Neuro-Linguistic Programming Workbook For Dummies E-Book

Romilla Ready

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 392

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

If you are one of the millions of people who have already discovered the power of NLP, Neuro-linguistic Programming Workbook For Dummies will allow you to perfect its lessons on how to think more positively and communicate more effectively with others. This workbook is packed with hands-on exercises and practical techniques to help you make the most of NLP's toolkit for new thinking and personal change. These can have an impact on many aspects of your life: from helping you change your negative beliefs, to building rapport and influencing others, to taking charge of the direction your life is taking. Take your understanding of NLP to the next level, and reap the benefits. Neuro-linguistic Programming Workbook For Dummies includes: Getting Your Mindset Right with NLP Setting Sound Goals Recognising Your Unconscious Values Recognising How You Distort Thinking Developing Personal Rapport Managing Your Emotions and Experiences Changing Habits and Modeling Success Recognizing What Works Adapting Language with Metamodeling and the Milton Model

Leseprobe

Neuro-linguistic Programming Workbook For Dummies®

Visit www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/nlpworkbookuk to view this book's cheat sheet.

Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Book

Foolish Assumptions

Characters in This Book

How This Book Is Organised

Part I: Setting Up Your NLP Journey

Part II: Connecting with the World

Part III: Honing Your NLP Toolkit

Part IV: Riding the Communications Escalator

Part V: The Part of Tens

Icons Used in This Book

Where to Go from Here

Part I: Setting Up Your NLP Journey

Chapter 1: Where Are You Right Now?

Explaining the Basics of NLP

Lining Up at the Starting Block

Beginning with Your Intent

Taking Responsibility for Your Learning

Noting the Nuggets as You Go

Having Fun Is a Must

Chapter 2: Getting Your Mindset Right with NLP

Surveying Cause and Effect

Tuning into the language

Examining internal dialogue

Revisiting the NLP Presuppositions

Charting the Maps

Spotting the different maps

Travelling through the territory

Changing Focus through Your Projections

Picking Your Mindset

Chapter 3: Planning Your Road Map

Mapping Your Life Journey

Assessing where you are on the journey

Assembling your wheel of life

Shooting for the Stars

Checking for Smarter than SMART Goals and Well-formed Outcomes

Choosing your focus

Designing your well-formed outcome

Overcoming your own resistance

Questioning Cartesian Style

Staying on Track for Your Journey

Rolling Smoothly Along

Holding the dream unconsciously

Staying on course

Making the Difference

Chapter 4: Working with Your Unconscious Mind

Recognising Conscious and Unconscious Behaviours

Searching for Hidden Messages

Discovering Fears You Hadn’t Spotted

Integrating Your Separate Parts

Getting Centred

Chapter 5: Recognising How You Filter Your Thinking

Checking the Communication Model

Ruling out deletions

Sorting out distortions

Making generalisations

Combining deletions, distortions, and generalisations

Transmitting for Reception

Looking in and out of the internal/external metaprogram

Discovering your values

Recognising Blocked Filters

Shifting Memories

Part II: Connecting with the World

Chapter 6: Seeing, Hearing, Feeling

Uncovering Your VAK Preferences

Strengthening your connections through VAK preferences

Looking at language preferences

Matching and Moving through VAK Preferences

Desensitising VAK

Turning Up the Passion

Detecting Patterns

Chapter 7: Developing Rapport

Looking at Your Key People

Matching and Mirroring

Pacing and Leading

Breaking Rapport

Stepping into the Other Person’s Shoes

Chapter 8: Influencing with Metaprograms

Listening for Metaprograms and Discovering Filters

The direction filter: Going ‘toward’ or ‘away from’

