Our research has shown that by the time the students have finished the course this negative internal dialogue has reduced significantly and their relationship with themselves has dramatically improved.  Many other things have improved significantly too, like self-confidence, wellbeing, having more choices about how they experience life and even evidence of what Abraham Maslow called self-actualisation, the final level of psychological development that can be achieved when all basic, emotional and mental needs are fulfilled.

It’s a strange business this ‘beating yourself up’, for example,  “Why am I always so stupid?”  Who is doing the beating up and who is being beaten up? There must be at least two of you in there! And yet the beliefs of the culture say there is only one of you. So which is it?

I think the simplest and most useful way to address this conundrum is to say that there are at least two of you in there: your conscious mind self and your unconscious mind self. What do I mean by conscious mind and unconscious mind?

Well, your conscious mind is where ‘conscious you’ lives. That endless flow of conscious thoughts creates the virtual reality of who you think you are – pretty compelling stuff. But where does this flow of thoughts (including beat myself up thoughts) come from?

From unconscious mind, which decides which thoughts are going to pop into you conscious mind next. Neuroscience shows that unconscious mind prepares these thoughts for ‘popping’ over 500 milliseconds before they ‘pop’ into conscious mind. Now this makes ‘free will’ look distinctly endangered, but it’s place is taken by ‘free won’t’. Any thought may pop into your head (e.g. beat myself up again), but having popped, you can consciously decided whether to follow it, or abandon it and replace with something more useful. This is a habit well worth mastering.

One practical tip, when you do have an unhelpful thought, ask what its positive intention is. For example, what might the positive intention be for calling yourself stupid? Paradoxically, it might be to get you to be more intelligent in future. How might you do that? By asking yourself the learning question, “How would I do that differently next time?”

At its simplest there are three different levels to the unconscious mind.

• The first of these levels includes everything that is outside of present moment awareness – shift your awareness and you can be aware of something (internally or externally) that was previously unconscious.

• The second of these levels is the sum of all experiences and memories that you can be aware of by shifting your attention internally. This is your maximum conscious mind reality.

• And the third level is all of the unconscious processing the brain/mind does in order to create and sustain the (almost illusory) conscious mind. This is the level of greatest unconscious capability. This is where ‘unconscious you’ lives. And this is the level most worth making friends with and harnessing.

I want to leave you with a simple but powerful strategy for doing exactly this. I first came across a version of this modelled from top creative artists. It is very effective. All you need is the belief that your unconscious mind is better equipped to solve your emotional problems than your conscious mind in – not too hard really. Notice when something is getting to you emotionally. Think of the issue as clearly as possible, and then think of the best question to ask. For example, “What would the best resolution be to this issue?”

Hold this question in your mind from time to time, and ask your unconscious mind to let you know when it has found the answer. (Do NOT try to answer it consciously).This process usually takes hours, days, or sometimes, weeks. This is pretty much what happens when you’ve got a difficult decision to make, and you decide to sleep on it. Your unconscious mind does the thinking while you’re asleep, and when you wake up, the decision has made itself.

I call this process ‘Holding the Question’.  May you find it useful.

The image used was found using a creative commons search on flickr and is by spaceamoeba

Like any other relationship, one’s relationship with oneself takes time, thought and effort.  It may take years to establish something that is comfortable, companionable and liveable.  I don’t know about anyone else, but often it feels like there are a whole lot of people in my head who absolutely all have an extremely strong opinion about how the whole show should be running.  I have stopped feeling embarrassed at mentioning this to other people, and now own this aspect of my internal life.

The most successful strategy for me in managing this internal menagerie has been to see it as a Board of Directors.  There’s a Financial Director, a Social Director and so on.  They all get to present their input, but all final decisions are mine.   The new skills I have learned on the NLP Practitioner training course have smoothed this process immeasurably.  I have started to listen to how I am saying something to myself.  Sometimes how something is said, internally or externally, can be as important as what is said.

