This article is particularly focused at dentists and helping them improve performance in their dental practice using an understanding of NLP and communication techniques.

What’s your CHUNK SIZE?

Chunk size… Horrible name I know, but that’s what this ‘filter’ is called. We all have filters in our brain that filter the world around us so we can make sense of it.

This filter looks at the size of the chunk of information that we can process at any given time.

There are two discernible chunk sizes:

1. Big picture. This is the largest chunk of information that it’s possible to give anyone about a specific topic. It gives the overall plan, the big picture, where are we going, what’s the point? A good example is a full mouth treatment plan where the big picture might be to restore function to the patient’s bite, ease TMJ pain and improve the smile line.
2. Detail. This is the smallest chunk of information that it’s possible to give anyone about a specific topic. It is essentially the contents of the big picture. In our treatment plan example the detail could be crowning the upper anteriors with zirconia crowns, & opening the bite with a dahl appliance.

Most of us will want all of the information, but it’s in which order we like to receive it – that’s the real key to understand.

1. Some people like the big picture first. They like to know the overall plan of where they are going and can’t cope with the detail until they know where all of that detail fits in with the big picture.
2. Some people like the detail first. They like to know the fine detail and can’t conceive of the big picture until they know what the detail is, they can then work out how it all fits together.

Neither is wrong, and it’s important to understand that different people like to perceive and receive information differently.

Some patients might prefer a big picture first treatment plan, which leads gently into the detail.

Some patients might prefer a detail first treatment plan, which gently leads into the big picture.

So ask them, “When I present this treatment plan to you, would you like the big picture or the detail first?”

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A DENTIST

This is where I think it gets interesting. Dentists are often brilliant at going from BIG PICTURE to MICRO DETAIL in the blink of an eye.

“Hello Mrs Jones, I haven’t seen you for 6 months, what’s been happening in your life?” (Big picture) – “Now let’s look at the mesio-buccal cusp of your LL6” ( micro-detail)

You do this everyday – Big picture > Micro-detail really fast.

It’s what you do.

But not everyone thinks the same way.

So be aware – dentists have a tendency to think big picture down to micro-detail incredibly fast!

We can now understand this in a clinical setting, but it also works when communicating with your team and thinking about your business, it’s easy for dentists to miss out a whole load of incredibly useful information that sits in the middle of the big picture and micro detail – and when we are communicating with others or thinking about managing our business, that information in the middle can be vital to our success!

If you’d like to help with your thinking, achieve more in life and business and restructure the way you communicate then book a discovery call to talk about Elite Breakthrough Coaching, it comes at no cost and no obligation!

In NLP we have a range of ‘Linguistic presuppositions’, these are words that many of us use and they give an insight into the assumptions that we all make about the world around us.

Very often those assumptions can be very disabling and unhelpful to us.

Whilst there are a range of these linguistic presuppositions, the one I want to focus on today is ‘makes’.

When someone uses the word ‘makes’ in a sentence like “You make me feel undervalued” then what we are actually saying is that we have no agency over our ability to feel valued… And that the other person MAKES us feel valued. The problem then arises, what if this other person isn’t around and we need to feel valued? Where do we look at then?

Taking back agency over our thoughts and behaviours can be incredibly empowering, and this very often starts with us understanding the small linguistic assumptions we make, usually without thinking!

In this podcast I talk about the different ways that ‘makes’ gets used, and how we might think differently if we catch ourselves using this incredibly unhelpful word!

This article is primarily focused at healthcare professionals, particularly dentists although the content is relevant to anyone in business.

Did you know there are four primary ways that we make sense of the world around us:

1. Visually
2. Kinaestheticly
3. Auditory
4. Auditory digital (logical structured)

When you understand which one you are primarily it makes it far easier to recognise why you think in certain ways, it also will help you communicate with people which represent the world around them differently to you, but when you think the plans patients or dealing with other team members.

Visual

People that represent the world around them visually think primarily in pictures. Most of us do this to a certain degree although some people do it far more than others. Visual people will often be artists, designers, photographers or anything to do with visuals.

