Relax; we're not talking about getting brain implants or strapping you into a big computer.  We're talking about how you can become a better communicator, thinker, decider, learner, and speaker -- today -- with some advantages offered from an amazing field of study. 

Let's clear up some A.I. Misconceptions.

I'm Jonathan (the author behind this blog entry & website; the other guy in the picture is a photographer's model).  

Most of you already know me (thanks for visiting again to read this blog entry!).  For those who don't, I've been training applications of NLP since 1997 (~17 years, now).  My first career was in Artificial Intelligence, specifically, expert systems (building intelligent decision-making software).

Most of us know A.I. has been madly misrepresented in the media and film industry. Many have been exposed to a version of AI like that in films, like "Transcendence", or the "Terminator" movies, "I, Robot", Spielberg's ridiculous "A.I.", or even "Wargames."  

I'm more interested (& trained) in the AI that makes Google a bit smarter when it searches for what you want, instead of what you asked for.  Or the AI that helps drive Google driverless cars, and fly airplanes, and schedule transportation amidst a constantly fluctuating chaotic world with moving parts.  Like the AI that's behind Siri on your iPhone.  Like the AI behind massive CGI battle scenes where computer-generated armies are filmed without requiring animators to make individual character movements.  Like the AI in video games.  Like the AI that figures out when its time to offer you a specific additional service on top of existing services.  Like the AI that approves your mortgage or ascertains your insurance application (no, not science fiction, I helped build some of these systems over 15 years ago).  Possibly also a little like the AI-based ad-retargeting systems that see you click on an organic food website and know that an ad for "non-GMO products" will be more likely to work with you than with someone else.

The field of A.I. can make you a more effective NLP student and communicator; indeed, a more successful professional.

In 1997, I began learning and then later training NLP.  I noticed early on that many other trainers were gifted at multi-channel congruent communication (words that are aligned with behavior, multiple messages that coordinated well, and very compelling communication that made me listen more closely).  I also noticed that many were not that compelling or congruent, or capable of demonstrating nonverbally what they were talking about verbally at the same time.  

At the time, I borrowed another computer metaphor for this, and labelled this for myself as the difference between serial communication (one skill described or demonstrated at a time) and parallel (many demonstrated at a time, well integrated and congruent).

Serial training rapidly became a turn-off.  Parallel training attracted me.

For me, 'Serial' trainers provide minimal more value in person than we get from a book or dvd.

Parallel trainers are amazing to observe and listen to, and are always worth the live training experience (& CDs/books pale by comparison).

Simply put, serial trainers bored me.  I wanted to learn to use these skills in an integrated, natural, massively parallel fashion, without having to consciously manage it all.  In keeping with the concept of NLP Modeling, if you want to get good at something, its best to model the skills and behaviors of, and learn from, people who are demonstrably good at what you want to achieve. So if you want to get good at using a wide range of NLP skills together, real-time, as I did, then you're going to want to choose to learn from trainers who are known for multi-channel communication.  

I learned early on that serial trainers weren't going to get me there, and don't seem to me to be good exemplars for getting really good at multi-channel communication - especially in the faster paced world of business.  So I sought out trainers who were clearly skilled at multi-level communication, and augmented it with supportive written, audio and video material from other wonderful trainers (even a few serial trainers who do great work, but just wouldn't be able to maintain my attention in a classroom).

As I was learning and attending courses with these amazing communicators (like Richard Bandler, and Rex Sikes), I found that my background was enabling me to absorb NLP skills and knowledge much faster than those I was learning alongside.  Further, I found that arguably the most important skill for an NLP trainer -- NLP Modeling -- was getting a lot of lip service, but not a lot of action, and not a lot of clarity.  Many people were talking about it, but not doing it, and couldn't seem to explain it to me.  Yet I was already doing a form of modeling from my years in A.I. -- I was paid to interview experts, and replicate their thinking and decision making in computers.

So when it became clear that A.I. offered benefits to NLP'ers, I started offering courses called "Knowledge Engineering" for modeling and belief system mapping.  And then later "Belief Craft" with Doug O'Brien, combining KE with Sleight of Mouth."  And over the years, I've designed learning exercises that help people develop the creative use of deeply integrated skills, for natural, parallel multi-channel communication.  In more recent months, it's become obvious to me that some of the exercise-drill designs that have gotten enormous attention and student praise, all come at least partly from my years in A.I.  This distinction that is impossible to find from other NLP trainers (whether serial OR parallel).

Shortsightedness in NLP is rampant.

Once in a while someone says "But AI was meant to emulate the mind, not the other way around."

This can be translated to "why should people interested in NLP study how computers have been taught to think like people?"  Or "shouldn't AI folks be studying us, instead of us exploring or studying AI?"

Avoid that very costly short-sighted perspective, and become a far more effective student of NLP.

Another field of study apart from NLP spent decades prior to and concurrently with NLP, learning to 'unpack' and optimally emulate how people think... and coming up with reflections of how people learn and make decisions, that were then tested and refined in measurable ways.

NLP students should want to glean everything they can from discoveries and representations created by such a field.

My perspective is that an A.I. background (even exposure to one), leads people to greater depth of skills, as well as more natural use of more than one skill at a time, faster than many other methods or backgrounds can.

Let's look at Neural Networks.

Once you get a sense of how neural networks learn, you'll likely find yourself more easily willing and able to immerse yourself in unusual non-rational learning experiences (as opposed to always needing rational explanations before determining if you've actually learned anything). Many people give the idea of "unconscious learning" lip service, and then still demand only conscious understanding and explanations -- and if they don't get it, they ignore any potential value experienced/learned. A willingness to learn in a 'variety of ways' (to quote Milton Erickson) is a critical factor to truly gettting the most from NLP. 

If you'd like to become better at (1) learning anything, (2) learning unconsciously, (3) unconscious uptake (what we like to call learning by osmosis!), (4) allowing yourself to reap the benefits of more than just conscious acquisition of understanding, then study Neural Networks.

In studying Neural Networks, focus on the evidence that explains how we draw conclusions and make decisions without any rational basis, entirely mathematically as a result of strengthening some neural traces and weakening some others.  From an NLP perspective, this could help free you from analysis paralysis and may even lead you to greater emotional intelligence. For those who are deeply stuck in ruts, this could just free you... from yourself.

Let's look at Expert Systems
(my prior domain of expertise).

The subfield of A.I. that deals with expert decision-making is called "Knowledge Engineering."  Knowledge Engineers interview experts, find out what they know, and then build pseudo-intelligent (not sentient) Expert Systems.  These have been in use for 30+ years.  I've built many financial expert systems currently being used by companies like Equifax, Chase Manhattan Bank, Ernst & Young, GTE (now Verizon), and contributed in some way to many more.  

When I arrived at the field of NLP, it became obvious fast that Knowledge Engineering would be valuable for NLP students.  So I created a course to train these skills.  Knowledge Engineering actually provides a conscious way of mapping entire areas of cognitive expertise, of decision systems, of belief systems, including kinesthetic information and values, etc. It offered a thorough and flexible decision and belief mapping system -- before NLP ever came along.

This is useful for doing actual (explicit/analytical) modeling, knowledge mining & transfer, business process re-engineering, consulting, coaching, and so much more.

From an NLP perspective, my KE (& Belief Craft) students often tell me that after they learn KE, they can literally see how people's decision systems and belief systems get them into trouble (or success), predictably. And when they turn that same skillset on themselves, it's transformational. People start cleaning up whole areas of their lives -- and not just magically/unconsciously thanks to some silly external provocation, but in a way they can easily understand and explain afterwards.  My expertise from this career covers cognitive modeling, mapping beliefs, unpacking belief systems, and reprogramming/rewiring belief systems.  For businesses looking to gain from that, I help people make smarter (sometimes seemingly impossible) choices, acquire and optimize and then share/retrain expertise to others.

KE explains how, when, why, where, and what you do, in a visual mapping system.  When KE is used to map a small piece of someone's mind, it becomes crystal clear why they're successful and why they're stuck.  More importantly, it provides perfect clues as to how to get them unstuck, or optimize what they're doing.  And it helps us to clarify someone's thinking, and get them from confused to clear, or from conflicted to congruent, or from hesitant to go for it.

And this is important:  most people trained in NLP, when presented with a real-world difficult situation, will not do the same things the same way.  NLP is not a consistent system.  But KE... is.  When properly trained in KE, people would go about unpacking beliefs and choices in very similar ways, and would result in very similar if not identical maps of what they're modeling.

Let's look at Hybrid Systems:

The intentional combination of multiple learning and deciding methodologies. This is where things get even more interesting. Allowing the parts of a larger system to do their jobs where they're most optimal. You shouldn't trust key decisions to unconscious feelings. But you also shouldn't trust learning to the conscious mind alone.

If you'd like to become better at complex marriages of very different skillsets, Study Hybrid Systems. From an NLP perspective, You can think of your own brain as a hybrid system, and check to see if you're using the right or wrong skill for each job, or perhaps the right or wrong MOOD (yes, emotional states matter). You can think of an entire team of people as a hybrid system. Where do they need to communicate? Where is communication bogging things down?

