Recently, on social media, an NLP Practitioner asked a question about a client who reported having a phobia, and with whom he used the NLP Fast Phobia Cure, which may have partly worked, but it came back a few days later? He was asking for ideas on how to handle that.

This was my response. Hopefully it illustrates why great coaching results, when working with a deeply skilled coach, really aren't accidental.

How I think and go about coaching:

Based on your initial question and the amended result makes clear that initially, you did not fully, completely, or accurately map the structure of the primary presenting problem.

Without us having been there, it seems/sounds that the first issues is that you accepted the client's description of a phobia at face value. Don't do that.  I don't ever accept a client's description of their presenting problem. I map its structure. And then I verify it. Poke holes in it. Challenge my own assumptions. And dance with that map, using clean language to ensure I've mapped it accurately.

Also...

Clients lie through their teeth. Constantly. Without knowing it.

Because, by virtue of the fact that they've come to you for changework or coaching, their conscious minds are likely not in congruence with their unconscious minds. 

They often decide, before showing up, what they think will solve the problem. But if they could have solved the problem, they would have, on their own. Their prognosis for what would work best is usually bullshit.

"Deeply Respect the Individual. Don't Respect their Bullshit."

That's my primary modus operandi as both a coach, as well as a GeniusMapper and GeniusMapping & NLP trainer. If you operate cleanly with that in mind, you won't take anything you hear at face value, but you will structure your language with a deep underlying respect for their potential, their gifts, and their desired result(s), without any personal judgement about their dysfunctional patterns.

I'd even say this is one of my biggest presuppositions when doing any NLP work.

Use the meta-model or whatever other tools you have to find out the hidden bigger wishes. The desired outcomes behind the desired outcomes. Don't ever accept their stated desired outcomes as the ones they really, really want. Verify. Dig deeper.

Because the specific reason they came to you (e.g., "please use the NLP fast phobia cure on me") is usually an example of a single "Means to an End."

The "means to an end" that they SAY they want, is often not the best way...

Their means to and end is often not the best way to get the bigger desired result. It's just what the client thinks will be best, but remember -- they're already and currently stuck. So why would I believe they know what's best?!?

Having said all that, lets say the problem DID present like a true phobia (and I don't do phobia cures, just to be clear -- any changework I do is coaching nowadays, not curing or treating any regulated issues). I design all my interventions these days, if any, on the fly. In response to what's actually presenting. I don't use recipes anymore.

So, again, lets say the client learned their phobic responses in a single traumatic event. One time trial learning. And lets say we verified all that with the meta-model and other case study memory-scanning inquiries. In such a case, I might actually use the NLP FPC as part of a larger process.

But first, before doing any intervention, I'd...

Check on the ecology of the change.

What effects would it have on their day to day life, if they got what they wanted. What effects do they currently ENJOY from the phobia, that might go away (e.g., family sympathy, time off work, bla bla bla). Can they handle all the positive AND negative effects of no longer having the dysfunction? Or not? Have they thought it all through?

Yes, "ecology" in NLP can be laughed at, or made fun of.  But it's still important.  You and the client would do well to fully explore the implications of actually getting them what they say they want.

Lets say the client likes the full ecology of the change. Then I'd want to find out about their current daily life -- and explore what anchors there are in their daily life, that re-trigger the old response. And before I'd be willing to do any change-work, I'd get them to COMMIT to removing or changing the unhelpful anchors -- with a SPECIFIC time or date when that's going to be done. And get them to agree that if they didn't make those changes, they were admitting they didn't actually want to change. Make them responsible for it. Make them take ownership. Then... and only then... is whatever magic you'd achieve or help them achieve... likely to take hold in a way that enables the change to stick, permanently.

Design an Intervention that Works, and Do It.

Then, once you design an intervention that works -- which of course is way beyond the scope of this [social media /blog] response -- do it.

And then, you have to verify the result, of course. Does the client get a fundamentally different result, thinking about the trigger, after the intervention? Phobias are pretty easy because generally there's only one trigger. General anxiety or control issues are way more complicated (not more difficult -- just more complicated) because of how many more anchors or triggers there are for the unwanted behaviors/emotions. You have to be thorough and get most of them (sometimes all, but not always; sometimes its enough to get the majority of them and the others fall over like dominoes).