During one of the exercises we were playing with voice tone and facial expression.  It made a huge difference to how someone received what was being said.  The words were exactly the same and yet the response was hugely different.  This can also work with internal dialogue.  When one of the Board has something to say that maybe makes me feel uncomfortable (for me these often tend to be in the “you should have” area), I replay the message, change the tone, maybe change that “should” to “could”.

I’m hitting a major birthday this year – one with a 0 on the end – and that, too, leads to some reflection.  You are the one person you can never leave.  You have to spend every minute of every day with you.  Surely this is one relationship that investing time thought and effort in is going to result in a huge positive payback.  What do you think?

Fran

The image used was found using a creative commons search on flickr and is by Jessica Mullen

I can remember being on the cusp between teens and twenties. Advice from my elders was only welcomed when I sought it. I know that the best way to learn is to make mistakes. What my present menagerie really needs from me is someone who provides a secure base; somewhere safe where they can celebrate their successes and lick their wounds; somewhere safe to learn from.

One of the best pieces of advice I was given in my early adulthood was this; when you set yourself a goal, view everything that subsequently happens as steps towards achieving that goal, even if it looks like the exact opposite. Imagine you have decided to climb a mountain. You need to prepare the proper equipment for the journey, plan a route, and make sure you have a good back-up team. Even with all this preparation, you may encounter things that are unexpected. You may have to double back on yourself. It might even take more than one try. However if you hold your goal in mind, believe that it is achievable, and learn from the unexpected along the way, you will get there!

As I recently remarked to a dog-walking friend on a dull, rainy morning walk: “When I was in my teens, dreaming about maybe being the next Mrs David Bowie, or taking the world of literature by storm with my mature and remarkable best-seller, none of my dreams included standing in the middle of a muddy field at 7.30 am shouting “Spike, where’s your ball!” – but I wouldn’t change a minute of it.”

The image used was found using a creative commons search on flickr and is by udeyismail

How can it make a difference?
Well, research clearly shows that those who have made a written record of their life goals achieve more of them, and a lot more, than those who don’t.

So what exactly is life planning?
Basically, it is writing down some of your main goals in each of the main areas of your life over three different time scales.

The purpose of this exercise is to get in touch with your inner compass and, for this stage of your life, to set yourself in the right direction.

What is involved?
Using your diary or daily journal if you have one to log your results, set aside one or two hours, either on your own or with a close friend, to elicit and log your main goals and give them a timeline.
It is important that you decide for yourself the main areas of your life, and that they feel right for you. How you decide is a personal decision that only you can make, and will change with time anyway.

The process – for you to tailor to your life
If you are ready to start the process now, move straight to Life Planning below.

If, however, it feels a bit daunting I can recommend a couple of warm up exercises to start you off. These are called life values and life purpose clarification. They really do work. You will be clearer about what really matters in your life, and life planning gets a whole lot easier.

First, have a good long think about whatever is most important to you in your life. You are finished when you can list your top ten life values in order of importance and are reasonably happy with the result. This exercise is simple, but not easy. If you have done it many times, it may only take ten minutes. If you haven’t, it may take a week or more of returning to it.

Second, write the words: “The purpose of my life is…..” on a blank sheet of paper. Now complete the sentence with different endings, until you are reasonably happy with it. Again, this can be challenging in that it is simple, but not easy. It may take anywhere between ten and a hundred repeats until you are reasonably happy with it. You will now find it easier to settle down to some creative life planning.

Life Planning
First decide on and write down the areas of your life that you want to focus on. Aim for the seven most important areas; if you go above nine it takes longer and seems to lose effectiveness; if you go below five it doesn’t seem enough.

How you divide your life up doesn’t seem to make much difference in practice. What does matter is doing it. Just to get you started here are some life areas that are often used:

Relationships – Career – Wellbeing – Financial – Home – Emotional – Spiritual

Next, consider which three time frames are most likely to be useful to you.

• What is the longest time frame you want to consider? eg 1, 10 or 25 years)
• What is the shortest time frame you want to consider? (eg 1, 6 or 12 months)
• And finally, what is the medium time frame you want to consider?

