Magic and Mastery

One of the biggest lies used in NLP is that anything can be done by anyone.  It’s a useful lie properly understood, but few people take the time to get that understanding, and instead just fall in love with the magical thinking implied.

It’s this love of magical thinking that leads us to a world where the competition is to make the most extreme offer for anything and everything for less time and less effort and less money.

“Just one rule to a flat stomach.” “I made $5,000 a month on the Internet.”  “Housewife loses 40 pounds with no effort - Fat burning pill.”  “Brain mastery while you sleep.”  My favorite, of course:  NLP Practitioner Certification in three days.”  Sound familiar?  Panacea, one simple solution preferably in a pill, and mostly, no thinking required.

The funny thing about NLP is that the technology is so powerful that even a novice can produce results that seem miraculous to the uninformed.   So how is this a problem?  It’s a problem because it leads too easily down the primrose path to grandiosity and magical thinking (it’s all quantum, baby!).  Grandiosity on the part of the practitioner or, more often, the “trainer” who finds him or herself in front of an audience being revered and adored and starts to believe they really are a miracle worker.  And the audience starts to believe it, too.  Then weird things happen.

Lose forty pounds in six weeks with no effort - not even a pill?  Well, to counter example one of my straw men above (a good NLP practice), a friend of mine was reading his first NLP book, “Core Transformation.”  He turned to his girlfriend and said “Hey, try this out.”  He read the basic process to her, leading her through a series of questions.  At the time they both thought it was kind of interesting, and that was that.

Six weeks later she realized that she had dropped 40 pounds in weight.   This was something she had very much wanted.  She wasn’t aware of having made any conscious effort, but when she thought back - profoundly puzzled and curious - she remembered how going through the Core Transformation process had reorganized the way she thought about certain things.  (this story was first documented in a “First For Women” magazine article some years ago).  This can happen even though Core Transformation is not about weight loss - it was simply an interesting side effect of a deceptively powerful NLP process.

Deceptive how? In this sense:  the Core Transformation process seems on the surface like just a series of questions and answers - what difference could that possibly make?  Yet it is at base an elicitation of your most deeply held core values and a realization of the importance of them.
This process of realization usually leads to a reorganization of your behavior and thinking to take greater account of the importance to you of your values and identity.   Living more and more in accord and congruence with who you are at the most fundamental level greatly reduces the friction in your life.  It makes choices and changes easier and more natural.  You move faster and with greater confidence.

In everything? Of course not.  Life will continue to throw challenges your way as long as you’re breathing.  Like Zorba said, “Life is trouble. Only death is not.”

Best regards,

Tom Dotz

P.S.: Oh, if you want to find out more about the Core Transformation process, we have quite a few resources - just CLICK HERE http://shop.nlpco.com/category-s/33.htm

P.P.S. There’s Still Time - But Not Much!  Summer In The Mountains: Personal and Career Rejuvenation in our exclusive NLP Immersion Trainings! Click Here To Read All About It!

ANd if travel doesn’t work for you, Remember, Now you can study NLP and become certified at home! Learn about our Special Offers of the Living Encyclopedia of NLP, our complete 20 day NLP Practitioner training on DVD. Click Here for more.

There is a very unusual NLP product I’d like to recommend to you.

This is not a book, CD, or video.  It’s not a download or a seminar.  It’s not even a game, really, although we have called it that since that’s the closest we could come to a description, and it does have a number of custom components that resemble game pieces.

What it is is a sophisticated NLP pattern generator, an NLP creativity engine.  It’s a way to really get outside the box of conventional thinking, both in using NLP and in other areas of your life.  It’s a way to generate new ideas and spark your creativity with new options and solutions.

This is probably the most sophisticated NLP artifact ever created:  with this alone you can generate 11,664 unique NLP patterns, even if you’ve never done it before even once. It is an NLP training/learning system, a modelling device, an intervention generator, a coaching instrument, a set of decision tools and much more.

Trimurti:  The NLP Creativity Engine was created by Charles Faulkner, our Director of Programs, internationally recognized as one of the most creative innovators in NLP.  Over a period of years he put extensive time and work into conceptualizing and developing, testing and refining this uniquely powerful tool.  Then he condensed and streamlined it to require the least amount of reading or study to get started.  He got the instruction manual down to only 42 pages while still including all seven vital elements.  And you don’t even have to wait to enjoy that - you can start playing around right away with the one page “Quick Start” guide he made for you.