Then if we got an elated emotional response from a client after they felt the phobia or anxieties had gone away, I'd anchor all that.

Anchor the Positive Results (or Better Response to a Trigger).

Then I'd pass the anchor on to them and teach them how to use it (and how not to use it so it doesn't get polluted and lost, 5 minutes after they walk out the door).

I'd also future-pace them getting the new positive response in at least 3 circumstances in the future. And maybe I'd do meta-future-pacing to ensure they themselves continued to future-pace good results into a further future. I'd future pace them facing unwanted old triggers and circumstances and firing their installed anchor for the desired new emotional response(s).

And More...

And there's more I might do, depending on what they presented with...

• Like inducing and anchoring tenacious indignance instead of helplessness, which can help make a client unwilling to go back to old results.
• Like using humor (or mild-confusion, or surprise) as thresholds for shifting old emotional responses into new emotional options, which is virtually a requirement for enabling new behaviors.
• Like getting rid of toxic beliefs and replacing with empowering ones.
• Like checking values hierarchies and seeing how many still support the old behavior.
• Like checking metaprograms and determining which ones will help bring back the old behavior.
• Like checking whether they've been guilting themselves with modal operators of NEED/MUST/HAVE-TO instead of creating more choices with CAN/COULD.
• Like checking how stuck they are and how nominalized their language is, and reactivating those nominalizations and stuck/frozen representations with active language.
• Annnnnd.... the list goes on. Not necessarily in that order.

There's just no substitute for breadth of experience and deeply integrated skills.

Every practitioner has to get those skills and experience somehow, but clients ought to somehow be able to tell the difference between a "Newbie," and an experienced, knowledgeable, skilled, and unconsciously competent coach, too, right?

Knowledge Engineering (& Belief Craft) have evolved, into GeniusMapping™

For all those interested in NLP Modelling -- the capture of excellence -- we've been teaching our K.E. Modeling Skills for 24 years to the NLP community. Recently, we up-levelled our process into what is now known as GeniusMapping™. Learn more at http://www.geniusmapping.com.

In addition to our 6-day Certification Course, you can now attend LIVE 3-hour GeniusMapping™ modeling taster sessions via Zoom.

Here's a 12-minute preview of one of these modeling sessions. In this clip, our trainer - GeniusMapper™ Jonathan Altfeld, models his exemplar Carlos Casados, for his gifted ability to create and nurture win-win relationships.

While it's worth watching in full, pay very close attention starting at timecode 4:18, for the next several minutes. This illustrates why GeniusMapping™ is such a superior method for modeling excellence: the ability to capture unconscious knowledge!

As of September 2020, we're in the process of moving from Tampa, Florida, to the Youngstown Ohio area.

Currently, during the Coronavirus era, we're mostly focusing on Zoom-based Coaching, and aligning resources to run online courses.  

Please do let us know what courses you'd like us to schedule now that we're offering online courses!  You can do so through our contact form here, or by calling us at 813-991-8888.

How "Civil Engineering" totally reframes the word "Stress," redefines the phrase "Stress Management," and leads us to embrace Stress!

Long before I became an AI consultant in 1991, and later an NLP Trainer in 1997, I spent a couple of years in an Ivy League Professional Architecture School.  While there, I had to take classes in Civil Engineering.  In those classes, I learned how to design buildings from the ground up, and also how to choose the sizes and types of building elements based on their ability to manage the loads placed upon it. 

It was actually my first exposure to making *Calculus* actually useful in real-world contexts.  No kidding!  If you did your calculus well, your buildings would stand up to the rigors placed upon them.  If you didn't, they'd fail, or collapse, or distort.  That could potentially endanger lives.

Now, in high school, my peers and I would often casually use the words "stressed out" when it came time for exams or term papers.  Initially I was conditioned, like many of you, to associate having too much on my plate, with being "stressed out."  We'd hear stories of doctors giving older people advice, "avoid stress."  I grew up in New York City, full of power players, brokers, lawyers and doctors, and many other professionals who often over-worked 50-70 hours a week.  The word "stress" was ubiquitous -- you'd hear it daily.  It became, inevitably, a bad word.

Yet, once I started taking civil engineering courses, they forever redirected my perspective about these words, and today I'd like to share this empowering frame with you!

