Posts Tagged ‘outcomes’

Making NLP work…

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

What really makes NLP work?

Just a few days ago I met someone who when they heard I taught NLP, they didn’t realize people still did it because they thought it was some sort of a ‘fad’ that has passed!

Every year I work with hundreds of people and even years later hear how learning NLP has helped them change their lives and I’m really amazed how anyone could think NLP is some sort of passing ‘fad’.

Take a coaching client I saw just a few weeks ago. He had been out of work for almost a year and really had pretty much given up hope of getting a job in the near future, especially in the recession. He also had a real fear of interviews, which was clearly getting in the way of his performing well in any job interview.

I worked with him using a variety of NLP techniques to help work with overcoming the fear of interviews and also to help him feel empowered and motivated about getting a job. We also did some hypnosis to reinforce the work.

Within the next 7 days he had been offered 4 jobs – all of which were better than any job he had had previously!

NLP really works – it’s not some ‘fad’, it’s a toolkit of principles and techniques that you’ll use throughout your life to create the results you want. I’ve seen truly miraculous changes in people with NLP and hypnotherapy.

So why do some people have the wrong idea about NLP?

Well, when I first learned NLP back in 1990 the Practitioner courses were all at least 15 to 20 days long. Nobody thought about NLP as a ‘fad’ back then. It was only when the courses got shorter and shorter and hundreds of NLP courses suddenly sprang up that a change in attitude started.

Unfortunately your experience of NLP will only be as good as the training you attend, and there are only a few really good trainings out there – so if you are going to go on an NLP training, you need to pick your NLP trainer carefully! INLPTA was set up to help ensure that NLP trainers have been through a proper and in depth training.

The most important principles you begin with in NLP are the ‘legs of NLP’.

These are:

1 Know your outcome

2 Take action

3 Have sensory acuity to notice the feedback

4 Flexibility – change what you’re doing until you get the results you want

If you follow these steps on they’re own, you’re going to get better results in any area of life.

To learn more about them, it’s vital to attend a good NLP training. You can get good information from a book, but the experience of being there in the room and practically ‘doing’ NLP cannot be matched anywhere else!

Our next NLP Practitioner training is between October 3 – 9 in London. We also have a hypnotherapy certification module starting in September in London and a Master Practitioner in Scotland starting in September.

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Secrets of communicating

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

NLP is all about communicating. In communicating with other people, the way you say it is the difference that makes the difference.

What is the real difference between average communication and excellent communication?

It’s commonly thought by most people that excellent communication is all about the words that you use.

Yet, the words are only a small part of communication.

So that’s one part of communication – what’s the other?

It’s all about the way you say it.

I’m sure you’ve experienced a salesperson who clearly didn’t believe in the thing they were selling, but was determined to try to convince you that something very average was actually worth buying?

Was it the language that they used that let you know they didn’t believe it?

That’s not it, is it?

It’s all in the way they say it.

Salespeople may know the most excellent lines and words to sell their products, however the words don’t matter if you don’t put it across it in the right way.

It’s all about the other elements of communication – voice tonality, the physiology and all the other non-verbals.

If you don’t get those correct, it’s finished from the start!

The deep principles to successful communication are how you say it AND what you say!

Take leaders – what makes an excellent  leader? You might say it’s about having intelligent and great things to say. However in reality, a leader could be the most intelligent and well meaning person in the world, but if they talk in a monotone and look at the floor the whole time, no one will want to listen to them!

They have to put the message across in an compelling and believable way also, or people will turn off!

Similarly, the message also should be well written. A really average message said with conviction still won’t do the job either – although unfortunately even an average message said well will tend to win over a great message said badly.

So how can you increase your cability to be great at communicating your message?

These are a few important steps:

1      Know your outcome – if you want people to really relate to your communication, you need to have a very clear vision. Having this very clear vision will develop your charisma as a leader

2      Believe totally in your outcome / message / or service. If you don’t believe in your outcome, people will pick up on it, and they’ll switch off to your communication – it’s really that simple!

