I was standing in the lobby outside of one of the trainings here in the Colorado mountains last week chatting with an executive from Hilton Hotels. Like many people her acquaintance with NLP was based on an exposure to Tony Robbins.
She commented several times that the main point Tony “taught” was to come back to his next program. “It’s a lot of pomp and circumstance and it’s very expensive and at the end of it you’re supposed to come back for more.”
Now I take second place to no one in saluting Tony for doing more to popularize NLP than perhaps anyone. An unfortunate result is that a lot of people think that NLP is “just that stuff Robbins does.”
As I explained to her, what Tony has done is an excellent job of using NLP to develop himself into one of the best motivational speakers around.
A motivational speaker’s job is to get you motivated. This is not the same as teaching you how to motivate yourself, which learning a little NLP can do for you. There’s a key difference between experiencing a motivational speaker and learning to motivate yourself.
It’s the difference between having it done for you – or to you – and learning to do it yourself. The first is sometimes easier, and in places more appropriate. I stopped doing my own car maintenance about 20 years ago. Cars became too complex to service without a lot of specialized tools and knowledge.
Motivating yourself is a lot more difficult to delegate, and it’s rather hard to get consistent results. It is actually easy to learn to motivate yourself, much easier than learning to maintain a modern automobile.
First, you already know yourself pretty well. You know what you like and what you don’t, and that’s where motivation starts. With a moment’s thought you can think of several things you truly want to accomplish.
One way to proceed is putting that thing you want to be consistently motivated to accomplish in the same frame, context, or place that you put things you already do consistently, almost automatically and with satisfaction.
In NLP shorthand I just described several submodality shifts you can make to give yourself motivation for any task that you truly want to accomplish.
Map out the submodalities of something you do consistently, easily, almost automatically without much effort and with satisfaction at the result. Then simply map the thing you want to be motivated to do into the same submodalities. (Hint: location is usually a prime driver)
Another popular NLP submodality tool you can use is the Swish Pattern. Naturally you’ll find a full description and instructions in our Practitioner at Home DVD Program, “The NLP Portable Practitioner Training.” You can also find it in the book “Heart of the Mind”
Both of these are simple enough that a competent NLP Practitioner could teach you both in an hour or so. Getting some private coaching can be a very effective way to rapidly access and experience for yourself the benefit of NLP in your life.
However you choose to proceed, you do actually have to take action. Like any tool, you have to use it to get a result.
Best,
Tom Dotz
Hi Tom,
I enjoy your posts and will make a comment about this most recent one mentioning Tony Robbins. Of course NLP is far more than, “Just that stuff Tony does.” I also believe Tony is far more than someone who simply used NLP to, “develop himself into one of the best motivational speakers around.”
Tony has spent years, spanning three decades, teaching people about NLP and how to use NLP to create the lives they want. His methods have been, perhaps, less formalized than typical NLP Courses, live or otherwise, but they have been equally, of not more effective.
Tom, I look forward to your next post as well as joining you and Tony in helping countless people create joy and success in their lives with NLP.
All the best,
Karl
Hi Tom,
I enjoy your posts and will make a comment about this most recent one mentioning Tony Robbins. Of course NLP is far more than, “Just that stuff Tony does.” I also believe Tony is far more than someone who simply used NLP to, “develop himself into one of the best motivational speakers around.”
Tony has spent years, spanning three decades, teaching people about NLP and how to use NLP to create the lives they want. His methods have been, perhaps, less formalized than typical NLP Courses, live or otherwise, but they have been equally, of not more effective.
Tom, I look forward to your next post as well as joining you and Tony in helping countless people create joy and success in their lives with NLP.
All the best,
Karl
Hi Tom,
I enjoy your posts and will make a comment about this most recent one mentioning Tony Robbins. Of course NLP is far more than, “Just that stuff Tony does.” I also believe Tony is far more than someone who simply used NLP to, “develop himself into one of the best motivational speakers around.”
Tony has spent years, spanning three decades, teaching people about NLP and how to use NLP to create the lives they want. His methods have been, perhaps, less formalized than typical NLP Courses, live or otherwise, but they have been equally, of not more effective.
Tom, I look forward to your next post as well as joining you and Tony in helping countless people create joy and success in their lives with NLP.
All the best,
Karl
Hi Tom,
I enjoy your posts and will make a comment about this most recent one mentioning Tony Robbins. Of course NLP is far more than, “Just that stuff Tony does.” I also believe Tony is far more than someone who simply used NLP to, “develop himself into one of the best motivational speakers around.”
Tony has spent years, spanning three decades, teaching people about NLP and how to use NLP to create the lives they want. His methods have been, perhaps, less formalized than typical NLP Courses, live or otherwise, but they have been equally, of not more effective.