I began to think about the word "Stress," less as a 'bad' word, and more as something worth embracing.

In doing Civil Engineering and measuring the anticipated loads on any given structural member, such that you can choose the right size and material for that member's purpose, we'd create a Stress-Strain diagram.

What's a "Stress-Strain Diagram?"

For starters, it illustrates precisely where, how, and when, a given structural member will bend without any degradation, distort under load without failing yet never return to its original shape, and potentially, catastrophically fail.

Without explaining everything about the diagram in detail, here's what's most important to OUR discussion today:

Every structural element has an ELASTIC phase.  While ELASTIC, material can take an increasing load without degradation or distortion or breakage.  Once the loads are removed, the structural element returns to its original and perfect shape.

Every structural element also has a PLASTIC phase.  While PLASTIC, material takes on a load that is too heavy, and the material begins to distort under the load, permanently.  And the longer the heavy load is applied, and/or the heavier the load, the worse off the distortion becomes.  This is all prior to breakage.  Once the load is removed, the structural element relaxes a little, but never returns all the way to its original shape.  It's been damaged.

Finally, every structural element has a FRACTURE POINT, whereby its material has taken too high of a load, possibly for too long a time, and then, distortions during a PLASTIC phase became too great to sustain.  The material snaps, breaks, or otherwise collapses.

The ELASTIC phase of materials can be thought of as what happens when we're Stressed.  Stressed is good, providing there is decompression time afterwards.

The PLASTIC phase of materials can be thought of as what happens when we're Strained.  Strained is bad.

Here's an example Stress-Strain diagram, slightly simplified to get the main points across.  Scan briefly to see the ELASTIC phase {stress}, PLASTIC phase {strain}, and FRACTURE POINT illustrated). The material can beautifully take all the load applied in the ELASTIC phase under stress, then it strains to take the additional load applied in the PLASTIC phase, then, at higher loads, it eventually reaches a FRACTURE point.

The implications of applying this to human psychology and workload management are wonderful, because amazingly, the metaphor works beautifully for people.

Let's walk through how the diagram works.  Imagine you're a point at 0,0.  And you're going to walk the curved line shown in the graph.

As you take on more projects, busywork, errands, commitments, assignments, and more, and find your time in greater demand or it becomes harder to balance things, stress is increasing.  You start walking "up" the black line in the diagram."

Up to a point, while you're still in your ELASTIC phase, you can take all the load you're carrying.  And when you set your commitments down for a while, when you finish projects, you walk back down the line.  And you feel generally good!  You're able to relax.  You can decompress.  You make time for fun and exercise and treat yourself right.

However, if you keep taking on more tasks and a higher load of work or commitments, you tip over into a PLASTIC phase, and you become... out of balance.  Stress doesn't actually increase, but the strain you experience, does!  If you stay on this path, it can be really bad for you... and the people who depend on you.  Also, if you're in PLASTIC, when you do 'metaphorically' set your load down for a bit, you don't feel relaxed at all.  You've bent.. under all the strain.  You're not back at a healthy stasis point.  You're temporarily... compromised.  Not broken!  Just compromised.

Now, unlike building materials, we can and do HEAL, so that's where the metaphor breaks down.  But it does take effort and planning to get back to a healthy point.

When we think about Stress, Strain and Stress Management with a Civil Engineering reframe in mind, it changes everything.

In the literature I've read on Stress, many people oversimplify things, and try to treat stress and strain identically.  They don't sufficiently distinguish between the two.  Suggestions focus on relaxation techniques.  Meditation.  Good sleep, nutrition and exercise. 

While these are good suggestions in some cases, they are incomplete and not always good advice.  Here's why:

Your ELASTIC phase:

I believe the human body and mind is designed to manage stress not only well, but beautifully well.  We evolved to improve under loads we choose to take on (e.g., short term or long range goals, or work assignments!).  When we add stress temporarily, we rise to the occasion.  We elevate ourselves.  We stretch, we strengthen, and we step up.  We invest ourselves in learning in order to handle the new effort.  The load should not be taken on 24/7, but instead, we expose ourselves to the higher load, take it on, then set it aside while we rest and recuperate, and in following that methodology, we improve ourselves.

Weight-Lifting is an incredible example of "stress management."  We stress our muscles in a systematic way, we rest the muscle groups exercised for a time, and our muscles grow and strengthen and become.. better.