Chunk size filter: Looking at the size of the chunk you see

The reason filter: Opting for procedure

The primary interest filter: Placing your focus here

Winning Combinations

Putting Metaprograms to Use

Scripting for results

Part III: Honing Your NLP Toolkit

Chapter 9: Managing Your Emotions

Appreciating the Abilities of Anchors

Setting Anchors

Creating your circle of excellence

Setting your own anchors

Facing Up to Challenges

Capturing the Positives

Breaking the Chains that Bind

Checking the Triggers for a Week

Dealing with Criticism

Chapter 10: Taking Charge of Your Experiences

Recording Your Memory

Getting Acquainted with Submodalities

Associating and Dissociating

Mending Memory Lane

Cleaning Up Your Experiences

Changing a limiting belief

Creating the resources you need

Overcoming Tough Emotional Times

Chapter 11: Aligning Yourself with Your Purpose

Looking at the Logical Levels

Going for Easy Change

Balancing key areas

Strengthening your NLP muscles

Focusing on Your Identity, Values, and Beliefs

Exploring your identity

Lining up your values

Making your beliefs more powerful

Valuing the Job of Your Dreams

Flowing Through the Levels for a Purposeful Life

Chapter 12: Changing Strategies for Success

Describing Strategies

Evaluating Your Strategies

Deconstructing Strategies

Discovering Someone’s Strategy

Reading the eyes

Strategy for detecting if someone is ‘normally organised’

Surveying for a strategy

Creating New Patterns

Deep Breathing: A Calming Strategy

Chapter 13: Working with Your Time Line

Discovering Your Personal Time Line

Picturing your past and present

Putting Your Time Line to Work for You

SEE-ing root causes

Watching the past unfold

Overcoming anxiety about a future event

Placing Goals in Your Time Line

Connecting Back

Popping In and Out of Time

Part IV: Riding the Communications Escalator

Chapter 14: Adapting Language with the Meta Model

Defining the Meta Model

Delving into the Deep Structure

Expanding possibilities

Challenging necessity

Shifting the universals

Reading the Distorted Patterns

Deleting the Missing Parts

Chapter 15: Adapting Language with the Milton Model

Easing into Hypnosis

Distinguishing between direct and indirect hypnosis

Recognising everyday trance

Taking the soft focus route to trance

Captivating Your Audience with the Milton Model

Using terms to entrance

Turning to key patterns

Relating the Milton Model to the Meta Model

Pulling the Patterns Together

Chapter 16: Storytelling Magic

Looking at Your Life in Storytelling

Seeing structure in stories

Telling tales of your own experience

Writing your story

Following the Formula for Creating Stories

Developing Your Storytelling Skills

Plotting Your Own Story

Part V: The Part of Tens

Chapter 17: Ten Ways of Bringing NLP into the Workplace

Set the Business Strategy

Start with Yourself: Be an Example

Unpack the Tough Stuff

Step into Your Colleagues’ Shoes

Create Your Own Workplace Culture

Build Rapport with Stakeholders

Own Your Career Development

Awaken Your Senses

Marketing with Metaprograms

Find the Difference that Makes the Difference

Chapter 18: Ten (Or So) Ways of Keeping Your NLP Skills Alive

Setting Your Intent

Keeping an NLP Diary

Going Back to Basics

Staying Curious

Handling the NLP Tools

Looking for NLP in Everyday Situations

Checking Your Habits

Scripting Your Communications

Teaching Others

Choosing a Model of Excellence

Joining a Practice Group

Chapter 19: Ten NLP Resources

Seek Out NLP Organisations Online

Read More Widely about NLP

Go to a Conference

Talk to the Authors

Explore a Related Field of Personal Development

Check Out the NLP Encyclopaedia

Find an NLP Training Course

Join an Online Community

Seek Out an NLP-Trained Therapist

Hire an NLP-Trained Coach

Cheat Sheet

Neuro-linguistic Programming Workbook For Dummies®

by Romilla Ready and Kate Burton

Neuro-linguistic Programming Workbook For Dummies®

Published byJohn Wiley & Sons, LtdThe AtriumSouthern GateChichesterWest SussexPO19 8SQEngland

E-mail (for orders and customer service enquires): [email protected]

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Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, West Sussex, England

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, West Sussex

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About the Author

Romilla Ready works as a trainer and executive coach. Having realised that the common denominator in any interaction – whether that causes stress or gives pleasure – is people, she developed and delivers Relationship Wizardry® in Business. These are workshops where her clients learn to build profitable relationships by understanding the psychology of communication. Romilla also offers a potent blend of NLP and metaphysics in her Breakthrough Coaching for executives who experience fast, powerful results. Some of the positive ‘side effects’ experienced by Romilla’s clients are a reduction in stress and an increase in personal effectiveness. Romilla also plays matchmaker at her public workshops, Relationship Wizardry® for Singles where people learn about creating their dream relationship.

Kate Burton is an executive coach and trainer who is passionate about enabling individuals and teams to communicate effortlessly and tune up their careers to be healthy and sustainable. She brings 30 years’ experience to her international work with services-based businesses and professional firms. Her own career began in corporate advertising and marketing with Hewlett-Packard.

