by Tom Hoobyar
• The Well-Formed Outcome model (Chapter 2) can be used effectively alone, with a partner, or with a group.
• Creativity is about multiplying choices. People can free up and more easily access their creative talents when they quiet inner dialogue, loosen up, and drop their filters.
• Part of Walt Disney’s genius was to employ his inner Dreamer, his Realist, and his Critic separately and in sequence whenever he wanted to create something new. He’d use each of these mental roles in a positive, collaborative way. His strategy can be used alone or with a group.
• People engaged in a conflict often feel stuck, and then their emotions take over, which puts them in a fight-or-flight mode.
• Learning someone’s goal-behind-the-goal enables you to understand what’s really important and usually makes it easier to find common ground.
• Once people in conflict can agree upon mutual goals or meta-outcomes, then they can work together to achieve those goals in a way that’s acceptable to both of them.
• The same kind of sorting process and identification of goals-behind-the-goals can be used to help someone who’s experiencing an internal conflict. Once this person’s competing parts find common ground, the remaining steps of the “Conflict Integration Process” can be used to resolve the issue.
• If a conflict has been going on for a while, the fight may have become personal—and the “gloves are off.” In these situations, it helps to ask each party, “If I were to ask the other person what’s most difficult about interacting or working with you, what do you think they’d say?” Next we’d build on their answer by asking, “Okay, if that’s true, then what would that make them want to do?” Then, of course, we’d ask these same questions of the other party. These inquiries enable them to see and depersonalize behaviors that they’ve been judging.
• Although negotiation is a game where someone wants to and will win, some aspects of the “Conflict Integration Process” are still useful—such as: centering yourself, using rapport skills to get people talking, zooming out, noticing nonverbal behaviors and language patterns, and learning about the goals-behind-the-goals.
• Effective preparation for any negotiation includes considering all possible outcomes– including “no deal”—so feelings of desperation are not driving behaviors and decisions.
• In most business negotiations, there are at least four sets of interests involved—the other person’s and yours, as well as their company’s and your company’s.
• The four assets at play in most negotiations are time, money, energy, and emotion. If someone’s not in a hurry to agree on and implement a solution, they may be able to leverage time to their advantage.
• In any negotiation, it’s critical to have access to all the information related to the issues—and to understand who, on the other side of the table, has the authority to make a decision.
• When dealing with difficult people, it’s important to help them feel heard and felt by asking questions, letting them blow off steam, naming the emotion—then moving them from being stuck to considering possibilities.
• If someone is upset with another person, a very unexpected and effective way to approach them is to say, “I’ve been thinking about the expectations I’ve had of you—and I think I owe you an apology. The more I think about our situation, I imagine you must feel like I don’t take you into consideration . . .” This helps the other person feel felt, doesn’t add any new demands, and frees them up to go back to being their best self.
To enhance the skills you learned in this chapter, check out the recommended Bonus Activities at our special “Essential Guide” website: http://eg.nlpco.com/8-13 or use the QR code with your phone.
Discoveries, Questions, Ideas, and Stuff You Want to Work On
CHAPTER NINE: MAINTAINING YOUR MOMENTUM WITH NLP
What’s next?
Your life will be no better than the plans you make
and the action you take. You are the architect and builder
of your own life, fortune, and destiny.
—Alfred A. Montapert
Recent research suggests that many of us buy books but never read them. We buy memberships to the health club, but never go. We buy clothes we never wear and power tools we never use. The list, as you might imagine, goes on and on.
Having gotten this far in the book, you’re already an exception. You’ve demonstrated your genuine commitment to improving your life. In using the NLP principles and techniques you’ve explored, I know that you’ve experienced some positive personal changes—and I hope that you’re motivated to continue to enhance your new skills.
