Practical NLP Podcast

A short and sweet episode this week as we start getting into the 'Linguistic' part of Neuro-Linguistic Programming - language! This episode introduces what's to come in the next few podcasts, and why this knowledge will give you greater precision in how you use language and, even more importantly, the ability to spot unstated beliefs and assumptions in what other people say. Plus, it gives you the lowdown on the difference between 'Deep Structure' (what we mean to say) and 'Surface Structure' (what actually comes out of our mouths). Featuring: Noam Chomsky Deletion, distortion, and generalisation Why misunderstandings happen Listen and/or subscribe to this podcast via iTunes here If you want to subscribe using something other than iTunes (e.g. if you have an Android phone), here’s the feed: http://coachingleaders.co.uk/feed/podcast/ Duration: 6m39s If you liked this podcast, please review it on iTunes! Image of Noam Chomsky by Duncan Rawlinson from Wikipedia

The longest ever podcast this week, as we get a step by step guide to chaining anchors, suggest some real-life practical applications for anchoring in business and elsewhere, review the material about anchoring covered in the last few podcasts, and suggest some ways that you can practice and sharpen your anchoring skills. Includes: How to get out of a 'stuck' state - automatically! How people can get high without drugs Why emotional states are like airports Why you need to be careful if you use music in courses ... and much more! Listen and/or subscribe to this podcast via iTunes here If you want to subscribe using something other than iTunes (e.g. if you have an Android phone), here’s the feed: http://coachingleaders.co.uk/feed/podcast/ Duration: 18:02 If you liked this podcast, please review it on iTunes! If you're excited by this approach to chaining states, and you'd like to go beyond "hub states" to greater nuances such as adding in "accelerator states" while ramping your clients or prospects up into "action states", then you need to get yourself a copy of Jonathan Altfeld's "Creating the Automatic Yes" MP3s or CDs. Jonathan is the originator of the "hub states" idea mentioned in this podcast episode, and he's one of the world's leading experts on conversational state change and influencing. Follow these links to order the CD set or download the MP3 version instantly. Image: Elwood64151, at the English Wikipedia project

State elicitation is one area that I think isn't given enough attention in many NLP books and even courses. But it's important, because when anchoring fails, most often it's because you haven't elicited a strong enough state. Find out how to do it (and of course, eliciting states in an audience, a client or a prospect is a useful thing in itself) in this podcast. Featuring: Something that will give you pause if you think covertly anchoring responses is unethical Why the wording that many books and courses give you for eliciting states won't work with a lot of people My attempt at a "John Major" voice! ... and lots more! Listen and/or subscribe to this podcast via iTunes here If you want to subscribe using something other than iTunes (e.g. if you have an Android phone), here’s the feed: http://coachingleaders.co.uk/feed/podcast/ Duration: 08:26 If you liked this podcast, please review it on iTunes! And for more convenient listening on your smartphone or iPad, why not try the free Practical NLP app for iOS and Android?

Are there situations that you find challenging? Where you don't respond as you might, and consequently don't perform as well as you could? Maybe giving a presentation, or speaking at an important meeting, or maybe job interviews? Luckily, there's something you can do about it. With this NLP technique called "The Circle of Excellence", you can feel at your best whenever you need to. This podcast talks you through how to have your personal resources ready to access, just one step away. Other questions answered in this podcast: How do you stack additional resources on the same trigger? How long will my resource anchor last? What's the best time to anchor a resource state? Listen and/or subscribe to this podcast via iTunes here (remember it can take a few hours for iTunes to grab the latest episode - if you subscribe it will appear as soon as it's ready) If you want to subscribe using something other than iTunes (e.g. if you have an Android phone), here’s the feed: http://coachingleaders.co.uk/feed/podcast/ Duration: 08:35 If you liked this podcast, please review it on iTunes! And for more convenient listening on your smartphone or iPad, check out the free Practical NLP app for iOS and Android.

Following on from episode 26, where we set up a resource anchor, this week we're going under the hood to find out how and why anchoring works. Featuring: The four steps of anchoring The five keys to successful anchoring Pavlov's Dog plus a couple of useful acronyms to help you remember the steps and the keys Listen and/or subscribe to this podcast via iTunes here (remember it can take a few hours for iTunes to grab the latest episode - if you subscribe it will appear as soon as it's ready) If you want to subscribe using something other than iTunes (e.g. if you have an Android phone), here’s the feed: http://coachingleaders.co.uk/feed/podcast/ Duration: 13:23 If you liked this podcast, please review it on iTunes! And for more convenient listening on your smartphone or iPad, check out the free Practical NLP app for iOS and Android.