Today she thrives on supporting people in boosting their motivation, self-awareness, and confidence. Her belief is that people all have unique talents, abilities, and core values. They just need to be focused in the best direction.

Kate also co-authored the bestselling Neuro-linguistic Programming For Dummies with Romilla Ready and Building Confidence For Dummies with Brinley Platts.

Authors’ Acknowledgments

From Romilla: NLP has been an amazing journey for me so far. It’s allowed me to learn not just about family, friends, and clients but most importantly, about myself. The greatest lesson I have learnt is to appreciate each and every person whose life intersects with mine because, no matter what, they enrich my life through their love or the lessons I needed to learn. With that in mind, I would like to thank the founders of NLP for their gift and the brilliant people who have taught me along the way. The more I learn and practice, the more I appreciate the fantastic grounding that David Shephard and Tad James gave me.

I would like to thank Kate for partnering me on this project and our team at Wiley, especially Alison for giving us this opportunity; Rachael, you have been a delight; and Kathleen, you have opened my eyes.

Sometimes it’s easy to take for granted those closest to us so I would like to say thank you to my family, particularly Derwent for holding up the metaphorical mirror and keeping the technology going; Mum for her ‘Go for it’ attitude; Derek for sharing half his life with me; Angela for keeping me on the straight and narrow; and Os for being. Thank you Carol, as always. Rintu, my NLP knowledge would be the poorer for not having you there to explore with.

A special thank you to our fabulous readers around the world for your feedback and for taking the time to get in touch and say hello. It’s heart-warming to hear from you.

From Kate: With the support and encouragement of so many people I’ve been bitten by this book-writing bug and you now have the finished workbook in your hands. I appreciate all the thousands of buyers of the original Neuro-linguistic Programming For Dummies and Building Confidence For Dummies.Thanks to you, our friends at Wiley issued yet another invite to write.

My special thanks go to Romilla for more fun and enthusiasm as my co-author on this sequel and to all our editors including Alison, Rachael, Kathleen, and Christine for patiently smoothing out our words.

I’d also like to acknowledge Bob, Rosy, and Jessica for their love and loyalty – writers are seldom domestic goddesses too. And to my parents, Gina and Tony, who instilled the core values that I cherish. Finally, I have been privileged to work with hundreds of fabulous clients, colleagues, and trainers who continue to inspire me. I trust that this collective wisdom will spread and prove valuable as you travel through this workbook.

Publisher’s Acknowledgements

We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments through our Dummies online registration form located at www.dummies.com/register/.

Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:

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Publisher: Jason Dunne

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Introduction

Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP), like hypnosis, is now widely accepted, thanks to the work of Milton Erickson, having moved off the stage into the world of therapy and into the consciousness of everyday folk as well the business community. From its beginnings in the early 1970s, the first wave of people to take NLP on board were trainers and therapists – using NLP in a specific field in a very focused way. More recently there has been new-found interest in NLP, with both adults and children wanting to find out what NLP is all about.

The following conversation between Dave, his daughter Charlotte, a very bright ten-year-old, and their neighbour, an NLP trainer and coach, illustrates the current interest in NLP perfectly.

Dave: So what is this NLP? Charlotte’s been asking me.

Neighbour: ‘Neuro’ means the neurology that is common to humans. You’re only able to see a picture, hear a sound, recognise someone’s touch, or feel an emotion because of the neural pathways in your body. ‘Linguistics’ refers to language. But NLP is much more than being concerned with words. NLP also means the body language that you display and, finally, ‘programming’ is the way you repeat behavioural patterns that give you your good and bad habits.

Dave (tongue in cheek): Yup, that’s what I told Charlotte. Wasn’t it Charlotte?

Charlotte (deadpan): Actually Dad, what you said was more like, ‘I haven’t a clue’.

The reason NLP is becoming more and more popular is because it allows people to understand human psychology in a way that is easy to apply to different aspects of their lives, and to bring about changes in the way they live their lives.

About This Book

Our reason for writing Neuro-linguistic Programming Workbook For Dummies is to help you gain a basic understanding of NLP in a format that you can easily work with and understand.

To crib a saying attributed to Confucius, You forget what you hear; You remember what you see; You understand when you do.