Let's look at Genetic Algorithms:

This is a search or exploration heuristic that mimics the process of natural selection in decision making and other areas of thinking. Often used in population studies in science, or in predictions of species intermingling, WE might want to learn more from this area of thinking to learn more about where teams become inefficient, and how to optimize them. Or what kinds of communication patterns take us from resourceful to unresourceful, or vice-versa.

If you'd like to become better at identifying inefficient or less optimal choices and replacing those with more resourceful choices, study genetic algorithms. From an NLP perspective, this is extraordinary useful for pattern-matching skills, developing a lower tolerance for inefficiency, and an awareness of when habits get stale.

Let's look at Organic Systems:

Organic Systems are an effort to represent and reproduce human cognition and organic thinking/computing. The truth continues to emerge that while we still don't have a crystal clear idea of how it all works together in our minds -- we do continue to progress towards an increasingly accurate understanding of the complex massively parallel operation of our minds. If you want to be on the forefront of learning about improving human cognition and optimizing human communication skills, there is a high cost to ignoring this area of study.

From an NLP perspective, when I consider group dynamics, I'm typically thinking in terms of organic systems. In small groups, Virginia Satir's family constellation work can be extremely helpful. But in larger groups, taking her approach makes things infinitely difficult to unravel. Organic systems help provide greater awareness of forces at play in larger groups, and help us choose good ways to navigate these choppy waters.

It usually only takes one profound unexpected learning experience, one powerful Eureka moment, to free hyper-analytical minds from their own limitations.  Put differently, one cannot 'understand' the pieces of organic systems easily.  However, one can experience organic systems, holistically, and then drill down to the dynamics at play.

Why would Exposure to A.I. Experience be a Valuable Criteria for NLP Training?

It's important for NLP professionals to do more than just think and wax poetic about "how" people think, and also do more to study these things, than just read articles about language, neurology, and behavior, on the web.  

It's important for all of us to test assumptions thoroughly, in the contexts where the results of those tests would be most valuable.  

A.I. taught me to make and constantly test refinements in long-standing models of learning, cognition, and decision-making.  In turn, this means my courses and home-study materials are designed for maximum acquisition and retention.  They're designed to reach the widest range of types of potential learners.

I've also always been deeply fascinated by unconscious learning and accelerated learning, and have been exploring (for two decades) what is required of me, to help people take that critical leap of faith into "learning to learn differently."  As well as to both demonstrate and explain, concurrently.

There is quite a bit more I learned and accomplished through A.I., and hopefully the above examples share with you how my experience in A.I. translates to some of the benefits you'll have enjoyed from my material and courses.

How Else can you Benefit?

My perspective is that NLP'ers can gain immense value from established and constantly-refining models of how people think.  Seems useful, doesn't it?

If you want to learn about specific areas of study above, search the web for resources on the above named areas, like Neural Networks, or Hybrid Systems, etc.

If you'd like exposure to AI -influenced NLP material, you can invest in some home-study materials.  My "Knowledge Engineering" course is the closest detailed home-study course.  Also, "Belief Craft" is a blending of "Knowledge Engineering" and "Sleight of Mouth."  Indirectly, all of my other NLP home-study recordings represent my approach to training and learning NLP, so, of course, I'm biased to think you'll benefit, no matter which titles you pick.

And if you'd like to learn either Knowledge Engineering or Belief Craft, these courses will be scheduled again soon.

Additionally, I'm working on a course currently called "The Refined Mind: AI Inspired Breakthroughs..." which aims to combine some of my most popular multi-channel learning experiences designed to help you become a more gifted thinker and communicator.  Coming soon!

To open a discussion here -- feel free to include comments below -- what area of your thinking and communicating skills, do you think you want or need the most help with?

author: Jonathan Altfeld

You are hereby invited to harness a natural mental process that you've probably never controlled in your past, learn techniques that utilize that process, and then become more effective and influential in every area of your life.

Perhaps in your past you thought improving your influence or changing minds or habits would have been a hard thing to do.   There is an area of study in hypnosis and NLP that explores this very topic and process, and has developed a range of techniques for harnessing it for improved human achievement.  We call it "time distortion."  Milton Erickson studied and utilized it, so Richard Bandler and John Grinder and many other NLP developers explored its use as well.

I have spent a decade and a half exploring, developing, and mastering a range of refinements with time distortion, to the point where I can confidently say... very little of this work gets explained or published on the web.  I use it during training, during coaching, and in a wide variety of business contexts.  And it can be very, very effective.

NLP Time Distortion techniques help lock in changes, expand perceptions, create new possibilities, and change the way the past and/or the future is experienced.  I'm sharing just the tip of the iceberg with this blog post.

Why is Time Distortion such a Potentially Powerful technique for Great Results?

Time Distortion is a profoundly useful set of techniques for consciously affecting how people think, because it makes adjustments to something we all already do naturally and unconsciously, frequently.  We can't not distort time.  And this leads us to experience both positive and negative results from these effects.

We can't not distort time, because our brains are wired to do this automatically.  As poet Arthur O'Shaughnessy wrote, and Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka quoted, "We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams."  Essentially, we are all meaning-makers, every one of us, and how we distort time is often at the roots of how we create and assign meaning.

It's Time Distortion that makes...

• that 3-hour dinner with a loved one feel like it lasted only a split second, and it's over too soon.
• that 3 minute wait at the bank or at an airline counter feel like it takes an hour. 
• those whole 20 years were wasted
• that one single day seem like the most amazing day or moment of our lives.

NLP Practitioners know that we do not have to be at the mercy of this effect, but instead, can harness it and use it more with intention, for ourselves — and others.

How does Time Distortion work?

Here are just some of the principles involved (there are more than just these):

• We assign meaning to all experience.
• Emotion colors our memory of experience.
• When we review experiences, and assign and review meaning drawn from that, it changes our perceptions of those time periods, which enables us to amplify some aspects of memories, and downplay or delete other aspects of memories.
• How we feel when we are doing the above, colors the process further.

NLP Practitioners learn techniques and language patterns for shifting how people distort time from being "at effect" to "at cause."  And in doing so, we change meaning — we change experience — and we can change values, beliefs, habits, and meaning.

One of the most important factors to understand is...

We encode memories differently between a "Future Possibility" and a "Past Experience."

We 'encode' or create sensory representations of these, neurologically, very differently.  We know this thanks to our work with submodalities.  As a result, people draw meaning from these distinctions, differently.

Future Possibilities have no momentum yet, sometimes have less meaning attached to them, and sometimes encounter greater resistance (to name just a few differences).

Past Experiences have momentum as a result of sense-memory and muscle-memory, are easier to repeat, and sometimes have stronger meaning and emotions attached to them (to name just a few differences).

How you refer to these distinctions is usually automatic.  How you store them in your mind is usually automatic.  But this doesn't have to be automatic!

One example of intentional time distortion would be to have you experience some of these things, differently, which may change how you feel and think about them.  Let's show you two ways to do this!

Change A Negative Memory

"Think of something you did in the past that you're not proud of."  This is stated in the present, looking back at the past.  Minimal time distortion.

Now let's add in some time distortion:

"If you went back to some time before that event, knowing then what you know now, you would be about to make a different choice today, wouldn't you?" 

This may sound like it's stated in the present, but there is ample time distortion here.  It takes the occurrence from a negative memory, and puts you back before it, looking forward towards making a better choice in the future.  Diagramatically...

Chances are, you're already feeling better about that memory, knowing you'd choose differently today.  Now, granted, this by itself usually isn't enough time distortion to completely clear a negative memory, but it's a start.  Why?  Because instead of treating something as a "done deal" in the past, it changes your relationship to the memory, reminding you that if a similar choice were to occur in the future, you'd make a more empowering choice then.  It re-enables greater hope.

Build a More Empowered Future

"Think of something you'd love to do in the future but have kept putting off, perhaps because you haven't prioritized it, or have hesitated too long, or don't believe in yourself enough, yet."  This is stated in the present, looking forward at the future.  Minimal time distortion.

Now let's add in some time distortion:

"If you were to fly forwards 6 months, having already done that thing you were hesitating to do in your past, looking back at how wonderful a time you enjoyed getting that accomplished, doesn't it now seem like something you absolutely loved doing, thoroughly benefited from, and can't wait to have done again?"

That way of framing a description involves a lot of time distortion.  It takes a future possibility and encodes it as a past occurrence, playing up the positive meaning of the newly chosen future activity.  It does this by taking the listener out past the choice to have done something, and look back at it as if it's already done.  Diagramatically...

This makes doing it in the future much more likely, and makes it feel much more real, because it's no longer encoded as only a possibility; it's encoded as something to "repeat" (for the first time).  And again, this by itself usually isn't enough time distortion to guarantee taking action in the future on something that someone's been putting off or avoiding beginning, but it's a start.  These are just baby steps with time-distortion techniques.

There is Far, FAR More to explore and use...

