Using Hypnotic or Milton Language in Text

There's often debate in social media forums about whether or not you can use hypnotic language in text, because of course you can't control the intonation, pace and so on. Well, if your hypnotic repertoire doesn't stretch beyond adding "now" on the end of every sentence and talking in a very boring monotone then the answer is simple. No. However, if you're a little more... sophisticated... then yes. Here's a paragraph that I've just written for my new book which you'll see contains a progressive association, used to switch perceptual positions.

The next day, these super-human productivity machines go back to work, and are instantly deluged with demands for urgent things and yesterday’s things and tomorrow’s things and something for the meeting I’m going to right now and don’t you even think about taking a tea break and WHERE’S MY REPORT????

How did your feelings change as you read through that?

Limiting Beliefs - And Why You Have None

(There's now a Facebook Q&A group at www.facebook.com/groups/nlpmetamodel)

I often read comments and posts and blogs from people on the subject of limiting beliefs, and in particular, how you can overcome your own.

Nonsense, I'm afraid. You don't have any limiting beliefs.

This topic is very popular amongst coaches and NLP Practitioners, so I'm going to turn to NLP's Meta Model of language to show you why you don't have any limiting beliefs:

(You can click on the image to make it bigger)

Does that all make sense?

Don't worry if it doesn't, it's quite technical. Here are the highlights.

It's impossible for you to have limiting beliefs because logically, a belief cannot do anything. Can a belief run? Can it play the piano? Of course not, only a person or animal, a living entity, can do such things. Only a living creature can act, and if we talk just about people, then only a person can believe. A chair can not believe.

What about 'limiting'? A limit is a point on a scale, so for there to be a limit, or for a person to limit something, it must be possible to have more and less of that thing. For you to limit your spending, it must be possible for you to spend more or less. The word 'limit' therefore implies a hidden scale, where both more and less of something is possible for you.

The phrase 'limiting belief' takes two verbs and freezes them in time, turning them into nouns, and that is called a nominalisation. Here are some examples, form a mental picture for each one:

I went for a run

I had a meeting

I made a decision

Now let's turn those back into verbs and see what happens - form a mental picture for each one:

I ran (somewhere)

I met (someone)

I decided (something)

What was the difference between the two sets of mental images? Do it again if you need to - I'm guessing that the first set of images were still and the second set were moving.

At a superficial level, the few NLP Practitioners who properly understand the Meta Model will say that this freezes the action in time, and makes it 'stuck' and difficult to change. However, something far more important is happening.

Every language spoken by every person on this planet conforms to one of two basic structures:

Subject Verb Object (The cat sat on the mat)

Subject Object Verb (The cat on the mat sat)

In other words, every sentence, when grammatically complete, has a person or a thing acting upon a person or a thing.

When we turn a verb (to believe) into a noun (a belief) it moves from the Verb position to either the Subject or Object position, which is logically incorrect. However, humans are adept at twisting logic to fit the story.

A chair cannot be happy, but a person can be happy with the new chair they just picked up at a local market. To attribute an action or quality to something which it cannot have is called a Selectional Restriction Violation. A belief cannot limit, but a person can limit, and a person can believe.

When the nominalisation 'belief' becomes active, the person, the speaker, becomes passive and gives up control and responsibility for their actions.

I said that freezing the verb in time is a superficial interpretation, so here is a more profound one. By taking the verb, the action, out of time and turning it into a thing, it loses its action, its event because it is taken out of time. Instead of starting and ending, the belief applies now, which also means forever, because it's always now. So by nominalising a verb, I don't just make it apply now, I make it apply forever, and that's what makes it stuck, because a chair will always be a chair (until someone acts upon it with an axe) and a belief will always be a belief.

To believe something is temporary. It has a start and an end. You can think of your beliefs, when you learned them and you can imagine changing them.

Why, then, do you have no limiting beliefs?

You believe in certain facts. You believe in your abilities to do certain things. You believe that the sun will come up tomorrow. You believe that you're a good person, a hard worker, someone who always tries their best.

You also limit. You limit your spending. You limit your ice cream consumption. You limit your choices, in order to make it easier to make decisions.

What you believe does not limit you.

You choose, freely and responsibly, to limit what you believe, or to believe that you can limit yourself. And as soon as you realise that it's you doing the believing and you doing the limiting, then no belief can ever hold power over you again.

Everything You Know About NLP is Wrong

I've been writing my proposal for the NLP Conference to be held in London, April 2016 ... do you think it's provocative enough? It's entitled...

Everything you know about NLP is wrong

Here's the description:

Everything you think you know about NLP is wrong.

And that's why you can't always get the results you intended.

When trainers just emulate the pseudo-science they’ve been taught instead of testing for themselves, they pass that on to their students. So instead of an evolving, developing field, we have bad techniques being taught badly, and then we wonder why NLP gets a bad name.

For example, if you have trouble getting anchoring to work reliably, it's because you've been taught it wrong. And you're probably trying to use it to access resources such as confidence, which is the wrong way to use it.

Swish? Having trouble keeping the client's mind on the process? You've been using it wrong.

Just can't get your head round the Six Step Reframe? You've been doing it wrong.

But how can all of these experts be so wrong? Because they have failed to take into account the 30 years of neuroscience research since NLP was first created.

And we’ve learned a lot in 30 years...



Overall, delegates will learn to incorporate the last 30 years of real scientific research into their NLP practice, so that they can use NLP more reliably and consistently and avoid many of the myths that surround the field.

Delegates will learn the easy, right way to perform techniques such as:

Anchoring – and use it correctly, not just to access states
Swish – and use it any place, any time, even in business meetings
Six Step Reframe – surely, there’s an easier way?