In this workbook, we explain the principles of NLP through anecdotes to bring home particular points, and explain, using examples, how you can tackle the exercises. Now if this seems a little like W-O-R-K (which some consider a rude, four-letter word), replace it with another four-letter word most of us use from a very young age: P-L-A-Y. Arm yourself with coloured pens or pencils, don your favourite learning hat, and play with the exercises.

Learning for the sake of learning is very commendable. But if you want to actively learn and achieve results, make the content of the workbook belong especially to you by coming up with your own real-life scenarios and using them in the exercises.

Foolish Assumptions

You’re probably well aware of the need to question everything and not to assume anything because it makes an ass of u and me.Well, we’re sticking our necks out because we’re assuming that at least some of the following, if not all, applies to you:

You’re literate.

At some point you’ve said to yourself, ‘Neuro-linguistic Programming, what a mouthful, but what does it mean and how can it help me?’

You want to know how understanding human psychology can bring clarity to your thinking.

You want to improve your relationships with the people around you.

You have areas in your life that can do with improving.

You want to be healthy, wealthy, and wise.

So in the spirit of our foolish assumptions, we’re offering you a toolkit that has changed our lives for the better, and we hope it does the same for you.

Characters in This Book

We don’t have a disclaimer like you get at the end of a film that goes something like: ‘The events depicted in this film are fictitious. Any similarity to any person living or dead is merely coincidental.’ In Neuro-linguistic Programming Workbook For Dummies a number of the anecdotes and examples belong to real people, but their identities have been heavily disguised, in most cases, to protect the innocent.

How This Book Is Organised

This workbook is split into five main parts, each part consisting of chapters relating to the overall concept of NLP.

Part I: Setting Up Your NLP Journey

Part I starts you off by getting you to think about your reasons for buying Neuro-linguistic Programming Workbook For Dummies and how you are going to use this workbook to learn and apply NLP to your everyday life or in the world of business.As with any journey, you want to know where you’re setting off from and how you’re going to get there. The purpose of this part is to get you thinking about how you’re living your life, and bringing your lifestyle to your conscious mind so that you can make choices about the paths you want to take.

Part II: Connecting with the World

The chapters in this part get down to the basics of understanding how you, and other people, think. You find out how you create your thoughts in terms of pictures, sounds, and feelings. This understanding allows you to connect with yourself and take charge of your thinking. Once you get to grips with ways of connecting, you can start communicating more effectively with other people – for example, by developing your personal rapport in all areas of your life. Discovering how to listen to other people and adapting your language patterns to theirs makes it easier to connect with, and understand, other people’s style of thinking.

Part III: Honing Your NLP Toolkit

This is where you get down to the nitty-gritty of the NLP toolkit. For example, in Chapter 9 we show you how to manage and change your emotions, regardless of what is happening to you, and how you can change the way you perceive ‘bad events’ from the past. Chapter 10 demonstrates ways of recording and managing your experiences, turning the difficult experiences into positive experiences. Chapter 11 gives you a model for getting you aligned with your sense of purpose and meaning. You find out in Chapter 12 how to use the tools for understanding your own behaviour, how to change annoying habits, and how to model successful people from all walks of life. And finally, in Chapter 13 you discover the pattern for creating and recalling memories. You also find out about your time line and how to put it to good use to make your goals irresistible.

Part IV: Riding the Communications Escalator

Part IV is all about communicating effectively. You find out about the magic of words and making language work for you. We show you how to dig deep into the psyche by going into the detail of how a person thinks and how to get your message across and be heard. Finally, we consider ways to hone your storytelling skills, for use in business situations and in your everyday life.

Part V: The Part of Tens

In The Part of Tens we suggest ten ways of introducing NLP into your workplace. We also offer you tips on developing your NLP skills and taking them further by practising and expanding your skills. Of course, you have a section on resources so that you can find out more about NLP – on the Internet, in books, and through other people and organisations.

Icons Used in This Book

To make some information stand out for you we have placed icons in the left-hand margins. You’ll see the following icons in this workbook:

This icon is used to tell stories and relate incidents to clarify the application of NLP processes.

You see this icon when an explanation of a term that is very specific to NLP is used; otherwise the term may sound like gobbledygook to you.

This icon tells you when it’s time to put theory into practice and start doing an exercise.

This icon is used as a friendly reminder and a recap of NLP principles and practices.

When we’re trying to be particularly helpful we use this icon to bring to your attention tips and tricks we’ve picked up to help you shortcut your learning process.