This area of NLP skills becomes even more fascinating when you begin to combine these approaches, thereby changing the perception of the past and the future in single sentences.  Your results begin to accelerate when you start to combine them strategically with other Ericksonian language patterns, and with congruent use of vocal tonality and rhythm.  And when you learn to engage your inner editor as well... you can take what speakers like Anthony Robbins take a whopping 20 minutes to accomplish in front of a group... and do it all in a single sentence, with conciseness, elegance, and conversationally hypnotic language.  Y' know. Only if you want to have gotten that good at this.

What will you have needed to have learned, to have turned around that collective set of ineffective communication experiences in your past, back then, into something you'll have done brilliantly, soon?

Study the above example... and then study it more deeply.

Here are just some of the things you can accomplish with time distortion...

• reprogram emotional responses to triggers, both in terms of remembering the past, and in terms of re-encountering past triggers in the future
• define for others in advance what meaning they're going to draw from a future experience, instead of just leaving future interpretations of events up to luck or chance.
• diminish unwanted emotional responses to past or future situations
• amplify desired emotional responses to past or future situations
• cause people to create increasing doubt and uncertainty about a topic or choice moving into the future
• cause people to create increasing certainty and confidence about a topic or choice moving into the future
• reverse old decisions people were certain about, take them back to before the decision, reopen the choice, help them make a better decision, make them more confident about it, and then condition them to be incredibly happy with that choice moving into the future
• and much, much more.

When you finally become ready to step things up further... give us a call!

Author: Jonathan Altfeld

This blog post is dedicated to anyone and everyone looking to measurably improve their business careers, and the date of its publishing marks a major transition for the Mastery InSight Institute towards focusing primarily on helping people become measurably more effective in business, with NLP.

Don't Read This Unless You're Not Yet Getting The Results You Want.

Most people who hear about NLP aren't interested in NLP for its own sake. You're interested in results. There's something you want, that you don't yet have, and you're hungry for it. You're looking for resources that will help you get it. Ideally, these resources must be proven successful, or you won't waste your time or money investing in it.

Yet the world isn't quite so black and white. If they sold promotions in a pill, everyone would be buying them. Your success in business is by its very nature going to be a more sophisticated result of a more nuanced development over time. You cannot escape that fact, so don't try. Instead, your best results will come from experimenting with things other people have found effective.

What's holding you back?

What's been holding you back is either Risk-Aversion, Oversimplification, Confusion, Poor Decision Strategies, or Fear of the Unknown.

1. Risk Aversion: If you try to develop yourself only by reading books, that's a good start, but then you'll be 60 when you make it from your entry level job to a middle management position. If you try to do it by doing what the guy or gal next to you is doing, then you're still not distinguishing yourself from the pack. You can only do it by choosing to invest in yourself, and take managed risks. The most successful people on the planet are voracious students for life, and are notorious for experimenting, taking risks, and learning from failures. If you catch yourself not taking small risks because you're afraid of failure, you've already lost the game. Being smart about evaluating and managing larger risks is important. But if that's caused you to be risk-averse at the lowest levels... then there's no point reading further. You're not ready for this.

2. Oversimplification:  Oversimplification happens when someone can't make sense of complexity on their own without generalizing beyond what's useful.   In other words... how comfortable with complexity are you?  Human beings love their "top 5 lists" and "top 7 lists."  If you regularly need the complexity of the world oversimplified for you, then you're definitely not at the top of your game, yet.  But if you can whittle complex situations down to "top 5 lists" for other people's consumption, that's evidence of the valuable ability to create order from chaos.  That's a valuable leadership trait; the world needs people who can simplify complexity.  The point here... is that if you're complexity-averse... you may as well sign a contract to receive the same salary for the rest of your life with no opportunity for advancement.

3. Confusion:  This nearly always boils down to poor information gathering and/or not having the expertise to evaluate that information (whether the expertise is yours, or consulted externally).  Solving this is easy when and if you're willing to hire someone who does have the expertise and knows what information to gather, or if you know where to go to get that information.  Failure to recognize the symptom of confusion and know what to do with it... is what NLP would refer to as a lack of behavioral flexibility.

4. Poor Decision Strategies:  Chances are if your business career is already moving forward, you've already got at least one if not several good decision strategies, and they probably serve you well in some circumstances.  The more you find yourself in unfamiliar territories, though, the more uncertain most people become about how and when to make decisions.  This sort of uncertainty and lack of direction can lead to career problems.

5. Fear of the Unknown: You need to develop, exercise, and keep exercising, your ability to embrace the unknown, step into what it is that you don't yet know, and explore. Play. Attach a sense of adventure and fun into the process. Because if you only stay inside your “comfort zone”, and aren't open to constantly challenging your own assumptions, then you'll remain stuck inside a lie of gargantuan proportions. “So, keep telling yourself you know it all, or that your position is the right one! That'll do wonders for your career.”

The Top 3 Skillsets You Must Keep Sharpening

Regardless of your Job title or your working environment – whether CEO, Manager, Customer Service Representative, Bank Teller, Entrepreneur, Venture Capitalist, Salesperson, Financial Strategist, Attorney, Doctor, or Lemonade Stand Businesskid – your success and growth always depends upon all of these three skills:

1. The ability to enter a situation and rapidly gather more than enough high quality information to make the best possible decision about an optimal result, moving forward.

2. The ability to (a) determine a strategy or course of action, or (b) identify or gather choices, and then make a decision about how to move forward.

3. The ability to execute steps towards the action or decision you've made, which may include leading, communicating, acting, and more.

The most successful businesspeople in the world – if that group doesn't yet include you – are all better at some or all the above, than you are. Every single one of these... are considered “Soft Skills.”

“Hard Skills” may have taken you from resume to interview, or from phone call to client visit, or from college degree to 1st job. The lists of hard skills are conscious check-lists. But always remember that its the “Soft Skills” that got you the offer letter, or the client, or the raise, or the promotion. It's the “Soft Skills” that led to the other decision maker's “impression” of you. And the factors that contributed to their impression are far more numerous than 7 +/- 2. Hundreds of pieces of information went into that impression, and the most important were your soft skills.

All three of these soft skills can be used to prevent or avoid or eliminate any of the above 5 areas:  Risk-Aversion, Oversimplification, Confusion, Poor Decision Strategies, or Fear of the Unknown.

Yet, amazingly, for the most part, they don't teach “Soft Skills” in college or graduate school.

An entire field of personal and professional development outside of academia has sprung up to help people improve themselves. Some call it the Self-Improvement field, which of course, is ill-named, since when you explore that field, you're still seeking advice from others about how you can help yourself.

If it were truly self-improvement, people wouldn't be quoting authors, reading books, listening to CDs, or attending training courses, to learn from other people.  Call it what it is -- learning from experts to enable growth.  And the better the teacher, the longer the mentorship relationship, the faster and more effectively you grow.

So throw away the myth of self improvement.  Find experts you align with, and learn from them in whatever ways you can.

Naturally, NLP provides profoundly effective tools, techniques and abilities for All Three Skill-sets.

There's not a person on the planet that wouldn't benefit from being able to more quickly and effectively connect with another human being. 

Everyone would become more effective in their careers if they understood themselves more accurately, and could understand more accurately how others think, what drives them, how to communicate with them, and how to motivate and influence them in ethical ways.

NLP in Business – Lessons for the USA from the UK.

I began training NLP in 1997 and rapidly began travelling overseas to the UK, Europe, Canada and Australia. In particular I visited and ran courses in the UK 20 times from 1997 to 2008, and have spoken in London, Richmond, Southampton, Oxford, Milton Keynes, Manchester, Leeds, & Glasgow (just to mention UK cities).

During these training visits, I noticed that there was widespread and increasing acceptance and fascination in the UK for using NLP in business. With the people and groups I met with in the UK, the emphasis was on developing emotional state-management, creative problem-solving, team development, personal excellence, and on effective communication skills. People exhibited an openness to accepting that their unconscious minds were as or more important than their conscious minds.... there was an openness to investing in their own development, and a willingness to play.

Perhaps equally important, the culture of business life in the UK and Europe allowed for and encouraged far more “vacation time” for just about every employee, than those employees' counterparts in the USA enjoy. In the UK, they call it “holiday” time. Employees in the UK can expect 3-6 weeks of holiday per year. Employees in the USA can expect 1-3 weeks of holiday per year, usually no more than 2 until they've become an executive or have been with a company for at least 10 years. Obviously, with less time to spare, people feel pressure to use that free time for relaxing or re-charging. In response, many NLP trainers have felt a need to keep shortening their courses in order to keep getting people in the door. They're short-changing their students – and the field.

The history lesson is only important for the purposes of reminding readers that the “Jedi-like” results written about during the early years of NLP, were mostly achieved by people who'd been trained for months, not from people who attended a 3-5 day workshop and got a piece of paper lying about their supposed abilities. The field is now chock full of people who suck at NLP and who’ve been told they're as good or effective as people who were trained 20 years ago. They're not.  The false idea that a person can get good at these skills in just a handful of days, and somehow magically transport their career into the stratosphere with that low a commitment is unrealistic at best.