Deceptively simple, and deceptively complex, you’ll be amazed how far you can go with just these instructions, a game board, a set of seven custom dice and a set of six “avatar” pawns.  There’s a lot more under the hood of that plain looking wrapper than meets the eye.

This is because Charles did the hard work to make this simple and easy for you.  He distilled fifteen years of thinking and development in NLP into this deceptively simple tool.

Like an IChing or any personal development tool, the value isn’t between the covers.  The value is the changes that happen for you when you use it.

It’s the doorway to generative NLP - moving beyond the standard set of patterns to a truly Systemic NLP. Yes, it does presuppose some knowledge and experience to get the most out of it, and you’ll get a lot of that as you use and experience it.

It’s a virtual coach you can use in the privacy of your own home or office, or take with you anywhere you go.

With this unique NLP engine you can

Increase your Resilience.
Increase your Flexibility.
Increase your Creativity.

You can buy cookbooks that have all the same standard patterns we’ve included in our training manuals for years.
You can practice doing the same pattern everyone else does.
Or you can step up to generating your own custom NLP processes to fit your special needs now and in the future.  You can set yourself apart from the crowd and move to a deeper practice and understanding with the most sophisticated NLP pattern generator there is.

Stuck???
Use Trimurti to quickly model your Present Problem State and instantly find freeing alternatives!

Can’t Follow Instructions !?!?
Charles discovered that each NLP Pattern is ONE solution.
It turns out there are many possibilities. With Trimurti you can instantly generate new choices and find the one that works BEST for you!!

Decisions got you down???
With the special Trimurti board, you can find out ‘why’ and change it right away!!

Want to really MASTER NLP?
Doing the NLP Techniques over and over again will get you good at techniques - and that’s a good step.

To develop a really robust response system, you need to do lots of things in unexpected ways.
Use Trimurti as an advanced training device. Get good at going where no one expects and you’ll get there first.

By the way, we’re moving our warehouse this summer, so we’ll only have these available until it’s time to pack - or they sell out.  We have enough components to make 42 sets of this personal edition.  We’ll assemble them for you until we have to start packing.  So order yours now - otherwise you may be stuck for a while.

Click HERE to order yours now - $54.99 while supplies last or they get packed away.

Best regards,
Tom

New Movie Preview - Arielle’s Story - The Living Matrix Movie

There’s an exciting new movie just released here in the US that features a great story of the use of NLP in a healing context.

In the producers’ words “The Living Matrix” features 15 leading people in the alternative health fields with:

“New insight into our bodies, minds and health.  In our full-length film, The Living Matrix - The Science of Healing — we bring you breakthroughs that will transform your understanding of how to get well and stay well.
Now you can get an up-close look at the science of information as medicine. Leading researchers and health practitioners share their discoveries on the “miracle cures” traditional medicine can’t explain.’”

I’ve posted an excerpt the producers were kind enough to share here:

CLICK HERE to see Arielle’s Story

This is a great way to share what NLP can do for people with your friends.
So please help us spread the word - forward this to anyone you think may be interested, and feel free to post a link to the movie clip on your site!

And if you’d like to get the whole movie, it’s available through this link for only $19.95 - you can also see more clips here.
Click Here to get “The Living Matrix” or to see more

To your health,
Tom Dotz

Sliding Into Focus:  Sliding Anchors!

In our recent survey a number of you mentioned a desire to have a greater ability to concentrate and focus on a project for an extended period of time.

This is a common experience we all face more and more as we are expected to do more and more and are now living in the information overload world that Alvin Toffler predicted some 30 years ago.

Google, Facebook, Twitter, email, text messages, newsletters ;-), not to mention phone calls and actual humans are stretching us in ways humans have no history of dealing with.

NLP has one very simple tool that is frequently overlooked in the fascination with newer and more complex processes.  It’s the basic tool taught in every thorough NLP training: Anchoring.  (You can certainly find out more about it in our NLP Home Study Practitioner, and you’ll get a thorough grounding in it at our Summer Immersion program.)

For having increased focus I’ve found a certain variation of basic kinesthetic anchoring is especially effective.  This is usually known as “sliding anchors” or “accelerated anchoring.”

