NLP Training, Techniques & Products for learning NLP

I love NLP, it's a field of study (and practice) that the more you do the more you want to do. That's why the recent change in the NLP landscape caught my attention.

For those of you who aren't aware, international Self-Help guru Paul Mckenna has announced that after this May there will no longer be any more Paul Mckenna Trainings for the foreseeable future. Paul on his site cites his reasons as "I will be taking a break due to work commitments overseas." Paul is known originally as being a stage hypnotist who turned NLPer and so began a very successful training career and business, delivering trainings to over 50,000 people and co-building what is reported to the largest NLP training organisation in the world.

This most likely will be a BIG change to the UK NLP training landscape, given that Paul Mckenna Trainings which had hundreds of attendants per Prac and Master Prac seminar is the #1 school people were learning NLP at.

So you may be wondering, just what is the NLP Self-Help guru and 3 times best selling author doing? He's off to the US, after signing a deal worth circa $30M with the Discovery Channel to deliver a new type of self-help day show around his "I can make you thin" program. Apparently the show is being put together by the makers of Reality TV show Survival and The Apprentice. Knowing Paul's past history he will do very well, with his captivating audience style, years of experience in front of the cameras and knowing how to capitalise on an opportunity.

He has signed up for a 3 year deal and will present his "I can make you thin" program is to be shown on prime time US TV starting in March.

Paul has had a lot of TV focus in the last two year having two shows run on Sky One ("I can make you thin" and "I can change your life") and has been seen on the daytime TV such as GMTV in the UK and the Ellen show in the US.

You can catch a nice edit of Paul on the Ellen show below:

Paul on The Ellen Show:

NLP-Times.com invites you to join a live VIP teleseminar with NLP Master Trainer Michael Breen on…

RECORDING NOW AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE

Would you like to have the ability to tell a story that will captivate your audience? To make them laugh and cry. Change their states. Create and lead them into new worlds and distort their sense of time?

Dear Friend,

He knows what works and is ready to share it with you!

YOUR TELESEMINAR

Each participant will be able to submit questions via a special question box both before AND during the teleseminar!

So you get to direct exactly what it is about storytelling that you want to know more about.

What People Who Attended The Call Thought. . .
 

"I liked the tips on getting into the state that you want your audience to go into - like Billy Connolly being hysterical before he starts.  I used these today and found people laughing along with my story - much more memorable for them".  Thanks Ed
 

——

"Thank you for addressing the topic of Storytelling in the recent tele-seminar.  As a salesperson, storytelling is the one activity that makes or breaks my sales presentation.  I never really paid much attention to the state of my audience when they filed into the conference room.  Michael Breen shared great techniques that really work. I now use the skills at every opportunity".   

Warm Regards,   Rocco Tucci

——

"When I was a little girl, I remember waiting with great excitement and anticipation for when in early school,would come the time to have a story.
I still remember the warm glowing feeling inside of me whilst listening to them.

As I grew, I continued to love stories and especially the ones that were told to me by my mother and father.
They always filled me with wonderment and hope as they reeled how life was for them when they were little.

I still love them. And now as a grandmother and NLP trainer/facilitator I know the value they hold.
Michael was wonderful in his explanation and clarity, directing us to the different layers of understanding and wisdom that can be achieved for helping audiences experience deeper understandings of themselves.

And, also, how stories help to evaluate and move us to think about actions, behaviours, values and belief systems we may hold.
I could listen to Michael and his lovely warm way of teaching every day!"
 
Many thanks for this opportunity.
Erika x
 

——

——

"I attended this event live and have a copy of the recording.

I found this a great resource.  It was obvious to me why Michael Breen
is such a great teacher.  He is obviously extremely knowledgeable
about the subject and he is able to get that knowledge across in a
really skillful way.

I would recommend this recording to anyone who wants to learn more
about good storytelling and I look forward to further seminars of this
type".

Stephen

Anthony J. Mahavorick, aka Tony Robbins is probably the most well known NLP students of all time. At one point in his truly remarkable career Tony was estimated to be worth $800 million and had an infomercial for his Personal Power product on TV somewhere in North America every 30 minutes. Tony learnt NLP back in the 80s and really did 'go for it' and apply what he learnt fully, fueling a career that went on to establish him and his "Mega" seminars as one of the top events to go to in the personal development world. He has coached or advised some of the top sports, business and politians of our time.