I also noticed that in the UK, there are NLP study groups all over the place. In every major UK city, there are multiple NLP study groups. People make a long-term commitment to exercising and developing their skills. That only rarely happens in the USA. There's a catch-phrase in the field that says “the training begins when the training ends.” This is well exemplified in the UK. In the USA, it's ignored. If you want to get damn good at using NLP in any area – especially in business, you should actively seek out post-workshop local study groups that meet a minimum of once a month, preferably once every couple of weeks, for 2-3 hours of active exercises and/or evening presentations from visiting trainers.

By contrast with the emphasis on applying NLP to relationship-building in the UK, in the USA, the emphases has been on being pushy... on influence... on hypnotizing prospects... on 'getting a leg up over someone else...' and on getting one's own way.  That win-lose frame will leak in your communication.  And this, I believe, is why here in the USA... NLP got a bad rap, from some unsavory characters using it badly.

So that stands in stark contrast to the UK, where mentioning NLP on a business card or resume is widely valued and accepted.  It's a badge of honor -- for the right reasons.

Science vs. NLP ?

Academics and social scientists have criticized NLP for years, suggesting that many tenets of NLP are either false or unproven.  Yet in fact, science is increasingly supportive of claims made by NLP as much as 35 years ago.  Visit this blog entry to learn more about this issue (as well as how and why science does support NLP).

The Direct Response Marketing crowd are ALL aware of NLP. Many of them are NLP Practitioners, Master Practitioners, or NLP trainers.

There's an enormous direct response copywriting world out there. Years ago there were just a handful of major names in the business -- Dan Kennedy, Jay Abraham, Gary Halbert, John Carlton, Gary Bencivenga and others.

Now there are hordes of effective Direct Response Copywriters, and they ALL know about NLP, because so many NLP-trained people have been going to their bootcamps and conferences for years. Some use it more effectively than others. Some use it more or less honorably than others.

Additionally, most of the major information product (& internet marketing courses) launches over the past decade have intentionally used NLP to help cause specific emotional response chains in their mailing list readers, leading to increased 'conversion rates' and of course, sales.

Effective use of certain skills, does not necessarily equate to honorable use. Both effectiveness and integrity are what contribute to improving the reputation of NLP in the marketplace.

Real Estate Professionals

Real Estate agencies across the country have studied aspects of NLP -- though it's often done in tiny piecemeal bits (like studying “Sleight of Mouth” for 1 to 2 days). Many real estate agency owners are notoriously cheap when investing in external training; they'll try to get their agents to pay for their own training wherever possible (it's extremely short-sighted of them!).

That said, extremely smart Real Estate Agents will do whatever they must, to place themselves head and shoulders above and beyond their competition.  NLP is an extraordinary tool for enabling that result. 

Competition in the real estate marketplace is often extreme.  Many people today can't earn a living doing just real estate, which is a problem, because to do it well, a realtor often has to be "on-call" 24/7.  But taking another job can make a realtor unavailable to serve their buyers and sellers.  NLP helps you get inside the minds of your clients, connect them to you strongly, and create loyalty and referrals, for all the right reasons.

Attorneys

There are a select few attorneys using NLP in a variety of ways, including making a persuasive court presentation, voir dire, discovery, and more.

However, it is difficult to get attorneys to realize the value of NLP to their practice, because:

• Many attorneys are know-it-alls. When you believe you know it all, or at least, you know better than most other people, why would you ever perceive a course outside your field to be valuable?
• Most attorneys are extremely busy, working 60-70 hours per week, with very little vacation time. How much free time for training can a lawyer take for themselves, when they're that busy?
• It's near impossible to offer them a targeted course on applying NLP to law, because every attorney has a different schedule.  Trying to get multiple attorneys to sit in a room together, long enough to get them really good at NLP, is a virtual impossibility.  This is why most attorneys will never get good at NLP unless or until they can take the time to invest in learning how to do it well.  (and remember, 3-5 days isn't remotely enough time, and home study on one's own isn't remotely effective enough). 
• Most of the attorneys I know who are great at NLP learned it before starting their practice, or over 20+ years, or by making it such a high priority, that they could devote a couple of weeks per year to NLP courses.

Now, all that said, law may be one of the best professions around for using the skills provided by NLP.  But only a select few attorneys will ever get good enough at NLP to realize that potential!

Salespeople:

This is one of the best possible areas where NLP can become extremely useful. 

There are some truly wonderful salespeople out there, and some utter frauds.  Most are on the ethical side, but not yet high performers.  Many less-than-ethical sales people have been forced into certain sales behaviors by demanding and cold-blooded sales managers who've taught them despicable tactics.  We wonder if those tactics evolved entirely because people didn't know there was a better way.

Recently, when shopping for a car, I walked out of 8 dealerships when faced with clear-cut examples of fraudulent sales tactics. That series of unfortunate experiences was fortunately overshadowed after I found the right dealer at the right dealership.

Finding honorable salespeople can be a challenge.  Why did I encounter so many negative sales experiences before finding a positive one?  What if every salesperson refused to work for an unethical sales manager -- and had the skills to identify that during their interview? What if every salesperson were so good at connecting with people and helping them make the best decision possible, that they all earned commissions for the right reasons at the right time? 

If all those things were true... what if that would enable them to (1) take better advantage of every opportunity, (2) cause their happy customers to rabidly send them more future business, and then (3) actually earn far more than they would have done, if they'd adopted a sales process with less integrity?

NLP helps you convey a sense of higher value, that people will attach... to you.

Executives:

Executives need to lead.  They need to be able to influence minds both gently and strongly.  They need insightful and incisive minds.  They need to radiate charisma, listen profoundly well, and effectively communicate a strong shared vision.   They need to be able to establish, simplify and streamline a company culture, a mission, and a public message.  They need to attract the best people to their teams, and retain them by challenging and rewarding those people properly.  They need to find and project confidence in their choices and in their strategic planning.  In short, there's very little in NLP that isn't extremely helpful to executives, because NLP teaches incredibly useful skills for all of the above areas.

Politicians:

Most politicians don't need any reminders of the value of NLP for influencing the masses.  It's been said that Al Gore has had NLP training.  President Clinton got coaching from Anthony Robbins.  NLP books have been seen laying on tables at No. 10 Downing Street (the office of the British Prime Minister).  Many politicians actively study the more hypnotic aspects of NLP, such as the Milton Model hypnotic language patterns, and rhythmic cadence to minimize resistance, and tonal shifts during key moments of a speech.

If you're a politician or planning to run for office soon, and you don't yet know NLP, rest assured:  You're way, WAY behind.  Get yourself registered for as many NLP courses as you can, ASAP.  Your competition probably already has.

Our 2014 Course Line-Up Serves All of the Above.

Our 2014 Business NLP training schedule meets a wide range of business needs, and aims to enable you to exceed others' expectations!  Go ahead and give us a call to ask any questions you may have, and/or register online when you're ready to make plans for your own rewarding professional development!

NLP Sales Wizardry - a 2-day course exploring NLP for Selling Effectively.  You'll learn how to improve in 5 areas:  Generating Leads, Qualifying Prospects, Selling/Convincing, Getting Past or Around Objections, and Closing the Deal.

Speaking Ingeniously - a 5-day course for Compelling and Memorable Presentation Skills.  Need to craft a profoundly powerful message for your audiences?  Want to become more effective from the stage?  There's no better preparation, anywhere.

Own the Interview - a 2-day NLP course for people running interviews, and for people taking interviews.  Got interviews coming up?  Limited time and money to prepare?  This is the course for you.

NLP Business Practitioner - a 10-day course teaching not only all of the foundational skills of NLP, but giving you active practice and preparation using it in a wide array of business contexts.  This is the basis for getting ridiculously good at NLP.  If you're serious about propelling your career, this is the first longer course to take.

NLP Business Master Practitioner (Link is coming soon) - an 11-day course teaching how to use NLP to become the undisputed leader of any situation.  You'll learn how to unpack & rewire beliefs and belief systems.  You'll learn Sleight of Mouth for extremely influential reframing skills, you'll learn advanced metaprograms (personality patterns and preferences) so that you can tune your communication to every listener's unique personality and communication style, and develop an operational real-time creative flexibility for entering, owning, and leading any situation from wherever you found it, to wherever you want to take it.

author: Jonathan Altfeld

There's been a rash of recent studies and publications that directly support NLP, accidentally!

Since NLP's early days in the mid-1970's, its development has been haunted by a lack of properly funded or carried-out research.

This is not because (as some academics have suggested) NLP is just a pseudo-science. 

It's partly because NLP has never claimed to be a science.  Ideally, the use of NLP is a methodology or skill-set that blends assumptions, facts, artistic style, and a sense of experimentation.  The assumptions and facts come from a wide range of fields.  The artistic style comes from an attraction to elegance and commitment to excellence.  The sense of experimentation and exploration come from an assumption that the definition of insanity is the act of repeating an unsuccessful activity over and over again, hoping to get a different result. 

All of these factors have led to hordes of NLP-trained Practitioners and Master Practitioners in every major country in the world, who anecdotally believe NLP has helped them become more successful.  People have achieved extensive success using NLP across a wide array of fields -- initially just therapy, but increasingly into coaching, business, sales, politics, teaching, marketing, medicine, law, and more.