Where to Go from Here

Neuro-linguistic Programming Workbook For Dummies is, as the name says, a workbook and doesn’t have the space for a lot of in-depth explanations. Like any work, the best way to learn is to dive in and simply get started. You find out more as you go along. Naturally, some of you will want to begin at the very beginning and go through the chapters in sequence. Others of you may prefer to start wherever takes your fancy. (Maybe, like us, you tend to read the last page of a novel first!)

If you’re currently very confused about various areas of your life, you may want to head straight to Chapter 3 where you can take a personal assessment of how satisfied you are with work, money, relationships, health, and other important aspects of your life. If you’re going through a time of change at work or home and want to plan your best approach, you can read Chapter 11 first and then work back to the beginning. If you’ve heard about the classic NLP language models and want to practise those, try Chapters 14 and 15 and experiment with the Meta and Milton Models as well as spinning a few stories with the help of Chapter 16.

Now we’re biased, but we also recommend that you read Neuro-linguistic Programming For Dummies, and use this workbook as a means of building on what you’ve already found out about NLP. There are also NLP courses you can attend and more books you can read relating to NLP – you can check resources out in Chapter 19. But of course, nothing beats working one-to-one with an NLP coach.

After trying out the exercises in this book, you may surprise everyone, perhaps yourself most of all. When you do find those magical aha moments, please drop us an e-mail – our contact details are in the resource section – so we can celebrate your success too!

Part I

Setting Up Your NLP Journey

In this part . . .

We help you to figure out how you can apply Neuro-linguistic Programming to your everyday life, whether in the business or personal arena. You discover your starting point for your journey of discovery and get your destination in mind. The whole purpose of this part is to get you thinking more clearly about how you’re living. This part enables you to recognise what drives your thinking and behaviour so that you can increase the choices you have in future.

Chapter 1

Where Are You Right Now?

In This Chapter

Figuring out what you want from NLP

Discovering the power of your thoughts

Keeping track of the gems you uncover

Making a personal commitment to your learning

Having fun on the journey

Are you at a set of crossroads in your journey through life? Questioning where you are and what you want to do next? ‘Shall I go this way or that?’, you may be asking yourself when faced with choices. Or, ‘I’m sure it doesn’t have to be this hard’, when you’re getting overwhelmed. Whether you’re facing choosing a job, tackling a project, or committing to a relationship, you’re not quite sure what you should do for the best when such opportunities present themselves. You may have picked up Neuro-linguistic Programming Workbook For Dummies because you want to do things differently or improve a situation in your life. Perhaps things are a bit flat at the moment and you want more ZING, or your life is manic and you want time to ‘smell the flowers’. Or, you’re simply curious about this NLP word, wanting to know what NLP can offer you and how it can help you to interact with other people – if so, that’s just great.

In this first chapter, we take time to help you get firmly grounded in NLP. You begin by taking stock and getting yourself in the right state of mind to ask what it is you want from this workbook. A basic assumption of NLP is that ‘the map is not the territory’ – you find out more about basic assumptions (we actually call them ‘NLP presuppostions’) in Chapter 2. You may currently have a ‘map’ – an idea of what you want, or of how life is, yet as you travel the road you find the ‘territory’ isn’t as you expected. ‘Stuff happens’, as the saying goes. Your world view changes as you journey along.

As you get drawn into NLP, you find yourself taking your learning further – into more and more areas of your personal life and the world of work. You discover how to create your own ‘maps’ of what you want, rather than navigating with an outdated map or using someone else’s.

Curiosity is a great starting point. Clear out any loose thinking about NLP. Come with an open mind and make it your intent to start paying attention to what you want to attract into your life. We promise that you’ll be exploring this in more detail very soon.

Explaining the Basics of NLP

Einstein said that there are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle or you can live as if everything is a miracle. Really it’s up to you. The thoughts you have determine the results that you get in your life. Have you ever stopped to consider the quality of your thinking? NLP can be the starting point to get you thinking in a new way and get you curious about the power of your own thought process. After you know how you think, you can translate that into chosen actions with the help of the NLP tools we share with you in this book.

At first, the concept of NLP can be hard to get a grip on – like grappling with jelly. NLP is defined as ‘the study of your subjective experience’; it’s about how you communicate with others and with yourself. In NLP the more you pay attention to how you think as well as what you think about, the more you will achieve the results that you want.

