, as it gives them time to talk themselves out of it. This may or may not be true, however insisting that someone signs there and then misses an absolutely fundamental principle of how we think and convince ourselves of the right decisions.

We all run what is known as a ” Convincer Demonstration Filter” which in NLP is known as a ‘meta program’- if you do not understand your client’s convincer  demonstration filter and you attempt to close the sale using the wrong strategy for that client  then you will almost certainly lose the sale.

This is how the convincer a demonstration filter works.

When we are required to be convinced about something, that could be another person’s performance such as in a work setting, or it could be we are required to be convinced about a product or service before we purchase it – when we are in this situation we will have a little program that we run in our mind which allows us to become convinced, or not convinced as the case may be.

There are four types of strategy that people use to convince themselves:

1. Automatic.
2. Number of times.
3. Period of time.
4. Consistent.

Automatic Convincers

These are the type of people who have done the research, worked out what they want & made the decision ready to go. There are already convinced before you get to the ‘close’ part of the sales process and if you stick rigidly to asking lots of questions about whether they are ready to buy or  not, can become rather frustrated.

These people may have the pain in their hand ready to sign, and you don’t need to use any other technique on them other than to get them to book their appointment or sign a contract. In fact using any other technique on them may put them off as they might think you aren’t listening to what they say.

If you have an automatic convincer in front of you, just get on with it and stop faffing!

Number of Times Convincers

These people need to be convinced you are the right provider of your product and service a number of times. They may need to see proof over and over you are genuinely good and true to your word. If you say that you genuinely care about them, they might want to see this represented on your website, when they phone you, when they come in to visit you, during the consultation and finally during the decision-making process.

A number of times convincer will have a specific number of times they need to be convinced – the clues in the title! If you have a three times convincer in front of you then you’re going to have to convince them three times that you are the best person to provide your product or service. If you are smart with your marketing you will allow them to do this during the marketing process, as mentioned above on the website and phone calls etc.

If you have a number of times convincer in front of you, allow enough time and give them enough information to be convinced however many times is right for them.

Length of Time Convincers

These people need to be convinced over a period of time. They want to hear the information that you have to provide, wait a period of time, and then become convinced.

A length of time convincer will have a specific amount of time they need to be convinced over. If you have a length of time convincer and their length of time is one month then you are not going to get them to sign up or agree there and then. You need to make a note in your diary to contact them after one month, when they will be happy to go ahead.

If you have a length of time convincer in front of you do not push for the close of the sale there and then give them the amount of time they need to become convinced themselves.

Consistent Convincers

These people can be the bane of your life. They will never be convinced, they will come back over and over and over again always wanting more information and prove that you are the right person to deliver your product or service. If you have a consistent convincer in front of you and decide to do business together you had better be prepared to demonstrate every single time you interact with them that you are the best person. You cannot rest on your laurels and you can never stop allowing them to be convinced.

So how can you tell what type of convincer a person is?

As with much of NLP you ask a simple question, shut up and listen.

Ideally the question you need to ask these people is “How often does someone have to demonstrate competence before you are convinced?” If they say for a week etc, then they are a length of time convincer, if they say three times etc then they are a number of times convincer, if they respond saying they are never convinced them they are a consistent convincer and if they respond saying they don’t need to convince they just trust then they are an automatic convincer.

The ideal time to ask this type of question is during your rapport building process at the beginning drop, it into the conversation – however it could be difficult to ask this question exactly so you could say, “I’m interested… to make sure that we give you the best service  can you tell me about the last time that you bought the product similar to this” – and then listen for their response.

They may talk and mention things like “Well, I popped in to see what they were like, then I looked at their website, then I gave them a call, then I went in to see them directly and then I realised they were the right people” What type of convincer do you think this person would be?

Yep, they are a number of times convincer.

What about if they said this “Well, I popped in to see what they were like had a good look around and chatted to the people there, then I went back again a month later and booked my appointment” – what type of convincer are they?

They are a length of time convincer… do you see the pattern?

Summary

Using questioning and listening for specific words and phrases that people use to understand how they construct the world around them is a far more elegant and eloquent way of building rapport and closing a sale. It means you are totally customising your technique for the other person, this helps them to relax, trust you and know that you understand how to solve their problem.