In this episode we look at how the NLP method known as 'anchoring' can help you manage your emotional state so that you can respond more appropriately and successfully in situations where you face challenges. We also guide you through a simple exercise where you can set yourself up a resource anchor so you can feel more resourceful any time you want. Listen and/or subscribe to this podcast via iTunes here. If you want to subscribe using something other than iTunes (e.g. if you have an Android phone), here’s the feed: http://coachingleaders.co.uk/feed/podcast/ Duration: 08:12 If you liked this podcast, please review it on iTunes! And for more convenient listening on your smartphone or iPad, check out the free Practical NLP app for iOS and Android.

This week's podcast starts to look at Emotional Intelligence and how it relates to NLP. Featuring: Why emotions are not the enemy of reason Why you need emotions to make decisions A focusing exercise to help you increase your self-awareness Duration: 14:56 Also feature's Daniel Goleman's four-quadrant model of Emotional Intelligence: Listen and/or subscribe to this podcast via iTunes here. If you want to subscribe using something other than iTunes (e.g. if you have an Android phone), here’s the feed: http://coachingleaders.co.uk/feed/podcast/ If you liked this podcast, please review it on iTunes!

What do we mean when we call someone a 'genius'? And if that person is a role model for us and we want to be more like them, is the concept of 'genius' getting in the way? Find out how, and what to do instead, in this brief podcast. I have something a bit different for you this week - it's an extract from an NLP Master Practitioner course that I ran in Manchester in about 2009. It starts to introduce the concept of 'modelling' (or 'modeling' in American English) in NLP - a way of rapidly learning some ability from a person who is good at it and stripping that reproduction down to a 'model' that contains the essentials, in a way that allows the skill to be transferred to others. It also looks at how calling someone 'a genius' is not very helpful in replicating their skills, and why you will get on much better if you look at what they are actually doing. Also featuring: The 'dormitive quality' of a sleeping draft in Voltaire's 'Candide' What 'genius' originally meant Why teenagers learn martial arts quicker than grown men and women Apologies for the sound quality (though everything is audible and I've cleaned the sound up as much as I can) - it was recorded on a fairly primitive camcorder. If you're new to NLP, here's a couple of words and names that are mentioned which you might not catch if you're not familiar with them: Nominalisations - these are words which refer to actions and processes as if they were things, and so they take a lot of the life out of language if they are used a lot. You can usually recognise them because most nominalisations are dry, abstract, long words, derived from Greek or Latin. There are some great examples of nominalisations from a government web site here. Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, and Milton Erickson - these are the three 'genius therapists' whose skills Richard Bandler and John Grinder modelled in the course of creating NLP. Duration: 8m43s Listen and/or subscribe to this podcast via iTunes here. If you want to subscribe using something other than iTunes (e.g. if you have an Android phone), here’s the feed: http://coachingleaders.co.uk/feed/podcast/ If you liked this podcast, please review it on iTunes! Photo of Albert Einstein from Wikipedia

Following on from episode 22, which guided you through the NLP Swish pattern, this week we unpack it to see the nuts and bolts that you need to get right to make it work. We also look at how to adapt the Swish for use in informal business and training contexts (thanks to Peter Freeth for his innovations here) and how to use submodalities in the external environment (thanks to Andy Jackson for some of his great ideas). Finally we review many of the useful ways you can apply submodalities in life and work. Also featuring, among other things: NLP practitioners who never 'got' the Swish pattern How to calm down teenagers in a youth club The best kind of room to hold a brainstorming session in Duration: 13m22s Listen and/or subscribe to this podcast via iTunes here. If you want to subscribe using something other than iTunes (e.g. if you have an Android phone), here’s the feed: http://coachingleaders.co.uk/feed/podcast/ If you liked this podcast, please review it on iTunes!

