Better Life and NLP E-Book

Hannu Pirilä

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 162

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

How to better control your own thinking and thereby change your actions and behavior? How to improve your quality of life and achieve better results in life? Our quality of life is formed by what meaning we give to things in our life, what kind of choices we make and how we act in different situations. By controlling our thinking and mind, we also control our behavior and the meaning we give to things. This book contains ideas, instructions and techniques for life management and self-leadership. The different chapters of the book introduce the reader to the use of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, NLP, through different topics. This book doesn't tell you what you should think or how you should act, because it all depends on your goals and what you value. Instead, this book teaches you how you can make the changes you want in your thinking and, through that, bring about concrete changes to improve your quality of life. The purpose of this book is to arouse thoughts and insights in the reader, because without them our minds will not be motivated to look for new solutions. In addition, this book introduces a whole bunch of different techniques and methods that will help you move forward on your path guided by your insights. This book also offers plenty of new thoughts and insights, guiding you towards the things you want in your life.

Leseprobe

Index

Foreword

Is NLP a Hoax?

Why Does Self-Development Not Lead to the Desired Outcomes?

From Self-Development to Self-Optimization

Self-Knowledge and Self-Leadership

Esa Saarinen, (Self-)Management and NLP

Does the Vision Board Method Work in Making Dreams Come True?

Do We Make Good Choices and Decisions in Our Lives – Or Bad Ones?

Are We Determined by Our Genes, the Environment, or Our Own Choices?

Beliefs – And Their Impact on What We Achieve

It Is Unnecessary to Suffer from Unnecessary Fears

Reality Tunnel

Is Life Change Possible at All?

The Three Most Common Reasons Why a Stressed Working Person Doesn’t Seem to Be Getting Control of Their Lives – And How to Fix It!

The Four Mistakes That Most Professionals Who Help People Make in Their Work – And How to Avoid Them

The Significance of Our Communication

Three Tips for Influential Communication

Feeling Good Through Positive Influence

Memories - Their Meaning and Their Modification

Getting Rid of Bad Emotions – The Basis of Controlling Your Mind

How to Become Smarter?

More Flow!

Mental Coaching and NLP – How Do They Fit Together?

Take Control of These Three Things and You Will Take Control of Your Stress

Five Guidelines for New Year’s Resolutions

How to Do NLP Exercises?

Three Effective NLP Techniques You Can Implement in a Few Minutes

What Are the Benefits of NLP Training?

Five Reasons to Participate in NLP Training

How to Choose the Best NLP Course for You?

APPENDIXES:

What Is NLP?

About The Author

Other Books by Hannu Pirilä

Foreword

This third book of mine is similar to my first book, The Little Book of Personal Development, Success and Happiness, published in early 2013 in that sense that this one, too, has been compiled from articles and writings I have previously published and that you can find from all over the wonderful world of the internet.

However, I have edited this book and its chapters a little more generously from their original outfits. So, in a way, one could say that I have constructed the content of this book even more carefully than my first book.

On the other hand, my growth, both as a coach and as a human being, is visible in this book. In the years that have passed between these books, I have continued to develop myself daily and study the workings of the human mind. In addition, with the numerous coachings and trainings I have given, my own experience and expertise have naturally continued to grow.

In my opinion, self-development is an endlessly fascinating and inspiring journey, which I want to continue from one day to the next. The results I have achieved and helping other people with various challenges constantly encourage me to move forward. My own development and the pleasure of helping others inspired the publication of this book as well.

In a way, this book is also an intermediate form of my first and second books. The purpose of my first book was to evoke thoughts, insights, and questions in its readers. In my second book, Your Own Blue Ocean, published in English in July 2020, I seek to provide answers to the questions that my first book hopefully raised. In addition, in Your Own Blue Ocean, I present a host of NLP techniques and exercises that allow readers to really coach themselves to achieve the things they want to achieve in their lives.