If you have ever seen Tony at a live seminar you will know he is an exceptional presenter and master crowd communicator. Even in Great Britain, a country known for being quite conservative in behaviour he will have 10,000+ attendees from the UK and around the world jumping up and down and celebrating like a rock concert crowd and singing "life will never be the same!".

So just how does he do this? What NLP methods are observable in his presentations? In this 3 part video analysis of a UPW Preview event, I examine many of these themes. I look at both the auditory and visual anchoring used, how Tony directs their attention, how he seeds beliefs and chains thoughts. You'll see Tony setup a propulsion system and demonstrate excellent state management and elicitation.

For those of you who watched my Derren Brown Trains of Thought Analysis (here), the key thing to keep in mind is that unlike Darren's fast NLP techniques to alter states with a specific outcome in mind, Tony will be seeding thoughts and stacking anchors overtime which to a non trained eye are far too subtle to be picked up. Even when you know NLP, it is easy not to 'see' what he is dong.

We pick up this analysis in video 1 where Tony is setting the frames for the beginning of the session, setting a hook to hang the rest of the presentation on ..

He skillfully guides the audience through a journey, moving from doubt, pessimism to really want to go for changing their lives. In terms of NLP skills demonstrated, by the end of the presentation Tony will have setup a number of anchored states, convince rs and a new perspective to move toward creating an extraordinary life.

Before you watch, please note I don't cover every aspect and have intentionally left some NLP aspects uncommented. Also, please be aware that the volume contrast between Tony's presentation and my speaking over varies so I suggest you keep your volume semi-low until you've calibrated to the right sound level for you.

Feel free to comment and post any thoughts below. Notice something that I left out .. share it!

Video 1: Tony beginning to build a propulsion system and reframe common resistance beliefs

Video 2: Anchoring an extraordinary life, chaining ideas and eliciting a self-convincer

Video 3: Amplifying certainty state, teaching self-anchoring and finally triggering "go for it"

Practical Application:

So after watching the above videos, what have you learnt? What did you notice that Tony does very well that perhaps you can use when doing your own presenting? Did you notice how when Tony anchored the audience he didn't look at his hand and give it attention .. his anchoring was outside conscious awareness and over the videos he amplified and chained more ideas to that left hand gesture (the anchor). How can you use that technique deliberately in your own talks?

Or perhaps you can use the disarming way Tony skillfully reframed and outframed likely limiting beliefs that stop people for going for the things they want. Notice how he didn't try to intellectualise it to his audience. He engaged their emotions and leveraged the peak states of his audience to have them re-affirm his earlier beliefs. Powerful.

Regardless of what skill level you are at, there is most certainly many aspects you could model from this presenation to how you use NLP in your life. Remember a little practice, done regularly is worth a lot more then a lot of "someday I'll get really good" talk.

The following post was written in response to a question by Tifi (here) who wanted to know how to anchor a state of excitement in an audience. Anchoring is truly one of those magical things that can continue to amaze both the new and experienced NLPer. It is a wonderfully powerful tool for change, influence and transforming lives. Yet many of us forget that anchoring is the process of learning and is happening all the time.

When you learn to master anchoring you have an incredibly powerful tool to use in everyday life.

Powerful Anchoring is not in the Trigger

People when they first learn to anchor make the mistake that it’s all about the technique, the touch or the specific type of anchor being set. But it’s not! The touch on the knee, the unique visual gesture etc is the magic curtain pulled over the eyes of the NLPer. Indeed the keys to anchoring were pulled over my eyes for quite a while.

I used watch video after video of some of the early NLPers masters doing trainings, looking to identify where for example Richard Bandler would anchor the audience and be mystified … two hours in I still couldn’t “find it” those darn anchors! Really great NLP skilled communicators don’t make their anchoring obvious many times.

I don’t know if you’ve ever sat through a presentation with a top speaker, even after learning NLP and not noticed all the anchoring that is going on – all the time. Yet the key to anchoring has been right there in front of all our eyes for a long time - it's just been obscured.