Now that we're getting familiar with submodalities (you may want to listen to the podcasts about visual submodalities, dealing with the 'inner critic', and 'mapping across' if you haven't already), here's a powerful changework intervention that uses them - the Swish Pattern. The Swish is great for defusing the environmental triggers for unwanted emotional responses or behaviours. Examples of unresourceful emotional responses that I've helped clients with using the Swish pattern would include: a feeling like their stomach is turning over when they see a certain expression on the boss's face; a sinking feeling every time they go through the front door at work; or a woman who'd had a car accident when someone pulled out in front of her without looking, and who had a feeling of panic whenever she saw a car ahead waiting to come out of a side road. Or, just any challenging situation where you might want to feel more resourceful than you've felt in the past. Examples of habits that the Swish can help with include nailbiting, excessive snacking, and distracting yourself by checking emails too frequently; anything that you find yourself doing in specific situations, where there's a specific trigger in your environment, that you wish you could stop. This podcast talks you through how to use the Swish pattern, including an additional which I've found makes the 'classic' swish pattern more powerful. Here are the steps of the Swish pattern as described in the podcast, written as if for a therapist or coach guiding a client through them: Client identifies what they will always see just before the problem behaviour occurs (associated). This is the cue situation.  Have the client make the picture of themselves as they want to be, when they are free of the problem. Use submodalities to make the picture as vivid and involving as possible - and have them step into it. Have them notice how good that feels - and turn the feelings up. Now have them step back out of the picture (dissociated). Shrink it down to a small, dark picture the size of a postage stamp. Have them see the negative trigger picture again, but this time with the ‘postage stamp’ in the bottom left corner. Now - quickly - fade out the trigger picture and expand the ‘stamp’ up to the full-size good picture - at the same time making a swissh sound. When they’ve seen the good picture, blank the screen (this is to mark an end point at the positive image, so they don’t install a sequence leading back to the negative trigger). Get them to repeat step 3 five more times for themselves, making it faster each time (remember the swissh sound). They could open their eyes between each swish to separate them. Repeat it for two more sets of five, making it faster each time, or until you can’t see the trigger picture any more. “Now, how do you feel when you remember the trigger situation? Put yourself into that situation in the future. What has changed about the way you feel and respond in that situation now?” The response should be different and more resourceful than previously. The podcast also describes the difference between 'associated' and 'dissociated' viewpoints, and tries out a little thought experiment with evoking each viewpoint through language. Duration: 11m35s Listen and/or subscribe to this podcast via iTunes here. If you want to subscribe using something other than iTunes (e.g. if you have an Android phone), here’s the feed: http://coachingleaders.co.uk/feed/podcast/ If you liked this podcast, please review it on iTunes!

This week, 'Mapping Across', a simple NLP submodality technique that will help if you like a particular food too much and want to be able to leave it alone - or, more generally, if you want to move from a particular state to something more resourceful (e.g. confusion to confidence that you will understand). I used to use this a lot with weight-loss clients - it's a great thing to do in the first session to convince them that it's possible to change their attitude to food. Recently, one contacted me after about 15 years and told me that she hasn't been near a chocolate digestive since. This episode also includes a quick explanation of 'Future Pacing' and why it's important in therapy, coaching and changework. Listen and/or subscribe to this podcast via iTunes here. If you want to subscribe using something other than iTunes (e.g. if you have an Android phone), here’s the feed: http://coachingleaders.co.uk/feed/podcast/ If you liked this podcast, please review it on iTunes! Duration: 12m 38s Here's a quick outline of the 'Mapping Across' process in the podcast: Identify the two states (or values/beliefs) that you want to contrast — one desired, one undesired. Elicit the submodalities of each separately. "As you think about that, what do you see?" encourages a picture - visual mode is preferable for quick changework. “Contrastive Analysis”. Identify the Drivers - the critical submodalities that make the difference between the two. (Usually it is good to go for the following as critical: location, distance, associated/dissociated, brightness, or focus.) Let go of the content of the desired state, creating a void. Change the submodalities of the present state to those of the desired state. Emphasise the drivers. You can leave the content of the present state as it is, although this may change by itself. Test the change using the internal kinaesthetic experience (e.g. "Does this feel like understanding now?" or "Do you want that food?") and future pace. The Mapping Across video demonstration by Tad and Adriana James that I referred to in the podcast is here.

This week's podcast looks at, or rather listens to, 'auditory submodalities', and shows you a powerful and easy way to apply them to defuse an inner critical voice (also known as the 'chatterbox', 'Self 1', or 'the monkey mind', depending on which school of coaching you went to or which self-help books you've read). Featuring Donald Duck, a gremlin, and what people might say to themselves about internal dialogue if they're not aware of having any. Listen and/or subscribe to this podcast via iTunes here. If you want to subscribe using something other than iTunes (e.g. if you have an Android phone), here's the feed: http://coachingleaders.co.uk/feed/podcast/ If you liked this podcast, please review it on iTunes! Image by JWilsher/sxc.hu