During these periods of added stress and then removed stress, we are managing stress beautifully already, and stress -- in this context -- is of absolute higher value to us.  We use it to grow and develop and elevate ourselves.

Consider this... your personal equivalent of your ELASTIC phase.  As long as you can stay in your ELASTIC phase, keep welcoming stress.  Its enormously useful for you, your community, and the larger world around us.

Your PLASTIC phase:

If you take on too much load, for too long, or without taking off the load for periods of time to rest and recuperate, you enter your PLASTIC phase.

A PLASTIC phase implies that if you stay there without returning to your ELASTIC phase, it will begin taking an unwanted toll on you.  It could affect your sleep habits, your eating habits, your ability to relax, your cortisol levels, your mood, your relationships, and eventually, much worse.

Ideally, you'd never enter a PLASTIC phase.  But reality has a way of occasionally overloading us.  So if you do ever find yourself there, you don't want to stay in the PLASTIC phase very long.  Because the sooner you get back into an ELASTIC phase, the better.  The restoration of your healthier habits awaits you!

Your FRACTURE POINT:

Human beings have lots of other words and names for this, some mild, some extreme:  "Heart Attack."  "Stroke."  "Nervous Breakdown."  "Hypertension."  "Divorce."  "Sabbatical."  "Vacation."

To be quite clear, I'm no doctor, so I'm speaking of these phrases in layman's terms.  None of us want the more deadly events in that list.  The rest is simply undesirable.  (Sabbatical and Vacation were shared as a joke, of course... but are clearly what happens in the mildest examples of reaching a FRACTURE point -- just as they sometimes occur as perfectly healthy steps for many of us).

So of course, I don't wish any of the above unwanted results on anyone.  We must avoid or prevent FRACTURE points.

Why do the thresholds between these matter so much?

We don't want any FRACTURE Points.  And while we'd love to stay in the ELASTIC phase, we may have to occasionally get back out of a PLASTIC phase.  The big Million-Dollar lesson?

There is no one-size fits all strategy for anyone, all the time.

We need different strategies for ELASTIC and PLASTIC phases!  

First, develop finer levels of awareness for what it feels like to be in your ELASTIC and PLASTIC phases.  Begin to develop a greater awareness of what it feels like to tip over, from ELASTIC, to PLASTIC.  Get to know that threshold moment.  Because in the future, from here on out, you'll want to switch strategies and lifestyle patterns from your ELASTIC phase, into your PLASTIC phase.

What your ELASTIC phase feels like, and how to manage yourself there:

You're in the zone, baby!  Life may not be perfect, but things are on track.  You can manage most if not all of what you're juggling.  You've got different responsibilities and there are things on your plate, but you can handle them.

You sleep pretty well most of the time, and generally have your diet in order. 

You have your work responsibilities, and you also some time to balance between enjoying hobbies, connecting with friends, dating, and working on home projects.  Maybe time for travel here and there.

You may have some stresses at times, but you're really good at putting them down or aside at will.  This is healthy, normal, and sustainable.

So, what best practices should you consider for the ELASTIC phase?

Elastic Phase Strategy #1: Balance your responsibilities and commitments with relaxing down time.  Set aside the load.  We all need relaxation, and relaxation time is a necessary component of the stress-strain diagram -- at some point we have to relax the load we carry.  Commit to this and follow-through.  If you add tasks to the schedule, add down time to the schedule at the same time.  Yes, seriously.  Schedule both effort and down-time.

Elastic Phase Strategy #2: When new opportunities come your way that excite you... evaluate any potential overload, and if you can't see problems, SAY "YES."

Elastic Phase Strategy #3: Be on the lookout for approaching your ELASTIC-PLASTIC threshold.  Dangerous cliffs ahead!

Elastic Phase Strategy #4:  Reward yourself for staying in ELASTIC -- regularly!  Appreciate yourself and reward yourself for sustaining, well, sustainability!

What your PLASTIC phase feels like, and how to manage yourself there:

You're overtaxed!  Often tired, listless.  Working too many hours.  Burning the midnight oil.  Too many deadlines.  No time for this, no time for that.  Strained.  Remember that.  Strained, which is way beyond stressed.  Stressed is good, strained is NOT.

The current state is unsustainable long term.

