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Have you ever wondered who beats your heart, who flows your blood, who keeps you breathing when you sleep?

What’s your phone number? Most people can answer this question without blinking. But where does the information come from? You don’t have to consciously remember your phone number all the time. The information goes out of your awareness until you need it, at which time, you can usually easily retrieve it.

How do you get in and out of a room? Through the door. How do you know how to operate it? Because you learned. Not only that, you learned once, and now you know how to open ALL doors, not only the one you learned with. Where is that knowledge stored? Do you even have to think about all the necessary steps to open a door? Probably not! You could open a dorr while thinking about something totally different.

The unconscious mind is that part of us that we are not conscious about, i.e we don’t have the faintest idea that it’s even here! But, as the immersed part of the iceberg, it is monumental. All our behaviours have their source at the unconscious level.

If you are over 30 years old, watch the 4 seconds video below (a very funny illustration of this). If you are below 30, don’t bother, you probably won’t get it.

To learn how, check the schedule of courses HERE.
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The MasterMinds NLP Website HERE

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Sometimes, mis­un­der­stand­ing arises when we do not under­stand other people’s map of the world, or in other words, when we can­not put our­selves in their shoes. Each person reacts to the other, the sit­u­a­tion esca­lates, emo­tions inten­sify, and the chance of reach­ing a mutu­ally ben­e­fi­cial agree­ment dis­ap­pears in a puff of smoke.

One of the most effective ways to solve conflicts is to be able to see the other person’s perspective. Many times, this is all that is needed to defuse tension, initiate a different mind-frame, and open the path to a solution to the conflict or argument.

Whether you’re prepar­ing for a meet­ing, deal­ing with fam­ily mem­bers, sell­ing, nego­ti­at­ing, coach­ing, or giv­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion, the abil­ity to consciously choose the perspective you want to have on the situation massively increases the like­li­hood of success. This is what in NLP we call ‘Perceptual Positions’, i.e. different perspective from which you perceive a situation or problem which involves several people.

In this short audio, I’ll take you through the 3 Perceptual Positions. Leave comments at the bottom of this page if you have any. Click on the little arrow below to start the audio player.

Want to know more? The schedule of all courses can be found here. Look for NLP Practitioner, Coach & Hypnosis Certification Training.

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… the human unconscious mind has an irresistible need for closure, you’d understand why you have felt an involuntary, maybe overwhelming urge to keep going after you read the title of this post.

In 1927, Gestalt psychologist Kurt Lewin noticed that waiters has a much clearer recollection of still unpaid orders. His student at the time, Russian psychologist Blyuma Zeigarnik went on to study the phenomenon. What she found is: People remember incomplete tasks much more easily than completed ones. This is now called the “Zeigarnik effect”.

Want to know the whole story? Watch the short video below. And if you want to become a master communicator, check out the NLP Practitioner and Coach Certification training in March. This is part of what we’ll learn.

If I Told You That…

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You may not know, but the 20th Century had its very own Merlin the Wizard.

His name was Milton Erickson, Dr. Milton Erickson. Dr. Erickson was a trained medical doctor and a hypnotherapist who had absolutely prodigious results with his patients.

The funny thing is: everyone thought that Erickson was a nice old man who said funny things. He would speak to his clients about tomatoes and their problems would disappear! But then videotapes were invented, and people started to realise what Dr. Erickson was doing. There are many things we learned about communication from Dr. Erickson (I will reveal what in subsequent articles), and what I want to focus on today is his most astonishing observation skill.

Not many people know that but Erickson had polio when he was young. He spent 1 whole year sitting in his mother’s kitchen watching people go by, and he could not move, the only thing he could do was to watch, and he developed some amazing powers of observation. He could see things that other people could not see. At age 18, he learned how to walk again by watching his baby sister learning to walk.

He would know exactly what was going on in his patients head. There was a particular woman client who did not show any sign, but when people asked him how he knew when she was in trance, he said, “Well, I knew because the pulse on her ankle slowed down”.

So what does this mean for us?

Think about it for a minute.

How useful would it be if you knew exactly what’s going on in someone’s head? We can use your observation skills in all areas of our life, whether you’re a coach or a trainer, a teacher, a doctor, a parent, a spouse, in business (with clients, with your boss), in sales, and in therapy as well. Using your observation skills, you can see whether you are having the impact you want, and utilise this information to get the results you desire.

The good news is that we now know exactly how Erickson did it! We know exactly what he was looking at when he observed people. So here are the 5 things to look at that will make a major difference in your ability to see difference in other people.

The skin colour: That is a shift from light to dark. The best way is to imagine that you are seeing people in black & white.

Skin tonus: You can look for the shine on the skin. You can notice the difference in light bouncing off the face even for ladies wearing make up. You can also pay attention to the symmetry of the face.