Journey Highlights: What You Learned
Before recommending ways you might do that, let’s step back for a moment and reflect on a few highlights of the territory we’ve covered together. You’ve learned about:
• NLP’s key presuppositions
• How you “work” using your body, brain, and mind
• The way you use all five senses to process, sort, and store your experiences
• How to notice incongruity in yourself and in others
• How your mind uses a shorthand to take in, filter, make sense of, and manage incoming data
• The power of intentional and unintentional visual, auditory, and kinesthetic anchors
Building upon these basics, you discovered:
• How subtle shifts in sub-modalities can create big changes in your remembered, present, and future experiences
• The importance of where you are in the experience, whether you’re associated or disassociated
• New ways to prevent and minimize personal stress
• The ways you motivate yourself and how to get unstuck when you are distracted, procrastinating, or resistant to doing something specific
• Nonverbal behaviors that might provide clues to what is going on with someone else and shapes how they are in the world
• Ways to create good connections with others by easily building rapport, demonstrating interest, and making them feel felt
Building upon these basics, you discovered:
• How people process differently and that by adjusting your natural preferences—representational systems, sense of time, meta-programs, etc.—you can more easily and effectively communicate
• The power of beliefs—and how each individual’s beliefs shape their experience, decisions, interactions, and identity
• Ways that conflicts occur and how to increase collaboration for more enjoyable relationships and successful outcomes
Hands-on Experiences: NLP Techniques and Strategies You Worked With
• Creating an anchor
• Shifting sub-modalities
• Enhancing your self-concept
• Mirroring/Matching
• Reframing
• Using metaphors
• Asking the Well-Formed Outcome questions
• Using the:
– Auditory Swish Process
– Eye Movement Integration Process
– Conflict Integration Process
– Curiosity Shunt Installation
– Disney Strategy
– Godiva Chocolate Process
Next Steps: Options for Additional Development
At this point, it might be tempting to put this book on the shelf and move on to a new resource that will help you continue to enhance your life and get more of what you want. Before you do that, consider this: In exploring NLP, you’ve already established an excellent foundation to make powerful personal changes. Why not build on that?
Rather than seek out the next book or online course, what would it be like if you could expand how you use NLP even more?
I’ve found that the more I learn about NLP, the more I learn about myself—and the more options I have for successfully making the changes in myself and my life. If you’ve been making notes or keeping a journal about your discoveries and dreams, you may already have a list of changes yo
u’d like to pursue. Pick one. When you’ve made progress with that, pick another. You get the drift.
The goal is to keep NLP in the foreground of your busy life—to use the principles and processes frequently enough that they become part of how you think and operate. If that sounds like a lot of work, it doesn’t have to be. In just five to ten minutes each day, you can strengthen your knowledge and skills. This small investment can pay big dividends.
If you’re someone who likes having a track to run on, we’ve created a 21-Day Guide that can get you started. You can use the preprinted guide at the end of this chapter or go online to access a version you can type into. Of course, it’s just a guide—you can do the activities sequentially, or skip around. You can even repeat all the activities—just using a different focus.
I said in the Introduction that NLP is more important today than ever before. Because technology keeps us in constant connection, we are continuously stimulated by information and interactions with others that we hardly have time to think. By now, learning NLP has provided you with insight into your personal thinking patterns—and helped you manage and change these if you wish. And you’ve learned whole new ways of dealing with other people and understanding how they are thinking and feeling. Great tools for the road ahead, aren’t they?
I’d like to leave you with a final thought that was well expressed by Samuel Johnson. Here it is: “Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.”
Now you have new tools to do exactly that. I wish you an exciting and rewarding journey—and I appreciate the opportunity to have shared mine with you.
21-Day Guide:
The Next Steps to Creating the Person You Want to Be
This guide is adapted, with NLP Comprehensive’s generous permission, from NLP: The New Technology of Achievement.
The best time to complete this portion of the book is after you’ve read all the chapters. This guide builds on the NLP ideas and techniques you’ve explored throughout the book and applies them in new ways. Continuing to play with these ideas and processes will increase your mastery of this breakthrough technology and allow you to integrate them as a way to naturally navigate life.
Even though there are recommended activities for each day, there’s no rule that says you can’t do more than one a day, as long as you’re giving each activity the full attention it deserves. Once you’ve completed this program, you may want to return to the days that you found most useful or appreciated the most, and repeat them for greater benefit. Or you may want to return to the days that didn’t seem to offer you much; repeating these opportunities might produce different results or reveal something about yourself. You can also simply repeat the entire program from the beginning. Do any of these activities as often as you like, until all of your goals are reached or you feel you’ve learned everything this book has to offer, whichever comes first.
Although there is workbook space provided on the following pages, you may prefer to use your own notebook or download one of the online versions by going to: http://eg.nlpco.com/21-1 or use the QR code with your phone.
Week 1: Going for Your Goals
Day 1: Finding Your Current Coordinates
In order to achieve anything, you need to know where you want to go, right? It’s also critical to know where you are right now so you can plot a course from here to the fulfillment of your dreams.
Almost all of us, probably without ever really thinking about it, have divided our lives into what we like and what we don’t like. NLP cofounder Richard Bandler remarked that while we’re clear about what we like and don’t like, we probably haven’t noticed that we can subdivide our likes and dislikes into the things we like or want but don’t have—for example, a new car, a vacation or a promotion—and the things we don’t like or don’t want and have—like too many pounds, a quick temper, or badly behaved pets.
