Category Archives: Neuro-Linguistic Programming
NLP Articles, News, and Cool Techniques
Coaching Demystified
Have you learned NLP or Hypnosis but lack the confidence to start your practice?
I’ve taught NLP and Hypnotherapy for nearly a decade, and I’ve noticed that there is only one thing that keeps students from starting a coaching practice. Without the confidence in your own skills and abilities, you’re likely to stay in a “safe” position. But how do you develop the confidence to pursue your dreams?
I’d personally like to invite you to a very special event I’m producing with my friend and colleague, Marcus Marsden, an executive coach to some of the largest companies in the world. Not only is he an excellent and seasoned coach, he’s a thoroughly entertaining and effective trainer and NLP Master. And, he works for the leading coaching company in Asia, where we’ve co-run NLP workshops for the past 3 years.
I know you’ll enjoy this workshop. I look forward to your participation!
Coaching Demystified
A Workshop for NLP Practitioners and Hypnotherapists
Successful coaches have their own style of coaching. They have cultivated how to think and act like a coach, and they know how to apply their skills at each stage of the coaching journey.
In this experiential workshop, you will experience and explore:
- what it’s like to go through the stages of a coaching journey with a client
- the mind of a coach – how does a coach think, listen, and act differently compared to people in other roles
- how a coach builds an effective coaching relationship with their client(s)
- your own coaching style – who do you need to be in order to really be effective at working with others; what experiences and qualities do you have that can assist you to be a great coach;
- why people are important to you and why is it important that you contribute to their development. This is critical in order to evoke a real commitment to go out and create a practice.
At the conclusion of this workshop, you can expect:
- Increased confidence and commitment to coach people in their daily life – either formally or informally. You will leave the workshop excited about coaching, ready to start a coaching conversation with a belief in your ability to coach and develop people.
- To be thinking, listening, and acting like a coach. You’ll learn practical, easy-to-use coaching techniques to use alongside other skills.
- To understand how and why to help others achieve goals.
- To determine your natural coaching style and how to adapt your way of working to coach different people.
So, if you’re ready to take the next step in your career, join us for this very special event. I am certain you’ll get exactly what you need to move forward in your own life, and be ready to help others move forward in theirs. Join us!
The Essential Details
Dates: October 14-15, 10am to 6pm
Location: 421 Post St. 14th Floor in San Francisco CA
Regular Tuition: $475
Early Bird Tuition: $350 before September 1 (Save $125!)
Meet Marcus Marsden
Marcus is an executive coach and personal development trainer based in Hong Kong with clients throughout Asia and the UK. Marcus brings to his training and coaching 20 years of business and management experience. Marcus specializes in coaching senior executives in leadership, management, and change and teaching personal breakthrough workshops.
Marcus has also worked extensively in the fields of leadership development and coaching with organizations including Unilever, PETRONAS, Sony Ericsson, Taishin Bank, Birla Group, Wika Construction, and Hewlett Packard.
Graduating from Oxford University, Marcus is an NLP Master Practitioner. He holds certification for Creative Thinking facilitation and he is a member of the International Coaching Federation and the Newfield Network.
Marcus is married to a lovely Indonesian woman and currently lives in Hong Kong. When not working, he enjoys keeping fit and healthy in the gym (his wife is a personal fitness trainer!) as well as playing golf, hiking and Pilates. He is a keen movie watcher as well an ardent fan of American football (Go Raiders!).
Time Lines
Whether you want to be on time more of the time or to resolve childhood traumas, familiarity with time lines is crucial.
As you may remember from history class, we tend to organize our memories in a linear format, separating the past from the present and future. Knowing how we organize time is helpful in being sure we are able to function well in modern society.
Overcoming Fears of Earthquakes and Other Natural Disasters
Individuals who live on or around major fault lines are wise to keep in mind the possibility of an earthquake, and take appropriate precautions. But if the fear of a potential quake that is designed to serve as a warning becomes an obsessive phobia, an individual should seek help from a qualified professional.
Experts agree that fear is a natural emotional response designed to keep us safe and out of harm’s way. However, when someone focuses for too long on an issue they can inadvertently make it worse, creating a phobia. A phobia is defined as an irrational, overwhelming fear that impacts an individual’s quality of life.
Janis Ericson, NLP Trainer and founder of Lightwork Seminars Intl. and HybridNLP, helps people overcome their fears and phobias. And when it comes to fears of natural disasters, she finds that most individuals do one or two things in their imaginations that lead to intense fear responses, which actually put them in more danger.
