Pegasus NLP Blog

This week’s Pegasus NLP Newsletter discusses how we don’t need an holistic or mind-body NLP because real NLP is holistic – hence the name Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

The Neuro part of the name refers to how NLP explores the the way our neurology and physiology impacts on our daily lives.

The Linguistic bit refers to how NLP explores how both verbal and non-verbal language impacts on our experience.

The Programming bit is about the way in which we use consistent patterns or ‘recipes’ or automatic programmes to do what we do in our everyday lives.

The newsletter also talks about the Triangle of Health – the mental, physical and nutritional ways in which we can support or undermine our mental and physical wellbeing – and how, to be at our best, we need to pay attention to and invest in all three sides rather than just focus on clear thinking or exercise or a good eating regime.

Top of the Pegasus NLP anger poll, in which people can vote on their ‘favourite’ negative anchors has always been “being spoken to in a patronising manner”.

Current score for this is 517 which is way ahead of being tailgated while driving (193), automated telephone switchboards (192). And queue jumping, many people’s pet hate, gets a mere 122.

This illustrates the importance which we attach to being respected. Being spoken to in a patronising manner impacts us at the Identity level of the NLP Neuro-Logical Levels or Personality Map. The other buttons mentioned above simply transgress our standards – our beliefs about how things should be - and so come in at the next level below Identity which is Beliefs & Values.

Incidentally, for those who haven’t come across the Logical Levels, first developed by Robert Dilts, it’s a model with which we can identify what makes people tick. With it we can identify, for example, which level of their personality a person is talking about and therefore how best to respond to them.

From the top down the levels are:

1. Mission and Vision: the big picture for our life, where we’re going with it, who fits into it, etc
2. Identity: our self-image and how we interpret events around us in terms of this
3. Beliefs & Values: includes beliefs about what is possible or impossible, what should or should not happen, and the values or feelings which we want to have more of and less of our lives
4. Capabilities & Skills: how we think, the skills we learn and our innate abilities
5. Behaviours: how we act
6. Environment: how we interact with our surroundings and with other people.

By the way, this is a very brief thumbnail sketch of what is arguably one of the most important and valuable NLP models.

So next time your buttons get pressed - next time you feel wound up or put down - check which of the upper two levels, Identity or Beliefs & Values, is being impacted. It may not reduce the impact of the event but it will give you insight into the intensity of your mood change; Anything which implies that we aren’t being respected as equals will always evoke a very strong reaction.

This week’s Pegasus NLP Newsletter is about negative anchors and how, unless dealt with, they can result in our feeling as if our moods just happen to us - as if we’re on autopilot.

In NLP workshops we examine how negative anchors work e.g. you’re going through your day, feeling fine, and then something happens which for you is a negative anchor and that’s it - instant mood change! So you feel bad for a while and then get yourself back on track.

However the most serious aspect of having lots of unconscious negative anchors is their impact, over time, on our self-esteem. We know we ’shouldn’t’ respond to these triggers. We know we ’should’ be more positive. So we read lots of positive thinking books which make it all sound so easy. And we make endless ‘new starts’ where we’re going to be positive, going to be more in charge of our moods, going to not let things get to us and so on.

But the negative anchors still get to us. Our negative moods continue to happen automatically.

Why? Because traditional ‘positive thinking’ methods simply don’t work with these hot buttons. Negative anchors are pretty well immune to intellectual approaches. It’s as if they bypass the intellect and head straight for the emotions.

But not knowing this can result in our thinking we’re to blame - when it’s really just a matter of not using the right approach…

The Professional Guild of NLP was founded in 1984 and now has around 20 organisational members. It is an independent membership-owned body which stands for a professional standards of training in NLP.

Member organisations agree to a code of ethics, a core syllabus, and to a minimum length of training.

The Professional Guild of NLP was set up to ensure that, in the free-for-all to provide impressive-looking bits of paper called NLP Practitioner Certificates (irrespective of what length of course a person had attended or what standard of training they had experienced or what standard of skill they had attained at the end of their training) the customer would be assured of a quality NLP training experience.

In addition to Organisational Membership the Professional Guild of NLP now offers Individual Membership to people who have trained to at least Certified NLP Practitioner standard through a member organisation. If you’re lucky enough, or discerning enough, to have done this you can apply for Individual Membership here: Professional Guild of NLP.

The Pegasus NLP Newsletter is 7 years old tomorrow, 10th of January! And to celebrate this we’re beginning a new 7-part series “Driving your own bus - 7 NLP practical tips”. The series is about using practical and (mainly) NLP techniques for feeling more in charge of yourself and of your moods. (You can view back issues here.)

It’s interesting to reflect upon how things have changed in the seven years since January 2001. Back then subscribers were very happy to receive an NLP newsletter every one or two or even three months as long as it was thorough and readable and practical. Nowadays most subscribers prefer short snappy NLP newsletters that are practical and to-the-point – they receive so many newsletters that most are simply scanned for gems of interest.

Here at Pegasus NLP we aim to strike a happy medium between the two extremes: between the long, carefully crafted and very thorough newsletter and the short and snappy but somewhat simplistic one. As a result, nowadays our newsletters are about half their former length and (in 2008 and onwards) we aim to get them out much more frequently. Time will tell on how effective we are in meeting this objective

Most New Year Resolutions last until about the middle of January… So I hope, if you’ve made one, that you’re planning on having it last a bit longer than that.

One thing to pay attention to is the impact of what your resolution or goal focusses upon. Does it focus on what you want - or on what you don’t want?

For example if your goal is I want to feel less nervous that evokes one mindset. But notice what happens if you re-phrase it I am moving towards becoming more confident and at ease. Now you attention is not on feeling nervous but on feeling more at ease.

If, say, your goal is to end the habit of smoking cigarettes phrasing it I want to stop smoking ensures you’ll continue to think about smoking. Having a goal I am moving towards being an ex-smoker who feels fitter and breathes more easily! The former ensures you’re continuously paying attention to the idea of smoking cigarettes rather than on the benefits of being an ex-smoker.

The impact of focussing on what you do want rather than on what you don’t want is huge.

(By the way this the topic is also explored in the next issue of our Pegasus NLP Newsletter, which goes out later this week, and is explored in some depth in our NLP Core Skills workshop.)

Individuals people who spy on the intimate private lives of others are called Peeping Toms. They are usually socially ostracised and are frequently prosecuted, unless…

… unless they do it en masse. Because if lots of others are doing it then it’s OK. As when one in five of the population watches TV series like Big Brother to see who will seduce and get into bed with who!

Then being a Peeping Tom is acceptable because it’s a new national past-time. And because the people you’re watching are exhibitionists. But it’s still being a Peeping Tom…

(This was the gist of another chat I had over the holiday period, by the way. And, though I’m not sure why, my views weren’t universally accepted   )

I was chatting with some friends recently and we got talking about what might be the most useful bit of NLP for improving our relationships with others.

For me it had to be Perceptual Positions (or Different Perspectives as we call it in Pegasus NLP).

Why? Because the NLP Perceptual Positions method gives us a way of systematically considering an interaction from at least three viewpoints: our own, that of the other person, and the viewpoint of a detached onlooker.

Most of us are a pretty good, experts in fact, at looking at the situation from our own perspective. And the reassuring thing about doing this is that it usually confirms how right we are…

But if we then take a moment to step into the shoes of the other person and consider it from their perspective, and “as if” we were them, that certainty tends to get challenged somewhat. We recognize that, just maybe, there might be other ways of looking at the situation.

Which is probably why so many of us do it so infrequently!