Nearly all scientific funding goes to grant writers.  Most grant writers work for universities and research facilities, in established, traditional fields.  NLP is not a traditional and academically established field, at least, not yet.  The fault of that belongs to the field of NLP.   We have failed to make it more traditional, by running training businesses instead of heavily lobbying to have it taught in schools.  The problem with teaching it in schools has to do with classification.  NLP is best taught as an art, with a partial basis in science.  Lectures are a dry and dead way to learn NLP -- yet NLP is a full body active sport requiring mentorship and feedback loops to help tune behavior and language and style.

It would be more accurate to say that great NLP Practitioners were taught NLP much like someone is taught a martial art -- through practice and refinement.  Poor NLP Practitioners were taught NLP through the delivery of dry information.  You cannot become good at NLP through the transfer of information; you have to get it into the muscle memory, and practice practice practice until you find flexibility and creativity in the activity.

Most scientific grants do not go towards studying an art.  But... we can find ways to do better.

All that said... while direct scientific proof validating specific NLP techniques has not been easily found or funded, we have in recent years seen research that now directly supports many of the early central tenets of NLP.  Here's just a small sampling.

Mirroring... Works.

NLP has suggested for many years that mirroring another person's behavior causes mirroring, and that rapport can be strengthened by mirroring other people. This was laughed at initially. Yet thanks to the scientific discovery of mirror neurons, we now have a scientific basis for understanding how and why most people are more comfortable when mirroring occurs. Mirroring creates a sense of recognition, and recognition creates increased comfort in most people.  According to the following article, published at livescience.com,

Telling you mirroring works, and having you become great at it, are two entirely different things.  You might read this and other sources on mirroring, put it into practice, and think you're doing it well.  You might also not know that you're off in your rhythms, or may only be mirroring above your neck, or mirroring in one way and mismatching in many others.  In short, you don't know what you're not noticing.  To do this elegantly, you need training and honest, positive feedback loops from people who have spent years training themselves to see, hear, and feel more of what most people have learned to ignore.  And then you need a lot of practice.

Also, mirroring directly is now well known in many business circles.  And ridiculously, direct mirroring is now often made fun of or 'toyed with' by those who know it.   What is far more elegant than direct mirroring, and very difficult to catch -- is cross-mirroring or cross-matching.  That's the next level of excellence with creating rapport without being "caught."  And to get good at that, you also need training and honest, positive feedback loops, and a lot of practice.

And to draw your attention to a massively important nuance:  We don't just mirror postures or expressions.  We mirror EMOTIONAL STATES.  This next linked article from the DNA Learning Center, states:

Terms of Empathy: Your Pain is My Pain – If You Play a Fair Game

The most important point in this article, from our perspective, is that mirror neurons aren't only about posture and physiological mirroring. We mirror STATES.  This has enormous implications for how we teach people to lead via state, first.  NLP has a presupposition called “You Go First” and it's never more important than with respect to this lesson, right here.  You need to be able to choose an emotional state, and start feeling it right now, at will -- and feeling it powerfully enough to radiate it.  This is EASY, after you'll have finished taking powerfully effective, and sufficient-duration NLP training.  Not hard, not challenging, but EASY.

Science Backs NLP for “Act As If” and for “You Go First”:

NLP includes another presupposition that if you “Act As If” something is true, it becomes true.  We use this in multiple ways, including in managing our emotional states. If you put a smile on your face, it causes a physiological shift that makes you happier.  We now know and have scientific proof that it also causes a neurological shift – it changes the active blend of neurotransmitters swimming around in your brain.

Saying the above most simply... state doesn't just cause a shift in posture... posture also causes a shift in state.  These two factors are linked, in both directions.  State begets physiology, and physiology begets state.

Amy Cuddy, of Harvard Business School, studied and confirmed that “posing in high-power nonverbal displays (as opposed to low-power nonverbal displays) would cause neuroendocrine and behavioral changes for both male and female participants”.

Power Posing:  Brief Nonverbal Displays Affect Neuroendocrine Levels and Risk Tolerance

In this case, we believe Harvard Business School is getting press for something that's been observed and taught through NLP, since the late 1970's and early 1980's.  Just don't get blinded by their limited focus on Power Poses.  Here's how to apply the above MYOPIC study, more widely in business: 

• If you spend 2-3 minutes physically adopting a more conciliatory posture, you will inevitably close negotiations more quickly.
• If you put a curious expression on your face and lean forward, you will color ANY environment or subject as suddenly becoming more interesting for yourself.
• If you physically shift an aggressive posture to a more relaxed posture, you will become less oppositional or aggressive, which in turn will put others more at ease.
• ... and so on.

Remember, State begets physiology, and physiology begets state.  And you have NLP to thank for that, though you can thank Amy Cuddy's research for helping us to demonstrate that we weren't just spouting nonsense.  We were observing, and sharing, human behavior patterns we (as a field) noticed -- decades ago.

Psychology Today published what we would say is a new version of NLP's "Visual-Kinesthetic Dissociation" technique from 1980, without any attribution. (Updated* 1/9/2014, see bottom of section)

Guy Winch, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist and author of The Squeaky Wheel: Complaining the Right Way to Get Results, Improve Your Relationships and Enhance Self-Esteem.  In that book, there's a passage which is published at the Psychology Today website, entitled "A Simple Mind Trick that Reduces Emotional Pain; How to reduce the pain associated with distressing experiences"

It seems to be increasingly common to read articles in the field of psychology recommending a technique or approach that's been a truly basic part of NLP for decades (after the field has actively resisted NLP as not-Psychology for those same decades).

Here's our approach to the referenced technique for reducing emotional pain:   NLP considers aspects of this mind trick to include one of several elements: (1) simple dissociation, seeing oneself in the picture dealing with the original emotional trigger, instead of seeing the whole experience from our own eyes. Or, (2) using multiple perspectives.  Seeing an event from our own eyes (1st perceptual position), seeing an event from another person's eyes (2nd perceptual position), or seeing an event involving multiple parties from a fly-on-the-wall perspective (3rd perceptual position)

Thanks to the brilliant Eric Robbie for sharing this with me through Facebook:

• The first mention *in print* of the Visual-Kinesthetic Dissociation technique is on pp117-124 of 'They Lived Happily Ever After' by Leslie Cameron-Bandler, published by Meta Publicatons, Cupertino, CA. in July, 1978. Library of Congress card number LC 78-71281. Near the start of that passage, Cameron-Bandler gives credit to her "colleagues" - by which she meant primarily: Richard Bandler, Judith DeLozier, David Gordon, and John Grinder.   Pay special attention to pp118-119 where there is a detailed discussion of two-place dissociation - or "distancing" - and then three-place dissociation, before the transcript of the treatment of a rape victim begins.

UPDATE, 1/9/2014:  A wide array of NLP Practitioners and trainers contacted Guy Winch, and as a result, he has just published another follow-up article on the Psychology Today website, acknowledging a similar technique from NLP coming decades earlier.  And in the interests of 'equal time', so to speak, he published a handful of techniques submitted by NLP contributors.  The follow-up article can be found here:  NLP Experts Speak Out.  Very kind of you, Dr. Winch!

Don't Blame the Traditional Worlds of Psychology and Business for what we might describe as Myopia.

They can't help it.  They're entrenched.  They have a way of doing things.  They have established channels of vetting information and knowledge, and NLP has flown above those channels, expanding and exploring in its own less traditional way.  Yet there are now millions of NLP students and enthusiasts out there still learning it (not all of which are learning it well, of course, which isn't helping matters).

If someone wants to pursue "business as usual..." if they're not willing to look outside the established rules of their field to discover advances already made elsewhere... then that's their prerogative.  Metaphorical myopia is an unfortunate and unnecessary 'condition'... and its easily treated with a little open-mindedness and a sense of exploration.

If you're in Business and Are Considering Learning or Using NLP in Some Way

Decide on your desired outcomes, interview a few consultants or trainers, and just jump in with a small pilot program or sign up for short seminars with several trainers.  The only way to find out for yourself, is to find out for yourself.

If the reason for your hesitation was because there aren't a lot of scientific studies to rely on yet, hopefully this blog entry has provided you a new and more empowered perspective about the field of NLP.  There are scientific studies that are relevant and valuable and supportive;  they're simply often distorted and misinterpreted, because of who paid for the studies and why. 

We don't claim to be a science; we claim to pursue the art of reproducing achievement and excellence, in accelerated ways.

Would you like to discuss our NLP Business/Consulting services?

Would you like to look at our upcoming Business-oriented NLP Workshops?

Would you like to Help the Field?

There is now a new initiative that is worth investing in:  "The NLP Research and Recognition Project."  At the time of publishing this entry, the main site page for that isn't working, but the project is definitely active.  For now, visit here.

author: Jonathan Altfeld

You're a diamond! One of nature's greatest creations. Already gifted, already beautiful.

Every natural diamond has imperfections.  Our imperfections make us more interesting to each other!

Our inconsistencies may, however, draw unwanted focus.  They may detract some people from being able to see your overall beauty. You can't do much to change other people's filters fast... but you can smooth out your rough spots and draw more attention to your amazing gifts!