In this Better Life and NLP book, I aim to offer both to some extent. My intention is still to evoke thoughts and insights in my readers because our minds will not be motivated to look for new solutions without them. In addition to this, I also present in this book a multitude of techniques and ways to help you move forward on your path guided by your insights.

I hope you will get a lot of new ideas and insights from this book again and that this book will help you once again as one component towards the things you want in your life.

In Vantaa, Finland, January 2024

Hannu Pirilä

Is NLP a Hoax?

I come across this question every now and then: Is NLP (neurolinguistic programming) a hoax or a claptrap?

The answer to that question is that, unfortunately, sometimes it is (but not always).

I should probably open this up a little more.

To Make Sense of this Properly, I Need to Tell You a Little Bit About the Background of NLP First.

NLP was developed in the early 1970s by Richard Bandler, a mathematics and computer science student at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Bandler became acquainted, for various reasons, with psychiatry and psychology and read a tremendous amount of literature on these subjects. Bandler was puzzled that, at the time, there were approximately 160 different schools of psychology and psychiatry in the world arguing over who had the right approach to helping people – even though no school was able to show that they were achieving regularly desired results in their patients!

From this began to grow his interest in the human mind and how it could be developed and improved.

However, there were a few individual therapists around the world who were famous for their ability to help their clients and patients bring about the desired changes. Bandler modeled several of these successful therapists and created kind of mathematical formulas and models from their activities and the language patterns they used, which he started to apply to see if he could achieve results similar to those of these successful therapists.

It turned out he could.

Bandler began to hold various therapy groups on the university campus, gaining a reputation at his university. With his reputation, Bandler was joined by John Grinder, a professor of linguistics, with whom Bandler set out to develop NLP further, modeling successful people and how they achieved success in their field. Together, Bandler and Grinder modeled, e.g., successful salespeople, artists, athletes, executives, therapists, and many other tops in their respective fields.

In addition, they modeled ordinary people who had accomplished something exceptional, such as getting rid of their fears and phobias without outside help.

In 1980, however, the roads of Bandler and Grinder parted ways. Following a lawsuit in 1981, the court granted Richard Bandler the rights to use the terms and names NLP and Neuro-Linguistic Programming. However, after a new trial in 2000, the court ruled that no one had the exclusive right to use those terms and names. As a result, NLP became a “free game.”

Because of this, NLP is unfortunately often equated with hoaxes and claptraps.

Around the world, as a result of this court decision, there are downright an enormous amount of dudes and blokes who say they use and teach NLP – even though, in fact, the methods and techniques they use are not necessarily based on NLP at all.

So NLP really has two developers: Dr. Richard Bandler, the originator of the whole methodology, and John Grinder, who soon joined. Since parting, Bandler and Grinder have continued to develop and train NLP independently.

Therefore, if you get to know a person or organization that claims to be an NLP Practitioner or Trainer but isn’t certified by either Richard Bandler or John Grinder, it’s possible – and in fact likely – that that person is pulling something out of their own and may have little or nothing to do with genuine NLP.

NLP has been set off by various people to take here and there and has been connected to all kinds of things, including even Reiki and energy healings that have nothing to do with real NLP.

From this large field of people who claim to use NLP, I argue that, at the moment, most are people who have not attended the teachings of either of the true developers of NLP. So be careful; if you are interested in learning NLP, find out where the instructor’s certificate came from (or if they have one at all…).

Another Thing that NLP Is Criticized for from Time to Time Is That it Is Not Science, nor Is It Based on Science.

This is both true and not true.

NLP is not a science. The sciences are largely based on all kinds of probabilities, statistics, means, medians, and theories. These are not of interest to us in NLP. In NLP, we are also not so much interested in the origins and foundations of different things and theories.

“Subjective experience is not just one of the dimensions of life, it is life itself.”

