Thursday 31 May 2007

Colour change card trick

I found this recently - I think it is a great illustration of how we filter information. Well it got me anyway! How do you think you will do....





It makes me wonder how many other pieces of information we miss in everyday conversations that might be important? What kind of states could we enter to start noticing what we missed before?

Tuesday 29 May 2007

Rapport, mirroring and the brain

photo: Modes MRI headlslice from the Swedish Brain mirror exhibition


On courses at NLP School Europe we often teach a number of rapport exercises which involve mirroring the body of another person. Doing this on purpose can seem artificial, and done poorly it can be pretty creepy.

Having said that it is something that people who get on with each other do naturally most of the time. What we show is that you can do it more purposefully to expand the range of situations whee you can feel comfortable, communicate clearly and influence people.

Here is a link to a study from UCLA that used brain imaging to observe the effect that mirroring had on brain activity. Though it used a small sample size it scientifically validates the exercise. Also the study confirms my experience that using mirroring helps create empathy for the person with who is mirrored.

The greater the empathy and connection, the more likely you are to use any influence gained through technique to the positive benefit of all parties involved.

Monday 28 May 2007

Fun with space

Photo: Power lines by shoothead


One universal human characteristic is the tendency to sort and organize our understanding of the world spatially. We are born into space and time, and our internal world is build around space and time too.

If you watch someone talking they will tend to gesture to where information and objects are in their imagination. Some of these gestures may be in corporal space - pointing to parts of the body when referring to emotions for example. Other gestures may refer to where they imagine events in the past or future to be, or to concepts that float somewhere in mental space.

As quantum physicists say time is what keeps everything from happening at once, and space is what keeps everything from happening in the same place.

There is a huge amount of information available for people willing to observe, and you it can be used in all kinds of ways, in teaching, sales, therapy, communication and influence.

In this article I am mostly interested in ways to use the tendency of the mind to code in space to explore characteristics or self concept.

For a long time in NLP people have used the tendency to code time spatially. A lot of people think o f the past behind them, or to the left and the future ahead, or to the right. Like anything else in NLP there are plenty of individual variations in these patterns.

This resulted in people explicitly laying out time as a line along the floor, which can be walked on to explore conceptions of the past or future, and stepped off to get some perspective on the whole flow of time. This has great application in planning, coaching and therapy.

Recently I stumbled across another related idea. You can code a quality spatially along a line. For example confidence, or patience, or playfulness. Choose what you would like to increase.

If you imagine a line stretching in front and behind you. Where you stand is your current level of whatever quality it is. If you take a step back that quality will diminish, and if you take a step forward it will increase.

To play with this I recommend starting slowly to explore along the line. Take a step back, and notice how your sense of the quality can decrease. Why back? Because most people find it easier to imagine regressing in terms of their desired qualities than progressing.

So take a step back, and notice the difference. Then take another step back, and notice the difference. Then step forward again, and again. Doing this begins to establish the sense of control of these qualities, and builds a relationship with intensity of the quality and the distance along the line.

Once you have the sense of control, then you can begin to walk forward beyond your baseline level. Keep walking forwards and backwards, playing to develop an increasing sense of freedom on what is personally possible for you with this quality.

The aim is to familiarize yourself with new levels of a particular quality. At different points along the line you can ask yourself what it would be like to be in a particular situation.

If you have a small space to walk in then you can imagine that a short distance is a large change in quality. If you have a big space you can still imagine that a small distance is a large change in quality. Establish the relation between distance and quality firmly, then walk way beyond your old limits...

Ideally you come off the line with a new baseline level for the quality, and greater choice and comfort at a whole range of different levels.

Now as I write this up I have had another idea of how to use this concept. But I will need to test I before I write it down. So while I test my new idea, you are free to test this one. You could pick curiosity as a quality to explore. The further you walk the more curious you can become as to what my new idea is!

OK so I am keen for you to come back and visit my blog, but curiosity is genuinely a great quality to develop, for all kinds of reasons.Of course you do not have to go with my recommendation, just be curious enough to wonder what quality could you really enjoy sharing sharing with the world?




Monday 21 May 2007

Who will you be when?