When these people think in pictures they will literally create a picture in their mind’s eye… Even a visual speller will visually see the letters of the word in their mind (by the way, this is the strategy to use if you are not a great speller, visualise the letters in the word rather than try to use simple memory).

A visual person will often say things like:

• “do you see what I mean?”
• “do you get the picture?”

The words they use literally explain how they represent their world.

Top Tip: if you are presenting a treatment plan to a visual person then use plenty of photographs and diagrams to explain what you mean

Kinaesthetic

People that represent the world around them in a kinaesthetic way are more connected to feeling. This is both emotional feeling and physical feeling. Kinaesthetic people will often have touch related jobs e.g. massage, reflexology or even something like a potter. They may also be counsellors and connect with feelings and emotions in their job.

A kinaesthetic person will often say things like:

• “does that feel OK?”
• “What do you feel about that?”

Top tip: If you are presenting a treatment plan to a kinaesthetic person have study models that they can hold and feel, have physical models of implants and crowns so they can touch and hold them.

Auditory

One of the least common representational systems. Auditory people will be very focused on the way the world around them sounds. They may be musicians or work in jobs relating to sound. An auditory person will also a very distracted by sounds around them and will often want to work in a quiet environment. If you’re talking to an auditory person they may find it difficult to hold a conversation with you if other people are also talking in the background.

An auditory person might say things like:

• “How does that sound?”
• “Do you hear what I’m saying?”

Top Tip: If you are presenting a treatment plan to an auditory person it will be absolutely fine to explain by voice alone what the treatment plan is. You could also record your explanation and send it to them as an auditory file.

Auditory digital

This relates to internal dialogue and logical thinking. Auditory digital people will often be engineers, scientists or people which think in very clear, logical straight lines. An auditory digital person needs order, flowcharts and processes.

I’ve run many courses looking at these different types of representational system and by far the greatest percentage of dentists are auditory digital. Auditory digital people like to think, plan and organise.

An auditory digital person might say:

• “there is logic in what I’m saying”
• “does that make sense?”

Top Tip: if you are presenting a treatment plan to an auditory digital person use statistics to back up your argument for example, success rates, number of treatments completed etc. Present your treatment plan logically using reason, systems and analysis to present it. And above all, if you are a dentist the chances are this will be your primary representational system, so be flexible in the way you communicate.

So how do you represent the world around you?

Which of the representational systems looks, sounds, feels or logically is more like you? (See what I did there!).

If you do some digging around online you should be able to find a representational system preference test (alternatively send me an e-mail and I can provide one for you), this will give you an idea of what your own representational system is.

And the biggest tip I can give… Just because something seems right to you, does not necessarily mean it is right or make sense to someone else… Remember, most dentists are logical auditory digital thinkers, and most people in the general population are visual. Remember to present your treatment plans in a way that makes sense to the person you’re communicating with.

The basic difference is that a consultant will tell you what to do:

• Put this system in place.
• Implement this protocol.
• Change this in your life and everything will work.

Very basically, a consultant says “I know best, so do what I say”

A coach on the other hand works on a different principle:

• I will help you discover the best systems that could work for you.
• I will work with you to make sure you implement the protocols that you discover.
• You know what is best for you and I will work with you to make that happen

Very basically, the coach says ” I will work with you to get the best out of you, help you discover the best way to do things for you”

So let’s look specifically at coaching, and more specifically at personal development coaching.

Personal development and breakthrough coaching works on the way you think & the way you approach problems that will help you break through barriers that are holding you back.

Classically, you might choose to use a coach if

• Your business is stuck
• You are stuck in your business or situation
• There are habits you have that interfere with day to day business
• Business or life isn’t happening as it should
• You have a lack of direction
• You are not succeeding or achieving what you want or deserve
• You have a lack of self belief causing you to not push forward with new projects
• You’re not feeling worthy
• You’re not feeling like a success which then holds you back
• You have a loss of self confidence which holds you back
• Stress is leading to a lack of sleep which then impacts the business

Let me give you an analogy which might help explain. Let’s say a client has come to me because they want to lose weight. I could simply give them specific instructions:

• Eat fewer calories
• Burn more calories

Weight loss is actually very simple and yet so many people struggle with it because of the way they view the problem in their mind. The key to losing weight is to first change our mindset, then the actual practical side is actually quite easy.