3      Write out the basics of your message and tell it to people you trust. Ask them for feedback. The journey from being mediocre to being great is about learning from feedback and getting feedback from people you trust to be honest is a great way to develop this skill.

Attending an NLP course is also going to help with your outstanding communication skills. To build your confidence, hypnosis is also a way many of my clients have succeeded powerfully.

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How to make affirmations work

Monday, June 14th, 2010

This NLP blog is about the power of affirmations

Many people use affirmations or have at least heard about them. Some people find they are great, other people only seem to get average results. What makes affirmations work – or maybe an important question is ‘do affirmations really work?’.

It’s easy to dismiss something if it doesn’t work at first, but sometimes things that really work can take a little while to practice.

Affirmations can be very effective, as long as you follow some of the rules for designing and using them.

What is an affirmation?

An affirmation is saying something like ‘I am confident’ repeatedly to yourself.

It is a little like making a suggestion to yourself. Effective suggestions work by really being able to accept them, so if you really don’t believe it, they won’t work as effectively.

Another thing that’s important is to say the affirmation in a way that sounds like you believe it. If you say ‘I feel confident’ in a weak and feeble voice, it won’t be that effective. If your outcome is to build your confidence, say it as if you believe it (just pretend you do if you don’t! – It will make a big difference!).

Using suggestions may take several weeks of consistent use before they become effective. However with practice they can really become powerful. You can even have a massive influence on your physiology. I used to get nose bleeds that would last for hours, however now I can just suggest ‘the bleeding is stopping’ and a nose bleed will stop within seconds. This can take a lot of practice, but it’s worth the practice to get amazing results.

So here are some steps to follow to create effective affirmations to help you achieve your outcome:

  • Consider your outcome carefully
  • Write your affirmation – make sure you state it positively – what you want, and not what you don’t want. It’s easy to know what we don’t want like ‘I don’t want to be anxious’ but when you say this, you have to focus on the thing you don’t want.
  • State it in the positive, for example ‘I feel calm and confident’
  • Stand in a physiology that matches the affirmation – if it is about being confident you may find it helpful to stand in a way as if you are confident.
  • Say the affirmation out loud in a voice tonality that matches the affirmation. How would you say it if you really believed it? This can really make a different. Repeat it 10 – 20 times.
  • You can repeat this many times throughout the day – keep doing it for several weeks

The more you do it the more effective it will be

For affirmations to become incredibly effective, you really want to build upon your ability to communicate with your unconscious mind.

A really great way to develop your unconscious communication is to learn NLP or hypnosis. I regularly see clients for hypnotherapy in London, and they can achieve amazing results when they develop their unconscious communication.

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NLP Blog on beliefs

Saturday, March 20th, 2010

Some time ago there was a person on a NLP training who had a very unusual habit. Every time she was talking with someone, she would keep looking away after making eye contact for more than a couple of seconds. A lot of people thought that she just wasn’t interested in speaking with them and some people thought she was quite rude.

She came and spoke to me about it. This had been a habit that she had had for only a couple of years and she had been having problems recently in job interviews where nobody seemed to want to employ her.

Part of her reason for attending the NLP Practitioner training was to improve her communication skills to help her with her job interviews.

During the course we talk about some of the Presuppositions of NLP – convenient beliefs that are useful paradigms to operate from.

On of these NLP Presuppositions is ‘the Map is Not The Territory’. When we started to discuss this, she had a major revelation about her unusual eye contact. She said she had seen a television show about relationships and some ‘expert’ had said if you make eye contact with anyone for more than 5 seconds, it is a sign you fancy them. After hearing this she formed a belief about the negative consequences of making eye contact and she developed a habit of avoiding prolongued eye contact because she believed that people would think she fancied them.

After exploring the presupposition that ‘the map is not the territory’ she began to realize that this was a belief that most people didn’t have and that eye contact could mean many different things.

Even by the next day she had transformed her communication and could easily maintain eye contact during a conversation and had built several good friendships on the NLP training.

