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NLP 101: 10 Plus 3 Beliefs That Create Wild Success

Alvin Soon — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 11:13:07 +0000

What is the Structure of Magic?

In the 1970s, Richard Bandler and John Grinder set out to answer the questions: ‘how do wildly successful people create their success?’ and ‘can these methods of success be replicated?’.

They studied the best therapists of their time, and through observation, testing and trail and error, codified what they found into sets of prinicples and techniques. When they taught and used these strategies and found that they could reproduce the success these therapists had, they knew they were on to something.

Now more than 30 years later, the results of their work has been built on and refined through the new art and science of achievement known as Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP. And the beliefs that they found these master therapists and achievers had in common to produce the results they did were codified into the master beliefs for success; the NLP presuppositions.

NLP 101: The New Science of Achievement

In NLP 101, I explained what NLP is and how it can make a difference in your life. The success of this series surprised me because it gathered more mentions around the blogosphere than any other posts I’ve written so far.

For easy reference, I’m putting up the index of posts here, with the last of the NLP presuppositions that didn’t get their own posts.

What is NLP?

NLP 101: What is NLP? Part 1 & Part 2

NLP 101: What is NLP Special for The Super NLP Hardcore

NLP Presuppositions

NLP 101: The Map Is Not The Territory

NLP 101: There Is No Failure Only Learning Experience

NLP 101: Every Behaviour Has A Positive Intention

NLP 101: The Meaning of Your Communication is The Response You Get

NLP 101: You Cannot Not Communicate

NLP 101: You Cannot Not Communicate: The Pygmalion Effect

NLP 101: People Are Always Making The Best Choices They Have

NLP 101: People Are Not Broken

NLP 101: Everyone Already Has All The Resources They Need

NLP 101: There Are No Resistant Listeners, Only Inflexible Speakers

NLP Bonus Presuppositions

NLP 101 Bonus: If What You’re Doing Isn’t Working, Do Anything Else!

One definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over and over again, and expecting a different result (sort of like stuffing your left shoe onto your right foot everyday and expecting it to not hurt).

If what you are doing isn’t getting you the results you want, you’re better off doing something else!

NLP 101 Bonus: There’s Always Another Choice

This is one of my favorites; in NLP we say that 1 choice is really no choice, 2 choices is a dilemma, only when you have 3 or more do you start to have a real choice. It’s also said that the wisest people don’t have a bigger map of the world, they just have more choices in that map.

Hint: the more flexible you can be, the more choices you will have, which ties into the next presupposition…

NLP 101 Bonus: The Law of Prerequisite Variety

Which states that in any system, the part that has the most flexibility will end up controlling that system. You can think of it behaviourally (the more flexible child or parent), financially (the one with more money has more options), or otherwise (the spouse who’s always right ).

In my experience, the 2 qualities that distinguish a great coach and an average one are flexibility and awareness. The more flexible you can be, the more you can accept, do, change, feel, say, let go of and learn.

NLP Thoughts

NLP 101: So Dark The Con Of NLP

NLP 101: How NLP Changed My Life

NLP 101 Thoughts: You Cannot Not Change The World

NLP Recommended Books

Unlimited Power : The New Science Of Personal Achievement

NLP Hardcore Recommended Reads

Modeling With Nlp

Sleight of Mouth: The Magic of Conversational Belief Change

NLP 101: So Dark The Con Of NLP

Alvin Soon — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 07:54:07 +0000

Throughout history, NLPers have been hunted down by the Evil League of Anti-NLPers, who have waved the Torches of deBunk (+2 agility) at us and angrily shouted big, big words like ‘pesudo-science’, ‘quackery’ and ‘you’re too hot for NLP’ (I get this one all the time).

For every claim for NLP, you can find one against. What’s going on?

Is NLP all just a big bunch of hooey?

There’s a famous story in the school of martial arts that I do. Once, an unsuspecting student asked the grandmaster of my school about politics in the martial arts. The grandmaster looked at him; and bestowed these golden words of wisdom: ‘Shut up and train!’

Can the NLP techniques be empirically proven? Maybe not. Are some of its claims a tad dodgy? Yup (NLP for penis enlargement? Please. I’m not kidding on this). Is NLP just pesudo-science. Could be.

But so what?

There are lots of claims and anti-claims out there in the world of NLP. But what do all those politics have to do with your own training/personal development?

Was It As Good For You As It Was For Me?