-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

In NLP, the focus is on the person as an individual and the person’s subjective experience. This means that no one’s subjective experience can really be put into scientific averages, medians, or statistics. It is about your own experience that you experience in this world. In NLP, the object of interest and research is precisely, i.e. the person as an individual.

Therefore, NLP, in a way, also challenges science because, in NLP, we take the individual out of “the masses of science.” In the end, the point is that if you bring about the changes in your thinking and behavior that you want, then that will work!

So it is indifferent if, according to statistics, 90% of people would not get any help from something, but you belong to the 2% who get the full benefit of it (no matter what it is about). Then, it works for you and it’s your subjective experience that decides whether it works for you or not.

“Each person creates his own universe out of his own neurological processes.”

-Robert Anton Wilson

What about when it is said that NLP is not based on science?

The developers of NLP, Richard Bandler and John Grinder, are both scientists. John Grinder is a professor of linguistics, and Richard Bandler has as many as five doctorates. Both developers have thus approached the issue through science, and, for example, Bandler says that he constantly reads, e.g., neurology publications to stay on the map of scientific advances.

NLP is, therefore, not a science because it explicitly studies human subjective experience, but it is strongly based on science.

“Our field is not about truth, it is about efficiency. This is the study of the subjective part of life, the subjective experience… It’s not scientific, it’s about the study of the structure of subjectivity.”

–Richard Bandler

Hannu Lauerma, a Finnish psychiatrist and psychotherapist, deals with hypnosis in a video of about 1.5 hours and, at the end of the video, NLP for less than ten minutes. In the video, Lauerma mentions, among other things, how a lot of absolutely whopping claims have been made about NLP, a kind of marketing stories, and all the amazing things that NLP can do. And this is true.

Once again, most people who claim to be NLP practitioners and trainers have never attended Richard Bandler’s or John Grinder’s certified training. So what is the basis for their NLP skills and their claims about what one can achieve with NLP? I really don’t know.

With his video, Hannu Lauerma also based many of his opinions on the website of the NLP Association of Finland. The NLP Association of Finland does not represent NLP training for either Richard Bandler or John Grinder. If Lauerma bases his opinions and criticisms solely on the NLP Association of Finland’s website and the information he receives from it, without attending their training (at least based on this video), then the things he poses really have nothing to do with what NLP purely and really is.

Now, it should also not be misconstrued that there would certainly not be a lot of good things in the NLP Association of Finland. However, the NLP Association of Finland does not teach genuine NLP, although it certainly teaches many real NLP things as well as many other good things – I do not deny this at all. However, it is not genuine NLP. It is not NLP certified by Richard Bandler or John Grinder.

So if such a specialist in psychiatry and a psychotherapist and, as I understand, the chairman of Skepsis ry (a scientific association of skeptics) present their assessments based on what a website that does not even represent the actual NLP says, then it is quite eccentric! The criticism of NLP has pretty much gone straight past its target.

There has been a lot of criticism of NLP that has gone way past its target and is completely unfounded.

Is NLP an Omnipotent Thing, Then?

Well, certainly not! Of course not! There is no such thing.

No form of medicine or therapy, at least to my knowledge, can provide a 100% response and cure to all our problems. At least I haven’t come across one. If you know one, then please let me know, too. If there were one, then all the problems of this world would gradually begin to be resolved.

NLP Is Also Not a Form of Therapy

Any claim that something is accomplished through “NLP therapy” is also nonsense, as NLP is not therapy. NLP is about teaching, coaching, and mentoring. Thus, anyone who says they use NLP therapy represents something other than genuine NLP. In other words, it’s something else that this person uses the term NLP for because the term is like a free game. It is not truly NLP.

There are a lot of claims about NLP made by people who don’t really represent pure NLP. And these claims should be treated with caution.

If you want to explore NLP, know what NLP is, and even learn NLP, I highly recommend that you ensure the certification is awarded by either Dr. Richard Bandler and The Society of NLPTM or John Grinder. It is also worth being aware that the trainings they represent have differences in their methods and teachings about NLP.