It starts just like a basic kinesthetic anchor.

Think of a desired state - in this case focused concentration.
Think of a time when you experienced that; establish a reference anchor, like touching your left wrist.  You’ll want a place where you can then slide your finger up a distance, at least six inches or so.

Now as you remember that time when you were intensely focused, slowly slide your finger up your arm as you imagine the sense of being focused deepening and lengthening. Slide your finger up to your elbow; lift your finger off and touch your wrist again, repeating this sequence and imagining your focus deepening and lengthening even more every time you repeat the process.

Do this three or four times.
Now go for it - start that task for which you wanted more focus and concentration.  If you find your self wandering, or are interrupted, repeat the process - it only takes seconds.  You may want to experiment with other desirable states or experiences just for fun and practice.  For instance curiosity, gratitude, laughter - you get the idea.

This is one of those that improves and becomes more effective and reliable with use.
So enjoy, and let me know how it you like it - add a comment or question here.

The New Comprehensive NLP Customer Appreciation Program

We at NLP Comprehensive want to show our appreciation for the interest you have shown in NLP.

We want to reward your commitment to bettering yourself and those around you.

To do that we are launching a new Rewards program, the NLP Comprehensive “Dollar for Dollar Rewards.”

Here is how it works : For every dollar you spend on products (Books, CD’s, DVD’s or downloads) you’ll earn a credit that can be used for any Practitioner or Master Practitioner Training we offer up to a maximum of 50% of the total tuition.

So if you’ve spent  $50 or $500 or even $2000 with us, you can use your Dollar for Dollar Reward points toward your Practitioner or Master Practitioner Training!

And to start with, we’re giving an instant credit for your last two year’s purchases towards this years programs for the first 25 people to sign up.

So any product purchases for the last two years can be used towards this year’s programs, and any additional purchases can be used for this year’s or any future training.

So if you’re even considering a training, or just want to find out how big your credit is, click here to email Sharon now - be sure to include your full name - to find out how much of a credit you already have!

Here in the US it’s our Memorial Day holiday weekend, our first summer holiday. So for those who are heading to the beach or the mountains, here are a few things that might make it worthwhile to take your computer along

Three cool new things in this newsletter:
* How Our New Customer Appreciation Program Rewards You
* Memorial Day Super Sale - 4 days only!
* Choice and Loss - Making Choice Easier!

Oh, and the new video clips are finally working correctly and consistently!
http://www.nlpco.com/pages/training/Student-Videos.php

Cheers, and have a great weekend, however you celebrate it!

Tom Dotz

The New Comprehensive NLP Customer Appreciation Program

We at NLP Comprehensive want to show our appreciation for the interest you have shown in NLP.
We want to reward your commitment to bettering yourself and those around you.

To do that we are launching a new Rewards program, the NLP Comprehensive “Dollar for Dollar Rewards.”

Here is how it works : For every dollar you spend on products (Books, CD’s, DVD’s or downloads) you’ll earn a credit that can be used for any Practitioner or Master Practitioner Training we offer up to a maximum of 50% of the total tuition.

So if you’ve spent $50 or $500 or even $2000 with us, you can use your Dollar for Dollar Reward points toward your Practitioner or Master Practitioner Training !

And to start with, we’re giving an instant credit for your last two year’s purchases towards this years programs for the first 25 people to sign up.

So any product purchases for the last two years can be used towards this year’s programs, and any additional purchases can be used for this year’s or any future training.

Even better, this weekend you can also take advantage of our Memorial Day Super Sale and save 33% on all Books, CDs, and DVDs you buy just by entering the coupon code “Memorial” at checkout! Go To: http://shop.nlpco.com

So if you’re even considering a training, hit reply to Sharon now - be sure to include your full name - to find out how much of a credit you already have!

Making Choice Just A Little Easier

In NLP we are real big on increasing choice. One of the basic presuppositions is “Choice is better than no choice” another is “The element in a system with the most flexibility (choice) has the most control.”

I was talking with an old friend the other day who was facing another of those transitions we all experience in life’s passages. She was living alone in the large home where she had raised her children (and a very nice job she had done, too). The house had become increasingly empty as her kids moved out on their own.

She half jokingly mentioned that she might want to move to a smaller place just to be sure one of them didn’t move back - seriously, though, she said, she’d like to have more freedom, less maintenance and house cleaning.