Delegates will also learn the ‘truth’ about some of NLP’s most loved concepts, such as Eye Accessing Cues, Metaprograms and Logical Levels.

Delegates will even learn the most surprising revelation of all – that submodalities, the very bedrock of NLP’s approach to subjective experience, are completely made up.

This workshop will be practical, it will show you a better, easier, more reliable way to use NLP’s techniques, and it’s based on 30 years of research in neuroscience and 20+ years of personal research and experimentation.

Overall, this workshop will bring delegates’ knowledge of NLP up to date and give them a new understanding of the subject which will make them measurably more effective in applying techniques with their clients.

Peter delivers hundreds of hours of training, and hundreds of coaching sessions every year and incorporates fresh insights and learnings back into his books and his training at every opportunity.

Does that mean that he knows best? No, it only means that he’s open to the challenge, that to evolve, we must often let go of our most valued beliefs.

Are you?

Planning Your Communication

Later on in this post, I'm going to tell you what really effective communicators do to make their listeners sit up and pay attention. I'm going to tell you what they do to ensure their listeners respond as they are intended to. And you'll be surprised at how obvious it is.

Really effective communicators plan their communication.

That's it? Yes, but that doesn't mean that they sit down and write a script, it means they tell their audience what they are supposed to do with the communication. Here's an example. I'm going to ask you a question. In a moment, I want you to make a choice. Here's something you need to decide on. You may have found that paragraph a little confusing, as it directed your attention in many different directions without closing any of the opening statements.

Before you say what you want to say, tell your audience what you want them to do. This is really just another way of directing people's attention, and it's very effective for managing the way people respond to what you say.

Here are a few more examples of this simple yet effective tool:

“I'm going to ask you a question now that I want you to think very carefully about before you answer”

“In a moment, I'm going to ask you to stand up”

“Here's a really important point for you to consider”

“This is what I want you to do”

“Before you fill out your feedback forms, I'm going to ask you a question”

“When we get back from lunch, I'm going to have you do some really creative group work”

“Before you finish reading your handbook, I would like you to think of at least three new ways you'll use all the great stuff you're learning.”

If you tie this simple concept in with the goal setting exercises that you'll read about later on, you will quickly become a very powerful and congruent communicator, because the people you speak to will be able to understand easily and quickly what you want from them. It may be agreement, it may be an answer, or it may just be their attention. Whatever you want, you're more likely to get it if you tell people what it is!

In organisations, people often launch into transmission mode during meetings and then wonder why their colleagues pull their project updates apart. Sometimes, decisions go round in circles forever and never quite get made. We have come to learn what to expect from meetings, and if you are invited to a meeting then there may be an implicit expectation that you'll contribute. Meetings everywhere would be far more productive if people applied this simple principle. For example, saying “Here is an update on my project, I don't need any advice or feedback at this stage, it's for your information only” tells people exactly what is expected of them. Conversely, presenting a huge volume of facts and figures and only then asking people to make a decision is simply asking for trouble. If you tell people up front what you expect, they will pay attention in the right places and be able to make a decision when you need them to, instead of saying they need more time to think.

So, this is what I'm suggesting you do. Whenever you want a specific response to what you tell people, first tell them what you want them to do.


This post is an extract from my book NLP - Skills for Learning which you can download for FREE from Bookboon. How marvellous!

Answers to Webinar Questions

On 26th February 2015 I ran a webinar, hosted by the Coach Support Service, on the subject of NLP's declining market presence, and the need to adjust our sales and marketing methods in response.

A number of questions were raised which we didn't manage to get to, so I've answered all questions below.

Do look me up on LinkedIn or Facebook if you'd like to ask anything else.

You can also see the slides and a video of the whole webinar.





Do you feel if NLP was regulated the public perception would shift back to the mass market approach?

No. By 'regulated' I presume you mean 'accepted by the mainstream therapuetic professional bodies', as hypnotherapy is, for example. What it would mean is a slower decline because front line doctors would ensure a steady stream of new clients being referred for help with smoking, diet, anxiety etc. which is what happens with CBT today. In that respect it would be different if Bandler hadn't alienated the therapeutic community from the start, but it's too late now, I believe.

Do you feel the decline in the search result over 10 years is the move away from use of the internet as an educational tool to the leisure platform it is today

No. The Internet has grown in all directions. The growth of online and social gaming has not been at the expense of other applications.

The name Neuro Linguistic Programming is something of a handicap. 

Is it? Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is widely accepted. As is Person Centred Counselling. I do agree that people wonder what the Programming bit means, and assume mind control.

Finding the correct markets and strategies

You'll only find them by knocking on doors and speaking to people. If we practice what we preach, then the only way to know if something works is to do it and test what happens.

It cannot be accepted in its own right as still not understood - has to be incorporated into training, seminars, coaching

I don't agree that it's not understood, the problem is that a profession has a professional body of knowledge. Even though NLP's Practitioner techniques are essentially plagiarised from other therapeutic practices, we could say that the modelling process is a unique body of knowledge. But while the likes of Bandler and Grinder are perpetuating the argument of what is and isn't NLP, and who did and didn't create it, and who can and can't teach it, a self-governing profession will never be established. Given where the market is, as I said in the webinar, our options are to integrate, which is what the question proposes, or differentiate, which is getting more difficult.

Just wondering Peter. What about some practitioners / trainers who have managed to demonstrate scale and seem to do very well, (Tony Robbins, Grinder, Bandler, Mckenna) is that evidence that NLP is not dead and actually the rest of us are not very good at marketing / sales.