You may be grumpy or irritable a lot of the time.  Your relationships may degrade or suffer.  You're hard to be around, which, paradoxically, makes it more difficult for helpful people in your life to help you.

You can be in this state temporarily, if you need to -- we humans are capable of temporary enormous bursts of productivity and effort even to our detriment -- but we must remain aware of being there, and we must enact a clear plan to pull ourselves back out of a PLASTIC phase, and back into the ELASTIC phase.

If you're a business owner and your employees are in a PLASTIC phase, they're in danger of burning out and getting ill, or injured, or worse.

One of my clients, a business owner with hundreds of employees, told me his experience that your employees can be there (in a PLASTIC, overtaxed state) for about three weeks, maximum.  But you don't want them there very long, if you can help it.  Employees in an ELASTIC phase make better decisions, are better team members, and support each other more effectively.  Employees in a PLASTIC phase more costly mistakes, endanger or undermine each other, and become much more self-oriented than they are, otherwise.

So, what to do?

Plastic Phase Strategy #1: Reality Check.  Recognize the unsustainable reality of the current state.  Did you enter this phase voluntarily?  If so, set a deadline for returning to Elastic, in less than three weeks ideally, and create a plan to make it happen.  If you got to this phase accidentally without planning it, then, create a plan to return to Elastic either immediately or ASAP.  Choose to make sensible lifestyle changes, and get started immediately.  You cannot continue with the status quo.  You may have gotten here with good intentions, but if you're honest with yourself, it probably happened with good intentions AND poor execution.  Do something different starting now.

Plastic Phase Strategy #2: If you're in PLASTIC, and new opportunities come your way that excite you... your new response -- your only response, should be to SAY "NO."  You really need to get good at saying no.  And there is no better time to say no to new hassles, responsibilities, requests, demands, etc -- than when you're in a PLASTIC phase.  My anecdotal observation:  Failure to say NO to new incoming issues when in a PLASTIC stage is probably more responsible for nervous breakdowns than any other cause.  It makes sense, right?  So get good -- really good -- at learning to say "NO!"

Plastic Phase Strategy #3: One by one, finish the things on your plate (or desk), and get them off your agenda.  Finishing things gives you more fuel and energy.  Leaving things incomplete drains energy.  Make sure that as you finish things, do NOT use this as a reason to justify saying YES to new things, until you're back in your ELASTIC phase.  Shrink your task-list, systematically.  And enjoy every "completion" thoroughly.  Take a deep breath, relax for a bit, then re-engage to reduce the task-list further.  No one can reduce it but you, so... get it all done, all while saying "NO" to new things!

Plastic Phase Strategy #4-A: While you're in a PLASTIC phase, withhold rewards to yourself.  Do NOT reward complacency and unsustainability.  This makes remaining here less pleasant.  Which it should be.

Plastic Phase Strategy #4-B: Once you do, in fact, return successfully to your ELASTIC phase... honor the transition, with some kind of break.  A vacation, a trip, a massage, a long weekend where you do nothing at all but decompress.  This is important to honor and use as a reward strategy.  Create experiences where you measurably reward yourself for returning to ELASTIC (just as you reward yourself for staying in ELASTIC in a sustainable way!)

I invite you to ask yourself and honestly answer the hard question(s):

1. Are you in a PLASTIC phase?  
2. If so, how long have you been there?  Just briefly?  Or, too long?

I recommend not spending much time focusing on how or why you're still there.  We could refer to the famous Boiling Frog metaphor (a frog thrown into a boiling pot of water will instantly jump out, but a frog put into a pot of water that's room temperature, and then heated up slowly, will eventually cook, not noticing the change.  Instead, just forgive yourself, make a clear decision that the Status Quo must change.  Get yourself into a sustainable set of habits for managing your loads.

So... you've got the questions... only you can answer them... and now you've also got success strategies to manage stress from here on out.  Let me know how it helps you! 

(And of course, if you need any additional assistance, I'm here for coaching sessions!)

Author: Jonathan Altfeld

Photo (of "Stress" written) by Pedro Figueras from Pexels

Many NLP Practitioners are more sloppy with their thinking patterns, than they'd like to admit, or... would even notice.

This statement, right up front, is likely blasphemous.

