NLP Articles Archives - Page 7 of 13 - NLP Education Australia

Your ability to influence your world starts with a change in mindset

April 20, 2015/in NLP Articles /by Andres Rodriguez

Influence your world

The ability to influence your world, your environment starts with you. That may seem obvious but to many people it is not.

Being able to influence yourself first is step one towards shaping your environment. When you are aware of your values, preferences, outcomes and intentions and you have choice about your state and what you do with your attention, you are in a position to make and articulate informed choices.

Have you ever met anyone who keeps changing cities, or partners or jobs but they keep getting the same results with each example? The same pattern keeps emerging.

Their behaviour stays the same and no matter how often they shift workplaces, for example, they keep having similar ‘problems’ with their bosses or colleagues.

However, before you start pointing fingers at anyone, it is fair to say that we all experience something like this at least once in our lives.

Becoming aware of your patterns of behaviour can be a challenging task, however it can be extremely useful – especially if you want to influence the world around you.

The old adage of ‘be the change you want to see in the world’ comes to mind here.

The question is, how do you do this?

In the article How to Control your feelings – and live happily ever after, By Steve Ayan published in American Scientist Magazine the author provides us with a good piece of advice.

‘Situation modification’: the key is to anticipate the potential for stress and take proactive measures. These interventions can be as simple as carrying a ‘lucky charm’ says the author.

There are many ways in which you can do this., Those of you reading this who have received proper training in NLP, can probably think of the anchors you use to manage your state, the principle of reframing or even using the ‘swish pattern’, for the sentence quoted above.

Nevertheless, what is important here is that you can influence your world by first influencing the way you perceive it. And the first step to it is building awareness.

To receive more articles like this one or to learn more about our courses, subscribe to our free newsletter by contacting us here.

Edited by Jules Collingwood, NLP Trainer at INSPIRITIVE

Exceptional People Align These Three Elements

March 24, 2015/in NLP Articles /by Andres Rodriguez

People who reach high levels of performance and become exceptionally effective in their field show certain patterns of behaviour that many people would not even be aware of.

One of these patterns is the ability to manage their state, or be ‘emotionally intelligent’ as some like to call it.

However, managing your state is only one element of the patterns that people like this engage. There is more to it, and after reading this article you will have a better idea of how you too can manage your state more effectively.

Elements To Consider

When managing your state it can be useful to consider the context that you are in. For example, a state that will be appropriate while at a romantic dinner with your partner, will probably not be your best option while sitting at a family dinner.

Aligning state and context creates functionality of behaviour as illustrated by research published in the article How to Control your feelings – and live happily ever after, By Steve Ayan published in Scientific American Mind magazine.

When describing the findings of the research, the article reads; Tamir and Ford found that people with high emotional intelligence opted for whichever feeling had greatest utility – regardless of whether that emotion was pleasant.

Which brings us to the next point. Your intention for being in that context and communicating with those people.

Your Intentions Matter

Being aware of what you want from or in a specific situation is another important focus of attention. Having a clear intention can be a very useful guide to choosing your state to support you in a given situation.

For example if somebody is at work just with the intention to make some money and go home at the end of the day, they will have a strikingly different state from that of somebody who is at work to engage actively and make progress in their career.

Being aware of these differences and aligning them consistently can help you become exceptionally effective in whatever you choose to do.

Now it’s your turn!

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Edited by Jules Collingwood, NLP Trainer at INSPIRITIVE

The top five most valued skills you need to develop according to Forbes magazine

March 21, 2015/in NLP Articles /by Andres Rodriguez

As the business world keeps evolving, so do the requisites that organisations look for in their employees. The skills and attributes that once took you from employee to manager are likely to be different from those you need currently in order to advance to the next stage in your career.

In today’s business world there is an emphasis on so-called ‘soft skills’. According to Forbes Magazine in the article The 10 Skills Employers Most Want in 2015 Graduates the 5 most valued skills by employers nowadays are:

Ability to work in a team structure
Ability to make decisions and solve problems
Ability to communicate verbally with people inside and outside an organisation
Ability to plan, organise and prioritise work
Ability to obtain and process information

In this article the author, Susan Adams, explains how the researchers arrived at this conclusion.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) a Bethlehem, PA non-profit group that links college career placement offices with employers, ran a survey from mid-August through early October where it asked hiring managers what skills they plan to prioritize when they recruit from the class of 2015 at colleges and graduate schools. Though the survey sample is small NACE collected responses from just 260 employers the wisdom is sound. New and recent grads should pay attention. (Most of the respondents were large companies like Chevron, IBM and Seagate Technology.)

