Rhododendron.
Using NLP in
Ordinary Life
Steve Andreas
Will Murray has accepted the
challenge of using NLP in casual situations
many people wouldn’t attempt.
Recently he shared some examples of conversational change
with me; I found them
interesting demonstrations of how NLP can be used quickly and easily
in ordinary life, so I asked
him to write up some of them for this blog.
We are pleased to share it
with you below:
Since NLP is based on the way your mind already works to
make useful changes,
often it’s easy to make changes conversationally, so that
it doesn’t seem to be “work” or “therapy.” This makes it possible to
incorporate it into your daily life, seamlessly and easily.
I encounter perhaps a dozen opportunities every day to
incorporate NLP patterns
into casual conversation with immediate results.
Using NLP in a casual situation is a little bit like
shining a flashlight around a dark room.
You see only where you point the beam. Sometimes the beam
illuminates a nice opportunity
to help a friend, and then I feel okay to take a next
step, and offer a new choice.
Shortening the two-year
heartache
Bill, a long-time friend, asked me for advice about a
complicated relationship situation.
He and I had spoken several times about his relationship,
which had recently ended surprisingly
and abruptly and had this poor fellow sleeping poorly,
unfocused at work
and unable to eat properly. A therapist friend of his had
suggested that he would have to go through a series of stages, which would
“take two years” before he could “put this sad feeling behind him.” That didn’t
sound necessary or useful to me, so I asked, “Two years—that’s a long time to
feel bad. When are you ready to be done with this?” Bill said, emphatically,
“Yesterday!”
spoken with force and speed and in louder volume than the
previous parts of the conversation.
This nonverbal “all systems go” behavior convinced me
that he really meant it,
so I asked Bill if he would be willing to try something
that would shorten the two-years
of bad feelings. “Of course,” he replied. “And would you
like to try it now?
It might take five minutes or so.” Again he said, “Yes,”
So I used the following process:
Reference example.
“Can you think of a relationship that really hurt you in the past,
but which you are completely done with at this time, and
it no longer causes you any trouble?
I don’t need to know what it is;
I just need to know that you can identify an experience
that fits that description.”
He responded that yes, he could think of something like
that, and his nonverbal behavior
(calm expression, relaxed posture, etc.) confirmed his
verbal statement.
Elicit the qualities of the
experience. “When you think of that relationship
that no longer bothers you, where do you see the image in
your field of view?
How far away from you? Movie or still picture? Large or
small image?
Does the image have a border? Color or black and white?
Fast or slow or normal speed?
Sharp or grainy? Bright or dim or normal? Is there sound
with the picture? Do you have
any physical sensations in your body in a place you can
point to when you see this picture?”
He represented the relationship that once really hurt him
but now no longer bothers him
as a color movie, about iPad-screen size, about 10 inches
to the left of his left temple,
a little faster than normal speed, normal sharpness and
contrast,
no sound and no physical sensation.
Transform the hurtful image
into the qualities of the reference example.
“Now get a picture of the relationship that hurts you
now, but think of it in the same way
as the one that doesn’t bother you anymore. Make it as a
movie, color, about iPad size,
about 10 inches to the left of your left temple, and run
the movie a little faster than normal.
Go ahead and do this now and tell me when you are done.”
. . .
In about 15 seconds he said, “Okay, I’m done.”
Test. “When you think about the end of this
relationship, when you think about her, how is it?”
He responded in a matter-of-act tone, “Well, I guess she
needs to do what she needs to do.
Too bad it ended this way, but, you know, life goes on.”
Stronger test. “Okay, let’s say you are walking down
the street and turn a corner, and there she is, almost bumping into you, and
she’s with
some other guy.”
He said, again in a “so what” tone of voice, “I guess I
hope she’s doing well.”
Test for objections. “Ask yourself, as though there were a
part of you who could answer,
‘Is there any part of me that objects to feeling this way
about the past relationship?’
and notice and report to me what you notice.”
Bill paused for a minute, and replied, “No, I don’t think
so.” Again, his nonverbal behavior
appeared congruent with his verbal answer, so I took it
as accurate.
