NLP Connections

Wazzzaaaaap

Chris Johnson — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:50:33 GMT

I've been interested in NLP for some years now. Originally, I got into it through various seduction materials that were flying around at the time (and probably still are). This lead me to "Frogs Into Princes," which really made a lot of sense to me. I proceeded to pick up several other NLP books, have a go at various techniques (on myself), mostly fail, dwell in alt.psychology.nlp, get utterly disgusted with that group, and lose interest in NLP for several years.

Now I'm back at it and determined to make some of this work. I've made pretty good headway on a major problem that has plagued me for some 10 years, although I haven't quite managed to "seal the deal," so to speak.

Besides taking care of that issue, I'd like to work on my social skills. I don't know if you've heard the joke,

Q: How can you tell an extroverted engineer?
A: When he talks to you, he looks at your shoes instead of his own.

Well, I'm the guy looking at his own shoes. :)

-Chris

Hi

Trace — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:32:24 GMT

I am fascinated by NLP...

The other day I was having some toast with marmite. I was on the way back to put it in the cupboard when my Sister happened to say the word "Fridge", as part of our conversation.
I walked straight past the cupboard and went to stick it into the
fridge. As I started to open the fridge I realised I was putting it in
the the wrong place.
I realised what my Sister had said and the effect it had on me.
I guess it worked as a pattern interrupt as it stopped my train of
thought and put in its place the message fridge which directed my
towards the fridge.
:)

Transferring Anchors Tips

cassius84 — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:02:46 GMT

hi i was wondering if any one would be willing to share any tips on transferring anchors.

i have had a couple of ideas my self but it doesnt look like its working. Peace

Remembering a Time When...

StBlue — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:23:24 GMT

I've just recently found out about NLP so I started reading some books, most notably "Using Your Brain - For a Change".
Now, many exercises start with remembering a past event or generally thinking of something in the past. This proved to be more difficult than I expected.

For example, directly from the book's introduction:
"Think of a past experience that was very pleasant�perhaps one that you haven't thought about in a long time."
I tried really hard, but couldn't really think of any specific experience I considered "very pleasant".

Same deal with congruence. I couldn't remember a time when I was congruent. Couldn't even remember a time when I was incongruent.

Back to the book.
"I'd like you to think of some argument you had with someone in which you were certain you were right."
This actually often happens to me as I have a friend who really likes to argue and barely ever admits he's wrong. However, I couldn't remember any specific argument with him or anybody else for that matter. But some time later, me and a couple of friends had a very long argument which I did remember, or so I thought. Then I tried once more to do this exercise, but all I could remember was a still picture of what it looked like (i.e. where everyone was standing at that point). I do remember what arguments and points of view each person had, but not the exact words, mainly ideas.

The list goes on. I didn't start learning NLP for the purpose of self-improvement, but this helped me realize a huge problem. I never had great memory, far from it. I often forget where I put the keys and literally the only phone number I memorized is my own.
The problem, however, goes far beyond remembering phone numbers (a skill that I don't consider vital considering I can just write them down). I was to write an essay on the best thing or most enjoyable event that happened to me this year. Couldn't think of one. Then I tried going with worst thing. Again, couldn't think of one.

I suppose you see where this is going - I remember neither pleasant nor unpleasant events and when I do, they're often just a couple of still, dissociated pictures with low brightness and little color. I can change the submodalities and that does change the experience, but I believe the problem is my remembering strategy (or the lack of one) as any new memories adopt the same still picture form with the same old submodalities.

Any suggestions on how to solve this problem?

How To Look Chilled, Relaxed & Cool

Dragon05 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:47:05 GMT

HOW TO LOOK CHILLED , RELAXED , COOL LIKE YOU HAVE NOT A CARE IN THE WORLD :

ok apart from end when Mum is startled lol!

Derek Acorah - Psychic Medium / Mediums Real???

Dragon05 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:29:41 GMT

For anyone that does not know who Derek Acorah is (many outside UK will not have heard of him, & many in UK wish they hadn't), he is one of UK's most famous psychic / mediums recently he contacted Michael Jackson live on TV! put sound on of course:

Harry Hill talking about Derek Acorah :

A REAL MUST SEE PENN/ TELLER ABOUT PSYCHICS/MEDIUMS :

Just try not laugh at 2:25 onwards 'do they mumble.......' etc.