That being said, a question is likely to arise: where do you learn these skills?

This is the first of a series of articles in which we will be discussing ways in which you can learn how to use these skills as well as giving you some practical tips on how to apply these principles.

In her article, Adams summarise the skills listed above – Cutting across all majors and degrees, employers want new hires who can work well on teams, and who are decisive problem-solvers.

I sincerely hope you enjoy this series and make the most of the information we will share with you.

As we like to say, we want people to be able to think, do and apply NLP, not just talk about it. So please go ahead and practice as much as you choose the principles we will be learning in the coming posts.

To receive more articles like this one or to learn more about our courses, subscribe to our free newsletter by contacting us here.

Edited by Jules Collingwood, NLP Trainer at INSPIRITIVE

Happiness: A scientific discovery that will change how you experience it

March 20, 2015/in NLP Articles /by Andres Rodriguez

Happiness and how you focus your attention

One of your most valuable resources in any situation is the ability to focus your attention at will. This is a key to your happiness.

No doubt you are familiar with the metaphor of the ‘glass half empty or half full’. That is an example of how you might be focusing your attention, or what you are attending to at the time, although what you are about to read is somewhat more sophisticated.

How you feel about a situation is normally closely related to how you perceive it to be, not necessarily how ‘actually’ is. You take information from the outside world through your senses and then after processing it, you come up with an interpretation of it. i.e. you see a container with water up to the middle point between the bottom and the top of the container, and after taking a moment to process it (regardless how much time it takes you) you come up with an interpretation like:

The glass is half filled with water
The glass is half empty
Anything else you can think of

What is interesting about this type of expression like ‘the glass is half empty/full’ is that it is filled with presuppositions. The words used in this phrase are purposely (whether you are aware of it or not at the time of saying it) directing your attention to a limited set of options:

It can only be half empty or half full, therefore limiting your perspective of the situation to only two options.
You have to choose between one of these two options.

Interestingly, most people are not aware of how the structure of language can influence their focus of attention and therefore their choices in responding to, external stimuli.

This is similar to saying that in life you can only be ‘happy or sad’, or ‘succeed or fail’. Another metaphoric description refers to ‘black and white thinking’, which also supports dualistic, right or wrong ideation with no other options.

The result of learning to track and identify both your own and others’ presupposed allusions is a type of awareness that provides you with more options in choosing your state in a given context and what to believe is possible. To put it simply, applying linguistic structures can help you choose how to feel about anything that happens in your life.

A scientific discovery

The article How to Control your feelings and live happily ever after, By Steve Ayan, published in Scientific American Mind magazine reads:

In a series of studies, psychologist Gal Sheppes of Tel Aviv University asked participants to either reinterpret a sad photograph in way that made it less worrisome “…seeing tears of joy as opposed to grief, for example or think of something completely different”.

Attention training can help you in managing your state and have more options in how you perceive a situation and thus, give you more flexibility of behaviour. Anyone who has had proper NLP training knows this. Please note the emphasis on the word proper.

Moreover, the author illustrates this point by referring to the following research:

In 2010 Philippe Goldin of Stanford found there are ways to help people with social anxiety disorder learn to attend to their breathing to refocus during an unpleasant experience.

Inevitably after reading this, a foundational principle of NLP developed by Dr. John Grinder, Co-creator of NLP comes to mind:

Grinder’s Chain of Excellence, which involves being aware of how your respiration, physiology, state and performance are all connected.

So you can have options about how you feel in any given moment. However, it all starts with awareness.

Now it is your turn! Now that you are aware of this, think about different, ways in which you can experience an ‘unpleasant’ situation, and change it next time you come across it.,

To receive more articles like this one or to learn more about our courses, subscribe to our free newsletter by contacting us here.

Edited by Jules Collingwood, NLP Trainer at INSPIRITIVE.

The one tool every politician uses – and how you can improve your communication with it

March 19, 2015/in NLP Articles /by Andres Rodriguez

Setting the scope

You may have heard of the saying ‘it is not what you say, it is how you say it’. Well, there is plenty of wisdom that can be derived from this saying.

Words can have different meanings according to the context in which they are used as well as tone of voice, listeners’ interpretation and accompanying gestures and movement. However, words themselves can be used to give a context specific meaning.

This article is to provide some insight into how you can do this yourself.