The answer is simply that they had full time sales teams. Tony Robbins uses a very traditional and well established consumer sales model. Jonathan Jay used a timeshare sales model for life coaching. Grinder and Bandler have enough of a reputation to trade off. McKenna got out of NLP! He sold PMT to Bernardo Moya, remember. And before he was a NLP trainer, remember that he was a radio DJ and had a TV show as a stage hypnotist. If any of us had that foundation to build on, or the resource of a full time, paid, targeted sales team, then we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Finding clients who will pay for my services

Yes.

How to deliver NLP so it makes really a transformation in peoples lives not just a short term change.

If you don't know how to do that then you were taught badly at Practitioner. Come to Spain in September!

To be able to know the right NLP techniques

If you don't know how to do that then you were taught badly at Practitioner. Come to Spain in September!

What's your key marketing strategy? Online, Offline? How are you getting clients knowing what you know?

Great question! A combination of both. I do as much public speaking as I can, both inside and outside the NLP community, and of course I have written a few books which are very important in building credibility. I'm very careful to align my online and offline activities, as I said in the webinar, because both together form the client's perception of you.

From your stats whilst you could see a decrease of 1 marker, we don't know what % decline in interest that was, firstly do you know that decline as a percentage and what's happened to you business sat in the last year knowing what you know?

The search volume is one half of what it was ten years ago.

What's happened in my business is a far greater focus than I've had before. In past years, I had the luxury of being able to do lots of different things that looked interesting, now I don't.

For success in NLP we need to recognise and use its fractal nature. 

I'll say yes.

Far too many in the field that think they know NLP yet are unable to extrapolate.

Yes, the result of either poor quality training, or often people go into training for reasons that aren't... well formed, or at least aligned with the practice of NLP. For example, to fix one personal failing, or to use on others.

How do we embrace the various names of coaching and proceed with NLP?

Stop putting them on our business cards.

Finding the appropriate audience. The market seem to be less transparent as many people call themselves e.g. Coaches.

Yes, as coaching is not a profession, any failed sales person, media 'celebrity' or sports player can decide to be a coach because they see the field, and especially corporate clients, as a cash cow. This makes it harder for clients to choose a good coach, so organisations such as the ICF spring up to add 'credibility' through a self-styled and non-peer reviewed certification process which is aimed at letting anyone be a coach, regardless of ability, as long as they follow the defined criteria. So we end up with a badge that helps clients choose, but in reality, it still doesn't guarantee a 'good' coach, only a 'certified' coach.

Looking at the social media, I see tons of people writing "coach". I think this has some impact too. 

See previous question.

In addition and along the lines with Peter's great presentation, in Denmark NLP is a commodity. 

Denmark is an advanced, Western European market so will be very close to where the UK is, as will be France, Germany, Sweden, Ireland, and so on. Sorry if I missed anyone's country out.

Focus seem to be packing NLP into something else. There seem to be a trend calling it "sales training" etc.

This is the integration strategy that I discussed in the webinar. Really, we don't call NLP sales training, what we do is to integrated aspects of NLP into sales training to make the sales training more effective. For example, belief change around cold calling, or how a sales person perceives the 'gatekeeper'.

How to encourage clients to believe in their own abilities

If you don't know how to do that then you were taught badly at Practitioner. Come to Spain in September!

Where to find my clients

You'll only find them by knocking on doors and speaking to people. If we practice what we preach, then the only way to know if something works is to do it and test what happens.

I add "NLP Practitioner" to my list of credentials, but really it is a set of tools to be used to deliver transformation

Yes, this is the integration strategy that I discussed in the webinar.

I don't sell myself as a NLP therapist - I use it, no problem there

Good. An integration strategy.

I have expectations of it being potentially very helpful

Yes, it is a far more versatile tool than many people understand it to be.

At the moment I don't 'promote' my NLP services to clients as I need greater in-depth experience of seamlessly introducing it ..

If you don't know how to do that then you were taught badly at Practitioner. Come to Spain in September!

I sell the result of the service, so NLP not always announced. The challenge is always in getting better as with all skill

Definitely, and practice groups are useful in that way, although it's sad to see that there aren't as many of them around any more.


That's all folks!

As I said, do look me up on LinkedIn or Facebook if you'd like to ask anything else.

Great Skills - But Where Are Your Clients?

Not enough clients?

Struggling to get clients to return to you?

Giving away lots of free tasters but getting nothing in return?

Why would you develop world class NLP skills without building the business to deliver those skills? After all, the skills you’re learning aren’t for your own entertainment, you are learning these skills so that you can deliver value to your clients. Without clients, your skills mean nothing.

This NLP Master Practitioner training will give you the skills and the experience to resolve any client issue and align your clients’ potential with the results they desire, but that’s only the first step. Too many trainers and coaches think that developing their technical skills is enough, and that somehow, clients will be magically drawn to them. This isn’t the case. Clients choose to work with you because you put the time and effort into finding them and proving that you’re the right choice for them.

So what do you do? Print some business cards, create a website, place some adverts? Then sit back and hope for the best?

It’s a crowded market and clients are more demanding than ever. And before they can discover how good a trainer or coach you are, they first have to experience how good a sales person you are.

Because I want to help you, not only develop the very best NLP skills, but also a successful business of your own, I am offering an optional sales and marketing module for this Master Practitioner training.

This optional module comprises a number of* evening sessions, during which you will:

• Understand what’s important in selling a service
• Develop a clear proposition for your business
• Identify your target clients
• Develop a personal business plan
• Create the marketing methods to support that plan
• Learn unique, service based sales techniques

Everything that you have read about sales and marketing in the past is most likely about product sales, and you have to understand that, if that’s the approach you’re taking, you are simply not going to achieve the results you want. Selling a service is fundamentally different, and in this optional module, I will show you how.

And, perhaps best of all, because I want you to be successful in applying your new skills, there is no extra cost for this optional sales and marketing module.