If if you want to find out more about practising these techniques, and indeed building them into a complete process with many other similar techniques then please do take a look at our NLP Communication & Metasales Workshops where you will have plenty of time to learn, practice and perfect your listening skills!

Once you understand some of the linguistic patterns that people have a tendency to use unconsciously, it allows you to understand more about what they are thinking which means you can communicate at a far deeper level with them.

Communication in the workplace is one of the great places to use this, if you could better understand the people around you, and make yourself understood how much simpler would life be?

So in this blog post on going to go through some of the classic linguistic patterns that we all use, break them down into three main areas and look at some ways that you can use this practically everyday.

Deletions, Distortions and Generalisations

The three broad areas of linguistic patterns formed are deletions, distortions and generalisations. There is so much information around us in the world that we have take in every second that our unconscious mind will invariably delete, distort and generalise that information so that we can make sense of it. We do the same when we speak.

Deletions.

These are linguistic patterns which have a tendency to delete information within them. When you hear these patterns being spoken by another person it is an indicator of the way their mind is thinking and what they are deleting. So here are some examples.

Mind reading.

Example. “You don’t like me”.

This is when someone is claiming to know the internal state of somebody else, there is absolutely no way that anyone can read the mind of another person. If someone said this to you it could be useful to respond with ” how do you know I don’t like you specifically?”. This then takes the conversation to a level of detail which can be discussed.

Cause and effect.

Example: “You make me sad”.

This form of deletion is very common and people often use it. They could be indicating that some body or something makes them sad. If we look at the sentence in detail the person that said it is putting ’cause’ outside of themselves. Ultimately we have the ability to feel happy or sad at any time we like, and it is impossible for something else to ‘make’ us feel sad or happy.

Think of a fantastic holiday that you went on, picture yourself sitting on the beach feeling the warmth of the sun on your face, smelling the fresh smells of the seaside and hearing the sounds of the children playing, the waves lapping and the seagulls. You might even want to remember the warm feeling of the sand as it moves between your toes and helps you to relax.

As you think of that holiday now just notice how it makes you feel. Was it the holiday that ‘made’ you feel happy, or was it your internal representation?

You see nothing ‘makes’ you do anything, you always have a choice how you decide to respond or react to anything and so when a person uses the word ‘makes’ it indicates that they are not in total control of the way they think.

A response could be ” How does what I’m doing cause you to choose to be sad?”. This response is putting ’cause’ back with the other person and highlights to them that they are actually choosing to be sad.

More information on NLP cause and effect

Generalisations.

Universal Quantifiers.

These are linguistic patterns which include words such as every, never, everyone, all and no one.

Example: “I never relax”

A response to this could be “Never? How do you know that you aren’t relaxed when you are asleep?”. This could lead the other person to realise that the use of the word ‘never’ is actually not true, and rarely is the use of a universal quantifier indicated. If someone were to say ” everybody hates me” then as soon as we can find one person that does not hate them that statement is no longer true.

Universal quantifiers can be quite negative words, being able to spot them in another person  and challenge them in a way that helps them to realise that the statement is not true is a very useful skill.

Modal Operators of Necessity.

Generally speaking people will do things out of ‘possibility’ or ‘necessity’. Some people may do a particular job because of all the ‘possibilities’ that their role brings them, some people may do that job because they ‘need’ to.

Of course money is important for going to work and some people do need to go to work for the bare essentials, however, assuming that this is not the case the use of the word need indicates that they are viewing things with the ‘necessity’ to do them.

Example: “I need to work more hours”

A possible response could be “What would happen if you didn’t?”. This simply highlights the alternate possibility of not working so many hours to the other person. This is a linguistic challenge to open up the possibilities of other ways of doing things. If a person thinks they ‘need’ to work more hours, for what purpose? Is it just to earn more money? Is working longer hours the only way to earn more money?

Challenging these statements and looking out for modal operators of necessity open up possibilities to the other person which they may not have thought about. This is a great technique if you are in management or a leadership role.

Deletions.