Straight Guys & Transtesticles

Dragon05 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:21:05 GMT

This is thread strictly for Straight Guys & Transtesticles only.

Why you might ask? Just as someone posted a 'Gay Guys' one, I felt another completely useless & inappropriate one was required to even up the balance, & in light of political correctness.

A Great Example for Timeline Fans...

Bufo Marinus — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:17:10 GMT

this caught my attention, LaRouche does a fantastic job of eliciting and exhibiting his own time mapping and time based values... not everyone would agree with him, but this very clearly demonstrates (from one perceptual position) how time awareness shapes identity... LaRouche steps up to the podium about 2 minutes into this presentation..

You Are Under State Control

adrian r — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:14:32 GMT

Today, I experienced frustration for the first time in five weeks.

I'm doing my second shift at the hostel for mentally ill people I work some of the time, and there was some business involving a resident missing an appointment to go and score drugs instead, and my response was to experience some cocktail of disappointment and frustration.

What was interesting was to experience that feeling after a month or more in which I'd encountered nothing like that state, having been on a wonderful holiday. I almost enjoyed the novelty, the surprise of the feeling was so powerful.

What I now recognise is that such frustration is characteristic to working in this field, and becomes harder to detect after a while because of the frequency of its occurrence: those chemicals wash round your system quite a bit if you work in a hostel.

How do you recognise the states which accompany your daily routine? Are they so ingrained as to become mistaken for life itself? What does it take to prompt awareness of the state you're in? What methods work best for you to shift into resourcefulness from being stuck?

An Insightful Observation

Bufo Marinus — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:50:45 GMT

This came from the Pinocchio Theory blog, good insights into the state of mind viv a vis the state of culture:

Jim Carrey doesn�t really cover any new ground in Bruce Almighty (2003), but the film reaffirms the comedic genius that was his in the first place. The film marks Carrey�s return to the bread-and-butter that originally made him famous, in contrast to his more �serious� efforts to extend his acting range (which efforts have varied from the dismal �The Majestic � to the utterly sublime � Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind).

Given divine powers, Carrey�s character Bruce (a disgruntled TV news reporter) goes off on a power binge whose utter narcissism is only matched by its infantile pettiness and lack of imagination. Unable to conceive the divine decadence of a Nero, Caligula, or Heliogabalus, Bruce contents himself with driving a new sports car, parting the Red Sea (a la Cecil B. DeMille) in a plate of tomato soup, and getting revenge by pulling a monkey out of a bully�s ass and causing his newsroom rival to babble as if he had breathed in a tankful of helium. Never has self-indulgence been so lacking in grandiosity. Bruce doesn�t have the manic energy of Ace Ventura; but like Ace and so many other Carrey characters, he is driven by an unconscious whose sole contents seem to be fifty years of television. No wonder the urges that roil in his raging id are nothing more than cheap special effects and lame one-liners. Above all, Bruce is characterized � like so many other Carrey personae � by a cringe-worthy need to ingratiate himself with everyone, and especially with his stereotypically whiny and long-suffering girlfriend (a role played, appropriately enough, by the sitcom queen herself, Jennifer Aniston).

I suppose my remarks are sufficiently snide that they could be read, in Adornoesque fashion, as a critique of the terminal mediocrity of American popular culture (a culture that is basically televisual, even when it is being enacted in the movies). But I don�t mean it that way at all. There is nothing mediocre about Jim Carrey. If you ignore the sappy moralizing and self-congratulatory complacency in which Bruce Almighty is wrapped, and focus just on Carrey�s physical and verbal performance, you will find it (as always, when he does comedy) utterly astonishing. It�s a miracle of embodiment. Every grimace, every twitch, every inflection, every pause conveys the predicament of the character � his narcissism without a self to be narcissistic about, his desire for recognition by others without any sense of otherness to pin that desire onto, the utter saturation of his inner experience by bland, public generalities: in short, the predicament of the quintessential postmodern �man without qualities� � every grimace, twitch, inflection, and pause of Carrey�s incarnates this predicament with energy, grace, intensity, and precision: so that nothing could be more profound and singular than the utter absence of depth and singularity that Carrey is depicting.
�If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise� (Blake).