* The schedule for the sales and marketing module is as follows:

Goa (10 day Master Practitioner, October)

10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19
	✓	✓		✓	✓		✓	✓

Spain (8 day Master Practitioner, September)

15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22
✓			✓		✓

Great Review for The Unsticker!

Mayur Bardolia

I have received the book 'Unsticker' by Peter Freeth Expert in High Performers, Author, Coach. It's amazing book. It has tons of questions to make me powerful problem solver. The questions are easy to understand and very helpful to be more creative. A question on each page make this book unique. One of the coolest thing about this book is that you don't need to read from the begining to end. You can pick up any 2-5 pages (2-5 questions) and they are good enough to solve your problems. Almost everyone should have this book with them all the time. Much recommended.

Bookboon have made my book, NLP - Skills for Learning, their book of the week!

Bookboon have made my book, NLP - Skills for Learning, their book of the week!

Here's the interview they've put on their blog...

Peter Freeth on how to enhance your potential

By Sophie Tergeist | December 13, 2013

Bookboon.com interviewed author Peter Freeth

Ever heard of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming)? Bookboon.com author Peter Freeth answers a few of our questions around his book  ”NLP – Skills for learning” and explains how progress starts with what you tell your brain. Take a look! 

1. Can you tell us more about what a “labelling system” is? You mention it in the context of how people develop behaviours throughout their lives.
One of the most important mental mechanisms that we develop from early childhood is the ability to represent the world as a series of symbols. Starting perhaps with ‘mama’ and ‘dada’, children quickly move onto ‘cat’, ‘dog’ and then actions such as ‘give’. Just think about your computer – there are several different symbols that you understand for the command to print something, including a menu action, the keyboard action ‘control P’ and the printer icon on the toolbar. As we grow and learn, we have new experiences and have to figure out how to symbolise those experiences and communicate them to other people. When you describe a holiday, you don’t just say, “We went to Spain on August 30th and returned on September 14th. The weather was mostly warm and sunny”, you tell people how you felt about it, so that they can better understand your experience.
Our labelling system is therefore a vital part of how a trainer can begin to interact with a learner’s inner world. By paying careful attention to the language that people use, we can gain valuable insight into how to help them learn new behaviours more easily and effectively. And by behaviour, I mean anything from ‘leadership’ to computer skills – all involve the learner doing something, so by definition this is a behaviour which is underpinned by the learner’s model of the world.

2. When coaching, why do you think it is a good idea to include physical versions of exercises into a session? Can you give an example of physical exercises?
When a coach works only conversationally with a client, all they get in response is words, and perhaps some facial expressions. A significant proportion of the client’s communication is therefore inaccessible to the coach or trainer. When the coach asks a question, the client has too much time to think of the ‘right’ answer rather than saying what’s really true for them.
Here’s an experiment that you can do. Next time you give someone a choice and they say something like, “I don’t mind”, such as where to go for dinner, or which film to watch, hold out your two hands, palms up. Tell them that, for example, your left hand is pizza and your right hand is Chinese. Look them right in the eye and ask them which they want. A second or two before they answer, you’ll see them glance, very quickly, at their preferred choice. What their body tells you is often very different to what they say.
So physical exercises help in three ways; firstly they enable the coach to get the answer that is really true, rather than the answer that sounds good. Secondly, they enable the client to answer without having to actually answer, which is a big help when they’re discussing something emotive or traumatic. Thirdly, it enables the client to uncover information that the client may not themselves be consciously aware of yet, such as reaching a decision that they have been mulling over for a long time.

3. You mention the difference between someone saying “I can’t do…” and “I don’t do…”. How are these two types of declarations different?
These declarations are called modal operators, and they modify the way in which a verb works. I can play badminton, but I’m not doing it right now. However, I can’t play squash. When you listen to the modal operators that a person uses, they tell you how that person organises their memories and abilities around a certain task. You perhaps already know, at least instinctively, that if a person says that they’re going to try to do something, it means that they expect to fail. “I’ll try to come to your party”, or, “I’ll try to get my report finished” are ambiguous, and the listener will typically hear what they want to hear, instead of hearing the “try” for what it really is.
Many people will be making New Year’s resolutions soon, so this is a good time to notice modal operators in practice. “I really ought to lose some weight”, “I want to start cycling to work again”, and “I must get round to booking myself onto an art class” all say very different things about the speaker’s confidence in their resolution.
Trainers can use modal operators in two ways to overcome barriers to learning. The first involves listening to modal operators and adjusting their approach accordingly. The second is to modify modal operators to get a desired result. If a learner says, “I can’t do this, I’ll never get it right”, then the trainer might respond with, “Yes, I can see that you’re not quite there yet, that must be frustrating. Sometimes, people get frustrated just before they find the solution, don’t they?”. The trainer has converted the learner’s “can’t”, which means “never” to a “not now” which presupposes that success is just around the corner.
Probably the biggest difficulty with using language in this way is that, in the cold light of this sentence, it seems like it can’t possibly make a difference. But you’re not in the state of mind or the situation of the ‘stuck’ learner, so you interpret the language very differently. The important thing is to have a go and see what happens for yourself.