Breathing: It can change pace or location, fast or slow, or high or low in the body. Try it! Your breathing can be way right up on your chest, now around your rib cage, or you can be breathing way down deep in the belly. Fast to slow, down to low are not always linked but many times they are.

Lower lip size: Many people do not know that the lower lip changes from moment to moment. What happens is that the blood flows or not to the lower lip. Check the lines and the thickness of the lip.

The eyes: Focused or defocused and pupil dilation.

So what do you do with this information? The process is called “Calibration”, that’s a technical term which means that we compare between a baseline picture (i.e. the person at rest, i.e. before you have an interaction with them) and the change compared to that baseline.

Then you can notice the relationship between the 2 pictures and notice what is going on.

As with everything, practice makes perfect. If you exercise your observation skills all the time, you will begin to see things that people have not seen before, like a magician, like Milton Erickson; and as you practise more and more, you will become a master at this and you’ll be able to dramatically improve your results!

Want to learn the secrets to Erickson success? The NLP Foundation 1 day introductory course (July 11th 2009), and NLP Practitioner, Coaching & Hypnosis Certification Training (September 2009)

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Negotiation is the process of getting into Agreement. Problem-Solving requires what’s commonly called Lateral Thinking. Here are THE two secrets that will make both processes easy and smooth, and that will bring results every time!

It has to do with our ability to think at different logical levels. It’s very simple, and it goes like this:

Let’s imagine that I want to buy a computer (by the way, I’m thinking of buying an iMac, so, it’s a real life example). And let’s imagine that I am asking you for advice about my options.

If you know anything about computers, it is likely that you are going to go into details, look at the different parts and explain about CPUs, types of RAM, and hard disk sizes. And if I ask about the types of RAM, you could go into more details still, and advise me to buy a DDG3 RAM because that will boost the processing speed.

If your tech knowledge is more limited, you may prefer to explain about different categories, whether I should purchase a MAC, or a PC, and if I choose a PC, shall I go for Windows Vista (nooooooooo!!!!!) or wait for Windows 2007 to come out.

In both cases, you’d go into more details about computers. This what we call CHUNKING DOWN. Computer>MAC or PC>Windows Vista or Windows 2007 etc…

The question you want to ask to chunk down is “what (or how) specifically?”, or “what’s another example of this?”

Now, let’s imagine that I am not even sure whether I want to buy a computer, and I ask you whether I should buy one or not. Then, you would probably ask me what is the reason why I am thinking about buying one, for what purpose. I may tell you, “well, because I want to keep in contact with my friends”, but that would not necessarily give you enough information to provide an answer, so you may ask “keep in contact with your friends, yes, and for what purpose?”, and I may tell you “well, to communicate with a large number of people” and so on.

In this case, what you’d be doing is trying to get my higher intention, what is the big picture reason behind my thinking about buying a computer. Once you know the higher purpose, you can advise whether a computer is the best choice for me.

This process is called CHUNKING UP, which means going toward the bigger picture.

So starting from computer, if we chunk down and go into more details, we get to parts (CPU, RAM, hard disk) or categories (PC or MAC) and if we chunk up, we go toward the larger picture (computer>networking>communication) You’ll notice that if we chunk up high enough, we always end up at “existence” or “universe” because in order to communicate, we have to exist right?

The question you want to ask to chunk up is “for what purpose, what’s the intention?”, “what’s this an example of?”

Now, I know you are thinking what does this have to do with the negotiation table? well… EVERYTHING!

Negotiation is the process of getting into Agreement, we said that at the beginning. Well, you know what? if you chunk high enough, it is IMPOSSIBLE not to get into agreement. Differences of opinion only exist at chunking levels where there are enough details to disagree upon. So what you’d do is to chunk up in the discussions, to a level where both parties would have to agree, then chunk back down (go into more details) only as quickly as everyone could keep a background focus on the higher intention.

I’ll give you an example of that. A few years back, I worked with 2 business partners who could not agree on anything! They had opposite opinions on where the business was heading, on business planning, they even did not agree on the colour of the room and the furniture! They decided to seek assistance, because they could see that the business was suffering. So we all sat down, and I asked both of them “what are you in business for, what’s your higher purpose?” Eventually they both got to “making a profit”. So from there, we chunked down while keeping the agreement. And what happened was magic! Once they had realised that they both had the same higher intention, they were much more willing to give up control over the smaller details. Both of them had gone into business together in the first place because they had very complementary skills, and through the process, they naturally allowed the other person to take decisions on whatever was their area of expertise.

You can see from here that this is not only useful in business, but in family mediation, relationships, and all areas where two parties want to reach an agrement.

A word of caution here: for an agreement to happen, there has to be a will to agree in the first place. Some negotiations are doomed from the start because one or both parties have already decided to get out anyway.