“Well, that might be a really good idea. You’d have more time, more freedom - things I know you care about. And you might have a better financial situation, too. So what stops you?”

“I’d lose all the good memories of raising the kids here. And a smaller place wouldn’t have enough room for holiday celebrations. And I don’t know what I’d do with all the kids stuff and art - putting it in a storage locker would seem cold - I wouldn’t see it again unless I unpacked it. The location is great for me, too, close to my job and my church. The thing is that stuff keeps getting in my way before I really have time to consider the good things about it (moving).”

More choices in life are nice to have, and it was really nice for her that she had the option to stay where she was or move.

Yet having choices is different from making a choice. The minute we choose, we are abandoning all the other possibilities.

Perhaps it’s clearest in the context of choosing a mate. Once you choose, you leave the others behind. Yet until you choose, you’re just dating. And you may choose to have dating as your relationship form - that’s fine, and notice what you give up with that choice.

This is what makes choosing so challenging sometimes. We are giving up the other options, and there can be a sense of loss as a result. Yet until we choose, there is no progress. Until we choose, we’re stuck with the choices we have. It’s only by choosing, stepping on to a new path, that new possibilities emerge.

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll likely get what you’ve always gotten.”

So what did I suggest to my friend?

I knew that she had lived in several other homes that she had really enjoyed. So I simply asked if it would be ok to put the fear of loss aside while she really considered her options. Oh, yes, she said; that would really help her to consider all the possibilities.
So I simply suggested she move her images of the losses involved with leaving her current house (holiday celebrations, places for the kids’ mementos, etc.) into the same location in her mind’s eye where she finds the memories of those other homes she’d enjoyed and still has fond memories of.

There are several other things I could have done as well or instead. Decision Strategy, Hierarchy of Criteria, just doing a well formed outcome can be quite a powerful intervention.

I happened to know, though, that she tended to make very good decisions in most areas of her life. In fact her current dilemma shows she was good at choosing a good place to live. Further, her first mention had been of a fear of loss. That was what was interrupting her otherwise effective decision process.

So by simply shifting the location of the thought in her mind’s eye from a place where it was in her way to a place that held it aside. She literally moved the images of loss out of her way, and in the process realized and remembered that she had successfully and happily negotiated this kind of transition before. Respectfully, and sincerely, she could move the trigger for feelings of loss out of the way so that she could make a decision without a sense of loss interfering with her ability to choose.

These forms of submodality processes are a cornerstone of both our Immersion NLP trainings and our Classic Home Study Practitioner Program, the “Living Encyclopedia of NLP.”

You can find out more about them here:
Read about Summer In The Mountains: Personal and Career Rejuvenation in our exclusive NLP Immersion Trainings! Click Here To Read All About It!

Now you can study NLP and become certified at home! Learn about our Special Offers of the Living Encyclopedia of NLP, our complete 20 day NLP Practitioner training on DVD. Click HERE

Save 33% On All Books, CDs, DVDs and Downloads during our Memorial Day Super Sale!
Just enter the coupon code “Memorial” at checkout and watch your cost drop 33%!
Offer Expires: Tuesday May 26   http://shop.nlpco.com

I re-posted these so they load much more quickly.  These are some engaging interviews a couple of our students created at our last summer program.  Their enthusiasm is fun to watch, and you get a real sense of what they are getting out of their experience with our NLP Immersion program.

Click here:  http://www.nlpco.com/pages/training/Student-Videos.php

Word Count 884 reading time 3.5 minutes
Sometimes it’s easy to think that changing someone’s beliefs requires a big formal process.

I was out visiting some old familiar places in Silicon Valley last week.  After living there 25
years you make some interesting acquaintances.

Meeting an old pal for coffee one day he introduced me to a friend of his whose business had really been devastated by the economic downturn.

I’ll call him Gil. He had had several businesses and this was the third time that just as he was on the cusp of success it had been taken away.

This piqued my interest as while once is an occurrence, twice may be coincidence, but three times?  That’s not a charm, that’s a pattern. In today’s world the economic mess is sufficient to explain such an occurrence, but this had also happened to him in normal economic times.

So after chatting a bit and establishing some good consistent rapport I started asking a few questions that otherwise might have seemed very personal.  After a while he dropped a comment that “it was really true, it seemed, that if it wasn’t hard, you really hadn’t earned it.”

