The NLP Practitioner is the first level of the NLP training. It’s the first contact with a new world for many people. The impression they get of this technology will depend on this first contact. Who has read my blog knows that I am extremely critical with those who try to make people believe that they (trainers) know, and they sell the magic of NLP based on Bandler magic stories.
Many people come to NLP looking for a solution to their problems and wanting to believe that they’ll offer it to them, giving to the trainer the power to influence them much further. It seems that blindly belief in the trainer is the indispensable key to access to this magic.
Form my point of view; Bandler is partially responsible of this situation because he has been talking about magic from the first published book. It is curious how in those early books, more than magic there was engineering. But I suppose that someone realized that it wasn’t a good way to sell books or courses, and for me also it makes sense....
Something happened over the years, that made Bandler swift from teaching NLP engineering to teach "NLP for dummies." There are videos for free where you can watch how he is teaching the structure and then people just start asking stupid questions. Bandler’s closest people say he just got tired of these situations and he just began to demonstrate and to teach techniques most of the time.
For those who have just received this last information, it seems that they can get results just following what Bandler says in the courses, and that with these things it is enough to achieve the same results as Bandler.
I think that probably this was the perfect business: to transform NLP into something simple, accessible, theoretically with spectacular results (rapid phobia cures, etc...) and reachable for many people, so that meant large courses and events. Let's be honest, no one can live from a few human behavior engineers....
I don’t criticize their choice, because that decision made NLP accessible to many people. But as a many things, it provokes some brutal effects: the corruption of the concept and its trivialization. Now, thousands of people in the world believe that by teaching a few techniques and repeating what is in the books, they are doing NLP.
Well, that's NLP for dummies. Is this wrong? No, if they tell what are really doing. If the people who assist to a course of NLP for dummies know that they won’t find the structure of the technology, it’s ok. Because then, they will be able to choose the best option for them. Some of them will prefer technology, others just steps and recipes.
What I find intolerable is offering a pig in a poke. And much worse than that, if the course is done by someone who never knew the work of Bandler and Grinder, or who did it superficially, or that just was trained with someone else who is not Bandler or Grinder and that he decided to train people to teach the complex world of NLP without understanding the work that lies behind of what Bandler makes. Amazingly, this master trainer thinks that he has the authority to deceive his students saying that his work is the work of Bandler.
In my case, I know that I have a lot to learn and to improve, but at the same time, I had the good fortune to meet people who always have been moved to understand and further advance the work of Bandler, following his vision at the same time. People like Gabriel Guerrero, Eric Robbie and Omar Fuentes; they dared to deepen beyond where the NLP was born: Bandler’s work.
I will continue telling what NLP is from my point of view and from what I learned every time I'm close to Bandler, Guerrero, Robbie, Fuentes, Fitzpatrick ...., constantly improving, growing steadily.
My advice: stay away from gurus, false bearers of truth, phonies, and pursue the authentic, the original.
Of course this way requires more complex challenges, but also offers greater satisfactions.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Strategic thinking
One of the inevitable consequences of the predecessors is that they aren't in preceded head, and therefore they have to interpret from their map of the world what the preceded is doing.
I'll never be able to be Richard Bandler even being close to him or learn from him, simply because I think differently. Despite this, I am also an engineer and I can understand some of how it intends.
In this world of phony trainers, exploiters, self-proclaimed gurus, and money-grubbers, tarot readers, is usual the self-proclamations of heirs, cousins or brothers-in-law of Bandler, capable of transmitting his word even though they have just seen him in the back of a book.
All of this squad who have found in the PNL a way to overcome their problems of self-esteem, childhood traumas or simply to make money at the expense of gullible people looking for the solution to all their problems, are nurtured by self-invented mythology about where they learned of PNL.
Bandler, in my humble point of view, has never used the PNL as a toolbox from which he could choose which is better in every moment. In this regard, I agree with other trainers (of which will keep anonymous) about the famous book of Dilts about Sleights of mouth.
This set of tools without any order, simply don’t match with Bandler’s way of thinking. The Sleights of mouth (as Dilts called) are a tool that Bandler uses strategically and not necessarily asking questions. This book is the product of Dilts mind (creator of great recipes) trying to understand what Bandler was a doing. Simply it's a model of Bandler’s world. The Dilts model of Bandler's world.