Every diamond, no matter how beautiful it is already, may benefit from having new facets carved, to give people a completely new perspective.

I know there are some who would disbelieve this about themselves, or at a minimum, find it challenging to believe it.

Yes, it is true that some people are beset by huge challenges they can't seem to get around or past.  And that doing so may have felt, or feel, insurmountable.

• Perhaps you're stuck in a job you don't like, in a career that isn't developing as fast as you'd want.
• Perhaps you've been trying for years to fix a difficult relationship, and repeatedly cycling through dysfunctional acts or communication -- or you blame your partner but that's not working either.
• Or maybe you don't know why you're not attracting the relationship or the business you've been wishing for, and don't know what to do to break free of those patterns?
• Can't ever get your kids to do what you want them to do?
• Are you the idea genius who never seems to bring those ideas to fruition?  Worse: is it always someone else's fault that you're not living the life you imagined for yourself?

None of that means you're not a genius inside, somewhere, with something.  All it means is that you're currently practicing less-than-useful habits.  Habits you learned at some time in the past, which obviously served some purpose at the time you developed them.  But you can change your perspective... you can begin to see things differently... and you can build new and more useful patterns of behavior, language, and, of course, results!

And I'm not asking you to blindly believe.  I'm not saying "the secret is..." and then pointing at the idea of 'just believe, and make it so!'  Instead, I'm suggesting some pragmatic ways to move forward.

You Are a GENIUS... possibly waiting to be discovered!  ...Possibly waiting to fire up that genius into action.

As Einstein said, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

Well, you personally are closer to Einstein's level of genius than you may have ever thought possible.

1. Geneticists would say you share 99.9% of your DNA with geniuses like Albert Einstein, or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. (While up to several hundred genes may be different).

2. Genius is now heavily associated with high levels of synesthesia.  Synesthesia is the natural link between senses.  "I see what you're saying."  In many geniuses, this seems to have emerged naturally and automatically. But... guess what: It's TRAINABLE!

3. Howard Gardner has been studying "the Theory of Multiple Intelligences” for years. His work currently suggests there are 9 intelligences, and he estimates that there may be many more yet to be found. Perhaps yours is waiting for you or others to discover your personal genius?

So... if you're so close to genius, how come you don't feel like one? Or feel like one, consistently?

And there's the rub:

The problem separating you from genius may simply be: Consistency and Systematization.

You may not yet have direct control or influence over your natural genius.  To enhance this, consider taking NLP training.  Great training can be immensely helpful for finding and enhancing your natural genius, as well as finding new ways to be brilliant!

To become more consistent, you first need to systematize.

To systematize your behavior, language, performance, and results... you can best begin by becoming more aware of what you're doing, what can be improved, what can be added, and what needs to be eliminated.  Part of this involves learning great techniques, or strategies of genius and success.  You can do this with books and DVDs etc.  But then, it's also essential to then refine those techniques with feedback loops that involve information OUTSIDE your own head.  It's not just a bonus -- it's essential, if you want to get beyond adequate, beyond mediocre.

Let me give you an example. You are already GIFTED at what we in NLP refer to as “Anchoring.”  

You might respond with, "What?  GIFTED?  The road to NLP greatness is littered with crappy anchoring examples -- and youtube provides amazing evidence of this.  So how can you say I'm already gifted?"

Anchoring is the process by which we all create associations between stimulus, and response. At its simplest level, think “Classical Conditioning.” Pavlov's dogs, etc. Think of anchoring as Classical Conditioning on steroids. And you've already been doing it all your life.

• Depending on how strongly you've connected with a significant other, you've probably anchored your spouses or lovers to go into a loving or lustful state (response) when hearing your voice or seeing your face (stimulus).

• If you've been repeatedly disappointed by your boss's reviews of your performance in the past, you may have anchored disappointment to the arrival of your boss.  That emotional state will pollute further exchanges, and could negatively affect further reviews.

• Depending on your past performance making cold-calls, you've anchored nervousness, fear, excitement, or motivation (response) to the idea of picking up a phone to make a cold call (stimulus).

• Depending on where you went to school as a kid, you may have anchored WOW (response) to hearing a bell ring at 3pm (stimulus) whenever you're in a classroom. (What if the same bell rang at home at 3pm while you were watching a movie on tv?)

• What response have you anchored to the act of stopping after engaging in an unwanted habit, like eating too much chocolate or staring at an empty tub of ice cream, or empty package of cookies?

There is no end to the associations we create in our minds, naturally, automatically (or accidentally), through normal daily living.

With NLP, we catch a glimpse that we can begin doing this more intentionally. 

We can, in fact, use anchoring to more systematically influence others to live better lives, to perceive us as more valuable, to make a sale more likely, to increase trust and credibility.  And guess what... it works – it works insanely well – and it only works when it's done artfully and well.  Again, check on youtube.  It's usually not demonstrated well.

I believe I do train it well – because I learned a lot about anchoring from my first NLP trainer Rex Sikes, and then became a voraciously experimental communicator.

In the cases of our less useful behaviors and habits and emotional responses -- we might want to learn how to associate different responses to those stimuli.  And we can.  We could, for example...

• Anchor a disinterested (or disgusted) response to the idea of the first spoonful of ice cream or that first cookie.  Or the 2nd or the 3rd while still feeling mostly an empty stomach.  So that you either don't start, or stop after a bite or two.
• Anchor a fabulous and WOW state to the idea of saying NO to that ice cream or cookie.  So that you feel great about having said no!
• Anchor curiosity and ambition to the idea of your boss inviting you in for a review... so that when your boss next sees you, he starts to associate a positive upbeat personality to his memories of your face.  It can't hurt, and it can only help.
• Anchor the smell of money or the enjoyment of hearing yes to the feel of the phone in our hands... so that when we pick up the phone to make a cold call... our voices radiate with fascination with "how can I help someone immensely, today?"

And, I also believe that everyone who hasn't yet taken NLP training... are geniuses already at anchoring. Yet... inconsistent geniuses. In other words, unconsciously a genius, sometimes.  And sometimes, not so much.

So aside from the cases where people aren't training anchoring well, how come sometimes NLP enthusiasts see or hear about anchoring, want to learn it, and are then occasionally not as good at is as they want to be, initially?

Because...

Learning is NOT Linear.  So, to reach greater consistency...

To reach greater consistency, you need to drill and repeat your successful systems, with feedback loops, until you get past being dissociated to the act you're practicing.  That is the required investment for reaching greatness at anything.

Every time you take something you were naturally good at, and unconsciously good at, some of the time... and make it conscious... you pollute the act. The moment you go meta to it, initially, you're no longer fully immersed in and invested in the action. In the doing. And performance suffers.

So even when it's trained exceedingly well... initially... performance is often poor... and what you need to make the leap between poor initial results and WOW results... is fine tuning, coaching, and a wildly fun, supportive environment, where you can feel free to make mistakes without being judged for it (or judging yourself). And that fun... combined with coaching (feedback loops), and repetitious drills... helps you find your natural genius. Here's an example of anchoring, in action, from my recent NLP Practitioner co-training with Rex Sikes back in November 2012.

Sample 1:  Jonathan Anchors Yes/No, Rex recommends systematizing behavior!  4.5 Minutes of Rex & Jonathan.

Sample 2:  Evidence that Anchoring... Works!  2 raucously funny minutes!

I hope you enjoyed the samples.  We're committed to helping each person emerge into the storyline they were meant to live!

For some of you, continuing to read articles like this can help fill in the missing planks on your bridge to greatness.  And that's great!

For others who feel they need something more than that... or they're finally tired of playing the same cycle over and over again:

• If you're dreaming... and idle...
• If you're lonely and don't yet feel like you have the tools and beliefs to find someone wonderful...
• If you're not happy with the way you're treating others, like your spouse, or your kids...
• If you're not in the career you want or need to be in -- the one your heart tells you that you need to pursue...

Then perhaps you need more than just scouring the web for ideas.  Perhaps you need to shake things up and start on a new path!  If that's true, then what do you, personally, dream about doing, becoming, enhancing, eliminating?

Anchoring is just one of many skills that can help you turn things around and establish entirely new patterns that will help you get the results you've been wishing for.  There are pragmatic and measurable skills that await you, and it takes immersion to get great at these.

Come join us!  Get in touch!  We'd like to help you find more natural and consistent access to your own genius! 

Explore our upcoming NLP workshops, and find a fast-track to reaching your goals!

Author: Jonathan Altfeld

Goodbye 2012, and hello 2013! 

That time has come again to ritually cap a year gone by... and, perhaps more intentionally, choose how you want your next year to go.

Towards that end, I'd like to share with you a way that you can establish patterns in a new direction that will help you to stay on track towards those New Year's Resolutions.

A 5-Step Process for Turning Resolutions Into Successfully Achieved Outcomes.

Step 1:  Once you decide what you want to achieve, whether it's reducing smoking, or getting fitter by dropping excess weight, or boosting your closing ratio, earning more money, etc... begin by figuring out realistic milestones.  Determine partial goals on the way to larger goals.  Decide what level of results you'd like to achieve, by what dates, and at what rates. 

