NLP in Everyday Life

I should have remembered

I was intently watching the car park meter slowly printing my ticket when a woman’s voice behind me said “Would you have a 5P piece?”

I said “Yes, I think I have” and checked my change and, sure enough, there I had a 5P.  As she counted out the penny coins to exchange for the 5P piece she said ” I should have checked my change before I left the house!”

Almost absentmindedly I responded, as we exchange the coins “Ah, life’s full of shoulds”

She stopped, looked at the ground and in a quite thoughtful tonality said “You know, it is…” I never thought of it that way!”

We exchanged friendly waves as we, having displayed the tickets in our respective cars, headed off on our separate ways. Never to meet again, no doubt.

A life of shoulds

It was an off-the-cuff remark on my part.  It wasn’t intended to be particularly profound.  And yet, sometimes profundity just sort of sneaks up on you!

Because, when you think about it, many of us live lives that are, indeed, full of shoulds. Continue reading

NLP and the T.A.T.E Model

The T.A.T.E. Model is great for identifying what accounts for success or failure in how we do things. We use it in our NLP Practitioner courses and it’s simply an adaptation of the famous T.O.T.E. model which was published over fifty years ago by Miller, Gallanter and Pribram.

Simply put, the TATE enables you to identify 4 elements in how someone does something i.e. in their strategy or programme for doing something.

  1. Trigger: How to you know when to begin doing something – and what is your goal or objective?
  2. Action: Once you’ve begun what exactly do you do – and how do you assess your progress towards your objective?
  3. Target: How clearly have you defined this objective – so that you’ll know when you’ve reached it?
  4. Exit: What do you do when you’re finished? Continue reading

I was asked for advice on what to do about anger – so I explained as simply as possible how we do the Anger Habit:

  1. People who get angry (let’s just say it’s ‘us’) do so because we have a strong sense of justice and fairness…
  2. We believe/decide that something is not fair or is unjust – or we believe that Other People should do things our way i.e. obey our ‘rules’
  3. In other words we want to be able to control the behaviour of Other People
  4. But, of course, Other People don’t want to be controlled by us – so they refuse to obey our rules
  5. So we get angry – sometimes even violent – in the hope that this will intimidate the Other People, and that they will give in and behave themselves according to our rules.
  6. But until we give up this need to control Other People – and accept that they won’t obey us – we’ll continue to get angry and continue to have pretty unsatisfactory relationships.
  7. However some people with the ‘anger habit’ find it very difficult to give up this need to control Other People
  8. Because they don’t like the thought of others ‘getting away with it’
  9. So they carry on getting angry.  Getting frustrated.  Losing friends.  And even losing their liberty, if things get out of hand.
  10. Until eventually (hopefully) they realise that they cannot control everyone else in the world and that sometimes people will get away with it. That’s how it is

 

And there’s a lot more information here:  http://www.pe2000.com/anger.htm

Living vicariously – or living

This month’s Pegasus NLP Newsletter is about the difference between living a fulfilling life and living your life second hand – i.e. living or living vicariously.

Many of us don’t live fulfilling lives i.e. we get by from day to day in comfort but without a real sense of  fulfilment i.e. the fulfilment that comes from fulfilling our personal values. We’re filling in time rather than living.

To avoid having to face this reality or the mundanity of a life that is not purposeful and fulfilling we have come up with ‘things to look forward to’ such as favourite TV programmes, computer games, and holidays. As a result much of the year can be taken up with looking forward to the holiday or looking back on one. Or in living our lives through other people as in gossip magazines, TV reality programmes, or TV knockout talent series.

(I know of people who will spend 2-4 hours nightly watching such programmes – they spend around 25% of their waking lives in front of the TV).

The danger with this is that, because everyone else appears to be doing it, it seems like a normal way to live one’s life.

Yet if you live your life according to your personal values you can have an on-going sense of fulfilment, involvement and purpose. The TV or the holiday becomes the icing on the cake rather than the cake itself!

The newsletter is posted here: http://www.nlp-now.co.uk/nlp_newsletter_current.htm

 

NLP Hype

The five of us were sitting in the sunshine outside a café in the lovely little Victorian town of Swanage this morning – Julie, Peter, their two boys, and myself. And despite our best intentions the conversation drifted back to NLP – a few times.

We got to remarking on the NLP Hype that so many people still subscribe to through exhortations and exclamations along the lines

  • Unleash your potential
  • Have compelling goals
  • Be the best you can be
  • Awaken the giant within
  • Live your life with passion
  • You have a right to be the best there
  • Aim for unlimited power in your life

And so on, ad nauseumContinue reading

It’s not ‘NLP’

Here at Pegasus NLP we use a number of ‘non-NLP’ concepts in our courses. And we then use NLP to unpack and examine these because

  1. They are valuable life tools
  2. Using NLP to figure out how they work demonstrates that there’s a lot more to NLP than a few techniques.

10% New

Take for instance one of our favourite ‘quick insights’ – the 10% New model. There is not really a lot to this little model and we initially cover the topic in about 10 minutes yet it can be life changing…

The idea is that you avoid getting into a rut with your life or your work by introducing frequent small changes e.g. 10% new. Continue reading

The Reviewing Model

The Reviewing Model is a pragmatic adaptation of the Experiential Learning Cycle. It is one of those deceptively simple yet powerful methods for learning through doing and reviewing – which is the style of learning we use in our Pegasus NLP courses.