The Sleights of mouth are based on very clear language logical structures, which Bandler uses to create a result in a wider context, and as part of a wider pattern of change.
Bandler’s strategic thinking is based on the calculation of the subjective structure of the person, and his pragmatic study. Bandler plays constantly with the change of beliefs based on several linguistic presuppositions in different logic levels. Everything that he uses is part of an overall strategy, not a try and error test in search of what can work.
Ask your NLP trainer, what he knows about the logical structures that support the belief system of someone, the presuppositions of 2nd, 3rd and 4th order, and what the restructured Metamodel according to the precepts above is.
If the answer is: "I do not need because I do something better than I have developed," the question for you must be: Do I want to learn about NLP? Or Do I want to learn about what he has developed?
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Do anchors work?
Continuing with the series "unmask the charlatan," we have the typical on the evidence of the incompetence of a trainer: anchors.
The anchor is theoretically a connection, learning between two subjective experiences that occur at the same time. That is, I see, hear or feel something, and at the same time I link to a feeling or an information (information Yes, part of Bandler's work is based on this), which at that time is being processed.
The theory says that if the stimulus is sufficiently accurate and the feeling is enough intense, the brain will learn to connect both. Without going into details (I repeat, this is not an online course).
The first point to consider is that the trainers don't know how to generate intense states in people, so it hardly the information will be saved. A phobia from an experience, is created in seconds because the feeling associated with that experience was very intense and the brain learns quickly.
What usually happens is that the self called NLP gurus or trainers evaluated by self called master trainers don't know how to generate in a demonstration, a state enough intense create a connection. And I say this because the amount of information of all kinds in which the person is submerged during the demonstration, causes a further loss of precision in the anchor stimulus or trigger.
All this means that people don't see spectacular demonstrations of anchors and least know how to use them in practices or exercises, so they end up thinking that anchors don't work. It is curious that such a logical sequence from the premise that your coach is qualified so if my coach knows, and anchors don't work , and to me either, ergo they don't exist. But they do not think that probably it's because the trainer has no idea how to do it?
Not only that, but you can also ask for what they are. Hence, this is the moment to take your popcorn and to sit down. The usual answers that come from the standard NLP books are: to provide the person of new resources to cope with limiting situations , or something like that. Oh yeah? And how?
The anchor has to be part of a much larger strategic process, and this can be one of the reasons why anchors don't work in people.
People work through strategies: sequences of mental representations that allow us to carry out decision-making processes. Within these strategies, there are steps where the component kinesthetic (feeling) is a determining factor because it is what makes it possible to leave or stay in a loop operation (trial and error). The anchors should be thought of as way to affect these sequences in the kinesthetic (k) part because in fact, they play the role of output element in most of the sequences of the subjective structure.
Therefore, when you fire an anchor outside of any strategy, your brain doesn't know what to do with that. It's like throwing a flare in the middle of the night. It illuminates for a few seconds and then darkness. Sometimes it can make some sense, but its usefulness lies in using them into the sequence of an individual subjective structure in order to affect it and to generate a different outcome.
With a little of luck any trainer or some self called NLP guru will read this and will think for some seconds about whether he should continue to apply automatically some already invented techniques or whether it's worth learning and research on how people create such a subjective structure and to teach how to modify to use it in different contexts.
With a little bit of bad luck, a charlatan, trainer-of-200-hours-of-NLP or fraudster will read it and start to talk about it as if he knew as he does with many other things he says he knows. In that case, please ask a complete demonstration with detailed and sensorial verifiable results.
The anchor is theoretically a connection, learning between two subjective experiences that occur at the same time. That is, I see, hear or feel something, and at the same time I link to a feeling or an information (information Yes, part of Bandler's work is based on this), which at that time is being processed.
The theory says that if the stimulus is sufficiently accurate and the feeling is enough intense, the brain will learn to connect both. Without going into details (I repeat, this is not an online course).
The first point to consider is that the trainers don't know how to generate intense states in people, so it hardly the information will be saved. A phobia from an experience, is created in seconds because the feeling associated with that experience was very intense and the brain learns quickly.