Comparative Deletions

These words such as bigger, better, more, less, most and less. People have a tendency to use these without really thinking, if we say something is better, then unless we compare it to something we have deleted the thing that it is better than. Marketeers use comparative deletions a lot especially the word ‘better’ as they can save them in straplines and marketing speak without anyone questioning what their product is better than!

Example: “I need to work more hours”

Aha, yes the same example again. Sometimes when we speak there are a lot of linguistic patterns going on in one sentence and in this one there is a modal operator of necessity ‘need’ and a comparative deletion ‘more’. A way to open up the options to this person could be to ask ” More hours, compared to what?”. Again this is opening up the other person’s mind to examine exactly the amount of hours that they are working, once they do this they start to analyse the problem and with the analysis can often come the solution.

“I need to work more hours” could be something that a member of your team says to you, and a typical response could be ” no you don’t!” except with this response we end up with a game of ping-pong when they reply ” yes I do!”.

Using the challenges I mentioned above such as  ”more hours, compared to what” and “what would happen if you didn’t” will open up your team members eyes and ears to the possibilities of working a different way. This will also allow communication to develop between you rather than get lost in the ping-pong yes I do, no you don’t pantomime conversation!

Excercise

Over the next week I would like you to listen out for these trigger words in other people’s conversations, watch live interviews on the television and see if you can spot the use of any of these linguistic patterns. Once you tune your ears into them you will be amazed at the number of times people use them.

Do you want to learn more?

Some of these linguistic patterns are something that we talk about and practice on my NLP Taster Days, please do visit my website
to find out when the next day is and ensure you book your place.

The first point I want to raise is that losing weight is really simple, all you need to do is to expend more energy than you eat. Simple is in it.

Yet we go on diets over and over again, we may think that the diet has worked but can it really have worked if we have to keep doing them over and over?

So why don’t these diets work? Well, you know it’s all in your mind. All you need to do is exercise more and eat less and the weight will fall off, yet there is something in our mindset that prevents us doing that, and we all know that if we could actually change our mindset losing weight would be easy and we would be able to stay as slim as we wanted to over an extended period.

So now you know that losing weight is all in your mind I’m going to break this down into stages which will be simple and easy to follow.

Step one.

Identify what the real problem is. Oh yes, you know THAT problem! You see unless we deal with past negative emotions and totally put them to rest it can be difficult to move on. Let’s take sadness for example. The problem with ‘sadness’  is that it is a label, people say ‘I am sad’. This is not true, they may be doing a very good job of showing all the signs of sadness, but they are not ‘sad’ itself – they have simply become very good at ‘doing’ sadness.

This is the same for ‘angry’, ‘fearful’ and any other emotion. No-one is fearful, they are simply very good at ‘doing’ fear!

This is a fundamental shift in thinking but once understood is extremely liberating. It allows a person to realise they can change.

It’s not always easy and may take time, but once a person realises that they do have control, and can learn to do other emotions, states and behaviours just as well as they do sadness or depression… then magic happens.

I’ve had clients say ‘I am afraid’ and have felt that way for 40 years, yet after 2 hours they have realised that they are just very good at ‘doing’ fear and are then easily able to let it go. 40 years of raging fear gone in 2 hours, no drugs just the power of the mind!

Step two.

What will losing weight get for you? The question you specifically need to answer is what will you BE, DO or HAVE once you have lost the weight?

Answering this question and writing down your answer will help you to completely visualise exactly what losing weight means to you. Once you have a clear idea of what it means to you the whole process is much more tangible and real. Doing this gives your unconscious mind a goal to focus on which is very powerful

Step three.

Focus on size and measurements not on weight. The more you exercise, the more muscle you will put on, as this weighs more than fat using weight is not a great way to decide how good your program has been.

Step four.

Focus on the big picture. Many people focus on the tiny details of not being able to eat what they want or having to exercise when they don’t want to. So what is the big picture? Well, it could be that if you were able to be the size that you wanted to be perhaps you could have more energy to play with the kids?

If you were the size you wanted to be perhaps you have more sex appeal?

Focus on what the changing your size will get you, what would it help you achieve, what would it help you do and what will it help you to have?