Two weeks later he reported that he is beginning to see
someone else, is sleeping through the night and eating well. And he wondered,
“Why do you ask?” The five steps above
took two or three minutes, and then we just carried on
with the rest of our conversation.
I used this same process with someone going through a
tough time in his marriage.
The couple counsellor had advised him that the problem
was his anger. After doing this brief process with him, he said, “What do I
have to be mad about? I don’t have any reason to be mad.” His wife reported
that the couple counsellor now thinks they can move on to the next part of
their process.
What comes next?
Barbara is a college professor friend who had some
previous experience with NLP.
One July 4th, a bunch of us from the building
wanted to watch the fireworks from our roof,
but she had a fear of heights and would not consider
climbing the vertical ladder, crawling through the hatch in the roof, standing
on the roof or descending through the hatch and down the ladder.
I asked her if she would like to be done with her fear of
heights, and upon receiving an affirmative answer, I spent a few minutes using
the Fast
Phobia Cure with her. She then scaled the ladder, enjoyed the
fireworks from the roof, descended the ladder and went through the rest of her
evening as though nothing unusual had happened. Her husband was quite
surprised. When I asked her
about her fear of heights (stronger test), she said, “Oh,
that was never a big deal anyway.”
At a spontaneous Sunday dinner with Barbara, we were
talking about our weekends.
I was just finishing a training session in Metaphors of Movement with Andrew T. Austin
that the Andreases had
sponsored, so I mentioned this.
Barbara said, “Metaphors—nobody uses metaphors.” I asked,
“Would you like to test it out?”
Most of NLP is vastly easier to demonstrate than
describe,
so I often invite interested people to try some NLP
pattern that is relevant to them.
To explore the Metaphors of Movement approach, I elicited
a metaphor by using a vague, general question: “You know that thing in your
life, you know, that has a lot of your attention right now?
I don’t need to know what it is, but you know what it is,
right? What is it like?”
She replied, “Well, it’s like I’m standing at the edge of
a forest.” Now that she had the kernel
of her metaphor, I quickly took her through the initial
steps to draw out the metaphor,
by asking her to observe and report what is to her left,
right, front, back, below and above.
She could describe her surroundings in all those
directions. To the left was dense brush; to the right, the same dense brush. To
the rear was a concrete path. Above was a clear blue sky. Directly below
Barbara’s feet was a gravel path, about a foot wide. In front was a forest
about five steps in front,
with the thin gravel path disappearing into the
trees. Then I asked her to take one step
in each of those directions, then return to center, and
say how it was for her.
Barbara said that “it doesn’t feel good” to step to the
left or step to the right toward the brush.
When she took a step back, her face
looked as if she smelled something bad
and her head retracted as she said, “Oh no…no good.” When
I invited her to take one step forward from her original position, then step
back, Barbara said, “I could see a little better from there.
Do I have to step back?” No, of course not,” I replied.
“They are your steps.”
There are more steps to the Metaphors of Movement
approach, but we were in the middle
of dinner, and her nonverbal responses indicated that she
was having a nice internal experience,
so we returned to normal conversation. The next afternoon
I received this unsolicited email:
“Thanks for doing that visualization exercise with me
yesterday. Turning 60 has been challenging because I don’t know what I
want to do with myself for the next phase of my life. I’ve felt frozen,
not knowing which way to go. Last night I slept very
soundly and then this morning I felt like
I knew how I want to move forward. I don’t need a radical
change, just a minor adjustment.
So I won’t be quitting my job or moving into a cabin in
the woods, but I will step down
from being department chair and dive into more teaching,
research, building the nonprofit I started, travel, exercise, and building
friendships. Sounds like an exciting path into the future.”
This was a nice report, but the “stepping down” part
caught my ear. As department head,
she has a certain status and position, and I wanted to
make sure she was ready
for that kind of change. A few days later, I ran into her
in the parking garage, and simply said,
“Hey, you know about your decision to step down?
You have a certain status now; how do you think that will
change?”
She replied, “Department head isn’t as glamorous as it
sounds. It isn’t a big step down.”
Then we went on to talk about how atrocious the weather
has been for bike riding.