- Some people watch disasters on TV, but they continue to watch them over and over again in their mind’s eye. The repetitive nature of these thoughts make the negative feelings more intense.
- Fears can turn to phobias when individuals associate into the “disaster” scene, meaning they pretend they are living it. If you aren’t going through it in real life, there is no benefit to pretending to go through it!
What many people don’t know is that a vast majority of people that actually live through natural disasters never create a phobia. And, many individuals that have never been through one do. This is due to the fact that the natural disaster is not to blame. Phobias are created by faulty thinking. This is good news, since changing thoughts is what NLP experts do, usually in an hour or less.
While a private session with Ericson is recommended, she offers the following tips for those individuals wishing to heal themselves.
- Find a comfortable place to relax. Take a few deep breaths.
- Imagine a small movie screen 30 feet in front of you. Put your scary movie on the screen, but only in black and white.
- Shrink the screen until it’s only 1 square foot. Do this quickly.
- Run the movie in reverse, from end to beginning, also quickly.
- Put the movie and the screen in a slingshot, and send them to the moon.
- Breathe, and relax.
Any time you think about what could happen in the future, stop, take a breath, and run the scene in reverse. When you do this a few times, your pattern for getting phobic unravels. You’ll no longer be able to feel the fear. Of course, you should always take precautions to keep yourself safe. But fear is only an alert. Once you interpret and act upon the alert, the fear will dissolve naturally.
We can’t prevent earth changes from occurring, however, we can prevent being afraid of something that hasn’t happened yet. Janis believes that no one should suffer needlessly.
“If a disaster occurs, the best possible response is calmness. When people are calm, they can react safely, because things around them are moving slowly. Anxiety is what puts people in danger. Individuals that panic often freeze, which is far more harmful than getting to safety.”
Janis Ericson can be reached for private consultations and training courses at 415.491.1122 or through her website at www.lightworkseminars.com.
Submodalities
Reality is subjective. The way in which we perceive our experiences determines how we feel about them. One set of distinctions of perception are referred to as submodalities.
Have you ever gone to a museum and compared an actual Monet to a print in the gift shop? Which had more emotional impact? If you’re like most people, you preferred the original painting. It has more texture, more vibrant color, a more interesting frame, and more dimension. These qualities are known as visual submodalities.
One way to think about submodalities is as the individual elements that make up the sensory information we receive from the world. Therefore, there are visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, and gustatory submodalities. Pictures can be big or small, bright or dull. Sounds can be loud or soft, near or far. Feelings can be intense or mild, moving or still. And while there are dozens more submodality distinctions within each sensory system, you are likely to be able to come up with a few on your own.
The most important thing to know about submodalities is that they are the coding for how you feel about a particular piece of stimuli. A very large spider running towards you is likely to produce a different feeling than a very small spider running away from you, right? And a loud sound right next to your ear is going to produce a different feeling from a quiet one across the room.
But, how does this apply to NLP? By changing the submodalities of a “negative” stimulus, you can reduce the amount of negative emotion you have about it. The reverse is also true. You can amplify the positive emotions surrounding a particular positive experience. This can help you to get over fears and phobias, or it can help you fall in love with your partner all over again.
Not everyone experiences submodalities in the same way. Some people respond more to big pictures, while others are more affected by the brightness or contrast of an image. For some, volume makes a difference, but for others it is the location of a sound that has the most affect. The only way to know what your submodality drivers are is to play with them, being aware of how your feelings change as you manipulate each submodality.
Building Rapport with NLP
“The internal sense of one person can communicate with that of another without the intervention of nerve impulses or any other physiological process. The effects of the movements of the nerves, modified in the brain by thought, can extend themselves to indefinite distances without the assistance of the air or the ether and make an immediate connection with the internal sense of another person. In this way, the wills of two persons can communicate through their internal senses. This relationship is called rapport.” Franz Anton Mesmer
Rapport is defined as being “of one mind.” You can have rapport with others or between your conscious and unconscious minds. Rapport with others is dependent upon appreciating and understanding another person’s model of the world, or their map of reality, and communicating that understanding to them in such a way that trust is established. I personally believe rapport is essential in every communication (with others and within the self), because it creates a state of oneness and empathy that is difficult to get any other way.
Rapport generates the following meaning for another person:
- You know, respect, and appreciate them and their world.
- You value what they value.
- You are like them and can be trusted.
When you don’t have rapport, the meaning given to the communication is:
- You don’t understand them or value what they value.
- You aren’t interested in them.