OK, so what does this have to do with problem solving? Well… EVERYTHING!

How?

Someone’s ability to problem-solve is proportional to his or her lateral thinking skills. How do you think laterally? Very simple. By chunking up first (asking yourself “what’s this an example of”), then chunking down (what is another example of that?”)

So for example, in our computer story, to chunk laterally from  “computer”, you’d ask yourself “what’s computer an example of?”, and you’d get to say, communication, then “what is another example of communication?”, and you could say “mobile phone”, but also “books” or “musical score” (which are other forms of communication). Then, you can become really creative, and connect things which are seemingly remote from each other. This is when you problem solving ability increases ten-fold!

Want to know more? Watch the video in the next post. There, I give other examples of why and when the chunking process can be useful. I also touch on one of the most powerful form of chunking up that’s used by politicians, public speakers and generally anyone in the business of convincing all over the world, and which is called “nominalisations”.

Liked this article? Leave your comment below, or email me helene@themastermindsgroup.com

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THE NLP TUTORIAL GROUP SITE CLOSED FOR NOW, WE SOMETIMES REOPEN THIS TUTORIAL. SIGN UP TO BECOME THE MASTERMINDS CLUB’S MEMBER NEWSLETTER (it’s fr.ee) TO GET NOTIFIED WHEN WE REOPEN.

To know more about NLP, go to the NLP Tutorial website. It is a member only website (you need to be registered as a student of our certification course to have full access), but the blog is public, so you can read more on NLP there.

NLP stands for Neuro Linguistic Programming. Nowadays, it is widely used in business to improve management, sales and achievement/performance, inter-personal skills; in education to better understand learning styles, develop rapport with students and parents and to aid in motivation; and of course, NLP is a profound set of tools for personal development.

Neuro: The nervous system (the mind), through which our experience is processed via five senses:

Visual
Auditory
Kinesthetic
Olfactory
Gustatory

Linguistic: Language and other nonverbal communication systems through which our neural representations are coded, ordered and given meaning. Includes:

Pictures
Sounds
Feelings
Smells
Tastes
Words (Self Talk)

Programming: The ability to discover and utilize the programs that we run (our communication to ourselves and others) in our neurological systems to achieve our specific and desired outcomes.

In other words, NLP is how to use the language of the mind to consistently achieve our specific and desired outcomes.

So, what’s NLP all about?

It is about understanding and knowing what’s going on inside our mind in order to master our behaviours, our emotional states, and ultimately our results.

Sign up for The MasterMinds Club Members Newsletter to be kept informed.

Speak soon!

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Click below to listen to the Switch-Position exercise.

switch-position-super-power

Is that useful for you? Please leave me a comment below!

Thanks!

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Sometimes, misunderstanding arises when we do not understand other people’s map of the world, or in other words, when we cannot put ourselves in their shoes.

Each person reacts to the other, the situation escalates, emotions intensify, and the chance of reaching a mutually beneficial agreement disappears in a puff of smoke.

Whether you’re preparing for a meeting, dealing with family members, selling, negotiating, coaching, or giving a presentation, the ability to put yourselves in other people’s shoes massively increases the likelihood of success.

When you are able to adopt a different point of view easily, you gain in your ability to detach from the immediate situation, and to keep your cool in challenging circumstances.

In a word.. you don’t go bananas!

Sounds good to me!

But not only that…

Your ability to look at things from a number of different perspective makes you more flexible, more adaptable, more able to see everything from a higher point of view, and therefore more likely to keep on the right track rather than get swallowed up in non-essential issues.

In a word, you make better choices and decisions.

Sounds really good to me!

The Background for the exercise

The idea is to adopt 3 different perspectives
1. Your own perspective (seeing through your own eyes, in NLP terms, it is called “Association”)
2. Another person’s perspective on the same situation (seeing through THEIR eyes)
3. The Fly on the Wall perspective (a totally detached, 3rd party perspective).

Now it’s important you actually DO IT! Understanding intellectually and experiencing and 2 VERY DIFFERENT THINGS! When you experience, you fix things at the unconscious level, and it is easy to get back into state.

The exercise

OK, so here’s how you do it. I’ll detail the process step by step below, read through it, and then go ahead!

So the first thing I’d like you to do is to recall an argument that you had with someone recently. Not necessarily a major argument, but chose something important enough that you can feel something when you recall the event.

Got that? Good!

OK, ready to go? Sit comfortably and close your eyes now.

1. See what happened through your own eyes, see the other person’s face, his/her facial expressions, what he/she looks like, how he/she moves, the gestures.

Hear the other person’s voice, the tone, the pitch, is it loud, is it soft?

And feel what you were feeling at that time.