Another example of the mindset not being right is yo-yo entrepreneurs. You see so many people make a real success, and lots of money and then lose it all. They then bounced back and do the same thing again. The cycle repeats itself until they sort their mindset out and stop self sabotaging their success.

Solving your problems is actually very simple:

• Stop doing those habits that interfere
• Make a plan and get direction
• Tell yourself you are worthy
• Put in the systems you need in the business to make it work (There are many courses to go on to do this)
• Stop working in the business so much
• Be happy and not stressed

And yet, even though solving those problems is actually quite easy, it doesn’t get done… Why is this?

People go on course after course with consultant after consultant, being told to do so many different things but, as a coach I believe they’re looking in the wrong place.

These people are looking outside of themselves, they taken years to acquire all of the skills and yet they just can’t seem to implement them.

When we look inside ourselves we can remove those habits, remove that self sabotaging and begin to actually implement all of the skills we’ve implemented… THIS is coaching and this is why it is so powerful

In this podcast edition I talk in depth about how NLP works. NLP is primarily a system for understanding how we encode our subjective view of the world. When we encode our subjective view of the world we turn it into a program in our mind. NLP looks at that program and encoding and seeks to change the parts which are less helpful.

Join me as I walk you through some practical exercises  to experience how your encoding works for yourself. I know you will find it enlightening!

Show References:
Noam Chomsky – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky

Transcript

In this episode, I want to explain what NLP is and how NLP works. So how NLP works to affect such large changes in people and make such big differences in their lives often very quickly. And by very quickly, I can mean in a matter of minutes sometimes.

NLP is fundamentally a principle and a system for looking at the way you take your subjective view of the world and encode it. Once we understand how you encode the world around you, then we can break encoding down into a program. We can work out the effective parts of that program, and we can work out the non-effective parts or perhaps the unhelpful parts of that program. And then we can recreate that program in a way that serves you better.

So I’m going to give you some examples so you can experience this for yourself. So what I’d like you to do is to think about something good that happened to you in the past. I mean, something really good. It could be a particular birthday celebration. It could be a wedding. It could be a birth of a child. But anything that you would consider to be really, really good. And as you think of that, I would like you to picture it. Create a picture in your mind of that really good, happy, joyous, momentous event. So create that picture.

Now, we’re going to start to break down the program, this encoding that I’ve spoken about. So now I want to ask you is there sound with this picture? And if there isn’t sound, give it some sound. As you look at that picture, are you looking at that picture through your own eyes? Or can you see yourself in that picture? I want you to make sure that you can see through your own eyes, that you are looking through your own eyes.

Now is that picture static or is it moving? Is the picture very clear? Is it very focused and sharp or is it slightly de-focused? Are there any noticeable smells happening around you? So you can see that as we start to play with this picture, we can pick up things that we call submodalities and these submodalities can make a huge difference to the way we store and encode things that have happened to us in our life.

So if I were to say to you, if that picture is moving, make it still and make it silent, and make the picture now small. So move the picture away from yourself so that it seems small. And now see yourself in that picture rather than looking through your own eyes. Now, make that picture black and white.

We can immediately start to feel the way we represent that event in our mind can start to change. And we do this with all things in our brain. Every time we think about perhaps a habit, smoking, drinking, doing things that we enjoy going out, dancing, meeting friends, we have little programs that we run. We have memories that we run and we will encode that memory, and we can change how we feel about it by changing the encoding. And that’s what we call submodalities.

So that’s one way of changing these programs and changing the encoding. We can use NLP and a series of techniques to uncover some of these events that have happened in the past that may be affecting you or things that you view coming up in the future. We can change the way it’s encoded. We can literally change the way you view it in your mind by changing these submodalities. We can even do things like switching out submodalities.