The question isn’t really: ‘is NLP all a bunch of quackery?’, it’s ‘does it work for you?’ (or, like Kathy would put it: ‘does it help you kick major ass?’). NLP is the study of subjective experience after all, and what’s really important is how you’ve found the tools to be useful in your own life.

When I adopted the NLP presuppositions, which are like the NLP master beliefs, I had no idea whether or not they were really true. How would I know if it was really true that the map is not the territory? But when I adopted the belief, it expanded my perspectives and it brought much more benefits to my life.

And miraculously, testing the beliefs out didn’t kill me! Gasp! I had nothing to lose but goodies to gain! Which leads me to this final point:

When in doubt, test it out (intelligently, don’t do stuff like jump off a building or buy a Backstreet Boys album please).

Even though not all the NLP techniques have worked for me, enough of them have enriched my life in ways I couldn’t expect. I’ll share with you my personal story on how NLP has changed my life, dramatically in some ways, in my next post.

P.S. If you’re eager to get your hands on some NLP goodness, I’ll be sharing more of the NLP core beliefs in the next few posts. Stay tuned!

P.P.S. If you really really need to get your NLP fix, Robert Dilts (one of the original co-developers) has a excellent resource site.

P.P.P.S. Finally, the longly anticipated answer to the most penetrating question of all: is NLP better than sex: if it is, you need to get out more.

Update: I’ve changed the title of this post. Sounds funnier, don’t you think?

NLP 101 Series:

NLP 101: What is NLP? Part 1
NLP 101: What is NLP Special for The Super NLP Hardcore
NLP 101: What is NLP? Part 2
NLP 101: So Dark The Con Of NLP
NLP 101: How NLP Changed My Life
NLP 101: The Map Is Not The Territory
NLP 101: There Is No Failure Only Learning Experience
NLP 101: Every Behaviour Has A Positive Intention
NLP 101: The Meaning of Your Communication is The Response You Get
NLP 101: You Cannot Not Communicate
NLP 101 Thoughts: You Cannot Not Change The World
NLP 101: People Are Always Making The Best Choices They Have
NLP 101: People Are Not Broken
NLP 101: You Cannot Not Communicate: The Pygmalion Effect
NLP 101: Everyone Already Has All The Resources They Need
NLP 101: There Are No Resistant Listeners, Only Inflexible Speakers

Recommended Reading for NLP Starters

Unlimited Power : The New Science Of Personal Achievement

Great Reads for the NLP Hardcore

Modeling With Nlp

Sleight of Mouth: The Magic of Conversational Belief Change

NLP 101: Life Is A Series of Systems

Alvin Soon — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 04:28:43 +0000

It was confusing; here was this bright, strong young woman who clearly had goals she passionately wanted, but somehow something held her back from going after them.

As I worked with her through the roots of her beliefs, I thought we were almost on the way to breaking her limiting patterns and on to action, when her face fell and she said she couldn’t continue.

Why?

The problem, is one of NLP’s best principles when practiced, and one of its worst when neglected.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming says that:

Life is a Series of Systems

more often known in the wordier version:

Life & Mind Are Systematic Processes

Your body and mind is an interlinked system, what one does affects the other. You and the people around you also form a system, the people around you and the outer world at large also form a system, humanity and the natural enviroment also form a system, the solar system is a system, and so on.

From the smallest bit to the largest participant, we’re part of a whole where a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world can cause a hurricane in another.

And because life is a series of systems, the changes we seek to make have to be ecological.

All Parts Of You Have To Be On Board The Change

Often, a change we make doesn’t stick because it’s not ecological: it doesn’t benefit or work with all systems.

On a personal level, it might be because a person who doesn’t recognize that the positive intention behind him smoking is that it helps him relax, and quits cold turkey without finding a more effective way to do so. The part of him that wants to be healthier is happy while the part of him that needs to relax freaks out; and he finds it a struggle to keep the change.

Or like the woman I was working with, it was on the level of her family system: while she desperately wanted to live her own life, she was being stifled by her parents and at the same time, had a conflicting belief that striving for her own goals would be selfish.

That’s why no matter what she did, she always refused to change in the end, either consciously or unconsciously. The change she wanted she felt was unecological, it involved a either her or her family decision; and only one side could win.

Seek Win-Win Solutions

Instead of bashing her limiting belief, I took the stance that she was only doing the best she could with the map she had, and that the belief also served a positive purpose even though it produced negative results: she wanted to have a harmonious family.