At first glance a belief like that could seem sufficient explanation for his dilemma but it didn’t seem to fully explain his situation.  So I inquired further and caught a comment “if you haven’t really earned it, you don’t really deserve it and so you didn’t get to keep it.”

This is what was happening for him. Every time he was on the cusp of success, of having it get easy, “something would happen” and it would go away.

A simple and seemingly obvious response would be to suggest changing his belief to the direct opposite, something like “If you can get it, you deserve it.”  However, that would have left a conflict with his strongly held belief in the morality of how he obtained financial independence, of having to deserve it.

One approach would be to go after changing that value, but aside from having no contract to do change work with him, I’m rather reluctant to mess with values that are part of an individual’s identity.

So I started exploring on a different tack, using the values elicitation process I wrote about here a few weeks ago.  I had noticed an interesting watch he wore, and I asked him if he had purchased it or if it was a gift.

It turns out it was a gift from his wife of fifteen years who “has always had faith in me and been true through thick and thin.”  There was a slight smile and a softening around the eyes that for a Silicon Valley executive was a huge signal indicating the deep importance of this relationship.

“Wear it often?” I asked; “all the time; it’s my favorite” he replied.  I asked what else he liked about it and he replied it was very well engineered, elegantly designed, simple to operate and thus really reliable.

So taking this into account I asked him if a business was also well engineered, elegantly designed to be simple to operate and thus really reliable would that mean it was a deserving business?  “Well of course it would be.”

“So it would be deserving of long term success even if it was easy and simple to operate?”  I asked.  Well, now I was seeing an expression usually labeled puzzlement on his face, as if it was so obvious the question was foolish.

“Of course.  Those are exactly the businesses that deserve to thrive and succeed for the long term.  Those are the ones that make it no matter the economic environment.  It’s exactly what Bill and Dave built.”  (Founders of HP, a Silicon Valley icon, a definition of long term success)

“Well, I suppose someone who built such a business would deserve all the benefits such a creation, wouldn’t they?”

“Totally” he replied.

So I switched back to the watch “Isn’t it interesting how a gift from someone we love who really knows us and shows us what’s important every time you look at it?”  A head nod as he was looking again at his watch, and a quick “Oh, look at the time - I didn’t realize how long we’ve been chatting” and I was satisfied.

What satisfied me?  I’d established in his mind a link between looking at his watch and the new frame on his deeply held values:  that a business that met those criteria was deserving of long term success and the builder of such a business deserved to enjoy the benefits thereof..  I’d moved the criterion of “deserving” from an obstacle to a solution.

And who would argue that a business that was well engineered, elegantly designed, simple to operate and thus really reliable didn’t deserve long term success?

In glancing at his watch while nodding his head in time with my hastily worded suggestion there was a good indication of agreement with that suggestion.  I doubt he’d remember our conversation even a week later.  Yet every time he looks at his watch there’ll be that subliminal suggestion to remember his criteria for success and how deserving he is of it.

My pal who’d introduced us and knows something about NLP had a big grin on his face.
Tom Dotz
 
P.S. Read about our Summer In The Mountains: Personal and Career Rejuvenation in our exclusive NLP Immersion Trainings! Click Here To Read All About It!
 
Now you can study NLP and become certified at home! Learn about our Special Offers of the Living Encyclopedia of NLP, our complete 20 day NLP Practitioner training on DVD. Click HERE To Read More!

This is an invitation for you to go through the door marked “Insider”, and to be an eavesdropper at the most exclusive and Advanced Health and NLP Conference in the United States, given only every two years. Check out these IASH Conference Recordings.

The hottest new approaches to NLP in the U.S.

This is a different message than the stories I usually tell you in this space, because I think this is really worth your while and you may have missed it.

You have an opportunity to listen in on the hottest new approaches to NLP in the U.S.!

These are the Conference Recordings of the most advanced NLP group in the U.S. — the Institute for the Advanced Studies of Health (IASH) — given at their 6th Biennial International NLP and Health Conference

Get the CD’s now - they can be played on your computer or MP3 player, and they come with a complete table of contents AND COPIES OF ALL THE HANDOUTS on disc.