With this week's episode of the Practical NLP podcast, we start looking at changework interventions, beginning with 'visual submodalities'. The podcast covers: when you should, and when you shouldn't, do changework what submodalities are how to make a good memory even better (and by extension, how to reduce the impact of a bad memory) It features, among other things: the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, NLP 'practitioners' who don't know what they're doing, and why I think submodalities have an evolutionary basis. Listen and/or subscribe to this podcast via iTunes here. If you want to subscribe using something other than iTunes (e.g. if you have an Android phone), here's the feed: http://coachingleaders.co.uk/feed/podcast/ If you liked this podcast, please review it on iTunes! This submodality checklist table is designed as a support to this episode of the Practical NLP podcast. It may not make much sense on its own. Visual Location? Size of picture? Black and white / Colour? Bright or Dim? Moving or Still? 3D or Flat? Focused / Defocused? Amount of Contrast Framed or Panoramic? Associated/dissociated? Location? Auditory Location Direction Internal or External? Loud or Soft? Fast or Slow? High or Low? (Pitch) Tonality Pauses Cadence Duration Kinaesthetic Location Size Shape Intensity Steady Movement/ Duration Vibration Pressure/Heat? Weight Photo by icea at sxc.hu

This week's episode of the Practical NLP podcast is all about 'eye accessing cues', and covers: how eye accessing cues relate to representational systems lead, primary and reference representational systems explained what 'synesthesia' means in the context of NLP It features, among other things: why teachers should never say "You won't find the answer up there", some subtleties you need to be aware of, and why not everyone corresponds neatly to the standard diagram. Listen and/or subscribe to this podcast via iTunes here. If you want to subscribe using something other than iTunes (e.g. if you have an Android phone), here's the feed: http://coachingleaders.co.uk/feed/podcast/ If you liked this podcast, please review it on iTunes!   This diagram and text are designed to as a support to this episode of the Practical NLP podcast. If you don't listen to the podcast, they will only make any kind of sense if you know that one of the things that Richard Bandler and John Grinder noticed about people when they were devising NLP was that their eyes tended to move in particular directions corresponding to the sensory system (visual, auditory etc) they were using to think with at that moment. More (much more) about this in the Encyclopedia of Systemic NLP. Note: people looking straight ahead with defocused eyes when answering a question are getting quick access to readily available information, or visualising a scene in an 'associated' way (i.e. as if they were in it). Some Questions To Elicit Eye Movements Vr (VISUAL RECALL) "What colour was your first car?" "How many windows does your place have?" Vc (VISUAL CONSTRUCT) "If the Owl and the Pussycat had kids, what would they look like?" "What would your bedroom look like if it was painted silver?" Ar (AUDITORY RECALL) "What was the very last thing I said?" "What does Donald Duck's voice sound like?" Ac (AUDITORY CONSTRUCT) 'If tigers spoke English, what would they sound like?' 'What would your favourite song sound like, if it was sung by a parrot?' Ad (AUDITORY DIGITAL - INTERNAL VOICE) "Can you recite the six times table to yourself?" "What's your favourite proverb or saying?" K (KINAESTHETIC) "What does velvet feel like?" "How warm do you like your bath?" You will probably need some more questions than these - it's quite a good exercise to write some of your own and try them out to make sure that they elicit the response they were designed for (if most of the time they don't, you've probably missed something). Eye accessing cues are not as straightforward as some NLP books make them appear - listen to the podcast for more information about this and also bear in mind that: a) some people's eye movements are really rapid, subtle and hard to spot b) if people are visualising something, they may move their eyes in the direction of whatever they're looking at in the visualisation c) as Bandler and Grinder pointed out when they first proposed eye accessing cues, the question you ask to elicit a particular response may get a different response depending on how the person accesses the information to come up with their answer (e.g. 'what colour is your front door?' designed to elicit a visual remembered response, but actually they are seeing the door on its own, which would actually be a constructed image as they've never actually seen it without the house around it). d) finally, as Derren Brown, who is a better observer of people than I will ever be, points out, sometimes it doesn't seem to happen at all (but sometimes it does).

Welcome to episode 17 of the Practical NLP podcast, which is all about 'predicates' - which is NLP jargon for the sensory (visual, auditory, feeling etc) words we use that give a clue to our thought processes. This podcast covers: What happens when people using different representational systems try to communicate How to notice which representational systems someone is using at any given moment How to develop your own least-used representational system And features, among other things, a consultant/client meeting that doesn't go well, the world's most boring piece of prose (it's almost a hypnotic induction in itself), and Benny Hill. Listen to the podcast via iTunes here. If you prefer to subscribe using something other than iTunes, the feed is http://coachingleaders.co.uk/feed/podcast/ If you like the podcast, please review it on iTunes!