Map the time frames and life areas onto a whole page forming a grid of squares. Usually the three time frames go across the top, and the seven life areas are down the side, making twenty one boxes or combinations.

Summarise each by writing a key word or phrase in the square. At the same time it can also be useful to note down any key issue which may prevent you from achieving any outcome.Now, taking each box of the grid in turn, clarify and reflect on the most important and motivating goals or outcomes for that life area in that time frame.

Do not give any airtime to limiting beliefs about yourself or your capabilities. Do not think that you have to know how you are going to achieve all this at the moment.

The trick to this exercise is to enjoy the experience by being in an optimistic frame of mind and a good mood, with all your creative skills ready at hand.

OK, you’ve done it, what next?
This next piece is somewhat paradoxical.

Be completely unattached to your outcomes, but persist in your commitments.

Using the life planning grid as a guide, create a list of daily action steps that will take you closer to your given outcome or goal. Re-read it every week and have two or three of the most important action steps in your diary every day. If you don’t complete them, break them into smaller steps and write these in for the next day.

Keep doing this. If you hit problems, ask your friends or support group for help.
Use your diary or daily journal to log your progress and celebrate your successes.

The image used was found using a creative commons search on Flickr and is by QuesterMark

So how do you push through the excuses and distractions to reach the proverbial Mecca of your dreams? Do you have any tips you can share? If so please do so below.

Is it possible to have the gain without the pain?  …Probably not …let’s not go there!

However, I have been reliably informed that there are ways to make the journey easier, and making time to practice is one of them.

When learning something new most of us start with heavy doses of enthusiasm, maybe even buying everything required. Then sometime later we will notice that the heavy dose of enthusiasm has covertly gone undercover and these objects of our learning desire are sitting, sadly collecting dust, yearning to be used.   We gave in to the discomfort that accompanies most learning at the beginning of the journey.

However, when we do push through the ‘pain’ barrier, there comes a point, that I am sure you will recognize, when the pain of practice and learning turns to joy. We have reached a level of competence, perhaps even unconscious competence, where we are able to play confidently with our skills and techniques; where we are able to experiment, in the knowledge that all the feedback we get will enter that loop of beginning > practice > mastery > beginning > practice > mastery >

And we may notice that we are in a routine, we have developed a habit and that we are able to spend the time with ease… in fact we don’t even consider that we are ‘spending’ the time.

So how did we get there?  What did we do differently?

When we look closely we may notice that we reach mastery more easily if we are motivated; if the learning is something we really want, if we believe we can do it and believe we have the time to do it.

At the start of the learning journey I have found it useful to turn my internal awareness radar up to full, I want to notice any small changes that the learning is giving. I am so used to the reward / measurement culture that I find it unavoidable not to measure the improvement. How about you?

With my NLP learning, like many others, I started the journey with an assumption that all of the learning would take place at the seminars; after all this has been the traditional way in which education has been passed on to us.  The seminars are a place of excitement as new skills are taken on board and tried out immediately during the seminar. We are also encouraged to try them on in our minds and envisage them in future scenarios. Often we marvel at the beauty of their sheer simplicity.

However, John reminds us time and time again of the importance of practice, and in particular the value of practice group attendance.  And off we go all inspired and skilled up, with the good intentions to attend practice group sessions, if we have time, but no problem if we don’t, after all we now have the skill and there is another seminar next month.  Besides there are only so many hours in the day!

A busy month later at the next seminar, having ‘found’ no time for practice, we disappointedly discover that the new skill learnt thirty days ago, that skill, at whose simplicity we had marveled, is now hazy and unclear.  What have we really learnt?

My learning was that anything worth achieving takes time and effort on my part.

There are so many useful things to learn, to master, but mastery isn’t automatic, we need to make the time to make it happen.

And you could say – make the time and practice makes perfect.

And you may want to consider that it takes 21 days to make a habit, you could say that is 21 repeats. And you may be interested to know that new research states that it takes 66 days. (The UK Health Behaviour Research Centre at UCL).