4. Let’s talk about the “images” you refer to as ways to create confidence. How does this work? Seems like a great method! Do a lot of people use it?
In fact, I would say that everyone uses it, because every person on the planet is goal oriented. We think about what we want before we take action to get it. That might be months ahead of time, or it might be just milliseconds. However, every action is preceded by a thought – an idea, a need, a desire, even a fear or an instruction from someone else. That idea usually takes the form of either a feeling (like thirst) or an image (like you winning the lottery).
It seems that many people worry, and worry is just an application of the same process – you imagine something that hasn’t happened yet, you picture it turning out badly, and you act as if it is happening now. If the things that you worry about were to really happen then your reaction would be entirely appropriate, however they haven’t happened, and so your response is more likely to make them happen. Going to a job interview under a dark cloud because you’re sure you won’t get the job gives the interviewer a sense that you’re pessimistic, negative and withdrawn. Not the kind of person they want to hire, and also not the kind of person that you are!
The simple trick that I’ve developed to help people with worry is this. Most people will ask the worrier, “Why are you worried?” but this is an unhelpful question because it confirms the worrier’s fears. Instead ask, “What do you imagine is going to happen?” The worrier then describes their image, and you ask, “Is that what you want to happen?” The worrier answers, “No!”, and you say, “Well, imagine something else then!”
It’s important to be realistic in all of this. If you imagine winning the lottery, it might encourage you to buy a ticket, but that’s not really an ideal way out of financial difficulties. It’s better to picture yourself taking action, getting results that you’re in control of and feeling good about yourself as someone who can set goals and make them happen.

5. When did you discover NLP? What were you doing/using before?
From when I was at school, I read books on psychology and sociology as I was interested in how people worked. In 1992 I went on an internal training course in the company that I worked for which turned out to be about NLP, and from there I just used the little that I knew in everyday meetings and so on. In 1999 I started running a large practice group in London that attracted some very well-known International trainers and up to 90 people each month, and from there I took a voluntary redundancy opportunity and started my own business. So I think that before I discovered NLP, I was just doing what most people do, learning to get through human interactions by trial and error, mostly error! I started writing about what I’d learned in about 1999, really as a way to help me to organise my own thoughts and capture some of the interesting discoveries I’d made. However, other people seemed to like my books too and it all grew from there. Today, I concentrate more on ‘modelling’ with NLP, which is a process for getting inside the heads of experts and figuring out what they do. It’s the process used to create all of NLP’s techniques, and I use it to model high performers and create custom training programs for corporate clients.

If you want to learn more about NLP and coaching, download Peter Freeth’s book “NLP – Skills for learning” right here.

Would You Buy a Used Car From This Man?

I've seen a lot of talk recently about the use of NLP language in advertising and marketing. Personally, I find it awkward and embarrassing. What works in conversation just seems silly on paper. And yet, 'hypnotic marketing gurus' still maintain that they know the secrets of unconscious influence that will have customers beating a path to your door.

I've felt for many years that hypnotic language such as Milton Model patterns or Sleight of Mouth patterns may work in a therapeutic conversation, but they don't necessarily work on paper, for many reasons. But it was just the other day, in a conversation about cultural alignment, that I realised what the root cause of the problem might be.

When Bandler and Grinder modelled therapeutic language patterns to create the Milton Model and Meta Model, they modelled therapists.

Now, would you hire a therapist to sell a car?

Maybe if you were giving free phobia cures as an incentive. But generally, no, you wouldn't. Their goals and beliefs are different to those of car sales people. Not better or worse, just different.

Would you go to a car salesman for relationship therapy?

So if you wouldn't buy a car from a therapist, why would you copy a therapist's language patterns to sell a car?

Wouldn't you model successful sales people?

This is the fundamental problem with NLP when used outside of a therapeutic context. NLP, as you'll see in my books Genius at Work and The NLP Master Practitioner Handbook, is the modelling toolkit from which we define and code excellence. When that was used to code the work of therapists, the set of scripts that we know as 'NLP Practitioner techniques' were created. But most people stopped their NLP studies there and went out swishing and squashing and modal operating on their customers.

Even those that went on to study Master Practitioner were mostly given a dreadful mis-service by their trainers who just taught them more techniques. What a waste of time. At Master Practitioner level you're supposed to be learning how to create custom techniques of your own, not just learning more scripts.

When you learn modelling, and I mean real modelling, not just strategy elicitation and TOTE, you can model great sales people, or doctors, or project managers, or drivers, or musicians, or therapists, and you can create unique, custom techniques that are specifically aligned with that cultural environment.







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NLP v Science

Today, on an online training discussion forum, someone posted a comment about how it would be good to see more of NLP's techniques 'scientifically tested'. But his angle was to give NLP validity,  saying, "I agree with many NLPers that if something is useful and works it does not necessarily have to pass a scientific test. There are many billions of people around the world who are guided by religions which fail most scientific tests but I know that many find it useful in their lives, it works for them."

Well, I see it from two sides.

"If it works then don't question it, just enjoy the results" - that's one way to paraphrase what NLP trainers might say.

"If it works, find out why, so that you can do it again" - that's one way to paraphrase a scientist's view.

In my limited experience, I have found that most NLP trainers buy Bandler's pseudo-science so completely, even though it's based on models of neurology that are decades out of date, that they don't question, or research, or form their own theories.

But I digress. The point I wanted to make is this: It IS important why something works. Because when you can understand why something works, you can refine it and improve it. If you don't question why, you just get better at doing the incantations and rituals which are the things you do WHILE it's working. And even many NLP trainers have said to me that they realise that the incantations of NLP, such as trance or timeline, give the client a reason to believe in the cure, rather than being the cure themselves. They fully realise that the client just decided to change. And Derren Brown's most recent TV performance where he gave people a placebo kind of supported this. His theory was that the placebo allowed the people to give themselves permission to change. Now, 'permission' is a very person-centered philosophy and I'm not sure I agree with the use of that word to explain the placebo effect. My personal view is to use 'excuse' rather than 'permission'. The person had given themselves reasons for why they had to smoke, or be afraid of heights, or be afraid of singing in public. They had built a lifetime of excuses around that assertion, so they can't just change their minds because then that makes them look like a weak, hypocritical liar. So instead, give them a big enough excuse, "Well I used to be terrified of potatoes but I took this new wonder drug that's really special and new and changed my brain chemistry and it cured me. There used to be something wrong with me, honest, but now the drug has cured me".