Lining up the group facing
forward
Working with a planning group or giving mental skills
training to groups of athletes
is not exactly casual conversation, but I have learned
that a strong start to any session is important, so I casually insert a bit of
future orientation right at the start.
I like to ask the members of the group to imagine being
in the future in order to set an agenda.
I will ask the group, “Let’s say our session today goes
as well as you could possibly want.
You are at the end of our day together, and you are able
to look back and say,
‘This is just what we needed. I’m glad I was here for
this.’ What would we need to get done today
for you to be able to say this?” Then the group makes a
list of things that would make them glad
to be part of this process, setting a direction for the
meeting. We record the list
and look at it again at the end of the day to make sure
we accomplished everything they wanted.
Having participants do this focuses their attention on
desired outcomes and sets an optimistic tone right from the beginning. It may
seem like a small thing, but I have found it really effective.
Although each participant answers that question
individually, having the group’s collective sense
on a flip chart, and then returning to it at the end,
helps the group’s work come together smoothly, because each knows the goals of
all the others. A key to this three-minute experience
is to have the participants place themselves in the
future
and experience what has already happened. Participants often refer to
the desired outcomes
during the session, and more easily stay focused on the
agenda.
Have a nice race day
In many of these situations, my friends and family know
my NLP background
and have a situation they would like to address, so I
have implicit permission to demonstrate
or do an NLP pattern. With a group, I’m on contract to
help them achieve the results they want,
and they expect me to bring the most effective skills I
have to help them.
Occasionally, though, doing some NLP with a total
stranger seems appropriate.
I was getting ready to race in a triathlon in Boulder
Reservoir in 2013.
All of us were standing knee-deep in the water just
before the start of the race,
which consisted of a ½-mile swim, 15-mile bike race then
a 3.1-mile run. It was a beautiful morning, just dawning, with the reservoir
glassy and a few golden scattered clouds catching the first light.
A few hot-air balloons were ascending to the east, right
in line with the buoys marking
the swim course. It was a great morning for a race (at
least I thought it was).
Nearby was another triathlete standing next to me knee
deep in the water
about one minute before the start of the race. He was
muttering something
and staring down into the water, with his fists clenched.
Barely audibly I could hear him saying,
“Oh God, oh God, oh God.” I noticed that he kept his gaze
down, looking a few feet in front of him.
I guessed that he was having an internal experience of a
terrible race to come.
Maybe he was catastrophizing about getting bumped into
and panicking in the swim
(150 of us were all going to start swimming hard together all at once), or
crashing his bike
or getting a flat tire or getting cramps or throwing up or getting blisters from
his running shoes
or losing his way on the run course or having an asteroid strike his home—I
didn’t really know.
But it was clear to me that he wasn’t in a good emotional
state to have an enjoyable race.
NLP uses eye position to detect how someone is thinking.
Eyes looking down usually indicate
that someone is talking to themselves internally, or
having a strong emotional feeling, or both.
Eyes looking up usually indicate that someone is having a
primarily visual experience,
making pictures in their mind’s eye, and usually having
less emotional feeling.
By changing eye position, you can change how someone is
experiencing.
So, without permission, and without announcing who I was,
or what I did, I simply said,
“Hey, look at those balloons going up” and I pointed up
at the balloons above the horizon.
He looked up, stopped his muttering and unclenched his
fists. Then I said,
“Great day for a race, isn’t it?” He looked at me,
giggled a little, and said, “I guess it is.”
Then the starting gun went off, and the race was on.
Will Murray, is an NLP Practitioner
living in Boulder, Colorado. He has trained with Connirae
and Steve Andreas and has
participated in many other training sessions.
Will has an 18-year career as a
management consultant to non-profit organizations.
He is a certified USA
Triathlon Level 1 coach and a certified triathlon youth coach,
specializing in
mental skills on the coaching staff of D3Multisport.
Will is co-author of The Four Pillars of Triathlon:
Vital Mental Conditioning for Endurance Athletes,
which uses NLP patterns to
enhance athletes’ results and enjoyment and Uncle:
The Definitive
Guide for Becoming the World’s Greatest Aunt or Uncle.
http://realpeoplepress.com/blog/using-nlp-in-ordinary-life
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