So what learning are you going to do for the next 66 days?

Me, I am going to start my daily journal…

The image used was found using a creative commons search and is by subflux

When I ask how many people have attended a time management course or read a time management book, 90% say they have. When asked how many use time management strategies, 90% say they don’t. When I ask why, they say they are too busy to. At this point, everyone laughs.

So what is going on here?

After all, time is not like money, it is completely fair. Everyone gets the same amount every day for the rest of their lives.

In this consumer society, what I think happens is that a lot of people and organisations are clamouring for a share of our attention, in other words, our time. In the UK watching TV, for example, takes up 3 to 4 hours of the average person’s day. If we are generous with our time to others, especially commercially focussed others, we will be time-poor with ourselves.

If you want more time for yourself, the first rule of thumb is to identify what you currently spend your time on that contributes the least value to your life. You will find this easier if you look for things you spend a significant amount of time on every day that are neither urgent nor important to you. This may, or may not, include watching TV and browsing online. Whatever it is, do less of this every day and use the time you gain for two main purposes.

The first is to reclaim some of your life. You are a human being, not a human doing. So spend this time just being, rather than doing task-focussed behaviour; sit in the garden or go for a walk; imagine you are on a mini-holiday – a passive one, not an active one; relearn how to enjoy the moment – much harder than it sounds. Meditation is good, and it can give you time back. Reflective thinking is fine as long as you are just allowing thoughts to emerge; there is a lot to be learned from what comes up. However it is not fine if you start forward planning more action; this belongs elsewhere.

The second purpose in clearing up some free time is to take some of it to manage your time and so create even more time. Some people are naturals at this; they are usually more emotionally stable and orderly than average. Other people will have varying degrees of what I like to call organisational dyslexia. If you can see the sense in managing your time better, but never seem to get around to doing anything about it, for really good but ever-changing reasons, then guess what you suffer from?

All is not lost. Through working with many good and creative folk with rich emotional lives – in other words organisational dyslexics – I have found some simple steps for reclaiming your life. Notice which ones you have already achieved, and keep going for the next one until you have mastered it. This usually takes a lot of repetition before it becomes as automatic a habit as the old behaviour it replaces.

Here is a beginner’s guide:

1. As life flies by, learn to spot everything that needs to be acted on and write it down.
2. Write it down in one place. Bits of paper don’t count. A dairy or personal organiser does.
3. Review this list every day and prioritise your action steps. This can be A’s, B’s, and C’s, urgent/important, or both combined.
4. Do the most important stuff every day.
5. Allow 30-60 minutes every day for organising your lists of stuff. If something can be done in less than two minutes, do it then. If it will take longer, diary in when you will do it.

Of course there is a lot more to time management, but these are the basics. And most people trip up on the basics. If you want a fuller model, then get hold of ‘Getting Things Done’ by David Allen. You don’t really need it until you’ve mastered the basics, unless perhaps to motivate yourself by believing that there is a stress-free way of dealing with things better and gradually reclaiming more of your life. It’s simple stuff, but it isn’t always easy.

So, what is the first step for you? And when will you do it? And are you just about to put it in your diary? Good luck, and may you enjoy rediscovering the time of your life.

The image used was found using a creative commons search on Flickr and is by DigitalFauxtographer

Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1749-1832

I once asked a well-read, philosophically inclined friend of mine to define what he felt reality was. He thought a little and said “as far as I can see, it would appear to be how your mind interprets the information it receives from your senses.” Well, life has moved on and those “sitting up all night sorting the world out” times have evolved into “10 pm already – must be bedtime!”

However, the definition of reality he gave (and I chose to take on) has held me in good stead over the years – especially at those times when “reality” has been a slightly fluid concept! Possibly the most constructive outcome for me has been that it has shown me that how I perceive reality has been coloured intensively by what I believe. Much of what we believe would seem to be hidden, even from ourselves, and having a way in to that secret part is a key to taking more control in how we walk through our days.