• 65 Presentations
• 70 Presenters – people like:
• Judith Delozier
• Steve Andreas
• Robert Dilts
• Kevin Creedon
• Charles Faulkner
• Art Giser
• Tim and Kris Hallbom
• Dee Kinder
• Richard Gray
• Don Blackerby
• Juan Francisco Ramírez M.
• Laureli Blyth

Over 150 Hours of the latest in NLP Including:

• Working Assumptions
• Test Drive NLP-The Basics and Presuppositions
• Meet Your Extraordinary Self:
• Personal Commitment How to Get it, How to Keep it, and How to Lose it
• Almar Coaching Connection:  On-going Artistry in Action
• Facilitating options with chronic pain patients
• School Shootings—Why???
• Health and Wellness - A New Way of Being
• From Grievance to Forgiveness: The Kinesthetic Component to Healing
• Toward an epistemology of NLP
• The Gift of Breath
• The How and What of Corporate Learning
• What We Want VS What We Need
• Provocative Change Works
• Opening Panel:  The State of NLP in the World Today
• NLP and Weight Loss: Plan and Prepare
• A Program for Lasting Weight Loss with NLP
• SHAMANIC DREAMING,
• Breaking The Communication Barrier
• Free Methods of Media Marketing
• Why we pick the mates we do…and what will happen after we marry
• Energetic NLP:
• Adventures in the Psychology of Place
• The Re-Membering Process: How to Come Home to your Self
• Never a Dull Moment
• This is Your Brain on NLP
• NLP and Bodywork - How (Specifically) They are Useful to Each Other
• Generative Body, Generative World
• Time To Feel Connected from The SOUL Project.org
• Enhance Any NLP Session with Techniques Emerging in the Field of Energy Psychology
• The Secret Formula of Successful Ritual: The Case for Shamanic Healing
• Advanced Integrative Hypnosis
• Optimagination: Using Your Imagination to Create Optimum Results
• Overview and Update on the NLP Research and Recognition Project
• Gabrielle Roth’s Five Rhythms®
• Artistry of Change
• Resolving Anger and Grief
• Applying Linguistics (and more) to Weight Loss
• The Immune Power Personality
• Transform Your Inner Judge - And Meet the Other Critical Parts of the Extraordinary Self System of Change
• NLP and 9/11
• Develop your own psychic abilities!
• Looking for the organizing principle of your excellence?
• Thought Engines®: A Reframe Of “Change”
• From Curing To Healing - Transforming Physical Therapists Beliefs
• Building your Practice — from the Heart
• Working Through Cancer: Beyond the Basics
• Nine out of 1001 things we don’t know about the opposite sex
• Numerology and NLP -  Esoteric Tools for the 21st Century
• Provocative Therapy and NLP
• Energy really matters: the shortcut to recovery from Chronic fatigue, ME, SAD etc
• Futures and Motivations: Moving, Compelling and Transformative
• Activating Spontaneous Remission
• Clean Language and Symbolic Modeling for Meta Level Change in NLP
• Strengthening and Adjusting Identity
• Study of changes in toddler and infant behavioral patterns resulting from NLP based interventions
• Dynamic Spin Release and the Energy of Your Mind
• SLA (Second Language Acqusition) and Personal Growth
• The Magic of Healthy Relationships
• Health and Leadership: Self Care Project
• Slice the Time it Takes Clients to Achieve NLP Outcomes
• Addictions and the Transformation of Meaning; Applying NLP to Substance Use Disorders

I hope you check them out.  Click Here for the whole story!

P.S. Read about our Summer In The Mountains: Personal and Career Rejuvenation in our exclusive NLP Immersion Trainings! Click Here To Read All About It!

NEW: Seriously Advanced Training The Advanced Mastery Training with Steve Andreas, Steve Watson, and Andy Bradshaw. Especially great for therapists and modelers, the prerequisite is a recognized Master Practitioner Certification or acceptance by application. Click here to read more!

Now you can study NLP and become certified at home! Learn about our Special Offers of the Living Encyclopedia of NLP, our complete 20 day NLP Practitioner training on DVD.  Click HERE

PPS: Coming in the next weeks:  Motivation:  Values to Beliefs; Focus And Concetration; Choice and Loss; It Is Brainsurgery.

It might just be a revelation, it may just bring a smile to your face.
Here’s another very simple and profound process that just might change your day - or your life.