That is why Vik and I have invited a very special trainer to do a post on anchoring later this month (sign up for the newsletter if you want to know when it comes out) and I’m sure what you read will spark your interest as it did mine when I spoke with him about the way anchoring is often mis-taught today.

So to return to the title of this article,

How does one anchor an audience NLP style?

There are three simple rules that if you follow will work consistently every time. Based on the initial question by Tifi, I’m going to assume you want to anchor excitement in your talk.

Rule 1: Focus first on eliciting the state. A strong state always proceed a good anchor.

Silly as this may sound, in order to anchor excitement you first must elicit excitement. Yet presenters make this mistake all the time. If you don't have any state (meaning a strong state of excitement in this case) you shouldn't even think about setting an anchor.

Anchoring is not a mechanical behavior, it is a fluid dance between two or more people with either a overt or covert intention to be able to trigger a specific response at a later time.

So first step is to elicit a pure state of excitement from the audience (remembering that not all of the audience will be feeling it to the same intensity – but you are looking for broad indicators that overall the group is).

A lot of NLPers and presentation folk anchor way, way, way before there is any real state to anchor. You might of learned or seen this form of anchoring where the presenter walks over to one side of the stage and says to him/herself "if I move over here" this is the spot for my “excitement” anchor. Right now walk over there and this is the spot for my “yes set” anchor. Unfortunately through no fault of their own this can look naf and no intentional anchoring is happening at that time.

To avoid this trap make sure you really build up the state of excitement in your audience. Use the best of your storytelling and elicitation skills to do this.

So the take away is: State proceeds anchor.

Rule 2: Get out of your head and be in uptime

Every tried juggling two balls while holding a serious conversation? If you have you know it isn’t long before you end up dropping both balls and forgetting what you were talking about.

In order to be able to know when the moment is right to anchor you need to be outside your head or what we call “in uptime”.

If you are presenting material you don’t know that well, trying to remember to do that, stay on track with your content and elicit a state and anchor all at the same time, chances are you are going to do a poor job. Your focus will be internal also known as being in downtime. Not the place to be when you're presenting to a crowd.

As we know from cognitive psychology the conscious mind can only handle 7 + or - two things. So if you are trying to read the audience, present, work out what's coming next etc you'll find doing your group anchoring skills challenging. Anyone would.

Therefore take the pressure off yourself and practice telling the main outlines of your content many times before hand and plan in an exciting tale that you know off well so you can notice the audiences state and can then anchor without ever needing to walk around the platform.

The Take away is: No Uptime – No Anchor! Stay in uptime and watch your audience for the "right time".

Rule 3: Once you have a strong state elicited Then and Only Then Set the Anchor

As soon as you have externally observed that the state is “cooking”, then do something unique and consistent. You don't need to change your tone to anchor the state, although of course you can and there isn’t anything wrong with that (unless you kill the state!).

One of the secrets to anchoring is to realise that the tone you are using at the moment of the heightened excitement WILL be getting anchored to the state and will act as a trigger for bringing back the state. When you really realise that powerful things are possible.

What's more if you use your voice tone effectively you can amplify the state and create a “sliding tonal anchor” totally outside your audiences conscious mind.

Before I get into the details of actually setting the group anchor I wanted to mention that there are many more ways to anchor that the kinesthetic touch taught in practitioner training. As a new practitioner I remember being frustrated wondering how do you anchor in a business enviroment. I can't exactly touch the client on thigh!

The good news is you can just as easily anchor by smell, taste (use your imagination!), sight and sound. Although to ensure you have anchor redundancy built in you will want to anchor in two or more sensory systems at the same time.

I’m going to assume for now you want to anchor using the visual and auditory systems for the "trigger".

To do so, you need to do three things at the same time.

(1) Continue to elicit/build the state, (2). at the point of strongest observable intensity, do something visually unique (for example twist your hand in a snapping motion as if you were catching a handful of air at the same time as you (3) make a unique sound or phrase at the same time.

Repeat it once or twice to re-inforce depending on the intensity (by the way this doens't need to be stratight away, you can tell another story that elicts the same state and repeat the visual and audtory sound) to condition the new pattern for the brain.

Once you’ve done the three steps above, you should now have a very good anchor for excitement.