When I studied Cognitive Behavioural Therapy I found Albert Ellis’ ABCs theory a real path into discovering what I believe. The theory that between the activating stimulus “A” and the consequence “C” there sits a belief “B” which is why, according to this theory, different people react differently in the same situation. Asking myself the question “what do I believe that makes this so” can uncover some surprising stuff!

Also working as a therapist for four years has shown me how powerful belief is. What we believe can shade every relationship, every psychological transaction. Bringing these beliefs to consciousness and working on changing them has dramatic and transformational consequences.

By the time you read this, I will have completed seminar 5 of the NLP Practitioner Training. It is entitled “Beyond Belief” and is the seminar I have been most looking forward to. So, who knows what I will believe by the next time we speak!

Fran

The image used was found on Flickr using a creative commons search and is by Wunluv

What is their secret?

Many years ago I became fascinated by this and sought out people who seemed to have a higher quality of life than average. I chose six of the best to research in more depth using the NLP approach known as Modelling. What follows is a brief summary of my main discoveries and in it are some suggestions that can really make a significant difference.

What I discovered is that they all shared a similar attitude to life, a shared belief, which was something like this.

We are responsible for the quality of our lives.

Waste no energy on blaming others or circumstance. Instead, put your attention and energy into learning to enjoy as much as possible of what you do. If that is not possible, then remind yourself that those things that are emotionally painful or difficult in your life are life’s lessons. They are in your life so that you may grow and develop through them, or not. However, if you do not learn from life’s lessons they will simply be repeated until you do. And, when you do master one lesson, then, of course, the next lesson will be presented.

All of the above is a matter of belief. However, if you act as though it is true, it is a great motivator for focussing on learning from the experience of life’s lessons.

One more belief they all shared was in the importance of habituation.

Habituation is simply the tendency of the mind to make automatic and unconscious any behaviour that is repeated frequently. For example, learning to use a mobile phone is hard the first few times, but after twenty or so repeats, it is well on the way to being an unconscious habit that requires little conscious thought. They all believed that repeating the habit of learning from experience many times a day would result in this habit becoming automatic. And that seemed to be the case.

How exactly did these good people go about the business of learning from experience on a daily basis?

They recognised the lesson, and then focussed on the learning. So, to take this into your life, you begin by learning to spot the first signs of one of life’s lessons. This is usually a feeling of emotional discomfort. Next you ask yourself a question that focuses you on the most useful learning from this experience. For example, “What would I do differently next time?”, or “What is the most useful learning I can make from this experience?”

This starts off a period of reflection, based on hindsight, of the experience in question. Your focus will be on the best way to handle it differently, and you imagine a range of different alternatives. These may include; avoiding it, behaving differently, thinking different thoughts, changing your emotional response or adopting another belief about it. Probably it will be some combination of these. If you get stuck, ask yourself, “Who do I know that would be able to handle this situation well, and how would they deal with it?” You imagine them in the situation, and notice what they do differently to you. Aim to reflect on each learning experience until you have come up with at least three good options. You now rely on your intuitive gut feel to choose the best one (or the best combination).

Having chosen the best option, you are ready to fine tune it by rehearsing this option mentally.

Imagine yourself back at the beginning of the original learning experience and watch yourself dealing with it differently using your new approach. If at any point it doesn’t feel quite right, stop, and go back to reflective thinking to generate new options until you find the best alternative. Continue until you have been through the whole experience and you are happy with the way in which you have managed it. You may want to repeat this mental rehearsal process a number of times until your new approach feels comfortable enough that you can begin to imagine it quite easily. This is evidence that the new learning is starting to habituate, and therefore is likely to happen the next time you find yourself in a similar situation. The final proof is when you do take a new approach in a similar situation. Congratulate yourself.

You can use your skill of mental rehearsal to learn from life’s lessons many times a day. One of the best side-effects of doing this is that it tends to eliminate any worry or guilt about the situation. It is as though, having made the learning, your mind is free of negative emotion about it.