NLP is based on the idea that you experience the world through your senses and translate sensory information into thought processes, both conscious and unconscious. Thought processes activate the neurological system (hence the neuropart of NLP) that affects physiology, emotions, and behaviour.

The linguistic aspect of NLP refers to the way your language helps you to make sense of the world, capture and conceptualise your experience, and communicate that experience to others. Body language is important here as well as the spoken word. The programming part addresses how you code or mentally represent your experience. Your personal programming consists of your internal processes and strategies (thinking patterns) that you use to make decisions, solve problems, learn, evaluate, and get results.

Lining Up at the Starting Block

NLP offers tools and models to help you solve problems in different ways. For example, take the ‘logical levels of change’ model from Robert Dilts that we explore in Chapter 11, which breaks down your experience into manageable parts, from looking at the environment in which you operate through to your overall sense of purpose as you go about your daily business.

You also have the classic linguistic models that the co-creators of NLP came up with in the early days: the Milton model, derived from studying Milton Erickson at work, and the Meta model, which enables you to gain greater clarity by going beyond language and digging deeper into the meaning underlying words. We show you how to filter your thinking according to your deepest values and beliefs without even consciously knowing that you do it. NLP is like opening a huge window onto your thought processes, so you have a huge treat in store.

You may already have a few ideas of what you want to get out of Neuro-linguistic Programming Workbook For Dummies – using NLP to be a more effective teacher, presenter, coach, parent, or business person?

Perhaps you’re looking for the latest thinking. As you read and work through this workbook, you’re likely to find more territory than you anticipated, discovering new ways of applying NLP that you hadn’t even thought about – until today.

Worksheet 1-1 is a simple exercise in placing your feet on the NLP starting block and being poised to get the most out of this workbook. That means starting with what NLP calls your ‘desired state’. Get your running shoes on and begin right now.

NLP talks about present state and desired state. The clearest way to describe these places is as a journey. Your present state is where you are now, today. Your desired state is where you’d like to get to; your goal or outcome for the future.

In Worksheet 1-1, we invite you to look at your present state as you begin to play with the ideas in this book. One of the purposes of the exercise is to make you stop and think about what you want to gain from reading this book, because as you do so you set yourself off on a proactive route, being curious (which is a great state to be in for learning) and taking responsibility for your learning. Consider whether you’re simply interested in NLP as part of an academic lesson, or if you have something specific happening in your life where you want help. Are you struggling with career choices, your health, your relationships, or do you feel that life could be more fun or more rewarding?

By making some preliminary notes, you place a marker that you can revisit in the months to come to observe your progress.

Worksheet 1-1 is followed up in Chapter 18 where you’re asked to assess how confident you are with NLP, after having worked through the book.

Beginning with Your Intent

In NLP you hear a lot of talk about setting intents and the reason for this is that when you set your intent, this is where you place your focus. Perhaps you meet someone and set your intent to have a long-term friendship with her. That dictates how you think about that person and behave towards her. By contrast, if you decide immediately that you’d be happy never to see her again, that intent affects how you relate to her from day one.

An intent isn’t as specific as a goal, but about how you are; a way of being that informs your action. When we run training or coaching sessions and set our intents, they’re usually fairly broad concepts such as, ‘We’re going to share knowledge’, ‘We’ll listen supportively and challenge appropriately’, or ‘We’ll be open to whatever comes up for our clients.’ You can often summarise intent in one or two words such as, ‘Be present’, ‘Share’, ‘Listen’.

‘Do you think you’re really up to this job, or would you prefer to shift down a grade and reduce the pressure on yourself?’ Maddy was having a tough time at work and felt pressurised to the point of physical exhaustion. She’d taken a new job as a client services director in a financial institution and her first annual pay review had come at a time when the business was going through a lean time; business leaders were pushing ahead to take operations abroad and cutting down on the cost of staff to compete more strongly. Maddy’s boss was suggesting that she might like to take a less stressful job at a lower salary even though she had met her performance targets. That same year, Maddy’s mother had been taken seriously ill. Maddy was taking the train home to support her father on alternate weekends in the west of the country. To cap it all, she returned late one Sunday to discover that her boyfriend had been seeing another woman while she was away. He announced that he wanted to get out of their five-year relationship, sell their flat, and split their belongings. She found herself crying on the tube to work and ready to throw in her job. Maddy became interested in NLP after a girlfriend invited her to come along to an NLP seminar on relationships where Maddy learnt that she could manage her emotions, even when under stress. That seminar led to others, to more reading and listening to CDs, which in turn gave her the encouragement to make significant changes in her job and home life.