It’s all about values - and the intersection with opportunity.  It’s our values that determine how motivated we are to make a certain choice or change a certain behavior.  After all, how often do you procrastinate doing something you absolutely love when it’s time to do it?  That’s not such a problem, is it?

It’s our values that establish our criteria for choice.  These values, along with opportunity, that largely determine our choice of friends, mates, careers, vacations, everything we do, in fact.

So it could be quite interesting to review and perhaps discover newly some of your values, your criteria for choice.  And to notice where you may have a criteria in place that is actually inappropriate and may be blocking you from having what you value.  Anytime you notice “perfect” creeping into your criteria, it’s a good warning sign that you need to review those criteria.

It may help to illuminate why something you think you should be doing just doesn’t get done, and something else does - and consistently, too!

This little language exercise is also a fun and interesting way to start a conversation.  I found it especially useful in my single days. With a little practice it can also seem like mind reading, and it’s a powerful way to build rapport.   All this in a few questions?  Well, actually, yes.  That’s NLP at it’s most interesting.

Quick Hierarchy of Criteria (and a tip of the NLPCO hat to Charles Faulkner for this version)
A Simple Hierarchy of Criteria Elicitation
1. Pick an innocuous object on your person. It could be a watch, a ring, your shoes, even the shirt you are wearing.
2. Ask yourself, “What do I like about this?” Starting at the bottom of a blank piece of paper, write down all of the words and/or phrases you use along the bottom allowing some space between each one. These words are criteria.
3.Taking each of the previous criteria words or phrases in turn ask, “ʻWhat is important about _________ ?” Your answers will be higher criteria of the previous one. There may be one or several of them. Write down each one of them above the previous criteria and on the same level with each other.. Connect the previous criteria with these new ones with lines.
4. Recycle through step 3 until you have no higher level Criteria. This can noticed by the repetition of higher level criteria or just finding there isn’t anything higher.
You could just write these questions on a post it and take it with you to lunch or a coffee break.  It’s also fun to have an acquaintance participate, either as note taker, or to ask about their values.

The Hottest New Approaches To NLP in the U.S.!

As promised, here is your invitation to go through the door marked “Insider”, and to be an eavesdropper at the most exclusive and Advanced Health and NLP Conference in the United States, given only every two years!

This is your opportunity to listen in on the hottest new approaches to NLP in the U.S.! These are the Conference Recordings of the most advanced NLP group in the U.S. — the Institute for the Advanced Studies of Health (IASH) — given at their 6th Biennial International NLP and Health Conference Get the CD’s now - they can be played on your computer or MP3 player, and they come with a complete table of contents - Order yours now for pre-publication pricing (shipping next week) Click Here and find out all about them!Click Here and find out all about them!

Cheers,
Tom Dotz

PS:  Summer Programs are upon us!  Thinking this is the summer for you?

A few of our students at last summer’s programs got so excited about what was being accomplished already in the trainings they did some interviews of their fellow students.  We’ve posted some here and we’ll be adding more.

Back in the 1960’s a  popular slogan on posters and bumper stickers was “Question Authority.”  It was directed outward, at the strictures and the authority to impose them of government and organizations - church, school, the “cool kids,” television and movies, books, art, and yes, science.

In the language studies of NLP we learn some useful ways to challenge authority, and perhaps more useful, how to recognize internal “authorities” who are imposing limits on us without our awareness.

Today’s simple suggestion - protip and newbie - is this:  tune your ears for the dread “should.”   It’s one of the warning words revealing that authority is being asserted rather than present conscious choice.  Notice it whether you’re hearing it inside or outside, listening or reading, watching TV. (Politicians and Preachers are particularly good sources).  Then simply respond with the awareness phrase “according to whom?”  Was it that second grade teacher’s voice, your Mom’s, a friend?  Was it really a rule you had chosen - and if so, is it still appropriate?

One of the founders of NLP, John Grinder, used to say “trust your unconscious - but train it first.”  Our unconscious can be a powerful ally, or a hindrance.  It really depends on who’s rules have programmed it.  NLP is a powerful tool for recognizing how your unconscious behaviors are programmed, and changing them.

This simple practice is a great starter and periodic clean up and tune up for your self awareness and liberation from old and no longer useful rules and limitations.

Taken from the “Meta Model” section of the “Living Encyclopedia” Home Practitioner Program.