She had no shortage of alternate empowering actions she could take for herself, but none of them had been ecological. Together, we talked about ways how both she and her family could accomplish their intended outcomes and both win.

It wasn’t easy, and I was sweating (even though I didn’t show it). But after sticking to my guns, and finding a moving resolution in the end, I can tell you from a coach’s experience, there wasn’t not a win-win situation, only that her old beliefs kept her from seeing it. And asking new questions and allowing herself to see new alternatives shifted her beliefs quite naturally, even if powerfully.

If Life Was A Series Of Systems, What Would Be Different For You?

One way to check for ecology is to imagine a far enough future in which the change you want has already happened; look back and ask yourself ‘what else has changed? who and what else has benefited? has anything or anyone not benefited from this change?’ and consider if all parts of you have been served.

Change doesn’t happen in a vaccum, neither yours or someone else’s. Whether it’s a change in beliefs, attitude, behaviour or environment, your change is going to have an effect on the larger systems around you.

Therefore, it’s best for your success to reduce obstacles and increase resources.

If life was a series of systems, what would be different for you?

NLP 101 Series:

Recommended Reading for NLP Starters

Unlimited Power : The New Science Of Personal Achievement

Great Reads for the NLP Hardcore

Modeling With Nlp

Sleight of Mouth: The Magic of Conversational Belief Change

NLP 101: There Are No Resistant Listeners, Only Inflexible Speakers

Alvin Soon — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 07:06:27 +0000

This belief which enabled master therapists like Milton Erickson and Virginia Satir to help people whom other people had labeled ‘hopeless’ is also known as:

There are no resistant clients, only inflexible coaches/ therapists/ salespeople/ teachers

Also phrased sometimes as:

Resistance is a sign of lack of rapport

When Lack of Rapport Led Me Resistance

This was it. It was the moment. I’d been talking with and thinking about this coachee for days, and I’d finally identified his limiting belief, and he was just about to demonstrate it live yet again. I was watching like an eagle ready to pounce on his afternoon snack.

The moment he did it, I delivered the smackdown: ‘Coachee X, is this a limiting pattern in your life?’ and the moment I said that, I could see his face drain and the walls slam shut from a mile away. I knew I’d lost him, and it was my responsibility, because I hadn’t built enough rapport for him to listen to what I had to say.

Why is it that you can sometimes get away with saying the most audacious of things while othertimes you get shut down?

The difference is in rapport.

We all have friends with whom we know we can be honest, crazy, fun, and tell them that yes, that dress does look fat on them and they’d be ok (well, semi-ok at least) with that.

And we’ve also had experiences where the most minor thing we say to someone we hardly know can cause major misunderstanding and unintended results.

If everyone had the same map of the world, getting into rappport would be as easy as pie. But since we don’t, how flexible can you be to shift from your map of the world to include theirs?

As a parent, how flexible can you be to shift your map to that of your child? As a teacher, how flexibly can you shift your map to that of your teenage student? As a salesperson, therapist, coach, friend, son, sister, life coaches blogger?

How Can You Use This To Kick Ass?

Take responsibility is the ultimate takeaway for this belief. When I crashed and burned with my coachee, it would have been easy for me to say ‘oh, he’s just being an ass-err, resistant. Yea, resistant.‘ but that would have brought me even further from my intended outcome to help him break his limiting pattern.

Instead, if I recognize that I can be more flexible than him, and do my best to understand his map of the world, I can better understand him and operate within his map to help him make changes.

If There Are No Resistant Listeners, Only Inflexible Speakers, What Would Be Different For You?

If there are no resistant listeners, only inflexible speakers, how would you approach communicating differently?

NLP 101 Series:

Recommended Reading for NLP Starters

Unlimited Power : The New Science Of Personal Achievement

Great Reads for the NLP Hardcore

Modeling With Nlp

Sleight of Mouth: The Magic of Conversational Belief Change

NLP 101: Everyone Already Has All The Resources They Need

Alvin Soon — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 16:41:20 +0000

Had enough rolling your mind over the Pygmalion effect? Because the next NLP presupposition ties in nicely with it:

Everyone already has all the resources they need or the ability to get them

which also complements nicely the presupposition that people are not broken.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming believes that experience has a structure, and that structure is composed out of 5 senses: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory or gustatory. And if every experience is composed out of these same building blocks, so is every state or resource.

Therefore, you already have the resources you need inside of you or the ability to get those resources.