- You can’t be trusted with their well-being.
When you are in rapport, you feel a sense of:
- Speaking the same language.
- Being on the same wavelength.
- Respect, appreciation, credibility and trust.
- Openness and liking.
Having rapport gives you the opportunity to share another person’s experience. It also provides increased sensory awareness and the opportunity to lead the interaction in a positive direction.
“To act like one is to be one.” Lao Tzu
Rapport is gained by a process called pacing and leading. Pacing refers to experiencing another person’s reality by matching or mirroring their external behavior, internal states and representations in as many ways as possible. Leading means guiding an individual to another state or thought once rapport is established. Matching and Mirroring nonverbal communication (like breathing at the same rate) increases understanding and appreciation. Research into mirror neurons has demonstrated that mirroring someone else’s body language lights up the mirror neurons four times more strongly that basic matching. You may also be interested to know that according to Marianne LaFrance (1982), when an observer sees two people mirroring, they regard them as having more closeness than when they simply match.
Once you have paced successfully and established rapport, you can learn a great deal of information relating to an individual’s reality, as well as your own. Rapport makes it possible to lead another personal into new experiences, like more positive states of being. Through rapport you can also lead someone into a buying state, a place of openness to new ideas, or even into love.
- Pace, Pace, Pace —> Lead
You’ve Already Succeeded
When thinking about what to write about each month, I think back to the recent experiences I’ve had. And having just returned from teaching NLP to a group of coaches in Singapore, I’m reminded of one of my favorite NLP processes- the As If Frame.
Milton Erickson, my favorite healer of all time, created easily the most clever way around obstacles that arise in the human mind. If you know the history of hypnosis, you know that it has been used for thousands of years to diagnose and treat illness. However, there has been no formal record of the way this was done. I believe Milton figured it out. Here is my interpretation of this famous pattern.
Take a moment right now to consider something you want to be, do, or have that is not currently part of your life. For example, I don’t yet have one million dollars in the bank, but I’d like to. Or, maybe you want to be pain-free or a nonsmoker.
Now, let’s take a ten minute mental journey. Read through the following instructions before proceeding. You’ll want to take a few moments to breath and center yourself for the exercise.
1. Imagine getting in a time machine, and set the controls for either six months or a year from today. Press the button to go to this time.
2. When you step out of the machine, notice where you are, what’s going on around you, and how you feel. What is in your environment that lets you know you were successful in creating what you wanted?
3. Listen to what you hear going on around you. What are the sounds of your success?
4. Take stock of how it feels to know you’ve succeeded. What’s going on in your mind and body?
5. If you had to give someone advice on how to get to this point, what would you tell them? What’s the method you used to get here? And, what would you do differently given the chance?
6. When you’re ready, get back in your time machine and come back to the present moment. Remember everything you learned and experienced there, so that you can apply that knowledge in the now.
The main objective of the process is to fully associate yourself into the desired state, to get visual, auditory, and kinesthetic information so that your visualization becomes more real. Research has proven that visualization works best when it is specific and focused. By fully immersing yourself in this dream world, you activate your unconscious mind to move in this direction. Now all you have to do is to take action!
Now that you’re back in the present moment, use that experience to drive your next steps. I like to envision my outcome each morning for a few moments. Alternately, consider putting a meaningful word or phrase on your desk to keep you focused. In any case, continue to act “as if” you’re already successful in your pursuit. It will give you the necessary confidence and direction to move forward in your life and work.
How Beliefs are Formed
Researchers at Harvard Medical School and McGill University recently teamed up to conduct experiments into how specific memories connect into bigger pictures. They showed subjects abstract images paired in hierarchies and then asked them to predict the hierarchy of new combinations. Subjects tested again after only 20 minutes showed no significant improvement, but those tested after 12 hours were much better at guessing the relationships, and the ones tested after a period of sleep did even better.
The conclusion, that the brain makes deeper connections in the background while we sleep or focus on other tasks, verifies what Hypnotherapists and NLP practitioners have known all along. Beliefs are constructed through connections between experiences that aren’t always chosen and are stored in the unconscious. Using modern techniques, these connections can be pulled or modified to be more consistent with conscious choices, and to support health and well-being within an individual.
NLP and Hypnosis Compared
One of the most prevalent questions I am asked is, “What is the difference between NLP and Hypnosis?” Here is a comprehensive answer.
NLP is the study of successful people. NLP modelers study what successful people think, say, value, believe, and do. Practitioners of NLP use this information as a map to guide processes that assist clients in making positive changes in their own minds and bodies. It is an extremely effective methodology for personal growth and development.