Sidebar: Remember the stronger the state and the more unique the trigger the better the anchor. When you are presenting to an audience you need to amplify both the visual and auditory aspects more so than when working one on one where the person can easily see and hear you.

Now before you congratulate yourself (which you should when you do this) you need to test that you have indeed set the anchor. How? Simply fire off the anchor at a later stage when the audience is in a different state and see if you bring back the excitement response.

What do you do if it doesn’t? …. Begin to look uncomfortable .. quickly look for a scapegoat and quickly exit from the crowd!

Seriously, anchoring works you've done it a thousand times already, even if like all of us you weren't aware at times when you did it. If the anchor didn't work simply re-trace the three steps above, identify what was missing and re-do-it. Do it even better this time!

Practical Exercise:

Anchoring is fun and something one can always learn to improve every time. You don't need an audience to practice the skills above. Try it out the next time you are in a social situation, at dinner, at a party .. or work environment.

Identify the state you want to elicit, practice putting yourself into that state at a moments notice, then plan two or three stories you can use that typically elicit this state and go out and have fun practicing. Remember what you practice you get good at!

[This post is part 2 of 2 of 10 Common Traps to Overcome as NLP Practitioners. You can find post 1 here.]

In this post I detail five more common traps NLPers and NLP change agents commonly make that limit their ability to do even greater change work.

Trap 6: Lacking Belief in their ability to create the change

One of the more common experiences I’ve seen when talking to both new and not so new NLPers is a lack of belief by the person in their own ability to create change. Depending on where you learn NLP, it can seem like a complicated and somewhat daunting field to learn.

For starters there are so many new terms, concepts, techniques and not necessarily obvious overlapping areas. How does the Meta Model connect with the Milton model? When should I use this technique or that?

Even figuring out which training school is right for you can be confusing. And when the moment of fresh faced training room euphoria wears off and you are faced with a real person who wants a change it can be a fearful response. Your heart begins to race, a flush of hotness rushes through your body, breath shortens and hesitation spins all round your mind. You can be left gasping for breath.

OK, STOP.

If you found the above description evoked a negative change in your state, take a big breath in now .. exhale as you r-e-l-a-x.

During my study of Richard Bandler and other expert change agents over the years, the one consistent thing that is present is their belief that they can help their clients make a change. They have that deep believe imprinted in every fibre of their being.

And you know what is relieving and also surprising … many times these top change experts when working with a new type of change request also had no clue what to do their first time! And there change work doesn’t work perfectly every time.

When the “early days” NLPers were first trying stuff out and seeing what worked many times they had no clue what to do. It was a time of pure exploration … as it can be for everyone when you working with a client doing change work you have never been taught a specific NLP technique for.

Remedy:

If you experience hesitation or confidence in your ability to create change for a client then take the time this January to alter your own beliefs. Get outside your own head and examine how your view the situation (using pen and paper or a dictaphone will help). Once you have unpacked the strategy you use and the pre-suppositions implied by your beliefs and thoughts you have a whole raft of NLP tools to quickly and permanently alter your beliefs and design a new way of being for your life.

Trap 7: Not defining the problem in solvable terms

A client comes to you deeply panicked and says “I want you to make my wife stop being so angry”. Many new change agents will automatically start working with the client without ever defining the problem in solvable terms.

If the person wife is always angry then you should be working with his wife (assuming she wants assistance and assuming it actually is some kind of “problem”) as the change requested is not in the clients ream of direct control.

Sure you can teach him some strategies about influencing her state etc but a much better place to start if you wanted to help this person is define the problem in solvable terms. For example you could help him change his association of what his wife anger means. The meaning is key.

It may mean to him that

Anger = She doesn’t love me.
My wife doesn’t love me therefore she will leave me.
Hence the behaviour of panic.

Yet for all we know his wife may be justifiably angry and simply wants her husband to be more present to the family’s needs.

If you worked with the client without understanding the 1st and 2nd order outcomes the client was seeking you would be solving the wrong issue and secondly would not help the client be able to direct themselves to feel the thing they want which in this case was safety and control.

Remedy:

Always listen to the literal way the client speaks about their problem and their request. Is the problem defined in solvable terms (e.g. I want to solve world hunger, I want my mother to love me). If not reframe the issue and request to be in solvable terms. Fully understand the structure of the clients problem and their 1st and 2nd order outcomes before you do any change work.