There is a powerful tool that exceptionally effective communicators use to contextualize their communication called ‘Framing’, which started in the field of NLP and has since generalised, partly due to linguist George Lakoff’s work with USA political parties.

A well set up frame defines the limits, boundaries and scope of the communication process at hand, and provided it is done properly, it will make it more efficient by keeping participants on track, provided that clear intentions have been set beforehand.

A good example of this can be found in the article published in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) article by Cas R. Sustein and Reid Hastie: Making Dumb Groups Smarter.

The article reads “framing effects influence our decisions according to the semantics of how the options are presented. For example, people are more likely to agree to an operation if they are told that 90% of people are alive after 5 years than if they are told that 10% of people are dead after 5 years”.

How influential can that be?

By framing ideas to direct people’s attention where you want it, you can use your words to invite your audience to concentrate on what really matters (your intention) in the process.

Just as a physical context can provide cues to where you should place your attention in a situation, so can your words if used with care and skill.

An essential part of any proper NLP training consists of attention training. You need to be able to put your attention on the things that matter, and make a difference, (having a clear intention), in order to direct your audience’s attention effectively.

Now it is your turn! Now that you are aware of this, think about different, ways in which you can frame things that you normally would not question while keeping in mind your intention.,

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Edited by Jules Collingwood, NLP Trainer at INSPIRITIVE

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Some enemies to defy if you want to become a man of knowledge

March 17, 2015/in NLP Articles /by Andres Rodriguez

Most of us pursue knowledge to a greater or lesser extent. We learn new things, some of us master them and then we pass them along to varying degrees of accuracy. Those of us who take learning seriously, are working on becoming ‘A man/woman of knowledge’, as Carlos Castaneda says in his book, The Teachings of Don Juan.

In this book Castaneda meets an interesting man who leads him along a path that will turn Carlos into a ‘man of knowledge’.

The approach to knowledge that Don Juan shows Carlos is different from the conventional western approach to education.

In Carlos’ journey with Don Juan, a man will encounter ‘four enemies’ that he needs to defy before becoming a ‘man of knowledge’.

Fear is perfectly natural

The first one is Fear. “When a man in the path of knowledge begins to learn, he realises that what he learns is never what he imagined, and so he starts to become afraid” says Don Juan. He goes on to establish that the only way to defeat fear is by facing it, giving the fear one’s full attention and separating the feeling from any meaning attached to it.

This first step of the path is one that you can probably relate to. We all have felt fear and we all have had to defy it at some point in our life.

Defying fear is one option, though in my opinion there are more effective ways of handling it (see above).

When you have the ability to manage your state you can confront and attend to, fear successfully. You would simply adjust your mental processes and physiology into a form that will help you become more resourceful and thus discover whatever it may be, in order to deal with the situation.

It may sound relatively prosaic, yet it is very effective.

The second enemy

Don Juan goes on to say that after you have been able to ‘conquer’ fear, you will gain clarity of mind. This, according to him, becomes the second enemy to defy.

“Clarity blinds him as it forces the man never to doubt himself again. He will be clear for the rest of his life, but he will not learn again“. Says Don Juan.

NLP trainer Steve Andreas illustrates this point very clearly in his article Certainty, Uncertainty where he elaborates the following:

“If a person is totally certain about their understanding, they will be closed to even considering other understandings, because their certainty about their understanding locks up the ability to consider alternatives”.

It is as if someone thinks they are ‘right’ and then tries to prove that they are ‘right’ with single-minded determination. They miss the point completely and forget what their intention was in the first place.

However, once Clarity has been conquered, by recognising an uncritical sense of certainty and remaining deliberately curious, a man in the path of knowledge will gain power; which is his also his third enemy.

Handling yourself

“A man who is defeated by power dies without really knowing how to handle it. He will turn into a cruel capricious man. Such a man has no command over himself and cannot tell when or how to use his power”. Elaborates Don Juan.

17^th century Dutch philosopher Baruch de Spinoza once said: “When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune”.

The emotions you feel are an interpretation of your state. Managing your state can give you the knowledge needed to comprehend a situation from multiple perspectives and be able to have ‘command over yourself’ as put by Don Juan.

The enemies of knowledge according to Don Juan will be an obstacle in the way of any man or woman in search for knowledge. Being able to defeat them is a matter of aligning your state and your intentions at the times when things get ‘tough’, remaining open to news of difference and curious about the world.