So there’s a great technique called a like to dislike. It takes the submodalities of things that we like, but perhaps we know we shouldn’t eat like chocolate biscuits perhaps. We can change the submodalities of how we represent chocolate biscuits to change everything so that the submodalities are of something that we actually dislike. What that does in our brains is it starts to mess up how we encode eating chocolate biscuits.

And the result of that is when we encode eating chocolate biscuits and mix it up with something that we don’t like, the desire and drive to eat chocolate biscuits disappears. It’s incredible when we start to mess and change the encoding in our brains. We also have another series of this encoding called meta-programs. And meta-programs are little programs that we run all of the time. We have programs for pretty much everything that we do. We have programs for cleaning our teeth in the morning through the program to falling in love, through he programs to buying something.

So let’s just look at this at the moment. Let’s just look at buying something and think about how that gets encoded in our brain because lots of people struggle with continuously buying things they don’t need perhaps, or spending money that they don’t have. And that’s because there will be some unhelpful part of their buying or decision-making process and the way they’ve encoded that.

Let’s just think about buying something of value. So imagine that you’re going to buy something that has quite a bit of value and this could be different for every person. But I want you to think of something that you wouldn’t usually buy that would stretch you. So it’s an item that you wouldn’t buy just without thinking. I want you to think of an item that you’d buy that would actually stretch you financially that you’d really need to be sure that you were going to buy it.

So it could be a new item of clothing. It could be a new fancy watch. It could be a car. It could be anything.

So I want you to think of something that you would like to buy, but that item is going to stretch you so that it’s not just a very quick decision. You’ve really got to think about it. When you’ve got that item, I want you to close your eyes. So now I want to imagine that you have already walked into the shop where this item is located and you see the item there.

I want you to think now, what is the very first thing that causes you to notice that you want to purchase that item? Is it something that you see or something that you hear? And some people, it may just be seeing that item, seeing the item triggers, emotions in them, triggers thoughts in them, or sometimes people can hear. They might hear their own voice in their head. Say, wow, you’d look good in that. They might hear a voice in their head saying, just buy it. They may hear a voice in their head saying, “You would look really good in that.”

And it may not be their own voice. It may be the voice of their partner, of their mother, of their father. Something that they hear in their head. So we will all have an initial trigger that causes us the desire to want to buy something. And that trigger will form part of the program. I would then say, what is the next thing? So when you’ve decided, okay, I’m going to move a bit further forward, what’s the next thing that causes you to notice that you want to purchase this item?

Is it something that you see, something that you hear, or something that you feel? At that point we might say, “Oh yeah, once I see it, or once I hear that voice, I get a feeling. I kind of just know.” Then I would say, “Well, where is that feeling? If it is a feeling, where is that feeling? Is it in your head? Is it in your stomach? Is it lower down? Is it an arm? Is it in a leg? It could be anywhere? Where is that feeling?”

What we’re actually doing here is starting to work out the encoding process. What is the process that we go through when we make this purchase decision? We will all go through our own little process or process will be very different. Sometimes people will see, they will hear, they will feel, but there will be a little process, a little series of encodings that we go through when we make a purchase. Sometimes there is a loop. So sometimes we get a loop in that process where we end up getting looped back to the beginning.

When we get looped back to the beginning, as you could clearly see it, it becomes really difficult to make a decision. We go round and around and around not being able to make a decision. The opposite end of the spectrum, some people’s purchasing program is very, very short and has very few steps in it.

Their program might be, I look at it, I feel that I want it. I buy it. And a person like that may end up purchasing too many things.

So we might want to adjust either of those programs. We might want to adjust the program that has a loop in it to take the loop out. So this person can make a decision better. Or if the decision happens too quickly to buy something of high value, then we might want to look at extending that program to put in some additional checks so that we can prevent this over purchasing, this behavior which is unhelpful. So you can see even making a purchase decision, we have encoded in our brains and all of this is linked to our emotions and the emotions it triggers within us and the memories because the memories that we have again are just encodings.