Step 2:  Develop a way of measuring and tracking that progress, daily, that ensures you continually remind yourself how much and how far you're progressing.  

Here's an example of what has worked well, for me!  I wanted to set up a spreadsheet that somehow tracked everything I wanted to know, about how quickly (or not) I was making progress from a starting point, to an end-goal.  I wanted to know, every day, how many days left I had, until specific known upcoming events came along.  So I created something like the following.

And, it worked!  I used that to track my progress during my Juice Fast in 2012.  Helped me to drop 70 pounds last year. 

What makes the above work?  It's a form of self-accountability.  And it's a daily reminder of where we are in our overall plan.

Every piece of literature you can find on goal setting & achieving suggests you need to know where you're currently at, where you want to get to, and have some way of measuring your progress.  The above chart is one way of providing you all that information, in a daily snapshot.  And it reminds you "here's exactly how long you have, from this day, until when you want that result to be achieved."  Each day that comes along, you'll have reminders like...

• It's 35 days until that family reunion.
• It's 72 days until that trip to the Bahamas.
• It's 112 days until the date of that half-marathon I want to run.

You could even add or change columns that showed how many pounds you still had to lose to get to each dated milestone.  Or how few cigarettes you wanted to use on that day (if you were stopping smoking slowly).  Or how many inches you still wanted to remove from your waist.  Or how many more dollars closer to your sales goals you want to reach.  Or how many new subscribers you want to your lists.  Or how many more books you'd like to sell.  Or how many new friends you want to make to expand your network (whether business or personal).

You get to choose how to set your spreadsheet up!

What are you waiting for? 

Step 3:  If you know (MS) Excel, or (Apple) Numbers, or (LibreOffice) Calc, It should take you less than an hour to set up a spreadsheet like the above, and customize it to your specific needs.  If you know these programs WELL, it should take you about 5-10 minutes to set up such a spreadsheet, because formula short-cuts can speed up all the numeric counting for you.

Step 4:  Print out your tracking progress spreadsheet, and put it somewhere you're going to see it every day.  Allow no excuses here.  Put it on the wall by your scale.  Put it on your refrigerator, or your kitchen cabinet.  Tape it to the side of your monitor, or under your keyboard (sticking out to the side).  Post it next to your vision board (if you have one) at home or in the office.  Have a pen right by it, that stays there.  Keeping a high frequency of visibility is part of what keeps you accountable.  By the way, don't do this as an "app" or a smartphone or tablet document.  Then it would be too easy to close or put away out of view.  Do this "old school."  Paper & pen.  Seen multiple times a day.

Step 5:  Every day, review where you're at, measure your progress, and write in the relevant new details for the current day.  You'll find that before ONE week is out -- if you do this religiously for 1 week, you find yourself starting to look forward to this little ritual!  It'll become a habit with very little additional motivation!

I hope you get immense value from the suggestion above.  Let me know how this works for you, and/or how I can support you through a more prosperout 2013! 

This came from solving a client's challenge!

I've had many coaching clients that kept putting their goals off.  Two in particular that were always 6 months away from achieving their goal.  One of these had a goal of finishing a book.  He was always six months away from finishing his book (which meant, he was always 10 pages into his book, never getting any further).  I designed the above system for him.  And it worked!  Unfortunately I can't quote the author's name, because -- feel free to enjoy the irony at my expense -- he's in the self-improvement industry.  How does someone who's supposed to be an expert at creating change admit he couldn't get his book started for 5 years?

And then, I did what in NLP we consider pretty important:  We "apply to self."  And 70 lbs down, I can attest, the above simple method contributes significantly to success.

Could I be the right Coach for you?

If you think you might need help with achieving specific challenges, did you know that I have coaching clients that regularly call me for 15-30 minute (pro-rated) bits of targeted coaching?  When they're stuck thinking through a challenging problem, I help them get unstuck in minutes, moving forward again, with an extremely useful and new solution.  I help distill the most relevant and important criteria for making decisions, and can rapidly and effectively identify what's distracting you unnecessarily and why.  Then the right decisions usually become obvious.

Providing help as needed without requiring commitments is one of the ways I build strong loyalty from coaching clients. 

In what ways are you not moving forward, that's costing you (or could cost you)?  If you're in a stuck place and don't care one way or the other, then coaching is an expense, not an investment. 

By contrast, if you're stuck... and getting unstuck and moving again fast would prevent losses or other costs, then coaching is an investment, not a cost.  In some circumstances, after doing a simple cost-benefit analysis, coaching is the only smart choice.

Author: Jonathan Altfeld

Have you ever felt like you were absorbing lots of information effectively, and then... when called upon to recall that information later... drew a blank?

Did you ever master something complicated over years of effort... only to get to a point where the simplest details of those skills were out of your conscious reach, yet... you could still USE the relevant skills behaviorally or masterfully?

Has an NLP Practitioner or Trainer ever asked you "Think of a time when you felt _____...", named for you a relevant emotion from your past, and then you found you couldn't recall such a specific time (even though you KNOW you had to have had such an experience?

These problem-ridden moments are not a useful or helpful cause for making judgements about the quality of your overall memory skills. In other words, failure to recall information or memories like the above situations, does not mean you have a bad memory.

To understand these experiences more accurately, you need to separate "memory storage" skills from "memory recall" skills.

The people with the most celebrated memory skills combine more effective information-storing techniques, with more effective (and relevant) questions.

And if you're not in the above small category of lucky people with both great information storage skills, as well as great recall skills, then you're among the majority of people, who must decide either to be satisfied with our memory skills... or work to improve them.

So let's look first at:

Memory Storage Methods.

Most of us have no idea how we remember and organize our memories. Nearly all of us do this unconsciously. Human beings are extraordinary learners (given effective learning experiences, motivation, fascination, good teachers, great feedback loops, etc). We acquire new knowledge and

skill with some ease, granted - with variations from person to person. We also have preferences for how we store our information. From an NLP perspective, most of how we store information can be gleaned from our "metaprograms." How we "sort" for information is usually related to how we store information.

So... without going into excessive detail in a blog entry about metaprograms, they're like filters. And here are some common filters (or sorting methods) as they pertain to memories:

• Time (some people store and access memories along a timeline)

• People (some people store and access memories associated with other people they know)

• Things (some people store and access memories based on the things they buy or keep)

• Emotions (some people store and access memories based on emotional triggers)

• Places (some people store and access memories based on locale, or cities, or landmarks)

There are more "sorts" (e.g. sorting methods), but these are among the most common ones.

Also, some people have the ability to store their memories or information using more than one sort. It's quite common for this to happen.

The computer metaphor version of this... is like a database. After all, databases were created by programmers to simulate how human beings store and access memories. It's no surprise we can use one as a metaphor of the other. So... we can have a great database full of gold, but if we don't understand the "index" being used (i.e., how the information is organized & sorted), we'll never be able to mine that gold.

Let's say someone asks you a question like "Hey, do you remember that guy "Jim, from Cincinnati?" How easily or not do you think you'll remember Jim if you store your memories based on time? If you don't store your memories based on people, or based on places, you probably won't remember Jim unless or until someone adds to the question "you know Jim, we met him last August." Until you have that one key piece of information that matches your preferred memory storage and sorting methods... the memory is unavailable. Now, knowing you met Jim in August, the memory of Jim comes back, images stream forth, and you'll suddenly remember Jim well.

So. If you somehow picked up the idea that your “memory wasn't that great,” you can throw out that limiting and inaccurate belief in favor of something more empowering for yourself, because the truth is: Your memory is fine; as soon as you begin to understand how your own sorting patterns work, you can move past memory challenges for some rather surprising results, and finally discover that your own world-class memory has been there all along... just waiting for you to discover how to use it more effectively!

How to Test for Your Own Memory Storage Method(s) / Pattern(s)

Simply ask yourself some questions using each of the above filters as your organizing method (and there are others beyond the above starting list).

To test whether you sort memories by time, ask yourself questions like:

(NOTE: Do not treat these questions as a complete diagnostic tool. They are a subset of examples, an incomplete guide as to how we go about evaluating someone's memory sorting preferences. They're labeled Q1..7 only so that we can refer to specific questions accurately and briefly.)

• Q1: "Last Thursday afternoon, where was I or what was I doing?"
• Q2: "4 Years ago this month, what was my most important project?"
• Q3: "12 years ago & 6 months ago, who was my best friend at the time?"

Rapid answers to questions like the above indicate a strong time sort.

To test whether you sort by people, don't ask about time first. Try this:

• Q4: “Name all of your lifetime best friends in any sequence. “
• Q5: “And after you have the list, name the date-ranges relevant for each friend." (If you can only do this sequentially through time, then either you sort by time, or by era).

To test whether you sort more by emotions than time, ask this:

• Q6: "Where in your body would or do you feel fascination (or, name any other emotion)? And once you do feel it, when was the last time you felt this?" (Emotion-sort, primarily)

If you can answer Q6 faster than the next question, you may have a strong emotion-sort:

• Q7: "When was the last time you felt fascinated?" (Time-sort).