To begin, consider what you really like about your life. These can be significant achievements—like hitting a home run, receiving your first “A,” or getting an important promotion, and they can also be the simplest of moments—listening to the sound of waves, watching a child sleep, savoring chocolate ice cream. Make your list as long and full as your time allows.
To simplify this process, you can use the following worksheet or one of the online versions. For now, just complete column 1, indicating the things you want and have in your life.
Now to the more expected question: What do you have that you don’t want in your life? Many of us spend much of our lives on this question in one form or another. As you consider this question, feel free to include those extra pounds, troublesome habits, being stuck in traffic, days your boss is a jerk, or whatever it is that “rains on your parade.” Complete column 3 of your worksheet, making this list as long and as full as your time allows.
Now to the NLP question: What do you want in your life that you don’t have? This is the time to write down your “wish list.” Begin anywhere—with your work, home, love life, finances, or whatever. Include your important dreams and also write down at least a few of the everyday dreams, too—like sunny skies, clean sheets, or fresh-brewed coffee. In column 2, write these ideas and make the list as full as your time allows.
The final column is the less-thought-of category: what you don’t want in your life and you don’t have. If you’re like most people, you probably haven’t spent much time mulling over this possibility, so take a few minutes now. There are obvious things like a dreaded disease, crushing debt, a crippled child, chronic pain, the inability to work, etc. There are also many other things that you’ve never thought of wanting, and you don’t want to try them—hang gliding, a prison sentence, a trip to a toxic waste site, etc. Include several of these on your list, too. Capture these ideas in column 4 on the worksheet.
Finding Your Current Coordinates Worksheet
Follow the instructions on the prior page
to complete each column below.
Take a look at your four lists. Make sure you have at least
several items in each column and that each item
that you wrote down is real and specific.
Once you’ve reviewed and refined your completed list,
answer the questions provided on the next page.
Looking at your lists again, notice:
• Which list is the longest and which is shortest
• Which list was the easiest to create and which was the most difficult
• Which list feels most familiar and which one is least familiar
As you look from list to list, are you comparing items of equal importance, or do you find you have “mountains” on one list and “molehills” on another?
Right now, which list currently draws your attention more?
As you look over your answers, how do you feel about them?
Do you like the items on your lists, or do you want to change some of them?
As you go to sleep tonight, let your mind wander over how things are, and how you’d like them to be. If anything significant comes up, add it to your list.
Day 2: Discovering Your
Motivation Direction and Priorities
Yesterday you discovered your current coordinates. Today you’ll focus on two of the lists you made: what you Want & Don’t Have and what you Don’t Want & Have. Which list currently occupies more of your attention? Remember the meta-program that describes a person’s motivation direction as away-from or toward (from Chapters 4 and 6)? The Want & Don’t Have list is another way of describing a toward motivation, while Don’t Want & Have is another way of describing an away-from motivation. Notice which list is more important to you now. Begin with that list first. Review the items and prioritize them. What do you want to change most? What do you want to change next—after that, and so on? Use any ranking system you like.
After you finish prioritizing your first list, do the same with the sec
ond list.
Once you have prioritized both lists, consider which change, if you were to get it, would make the most difference in your life. It might be one of your top-ranked items, and then again, it might seem at first to be a minor one. For example, how much difference would it make to everything else in your life if you began each day in a good mood? What small but significant change could you make in your day now that would encourage this—the perfect latte, a healthy breakfast, upbeat music, stimulating conversation, comfortable shoes? Review your priorities again to identify items that seem most likely, once they shift, to produce the biggest change. Star or highlight these items.
Day 3: Making Your Dreads into Dreams
Look again at your prioritized list for what you Don’t Want & Have. If this is one of your longer lists, today’s activity will be even more important for you. When someone has a well-developed away-from motivation direction, they naturally pay a lot more attention to what they don’t like and don’t want. While this can be motivating, they ultimately won’t experience much satisfaction. As they get further away from what they don’t like, they get relief and less stress, but not excitement, satisfaction, or achievement. To experience a sense of fulfillment an away-from person needs a reorientation of attention. They can tremendously benefit by redirecting attention from what is not wanted to what is wanted. This activity, using the items you already listed, will help you explore redirecting your attention from what you don’t want to what you do want.
Copy items from your newly prioritized Don’t Want & Have list onto the next page.
Next, take each item you Don’t Want & Have and think of a positive phrase that means the same thing to you, but is something you Don’t Have & Want. For example: If you Don’t Want & Have a few extra pounds, what you probably Don’t Have & Want is a slimmer, more muscular body. If you Don’t Want & Have a dead-end job, then you Don’t Have & Want work with more opportunities. Create a transformation for every Don’t Want & Have into a new Don’t Have & Want that is satisfying to you. Write down each transformation for future reference.