Noam Chomsky talks in great detail about deletions, distortions and generalizations. And I’ll put a link to him in the comments of this podcast. So deletions, distortions, and generalizations. We delete the world around us. We delete things we don’t need like the sound of a computer buzzing in the background, like the sound of birds tweeting outside, like any other extraneous sounds that are going on around us, that we don’t need to be aware of all of the time, because we’d go into overdrive if we were aware of them all of the time. So we delete things.

We distort things around us. Distortions, deletions, and we generalize as well. We generalize things that people say. We generalize emotions and we generalize if someone says, “I don’t like that.” We generalize it. So why would I think that? I don’t like that means. And we turn their emotions into our emotions by comparing it with ourself.

So we delete, distort, and generalize all of these things around us. So as we creating our memories, our memories become encoded in our brain and actually are not true.

They are just our encoding of what happened. They are not the reality. They are not the truth. All of this encoding, all of these programs, this is what we work on with NLP. This is what we work with a client to identify which programs are helpful, which programs are unhelpful. And then we break that program down and we rebuild it in a helpful manner, which works better for that client.

So that is how NLP works. And all of the NLP techniques and ideas that you see out there, they all work on this basic principle of taking the encoding of the world around us, breaking the encoding down into a series of stages, understanding how we encode, and then re-encode in a more helpful manner.

And as ever, I would absolutely love to hear your feedback.
Thank you for listening. If you have liked what you have heard, please rate and review, and subscribe. If you’d like to ask any questions, please send an email to succeed@mysuccessfullife.co.uk. Or to find out more about the Performance Academy, what we offer with our online verifiable CPD courses, please visit mysuccessfullife.co.uk.

• Relax and destress
• Learn from the day in order to deal with stress differently next time

The technique is based on Time Line Therapy, it’s quite hypnotic in its approach and  very easy to do. Give it a go at the end of the day whilst lying in bed before you go to sleep.

Enjoy…

Transcript

This is an absolutely fabulous technique to help you deal with stress at the end of a difficult day, and also to learn from the day so that you can avoid that stressful situation next time, or deal with a stressful situation differently. So let’s get started.

I want you to sit in a quiet room, in a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed for the next 10, 15 minutes or so. No distractions, nothing going on around you, just in a quiet place. When you are there, I want you to close your eyes.

We can let everything go now because everything that needs to be done has been done. There’s nothing left to do, nothing left to think about. All there is is just this present moment. You’re here with me, and we’re going to learn the most wonderful technique in timeline therapy.

So timeline therapy is about visualizing our timeline. So what I would like you to do is to think about your past, think about an event that happened in the past. Now I want you to point to that event.

So where would you point? Would you point to the left, to the right, in front of you, behind you? Where would you point to that event? I would now like you to think about the future and think about something that happens in the future, or is going to happen, and point to the future.

Now I’m imagining that it’s kind of opposite to where the past was, and that is your timeline. Some people have timelines that go from behind them to in front. Some people have timelines that go left to right, or right to left.

I bet that before listening to this, you had never considered where your timeline was. As a master practitioner of timeline therapy, this is something that I can work with. We can deal with past emotions, past stresses using timeline therapy.

Now we don’t have the resources and the time to do that right here, but what we can do is we can do what’s known as a timeline therapy test flight. That test flight takes you up and down your timeline in a very relaxing way. It helps us to dissociate from those negative feelings, from that difficulty, from the stress of the day. By dissociated I mean looking through your eyes and you can see yourself in a situation. So that is dissociated. Associated is when you imagine that situation and you’re looking through your own eyes.

So what I want you to do throughout this is to remain dissociated. In other words, you are looking at yourself. You can see yourself in the picture. So now let’s get onto this timeline therapy test flight.

So use this at the end of a day, at the end of a difficult day, to help yourself relax and help yourself learn from that difficult day. Here we go.

Take that timeline. However you’ve got it, pick the timeline up and put it on the floor in front of you. So put your timeline on the floor in front of you. So you can see your time running from past to future on the floor in front of you.