Now it is your turn! Now that you are aware of these, think about which ones you have faced and how you have defied them.,

To receive more articles like this one or to learn more about our courses, subscribe to our free newsletter by contacting us here.

Edited by Jules Collingwood, NLP Trainer at INSPIRITIVE.

The difference between a real advantage or disadvantage – and how you can learn it

March 6, 2015/in NLP Articles /by Andres Rodriguez

Context – keep it in mind

In the western world we are accustomed to experiencing life in terms of pros and cons, advantage or disadvantages and other similar categories.

What we tend to forget though is that when it comes to labelling a quality as an advantage or disadvantage context is king, followed second by our outcomes and intentions in that specific context.

Being able to choose how and when to put those qualities to use can be very liberating, to say the least.

However, that choice takes place first inside your own experience and having a point of comparison tends to be the driver for choosing. For example, if you only have ever been exposed to one single style of transportation (say walking in this case) in your life you will most likely lack the contrast between how walking and others like flying, a pushbike or a car, can have advantages and disadvantages given your specific situation.

Hence your choice will be limited to the ones you have experienced or been exposed to.

As noted in the article The advantages of Dyslexia By Matthew H. Schneps, published in American Scientific Mind Magazine:

“Nothing productive takes place when everything is the same. Neurological differences similarly drive the engine of society and create the contrasts between hot and cold that generate new ideas. Impairments in one area can lead to advantages in others, and it is these differences that drive progress”.

In short the article proposes how in a variety of contexts Dyslexia can give people who ‘suffer’ from it major advantages in the way they process their thinking.

These advantages are varied and go beyond the scope of this article, however the point of this article is to illustrate how it is up to each of us to build the awareness needed in order put our skills to use with reference to our intentions and the situation we are in.

Please note that the way in which you can do this is not only by building contrast. This is just one of an array of options you can use.

Your turn

Before you go ahead and start putting this to practice here is a quote from the article mentioned above, that you may find inspiring.

“After all, our conceptions of ‘advantage’ and ‘disadvantage’ have meaning only in the context of the task that needs to be performed”.

Now it is your turn, start paying attention to the meaning you give to things and how you can change that meaning to suit your intentions and context.

To receive more articles like this one or to learn more about our courses, subscribe to our free newsletter by contacting us here.

Edited by Jules Collingwood, NLP Trainer at INSPIRITIVE.

This can give you more options in responding to what you feel – once you start to use it

March 5, 2015/in NLP Articles /by Andres Rodriguez

Choose the meaning of what you feel

We have touched the topic of reframing many times in the past and from my own experience I know that it certainly works.

However, recently I came across an article that discusses a study carried out at Harvard University where it was found that interpreting sensations differently from the way we do normally; an action also known as reframing, does bring about improvements in performance for people.

In the article Performance anxiety by Tori Rodriguez published in American Scientist magazine she writes:

“Anxiety or excitement? New studies at Harvard university found that by interpreting these sensations as excitement instead of anxiety, people performed better in three types of stressful situations: singing in front of strangers, speaking in public and solving difficult math problems”.

Interestingly, in the article there is no evidence of how you can do this. However, to those who have had proper NLP training this can be almost second nature. We know from previous studies in psychology that the physiological components of anxiety and excitement are exactly similar. Therefore the perception of anxiety or excitement is open to interpretation as either, depending on the context and the personal meaning and preferences of the experiencer.

The first couple of ways in which we can change our perceptions are altering the sub-modality structure of each sensation or using a using a pattern called perceptual positions; and there other options as well. I’ll go into a bit more detail further down.

What is even more interesting is that there are more results of studies published in the same article also carried out at Harvard University, that link effective performance in social situations to the ability to reframe.

In her article Tori goes on to elaborate another Harvard study published in August 2014, also found performance-boosting effects for people with social anxiety who thought of their stress as helpful during a public performance.

Learn to choose

Reframing can be done in many ways by those who have been properly trained in NLP.

You can use your physiology, language, time line (the way you experience time), values, sub-modalities (the structure of how you experience sensations, images and sounds inside yourself) to mention but a few.

Reframing is about creating flexibility of behaviour and adapting your internal experience so it matches your higher intentions. It is a tool used by all exceptionally effective people I know.

As I like to always say “Life is what you make out of it”. So do yourself a favour and do exactly that.

Now it is your turn, ! start paying attention to the meaning you give to things and how you can change that meaning to suit your intentions and context.

To receive more articles like this one or to learn more about our courses, subscribe to our free newsletter by contacting us here.