Step five.

Honestly identify the excuses. This can be really difficult however you need to tackle this honestly. This is definitely not the case the you, but many people out there may want to stay the way they are as it allows them to sit on the sofa all day and not do anything. If those people wanted to lose weight they would have two get up and do something! This is what we call secondary gain and identifying it is really important.

What we have to stop doing that you like doing if you reach your ideal size?

What will you have to start doing that you don’t like doing if you reach your ideal size?

My suggestion is to take some time to write down your answers to these specific questions, this can be a difficult exercise bike you will find that once you really tackle it that it identifies areas in your life where you can really make some improvements.

Summary

The changes that are required in the way you think are very extensive but are actually pretty simple to achieve with the help of a coach. One of the issues of dealing with this yourself is that the temptation can be to let yourself off the hook! Working with a coach will allow you to deal with past negative emotions in a gentle, relaxed and even enjoyable way.

Timeline therapy® can be used to simply and easily remove past negative emotions, this allows you to focus on the now and the future without the emotional baggage.

We can then use NLP to highlight any of the areas of secondary gain and to set your goal of exactly what you want to be, do and have in your life and what achieving your ideal size will get you.

Hypnosis is then a perfect tool to cement in all of these changes and ensure that the changes are made at an unconscious and permanent level.

If you are looking for a cheap fix to solve your overweight problem then this is not it! Think about what you spent in the past, all of those diets and wasted opportunities… If only you sorted it right from the beginning then you wouldn’t have spent that money and you could have enjoyed the past few years.

Losing weight and staying slim is an investment in yourself and you will reap the rewards of it many times over I’m sure.

So take action today, works with a bullet points I’ve listed above and then when you are ready now give me a call and we can discuss a personalised program just few. Amazingly the weight change program I use takes only one and a half days with a six-week coaching period afterwards, no diets, no restricted foods simply losing weight in the most natural way possible.

Interested? Let’s talk…

Wikipedia says that NLP has made unsubstantiated claims that it is capable of addressing problems such as phobias, depression and other psychosomatic illnesses. They go on to cite research which they claim proves NLP doesn’t work saying it exhibits “pseudoscientific characteristics concepts and terminology”.

This may or may not be true and I welcome this kind of debate as it gives the opportunity to talk about NLP and all that I believe it has to offer.

My choice of words there is actually pretty deliberate, notice I use the word believe.

I do believe that NLP works and consequently so do my clients which means they get results. Some people may call this the placebo effect and would want to research the actual NLP techniques that are used, however what is important is that the client made the changes they wanted to make. If they had a phobia before we started therapy and they no longer have it, or if they had problems with anger before therapy and those angry tendencies have gone or perhaps they had an enormous fear over the future and after therapy the fear is gone – if all these happen and the client feels better, that’s all I care about.

If a client needs to lose a couple of stone in weight and after a few days of therapy by able to start to make these changes, then keep the changes up over a period of time so little way they want to then who cares about Wikipedia entry?

It absolutely could be that if a practitioner of NLP talks with such conviction about how the techniques can have enormous change then this conviction may enable the client to make changes they need, using NLP is a way of attributing those changes for the client.

Many clients have had fears, phobias and anxieties for many years and so have limiting beliefs within themselves, believing that they can’t change. NLP may be the external mechanism by which those clients are able to change, and when they do who is to say that NLP is discredited and doesn’t work?

Doctors often debate the use of placebos (please don’t get me wrong I’m not suggesting that NLP is a placebo) and Dr Arthur Caplan from NYU Langone Medical Center seems to agree. He suggests that there are times when a medical Dr could consider prescribing a placebo, if this is the case then surely he is considering the possibility that placebos work.

If Dr Kaplan’s experience suggests that prescribing a placebo works this could indeed confirm my points above, if patients have limiting beliefs and believe they can’t change, if a doctor prescribes a placebo the patient is able to attribute those changes to an outside force and therefore make the change.

Either way, the pain, fear, anxiety or phobia has gone – and that’s all I care about!