Here's a Real New Code Experience!

Bufo Marinus — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:06:50 GMT

NLP Practice Group in Geneva, Switzerland

Lee-Siah Chong — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:25:30 GMT

I want to start a NLP practice group in Geneva for NLP practitioners in and around Geneva to come together to practice our skills and for those interested to learn more about NLP to join us. Please do let me know if you are interested to join me.

Shared Brilliance

adrian r — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:38:02 GMT

The emphasis within NLP has been on modelling individual excellence -- those people who demonstrate unquestionable talent in their field. And that's fine. What interests me at this point is collective brilliance, as seen in your favourite musical assemblies, be it the songwriting excellence of The Beatles, the group improvisational skills of one of John Coltrane's bands, or the interlocking brilliance of the Kronos Quartet.

How to account for that shared genius, which also applies on the sports field, the research lab, cinema screen? Does one individual's brilliance raise others to their level? Or do people of equal capabilities somehow reach new heights in the right company? And what of acts of cultural genius that no individual or group can claim as their own?

NLP - a Modern Initiation Process?

alexd181 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:20:40 GMT

I've noticed the NLP study system, from Practitioner to Master Trainer, resembles the hierarchy of many classical systems of initiation into a field of knowledge that was thought to be very secretive and reserved for those who would use the power responsibly.

Now, even in the modern world, we still have 'NLP Masters' who will only train 'students' should they meet a specific personality criteria (or perhaps in our Capitalist society -- meet a specific ability to pay). Although this is rare, the whole 'levels' system of NLP, coupled with the consideration that NLP is still not commonly known to the average man and woman, reminds me of the 'master-student' relationship in many elite schools in the past (or even secret societies). A relationship where precious and powerful knowledge is passed on when the student has reached a certain level to be considered worthy of being given the next teaching.

Of course I might just be exaggerating the practice that many trainers have of segmenting the training into several levels to maximise their profits. Has anyone else felt a similar connection between the way NLP is taught and the way many elite or secret societies segment their 'initiations'?

How Highly Tuned Are Your Senses and How Do You Know?

Carol — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:33:17 GMT

How highly tuned are your senses and how do you know?

I started asking myself these questions partly through my experiences of NLP and also because of a recent experience with a dog that has come to stay with me. He was suffering from 'separation anxiety' and could not be left alone. He had no name which surprised me as he was 14 months old and the rescue experts said they had tried naming him but he had not picked up on it. After a few days I noted that he was unable to understand what words meant. He seemed really friendly and affectionate and was always staring at me and following me around. I wondered if he was deaf but he wasn't. He looked confused and worried a lot of the time.

As I wondered how to help him and to calm him down I remembered how I'd seen James Shaw and Eric Robbie change a animals state so I started to experiment with what I 'saw' and 'felt' them do. It worked, for sure nothing like as elegantly as when those experts worked their magic but the dog was calmer. Once the dog was in the same state as me he started to model me. In this way we started to get some good patterns going, such as creating calm and sleepy quiet anchors to a particular blanket, liveliness and energy to his lead and so on. Soon he could read and use visual signals such as pointing and patting a surface. Once this was established I started to overlap and use my words very carefully so they were clear and different sounding (Eric gave me some great advice).

Now the dog knows his name, bed, lie down and good. He is enjoying playing with musical toys (its amazing what you can get now) and it is working well getting him to locate them through sound and activate them by biting. This first is a great game as it takes him ages to work out where it is and he sometimes needs a lot of help. In the last few days he has started making little noises and so is finding his voice. The experience of helping this dog coupled with the experience of training with Eric Robbie and developing my own senses (with the result that the world seems like a very different place) has got me wondering what your experiences have been.

How aware are you of the sensitivity of your own senses?
How can you tell if one sense is operating less well than it could be?
Do you know which of your senses is the most highly developed?
Are you ever aware of overlapping the senses?
How did you notice that your senses could be sharper?
How did you know notice that your senses had become sharper and what changed their sensitivity?