Now firmly, with your eyes closed, I want you to step onto your timeline so that when you look down at your feet, you are looking at your timeline and you’re stood in the now. You are stood in today.

Now what I want you to do is to float up above your timeline. So just float up above the now. So float up higher and a little higher and a little higher, so that you’re floating above your timeline.

Now what I want you to do is to look and face the future. Turn to face the future on your timeline, floating above it. I want you to float along your timeline into the future to an unspecified time, but just keep floating until you feel that there’s a very positive event happening below you. It doesn’t matter what it is, but you just know that it’s a very positive event happening below you in the future on your timeline.

So just float, maintaining your height into the future, until you find that event. You may or may not know what it is. If you do know what it is, that’s wonderful. If you don’t, that is equally wonderful.

Now what I want you to do is to look down on that event. So once you arrive, look down on the event so you can see yourself floating above it. I want you to imagine that that event is hot like the flames of a fire. As you are floating above that event, you can feel the flame of that fire. You can feel the heat as you’re floating above it.

Now just float a little bit closer. So drop down, descend on your timeline a little bit closer to that fire. Notice how you can feel the heat increase. That’s a good feeling. You can feel the warmth of the flames, the warmth of the fire.

Now just float up a little bit higher back to where you were. You can still feel the warmth. You can still feel those flames. You’re still looking down on that future unspecified event. You can feel the fire and the warmth, and it’s good.

Now I want you to float up high and keep going and keep going and keep going higher, higher, higher until you can no longer feel the flames, until you can no longer feel the heat. You may still be able to see that event, but it’s way in the distance.

Just get so high that you can no longer feel the fire. You can no longer feel anything from that event at all because you’re so high. Go as high as you need to go in order to be so high that you can feel no heat from the fire at all. Just notice how high you are. Wow! You are so high.

Now just float back down again, getting lower and lower, until you feel the strength of that fire increasing and you can feel the emotions of what’s going on in the future. You can feel all of that lovely warmth getting warmer again. Get to just a good height above that flame, above that fire, above that future event. Get to a height that you feel is really comfortable and feel the warmth again.

Now just turn to face the past from that future event. In the past, you should be able to see now. Just float along the now until you reach now while maintaining your height. When you reach now, look down to see the now and float right the way back down into your body, into the now, and open your eyes.

Now what did you notice from that little trip? What are some things you noticed? You might notice that when we go up and down on our timeline, we can control how much we feel from that event. You floated out to the future and you could feel the flames. You could feel the fire. When you lifted up high, you could notice that you could no longer feel the flames of that fire. You couldn’t feel that event.

Now this is what I want you to do at the end of a stressful day. So at the end of a stressful day, you close your eyes. You take your timeline and you put it on the floor in front of you. You look down on today and you float up. You float up and you go as high as you need to go in order that you can no longer feel the events from the day.

You can still see what happened, but you are so high that you can’t feel it. If you can still feel the emotions and the event of the day, float higher. Put that jet pack on and float high, high, stratospheric out of the atmosphere if you need to. But go as high as you need to go.

So you can still look down, you can still see the day, you can still see the events, but you can no longer feel them. When you reach that height, I want you to ask yourself a question. That question is: what can I learn from today? What can I learn such that I can take that learning back to work with me tomorrow, so that if the events of today happen again, I know what to do? What can I learn and what specifically am I going to do differently next time?

What can I learn and what specifically am I going to do next time? When you have taken your learning and when you know specifically what you are going to do differently next time, then and only then can you float back down to the now, right back down to now, and open your eyes.

This is a fabulously wonderful technique, to float up and down your timeline. If you’d like to go off to the future to practice that again, feel free to do that. Stay above now. Float up above, learn, decide what you’re going to do differently. It’s a fabulously wonderful technique to deal with the stresses of the day.

Please feel free to get in touch with me.

There are lots of other resources that I have on there to help with dealing with stress, to help improve your success, to help improve mindset, to help communicate with others. I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you.

