NLP in Everyday Life

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

Self Talk has its uses …

A lot of us who do our thinking primarily through self talk or, as we term it in NLP, through Auditory Digital thinking, try to keep track of everything going on in our lives “in our heads”.

And if you have a very busy life and have lots of things to keep track of you’ll know that this is not a very efficient way of keeping track – and that you’ll be quite familiar with the process of constantly ‘going over’ things through self talk:

  • I must remember to do that,
  • When will I have time to fit this in?
  • Emm,  let me think, could I postpone that till tomorrow?
  • Oops, forgot to make that phone call! Continue reading

Bad times or learning opportunities?

What’s your favourite screw-up, setback, mistake, weak spot, etc. What’s pretty well guaranteed to have you in an unpleasant mood?  For example:

  • Do you forget things? And then give yourself a hard time about it.
  • Do you get irritable? And then blame yourself or others for causing the mood change?
  • Do you fret unnecessarily about things – which later turn out okay?
  • Do you blame others for not behaving as you’d like them to – and then use guilt to try and mould their behaviour?
  • Do you feel sorry for yourself because the world isn’t as it should be – but do nothing to make things right for yourself? Continue reading

NLP Quick Tips: Task, Relationship… and Rapport

There’s been a long gap between this post and the previous one — almost 2 months. September-November is our busiest period and happily this year has been no exception.

So finding time to keep up with blogs articles hasn’t been easy. And that’s quite frustrating because I get so many great ideas for articles from interacting with people who attend our NLP training courses.

Quick Tips?

Yep, it’s been a matter of lots of great ideas and no time to flesh them out into articles… so I’ve come up with the idea of “Quick Tips” in which I’ll condense very practical, down-to-earth ways of doing things more effectively into as few words as possible.

Obviously these won’t be very thorough or in-depth but they will be practical.

Take your time!

One of the first “challenges” in becoming an effective comnicator is knowing how to create the right atmosphere for effective communicating to occur. (By the way, this is a huge subject – further ideas and tips will follow.) Continue reading

How we programme our own moods

How we interpret events and then have feelings as a result of our own interpretation is the main topic in today’s Pegasus NLP Newsletter.

The article takes a look at how we attach meaning to what is happening around us and how the meaning which we attach then determines how we feel.

The NLP Meta Model

The process has traditionally been called “Complex Equivalence” in the wonderful NLP Meta Model. (Here in Pegasus NLP, in our quest to make NLP more user-friendly and jargon-free, we opt for the more descriptive title “Attaching Meaning” because this actually describes what is happening.

An ‘automatic’ process

Because we do it so quickly – and unconsciously – we rarely recognise that the significance which we attach to an event is often quite arbitrary. And, since we’ve been doing it like this for years, we rarely  consider what other possible meanings or interpretations we might attach to the event – unless, of course, we use the Meta Model to monitor our thinking.

It’s bank holiday weekend!

The Dorset Coast, when I live, is a popular visitor destination and I’ve long ago learned from the locals that it’s best to avoid travelling locally on bank holiday weekends.

But yesterday I took a chance. And got caught in a traffic jam. It wasn’t a long one – just about 15 mins and in beautiful surroundings – so it gave me a chance to more closely admire the countryside I normally whiz through at 60 mph.

One extra day off

It also gave me food for thought and conversation. We have just 8 bank holidays here in the UK. This is fewer than many countries: Spain has 14 and Italy 16. India has just 3 ‘national’ holidays though you can get other days off depending on your religion. Continue reading

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