Tom, I look forward to your next post as well as joining you and Tony in helping countless people create joy and success in their lives with NLP.
All the best,
Karl
Whilst I do love your work, your site and your emails to me,……I do disagree with the comments on Tony. I worked for him for 2 yrs. in San Diego California and he is one of the most generous people I have ever met…Every course, every video, every tape, every event was FREE to me and I took every course available..He stretched my mindsets to way beyond my traditional beliefs..Walking on fire staggered my brain and all I held as TRUE…After an absence of 5 yrs. and while I was living in Australia, Tony came to Sydney, NSW, to do a seminar at the Sydney Showgrounds and the firewalk was part of the event. I enrolled people via our company and then worked registration for seminar that night; was then asked to run a line of participants through the ‘walk’. No porblem…When they were finished I was told “OK it’s your turn to walk….”Who me? I wasn’t even inside….it’s been 5 years.” So what? go ahead and walk.”
I walked on those hot coals again. Later in Sydney I also went to a physic surgeon instead of an MD to have an obstruction removed from my colon…..another thing which had been far beyond my belief system. There is much we are taught to believe which is not necessarily true and those exact beliefs can limit both who we are and what we accomplish .. If I learned NOTHING else from Tony this ‘fact’ was beyond price and reflected in my quote:
“The ONLY limit to your life
lies within the boundaries of your BELIEFS .”
When was the last time you investigated them?
Jediah Ahern 2009
http://www.thework.com
Great post. Outsourcing is definitely the way we built our business. Every time I have a task that I need to grow the business I’m thinking how can I create a process so someone ELSE can do it. Because my job is to learn new ideas to continue to grow the business. Not spending my time on stuff I would pay a virtual assistance in India $3/hr.
To give Robbins some credit, he does teach motivation strategies in his seminars and books, but not with the precision of submodality distinctions taught by NLPCO in my opinion. What is more concerning to me is that he does so with little to no congruence or ecology checks, which is something I find extraordinarily valuable and unique about the approach NLPCO takes.
In his Unleash the Power Within seminar, the main tool I walked away with was his idea of the “power move,” a physical anchor in which you link a very intense state of “passion” with a violent physical action, like pounding your chest. Such a resource is usually overdoing it for most contexts, something Robbins seems to miss.
Robbins also has the entire 2000+ crowd jump up and down like maniacs every 15 minutes or so “at a level 10” to loud rock music and rock-concert lighting. The focus on cultivating states of mania and forcing such states by eliciting them through movement was very problematic in my experience. It seemed to create a kind of bipolar thrill-seeking using the technology of NLP. For a time I got hooked on my own ability to generate adrenaline and other neurochemicals with NLP–not exactly the outcome I was going for!
I’ve been blessed to find the congruence, precision, and sustainability of the techniques offered here.
There’s nothing like mentioning a public and controversial figure to get some response.
I was complementing Tony when I said he had turned himself into one of the top motivational speakers. That is no small feat and the competition in that arena is Olympic level. Sure Tony has lots of other qualities, and does a lot of good stuff in the world, like his Thanksgiving dinner giveaways.
Of course he does stuff that isn’t NLP. Yet NLP is more, far more, than what Tony does. For that matter, it’s more than what Steve Andreas or Richard Bandler or Robert Dilts or Charles Faulkner does.
There has been so much developed over the last thirty years and so much is being developed now that it would be merely a demonstration of ignorance for any one person to claim they knew all or did all or taught all that was NLP.
While the arrogant and ignorant will keep making such claims, that very behavior will help you to identify them. 😉
What a shame that so many supposedly intelligent people are spending their money/company’s money on NLP courses just to boost their already enormous egos!! These are nothing other than brainwashing/hypnotising sessions that that leave the payers believing that they are the best and everyone should follow them. I have seen it destroy a small company like a cancer via the two worst managers anyone has ever encountered – yet they believe they are invincible! Is this what the Taliban uses to recruit its members I wonder? Or The Moonies?
Yes, GeeGee, like any effective technology NLP is as beneficial as the person using it.
It can be and is used in ways I disagree with.
The same is true of electricity. Shall I sit in the dark because electricity has been used for evil purposes?
The same can be said of computers, the internet, and email.
Am I going to throw out my computer or stop using email because some people abuse it?
Hardly. Nor would you.
If you did so you would only be leaving the technology in the hands of those who use it in ways you dislike.
Whether specifically various cults are using nlp I don’t know.
Cults have historically used a variety of rhetorical and hypnotic methods to recruit and usually the latest technology they can access. Certainly al Quaeda uses the Internet. Whether they “use nlp” I have no way of knowing. I rather doubt they would advertise the fact or even admit it. 😉