When you ask him why he thinks he’s “bad” and “evil”, he says that he has no friends, and therefore he must be “bad” or “evil”; either that, or everyone is “bad” and “evil” for not wanting to be friends with him. S also keeps saying that the world is a very bad place and we just don’t know it yet, but we will realise it sooner or later and be affected by it (I think he’s thinking about stuff like global warming, nuclear war etc).

The scary part is how deeply, how completely, S believes what he’s saying. It’s a very striking example of how thoughts affect reality. S is deeply entrenched in his own very negative thoughts, and that’s what his reality has become right now. We’re trying, but we can’t get him out. His existence, his reality, his entire world is indeed bad, evil, hopeless and grim – and he made it that way, for himself, through the sheer power of his own thoughts.

What’s Really Keeping S Trapped?

S sounds like he’s trapped in a ‘double-bind’ belief; he’s damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t. When someone is caught in a double bind, it can be very hard to change his beliefs because he’ll use everything, even evidence to the contrary, to reinforce his beliefs.

Richard Bandler, co-founder of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), likes to tell the story of a mental patient who kept insisting that he was a living corpse. Hitting upon a bright idea, a doctor asked him; ‘do corpses bleed then?’

The patient replied; ‘of course not!’ The doctor promptly pricked him, and when the patient saw blood dripping out of his wound he exclaimed; ‘well I’ll be damned – corpses do bleed!’

How Beliefs Turn into Thought Viruses

NLP developer Robert Dilts explains double binds in his ground-breaking book Sleight of Mouth: The Magic of Conversational Belief Change. In NLP we say that the map is not the territory – our beliefs about reality is not reality itself.

Healthy beliefs exist in an eco-system; they’re linked in a cycle to our internal states, values, experiences and expectations. And so they can change according to our inner states and outer environment.

Adapted from a diagram in Robert Dilts’ book Sleight of Mouth.

According to Dilts, beliefs become ‘thought viruses’ when they’re cut off from this cycle. A belief, disconnected to internal and external feedback, then feeds upon itself – and change becomes difficult because it refuses to ‘listen’ to anyone but itself.

Adapted from a diagram in Robert Dilts’ book Sleight of Mouth.

This leads to all sorts of problems because the belief becomes a circular argument and double-bind…like a Catch-22. In the classic novel ‘Catch-22’ (which is hilarious by the way), WW II airman Yossarian wants to escape the horrors of war by leaving the air force.

But he can’t, because of regulation ‘Catch-22’. Catch 22 says that if Yossarian can prove himself insane, he can be discharged. But only a sane man would ask to be discharged because no sane man would want to risk his life. So by requesting to be discharged on the grounds that he’s insane, Yossarian proves himself sane and can’t be discharged. It’s a circular argument that Yossarian can’t win.

Breaking Out of a Double Bind

Reading Mr Wang’s description of S, it’s obvious that S has caught himself in a double bind. He has no friends, therefore he’s bad and evil. Whomever doesn’t want to make friends with him is also bad and evil. Therefore, everyone is bad and evil.

So how can you help someone who is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t?

I’ll be honest with you; there aren’t any easy answers to this question. In essence, you’ll want to open up his double bind belief so it’s receptive again to feedback from his internal states, values, experiences and expectations – this makes the belief open to change.

In Dilts’ book Sleight of Mouth he reveals (more than) one way to break down limiting beliefs; applying the belief back onto itself.

For example, if I were working with S; to the belief that everyone is evil, I could say that ‘yes, the world is an evil place…because of evil beliefs like that‘.

There are even more methods, like speaking to his values, chunking his beliefs or conditioning new behaviors. But in a situation as advanced as S’s, change needs time and someone by his side who can get a more comprehensive view of his situation than the internet can give.

In Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), we learn about the Law of Prerequisite Variety: the element in any system that has the most flexibility will end up leading the system.

Think of little children, they have incredible flexibility. To get you to do something, they’ll tease, cajole, beg, lie, cry, laugh, use logic, use emotion, jump up and down, be adorable, be funny, and they’ll keep doing it until they get what they want.

Adults seem to have 2 or 3 patterns they keep coming back to

But while that belief has been useful to me, I’ve come to feel that it’s incomplete. Instead of:

The person with the most flexibility will lead the group.

I’ve come to believe that:

The person with the most flexibility and inner congruence will lead the group.

We know that the map is not the territory. When you’re alone, you’re living in your own reality. But when you’re out there with people, there are many different realities interacting all at once.

So the obvious question is; whose reality do you want to be in; theirs or yours? Because I’ve come to realize the person who has the most congruent map of the world will lead perceived reality, and the group.

