Knowing Where To Tap

This is one of many stories I fondly remember from my first Practitioner Training. Along with numerous others it’s to be found in the Trainer’s Version of the “NLP Comprehensive Practitioner Training Manual” as well as in “Is There Life Before Death?

Among other reasons that the training was remarkable was that while a lot of entertaining stories were told, building rapport and keeping us alert in the moment, none of them were accidental.

Each was, in fact, quite premeditated, planned, and positioned to make an immediate teaching point, while either setting the stage for the next learning or summarizing a piece just experienced.

The stories were also, of course, wonderful examples of the power of metaphor, so that by the time we got to the formal metaphor section of the training, we had numerous examples of its use.

Best,
Tom Dotz
PS:  Colorado Grads – and those traveling through,  on Friday evening September 24 and Saturday the 25th, Jan Prince is doing a really cool NLP program.  It’s a chance to renew and reacquaint with what you loved in your first training.  (Cheap, too 🙂  Here’s what Jan is promising you: “If you have taken an NLP Practitioner Course and want to freshen your skills, this Friday evening and Saturday workshop will give you a great way to do that.
You will get the opportunity to reconnect with other practitioners, share experiences, ask questions, review and practice your skills. More recent contributions of trainers and innovators Steve Andreas and Charles Faulkner on the general foundations of NLP will be the framework for updating and refreshing NLP’s most useful tools.  These foundational concepts have been taught for the last several years in the Summer Immersion trainings and the students have understood and mastered the NLP techniques so much more quickly and deeply because of them.” For more info, click here to contact Jan directly.

The Boilermaker, or Knowing Where To Tap – Steve Andreas

There is an old story of a boilermaker who was hired to fix a huge steamship boiler system that was not working well. After listening to the engineer’s description of the problems and asking a few questions, he went to the boiler room. He looked at the maze of twisting pipes, listened to the thump of the boiler and the hiss of escaping steam for a few minutes, and felt some pipes with his hands. Then he hummed softly to himself, reached into his overalls and took out a small hammer, and tapped a bright red valve, once. Immediately the entire system began working perfectly, and the boilermaker went home. When the steamship owner received a bill for $1,000 he complained that the boilermaker had only been in the engine room for fifteen minutes, and requested an itemized bill. This is what the boilermaker sent him:

For tapping with hammer: $ .50
For knowing where to tap: 999.50
Total: $1,000.00

(With gratitude to my high school science teacher, E.R. Harrington, who told me this story in 1952.)

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