NLP is a wonderful way to learn how to change limiting beliefs that might be holding us back. Our next NLP Practitioner training is between June 13 – 19 in Islington, London – see our website for details.

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More negotiating with NLP…

Friday, February 5th, 2010

In terms of negotiations with NLP, the mindset that you are in before the negotiation is critical. As in the last NLP Training blog, we talked about how important it is to go for a win-win. You also want to have in mind what you are really prepared to settle for, and during the negotiation start with something greater. I remember many years ago going to Morocco with my father, who was a photographer. I had had no experience with bartering, and this was a major culture shock to me. As on many days out in Morocco, we somehow ended up being taken into a carpet shop, where we would be shown an incredible range of carpets and offered incredible mint tea. The carpets would of course be offered at a huge starting price which was not the sale price, but bartering was expected. At the time, I was a student and had pretty much no money. However at some point we were shown this incredible carpet weaved with real gold thread by a tribe in the desert – it took months and months to make. The starting price was thousands and thousands, however I really wanted it! The salesperson knew I really wanted it, so he asked me how much I could offer. I said I didn’t want to insult him and after minutes of being pushed I said £10! Of course he laughed, however after about 15 minutes he offered it to me for £100! Before I had ever attended an NLP Training, I wouldn’t have dreamed about doing this, but through my own personal development from learning NLP, I really enjoyed the whole process.

After that experience I took any opportunity I could to try my bartering skills! But the important thing was I set myself a limit I wouldn’t go above and would make an offer initially of much less than that limit.

In any negotation both people are never unlikely to get exactly what they would ideally want, however when both parties are happy with what they settle for, you can still have a win-win outcome.

Join our NLP Practitioner training in March in London to learn more about how to get the most out of any communication. Or take our hypnotherapy training to get in touch with your unconscious to make the changes you want.

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More negotiating…

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Negotiations can be challenging for many people. As in the last NLP blog, I talked about how with parts integration you want to chunk up both parts to a level where they can find some agreement, the same holds true in negotiations. Negotiations, when they work, involve finding some level of agreement and then working on specifics based around this. Negotiations with other people involve several other key areas to focus on. The first is the attitude you take before you start.

I once had a client who many people would describe as being completely ‘power mad’. His whole goal was to win every argument or sale at any cost. He frequently would win arguments through inducing fear in the other party. However, whether he won or lost left the other side feeling resentful and unhappy.

Going into any negotiation with a ‘win-lose’ attitude is never going to be the most successful. Have a ‘win-win’ focus, where both parties are left satisfied, is in the long term far more rewarding. This is also true in sales. Again, I have know many sales people who use ‘hard sales’ techniques which are like attacking someone with a sledgehammer! Even if they make a sale, they will leave the person unhappy and never find repeat customers. Buyer’s remorse is never a good situation (unless of course it is the thing that stops you buying lots of junk!). Satisfied customers are more likely to become long term customers and also recommend you to other people.

More about negotiations in the next blog…

If you want to learn powerful skills for negotiating, building rapport and resolving conflict, you can join us on the next NLP Practitioner training between March 14 – 20 in London.

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Dealing with blocks…

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

So why do people put off taking action to turn their dreams into reality?

There are many reasons, but one of the most obvious is some sort of internal conflict.

If you are new to NLP, you might be thinking ‘internal conflict? What on earth is that!’ – well basically think about times in the past you have had conflict with someone else – say for example in a business situation, where you want one thing, but someone you are working with wants something else. You can spend hours, days or even years getting nothing done – and I know people that really have spent years!

An example of internal conflict is when part of us wants one thing, but another part wants something else. For example, someone I once worked with really wanted a close intimate relationship with her boyfriend, but another part of her wanted freedom to do what she wanted, whenever she wanted.

Usually it wasn’t a problem, but several times in the past her boyfriend would ask her to move in with him, which she did, and within a few days she would start to get into arguments with him, which she rarely ever did when they were living apart, and she would end up storming out of the house and back into her own place. This must have happened 8 or 9 times before. Clearly there was a pattern! In NLP we are always looking for patterns.