What usually happens is that the self called NLP gurus or trainers evaluated by self called master trainers don't know how to generate in a demonstration, a state enough intense create a connection. And I say this because the amount of information of all kinds in which the person is submerged during the demonstration, causes a further loss of precision in the anchor stimulus or trigger.
All this means that people don't see spectacular demonstrations of anchors and least know how to use them in practices or exercises, so they end up thinking that anchors don't work. It is curious that such a logical sequence from the premise that your coach is qualified so if my coach knows, and anchors don't work , and to me either, ergo they don't exist. But they do not think that probably it's because the trainer has no idea how to do it?
Not only that, but you can also ask for what they are. Hence, this is the moment to take your popcorn and to sit down. The usual answers that come from the standard NLP books are: to provide the person of new resources to cope with limiting situations , or something like that. Oh yeah? And how?
The anchor has to be part of a much larger strategic process, and this can be one of the reasons why anchors don't work in people.
People work through strategies: sequences of mental representations that allow us to carry out decision-making processes. Within these strategies, there are steps where the component kinesthetic (feeling) is a determining factor because it is what makes it possible to leave or stay in a loop operation (trial and error). The anchors should be thought of as way to affect these sequences in the kinesthetic (k) part because in fact, they play the role of output element in most of the sequences of the subjective structure.
Therefore, when you fire an anchor outside of any strategy, your brain doesn't know what to do with that. It's like throwing a flare in the middle of the night. It illuminates for a few seconds and then darkness. Sometimes it can make some sense, but its usefulness lies in using them into the sequence of an individual subjective structure in order to affect it and to generate a different outcome.
With a little of luck any trainer or some self called NLP guru will read this and will think for some seconds about whether he should continue to apply automatically some already invented techniques or whether it's worth learning and research on how people create such a subjective structure and to teach how to modify to use it in different contexts.
With a little bit of bad luck, a charlatan, trainer-of-200-hours-of-NLP or fraudster will read it and start to talk about it as if he knew as he does with many other things he says he knows. In that case, please ask a complete demonstration with detailed and sensorial verifiable results.
Metaprograms and strategies
Continuing with the series "key points to detect what your trainer on call knows”, today will discuss the relationship between metaprogramas and strategies.
Attention! If your trainer doesn't know what are the strategies (ie the management of a succession of actions that occur within the mind and which are related to the events of the environment or simply with the events generated by the mental simulator ), run!
The metaprogramas are often described as boxes that process information in a certain way, filtering or distorting information that gets results within our head.
It's a usuall practice to label the people through metaprograms ("He's a internal or external reference filter", or "She's proactive," etc.) in the same way that people are labbelled through the representational systems ( someday I'll talk also about this mania to label all). Ie, they are often dealed individually.
What hardly anyone knows is that metaprograms are part of a strategy or strategies that can run simultaniously. In addition to the different steps of those strategies, metaprograms can change its EQ (that is the percentatge of predominance of one or the other) or simply switch to another metaprogram.
A group of key metaprograms in a strategy are the primary interest sort because they give us information on the environment and conditions (necessary and / or sufficient) that must be taken to trigger a strategy.
But in addition, there are false metaprograms or just labels that define strategies subroutines, such as the conviction metaprogram that describes how someone is convinced of something. This metaprogram is the representation of subroutines that depend on the number of iterations and / or kinesthetic threshold for exiting out of a subroutine.
Another false metaprograma is the flow of mental events in which the focus is categorized according to similarities or differences. A metaprograma that doesn't make any sense because is against set theory and general common sense, speaking to differentiate and matching processes as opposed. Again, it is simply the nominalization of a strategy that runs in our minds and in which I will not go into details now.
All this sounds to you like Chinese? Don't worry it's ok (unless you are already Master Practitioner).
All this sounds like Chinese to your trainer? Caring much! Yes, because he's certainly a part of the set "trainers", but also part of the subset of "people with a title of dubious reputation and who think they understand something of NLP."
Tip: Do not let your trainer to answer you "Man of course! It isn't anything new! That's basic!" (Classic breakaway of the insecure).