I’ve had 3 discovery calls in the past week and I thought I’d share with you some common themes that so many people experience, do you recognise any of this?

1. Freedom vs Security. It seems so many people want to have both. Freedom – to live life as they want and freedom from having to work all hours. Security – that there is a regular income. If these two parts are not reconciled then they will continuously pull in different directions and you’ll find business and life does the same. This way, that way, never really getting anywhere.

2. Not having a clear goal. Unless you know exactly what you want to achieve in life, and have it shining brightly as something to walk towards, almost magnetic, pulling you irresistibly towards it then focus in life can become difficult. As soon as things get tough you will lose focus if you’re not absolutely crystal clear about what you want to achieve in LIKE. (and I’m not talking about a five-year goal with a business plan!)

3. Past experiences/emotions holding us back & becoming a barrier. Even if we have a shining bright goal that we know where we are going in life, if we have unhelpful thoughts, experiences or beliefs these can hold us back and prevent us achieving… Even if we think we have all of the business tools available to us.

If you recognise these things, you aren’t alone.

If you recognise these things, the good news is that something can be done!

And so, I’m off to coach myself… Today I’m writing my 10 year, 20 year and 30 year goals.

I love all this stuff 🙂

There’s lots of talk about manipulating people, how bad it is & how we should never do it.

The problem is, the people that say this are often the worst offenders and manipulate all of the time without even knowing it!

You see we are born manipulators and by the time we reach adulthood we are expert at it.

A baby realises quite quickly that if it cries in a particular way it gets fed, or changed or put to bed.

As the baby turns into a toddler it begins to experiment with other ways to manipulate its parents to get what it wants. It tries the two-year-old tantrum lying on the floor screaming, if that doesn’t work, our darling toddler resorts to the doughey eyed “oooh mummy I love you” look, you know that look, the one that parents can’t resist!

As the toddler works out which strategy works best to manipulate its parent it begins to use those manipulation strategies more and more. The parent learns and the parent adapts… And so as the toddler grows and turns into a teenager the teenager adapts its manipulation strategies too.

In an attempt to get what the teenager wants the use of classic “It’s not fair, all of my friends have got one!” manipulation strategy gets used – and if you have kids I’m sure you can think of many others.

By the time our stroppy teenager has turned into adult it has become a master manipulator. Our adult can now manipulate without even thinking about it, and therein lay the problem!

The manipulation strategies we use as adults may be more subtle, but they are there:

• That knowing look you give your assistant over the top of your glasses when they ask you a dumb question.
• The obtuse reply you give someone when you want to tell them you disapprove.
• When you ignore a comment completely.

The problem is, we cannot not communicate.

It’s absolutely impossible to not communicate anything at all. Even the act of ignoring someone and not speaking or messaging, is still communicating (I’ll leave you to decide what it communicates) and is still manipulating.

The cleverer person amongst us realises that.

They realise that they accidentally manipulate situations all day long.

They become aware of how they communicate, they become tuned in to the other person, realising that they have accidentally manipulated the other person, they then adapt their communication strategy to communicate their true intention without manipulating at all.

So is this person manipulating? Well, yes… It’s inevitable, it’s what we all do, the difference is that they are manipulating the conversation with positive intention to allow the other person to understand the true intention, and to communicate in a way that makes sense to the other person. It’s a complete win/win.

It’s what the expert communicators do without even thinking. Some people have learned the knack of doing this implicitly, all we are doing is making their unconscious, conscious.

So which do you choose? Conscious Competence, where you are aware of how you communicate, the problems you can accidentally bring about and are actively working to make a difference to communicate better… or do you wish to stay completely in the dark, ignoring the fact you do it and remain unconsciously incompetent?

I’ve recently started to run the Park Run 5K, it’s quite incredible that I’m actually at this stage as just over one year ago I wouldn’t have been able to run to the bar for last orders!

I did the Couch to 5K program using the the BBC app and have managed to get my time down to about 31 minutes.

But I hate running. Oh yes, every step is pain!