Hypnosis, however, is a skill a practitioner of NLP requires in order to facilitate effective and lasting change in their clients. The purpose of hypnosis is to access and use the unconscious mind to change beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors to match the map generated with NLP skills. During hypnosis, clients enter a relaxed dream-like state of consciousness that allows for new and healthy patterns to be implanted.
NLP Practitioners generally employ Ericksonian hypnosis, which differs from traditional hypnosis in the way suggestions are made in the client’s unconscious mind. Ericksonian hypnotists use subtle, indirect suggestions that are more powerful than direct suggestions and are easily accessed during NLP processes.
In summary, NLP and Hypnosis are separate fields of study, requiring different skills and techniques, but they are often combined together to produce permanent and lasting changes.
Improving Health with NLP
“For hundreds of years, Western medicine has looked at mind and body as totally separate entities,” says Herbert Benson, MD, director emeritus of the Benson-Henry Institute, “to the point where saying something ‘is all in your head’ implied that it was imaginary. Now we’ve found how changing the activity of the mind can alter the way basic genetic instructions are implemented.”
Benson’s Institute for Mind/Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, working in collaboration with the Genomics Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, uncovered a connection between relaxation and the expression of genes involved with processes such as inflammation, programmed cell death and how the body handles free radicals — molecules produced by normal metabolism that, if not appropriately neutralized, can damage cells and tissues.
But research into the mind/body connection is nothing new. In the 1970s, Robert Ader and Nicholas Cohen conducted a series of experiments on conditioning in rats. They found rats given immune suppressing drugs with added saccharin eventually experienced suppressed immune systems when given only the saccharin. In 1980, Lydia Temoshok showed that cancer patients with repressed anger had slower recovery rates than expressive patients. In 1990, Howard Hall discovered that psychological factors could directly affect cellular function in the immune system by proving an association between hypnotherapy and clinical improvements in warts and asthma, both of which can be mediated by immune changes under subconscious control. Since that time a large number of scientists have researched the links between the mind and physical health, with the consensus that a definite link exists.
While NLP is not therapy or medicine, the link between the mind and body proves that health can be improved and disease prevented by using techniques that affect mental states. NLP falls into the category of psycho-education, meaning it is a way for individuals to learn about their minds in order to make their own shifts. There are several NLP tools and techniques for reducing stress, preventing and reversing cancer, ending allergic responses, and releasing pain. Whether you want to prevent disease or desire to correct current health concerns, you have everything you need within you to create good health.
Please note that NLP is extremely useful in achieving and maintaining health, but it is not a substitute for proper medical or psychiatric care. If you or your clients have any diagnosable disorders, please seek a referral from a doctor or psychologist before proceeding with NLP. This ensures safety for all parties involved. If you’re unsure whether or not a condition is a recognized disorder, please consult a doctor.
5 Reasons to Learn NLP
Intelligent, motivated individuals around the globe have been learning NLP for over 30 years. By far the most successful personal development technology in existence, NLP utilizes both the conscious and unconscious minds to make positive, permanent shifts in behavior. It has been used by actors and CEO’s alike to bring out their best selves, allowing them to make more money and enjoy greater success and fulfillment. Don’t you think it’s time to join them?
1. Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) teaches you how to create a natural rapport with important contacts.
Not only does the ability to generate liking in your clientele boost sales, it can also make you stand out in interviews and important meetings. Our NLP students learn how to build rapport with anyone in five minutes or less, with integrity and style.
2. NLP teaches you how people think.
By learning what makes people tick, you have an edge in marketing, sales, and in every day life. Relationships also improve when you know each other’s model of the world and how to communicate in a way that will be heard and understood.
3. With NLP you can conquer fears and phobias.
Afraid of flying or public speaking? Fears can get in the way of normal life- and making money. Have you turned away offers or deals because of your fears or concerns? Maybe it’s time to move through fear and into greater freedom and success.
4. NLP teaches you how to be an effective leader.
Whether you manage a team of individuals or teach or parent children, you need to be able to take the lead- and get others to follow. NLP offers a set of concrete linguistic patterns designed to persuade others in a more positive direction. And, you’ll learn how to develop your own style and charisma.
5. NLP can make you happier.
When it comes down to it, life is meant to be enjoyed. If anything gets in the way of your happiness, it’s time for a change. With NLP you can clear away stress, apathy,fear, and resentment in a short time. Once you’ve learned the techniques, you can use them to build a career that will continue to improve your happiness!