Edited by Jules Collingwood, NLP trainer at INSPIRITIVE.

For those of you who believe in it – here is how you create your own luck

March 4, 2015/in NLP Articles /by Andres Rodriguez

Awareness – the key to creating your own luck

As members of at least one culture, we all engage in identifiable culture specific behaviour almost as if we were running on auto-pilot.

We grow up imitating our elders and so we learn behaviour that we do automatically without even realising it is happening. We tend not to think about these acts, but just perform them. Sometimes this behaviour comes in sequence and forms a pattern, which can vary between contexts.

For example, when you hear a telephone ring, you might have an urge to pick it up. When you hear a doorbell ring you will probably feel a desire to go and see who is there. If your culture places great store on courtesy, you might stand up when someone you consider senior enters a room you are in.

This is called anchor in the fascinating world of NLP. It is nothing new to you or anybody else, you just did not have a name for it even if you observed it happening.

But, how is this relevant to anything or how can this affect your everyday life?

Scientific research about luck – and how it is perceived

Here is some research shown in an article called Bad Luck Begone published in Scientific American Mind magazine by Tori Rodriguez to help you understand.

In her research it is shown how triggering an anchor, in this case the western world anchor referred to as ‘touch wood’ to prevent or reduce the likelihood of inciting disaster – can affect the way in which you experience luck.

Investigators at the University of Chicago and the National University of Singapore first engaged participants in small talk then turned the conversation to a topic pertaining to a specific misfortune. In one experiment, for example, a researcher talked about car accidents and then asked:

Do you think that there is a possibility that you or someone close to you will get into a horrible car accident this winter?

Some subjects choose one of three neutral answers; others chose from one of three answers that could be construed as presumptuous, such as:

No way. Nobody I know would get into a car accident. It’s just not possible.

A pre-test had confirmed that these answers effectively triggered the sense that participants had temped fate.

“For participants who knocked on a table, however, the perceived likelihood of an accident happening was reduced to a level similar to that of people who had not temped fate”.

Surprising, right?

How can doing something like literally ‘touching wood’ have any relation to how you perform in your own future events?

It makes no sense. However some people live by such systems of belief and in the believing, they can create the very opportunities they want to avoid.

Create your own luck

In the world of NLP, those who have been properly trained have the capacity to display an array of states that are congruent with their intentions within a context. They are either free of or minimally aware of externally set anchors on their behaviour and that gives them the flexibility to act or not upon those anchors being fired.

In other words, they have learned to create their own ‘luck’.

Now it is your turn, take your next step towards Exceptional Effectiveness, and learn how to start creating your own luck. Remember to be aware of those things around you that elicit a response in you. You will be amazed of what , you find out.

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This one secret may make you very successful – only if you use it

March 3, 2015/in NLP Articles /by Andres Rodriguez

Success – It’s all about people

A lot of research has been conducted on the subject of management over recent years and it all seems to be pointing out the same patterns.

It is all about people and how you manage them.

In December 2014 the Harvard Business Review (HBR) published an article called Talent. Why Chief Human Resources officers make great CEOs. In this article they put forward some research that may influence the way you see your workplace from now on.

“Over the past 20 years Jim Collins and other management theorists have focused on talent management as the prime determinant of corporate success”. (HBR 2014)

Once you read it, it all seems like common sense.

Well have a look around you next time you are at work and really check for how this common sense principle is being applied by managers.

The article goes on to explain how

“If you don’t have the right people in the right places. the right talent strategy and the right team dynamics in the right culture – and if you manage how an organisation works proactively from a cultural and people oriented perspective, you could be on a serious path to disaster”.

A good example to illustrate this is being a sports coach. If you have a talented left wing player playing as a full back, you are probably not making the best use of your resources.

But how do you put this strategy in place at work?

Learning about people’s outcomes and intentions as well as the values they hold in life outside work, will for example, give you a good idea of how to keep them motivated and responding to useful talent strategies and team dynamics.

Being aware of individual people’s patterns of human experience can give you a great competitive advantage.

Someone who values praise and high quality results will have a different motivation for doing certain tasks than someone who values money over anything else, for example. Not that one is better that the other, but they will both work better when offered frames and conditions that fit for them.

So go ahead and coach your team to victory and let us know if you would like our help. To receive more articles like this one or to learn more about our courses, subscribe to our free newsletter by contacting us here.

Influence your world

The question is, how do you do this?

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