We’re still reviewing all the feedback you provided in our survey.  You’ll be seeing the results over the next few weeks in some changes in our formats, offerings, and website.

Look for next week’s announcement of two new programs, Tuesday, the new NLP Conference audios - and a new advanced training!

Meanwhile, if you haven’t checked out the opportunities in the “New Technology of Change” program with Gerry and Lisa, you’ve only this week - so Click Here and hit send to get your copy of their free whitepaper.

PS:  Summer Programs are upon us!  Thinking this is the summer for you?

A few of our students at last summer’s programs got so excited about what was being accomplished already in the trainings they did some interviews of their fellow students.  We’ve posted some here and we’ll be adding more.

PPS: Almost forgot.  Recently I had a chat with a graduate of our Immersion Practitioner who had gone on to take her Master Practitioner from one of the “big names” in NLP.  The training was located only an hour from her home, and that convenience factor overwhelmed her other criteria.

She found herself one of hundreds in a large room where the trainer was just a little figure on a stage in the distance.  She said she was first disappointed at the lack of personal attention and mentoring she was used to from our programs.  Then she realized as the training went along that she had already learned at least 80% of what they called “Advanced Mastery” material in our Practitioner Immersion Program!

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard a story like this.  Really learning NLP is difficult in a ‘rock star’ arena.  That’s a great format for entertainment - and state elicitation - but not so great for learning.  And you realize pretty fast that calling something “Advanced” is a truly relative statement.

It’s with this in mind that we offer a 1/3 discount to anyone who’s done Prac or Master Prac and wants to repeat it with us.  Even if you took a truly excellent program, you’ll find the new formats and methodology of our exclusive Immersion Design a revelation.

So if you want to actually realize the promise of NLP in your life and have a superb set of skills and the kind of competent confidence that gets results fast, email or chat Sharon and book your place now.

by Richard Bandler,  excerpted from the NLP Comprehensive Practitioner Manual Trainer Edition

A fast little process - with a little practice you’ll find yourself doing this in just minutes - that’s great for motivating yourself to do things you know you need to do and want to have completed but seem to keep putting off.

This pattern is an example of the power of submodalities.  It is especially useful for changing your feelings about  getting and staying motivated to do tasks that you have congruently decided you want/need to accomplish, but don’t presently enjoy doing - like cleaning out the garage, balancing your checkbook or exercising regularly.

Choose carefully what you wish for :-)  -and be very careful of ecology with this pattern.  You don’t want to install an intense desire to do random or silly things.

1.  Compulsion picture: Get an associated picture of something you’re wildly compulsed to enjoy, for instance, chocolate. (associated:  You are in the picture seeing the object of desire).

Break state:  recite your phone number backwards.

2.  Task Picture: Get a dissociated picture of yourself doing something you have congruently decided you need/want to do (so you may as well enjoy it!). (disassociated: See a picture of yourself doing the task).

3.  Ecology Check: Is there any part of you that objects to your enjoying doing this task (that you have decided you need to do)? If so, reframe objections by contextualizing or just choose a different task for the exercise.

4.  Godiva!  (Go for it):

a.  Hold picture #2 (Task) in your mind, with picture #1(Pleasure) right behind it. Quickly open up a small hole in the center of picture #2, so that you can see picture #1 through this hole. Rapidly make the hole as big as you need to in order to get a full kinesthetic response to picture #1.
b.  Now shrink that hole down fast, but only as fast as you can maintain that feeling response to picture #1.
Do this process as fast as you can, three to five more times.

The outcome is to attach the feelings of picture #1 to picture #2.

5. Test: How do you feel when you look at picture #2? (calibrate)

Why the “Godiva” pattern?  When this process was being created, the Compulsion (pleasure) PIcture was an experience of eating Godiva Chocolates!

And other announcements:

Here in the US yesterday was Tax Day, and with that behind us we’re springing into spring.  So to help you spring forward, and us with our tax bill we have a special savings coupon for you:

Save 20%	On Any Of Our Books, CD’s or DVD’s (exception: The Living Encyclopedia Practitioner and Master Track sets). Good on your next two orders before April 22.2009
Offer Expires: Good For Any Orders before April 22, 2009! Go to http://shop.nlpco.com enter ”Classic” in the Coupon Code box at checkout and your savings will appear!