You can also use it to mentally rehearse any future situations that may be tricky. For example, you may have a difficult conversation coming up with someone, or a demanding negotiation. When you mentally rehearse a future scenario there will usually be branch points where it may go in different directions. For example. “If they say this, then I could… , and if they say that, then I could… “. Rehearsing future scenarios is a great way to prepare yourself in advance for difficult situations.

One last aspect of mental rehearsal is often overlooked. You can use it for learning how to improve your ability to enjoy anything you do. Use questions like: “How could I enjoy ‘x’ more?” or “How could I create more satisfaction for myself and others in the way I do ‘x’. Initially this can be rather challenging, unless you are one of life’s perennial optimists. With repeated practice, however, you can learn how to focus on the most enjoyable aspect of everything you do.

By practicing these different types of mental rehearsal daily over the next month, you will be surprised at the difference you can make to the quality of life.

Sceptical? Well, there is only one way to find out – try it and see. Perhaps the hardest part is remembering to do it. That is where daily journaling comes in – and there is an article about that on my blog page on the JSnlp website.

Believing is the beginning.

If there was something that, if you believed it were possible, would make a big difference in your life what would it be?

And what would you need to do to make it possible?

Let us know your thoughts and / or experiences?

Check out John’s article on Daily Journaling here.

The image used for this blog was found using a creative commons search on Flickr and was by zanzo

Would you like to feel more confident when making decisions?

In the following article, adapted from a piece written by John Seymour, learn how our values, conscious and unconscious, impact on our lives and the decisions we make. Discover how to uncover your core values and use them for choosing the best direction to take in your life and strengthening your ability to make sound decisions.

Your Values are the Compass of Your Life

What are values?

The Shorter Oxford Dictionary defines values as: “personally held judgements of what is important in life”. From an NLP viewpoint they are the system of beliefs we hold, consciously and unconsciously, about the relative importance of everything, and that we use to direct our lives.

The importance of values is that they hold the key to living a fuller and more satisfying life. However there is a lot more to them than the commonsense way we usually think of them

So what exactly do values do? They motivate us. We are more motivated to do things we consider to be important; earning money, for example. Values guide our decisions. Given a choice we are more likely to decide according to our idea of the relative importance of the options. For example, the decision to work a four day week instead of five is likely to work well if you value your extra time more highly than the extra income. Values will also determine how you evaluate something after the event.

Increasing your awareness of your values can improve motivation, the quality of decisions you make, and satisfaction with your life. Put simply, the more your life reflects your true values, the happier you will be. The more your life conflicts with your true values, the more off-track and dissatisfied you will feel.

What then, are your true values?

Here is a simple exercise you can do to clarify your core values. In NLP this is known as life values hierarchy and allows you to elicit your core values and order them according to their importance to you.

Sit down in a quiet place with your journal, or a piece of paper, and ask yourself: “What is most important in my life?” Let your mind go as blank and see what words or phrases come up. Take your time. Aim for at least ten words or phrases and write each down. Now ask yourself which are the top five. Rely on intuition/gut feeling to put them in rank order one to five.

This exercise is simple, but most people will find it far from easy until they have done it many times. The trick is to just do it. By doing it you will be a lot clearer about what really matters to you and this will help you to make decisions that work better for you and those you care about. By making better decisions your life will tend to become more aligned with your true/core values which leads to you experiencing a better quality of life and contributing more in your chosen areas.

There are many ways you can use the values hierarchy exercise. For instance, anytime you want to do a life purpose statement (the purpose of my life is …) or any life planning I strongly recommend that you take 20 minutes to do a life values hierarchy first. You can also apply it to each of the separate areas of your life, incorporating it into your daily journaling, or by building it into your time management system (so that the way you spend your time becomes more aligned with your values). It is a simple thing that really does make a difference

Of course there is a lot more to values work than simple hierarchies. Some of the other aspects we explore on our NLP courses include identifying and clarifying values conflicts, a cause of much human misery, and identifying other people’s values, which drive their behaviour. We also explore the difference between espoused values, what we like to think we value, and operational values, what we behave as though we value. An example of this would be being concerned about climate change as the biggest issue we face while continuing to take flights for holidays. Last, but not least, we explore the difference between instrumental values, or means to an end values for example money, and intrinsic values, for example health or wellbeing.