Interestingly as I was reading the negative comments on Wikipedia my wife came back from taking the children to the orthodontist. Every person at the orthodontic practice has been on one of my NLP taster days and she commented that they were singing the praises of those days and that simply attending the taster day has changed their outlook on life and made communication at the practice so much better.

Try telling them that NLP is discredited…

Do you say this kind of thing? Do you know others that say it?

What I would say to you is that surely you are more than this? How much more than just a housewife, nurse, builder or anything else are you? Is that all you are?

Many of us have habits of giving ourselves, and indeed others, labels. And often these labels are rather restrictive, using the word ‘just’ is an example of one of these restrictive labels. There is not one person in the world who is just a housewife, nurse, builder or anything else. Every single person in the world is so much more than that and so are you!

So here is my challenge to you today. Listen out for the word ‘just’ in your language, then question yourself and ask if that is all you really are? And if you hear someone else say I am just XYZ then challenge them, and ask them if that is all they really are?

This is a really simple NLP technique which can make a huge change in people’s lives if they understand that they give themselves labels which hold them back.

So watch your language, speak with precision and be aware of limiting labels everyday.

MySuccessfulLife is a life and business coaching company which enables individuals to resolve those internal conflicts which hold them back in life… You know the ones!

So, if you make sense of your world by deleting, distorting and generalising things, how much clearer would it make it if we knew exactly what those things were?

What if there were a way to know what was real and what you have constructed in your head?

Many of us have been to parties with friends or family, and yet when we recall that event with those same family or friends we all have a different recollection of the party. We all chosen to delete, distort and generalise different aspects of the party.

So let’s look a little bit more about what you might be distorting in the party that is your life!

There are many ways that we distort the lives we see around us, I’m going to look at three of them in more detail, and they are cause-and-effect, complex equivalents and modal operators.

Cause and effect

The giveaway is the word ‘makes’. How many times have you heard someone say ” he/she makes me angry”? Or perhaps “going to work makes me stressed”.

The real key is to know that being angry, or stressed is a choice. It is a choice about how you choose to react to a certain stimulus or input. If a person shouts at you, you have a choice about whether to be angry or not, don’t you? When you go to work you have a choice about whether you decide to let what happens affect you. You may decide that being angry or stressed is how you are going to react… But the event does not make you that way.

Understanding that you have distorted the event and decided that it is going to make you do something is the first step to changing.

The next step is to realise that in each of those situations, you have a choice. You can choose to be angry, or you can choose to be stressed. What are you choosing and why?

Complex equivalents

The giveaway is the word ‘means’. How many times have you heard someone say “Having no money means I’m not a success” or ” You shouting at me means you don’t love me” for example.

Using the word ‘means’ is drawing a direct equivalent between one thing and another, and this equivalence is not reality. Let’s break those sentences down into two halves, half of the sentence before the word ‘means’ and half of the sentence after.

” You shouting at me means you don’t love me” - I am going to challenge that sentence, could someone shout at you and still love you? Could someone not shout at you and not love you? If either of these questions are true, then there can never be any direct correlation between shouting and love, can there?

It is possible for a person to shout and still love you.

It is possible for a person to not be shouting, and yet not to love you.

This is definitely a play on the words, but as a Master Practitioner of Neurolinguistic Programming I notice many clients saying this type of thing often. The problem, especially with the love example is that an argument can begin around a statement that is simply not true. And indeed if it is broken down doesn’t seem to make sense any more!

Being aware of what it means to use the word ‘means’ means you get it!

Modal operators

The give away here is the use of words like ‘need’, ‘should’ or ‘ought’. Using these words implies that there is some form of external force directing us into an action.

“I ought to stop/start doing that”

The question as a Master Practitioner of Neurolinguistic Programming I would want to know is, ‘who says?’.

I saw a client the other day for weight loss, she wanted to lose weight and when I asked her why she told me that the doctor told her that she should. I repeated my question, and asked again why she wanted to lose weight. She replied once more, “Because the doctor told me I should”.

Where is her motivation?

What does she get out of losing weight, specifically that is for her?

Until this person realises that they want to lose weight and can see the benefits themselves then change will never happen. Words like ought, should, or need imply an external motivation… And external motivations are never as powerful as internal motivations.

