First, Rapport

Start with Rapport, ecology, then desired outcomes

This is an especially important presupposition for the NLP Practitioner. Unfortunately, so many “wise-guys” think that NLP is a verbal hammer with which to beat people into submission. The fact is the NLP is a verbal tool and how one wields the tool will define the ecology if its use.

I remember Bob Proctor saying, “I don’t know much about electricity but I do know that with it, you can cook a man’s dinner or you can cook the man.” Well said Bob. Electricity is a tool and how you use it will define the ecology of it.

In any exchange, start from a place of rapport - this will create the space necessary for an ecological win-win-win. Rapport, then ecology, then desired outcomes, makes for a nice check and balance system. It would be impossible to create a desired outcome that would be harmful if strict attention were given to this presupposition.

-Lane

If don't like the results

If you don’t like the results you are getting, do something different.

I once heard the definition of insanity as ‘doing the same thing over and over again expecting to get a different result.’ ‘Nuff said.

-Lane

The meaning of a communication is the response you get

The meaning of a communication is the response you get

George Bernard Shaw said, “The problem with communication is the illusion that is has been accomplished.” Isn’t that so true in lots of different ways?

In any communication, the listener will necessarily delete, distort and generalize the information that the speaker has already deleted, distorted and generalized. Remember playing the game of ‘telephone’ as a kid? One child would whisper in another’s ear a short story and that child would pass it on around the circle until it ended up back with the first child. It was so much fun to see how the story had changed!

As an excellent communicator, be flexible in your communication. Take any and all responses from the listener as feedback and calibrate this to the result you intended. If you didn’t get the result you wanted then adjust your communication.

BE Amazing,

-Lane

Benefit of doubt

People always make the best choices available to them given their personal situation at the time.

Whatever the situation, a person will choose the best option for them given the resources that are available to them. You and I might look at a particular situation and ask why. That is because we have different resources available to us. Maybe it is only a difference in thinking.

I like to call this presupposition ‘benefit of doubt’. While I may have responded differently, I can acknowledge that they did the best they could.

-Lane

There is good in even bad behavior

Behind every behavior is a positive intent.

We do what we do only because, in some way, even if only unconsciously, we believe it will help us in some way. A child will have a tantrum in order to get candy. The behavior is not positive however the intent behind the behavior is.

No matter how heinous the act, there is always a positive intent for the individual. Perhaps the behavior satisfies a need for acceptance by a group or a need for sexual release. I think we can all agree that there are aberrant behaviors and we have constructed societal methods for dealing with those behaviors. Those behaviors must be dealt with.

What is so important about this presupposition is that is suspends judgment and has us begin to understand the motivation behind the act. If a solution can be found that provides for the need of the actor and society then that would be the best outcome.

Seek to find the good and you will.

More on The Map is Not the Territory

The map is not the territory – there is always more choice in the real world than in ones mental maps of reality.

“The map is not the territory” (Alfred Korzybski) says that the representation of something is not that thing. Seems pretty simple right? When you look at a map you know that it is a map, a representation of a place – not the actual place.

As meaning-making creatures, we access our world through the five common senses and from that “map” we assume reality. What you sense is only a representation of reality taken in by our eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin. Take the case of a police officer that shows up on an accident scene with 3 witnesses. The officer will take three reports and each report will represent a distinct map (now twice remove from the actual experience, the first one being the observation and processing of the event). None of those reports is the event.

Continue to be an astute observer even when you believe you have your answer. More information and observations will be available to you.

BE Curious,

-Lane

A new definition for NLP

This afternoon I read a great article from Steve Andreas that succinctly defines NLP. I have often described it as “the manual for how to run your mind (and body)”. Check this out…

First there was psychoanalysis, analyzing the mind. Then there was psychotherapy, in which one person treats or "therapizes" another. NLP can also be used in this way, but primarily NLP is about psychoeducation, teaching someone how to use their mind, so that people can use it with themselves, as more of a personal practice, rather than a therapy.

Nice Steve. Thanks!

The Map is Not the Territory

The map is not the territory – there is always more choice in the real world than in ones mental maps of reality.

What ever you believe to be real is real for you in your map of reality. There is a tremendous amount of information coming into your awareness at any one time. In order to deal with all that information, you filter it through your five senses and your internal processes. This then makes up your experience – your reality.