As this year ends and we move into the next enjoy bringing your life more on track by clarifying your values.

Practice groups are so important. If you are reading this and have a practice group I would love to hear some of your experiences of what works well for you. If you have questions about practice groups post them below and I will do my best to answer them.

NLP is at heart a set of skills. Like any skills, you only acquire them by repeated practice.

So, what is an NLP practice group?

It is a small number of students of NLP who meet regularly to practice their NLP skills. There are hundreds of practice groups meeting regularly across the country.

What are the advantages of a practice group?

If you do attend regular practice groups, the payoff is huge.

Many of these skills are generative, such as outcome thinking, mental rehearsal, resource states, etc. and will benefit you for the rest of your life.

More than that, they will help you to create the rest of your life.

And the more you practice the higher your levels of competence will become. You will have more of your skills up to unconscious competence faster. This, of course, is the biggest payoff, when you are getting the full benefit of highly generative skills, with minimum effort.

How does a practice group work?

Typically, between three and six students arrange to meet one evening a week. Their aim is to have a good time talking about all the things NLPers talk about and, of course, practicing the skills they most want to develop. There will often be a social beginning and end, and in the middle a practice session lasting around one to two hours.

There are some important essentials to agree at the beginning of a meeting:

• Be quite explicit about how you will respect client confidentiality.
• Decide at the beginning of a meeting what time people need to leave and agree on how long each session should last – and stick to it, unless you all agree otherwise.

Use each of the three classic NLP roles, client, practitioner and observer, and spend equal time in each role.

In the client role you choose an issue to explore that you are motivated to resolve. The practitioner works with you on this for the agreed length of time, often around 30 minutes. The observer keeps time and is available to coach the practitioner if they get stuck. You then move on to the next role for the second round, and the third role for the last round.

Each of these roles has different advantages.

Client role

When you are in the client role, you learn the skill of picking which issue to work with. Daily reflective journaling will offer you a range to pick from. Some will be relatively easy to shift, and you may get through a few in a session. Some will be medium hard, and they may take a number of sessions to shift. Some will be really hard. You may not feel emotionally ready to tackle them; respect this. They may also be hard in that you may not get a shift unless you work with someone considerably more skilled and experienced. We encourage our students to bring in any unresolved issue to the next seminar, where the assisting tutors will be happy to work with them between training sessions.

From hesitant beginnings, most people learn to make good use of their client time and resolve many of the issues that have prevented them from achieving important life goals. Resolving significant issues and achieving the goals that really matter to you, are some of the most satisfying parts of the whole training, and where you really develop as a person.

Practitioner Role

When it is your turn to be in the practitioner role, you practice using many of the skills you have been learning. These might typically include:

• Embodying the presuppositions of NLP
• Rapport
• Information gathering:            Clarifying the issue
  • Eliciting a well-formed outcome
  • Diagnosis
  • Changework:
    • Using a change process
    • Testing
    • Future pacing

In practice this process can vary considerably. For example, simply clarifying both issue and outcome is often enough on its own. The learning either becomes obvious, or sometimes it just occurs spontaneously. Whichever way it turns out, as the practitioner, you have been using and developing your skills. And these are some of the key skills that will serve you well for the rest of your life.

Observer Role

The observer can learn a lot from the interaction, for instance observing how the practitioner uses their skills to ‘read’ the client to gain rapport and check for congruence, or  watching the subtle signals that show how a client is responding to the practitioner’s questions.  As observer you are in a good position to give the practitioner feedback on what they did well and on what they could improve. In many ways, the observer position is the best one for making useful learnings.

 
The image used was found on Flickr using a creative commons search, the artist is United Nations Photo’s photostream