Picture: You know who I am, by oxfordshire church illustrations

In most standard NLP goal processes there are various checks. Checks on whether achieving the goal will cause all kinds of havoc with friends, family and other vital systems. Checks on whether the goal is worthwhile in terms of time effort and money. Finally there is usually a check on whether the goal fits with your sense of self.

It is that last check that I'm interested in today. One way to look at our lives is that they are to a large extent created by our sense of self. We do the things that we do, make the choices that we make because we are who we are.

At the same time our sense of self changes with the circumstances of our life. Major events like becoming a parent, changing professions, or country of residence have a fairly clear effect on how people think of themselves.

This means any large goal is likely to result in a change in the sense of self. So if someone sets a significant goal for themselves and really considers the consequences of achieving it they are likely to notice a gap in their sense of self.

For some people and in some situations that will be fine. However our sense of self is also something that we protect, fiercely. Many people get depressed or die when they retire because they have so identified with their work role. Loss (and that can include) change of identity can be an intensely frightening and disturbing experience.

Now how can we work with this?

Well to start with you can ask 'Who will I be when I have achieved this goal?' Picture yourself as this person, change your posture and move like this person, describe or talk like this person.
Then notice two main groups of reactions or observations.

The first is what emotional tone that you have with respect to that 'new' you? Are there any physical reactions that come up? Or perhaps internal voices that encourage or discourage you from this. You can become curious about these.

If you have some some strong negative reactions then you may need some kind of integration practice, coaching or therapy before you can achieve the goal smoothly. If you do not have access to any of these then simply observing the voices/feelings with curiosity, compassion and the discernment is a good start as a practice.

The next is what do you notice about how you act differently as this future self?
Some of these differences will be obvious to you as part of your goal. It is the ones that are not so self evident that are interesting? Do you wear the same clothes, talk the same way, spend time with the different kinds of people? Whatever you do differently you can begin to take on these differences as a way to become the 'new' self.

As you become the new self the kinds of actions that lead to your goal will flow from you more naturally. People will also increasingly perceive you differently, and act towards you in different ways.

As well as being a pragmatic aid to achieve your goals, working with your identity in this way has a deeper component. In many spiritual traditions clinging to a limited sense of identity is considered a source of suffering. By observing and modifying your identity with awareness it helps create a more expansive and open sense of self. So as well as going forward to a new identity with the 'who will I be when?' you can also be moving beyond with the classic Zen question 'What was my original face before my parents were born?'

Do you know?


Tuesday 15 May 2007

a million wishes

photo: who has lost a magic wand by Pσrcelαΐηgΐrl°


Having lunch with
Chris West, and discussing an NLP book I wanted to a way to get across the optimism, and humanity that I find in NLP. I offered Chris the following thought experiment.

Think of all those stories where someone receives three wishes - and is either filled with contradictory urges about what to wish for, or wishes for something that ends up messing up their lives.

Now imagine that somehow a million wishes had been offered to you (and if you think that a million is not enough, you can always use one of that million to wish for a billion more...). Now what would you do with those wishes?

I can summarize what the people who I've offered this experiment to say as

'Well I'd wish for certain things for myself, then I'd start thinking about what I could do for other people.'

I have not met anyone who genuinely put themselves in this imaginary position, and who would use their wishes to wreak havoc in the lives of others.

Perhaps I should ask this of some of our society's demons - murderers, fundamentalists, terrorists. I have not done that yet.

I can imagine that certain people would go through a period or wrath and revenge with their wishing. I can also imagine them coming out of it into something more generous.

One of life's questions is how do we navigate those situations where the fearful and angry have the power to wound and kill. Soldiers, politicians, therapists, scientists, and philosophers all have different ways of answering that.

Of course we live in a world where we do not have the power to simply wish anything into, or out of existence, even though we may have more power in changing aspects of our lives than we think.

For me NLP, or any other form of genuine personal development, is about moving in a direction where we have more choice. That choice leads to greater compassion and greater generosity.

We may live in a way where we have three or fewer wishes at our disposal. But we can still aim for the expansiveness of a million wishes.

NLP and coaching can help us in this journey by developing increasingly effective methods that to navigate and transform the dangers of our current reality.

So what would you first ten wishes, your hundredth, and your thousandth wish be?