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
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