If you can answer Q7 more easily than Q6, then you sort memories more by time, than by emotion.

So, hopefully this has illustrated some ideal methods to use to determine someone else's memory sorting patterns. When communicating with coaching clients, it's worthwhile ensuring not a single moment is wasted. So if you're a coach, you'd better shape up your questions and realize that a client's lack of ability to come up with matching memories says as much or more about the way you phrase your questions, as it does about their history. And if you're a client of a coach, you'd want your coach to ensure the questions they ask are well designed for your ears, to get rapid and effective answers.

While the above questions are not a complete list, they are examples of some of the exact methods and protocols we use in personal coaching sessions to determine someone's memory sorting patterns.

So, presuming you have some great clues about how to figure out your own memory-sorting & storage methods, now we need to know more about how facts and memories are recalled and accessed.

Memory-Recall questions, for ourselves

Chances are, you're amongst the majority of people who use the same memory-recall sorting methods that we use to store our own facts and memories.

Most of us are fortunate, in that IF we use time to organize our memories, then to remember things both consciously and unconsciously, we tend to ask ourselves time-based questions. If we use places as our primary sorting method for storing memories, we think first about places, to access further information we memorized when we were living in or visiting those places. Another way of saying this is that our storage and recall methods are congruent. We use the same circuits, for input, and output! This is very important, and useful.

If you're not one of those people... then you may have difficulty remembering many, many, many things - even things you want to remember for your own purposes. Such a person will (not may, WILL) benefit massively from getting some private coaching from someone who understands all these issues and can help them to develop new long-term memory skills and techniques.

By contrast, if a stroll down memory lane is an easy frequent activity for you, and you can often remember addresses, telephone numbers, birthdays, names, etc., then you can rest easy that you probably don't have anything to worry about in terms of your own memory management.

Memory-Recall Questions asked by Others of Us:

Have you ever heard an NLP Trainer ask "Think of a time when you felt Powerful!" ? If so, did it ever not work for you? No matter how hard you tried, was it impossible to access a matching memory?

We've seen and heard this result happen time & time again -- in online chatrooms, and during breaks at courses we deliver, when people sometimes complain about other trainers' courses.

If someone asks you a question that attempts to get you to recall a memory, and you aren't able to recall such a memory, all it potentially means is that (a) you don't have such a memory - which is ridiculous if the question is similar to "have you ever felt powerful before," or (b) the questioner asked a question using a sorting method that doesn't match your memory-storage preferences.

Once in a while, a person presumes erroneously that it's their own fault. Perhaps they even conclude that there's something wrong with them, or their brain... or possibly that NLP doesn't actually work. None of these conclusions are remotely close to the truth.

If you store your memories by time and someone asks you to think of a time when you felt powerful, then unless you've felt weak all of your entire life, you WILL be able to follow their instruction, relatively quickly. Count on it.

If you sort through and remember your memories using places (as a primary organizing index) and someone asks you to "think of a time when you felt powerful," you might not be able to answer quickly or at all. The memory... which will still be buried in your mind through 'pointers' like what city you were in where (not when) you last felt that emotion... is not easily accessible through a time-sort. They would have to ask you "Think of a place where you felt powerful" and the memory would be rapidly available.

In NLP we call these types of questions "elicitations." We often ask questions that are designed to bring students (or coaching clients) to revivify emotions from past experiences. We do this because we operate from a belief that says "everyone already has the resources they need, inside them." In other words, everyone's capable of solving their own challenges, but for whatever reason, they just don't yet see how to access their own resources, yet. As NLP Practitioners, we act as guides to help people access their own existing brilliance and ability. We help elicit older more resourceful memories and skills and emotions... and help people bring those past resources into current challenges. And sometimes we teach a few new techniques to enable further progress.

Flexible, smart Practitioners & Trainers understand that they MUST elevate above the typical "think of a time when" types of questions. These are “elicitation questions,” and when they don't work, it is NOT a comment either about the efficacy of NLP, or about the person answering. It's a comment that the Practitioner or Trainer needs to change the elicitation questions they're asking, immediately.

It amazes us that there are even some trainers and practitioners out there that, when students or clients don't come up with memories in response to the typical elicitation questions, will actually blame others for having poor memory storage methods. In such a case... their own inflexibility as a leader is the primary culprit. Avoid these pretenders at all costs in favor of a true professional.

Regarding the Challenges Described Initially

If you know you absorb lots of information effectively, but have challenges with recall... chances are your methods of storing information may not match your methods of recalling information. In which case, use some of the insights from this article to (a) determine where the differences are, or (b) change the way you organize new information, or (c) change the way you ask yourself questions to sort through your existing knowledge and memory!

If you've ever mastered something complicated over years of effort, then found details outside of conscious reach, yet masterful demonstration still exists... rest easy. This is what happens when you reach unconscious competence in your learning. This is actually normal, and is evidence of reaching high performance levels! To regain conscious access to the details, you'll have to review the material again from the beginning (don't worry, it's far faster the 2^nd time). Only after learning something twice can you have both conscious competence and unconscious competence concurrently (which, in my opinion, == mastery).

If "Think of a time when you felt _____" didn't work for you... rephrase the question to include your own natural sorting preferences, instead of just a time-sort! i.e. say to yourself “think of a place where...” or “think of a person who caused me to feel...” or “think of things that make me feel...” etc!

Times to Use These Lessons?

If you're ever given a high pressure test... and you need to do as well as you possibly can... recognize that sometimes tests ask questions that use less-useful sorting methods than we ourselves use. Learn to identify what sorting patterns you use.. . what sorting patterns the tests use... and how to translate in your mind from one to another! You'll be able to come up with better answers more quickly!

If you're in an interview... and you're either asked questions that you're not coming up with answers to... OR you realize that your interviewee/interviewer uses a different sorting process than you use... change how you ask your questions! Get different & better answers!

If you're speaking to groups... and you want everyone in the room to access memories that are resourceful... ask the same elicitation questions multiple times using different sorting methods! (Make sure to separate these questions with the word “or,” so that people know that all is well, as long as they can successfully answer only one of these questions!

And the list goes on... and on... and on!

These are critical skills for knowing how to gather better information from ourselves and others!

By Jonathan Altfeld

Want Additional Help Beyond the Above Self-Help?

Private coaching is available to help with these questions and issues. If you prefer self-help to coaching, get as far as you can with the above on your own, and see how you do! If either you'd like to go beyond what you accomplish on your own, ask Jonathan Altfeld for some private coaching via phone or skype (or in person, if you're within driving distance of Tampa, FL).  Initiate a conversation, here!

In today's entry, I'll start sharing examples of effective NLP techniques used in presentations.  TED is an organization that hosts extraordinary conferences wherein extraordinary people give short presentations about amazing ideas & results, in the worlds of art, science, music, performance, and more -- TED is "Ideas worth spreading."

Remember that NLP is primarily about the replication of excellence.  And some NLP classes teach more empowered ways of being, some, more empowered ways of communicating.  So my comments here will be amongst the easiest to share via text.  There is MUCH more than can be shown and then trained and tuned, in person.  This is, in my opinion, by far the most valuable coaching, but... we're limited to one way communication here.

The people whose talks I will share here and comment on, aren't necessarily aware of NLP at all.  Sometimes it's obvious when they are.  Sometimes not.  That's not the point, though.  The point is to observe examples of communication and behavior that contribute to the effectiveness of that communication and behavior -- and from my perspective, I'll be focusing on that which either IS an NLP technique, or that which mimics such, and is simply a good example of an NLP technique, whether or not it was intended as such.

So, on to the first of my video comments.  I don't know how long this video will be visible on the web and thus embeddable here, but for now... here we go:

This is fabulous.   Even aside from the great environmental value.   If you sort primarily by content, you'll be wowed by the simplicity and power of the specific message.  You're wowed by the what.  But that doesn't and won't EVER help you to elevate above the message and learn from the specific methods the speaker is using.

As an NLP Modeler and trainer, and as a coach of public speakers, I'm sorting for process.  And while I can be wowed by the WHAT, I'm primarily sorting for, and even MORE wowed, by the how.

Trainers, speakers, and NLP enthusiasts of all kinds, should study this 3 minute video to see & hear excellent examples of:

• Anchoring
• building an anchor chain
• embedded commands
• repetition for somatic learning
• future pacing & post hypnotic suggestion
• ...amongst other things.

Joe's presentation isn't perfect, but it's *extremely* effective.

Perfectionists should watch this and realize... you don't have to be perfect to be great.

The one thing this presentation is missing (at least in the recording; it might have been delivered to the audience before the starting edit point) is a values-based headline that gets us frothing at the mouth in curiosity for the right reasons, BEFORE the demonstration.  A values based headline also "opens the right box" in listeners' minds... ensuring maximal audience retention and adoption of the message, as well as ensuring action is taken later.

For those who are fascinated by my comments above, I teach all of these skills and more, for public speakers with every level of existing background from newbie up to keynote speakers... at my Speaking Ingeniously course.  (Which is coming up in Orlando very soon!)

More video reviews will come soon...

Regards,

- Jonathan