Now, I’d like you to float up outside your body, and float down into the other person’s body. And when you do that

2. You see everything that person saw: he/she can see your face in front of him/her, so see your face right now, the facial expressions, the gestures, the body language.

And hear your voice as you are speaking to that person, the tone, the pitch, the volume.

Feel what that person is feeling at that time.

And now, float outside that person’s body, and go and adopt the 3rd party perspective, be the fly on the wall.

3. And see these 2 people there, see their gestures, their body language, their faces, the facial expressions.

Hear the voices, how they speak to each other, the volume of the voices, the different tones, the pitch.

Notice any feeling, or are they not there?

And now come back into your body and open your eyes.

Debrief

How was it, did you notice anything different as you were adopting different perceptual positions? How about your feelings?

What have you learned? What are your conclusions on that matter?

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Beliefs are prime examples of generalisations about ourselves AND the world, which act as a spring board to all our decisions. Beliefs are JUST IDEAS, there is nothing intrinsically TRUE about them.

One of the most powerful character of beliefs is that they often become self-fulfilling prophecies.

A common example of this is when a person firmly believes they’ve lost something, and sure enough, they can’t find it until someone points out that the lost object is right in front of them!

The unconscious mind deletes the visual information (“the object is right here”) to prove the belief right.

Where do we learn them from?

• From direct experiences filtered through the senses (what we see, hear, feel etc…)
• From our parents,
  
• From other people and what we hear in our direct environment (example: religious figures, teachers, media, peers, etc…)
  

Most of the time, our beliefs have an enormous positive power in how we see the world around us. For example, the most confident and successful people have a strong deeply anchored supportive belief about themselves and what they can achieve.

Sometimes however, some beliefs, which used to serve us have stopped doing so, and have become a source of limitation in our life.

One little known fact about beliefs is that they are embedded in our senses, and in the language we use to communicate with the world AND with ourselves (the conversation that we run in our own heads, that you are probably familiar with.)

Therefore, of the many techniques that are used nowadays to assist people change their beliefs about themselves to create results in their life (be it business, relationships, or health), none is as astonishingly effective and swift as the sensory and language-based belief change.

HOW TO IDENTIFY A DISEMPOWERING BELIEF?

Look for clues in words such as: “I must”, “It should”, “I ought to” etc… Technically, these are called modal operators of necessity. What they do is limit the possibilities which are open to us.

Also, possibility words used in the negative such as “I can’t”, “I couldn’t”, “I’ll never be able to” etc.. have the same effect.

When someone uses these words repeatedly, it shows that their model of the world is extremely restricted.

EXAMPLE OF QUESTIONS TO SCRAMBLE A NEGATIVE BELIEF

“How is that a problem?”

This will get people to the source of their problem, which ISthe limiting belief. Most people are only aware of the manifest issues in their life (example: “I smoke”, “I am overweight”, “I can’t sleep”, “My back aches”, “nobody takes me seriously”, “I can’t get promoted/loved”, “I should exercise more” etc…) but very few are aware of the source of their problem (if they were, their problem would disappear by magic!)

“How do you know it is a problem, as you sit right here right now?“
This will put light on the internal process they go through to make the problem a problem. Each belief exists because it follows a certain thought sequence (called “strategy”). The only thing often needed to get rid of the entire belief, is a mere scrambling of ONE step in the sequence.

“What is the higher purpose of this behaviour?”

All behaviours have a positive intent. Even those behaviours which appear silly, impossible to understand, or even downright obnoxious, have some kind of positive intention behind them.
A classical example is the unruly/“badly behaved” child (NB: “badly behaved according to whom?” is the question, but that’s the subject of another article!) who just uses offensive behaviour as a way to attract attention and confirm that the adults around him love him.
Don’t underestimate the power of the positive intent behind negative behaviours. Some people can make themselves sick if they believe it is the only way to attract attention from loved ones who seem too aloof.
Once the higher positive intent has been discovered, it is easy to
– find the belief behind the behaviour
– change the negative behaviour to satisfy the positive intent.

“How would you know if it wasn’t true?”

This question challenges the belief, the idea, that we hold true. It opens the possibility that, maybe, after all… there is another way to think about this. This question acts as the grain of sand in a perfectly polished mechanism.
Hum… Maybe, just maybe…

And finally, I want to share a secret with you.

This is something I ONLY teach in the advanced levels of language training certifications we run.

It’s a HIGHLY advanced language pattern that is used to totally scramble someone’s thinking sequence, and in the process, help them to dissolve deeply anchored disempowering beliefs.

And you’ll probably feel very uncomfortable using it the first few times, but I promise! It REALLY works!

The patterns uses a DOUBLE NEGATIVE question that the brain cannot process.

It goes something like this:

“What would not happen if you did not do it?”

Have fun!

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