Ask a demonstration that doesn’t lead you to misleading technicalities. If He is good, he will know how to simplify it in order that just with your common sense you will understand it.
Then just look for a couple or three examples to clarify the explanation.
Attention! If your trainer doesn't know what are the strategies (ie the management of a succession of actions that occur within the mind and which are related to the events of the environment or simply with the events generated by the mental simulator ), run!
The metaprogramas are often described as boxes that process information in a certain way, filtering or distorting information that gets results within our head.
It's a usuall practice to label the people through metaprograms ("He's a internal or external reference filter", or "She's proactive," etc.) in the same way that people are labbelled through the representational systems ( someday I'll talk also about this mania to label all). Ie, they are often dealed individually.
What hardly anyone knows is that metaprograms are part of a strategy or strategies that can run simultaniously. In addition to the different steps of those strategies, metaprograms can change its EQ (that is the percentatge of predominance of one or the other) or simply switch to another metaprogram.
A group of key metaprograms in a strategy are the primary interest sort because they give us information on the environment and conditions (necessary and / or sufficient) that must be taken to trigger a strategy.
But in addition, there are false metaprograms or just labels that define strategies subroutines, such as the conviction metaprogram that describes how someone is convinced of something. This metaprogram is the representation of subroutines that depend on the number of iterations and / or kinesthetic threshold for exiting out of a subroutine.
Another false metaprograma is the flow of mental events in which the focus is categorized according to similarities or differences. A metaprograma that doesn't make any sense because is against set theory and general common sense, speaking to differentiate and matching processes as opposed. Again, it is simply the nominalization of a strategy that runs in our minds and in which I will not go into details now.
All this sounds to you like Chinese? Don't worry it's ok (unless you are already Master Practitioner).
All this sounds like Chinese to your trainer? Caring much! Yes, because he's certainly a part of the set "trainers", but also part of the subset of "people with a title of dubious reputation and who think they understand something of NLP."
Tip: Do not let your trainer to answer you "Man of course! It isn't anything new! That's basic!" (Classic breakaway of the insecure).
Ask a demonstration that doesn’t lead you to misleading technicalities. If He is good, he will know how to simplify it in order that just with your common sense you will understand it.
Then just look for a couple or three examples to clarify the explanation.
Magic installations
One of the great myths that seems to run in the world of the so-called "nlp experts" are the unconscious installations. There is a widespread belief by all those who justify their lack of skill (I would presume that they have the ability) in transmiting clearly and intelligibly the necessary concepts in order to understand a course of NLP, that if the a student finishes the course with the feeling that he hasn't understood anything, that does not mean he didn't take "the necessary". This absurd belief, is based on the installation of (theoretically) more or less sophisticated strategies at an unconscious level in the minds of the poor students . In fact, the theory is correct, but not they ability to carry it out.
To install a strategy, first you have to be clear about what is and how it works, and this is the first of many handicaps. But on the assumption that we know what it is a strategy, and even how to install it (with all its complexity), this is not enough for the student to bring with him something valuable.
It is also necessary in order to install these strategies, to carry out exercises that strenghts the new neural connections instead of the old ones. As Owen Fitzpatrick said: "The best installation is action."
Furthermore, it is not wrong to move the student from the feeling of confusion (even fear), that seems more advisable at the begining of the learning process, but after you just put the student into an uncomfortable zone.
Gabriel Guerrero uses to say that the installion of a new program does not guarantee anything if if its not ran, so is not enough the "magic hands" of the trainer, is necessary also the student.
Please, do not conform to believe that heor she has made his or her job even if you haven't realized about anything, leave the faith to mysticism. If you feel that you have not learned anything, probably you have not done so.
To install a strategy, first you have to be clear about what is and how it works, and this is the first of many handicaps. But on the assumption that we know what it is a strategy, and even how to install it (with all its complexity), this is not enough for the student to bring with him something valuable.
It is also necessary in order to install these strategies, to carry out exercises that strenghts the new neural connections instead of the old ones. As Owen Fitzpatrick said: "The best installation is action."
Furthermore, it is not wrong to move the student from the feeling of confusion (even fear), that seems more advisable at the begining of the learning process, but after you just put the student into an uncomfortable zone.