Until my weight loss client replies telling me that she wants to lose weight for herself, and can give me very specific reasons why she wants to that benefit herself I will not be working with her! Change happens when we take charge and control of our own lives, and stop looking to external motivations to make things happen.

Summary

As you can now see we use language and words to distort reality all day long. Most of the time we do it without even thinking about it, and now you know what to look out for I wonder, how many times you will notice yourself using these words over the coming weeks?

Make a decision now to start being aware of your language, its meaning and how you distort the world around you.

Hypnotic language is the art of using words in such a way as to alter the listener’s state of consciousness; for example to assist an anxious client to access a state of calmness, or to motivate a weight loss client into more useful eating habits – it is not about getting someone to do anything the thinking they would not normally want to do. We already use hypnotic language – think of a time when your mind wandered off half way through a conversation and you missed what was being said, because something in the speaker’s words had sent your mind off in a completely different direction!
Learning how to use this technique deliberately and with positive intention can turn it into a useful communication skill.

Language is one of our most powerful internal “filters” through which we perceive the world around us. Words, whether spoken by another person, or what we say to ourselves inside our own head, communicate much more than we can process consciously. Whatever we say will affect the receiver in some way, so it makes sense to use language in such a way as to produce the most effective results, both for ourselves and for those around us.

On the subject of language, acclaimed Hypnotherapist Milton Erickson wrote, “In any work, you are going to use words to influence the psychological life of an individual today; you are going to use words to influence his life twenty years from today. So you had better know what you are saying.
You had better be willing to reflect on the words you use, to wonder what the meanings are, and to seek out and understand their many associations.” Erickson’s skill with language was such that one of the models within NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) – The Milton Model – was based uponhis work.

The Milton Model uses “artfully vague” and ambiguous language which can communicate with an individual’s unconscious mind, enabling them to overcome problems and discover new
resources.

By changing the structure of the language we use, we can create more choices for ourselves and others. As you start to pay attention to the words you use, you can develop a way of communicating elegantly and effectively; which is what conversational hypnosis is all about.

Negatives and Positives

So how do the words you use affect your clients?

The unconscious mind cannot process negatives (don’t think about a pink kangaroo – oh, sorry; too late!). Bearing this in mind, how careful are you not to use negative words and phrases? I spend a lot of my time working with dental practices and often come across phrases such as: “nothing to be afraid of”, “this won’t hurt”, references to injections or drills and so on. Those are obvious ones, but what of the less obvious ones?

Consider the impact of your own words, especially with anxious clients; what thoughts are being created in their minds as a result of the language you use?

We can make a big difference in our outlook and our clients’ thinking by presupposing what we want and avoiding what we don’t want. You may suggest to the client that it’s easy to incorporate daily self-hypnosis into their schedule, or that they may find it difficult to start with and that it will be a nuisance to remember about it until they eventually get used to it.Which option do you think will produce the best results?

Trying to Change

The word “try” carries with it an implicit suggestion of potential failure. Inviting your client to “try to relax” or “try to imagine” is therefore unlikely to achieve the results you want. (How is that kangaroo, by the way, or are you trying not to think about it..?)

Truisms and the “Yes Set”

Socrates proposed that if a question is asked to which a positive answer will definitely be given, it is more likely that subsequent questions will be answered positively. This is also the case if we use a succession of “truisms”; ie statements of fact that cannot be denied, followed by a statement which we wish the client to act upon. For example, “…so as you sit there in the chair…” [the client is sitting in the chair] “…listening to the sound of the music…” [there is music playing in the background] “…and looking at the trees moving in the breeze outside…” [the client can see the trees through the window] “…you might notice how easily you can relax…”

Now, you have given the client a suggestion to relax, to which they are likely to respond since the rest of your statements were true.

Presuppositions

A presupposition is the linguistic equivalent of an assumption. The power of presuppositions lies in the fact that the unconscious mind has to accept that the presupposition is true in order to make sense of the sentence. Every sentence that we use contains at least one presupposition, and we can use patterns such as the “double bind” very elegantly in conversation; “Will you choose to listen to your self-hypnosis CD in the morning, or at bedtime?” presupposes that the client will definitely be listening to the CD every day; it’s only the time that is in question.