Faith in a religion, and the strength that your faith gives you to face life's trials is something important and valuable. I'm not a religious person myself, but I sometimes envy people who have that level of true faith. But the mental resilience that a person atributes to their faith is not a good enough reason to say that religion 'works' and we should leave it alone. I have generally found that people with true faith delight in having that faith tested through enquiry and debate. The people whose faith is a show, a pretense, get defensive and aggresive when you defend it. But that's always the case with people who don't truly believe what they say. I admire anyone with the courage of their convictions, whatever their faith or beliefs may be.

Coming back to the question about scientific analysis of NLP, I find that in any 'coaching' interaction, I could say this:

Something in the technique works, and something in it is an excuse.

A scientist tries to find out which is which.

Perception, Subjectivity and Reality

An important concept in NLP, and in other psychological and philosophical theories, is that we construct our experience of the outside world by piecing together snippets of information gathered by our senses.

Because there is far too much information available, we have to reduce it down in order to make sense of it. Just go into any busy room and try to listen to every conversation at the same time to experience the potential sensory overload that we all face, every moment of every day. Even if you're sitting somewhere quiet right now, there is a huge amount of information that your brain is filtering out. For example, can you notice the temperature of the air? What can you see around you that is red? How do your feet feel? What sounds can you hear?

Even our senses, which are concerned with the reception of information, don't have access to all the potential information that exists in the world. We can only see and hear in a very narrow range of frequencies that coincide with the characteristics of sunlight and air. Our sense of smell is generally rather poor. We cannot directly sense magnetic or electrical fields, ultra-violet light or the rotation of the Earth, yet the limited information that is available to us is still too much to cope with.

In order to reduce this overwhelming amount of information so that we can focus on what's important, our brain uses three filtering processes.

The first filter deletes anything that is not within our focus of attention. It's also influenced by our beliefs, for example allowing your car keys to disappear before your eyes when you are convinced that you've misplaced them.

The second filter distorts the world so that it appears how you think it should be. For example, if there is someone at work who you can't stand talking to, you probably distort the way their voice sounds. You have probably also distorted many of your memories to exaggerate how they feel to you.

The final filter generalises information and forms rules. We couldn't survive without generalising. Our ancestors couldn't test every sabre toothed tiger to see if they were all dangerous, and we don't want our children to wonder whether every road that they cross is dangerous or not.

These sensory filters form our perceptions and most people, most of the time, confuse their perceptions with reality. A lifetime of perceptions create what you know through the processes of comprehension, and your experiences form your attitude and personality, which drive your behaviour.

Your behaviour influences and changes the outside world, which feeds back in through your senses.

Therefore, your senses are not a one way street; they are part of a continuous flow of information from the outside world into your mind and from your mind back to the outside world through your thoughts, words and actions.

In NLP, we often refer to this lifetime's collected experience as a person's 'map', taken from the saying that "the map is not the territory".

When a person's map differs significantly from the territory, the outside world, they cannot function effectively. They are unable to deal with the unexpected and they particularly struggle to make sense of and relate to other people. Physical objects are reasonably reliable and constant, but people are ever changing and growing, and so our 'map' of other people must be open to changing and growing too.

And if that's not already a lot to take in, consider this. If you were to calculate the resolution of your eyes in the same way that you would for a digital camera, you would discover that your eyes are physically incapable of resolving enough detail to even read these words. So how are you able to see in such detail? Clearly, vision is more than just a physical process...

Imagine using a satellite navigation system that had a map that was ten years out of date. Where would it take you? Dead ends? Would it take you through congested town centres rather than round the bypass? Would it take you on narrow country lanes instead of a new motorway?

It might sound like an impossible example, yet the reality is even worse. People have driven the wrong way on Motorways because their 'sat nav' told them to do a 'U turn'. The number of accidents involving trucks stuck under bridges has increased because of 'sat nav' systems with incorrect information. One man even followed his 'sat nav' when it instructed him to drive over a bridge. The bridge was, in fact, a car ferry and the man drove his car off a quayside. It's difficult to understand how these drivers couldn't see that the 'sat nav' was wrong. It's hard to believe that they couldn't just use their own eyes. Yet we all do this, every time we rely on our own out of date maps and choose to ignore the information that the outside world is giving us.

Many NLP techniques simply recover the information lost within this filtering process so that a person can update their map of the world, gaining more useful perceptions and behaving more appropriately and effectively in situations that they previously found difficult to manage or control.

When people do 'wake up to reality', they often do so with a shock, yet it doesn't have to be that way. NLP gives us a set of tools and techniques that help us to update our maps so that we can live more in the real world and enjoy meaningful and satisfying relationships with the people we share it with.

State

State isn't just about how you feel, it's your entire present physical and mental condition, so you might be tired, happy, curious, careful or fascinated - all of these are states.

The two key ways to quickly influence your state are through your physiology and your focus of attention.

People have all kinds of methods and routines for controlling or maintaining states. Perhaps you have a routine for getting ready for work, or for going out on a Friday night. Perhaps you have a lucky charm or item of clothing that helps you get into a certain state. Perhaps you can just think of a state and you're there. The reality is that everyone has total control over their state, yet most of the time we just go with the flow, letting external events and people cheer us up or put us down.

Your state defines the meaning you make of the world, the choices you make, the risks you take and the language you use. The differences in your behaviour between a great day and an awful day may be tiny, yet they add up over time creating a state that builds throughout the day, reinforcing itself.

When you wake up, knowing it's going to be a bad day, you program your sensory filters to notice things that go wrong. Anything that goes well is set aside as an accident or coincidence. When you plan for bad things to happen, they often do.