What is it?

The model provides a quick-and-easy three-step structure for learning and benefiting from your experience – any experience:

Step 1. What? What did I experience? What did we do? What happened first, next, etc? What was it like? What did I learn? How did I think and feel during the experience?

Step 2. So What? What can I do with what I experienced? What are the lessons and applications? Where can these be used in my everyday life?

Step 3 Now What? Okay, what am I actually going to do in the coming days and weeks? (This is where we commit ourselves to putting the learning points into practise. )

Continue reading

NLP Tips – Week 2

The NLP Tips’ series on Twitter has now completed its second experimental week of daily tips. This Blog article enlarges on the Twitter tips since these are restricted to just 140 characters – and enables people who don’t use Twitter to have access to the tips. It also provides a little more information about each of the tips – particularly for people who are not familiar with NLP.

Day 8. NLP Meta Model – Cause & Effect

“This made me feel…” Be more in control of you by considering: How has my own thinking/reacting unintentionally created this mood?

The NLP Meta Model has been described as the “study of fuzzy thinking” because each of the 13 patterns identifies a particular style of unclear thinking.  One of the central themes in the NLP Practitioner Programme, the Meta Model enables us to recognise the beliefs which support a person’s attitude.

In the Cause and Effect pattern we believe that other people and outside events can cause our moods to change — without our having any say in the matter. This is a widely held, and rarely questioned, belief which is inculcated into us from childhood.

Posted Sunday 13 February 2011

Day 9. NLP Meta Model – ‘Rules’

Challenge your own self talk: “I must, shouldn’t, have to”. Where did I learn these rules? Do they still apply in my life nowadays?

Another of the Meta Model patterns is Rules (or, to use the arcane terminology of early NLP, Model Operators of Necessity). in this pattern we can recognise from a person’s conversation the rules which they live by.  Sometimes these rules are still relevant in their lives as adults – but often they have been picked up during childhood years and have never been questioned or updated.

Posted Monday 14 February 2011 Continue reading

Why do people sometimes seem to be their own worst enemies?

They eat too much, drink too much, work too hard etc. despite advice and evidence that it is not good for them. Despite the trouble it causes. Despite the side effects. Despite, in some cases, even the threat of losing their liberty.

This is the subject of the latest Pegasus NLP Newsletter: http://www.nlp-now.co.uk/nlp_newsletter_current.htm

The answer? What they are doing is the best means they currently have of fulfilling important values i.e. of experiencing welcome feelings and avoiding unwelcome feelings. And as long as they don’t have better alternative routes to fulfillment of these values they are unlikely to change their behaviour – or, at best, to change it for very long.

Daily NLP Tips

The new daily NLP Tips series on Twitter is for people who have had some experience of NLP. This is because anything other than a reminder of an NLP concept or process would be impossible to squeeze into 140 characters – it’s a tough enough challenge as it is :-)

I’m planning on keeping the series going for a few weeks, at least, until I get a sense of how useful it is proving to people. I will also repost the Tips here on the Pegasus NLP Blog, along with some explanatory notes, every week or two. This is to enable people who don’t use Twitter to have access to them.

And if you do use Twitter you can follow the NLP Tips: @pegasusnlp

Day 1. The Sameness & Difference Meta Programme

Meta Programmes reminder: Sameness – first recognises how things are similar. Difference – first recognises how things are not similar. Posted Saturday, 7 February 2011.

Sameness-Difference is one of the most useful of the NLP Meta Programmes. It helps explain why some people like lots of change and variety in their lives while others prefer continuity and stability.

Day 2. Rapport through body language matching

Rapport: body language matching (most risky, liable to intrude). Match only one area e,g. torso position Allow 10-20 secs before matching. Posted on Saturday, 7 February 2011.

As already mentioned in the blog articles below the Body Language method of creating rapport is risky since it is likely to intrude into the awareness of the other person who may well misconstrue it as an attempt to manipulate or to mimic them. Nevertheless it will work quite well if done very subtly, with the 10-20 seconds delay mentioned above, and against a background of the 4 Rs. Continue reading

The ‘official’ day for feeling bad

A week ago on Monday, 18 January 2011 was Blue Monday, officially the most depressing day of the year, or so we’re told. Mind you, it could have last Monday (25th) – no-one seems quite sure.

As it happens I slipped up and forgot about both dates. On 18th I was busy exploring great things on the final week of our NLP Master Practitioner Certification Programme and clean forgot to do my bit by being miserable and supporting this new National Institution. And last Monday it just slipped my mind even though, along with their 6 million other listeners, I’d heard about it mid-week on the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme. Never mind, there’s always next year. Continue reading

NLP vs. Bodywork

In the early 80’s as I was exploring NLP I also became interested in bodywork as another route to personal development. As the name suggests bodywork is about physical ways of enabling oneself and others to get to know ourselves better and to feel better. My experimenting took me into workshops and training in Touch for Health and other branches of applied kinesiology, acupressure, shiatsu, reflexology, iridology, Gestalt Therapy, bioenergetics, neo-Reichian work, along with Tai Chi and other forms of Chi work.

I noticed at the bodywork workshops that people were more warm and touchy-feely with one another.  This was great at times and at other times became an imposition, especially when it came to hugging. Continue reading

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