How did she resolve this conflict? Find out in the next NLP blog….

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More dreaming

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

People often procrastinate because the dreams seem too big and unreachable. However when you begin to break the outcome down into stages, suddenly you can get started on something that you may have previously kept putting off.

So consider your dream again and start to break it down into smaller chunks. What is something you could do TODAY that would get the task underway. Don’t leave it to tomorroe – what will you do today. Remember, to your unconscious mind, tomorrow is always a day away!

Once, the idea of running successful NLP trainings courses was a total dream to me. I always thought how great it would be to be working with groups and helping people change their lives, but how to get started seemed somehow unreachable. Then I started to break my vision down into stages. I started assisting on dozens of NLP trainings to build experience to help me really know NLP at a deeper level. I attended an NLP Trainer Training. I then had to think about how to get a group of people together in a room to actually make a business from the whole thing. This involved chunking down to real specifics to get the whole dream off the ground. I did it and now it seems bizarre that I once thought this was such a huge dream that I probably could never achieve.

We all have dreams, and we all are capable of transforming these dreams into reality. It starts with the dream, then our emotions drive us into planning and taking action. So make the dream board so appealing that it drives you emotionally and then create your plan and remember chunk it down to a level that you can start to take action NOW. The most successful people in life are no different from anyone else, except they have the vision, passion, dedication and commitment to bring their vision into reality.

One way people do this is by attending our NLP Practitioner training – the next course is March 14 – 20 and is an extremely powerful way to take control over how you think and use your emotions to turn your dreams into reality.

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Creating your year with NLP

Monday, January 11th, 2010

Your outcomes should be some of the most important things in your life, so respresenting them in a way that represents this importance is critical.

Past students who have have attended my NLP courses and coach trainings and have invested the time to create their own ‘dream’ boards, have been amazed at how in the future they have completely manifested these outcomes.

Being clear about what you want is essential – after all if you don’t know what you want, there are many people out there who will try to get you to do what they want, which may be unlikely to fit into your own outcomes.

Make sure that when you create your dream board, that you feel emotionally driven towards achieving it. You want to feel inspired and motivated when you think bout your outcomes. It is this emotional drive that will drive your behaviours and get you to take action.

Once you have the ‘dream’, now you need to chunk it down into how to create it. This can be a major challenge.

I once had a client who build their dream house. They had wanted to do this for over 15 years but had never done anything about it. When we explored what had been stopping him, the whole vision seemed like such a huge thing to accomplish that he couldn’t even begin to consider getting started with it. We had to break the goal down into smaller pieces. One of the first tasks was for him to consider where he wanted to build it. Although he had a clear vision and even drawn pictures of what the house would look like, he had no idea where he wanted it. Part of this involved visiting places and spending a few days in different locations to make sure it was the right place. After all, if he was going to live there it made sense to ‘try’ the place out, before he embarked on the huge project of building a house there.

Then we broke the task down onto a series of small pieces, such as getting planning permission, working out budgets, considering materials he would like to be used in the design and so on.

Within a relatively short space of time he had the project underway, where in the past it had just remained a dream.

The next NLP blog will continue this to help you put together your outcomes in ways to help you achieve them.

To immerse yourself in creating your goals, our next NLP Practitioner training is between March 14 – 20 in London.

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14 Day of Christmas

Monday, December 14th, 2009

Every morning my 5 year old son gets up eagerly waiting to find out what shaped chocolate will be in his advent calendar today.

Having things to look forward to really drives our behaviour and motivation. Many people wait until New Year to set outcomes (and then often forget). NLP focuses on outcomes and how to achieve them.

Why not take a little time right now to get out a piece of paper and write out your outcomes.

Start with big dreams – spend 15 minutes and write down any crazy dreams you have – things for the distant future.

Now focus on the next 3 years – what do you want in the next 3 years?

Now the next year – what do you want over the next year?

Now do the same for 6 months, and then a week.

Finally what actions can you take today to start to make these dreams reality?

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