When you wake up, knowing it's going to be a great day, you notice everything that goes well for you. Anything that doesn't go your way is set aside as just a temporary setback. When everything seems to be going your way, it probably is.

You might say that you can't predict or control what happens to you, and you might be right in saying that. What you can control is your response to what happens. Here's an example.

A salesman leaves a message for a customer to call him. After two hours, the customer hasn't called back. The salesman knows that the customer always returns calls promptly, therefore something must be wrong - the customer must be avoiding the salesman. Self doubt starts to creep in and the salesman's state changes to reflect his negative mood. When the customer finally calls (he had left his mobile at home) the salesman's voice tone reveals his state and the customer thinks something is wrong. The customer's state changes accordingly, confirming that salesman's suspicion and they enter a 'vicious circle'.

The only thing that the salesman can say for certain about this situation is that he has not spoken to the customer since leaving a message. The salesman's response presumes that he has read the customer's mind; the customer has heard the message and has made a conscious decision to not call back. None of this is true, so it's just as acceptable for the salesman to imagine the customer going to the dentist, or just taking a quiet afternoon out to make an important decision. Neither this nor the pessimistic version is 'true' in an absolute sense, so which is the more useful to believe?

Let's say the customer has gone away to decide whether to buy the salesman's product or not, and currently the customer is undecided. When the customer calls back for more information, the salesman's state could be the deciding factor. You may think that no customer would make a decision so lightly but in fact we each do exactly this - we buy from people we like to do business with. A friendly voice on the end of the telephone could be all the customer needs to decide. Conversely, a negative or pessimistic voice could influence the decision by making the customer more aware of their doubts.

Your state is a filter through which you experience the world, and it's a mechanism by which the people in that world experience you. A NLP Practitioner can both influence a client's state and also give the client tools to manage their own state so that they can make better informed decisions about what is happening around them and behave more appropriately and effectively.

Rapport

Watch two people, deep in conversation, and you will see a number of things happening. You'll see them touch their hair or pick up a cup at the same time. You'll see them laugh at the same time. You'll hear their conversation naturally ebb and flow, and you'll hear them talking at the same volume and pitch. It's as if they're in a bubble, separate to the rest of the world.

This is rapport.

Rapport isn't something you do - it's more like a measure of the quality of a relationship.

You can think of rapport as being a conduit for effective communication. In general, in most situations, it is more useful to have rapport than not. Most of the time, we get into and out of rapport with people unconsciously, so our beliefs and thoughts are revealed non-verbally, regardless of our efforts to hide our true feelings. Regardless of what people say, they will show you who and what they agree and disagree with.

When two people are in rapport, they are influencing each others' thoughts and feelings. When one feels angry, the other feels angry. When one feels relaxed, the other relaxes. When you're in rapport with other people, you are influencing the way that they feel - their state - and that in turn influences how they interpret and respond to their interaction with you.

In a therapeutic or counselling setting, rapport is vital to develop trust and open communication, yet the counsellor must always stay in control, otherwise the client's issues can easily transfer to the Practitioner.

One important thing to understand about rapport is that you can choose the people you want to get into rapport with. If you feel that a salesman is being a bit too persuasive, or that someone secretly disagrees with you, even though they say differently, then it's worth having a quick check of your own feelings and intuitions.

In almost all NLP training courses and corporate 'communication skills' programs, people are taught to develop rapport by 'matching' or 'mirroring' another person's posture and actions. There are certainly some interesting things you can learn from doing this, and in a counselling or coaching situation it can be very valuable. However, in other situations, this approach can be contrived and obvious and can do more harm than good. If you get on with someone, you'll be in rapport with them. If you're not in rapport, there's probably a reason for that and you should pay attention to what it is.

Don't waste time learning how to get rapport, because you're already good at that. Instead, learn how to manage rapport - far more valuable for you and your clients.

Outcomes

You'd be surprised how many people don't have a clear idea of what they want. They're not too fussed, just get them anything, they don't mind. Until you get back from the sandwich shop and then they suddenly know exactly what they want - and it isn't what you bought for them. And some people know exactly what they don't want, yet excel in achieving exactly that. When you have a very clear set of outcomes, every action and thought reinforces those outcomes and takes you a step closer to achieving them.

When you don't have clear outcomes, your thoughts and actions tend to be more random, so you have to think consciously about what you do, and you have to waste time correcting actions that take you in the wrong direction.

Frequently, people have a very clear idea of what they don't want, and they only know when things are going wrong for them. They tend to bounce from one wrong course of action to the next, never settling on a clear direction.

Most people think that they set clear goals, yet mostly these goals are not phrased in a way that your brain understands, so they're actually quite useless.

A goal like "To complete my project by September 1st" sounds very specific, but it really doesn't mean much to your brain. For a start, different people each have a different definition of 'complete'. Although we use dates and times as fixed, absolute markers, your brain treats them as very elastic concepts because we all have a different way of coding and representing time. In particular, the concept of 'now' is different for each of us.

You may have come across SMART objectives at work. With SMART, you make sure that every goal you set is:

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Realistic

Timebound

In NLP, we have a different way of setting goals. We call a goal an 'outcome' because it is the result of behaviour, and we apply four simple criteria to the outcome. When an outcome meets those criteria, it is said to be 'well formed', so in NLP, goals are called 'Well Formed Outcomes'.

Well Formed Outcomes are designed to adapt to a changing world as you move towards your goal, and they are designed to get you to take action, continually, in pursuit of your goal.

With a Well Formed Outcome, you always move forwards. You may or may not end up where you first thought, but that's always a good thing when the territory is changing so quickly.

We are goal directed animals, and we act in pursuit of goals, both large and small. NLP offers a way to access those natural resources so that you can achieve goals that lead you more directly to the life you want.