Let’s say you have a shaky belief that you’re attractive to the opposite sex. You’d like to believe, and you do believe it – half of the time. The other half you’re not so sure.

You go out with a group of friends and meet some new people of the opposite sex. As the day goes on you notice that they seem to be ignoring you; alarm bells go off and the pessimist inside your head goes; ‘oh no, I guess I’m not that attractive after all!’

But what if you have a strong, inner conviction that the opposite sex finds you irresistibly delicious? So even if they do seem to be ignoring you, the voice inside your head will go in another way; ‘they haven’t had the chance to know how sexy I can be yet’.

In the first example, your shaky map of the world will be led by their maps of the world which has made them do what they do – but maybe they were just shy? In the second, your congruent map of the world will lead you to take proactive actions to steer the direction of the group in the way you want.

Together with the law of prerequisite variety, if you have the flexibility to keep changing your approaches, you’ll have even more power to lead anyone’s reality instead of being drawn into theirs.

Slightly more than 10 years ago, I first read about NLP from Anthony Robbins’ book Unlimited Power. It opened up my eyes to an exciting new world of powerful skills I never thought could be possible, and in that same year I took my first NLP Practitioner training.

I then took those amazing new skills and…did nothing about them.

Don’t get me wrong, I attempted to put them into practice, but after a few half-hearted attempts, I always put them aside. I didn’t know why, but somehow they didn’t work for me. The trick, I thought, must be in some more advanced skill that I hadn’t learned yet.

The years passed, and I devoured anything I could on NLP, personal growth and development. I even worked at a personal development bookstore for a while, taking a pay-cut just so I could borrow the materials for free.

I was such a wild fanatic I quickly became a walking NLP dictionary.

All that changed in ’04 when I discovered the difference between a walking dictionary and a walking example.

The Difference That Makes The Difference

When I joined the Patterns of Excellence program (I can’t believe they used that photo, that’s me holding the board for Adam!), I knew more about NLP than most of the coaches there (oh, the humility! ).

But during the course itself, I couldn’t just talk the good talk, I had to put into use all the NLP skills I had only read about. I had to use the hypnotic Milton Model to help my team win a game, use the Parts Integration Process on my friend, and the power of anchors and visualizing to get myself to overcome my fear of heights.

I was handed the key. And when I used that key to open the doorway into life coaching, a whole new world opened up again just like it had almost 10 years ago, but this time I was a participant not an observer. And that was the difference that made all the difference.

The Key Is Action

“Knowledge is only a rumour until it’s in the muscle.”

~Papua New Guinean proverb

I’ve coached and seen hundreds of participants in training programs, and I’ve seen people who were like me all the time. They absorb new knowledge like sponges, but never put any into action. They believe that all they really need to make that change in their life is that new tidbit of information that’s just round the corner, but never the things that they already know.

While there is a lot out there still to learn, here’s an insidious truth about marketing and the power of words: everybody out there who’s out to sell a book, audio program or training course wants you to believe that their product is the next thing you’ll need to really turn your life around.

Heck, I’ve done it with my language in Life Coaches Blog from time to time. There’s nothing good, bad or indifferent about it, it’s a way we structure our language to make our stuff stand out from the millions of competitors out there and make sure our voice is heard.

(Except my stuff is good and it’s free – oh the humility! )

Unfortunately, some of them do it by purposefully making you feel inadequate. Like you’re not enough if you don’t buy their product and make them money. While it’s true that there’s a ton of useful information out there that can really make a difference in your life (Life Coaches Blog, Life Coaches Blog – oh the – you know ), if you’ve already accumulated lots of it and haven’t done anything with it, you know it’s time to stop.

All the knowledge in the world is useless if you cannot put it into use.

“Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing flawlessly.”

~Robert Schuller

3 Ways To Get Knowledge Into The Muscle

If you honestly need more knowledge to help you improve your life, this article is not for you. But if you’ve gathered a lot of personal development insights you know could improve the quality of your life but you haven’t acted on them, I’ll suggest a few things I’ve done that have helped me move from being an NLP dictionary to an NLP practitioner (some say master practitioner or better, but I’m humble – it’s about time I am, isn’t it ).

1) Build the belief that you already have all the resources you need or can get them.

You don’t need a new book, audio program, or training course to awaken your potentials, just action on knowledge. You are not lacking, you already possess all the internal resources you need to make things happen.

2) Start small.

When I read a good personal development book, I know I won’t be able to implement everything it teaches immediately (unless it’s a really thin book). Instead, I aim to take at least one idea and put it into use, because one new idea I ingrain is better than ten thousand I only know.

Pick one good idea and focus your efforts on mastering it. Momentum tends to row, I still have problems with the basic NLP technique of using primary representational systems but am pretty confident in my Milton and Meta models.