Embedded commands are an instruction embedded within the context of the sentence; for example, “…and you can be surprised at how easily you can… relax in the chair now…”

We can also use presuppositions to attach meanings to something specific; people like to know WHY you are asking them to do something – “Using self-hypnosis regularly means that you will find it very easy to reach your goal.”

There are many more language patterns than I am able to detail in this short introduction; perhaps you might be curious to discover just how easily you can use them in your conversations and how much fun you can have with your new learnings – you probably already know much more at an unconscious level than you think you do… and by the way, have you managed to stop thinking about that kangaroo yet…?

However, for the purposes of this blog post I will go through a series of NLP techniques and provide links to resources where you can try out these techniques for yourself. I include links to other people’s websites in order to make this blog post as useful as possible, please note however I do not endorse nor recommend nor use any of the scripts to which I link, they are simply provided for your assistance.

NLP Techniques

Parts Integration techniques.

This technique is useful as many people exhibit parts in their lives. This typically comes to the fore when people say part of me wants to do this, and part of me wants to do that. Very often these parts of their personality or in conflict with one another, and so it makes achieving the person’s goal all but impossible.

Parts can also be around beliefs, part of me believes this, in part of me believes that. They can also be present at a values level, a person may have two values which are extremely important in their life, yet these values may conflict. An example of this could be if a person values freedom and security, for some people it may seem impossible to have both of these values.

Parts integration uses a light hypnotic trance to allow the client to find the highest positive intention of each of their parts. What will always happen is that the highest positive intervention will always be the same, and hypnotic script can then be used to bring these two parts together.

Here are a few links to various parts integration scripts.

Troy Bakes

transformation.net

Like to dislike.

This is an extremely useful technique in NLP and comes under the banner of sub modalities. They like to dislike is useful if a person wishes to give up a particular foodstuff, the example chocolate or crisps. It can also be used within more advanced therapies such as smoking… Wouldn’t it be good to find a cigarette abhorent and to dislike it?

The technique works by understanding how the client creates their representation in their mind off the thing they wish to dislike. We then need to understand how they create the representation of something that they currently dislike. What you will find is that the representation in their mind off things they like and dislike are normally:

• In a different location.
• A different sized picture.
• The picture could be framed panoramic.
• The picture could be close or far.
• They could see themselves in the picture, or they may be looking through their own eyes.
• The picture may have sound.

Chaining anchors.

Anchoring is a technique whereby we link a physical touch on a person (typically a knuckle) to them when they are in a heightened state. For example we could anchor the state of motivation. Anchoring is an NLP technique that is used outside of NLP also, most famously with Pavlov’s dogs who salivate at the sound of a ringing bell.

Training anchors is an NLP technique whereby we can move a client from an on resource full state towards a resource full state. A typical example is moving a client from procrastination to motivation.

The NLP technique simply involves getting the client to list for different states which move logically from the negative to positive. So for example state number one could be procrastination, the client may then identified boredom as a state which would move them out of procrastination, we would then ask which state would move them out of boredom… Perhaps excitement, we can then move from excitement to motivation.

Once the client identifies a logical progression through a series of linked states we can then start to anchor them. We simply start with the negative state, ask the client to close their eyes and think about the first state of procrastination, to float down into their body, look through their own eyes, see what they saw, hear what they heard and really feel that state of procrastination. When the state is at its highest we can trigger the anchor on the first knuckle.

The NLP technique is then to anchor subsequent states on the next knuckle, so in this example we would ask the client to vividly relive the state of boredom, we would anchor this to the next knuckle but ensure that we did it 2 to 3 times so that it was a stronger anchor than the one the procrastination. The NLP technique is to then repeat this for the subsequent states right through to motivation, each time ensuring that the states are anchored more times than the last to make them stronger.

The final step in the technique is simply to fire off the anchors starting on procrastination and moving along through all the techniques towards motivation.

personal development planet.com have a good run through of the technique.

Summary

This has been a simple summary of three of the most basic NLP techniques, why not read through this a few times, give the techniques a go and let me know what you think.