And yet, it's probably true -- in spite of our best intentions. Because the model of NLP does not spend much time covering two fundamentally different styles of thinking, of cognitive processing. This distinction isn't quite built into the model of NLP all that well. Shadows of this distinction show up in a variety of places, but its not directly clarified with NLP.

Certainly, however, we would all agree that cleaning up our thinking patterns is valuable, as that can affect where we focus our attention, time management, relationships, emotional state management, communication skills, and the list goes on. Managing our own brains is highly important! And in doing NLP work with people, we and they are more likely to be effective, if we gain some increased measure of self awareness, first, and then, later, more self-control, about how we think about things.

We as human beings all use both inductive, and deductive, reasoning.

We're all capable of it, to some degree. And most people switch back and forth, without ever knowing about this oscillation.

Oscillating back and forth without awareness, between inductive and deductive logic, is just sloppy. Especially for NLP Practitioners.

So what are these two styles of thinking or of logic, and why are they important?

Inductive Reasoning aims to induce, or prove, assumptions.

Inductive reasoning assumes something is true or false, and works backwards from that assumption to see if that can be proven or disproven.

Inductive reasoning is not yet concerned with the now. Inductive thinking works backwards, and tries to work its way back, from the end goal, to the current state.

This is why inductive reasoning is also known as backwards thinking. Not backwards as in invalid or senseless, but backwards, literally, working back from an endpoint to the current point.

Sometimes you can't find a way to get back to now, and essentially, that disproves the assumption or goal state.

Sometimes you can find a way to get back from the endpoint to the now, and then, you've got yourself a plan or a process that should be reliable.

The downside of Inductive reasoning is that it involves a lot of baseless guesswork. Which can be valuable in some situations, but not all.

Deductive Reasoning is aimless, only using what we know, right now, as a guide.

Deductive Reasoning is a process made famous by fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes. Holmes would investigate something, and seemingly magically arrive at solving a crime. But Holmes didn't make guesses, and as a result, he was never wrong. Holmes used deductive logic, exclusively, and began with the initial clues, following them wherever they led. He didn't operate from assumptions, and wouldn't chase down hunches. He followed currently known clues, wherever they led, and over time, a preponderance of clues and evidence would lead to the correct conclusion.

As a result of the absence of guesswork in deductive reasoning, its also known as forward thinking, or forward logic or reasoning. Not forwards as in progressive, productive, etc -- not really. More like forwards as in starting from the current state, and taking one step in a useful direction as chosen by facts we currently know.

The downside of Deductive reasoning is that it potentially involves a lot of wasted time and effort, chasing down many currently known clues that may not be relevant. There is no intuition involved in deductive reasoning. None. So any NLP Practitioner quoting "intuition" as the source of their intervention work... definitely isn't using enough deductive reasoning... which may mean they didn't spend enough time gathering information before relying on that magical intuition.

Become Hyper-Aware of When You Use Each.

The biggest concern with these styles of thinking... for NLP Practitioners... isn't whether you use both, or not. Every human being can and will. It's that you may not be precisely aware when you switch back and forth between these two modes. And if you aren't, then I guarantee you're doing sloppy work, because your NLP interventions are fighting moving targets. I'll explain further:

When you ask clean questions of another person, without judgement, tone, or leading language, you're learning about other people's thoughts, deductively. And you really should be in a deductive mode, most of the time, when building a map inside your mind of what is going on in the other person's mind.

NLP's presupposition "The Map is Not the Territory" refers to how our inner maps differ from actual reality. For NLP'ers, we work effectively with others by building and operating through the maps we build of how other people think and feel. That process of Map-Building ought to be done very cleanly, as we build a map of how another person thinks. If we ask clean questions, we get clean answers, and the map we build in our mind of the other person's mindset, gets increasingly accurate.

But if ever we disbelieve a client's thinking and tease them to stretch their beliefs, mid-stream, before we've built a more accurate map, then their map has the potential to change before we and they were ready for an optimal change. And that means, their maps start to change, while we're still building maps. We end up mapping a moving target, which makes it impossible to build a more acccurate map, because its continually becoming less accurate as we ask unclean inductive questions.

And if we ever act on a hunch, thinking we know best, then, we've gone inductive without thinking about it, and now we're selectively trying to prove our hunch was right. Well, we may be close, but close isn't the same as "dead accurate." So hunches and intuition are often bad labels for not necessarily knowing when to go from deductive to inductive, or back and forth.