As Louis Pasteur said, "Chance favours the prepared mind".

Meta Model of Language

One of the most important ways to apply NLP in a therapeutic or coaching situation is to help a client form a more complete and accurate map of the world. There are a number of NLP techniques for doing this, and perhaps the most powerful, flexible and misunderstood is the Meta Model.

Meta just means 'above' or 'encompassing', so the Meta Model is simply a collection of other linguistic models.

From role models such as Virginia Satir and Gregory Bateson, the Meta Model was created. Simply, we construct sentences which are grammatically correct yet which delete, distort or generalise information. For example, if I tell you that you shouldn't eat chocolate, it's bad for you, you might believe me. If I tell you that you shouldn't trust salespeople then you might believe me too.

Are those beliefs useful? Is it more useful that you also know how I know that, so that you can decide for yourself? Parents pass on beliefs to their children, and some are useful, some are not. The Meta Model therefore allows you to explore and unpick beliefs, assumptions and rules that have become accepted as facts.

The Meta Model is based on linguistic structures which are not specific to NLP, you'll find them in everything from books on transformational grammar to school books. However, what is relevant to NLP is the way that those rules are connected to a person's experiences and behaviour.

According to the theory of 'universal grammar', we are born with the 'hardware' for language, which results in all languages in the world, even those found in remote valleys that had no contact with other cultures, following the same basic structure with a gramtically correct sentence following either a Subject Verb Object (SVO) or Subject Object Verb (SOV) word order.

The theory perhaps began with Roger Bacon, a 13th century English philosopher, who noted that all languages are built upon a common grammar. The idea was popularised more recently by people like Noam Chomsky, Richard Montague and Stephen Pinker, from the 1950s onwards.

We often communicate so lazily, relying on other people to fill in the gaps. Sometimes, when they can't, we get frustrated, perhaps saying, "You know what I mean!" Do you know someone who often says, "Can you pass me the thing?" or "What's going on with that project?"

In NLP, we use the Meta Model to help clients to be very specific about their intentions, needs and experiences. This puts them more in touch with the outside world, and that helps them to make more useful and valuable decisions.

Therefore, becoming familiar with the Meta Model patterns and listening out for them in people's language is a good way to train yourself to notice the way that people structure their experiences, and that is vital in developing your ability to help people change those experiences and then their behaviour.

Milton Model of Language

Milton Erickson was a Hypnotherapist in Arizona. He can perhaps be credited as the person who made hypnotherapy acceptable in western medicine, using it in a wide range of situations and helping patients that other therapists had declared 'incurable'. Erickson had suffered from polio in his early life and found himself able to spend many long hours paying attention to the effect that words had on people.

Erickson's language was structured to gently influence the listener, almost like hypnosis but without the stereotypical 'trance'.

In a normal conversation, language has both structure and content. The content gives you facts and the structure connects those facts together into a story.

For example, if a story contains the facts 'cat', 'dog' and 'tree', there is nothing to tell you what is actually happening. The chances are that you have already imagined what is happening in this story, so your mind has unconsciously filled in the missing information based on your prior experiences.

NLP's Milton Model of language works in this way, giving you the structure but no facts. The listener has to insert the missing information from their own experiences and the result is something that is absolutely unique to each listener.

This process wasn't invented by Milton Erickson, he was simply the role model for it in NLP. If you listen to any statement prepared by a politician, you may hear something similar. For example:
"People will understand that the solutions to these kinds of problems are to be found not in the past but in the future, and everyone will appreciate what a difficult task this can be. You can also be absolutely certain that the government we have now is in a far better position than any other to tackle these problems and to resolve them in a way that is economical, effective and respectful to the local community."

Does that sound familiar? Perhaps you remember hearing that before, about asylum seekers, or racial problems, or local policing policy? It sounds like it says something, but when you look carefully at the words, it says nothing at all. Unfortunately, many people have prior experiences of politicians which make them interpret such vague words as being 'manipulative' or judging such statements as 'sound bites', and it is vital to bear in mind that a political context is entirely different to a training, coaching or therapeutic relationship.

Milton language is a framework within which the listener can place their own meaning which becomes totally unique and personal to each listener.

Using Milton language enables you to communicate in a very personal way to a diverse audience, and it also allows a NLP Practitioner to communicate very effectively with his or her clients.

Uniquely and crucially, Milton language enables NLP Practitioners to coach clients without knowing specific details about the presented issue. This means that a Practitioner can help a client to achieve change without having to go into factual details about an issue that could be embarrassing or even traumatic to describe.

Time

Time is an abstract concept, created entirely through our perceptions. Mankind has created many ways to measure the perceived passage of time, from celestial temples and sundials to atomic clocks and egg timers. How we relate to time has a great influence on how we relate to our past experiences and future plans, and you may already know someone who seems very rooted in the past or, someone who is forever waiting for tomorrow. 

Some people say, "I'll look for a job soon", or, "I'll go and talk to my manager when the time is right". Some people say, "This won't work, because we already tried it", and some people say, "It's time to try something new - nothing we do works". When we consider time as a shared experience, we can certainly observe that different people exhibit different relationships to that shared experience.

Consider for a moment the concept of 'now'. When is it? Is it the same for everyone?

Ask a few of your friends the following questions, and notice how their answers differ:

When is 'now'?
How long is 'now'?
Where is 'now'?
How big is 'now'?
What colour is 'now'?
Where is the 'future' in relation to where you're standing?
Where is the 'past' in relation to where you're standing?

Hopefully, you found their different answers interesting, yet found yourself wondering how that information might be useful. By understanding a person's relationship with time, we can understand their relationship with change and create tools and techniques that make change easy to achieve for them.