When Maddy went on her first personal development workshop, her aim was to reduce stress in her life, to live and work with less hassle, and to rediscover her natural ability to enjoy life once more. Worksheet 1-2 shows her personal intent for her NLP learning plus one word that reminds her of what she wants.

In Worksheet 1-3, write down a statement of your intent for your learning through this book and then summarise it in one word that applies to you.

Intents are a powerful way to focus your attention and quieten your mind. Write your ‘one word’ in colour on a card or piece of paper where you can see and refer to it easily. Try writing your one word on the front page of your diary, office wall, computer, fridge door, or your bathroom mirror.

Taking Responsibility for Your Learning

Not everyone learns in the same way. Some people love to have to have theory, others need to try out a new idea; some need to be sure the idea is practical and useful, and others need a chance to think it through. You’ll learn about NLP in different ways that work for you and this book is part of that journey. One of the key concepts of NLP is to be flexible in your behaviour, so think about your learning in this way and be willing to experiment with new ways of learning.

You can develop your NLP expertise in various ways by:

Diving straight in, and doing the exercises in this workbook.

Finding opportunities to practise your skills, and applying them to everyday situations.

Studying around the subject and researching NLP’s underlying theories.

Allowing time to regularly step back and reflect on any areas where NLP tools and exercises can make a difference for you and for others.

Checking out how and with whom you learn best. Do you, for example, learn best with a buddy, or by taking yourself off to a quiet place to learn?

Choosing for yourself your own method of learning, supported by this workbook.

At the age of 14, Clare found school life boring and dull. Feeling restricted by the demands of the curriculum, she played truant, finding it much more satisfying to meet up with friends in a local café rather than to go to lessons that she couldn’t understand, and be criticised for her pierced earrings and messy school uniform. For Clare the lessons were pointless and all the fun of being at school had gone out of the window. She left school at the earliest opportunity and took a job as a trainee hairdresser where she became a firm favourite with the customers. Ten years later, when she decided to live and work abroad, Clare enrolled in Portuguese language classes. She had a sense of purpose – being highly motivated to learn so that when in Portugal she would be able to speak to the locals in their own language. Clare went about finding the best way of learning the language quickly and easily. She looked up the names of everyday objects in her home, at work, and in the car, and placed colourful labels on the objects so as to remember the equivalent Portuguese words. She also bought children’s books written in the language and listened to foreign pop songs and radio programmes on her iPod. Clare found that one of her clients was Portuguese and when she went to her client’s house to cut her hair and that of her circle of friends, Clare got them to chat to her in Portuguese. She realised that she could learn quickly when she wanted to. For Clare it was all about finding the style of learning that suited her best, together with taking ownership of her learning – no one else could do it for her.

You learn at your best when you’re motivated for your own reasons rather than when someone tells you to. So if someone has given you this workbook, or told you to work through it, find your own reason why this workbook will be helpful for you. Put yourself first, and connect with your own sense of purpose.

In Worksheet 1-4, you use three examples from different times through your life when you had a great time learning something new. Go back to those experiences, capturing what worked best for you.

When you do the exercises in this workbook with an open mind and a willing heart, you’re the person who benefits most.

Noting the Nuggets as You Go

While reading a book, you may come upon a word or phrase on the page that makes you stop and think – you go: ‘Aha, that’s good, I must remember that.’ We hope that you find many such nuggets in this NLP workbook. Feel free to track your journey through this book by making notes on the pages using coloured pens and sticky gold stars – anything that catches your eye. Photocopy exercises, stick them on your wall, cut them out – whatever works for you. After all, you can always buy another copy if you want to keep the book ‘clean’! Get into the mindset that this is your NLP journey and you can travel it in any which way you choose.

What we like to do is to keep our own special notebooks and diaries for jotting down our thoughts and ideas relating to NLP. Try carrying a small notebook around with you when you’re on the move – one that fits inside a pocket or a bag and that can be kept handy on your beside table – for recording the real gems from this workbook that catch your attention. When writing down your nuggets make a note of your intent at the very beginning, then capture landmarks as you go – rather like a map in TreasureIsland; you may like to draw your own NLP work map seeing how key themes join up for you.