So now that we know that haphazard use of both leads to sloppy work, how and where is using both valuable?

It turns out that judicious intentional use of both styles of thinking... is essential in doing any kind of diagnostic work. Here's why:

A doctor that diagnoses you only deductively, will order 1000's of tests. Because they cannot move forward with any treatment until they have all possible clues about what's going wrong. Your finger is hurt? A deductive Doctor would reply, "Gosh, that could be at least 2700 different things. Lets find out which!"

A doctor that diagnoses you only inductively, will make enormous leaps with insufficient information available, and will not stop to gather the right kind of additional information. Your finger is hurt? An inductive Doctors would reply, "We need to get you into chemo immediately, its probably cancer!"

What would a great diagnostician do?

If you go to a great diagnostician, they're going to start by building a map of how you're unwell, based on your report and your presenting condition. They'll look at those symptoms and deduce any additional information they can pull together from the facts that present.

But that's just the start. Then they organize, using the information available, the 3-5 most likely possibilities. Once they have that list, they go inductive in their minds, briefly, and treat those few possibilities as the most likely ones.

From that small list, they start ordering any tests that would help prove or disprove any of the possible causes or conditions. They run that small subset of tests, and look at the results, now back to doing so deductively. And the cycle continues until a hopefully proper diagnosis is made.

So as you can see, judicious use of going back and forth is essential to great diagnosticians, who want to get as quickly as possible to an accurate diagnosis, with minimal time, money, effort, and testing.

Haphazard or Sloppy use of both styles of thinking leads to sloppy communication and work.

So use deductive logic when modeling and map-building. Use inductive reasoning for goal setting and planning for generating desired outcomes. And most importantly, learn to detect, in your mind, when you pop back and forth. And as you do so, ask whether the current shift will be valuable in your present context. If not, switch back! Be precise, intentional, and reap the rewards!

No matter what skill you want to learn, no matter what fears or concerns or hesitation you may have, there are and will always be a wide range of approaches, to learning that skill.  It's important to keep that in mind when making learning choices.  Today's note is a personal note from me (Jonathan) to you, about trials-by-fire vs. better approaches! 

Today, I'm a trainer, consultant and coach, primarily.  I don't think of myself as primarily a speaker or presenter, though I certainly speak both in public and at corporate events.  I view myself as a behavioral change agent who uses communication and structured experiences, to enable learning, among groups sized from one to thousands.

Perhaps because of an outrageous trial by fire at the age of 14, nothing really scares me about public speaking.

Yes, with new events, new challenges or logistical questions arise, but I don't have a fear response either to approaching such events, or to stepping onto the platform, or to actually being on stage and speaking.  Or even to getting briefly stuck and having to find my way again.   It might surprise you that my comfort with all those things cannot be attributed to NLP, though I certainly would have wished for an NLP solution when I was younger, if I'd known it was available!

My first big public speaking experience, was with about 8,000 people.  I didn't have to be seen by the audience, I had about 20 seconds prior knowledge that I would be speaking, while massively amplified (& voice-delayed).  I didn't even have to choose what to say.  Before that, my experience had been limited to giving speeches in school classes, performing in plays, and reading my heavily practiced Torah portion at my Bar Mitzvah at 13.  These were useful experiences, but not grand or large-scale, until...

I was working a Summer job at a concert series.

I worked in New York City at an annual concert series, known at different times as either the "Miller Time Music Festival" or the "Dr. Pepper Music Festival."  Each Summer, I'd have to work at ~30 concerts.  Each event night, there would be one major band along with a popular opening act.  Most of these concerts were held at Pier 84, right next to the USS Intrepid museum.   At the age of 14, I managed a group of five other teenagers, and all of us sold concert programs (magazines) to the entire audience.  We were called hawkers, and would walk around the venue, and climb throughout the seating stands, each carrying stacks of programs wherever we went.

As the manager, one of the interesting benefits involved backstage access as desired or needed, because that's where the extra stock of concert magazines were stored.  Yes, as a teenager, I met lots of, and occasionally got to chat more in-depth with famous musicians and bands (ask me in person sometime).