For example, you and a friend may sit together and watch the same movie and yet each of you will have your own individual experience of the movie. Some part of that movie may mean more to you than it does to your friend.

I especially like this presupposition because it helps me to remember that what you experience is always different than what I experience and that if we agree to accept that other options are available then there can always be a basis for agreement.

It also reminds me that what ever limitation I am experiencing are not reality, rather they are a byproduct of the thinking I am engaged in at the moment.

BE Amazing,

-Lane

So long as people have an ego...

So long as people have an ego, they live from their visual, auditory, kinesthetic, emotional, and linguistic maps of reality rather than reality.

The ego is, in psychoanalysis, the division of the psyche that is conscious, most immediately controls thought and behavior, and is most in touch with external reality (American Heritage Dictionary). Given this, living through the ego necessarily requires that one will process their reality from their V-A-K maps of reality. Emotion is the ego response to the reality and the language is the best description of the reality. In all these ways of experiencing, none of them are reality. They are our best representation filtered through the ego.

To be in your ego self is a good thing so long as you recognize that you are acting from your ego and you remember that you are more than your ego. You are a spiritual being experiencing the ego.

Best wishes to you,
-Lane

Stability, Regularity, Predictability and Habit

Stability, regularity, predictability and habit use less energy, are more stable, and preferable to constant change so long as behaviors are not maladapted to the context and produce the desired outcome.

I think this is truer in the USA than in other parts of the world. Take the humble cell phone plan. We will purchase more minutes because there is significant comfort in knowing that the bill will always be $99.99 each month even though we never use all those minutes. We just can’t stand it when the carrier hits us with even one of those high per-minute charges. Now, once the per-minute charges become a burden (maladapted to our situation) then we attempt to get back to stability buy upgrading our plan.

In sales, the role of a sales person is to help the buyer make the purchase. Make it easy for them to buy and they will buy it.

In therapy, if the adopted behavior is stable, regular, predictable, and uses the least energy possible, then the change will be more likely to stick.

Best wishes to you,
-Lane

Humans are meaning making creatures

Humans are meaning making creatures. We abhor confusion and unpredictability.

In a general sense, humans like to understand their world. We are very curious aren’t we?

A person will continue to seek meaning out of confusion. Order and process are very important and our minds are continually seeking to order, categorize and classify our world. Once done, then a new order of thinking can emerge and a new level of understanding or learning can be achieved. Really, confusion is a nice indicator that you are about to learn something very important.

A person will continue to seek control or predictability over the unpredictable. In what job can you be right only 30% of the time and still keep your job? Right – weatherman! All kidding aside, as a hobby, I am an amateur radio operator and I work with the local group to spot and monitor storms in our county. I find it amazing that today we have the technology to be able to predict sever storms 3 to 5 days in advanced with a high degree of accuracy.

There is this internal drive to straighten the path, unless keeping the curves in the path allow us to make sense of something we don’t understand.

You can empower you communications by keeping this presupposition mind. Whatever you say, the listener will apply filters to eliminate confusion and create meaning from your words. Remember these are their filters and the communication received may not necessarily be what was intended.

BE Amazing,
-Lane

People Can Change. Systems Can Change.

People can change. Systems can change.

Keith Fail is a fellow NLP Trainer and he runs an executive coaching business down in Austin. While I never met Keith face to face, I would call him a friend as he is engaged in using his skills to empower people.

In NLP there is a set of ‘Presuppositions’ one should take into account when applying the techniques. Presuppositions are convenient assumptions and they essentially reframe the practitioner into a more empowering state. I like Keith’s spin on Presuppositions so I thought I would share these with you in a series of blog entries.

The first of these is “People can change. Systems can change.” And it is a presupposition that is not taught in many NLP schools. I think this was the foundation behind Dr. Grinder’s thinking in New Code NLP.

In many NLP schools and “back in the day”, NLPers liked to label people and put them into a box. They would say, “Oh, you’re a Visual” or they might say, “You always do (run a strategy) when that happens.” The truth is, a person is never just a Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic or Auditory Digital. They are all of these at any moment in time and can change from one to the other in an instant. A person will not ‘always’ run a certain strategy when a particular event happens. We are much, much more complex beings than that.

