Pegasus NLP Blog

This is the third in a series on how you can use NLP to create personal or professional goals, including New Your Resolutions!

Article No. 1 is about how to use NLP to create life goals which give us a sense of fulfilment and purpose – a feeling that we really are going somewhere with our lives.

Article No. 2 is about how our goals become meaningful and fulfilling when we use NLP to link our goals with our values i.e. when, instead of being sort of plucked out of the air,  our goals are carefully designed to ensure we experience, on a daily basis, more of the feelings which we would like to feel – and less of the feelings which we would like to avoid feeling! And the rest of this series is about how to carefully design such goals.

Time for some day dreaming!

A great way of identifying how you want to feel (and how you don’t want to feel!) is to do a bit of day dreaming – or fantasising – about your Ideal Day. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, if the Ouch Factor from the previous article and, especially, from Kaufman’s Victory Poem has worked you’re now probably thinking about your goals for 2010. And, if you have done some NLP and come across the NLP Well Formed Outcomes process or, as we have defined it in Pegasus NLP, the  NLP PECSAW process you may have now begun designing goals for the next year.

Great! Or is it…?

Goals, walls, and ladders

Stephen Covey, in his pithy style, distinguishes between management and leadership: ‘Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.’

The same concept can be applied to our personal and professional goals, Read the rest of this entry »

Well, how about that! Another year almost through…

And, yes, it’s once again that time… when many of us take stock. And look backwards over the past year or so, and look forwards towards the coming year and, perhaps, reassess how we are living our lives and how ‘on track’ we are for fulfilling our personal values.

As I was driving home a little while ago I was half-heartedly pondering such thoughts and Herbert Kaufman’s great little poem popped into my mind:.

Victory

You are the man who used to boast

That you’d achieve the uttermost,

some day… Read the rest of this entry »

Comments and emails about the first article in this series (NLP and Sales 1) got me thinking about what works and what doesn’t work in dealing with potential customers.. and about one of my pet hates in selling: the ‘We are proud to announce’ tactic. In this approach the selling company runs a campaign along the lines: We are proud to announce…

… the launch of our new range/catalogue/etc

… the appointment of Jack or Jill to our team

… the opening of our new store

… our new brand/logo/livery

Yes, they’re proud of these, which is fine and laudable, but to think their customers should be in the least interested is quite amazing!  What they are actually conveying to their customers is ‘we’re self-centred and self-serving – and quite uninterested in you – except insofar as how you can help us make more money!’ Read the rest of this entry »

On last week’s NLP Trainer Training we were discussing the importance of customer satisfaction and long-term relationships in developing a training and consulting business.

Coincidentally, I was this morning chatting with somebody who could be a role-model for this: someone who instinctively applies this approach. (That chat prompted this article). He owns and runs one of the local car-repair garages here in Swanage and is somewhat unusual for someone in his business.

If you ring him up and say your car has a problem he says ‘Fine! Drop in and we’ll have a look at!’ Then he will look at the car, roughly assess the problem, and say ‘Yes, that’s fine – we can deal with it and it will take this long and cost this amount.’

What’s the catch?

The first time this happened I wondered what was the catch. I wasn’t used to this kind of service, especially from garages. Read the rest of this entry »

The “Sympathy vs. Respect?” blog article produced lots of online and email responses.  One common theme can be summarised:  “I should be doing something even if the unhappy or unwell person doesn’t want it!”

Sam and Ulrica

I have made a composite of the comments and come up with a typical scenario:

1. Uneasy Ulrica is unwell or unhappy. Ulrica has explicitly said that she does not want sympathy. Nor does she want people empathising with her. Nor does she want people telling her how she ‘must be’ feeling.

2. Her friend, Sympathising Sam, naturally wants to respect and support Ulrica’s wishes. But Sam also wants to let Ulrica know that she is loved and supported and cared for. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve recently had reason and opportunity to think about the concept of sympathy. The feeling of sympathy, that is, for somebody who is unwell or unhappy or in difficult circumstances.

It’s quite normal or natural or understandable to feel sadness or even unhappiness for somebody who is going through a difficult time. And, if this person is very close to us or is a relative, to almost feel as if we should not be happy because they are not…

But a question to consider is: even though feeling this way may be normal or natural is it appropriate?

Feeling unhappy for people

Much of our sympathising, including imagining or associating into the feelings of the unhappy or the unwell person, occurs automatically i.e it occurs outside of our conscious awareness.

So we experience it as “a feeling”. And because it’s “a feeling” we consider it very valid, real and powerful. We don’t question it nor think about it. We don’t analyse it. It’s just how we are and, after all, it’s how anybody would feel in our situation, isn’t it? Read the rest of this entry »

When a pole vaulter or high jumper is competing the bar over which they are jumping is raised each time they successfully clear it. Until, eventually, they cannot clear it. The bar has been raised to the limit of their current skill/ability.

They accept this as an indication of where their current limit lies – and as a challenge to further develop their ability.

In everyday life

Many of us operate a similar pattern in our everyday lives but, un-intentionally, use this in a manner which continually keeps us in a state of low self-esteem. Read the rest of this entry »

This months Pegasus NLP Newsletter arose out of observing the differing approaches and styles of different NLP Core Skills groups when doing the Spiders Web challenge on the Low Ropes course – and afterwards reviewing their experience with them.

The Spiders Web challenge is web a made of light rope and is about 2 m square. The challenge is to get a group 6-9 people through the web without touching the ropes and only allowing one person to go through each hole.

This means that the activity does requires a degree of careful planning.

And most groups, at this stage, tend to polarise into two camps: the let’s plan this carefully and the let’s just get on with it! groups – something which, when they are later using NLP to review and learn from their Ropes’ experiences, produces some hilarity and lots of personal insights!

The newsletter explores how neither approach is the absolute right one – but that the let’s just do it approach tends to produce (1) more failures and therefore (2) more successes and definitely (3) more learning and experience.

This Pegasus NLP Newsletter article is online here: http://www.nlp-now.co.uk/nlp_newsletter_current.htm

In the second NLP Bore trait other people are not allowed to ‘be negative’. They must remain in a permanently positive frame of mind otherwise they’ll be ‘NLPed’.

So you can’t discuss your problems – that’s not positive. You can’t talk about your difficulties – because we have to deal with process and not with content. You can’t even have a moan – because, you’re told, that’ll simply make things worse.

The right way

Now in the NLP Meta Model these are all unquestioned and unquestionable ‘Rules’ (or in the traditional jargon they are ‘Modal Operators of Necessity’). They are the NLP Bore’s rules and they are being imposed by the Bore on the rest of us – whether or not this is appropriate for the rest of us. Read the rest of this entry »