Modeling: From Zero to Hero

In NLP 101: Experience Has A Structure I told the story of how researchers were able to break down the skills of good skiers to teach to beginner skiers and prove that skiing was a matter of skill at a time when people believed it was a matter of talent.

Why was this possible? Not only because experience had a structure, but because we all have the same resources within us, it’s only a matter of how we use them.

This process is also known as modeling, which NLP is excellent at (I talked more about this in NLP 101: What is NLP Special for The Super NLP Hardcore). Presuppositions like these are what’s allowed it to model spelling strategies, for example, from spelling geniuses and teach them to struggling kids who can reproduce the same result. It’s not that they’re broken or they’re bad in any way, it’s just that they had a limited map of resources to be able to spell well.

In fact, Robert Dilts, one of the first and foremost co-developers of NLP, is a genius at modeling, and he’s been generous enough to share a list of articles and techniques he’s modeled from people like Walt Disney, Darwin and even Jesus on his NLPU articles page.

How Do You Use This?

Remember the takeaway from the Pygmalion effect post? That people can do better than other people just because they’re expected to do so, yourself included.

If you’ve been noticing, all the NLP presuppositions come together to form a holistic whole. Since you cannot not communicate, and you cannot not change the world with your map of the world, what if you held the beliefs that people are not broken and that they already have all the resources they need inside of them or they can get it, yourself included?

Compared to the results you’d create from holding the beliefs that people are broken, and they do not have all the resources they need or they cannot get them, yourself included.

If You Already Had All The Resources You Need Or The Ability To Get Them, What Would Be Different For You?

What if you recognized that you already have all the resources you need within you, or have the ability to get them, what would be different for you?

NLP 101 Series:

Recommended Reading for NLP Starters

Unlimited Power : The New Science Of Personal Achievement

Great Reads for the NLP Hardcore

Modeling With Nlp

Sleight of Mouth: The Magic of Conversational Belief Change

NLP 101: Experience Has A Structure

Alvin Soon — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 04:26:30 +0000

The next NLP presupposition is a pretty integral one to making things work with Neuro-Linguistic Programming:

Experience has a structure

Neuro-Linguistic Programming believes that experience has a structure, and that structure is composed out of 5 senses: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory or gustatory. And because every experience is composed out of these same building blocks, so is every state, habit, skill or resource.

If someone else is able to develop a skill, a belief, a particular state of mind, you can also learn to do the same if you could discover how she composes those building blocks in her mind and body to achieve the result, and do the same in yours. This is the process of modeling I described in What is NLP? Part 2.

To put it simply:

If someone can learn to do something, so can you.

From Natural Talent to Learnable Skill

Until the 1950s, people thought skiing was a matter of talent, not skill. You either got it, or you didn’t.

But something happened. According to professor Edward T. Hall, black and white films were made of successful skiers. Researchers then studied the frames and broke down their movements into the smallest possible units of behaviour.

When beginners were taught these movements, their results improved dramatically. Because the skill of skiing had a structure, the only question was how to break down that structure into methods that could be taught to others and produce results.

How Did This Belief Change Me?

The belief that experience has a structure has given NLPers all over the world the guts and the curiosity to find how just how is it that exceptional people create exceptional results, to create techniques and models from the answers they found and use them to create accelerated results.

In How NLP Changed My Life I shared that I was a pretty insensitive person who was never very good with words. How did someone like me change and rise to the ranks of a senior Life Coach within a year, do multiple presentations that were well-received, and help people make changes in their own lives, emotionally, mentally and spiritually?

If the founders of NLP had not believed that experience had a structure, they would not have bothered to deduce the structure of magic behind what top therapists of their times did. And the wonderful NLP Meta and Milton model language patterns would never have been created, and I would never have been able to use those patterns to create the changes I did within myself and my ability to influence.

How Can You Use This?

The belief that if someone can learn to do something, so can you, which is supported by the belief that experience has a structure, or like some NLPers like to say; that success leaves clues, is a powerful belief to adopt for personal growth.

Compared to if you believed that just because someone can learn to do something, it doesn’t mean that you can, and experience does not have a structure because success does not leave clues, you wouldn’t be able to model anyone and find shortcuts to your own success.

If experience has a structure, and you can learn to do anything that someone else can do because success leaves clues, what would be different for you?

NLP 101 Series:

Recommended Reading for NLP Starters

Unlimited Power : The New Science Of Personal Achievement

Great Reads for the NLP Hardcore

Modeling With Nlp

Sleight of Mouth: The Magic of Conversational Belief Change