A metaphor for NLP

Think of Alchemy as something which is not just for transforming base metals into gold; but for transforming ‘base’ emotions as well.

Think of it as a metaphor for all the different ways that inexplicable beneficial  change can happen in your life …

• An easy solution to what seemed to have been an insoluble problem
• A change of perspective that opens you to possibilities you could not have considered before
• A chance encounter that becomes your turning point; life-changing in every way!
• Someone mentoring you towards unconsidered excellence, when once you had thought that no one could, or that no one cared
• Kindness towards yourself, after a lifetime of blaming and shaming

Maybe you learned that Alchemy was a precursor to modern science and that nothing it proposed has any serious scientific basis. There’s another perspective that recognizes Alchemy as a metaphor for unaccountable transformational change, the inexplicable dynamics of unconscious transformation.

Neuroscience has barely scratched the surface. Yet there have always been ways to access  the seemingly miraculous

• To design your own emotional states and engage brand new combinations of emotion at will
• To help others effect positive critical change for their, and others’, maximum benefit
• To focus like a laser beam
• To expand your own and others’ conception of what is possible
• To learn in ways that are simpler, more effective, and faster than what you previously considered possible

As magical as a cell phone, a microwave, an artesian well, an organ transplant, a solar powered automobile, a kind word between previously mortal enemies..  would be magic to someone who had never encountered those things before.

But once they do, they are no longer magic, just a part of the ongoing miracle of living.

• How would it be if you learned choose your emotional response to anything at all?
• How would it be if you could tap into your boundless capacity for creative thinking, and know that you can solve any problem that comes  your way in a fashion no one may have encountered before?

Too much to consider, even as a  possibility? What if that were a choice you could actually change, if you wanted to?

Milton Erickson, who was a truly brilliant hypnotherapist, and one of the main inspirations for the original developers of NLP, said “We all walk around in a trance of disempowerment.” The implication is that our work as facilitators for personal change (for ourselves or for others) is to change that to a trance of empowerment.

Milton Erickson

Does that mean we have to be hypnotized, that we have to be in another sort of trance, to be ‘empowered’, and to live and operate at our best?

A trance of disempowerment is when you’re running on instinctual impulses, reactions, and habits that are unconscious and unconsidered. Now, running on habit is not always a bad thing. Imagine having to drive a car with the same conscious deliberation as when you first started driving! Fortunately your body (and your unconscious mind) have taken over, and look after many of the activities associated with driving. The same is true with everything we learn; especially our communication styles and our emotional responses. Perhaps we get into trouble because we never had to take a driving test for our emotions in the same way we did for a car.

The point is that you can learn to avoid emotional collisions, incogruence, and unhappiness. But there are a few things you will need to learn. You have to develop an emotional intelligence which parallels the intelligence of a good driver.

Emotional intelligence isn’t really intelligence in the cognitive sense. It is an inner transformation that has tempered and matured your emotional reaction to things so that you are more truly responsive (rather than merely reactive).

Understanding the nature of hypnosis is a key. Any effective learning environment (including the therapy office) has lots of hypnosis going on – inducing a receptive mental state, wonder, images to reinforce new ideas, repetition, minimal distractions, not to mention (hopefully) the clarity and eloquence and likability of  whoever is doing the teaching. It’s not ‘formal’ hypnosis, but it’s still trance.

A trance of disempowerment

is sedative, dulling, tending towards unconscious repetition, whereas a trance of empowerment allows you to gain access to your ability to discern, to navigate your state of mind. A lot of the misunderstanding of hypnosis stems from a misunderstanding of this distinction.

A trance of empowerment

is not being unconscious, or being asleep, it is a lively conversation between your conscious and unconscious mind, in which the two are congruent and aligned with each other. Incidentally it’s the opposite of ‘mind control’ ( a trance of disempowerment) and very similar to meditation practices of the highest order.

So, is NLP hypnosis or not?

Yes!

Because you can use it with or without ‘formally’ inducing the a hypnotic state. NLP is simply the most effective way of utilizing  your natural ability to learn. I say the best way, because anything that comes along that you discover to be a helpful addition, you absorb into what you are already doing. If what you are already doing is already part of the eminently flexible discipline of NLP, then whatever you add to it can become part of your unique synthesis.

PRAXIS

It means practice + action.

What works best for change to happen is the application of new ideas pointing towards new possibilities.

When you first learn to ride a bike you may fall off. There is an equivalent for anything that you are in the process of learning; NLP, or hypnosis, or writing.

So you practice. Later you may become  a champion, refining your ability to ride, you may still fall off from time to time, but you are now at a different level.

You make distinctions that a beginner cannot appreciate. Your work is now to ride further, or faster, or longer, or with greater pleasure, or towards a different goal.

You are now engaged in the praxis of riding a bike.

Praxis is more than repetition. It is learning + action.

Comfortable

with Uncomfortable?

Which way do you lean?

Do you cheat yourself by accepting other people’s solutions and perspectives without question? Or do you challenge yourself to find your own?

Do you come down on one side or the other? Or do you understand that all sides have something to offer, and that all perspectives hold a piece of the ‘truth’ that you may be looking for?

Simplistic solutions provide temporary comfort, whereas ambiguity challenges you to think creatively. Is your priority just to be comfortable, or safe, or ‘right’, or is it to learn and excel at what you are doing?

Have you noticed the paradox here yet?

Those who trully excel are used to moving outside of their comfort zone, of testing their limits. They are actually comfortable in situations where others might succumb to anxiety and stress. Whether in sports, politics, business, the arts; the one characteristic that distinguishes the truly great from the mediocre is that they are willing to learn new ways of looking, and to change old patterns, habits and behaviors that do not work.

This is a key element to the praxis of NLP; asking the  ‘how’ questions, even if they provoke discomfort.

How can something that no longer works be be done differently, adapted, or discarded?

How can what already works be improved on, learned, taught etc.

How can I look at any given situation and be free
from my prescribed expectations and judgments of it?

Simplicity, and following the status quo, may comfortable. Ambiguity may be uncomfortable. Do you remember Thomas Edison’s response to repeated failures in his attempt to create an electric  ligh When asked if he was discouraged he replied, “Certainly not, I’ve just discovered a thousand ways how NOT to make a light bulb.”

How far are you willing to go in order to unlearn what doesn’t work, or what may only work in the most limited way?

NLP emerges out of questions that are usually not asked. It emerges out of a willingness to challenge what has been hitherto accepted.

Like the child in the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes; the only person who dared mention the unmentionable truth – that the emperor was naked. And unlike the Samoans who were unable to recognize the first European sailing ships and saw only clouds on the horizon.

Which side do you fall on? Are you looking for new ways to look; new ways to question and learn? Are you willing to step out of your comfort zone so that you can learn not just another way of seeing, but as many ways of seeing as there may be?

NLP is not just a box of tricks and tools. It begins with a curious mind, willing to discard comfort, in order to ask what at first may seem difficult questions.

It’s curious how, later on, and in retrospect, it  may turn out that those questions may have been the most obvious ones to ask.