Pegasus NLP Blog

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!

Today is Remembrance Sunday which commemorates the official ending of World War I - when, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month Germany signed the armistice with the Allies. It’s the day when we remember those who died in all wars.

Out in the New Forest today we were on the final day of the NLP Core Skills programme and we agreed to take a break at about 10:55 a.m. to allow people to recognize the moment in whichever way they considered was appropriate for them.

I spent a few minutes walking almost ankle-deep in autumn leaves among the trees and listening to the birds. Somewhere in the distance was the sound of a volley of gunfire to mark 11 a.m. and, curiously, just at that moment a huge hawk swooped down almost to ground level about 50 yards in front of where I was standing… Right at that moment a dove might have been more appropriate, perhaps, but it was a wonderful moment.

We have a saying in NLP that “if you always do what you’ve always done you always get what you’ve always got.” (It’s not exclusive to NLP, I know, but it’s one of the ways in which we encourage ourselves to become more adventurous and more flexible in how we deal with situations.)

And, as I walked back to the training room, I tried to imagine how the world would be if political leaders had to prove their worth rather than their wealth and cunning before they were allowed to have power. And if, as part of proving their worth, they had to study the 15,000+ major wars in the last 5000 years of world history to recognize the futility of war - especially ones which are designed to change people’s beliefs.

Yes, I agree, it was just a fantasy… but it might make a difference - there’s a saying: ‘those who aren’t prepared to learn from history are destined to repeat it.’

I’m amazed at the number of individuals, websites and blogs which describe NLP or Neuro-Linguistic Programming as a set of techniques or, even worse and from a recent Daily Express headline, ‘a technique’!

Over 30 years ago, back in the early to mid 70’s, Bandler and Grinder began NLP as a sort of meta-therapy. A therapy that would have the key ingredients of successful therapies. In doing this they ‘modelled’ what worked in the world of therapy; notably Fritz Perls’ Gestalt Therapy, Virginia Satir’s family-oriented therapy and Milton Erickson’s unique approach to hypnoptherapy.

(This was, of course, just the beginning and pretty soon they and their co-explorers realised that NLP had potential in many more fields than just therapy).

To do this modelling they didn’t use ‘techniques’. They used an attitude and a methodology. The attitude was one of wanting to know how things worked. Specifically, in this case, they were curious and fascinated to discover how, despite being radically different from one another, the approaches of Perls, Satir and Eriksson all worked and produced very effective results.

They were also very, very systematic in how they went about studying, or “modelling” these approaches. And that’s where the methodology comes in. By looking at the processes (what was actually going on at the level of structure and patterns) rather than the content (the superficial level of what these experts did and said) they were able to identify the key ingredients which accounted for their successful results.

Out of this Attitude and the application of this Methodology came a whole series of techniques including the Meta Model, Reframing, and the Milton Model.

These techniques, and the dozens of techniques which have since been developed, are the result of the modelling process which is NLP.

Saying that NLP is a technique isn’t just inaccurate - it’s missing the point.

NLP is an approach to life, a way of looking at things, a way of understanding things, a way of thinking, and so on and on… it’s much, much richer than a paltry set of techniques.

Well, the NLP Adventure 2007 has arrived and is in full swing. Nearly 100 children-at-heart. Youngest participant is 8 years old. Enjoying amazingly good weather

• swimming
• exploring Tai Chi
• canoeing and kayaking
• climbing on the High Ropes and Climbing Tower
• crawling and scrambling through the Adventure Course
• discovering how to have more impact and presence
• building shelters in the woods
• singing by the lake
• sitting around in the sunshine listening to birdsong
• watching a great sunset on Friday evening
• learning how to light fire with flint or bits or string
• eating a sunset barbeque
• flying fast and high over the lake on the zip wire
• meeting new friends in an atmosphere where the Pegasus NLP principles of fun, curiosity and adventure set the scene
• joining everyone else being at bit silly at the barn dance - where no-one really knew how to barn dance

And that’s just up to Saturday evening. This is being posted at 6.30 am on Sunday(!) and today there’s going to more of the same plus we have a few more people joining us who had to work yesterday.

When you’ve had a moment to read the newsletter add a comment and let me and others know about your experiences in using NLP or other methods to throw off a weary mood or attitude.