Gabriel Guerrero uses to say that the installion of a new program does not guarantee anything if if its not ran, so is not enough the "magic hands" of the trainer, is necessary also the student.
Please, do not conform to believe that heor she has made his or her job even if you haven't realized about anything, leave the faith to mysticism. If you feel that you have not learned anything, probably you have not done so.
dogmas and dogmatics
Every time I start a course and just after the welcome I tell my students: "Do not believe anything of what I am going to say. Put it to the test and if it works for you, use it until it stops doing it or you find something better" .
NLP it was a concept developed by Bandler and Grinder based on pragmatism. That is, in the use of models to interpret reality and to interpret within this reality, the models of others.
Another of the basic tenets of NLP is relativism as they present it in the introduction to the book Neurolingistic Programming Vol.1 (please do not confuse with the boring book: Introduction to NLP). Without going into details now, they proposal is that the models are validated by its usefulness in a particular context and understanding that they will always have an effect on the observed and the observer, which will affect the final outcome of the observation.
The first derivation of this axiom is that there may be no dogmas. Any model used to describe someone or an experience, is going to be relative to the user and the context in which it uses. If everything is relative, if the observer affects the observed, and if the models used depend on the variables present at that time, who can say nothing? Probably no one.
Relativism need not lead to nihilism, or to chaos or to the total uncertainty. In fact, is based on the same principles of quantum physics and the uncertainty principle, we can determine where only certain qualities of the atomic or subatomic particles, while others will inevitably change by the mere fact of being observed.
In our case, the simple fact to look at someone's head by asking questions, affects the mental structure that he had until then and we're bringing new information to his system, so we can not be certain how it was before our intervention.
The funny thing of the case, is that our structure is also affected by the introduction of information from the scrutiny of the head of others.
But in addition we can only be sure of the outcome probabilistically used to describe the reality. In other words, it is very unlikely to be 100% sure of anything.
Anyone who claims something roundly in NLP, or that classify people by representational systems, or that snaps into metaprograms, or speak of the metamodel as if they were boxes, or any such clear evidence of ignorance, probably does not have the most remote idea what he's talking about.
That could be a good moment to escape through the closest door , but not before claiming your savings.
NLP it was a concept developed by Bandler and Grinder based on pragmatism. That is, in the use of models to interpret reality and to interpret within this reality, the models of others.
Another of the basic tenets of NLP is relativism as they present it in the introduction to the book Neurolingistic Programming Vol.1 (please do not confuse with the boring book: Introduction to NLP). Without going into details now, they proposal is that the models are validated by its usefulness in a particular context and understanding that they will always have an effect on the observed and the observer, which will affect the final outcome of the observation.
The first derivation of this axiom is that there may be no dogmas. Any model used to describe someone or an experience, is going to be relative to the user and the context in which it uses. If everything is relative, if the observer affects the observed, and if the models used depend on the variables present at that time, who can say nothing? Probably no one.
Relativism need not lead to nihilism, or to chaos or to the total uncertainty. In fact, is based on the same principles of quantum physics and the uncertainty principle, we can determine where only certain qualities of the atomic or subatomic particles, while others will inevitably change by the mere fact of being observed.
In our case, the simple fact to look at someone's head by asking questions, affects the mental structure that he had until then and we're bringing new information to his system, so we can not be certain how it was before our intervention.
The funny thing of the case, is that our structure is also affected by the introduction of information from the scrutiny of the head of others.
But in addition we can only be sure of the outcome probabilistically used to describe the reality. In other words, it is very unlikely to be 100% sure of anything.
Anyone who claims something roundly in NLP, or that classify people by representational systems, or that snaps into metaprograms, or speak of the metamodel as if they were boxes, or any such clear evidence of ignorance, probably does not have the most remote idea what he's talking about.
That could be a good moment to escape through the closest door , but not before claiming your savings.
Coming soon.....NLP for dummies
How NLP became something like "NLP for dummies" instead of an Engineering?
Hello everybody!
Hello I'm working to translate my blog as soon as possible! Just for now, please use the Google translator. It's good enough!
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