Pegasus NLP Blog

Time for change

Back in the mid 70’s I got fed up earning quite good money but with little job satisfaction. I was in charge of the new computer department for a large firm in the City of London. This was before I encountered NLP so I didn’t know about living life according to one’s values – I just knew I wasn’t feeling fulfilled and that too much of the ‘quite good money’ was being spent on ‘things and events’ i.e. on compensations for not living a fulfilling life!

Anyway, I decided to take a sabbatical and do something for fun while I decided what to do next with my life.

So for nearly year I indulged my passion for motorcycling by working as a despatch rider (or motorcycle courier). That year of sitting in the saddle for up to 12 hours a day and in all weathers put paid to my passion for motorcycling and so I again changed direction.

An uncomfortable lesson

I taught myself to make and market my own gold and silver jewellery (long story, there, and for another time). My jewellery making career got off to an enthusiastic start but quickly became financially disastrous – until I met a great mentor.

I’d arrived, unannounced, at his jewellery shop in Watford (in Herts, UK) and wanted to sell him my designs. He briefly looked them and said ‘Look, I’m busy – I haven’t got time to talk with you now but if you call around to my home we can look at them’. He gave me directions and next evening I called to meet him and his family.

His opinion of my work wasn’t flattering. Nor was his opinion of my presentation. Nor, especially, of my sales’ approach! Read the rest of this entry »

She didn’t dither nor mess about. She got straight to the point. She wanted information which she knew she had a right to and she expected me to give to her!

Her email arrived today via our web contact form and read: ‘I am actually getting fear of closed spaces I want to treat myself and help my followers in my sports profession.. many undergoing these symptoms.’

That’s it – exactly as it arrived (apart from her contact details, of course. No attempt to create rapport. No real information. No reason for me to respond. )

The pe2000.com website

The message came via our pe2000.com website which provides free information about how we can manage our emotions and deal more effectively with anger, panic, fears, phobias and so on. Most of  the information is based on my experience and observations from working with individual clients as a psychotherapist and with groups as a stress management trainer since 1984. Read the rest of this entry »

In relating with other people many of us unintentionally sabotage the rapport we are trying to create! We are so desperately anxious to get along well with someone and to create a good impression that we simply try too hard. As result we come across as nervous, tense, jumpy, pushy, preoccupied, or bossy – or a confusing mix of all of these.

We are trying to impress rather than to communicate. And because we are not at ease with ourselves we cause others to feel ill-at-ease. Read the rest of this entry »

It was a fairly dramatic example of being talked at. We were chatting on the phone and she was telling me about something. I attempted to ask about a point she’d just made – but the flow of talking continued unabated.

I then used my favourite technique for getting somebody’s attention (it rarely fails) – I used her name (let’s call her Helen)

‘Helen?’ She carried on.

Tried again. ‘Helen, can I ask you something?’

She carried on.

I thought, okay, lets go for it here:

‘Helen? Helen?’ (Still she carried on). Read the rest of this entry »

What is rapport?

Rapport is the feeling of being at ease and in tune with someone; it’s what we experience when engaging in a satisfactory relationship.

We have all had the experience of instantly feeling quite at ease with someone. And the feeling of being instantly ill-at-ease with someone else. In the first case there is a natural experience of rapport and in the latter case rapport does not exist.

Rapport means ‘emphasising similarities’

In NLP we consider rapport to be a process of emphasising the similarities between us – and of playing down the differences. People have been doing this for millennia; NLP provides us with a way of clearly understanding the process, or the ‘mechanics’, of rapport. Read the rest of this entry »

‘I’ve done NLP – I can tell if you’re lying’

The old myth of the NLP Lie Detector Technique came up again in today’s course – just as it does in just about every NLP Core Skills Course we do. And it again struck me how sad it is that such a valuable body of knowledge as powerful and life enhancing as NLP is can be trivialised in this way.

Not only trivialised but misrepresented in facile and misleading NLP articles, websites, and training courses – to the extent that these trivialised versions of NLP become almost ‘accepted facts’ about NLP…

The NLP ‘Frogs into Princes’ book

The myth is based on an early observation made just a few years after NLP began to be developed in the early 70′s and mentioned in the great little book ‘Frogs into Princes’. Read the rest of this entry »

Instead of rushing about in the dark

Thomas Henry Huxley was a London biologist during the second half of the 1800’s. He coined the term ‘agnostic’ and championed the work of Charles Darwin’s work, among other things. There is a story of his being late for an appointment, rushing out of his house, hailing a hansom cab, and shouting to the cabbie ‘Top speed – I’m late!’

After a few moments the thought dawned on him… He stuck his head out the window and shouted to the cabbie ‘Hey, do you know where I want to go?’

‘No, sir, I don’t,’ shouted the cabbie, ‘But I’m going as fast as I can!’ Read the rest of this entry »

Making it ‘your own’ Values Hierarchy

Values are very personal. No-one can or should advise us about which values are right for us. Of course lots of people are only too happy to do so, whether as well-meaning friends or well-intentioned (if unskilled) coaches or therapists.

It is, after all, much easier to advise someone else on how they can or should live a fulfilling life than to do so for oneself.

Fortunately anyone can use the NLP-based process described in this series of articles to check and double-check their values hierarchy before investing time and energy in pursuing it.  (Incidentally, if you’ve just discovered this blog you might want to note that this is No. 6 in a series – scroll down to get articles 1-5 in the NLP & Goals series. And it might be a good idea to read them in this order.) Read the rest of this entry »

I was feeling pretty good as I made my first coffee of the day at 7.10 am this morning (for the record that’s Saturday 16 January 2010). The snow had not affected plans for the 3^rd module of our NLP Master Practitioner Programme – and I was looking forward to going in to facilitate today’s session and was happily anticipating some of the good things we were going to be doing and exploring together.

Then I turned on Radio 4’s flagship Today news programme to find out what was happening in the big world out there.

Big mistake. I was just in time to hear presenter Jim Noughtie putting on his ‘sad-and-moving-story’ voice and beginning to read from one of the Rupert Murdoch tabloids…. “…the bloated and rotting corpses in the intense heat…” was all I heard.

Fortunately I was able to switch him off in time. It was about the terrible earthquake in Haiti, of course, and Jim had managed to evoke some images. Not what I, or anyone else, needs at any time let along 7.10 am as you begin your day. Read the rest of this entry »

If you have taken action with the first four articles on how to use NLP to identify your values and goals you will now have a list of your Top 7 values, arranged in order of importance to you.

You now have your provisional Values Hierarchy.

Next step is to check this hierarchy to ensure it takes you in a right direction for you – and without creating inner conflict. And that’s the subject of this article and the next one. Read the rest of this entry »