3) Surround yourself with like-minded people.

The biggest boost to my personal growth was and is the people around me. I’m blessed to have good friends who are committed to continuous personal development. These wonderful people push and challenge me, and we have great fun discussing and discovering new ideas about NLP, communication, personal development and how to lead a greater life.

You Already Have Everything You Need To Put Anything Into Place

This post was written for the friend who wrote me that email, you know who you are but you don’t have to reveal yourself. I just wanted you to know that I know how you feel, I was there for 10 years.

It took me that long to realize how I could get out of it, and that all along I had all that I really needed to put my knowledge into action. I lacked nothing except the willingness to act and learn from my mistakes.

In the end, you cannot rely on books, or even a post like this. All you can rely on are the actions you have taken to make you who you are, and will take to make you who you want to become.

You already have learned some incredible skills, and with what you already have you can go beyond what me or any of the other Life Coaches possess, if you only allow yourself to act.

I’m sure you’ve been there too, haven’t you?

So how do we thrive in the midst of stress? How do we transform stress into strength so that when the going gets tough, the tough get going?

While there are many methods to do so, this is a modified NLP visualization technique I used during the last week to keep me going through a couple of 20 hour workdays (and a crazy week).

9 Steps to Transform Stress into Strength

1) Where do you feel the stress in your body?

Take a moment and notice where you feel the stress most in your body. Is it in your head, shoulders, chest, stomach, arms, or legs? I felt mine most in my heart region.

2) What does the stress feel like?

Notice what it feels like. Is it heavy or light? What’s the texture like, rubbery or leathery, hard or soft, smooth or rough? Mine was very dense, hard and heavy.

3) Pluck the stress out using your hands

Without this key, most NLP techniques don’t work: using your body is vital. Use your hands to imagine physically taking the stress out from you and hold it in your hands.

4) What does the stress look, sound and feel like?

Now that it’s in your hands, notice what it looks like. What color is it? Does it make any sound? Use your hands to move around the shape, what does it feel like in your hands? Explore the stress feeling in your hands, and get curious about its details like it’s a real object.

Mine was a hard-edged box, black and heavy.

5) What does the stress say?

If there was a belief or a sentence associated with the stress, what would it be? Mine was saying; ‘I can’t do this, I can’t do this’ in a weary tone again and again.

6) Shift the colors, shape and sound around.

Using your hands, imagine yourself sculpting and changing the surface of the stress. Some people find it easier to change the colors first, some the sound, and some the texture. Imagine what the colors, sounds and feel of a neutral feeling would be like.

For me, I changed the color of my stress from black to a milky white, from being heavy to feeling lighter, softening the edges of the box to a roundish shape, without any sounds.

7) Change the colors, shape and sound to a powerful, empowering emotion.

What’s an alternative, empowering feeling you’d rather be feeling instead of stress? In my case I had to overcome challenges at work, so I chose to make mine strength. To me, red is the color of power and boldness, so I started to change the color of the stress from a neutral milky white to bright red.

Feeling light doesn’t make me feel powerful, so I made the shape of it denser, and I started to spin it. The more dramatic you can make it, the more impactful this exercise will be, so I made it bigger, brighter, with firetrails bursting out of the circle shape.

You should be feeling pretty differently by now! If not, make the empowering shape bigger, brighter, louder, up and up the intensity of it!

Slam it back into where you plucked it out from!

Take the new empowering shape/emotion and slam it right back from where you first plucked it out from, fast, and notice how differently you feel as it permeates your entire body. Then make a strong gesture with your body, make a fist, raise your hands, jump up and down, do anything that you feel is associated with this new feeling.

When my new spinning ball of fire entered my chest, I felt awash with strength as I imagined it rushing all over my body, and I breathed in and out deep as I clenched both my fists hard.

9) Say the new belief!

Now that your stress has been transformed into strength, notice the new belief or phrase that comes with this strength. From ‘I can’t do this’, the new phrase that came to me was ‘I’m stronger than this.’ This new phrase shall be your mantra for the day, that you’ll repeat to yourself whenever you need to transform stress into strength.

What You Need To Know About Stress

Your unconscious mind is a pretty smart thing, and there’s always a positive intention behind the feelings it’s sending you, even stress. There are either 2 major reasons why you feel stressed; either the environment or behaviour within that environment doesn’t support you or your ability to handle stress is low.

While this technique helps you to increase your ability to handle stress, if your environment or behaviour doesn’t support you long-term and you’re not changing it, the stress is going to come back.

Even though this technique worked for me in the short-term, I knew that I still had to make changes around my working environment or I would be the worst off in the long-term.

10) Bonus Step: Play with the company cat

I just did and it works great to relieve stress too

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

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