Having Fun Is a Must

This is the only time we say ‘must’. Fun is one of our core values and we’d like to share that with you, and Dummies books make learning fun. When we set out to write the first Neuro-linguistic Programming For Dummies book, we agreed the writing process must be fun. We were delighted when readers wrote in to tell us that our fun-loving attitude came through in the stories and ideas we shared. Similarly, in this workbook the process of sharing and learning together through writing about NLP in practice has been fun. Humour may not come through so loudly in the written word as it would if we were to meet and laugh in person, but rest assured that an essential ingredient of NLP training is to have fun.

Do whatever you need to make your own learning fun. Take the workbook to the beach or to the zoo. Dance around the kitchen, draw silly faces, and play with bendy toys. Make yourself a chocolate milkshake, a smoothie, or have a glass of your favourite tipple as you do the exercises. Look out for humour even in serious situations – yes, if you look, you can always see the bright side of life.

So, with mind and body fully present and correct, you’re all set to take NLP action.

Chapter 2

Getting Your Mindset Right with NLP

In This Chapter

Putting yourself ‘at cause’

Trying on the NLP presuppositions for size

Recognising other people’s maps of the world

Holding up a mirror to yourself

Have you ever had the feeling that the whole world is plotting against you: Everything that is going wrong is happening just to you? Oops! And maybe you are wallowing a teeny-weeny bit in self-pity? Poor you. Then again, there are times when you feel blessed at having been born in the right place at the right time. Lucky you. Guess what? These experiences that you carry about with you in your head are normal. It was the great psychologist Carl Jung who came up with the concept of ‘perception is projection’: People project to the outside world what is going on inside their heads. Jung said that the world is like a mirror and that if you change what goes on inside your head, then the world changes for you.

Vikram, a 12-year-old Indian boy with a wise head on young shoulders, emigrated to Australia, where he was asked by his new school teacher, ‘Don’t you find people here prejudiced’? His response was, ‘No, not at all, but then I’m too excited adjusting to a new life here to look for prejudice.’

The point of the story is that because Vikram is confident in himself and he is not prone to harbouring prejudice against others, Vikram doesn’t have prejudice reflected back, so is seldom on or at the receiving end of discrimination and is a popular young person.

With NLP tools you can take responsibility for controlling what goes on inside your head and not getting overwhelmed by emotions flying all over the place. It’s simple when you know how. The examples in this chapter lead you through how NLP tools work.

Surveying Cause and Effect

The assumption you can make is that every effect has an underlying cause. What this means is that the results you get today are caused by something that either you did previously or somebody else did. For example, if you’re finding that your jeans are feeling tight today, it may be because you’ve had a few too many good dinners lately! Or, if you’re finding yourself lonely and alone, something you’ve done (such as turning down invitations to socialise) may be causing the problem.

The ‘effect’ may not always be due to your direct earlier action. If you find yourself being made redundant because you work in a company that’s moving your job abroad, for example, the underlying cause rests within market forces over which you have no control. You get back to ‘cause’ by taking action over your own career choices.

In NLP terms, people are said to be ‘at cause’ or ‘at effect’ as follows:

At cause: When you operate ‘at cause’, you don’t make excuses. You take responsibility and ask ‘What do I need to do? Or what lessons do I need to learn?’ You are in charge of your destiny.

At effect: When you are ‘at effect’, you have lost power, you make excuses, offer justification, and blame others. You can’t see that you have any options or choices and are likely to be taking the role of victim or passive observer of your experiences.

Where are you in different situations you face right now? Are you ‘at cause’ or are you ‘at effect’? The game plan in this workbook is to allow you to be at cause for more aspects of your life – empowering yourself and others on the way.

John booked a last-minute holiday in Spain with three of his old school friends. He’s naturally a quiet and artistic character and likes to visit old buildings and art galleries. His friends are more outgoing and persuaded John to stay in a coastal resort with bars and nightclubs where they drank beer late every night and slept for much of the day on the beach. John spent the whole week feeling cross that he’d agreed to go with their choice of location and wishing that he’d argued more convincingly for going to Barcelona where he could have enjoyed the architecture and met up with the lads later for the nightlife. He was at effect by not stating his own holiday needs more powerfully.

Table 2-1 shows some of the things to notice and check when you’re at cause or at effect.

In Worksheet 2-1 you have the chance to observe when you act at cause and when you act at effect.

1. Track an example of when you felt you were at cause and an example of when you were at effect.

2.