Bandler has been developing NLP for 50 years, and his techniques are constantly evolving. As Bandler himself says today, “There are a lot of people out there who say they teach NLP, but who have remained in my early stages of development.” That is, what they learned from Bandler sometime in the 70s, 80s, or 90s no longer represents Bandler’s NLP. Bandler no longer teaches many of those early things because he has developed and taken them forward. He has continually developed his techniques, methods, and methodologies to make them much more effective today than some decades ago.

So, Is NLP a Hoax?

It can be.

It depends on who teaches it, who uses it, and what it is really based on. Is it really NLP or something that is just said to be NLP?

In addition, it is worth noting that even if a person has studied pure NLP, NLP is by no means omnipotent. There are also many differences between genuine NLP practitioners. Some are simply better than others, just like in any other profession. Some are better doctors than others, some are better runners than others, some are better basketball players than others, and so on.

Nor should medicine be judged on the basis of a bad doctor. Both medicine and NLP should be studied based on what the best practitioners achieve with them and how they are constantly developing their skills. That is what it’s mainly about.

I hope that with this chapter, I have been able to answer some of the questions that have preoccupied you about NLP. Hopefully, you are now interested in genuine NLP and will find out what it really is, what it can accomplish, and what benefits it has. There certainly are many benefits of NLP.

“NLP isn’t a “thing” you use. It’s a means for you to learn how to run your own brain.”

-Richard Bandler & John La Valle

Why Does Self-Development Not Lead to the Desired Outcomes?

Self-development (or personal development, self-help, etc.) is a concept and notion that is growing almost like an avalanche around the world. This self-development generally means, for example, activities to enhance one’s own awareness and identity, develop skills and personal potential, build human capital and facilitate employability, improve quality of life, and contribute to dreams and goals.

Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

And the good things they are. Who wouldn’t want all of the above? So this is a good thing.

There are all kinds of self-development “gurus” in the world today whose messages consist of pretty much the same things related to self-development, such as goal setting, universe laws, visualizations, mind control, awareness, etc. All are still good things in themselves.

But what if they don’t produce results?

I first became acquainted with self-development in the mid-90s through a few interesting books. The books evoked in me a lot of good insights and thoughts that started to make some positive changes in my thinking.

My desire to develop myself grew larger over time, but the results remained pretty meager. I often wondered where the fault was – in me or my teachers.

Then I read “Unlimited Power” by Anthony Robbins.

For the first time, I got my hands on a book introducing real techniques I could use to get results. For example, one of my teachers, Bob Proctor, repeatedly talked about how we face a “Terror Barrier” in pursuit of our goals and that we need to break down or otherwise clear up this barrier. Bob never told me how to do it. The NLP techniques presented by Anthony Robbins, on the other hand, provided clear solutions for this as well.

I realized the same was true of virtually all the other “gurus” of selfdevelopment I had become acquainted with. Yes, they willingly told me what to do, but they couldn’t tell me how to do it all. Their instructions seem to run out in the middle just when you are on the verge of that big change. And because I didn’t come up with ways and means to complete the change process with their instructions, I returned to the old, familiar, and safe. However, my desire for development remained simmering, as did my frustration and confusion.

So, the reason many don’t get what they hope for out of selfdevelopment is largely that most teachers and coaches in the field say what should be done, but only a few can tell how it’s all done. This is why quite a number of people also experience disappointment when they do not achieve the desired results.

Of course, there are a lot of good tips for self-development, many of which are quite functional. However, what works for someone may not work for everyone, which is why the most important thing is to find a model based on the needs and starting points of the individual.

NLP has its roots, above all, in modeling success. In NLP, therefore, the main interest is “how,” not “why.”

Because NLP considers everyone’s individual perspectives and focuses above all on how we can solve our problems and bring about the most appropriate change in our thinking and behavior, NLP is currently most likely the most effective “tool” for self-development.