"Oh, I don't have the time to practice!"

This is one of the most common complaints I hear from students in reference to NLP. You may have even it said it yourself. Perhaps even many times.

But is this really true?

Try this... if you want to get better at NLP and you find yourself saying often that you don't have the time, stop, think again.

The opportunity to practice and develop your skills with NLP can occur anywhere. Perhaps the mistake you are making is thinking that NLP is a set of techniques, a something you do 'on' someone else, rather than presupposing that it is more akin to an operating system, that is always running, and operating to help you experience and feel more of what you want, more often (and help others where you can.)

Sure, if you live on the top of a mountain, isolated with no other human beings around, there are some aspects of NLP that might be a little difficult to get feedback on but for everyone else, you can't help but have the time to practice.

Here's why...

From morning to night, there is one person who is always with you... yourself. So you have 24x7 opportunity to use the technology of the processes of NLP to better your own life.

From managing and lifting your baseline state, using the Meta Model to improve your own thinking processes and challenging 'unhelpful' inner dialogue, to reviving precious memories, to being fully present in any given moment. The opportunities to use NLP to help yourself are pretty much unending.

Chances are your life is giving you plenty of great opportunities every day to use NLP to better yourself, whether you are a stay at home mum/dad or a CEO of your own corporation.

If you always find yourself needing an "NLP" book to know what to do... throw it out. At some point, you have to move from "'learning' mode to 'doing' mode. As the old phrase goes 'the learning is in the doing'.

"So if you want to make significant inroads (for free) on your skill with NLP, take 5 minutes today and every day to intentionally practice your skills."

Start trusting your own instinct that you can make good decisions. NLP, or indeed any personal development technology, should not be a crutch. NLP is really more about creating greater freedom and choice about how you want to respond in any given situation. If you need further training to get the foundational skills onboard - do it. And if money is a problem, treat that as a resource issue and become inventive: expect that it is a temporary issue. Stay fixated on achieving your goal and you will almost certainly succeed.

And of course, there is ample opportunity to use whatever you do know about NLP... when you watch TV, listen to the radio show, use the Internet, engage personally with other human beings etc. The opportunities are endless.

Investing your time to become really good and practice NLP really is a worthwhile experience.

"Yes, but I want the easy technique, the unconscious installation of everything NLP."

Sure, I'd love the "Matrix" installation too for lots of things but, as of 2020, a process to do that doesn't exist. There are some things you can do to help speed up the process but whether you learn from a master or pattern from someone who has the exceptional skill... these things only “shorten the learning curve”, they do not eliminate it. Ultimately true skill comes from practice, lots of practice. Dancers, sports athletes and high performers of all types know this and they invest in that practice.

So if you want to make significant inroads (for free) on your skill with NLP, take 5 minutes today and every day to intentionally practice your skills.

Perhaps you can set a memory hook, like every time you are at the water cooler or having dinner or in a meeting etc... and start practising the fundamental skills... working to a T.O.T.E, state elicitation, state management, anchoring, eliciting the present state, desired state, evoking resources etc. Immerse yourself in the fundamentals of the technology. Practice NLP daily and you can't help but become significantly better in time.

Review your performance, identifying:

• what went well?
• what didn't?
• what will you do differently next time?

This is a simple process of action, reflection, improvement, new action - will help you become a much better NLP'er in 2022.

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