Greeks, Lizards, Chimps and Mr. Logic! 31 Mar 2010

OK,  I admit it –  it’s not real  easy to see what Aristotle, a lizard, a chimp and Mr. Logic have to teach you about how to use your NLP skills; what you might do to improve your relationships, communicate more effectively and influence the people in your life?

…and it’s not all about good times — with the “professional persuaders” warming up there influencing muscles as another election looms over us and we’re subjected to a barrage of vague abstract “Spin” – what can you do to tune up your “bulls***” detectors?

Tonight we took on the “thorny” subject of how to communicate, influence and persuade people ethically and effectively in everyday life.

NLP has a whole raft of tools and techniques to help you do this and my outcome for this session was to introduce a simple 3 stage model that I’ve developed that will ensure that your messages are more likely to be accepted.

The 3 simple steps of this model allow you to use all of your NLP skills in a structured way that flows naturally with how your 3 brains keep you alive, happy and sane ;o)

We could call this the Anth’s “Evolution Model” of persuasion, but, Aristotle was teaching this 2000 years before Darwin, Bandler or Grinder…

…and he just noticed what was going on around him – Don’t you think it’s amazing what you can notice if you keep your eyes peeled, ears tuned and others senses open?

If you were there last night don’t be too suprised if you begin to discover new things about what’s going on around you, because as you practise what you’ve begun to learn this evening, you are going to be noticing more than you expect.  Maybe they’ll make a movie about it one day – I wonder what movies you’re already playing a role in, do you?

Keep enjoying what you’re noticing in the people around you and I’ll look forward to seeing you for some more laughing and learning next time.

Anth.

The Cloud – Submodalities, metaphor and language 24 Feb 2010

I was rather looking forward to tonight’s session, I’d been told it was on the “ The Cloud” technique and being a bit of a dreamer I thought lying around staring at clouds could be quite pleasant.

But no, Alan had decided to introduce this apparently simple technique as not only a great technique in its own right, but also as a fun way to review submodalities, metaphor and presuppositions in language.

(Alan did attribute the Cloud to its developer – but I’ve currently forgotten the guy’s name – so apologies to the nameless one – I will add his details as soon as I get them)

Anyway, back to the evening after a brief review or introduction to submodalites and metaphor we soon got to the meat of the evening “The Cloud” – which turned out to be a very simple technique which really helped open up people’s thinking to new choices in their lives.

Judging by the laughter in the room and the feedback afterwards we had all kinds of clouds appearing and disappearing in the room as people let go of old ways and practiced designing and building new resources for themselves.

Were the clouds real? Who can tell?

But real or not it they certainly worked and it’s really easy to do too

Next time (31^st March) we’re going to be looking at NLP approaches to working with difficult people – not that you know any of those of course

…and no it doesn’t involve lying down staring at clouds.

Bye for now,

Anth.

Gathering Useful Information – 27/01/2010

Recovering specific information to clarify what is being communicated is crucial in all aspects of human interaction and agreeing and delivering agreed outcomes.

Tonight we began with the communication model and filters then focused in on on getting to grips with really listening to what was being  said – and more importantly for this evening what was missing so that we could really understand and picture what the other person was describing.

By the end of the evening most people were surprised at just how powerful even these “basic” techniques were in clarifying what the other person was really saying and how useful taking the time to do that could be.

We finished off the evening with working with nominalisations and how easy it can be to free ourselves and others from the “stuck” mindset that can result when these go unchallenged.

Another fun evening and I’m already getting great feedback from people about how they’ve used what they’ve learned to good effect in therapy and business, which is kind of the point of the group really ;o)

Anth.

7 Word Reframe and Triple Inductions – 30th September 2009

Reframing is a well-known technique for helping people change and to overcome objections etc. but this little know 7-word reframing tool proved to be a powerful tool for creating inductive change.

But with only 7 words, how could you do that?

What if you only had one word?

We finished off by embedding in the changes and insights fro mthe evening with a creative use of triple induction – if you haven’t tried it yet, give it a go – I think you’ll like the results.

 

Anth.

Listening for Values, Calibration and Feedback based Selling – 26 Aug 2009

Values are the labels we give to what is really important to us, and people are often to use formal procedures to discover other people’s values.

Tonight, we combined sensory acuity and listening skills to identify and then feed back values conversationally – but, what would you buy if the seller could identify exactly what you wanted, and they had everything in stock?  (an in-joke for those who were there on the evening – sorry ;o)

Anth.

Clean Langauge 29 Jul 2009

Another slight depature away from NLP, but hey who cares about the “rules” anyway, Clean Language is a fabulous series of questions which can really empower people with new emergent knowledge that they discover for themselves, and that was only this evening,  imagine the benefits of developing genuine mastery through practise, where would that lead you?

 

Anth.

Creating Deep Metaphors 24th June 2009

Deep metaphors can seem a bit of a mystery, and maybe that’s one of the points of using them – Still, having some simple structures to allow you to create transofrmational deep metaphors is a good thing, and by the end of this evening most people were amazed how easy they’d found it.

Maybe word weaving is easier than you thought?

Anth

Story Telling 29th April 2009

Story telling a a powerful and engaging tool for change and not everyone knows how to release their inner creative, and let their mind create powerful stories on the fly.

 

We’d decided that relaxed natural story telling was our desired outcome this evening, as we worked/played and laughed our way through a whole series of exerices designed to get our creative juices flowing as we switched over to allowing our minds to weave free flowing and enthralling stories – or was it just an excuse for a night of laughing?

 

Anth.

Anyone else enjoy games?

Richard was the brave soul who stepped up to the plate for tonight’s 3 part session and from the positive feedback I received after the session he did a great job )

Before jumping in to see how New Code could help us to create new “content free” resourceful states, Richard explained that John Grinder created New Code to address the issues he saw with NLPers doing great work for clients, but struggling to apply it well in their personal lives.

Would you like to use NLP even more effectivly in your life? Yes, then read on…

It’s a kinda magic; or is it?

Inspired by a recent trip to group clairvoyant show to study cold reading, we decided to take a look at sensory acuity and calibration this evening.

 

While this is one of the first things most people learn on any NLP training, it’s something that is worth continuing practice because as Richard Bandler apparently said – 95% of NLP is information gathering.

 

It’s still amazing to me how little information we take in as we operate accoring to our exisiting “maps”

 

As usual in order to get the most out of the evening we mixed up discussion and learning with lots of practical exercises beginning with some basic sensory acuity exericses to une in our major senses.

 

The later exercises developing combinations of senses before moving into the last couple designed (made up on the way in the car – yes, I do seem to have perciever tendencies) to be directly applicable in everyday life – interviews and meeting and greeting )

 

Thanks for another great evening; it’s great to have such a laugh with good people while developing our skills.

 

Bye for now,

 

Anth.

 

PS:  …and nobody spotted the shirt switch )

 

If you haven’t seen it already try this…

 

http://viscog.beckman.illinois.edu/flashmovie/15.php

 

This link takes you to the basketball video from an experiment by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris. When viewing the video, try to count the total number of times that the people wearing white pass the basketball. Do not count the passes made by the people wearing black.

 

When you’re done, visit the main lab web site for more information. Please note that this video is copyrighted and is available on this web site for viewing purposes only — it may not be downloaded, copied, saved or used for any other purpose. If you are interested in using this video in any other context, it is available on DVD from Viscog Productions, Inc. Please see the link below. (Note that the University of Illinois is not in any way affiliated with Viscog Productions and this link does not represent an endorsement of Viscog Productions or its products by the University.)