Trap 8: No Congruency

Ever had a client who a change didn’t stick for? Before you take on a client to do any work, make sure the client is really congruent about wanting to make the change and is ready to have the change work. Many times clients may say they are ready for the change but are not. The believe they will be giving up too much and so are no congruent with the change. Make sure these issues are addressed up front.

Remedy:

Make sure you client is congruent about wanting the change. Pay attention to the non verbals to see if they match up. Have them explain to you why you should help them make the change. Look for any side-benefits they get by having the particular behaviour or likely resistance forces in the life (e.g family, colleagues, or friends) who may undermine or undo you change work. Where necessary help the client develop the congruency they need and if they aren’t congruent or don’t want the change really, then don’t work with them.

Trap 9: Not following instructions

Much of the overt change technique work we do with NLP requires the client to follow the instructions we give them. In the early days when I was learning NLP I was dealing with a client who had a phobia of flying so I used the phobia technique with her. To my concern the technique didn’t seem to work. 10 minutes on she still was terrified of the thought of flying and would have board a flight in 12 hours time.
I changed my approach and ran a different change intervention which worked perfectly.

Reflecting on the event afterwards I realised an important distinction that would stay with me for all my change work ever since … the client wasn’t following my instructions, I wasn’t paying close enough attention to her to notice tell tell things that could of alerted me and I had let her state effect mine. Her emotional response was leading me. It was a lesson that is something that I always check for now when I work with a client and am much slower to jump techniques until I know I have mis-calibrated to the persons structure first.

Remedy:

Pay close attention to your clients. If you are giving conscious instructions to your client about doing some change work (such as changing sub-modalities) make sure the client is following your instructions to the letter. If you are giving unconscious change work, make sure you have calibrated well to the unconscious signals of the persons body and either have setup IMR responses (e.g. finger signals) or have staged tests built in at each stage of your work.

Trap 10: No Testing

Testing is key to NLP. It’s not enough to hope that your intervention(s) has worked. You must test. Test, Test, Test again. And I am not just talking about future pacing.

Future pacing is important and useful for installing future memories but at each stage of the change process test your work to ensure each part is working as expected so by the time you are done you know the client has the change. Then test to confirm. Put the client in the situation or context that bothered them and look to see a different behavioural response.

Perhaps where they got angry now they laugh or where they were anxious now they feel totally at ease. It is essential and beneficial that you test your work. It will give you greater confidence in your ability to do great change work and also give you an opportunity to learn something new if it didn’t quite work completely yet. Perhaps there was some small piece you missed off. If so re-do your work to make sure you have addressed it all.

Remedy:

Test, Test, Test your work. Do so at each stage of the change process and again and again at the end. Make sure you’re intervention worked.

Closing Comments:

In these two posts I’ve covered ten of the most common traps to overcome as a NLP change agent. If you follow and implement the suggested remedies outlined above you will notice great increase in your confidence, skill and fun in doing NLP change work. Feel free to post a comment if you'd like to share any useful change creating principles you have learned while using your NLP.

Today is the first day of 2008 and a friend sent me the video clip below which I thought would be perfect for today.  For those of you who have  trained with Richard Bandler will know he installs some fantastic attitudes.

One that comes up repeatedly involves him telling a story that ends with something along the lines of 'well you should have told me it cant be done before - I've already done it.'

The essence being that anything is possible and you should not let other peoples limitations, or your own limitations hold you back.

So as you go into 2008 and set your goals for the year to come  - watch the video below for an example of how much someone can do with an anything is possible attitude.  Without conventional wisdom and 'education' holding you back.  Telling you what is and isn't possible.

William had to drop out of school due to money problems with his family and went on at the age of 14 to build them a windmill from a book…. Using his creativity and mind he built this windmill with equipment like a bicycle frame. 

I hope this video does two things for you  - (1) give you some perspective or a change of perspective on your lives and 'problems' and (2) inspires you and sets you up for a new year where anything is possible.

Whats your windmill. Do you have a big goal in mind. Can you find some instructions from a book, use a little creativity and just try…… you never know it just might work!