The mark of a skilled NLP practitioner is one who can readily identify tendencies of the subject to act or process information a certain way and still maintain a conscious awareness of shifts in the client as they move from one way of thinking to another.

People can change and they can change very quickly (without warning).

Systems can change too. Consider a system as an interaction between people. At any moment in time there are rapid shifts in the physical, emotional and mental bodies and there could be hundreds or thousands of these shifts each minute.

The thinking process of a person could be considered a system as well. A Strategy is a system (process) for handling decisions and actions. While a person might have a tendency to always run a certain strategy (we are creatures of habit), it is not a guarantee they will always do so.

So, gentle reader, what does this mean for you?

Remember that ‘where’ a person is, how they are acting or what ever the current situation is, you can best respond by being in the moment and calibrating on the needs of ‘now’ and how that shifted over a span of time.

BE Amazing,
-Lane

Responsibility

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, pg. 71, Steven Covey writes,

“Look at the word responsibility – ‘response-ability’ – the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling.”

What Covey is talking about is BEing empowered or, more importantly, how to BE empowered. You see, every day you get to make the choice. Are you going to assume responsibility for your life or are you going to allow yourself to be bullied by external forces and circumstances?

In Technologies of the Mind, we talk about this in terms of Cause/Effect. Are you the cause for what is going on in your life or are you at effect of events going on in your life?

I cannot stress enough the importance in understanding the difference between the two. Cause is the condition of creating an effect. Effect is the end-state of the cause. We live in a causal world. For example, if you were to insert your key into your car’s ignition, you begin a chain of cause-effect events that result (hopefully) in the car starting. Twisting the key causes the effect of electronic contacts coming together. That causes the effect of an electrical current to flow through a circuit. That causes the effect of a motor to turn. That causes the effect of the engine begin to turn – and so on.

If you begin to assume responsibility for everything that happens in your life, you move into your full power as a human being. Have you considered that your world is the world of your own creation? That your reality is yours by your intentional creation? What I am suggesting to you is simply this… everything that you experience, whether or not you necessarily like it, you are the cause for. Wow! For some people that can be heavy! Pay close attention, you are the “cause”. It was a series of events and choices executed by you that resulted in your experience.

The next idea is simply this. If you are at cause for every event in your life then you are fully empowered to do something about it. Nice huh? Be the intentional cause for creating your life the way you want it. When you fully commit to that idea you begin to get the kind of results in your life that you consciously want. There is more work to be done of course – like letting go of your negative emotions and limiting decisions – you come to the conclusion that you totally deserve to BE, DO and HAVE what you want.

Being at cause for your life has nothing to do with being at fault or to blame. It has everything to do with being responsible. You see, stuff happens. I think we can agree on that. What our friend Mr. Covey is saying is that you get to decide how you are going to respond. I think the obvious answer is, respond in whatever way is empowering to you.

BE Amazing,
-Lane

This Door Swings Both Ways

This Door Swings Both Ways

Everyone’s life is bittersweet
It's a door that opens wide
And no man can call himself complete
Till he's seen it from both sides
This door swings both ways
It's marked 'In' and 'Out'
Some days you'll want to cry
And some days you will shout
This door swings both ways
It goes back and forth
In comes a southern breeze
Or a cold wind from the north
This door swings both ways
Lets in joy and pain
In comes the morning sun
And then the evening rain
This door swings both ways
Lets in dark and light
Every day you make the choice
To let in wrong or right
When shadows fall
You must prepare yourself for sunshine
For everything there is an end
And so my friend you must be brave
This door swings both ways
Which one will it be
Will we live in happiness
Or dwell in misery
This door swings both ways
Lets in earth and sky
Make the most of livin'
If you're not prepared to die
Make the most of livin'
If you're not prepared to die
Lyrics by: Thomas & Levitt - Herman’s Hermits

Wisdom from the British Invasion! The point is we do have a choice. There is a story that I have heard told in several different ways my favorite goes like this…

The tribal chief’s son says, “Father, I am concerned. I have a terrible conflict inside of me. It is like two wolves fighting. One wolf is kind and gentle. The other wolf is vengeful and destructive. Which of these wolves will win my life?” His father replies, “The one that you feed.”

Those are true words.

“Every day you make the choice
To let in wrong or right”

So may it be,
-Lane