So I as I’m running my first Park Run 5K I’m thinking, “This is so demoralising, there are people SO far ahead and I am SO sloooow”.

I’m beginning to wonder why I even bothered to run in Park Run, there’s no way I’m going to get a good time.

And yet, when I crossed the line I realise I’ve taken nearly 2 min off of my best ever time and I ran it in 28 minutes 10 seconds.

I’m absolutely astounded.

So now the question, where does our motivation come from?

In NLP we have a series of meta programs. These are programs or filters we all run in our mind e.g. big picture thinking vs detailed thinking… And one of those programs is called a “Frame of Reference Filter“.

An internally referenced person will draw motivation from themselves, they will know when they are doing well and don’t need other people to tell them. Many entrepreneurs are internally referenced, they go about doing what they do and stay motivated despite what others say.

An externally referenced person will draw motivation from others. They will seek affirmations from other people. They know they are doing a good job when they get confirmation from others.

I know that I have a tendency to be externally referenced. I know that I like to hear that I’m doing a good job from other people and I use the external world to tell me whether I’m doing okay or not.

Isn’t it interesting that during my first Park Run my external reference predisposition informed my internal dialogue to tell me I wasn’t actually doing such a good job.

It turned the whole 5K into a disappointing slog… Right up until the last minute when I realised that my internal dialogue was wrong and I’d actually run faster than ever before!

Wow, it was all in my head…

1. So are you internally or externally referenced?
2. Do you need other people to tell you you are doing a good job, or do you just know?
3. How does this then inform your internal dialogue?

The first stage in utilising and changing how we think is to recognise these patterns in ourselves.

Now that I recognise that my external referencing leads my internal dialogue to speak negatively to me… I can choose to ignore it.

Or I can choose a different external reference, rather than referencing myself against other people I can reference myself against my own timings, my own pace, my own personal best.

Every day is a new day to learn something new… And isn’t that amazing?

I talk more about meta programs on my NLP personal development membership program, it looks at how we can use these basic filters to improve success for ourselves and our teams.

Should you win at all costs?

Absolutely YES.

And, definitely NO.

Okay, slightly confusing, let me tell you a little story…

A little over 18 months ago I started the running program “Couch to 5K“, it takes a non-runner through a training programme to be able to run 5K.

I can now run 5K quite comfortably in 30 minutes and am indeed pushing harder to improve my time.

One of the things I wanted to do when I began this training was to join the Park Run movement, to join hundreds of other people locally all running a 5K on a Saturday morning.

Due to Covid restrictions Park Run is not up and running yet but I’m planning in my head how I can win.

I’m competitive you see, if I do something I need to compete. And I need to win at all costs.

I’m planning on winning Park Run. Oh yes, you bet.

At least I was until I saw the fastest runner had run it in 14 min. Jesus, that’s a sprint!

There is absolutely no way I’m going to win, at least not for a considerable amount of time, and possibly taking 20 years off my age!

So what do I do, give up, just because I’m competitive and stand no chance of winning?

Absolutely not, I compete with myself instead.

I change the focus from competing with other people, to competing with myself. As I’m running I watch my pace on my Smart watch, checking to make sure I’m at least staying within a 6 min/kilometre pace, ideally running closer to a 5 min/kilometre pace.

Each time my pace slows, I push myself to compete with the last kilometre.

So I’m still competing. I’m still winning at all costs… so here’s the thing, it’s not actually winning at all costs that’s the problem… It’s who we decide to compete with.

Should we win at all costs competing with other people?

Or, is it kinder to ourselves to win at all costs by competing with OURSELVES?

And who knows, if I keep competing with myself, winning at all costs to reduce my time to a 25 mins 5K slowly edging towards 20 minutes, then pushing a bit more to reduce the time even more, I may actually achieve my 16 min 5K after all!

So who do you decide to compete with?

Who makes up your rules?

For more personal development courses and resources for learning how to change the way you think, please visit THE PERFORMANCE ACADEMY, this is my learning resource hub where I have up to 80 hours of content and learning for you to implement… Click here to get started.