One early evening, after the audience of concert-goers had arrived, about 45 minutes before the opening act was scheduled to take the stage, the stage manager ran past me while I was counting out a few replacement stacks of concert programs for my hawkers.  He almost knocked me over before stopping, then he looked at me strangely, and said:

"You.  You have a good voice.  Come with me."

That was all he'd said.  No further explanation at the time. Then he grabbed my t-shirt sleeve, and started pulling me.  We went around a corner, up a few stairs, around another corner, then another.  Then, finally, just as we approached the corner of the stage, I caught a glimpse of 8,000 people through the scaffolding.  Before I could feel my spleen rising up towards my throat, he pulled me into a white wooden booth with a huge audio board, and a microphone, and positioned me in front of the mic.  

I could no longer see the audience, and they couldn't see me.  But they were about to hear me.

He simply handed me a pre-printed white index card, and said, "Read this."

Then he reached in front of me, and switched the mic from Off to On, so that 8,000 people could hear me.

I had no time to panic.  No real time to evaluate my emotional response, or wind it up further.  The circumstance unraveled too quickly for me to become aware of feeling anything.  And it's not as though I wasn't actually feeling my nerves, adrenaline, fear, excitement, curiosity, and more -- all at the same time.  I was.  I definitely felt all that, in retrospect.  But he didn't give me enough time to evaluate it, or allow it to control me.

So, I went ahead, took a deep breath, and read the first sentence out loud with enthusiasm:  "Welcome to the Dr. Pepper Music Festival!" And initially, I heard nothing, real time.  As I was finishing the sentence, I thought, "something must have gone wrong."  And then, long after I expected it to, and thanks to ~5-meter-tall stacks of speakers, and many kilowatts of power behind them, I was almost knocked backwards, as I heard my booming deep voice roll out through the audience.  Then the subsequent applause and audience noise completely overwhelmed me.  And it didn't matter that none of it was meant for me personally -- it was all a form of positive feedback for a set of massively powerful lessons all learned within seconds:

1. I had a voice (that at least some) people would enjoy listening to.  Your voice has value.
2. I was not going to be able to speak at my normal rate, or words would blend together too closely and sound like mud.  So I was going to have to enunciate, and speak more slowly than I would normally, and stretch vowels out.
3. After hearing the duration of the electronic delay, I was not going to be able to wait between clauses or sentences, to hear the end of what I'd just finished saying, before continuing on.  That would be waiting too long.  To speak well with electronic delays, I was going to have to temporarily block out the external feedback of the timing of whats being said, and choose pacing and pauses based on what's said, real-time, not what my ears were hearing externally more than a full second later.

Those valuable lessons were almost instantly integrated, thanks to the intensity of the experience.  

I then read off the rest of the printed announcements on the index card, smoothly through to the finish.

The stage manager then shushed me, reached over to turn the mic off, and said to me...

"That wasn't bad.  You'll be doing this from now on..."

"...so make yourself available about an hour before showtime from here on."

So how did I accidentally get picked for that opportunity?  A backstage equipment handler who normally did the announcements had quit that day, and word hadn't gotten around sufficiently.  The stage manager found out about the handler's having quit, five minutes before the announcements needed to be read.  So in a panic, he grabbed the first guy he found, who had a reasonably nice voice.  And it worked, so I was expected to continue doing it.

So all in all, including all the years I managed the program hawkers, I probably read the announcements there at a total of ~120 concerts.  Maybe more.

Great "Trial-By-Fire", right?  Powerful Learning, right?  Well, it got better (or worse!):

A year passed.  I had gotten used to doing the pre-show announcements in the booth.  It was still very cool to look out at the audience while approaching the booth, but no longer a nervous experience to speak on a live mic, inside the control booth.  Then, one night near the end of that season, I was visible backstage when I needed to be called up, and I headed up to the booth as usual.  But the booth door was closed, and that wasn't expected.  The stage manager handed me the card for the night, pointed through the back corner of the stage at the mic at the front of the stage, and sounding 100% like an impatient manager, said:  "Do it from up there tonight.  Smile, wave after the welcome bit, then finish the rest.  And remember to turn the mic both ON first and OFF afterwards.  Go."

I thought I'd gotten used to the applause after the greeting.  But I clearly wasn't prepared for hearing the applause when I was speaking from center stage on a live mic, while watching the audience and being watched real-time.  Doing the announcements from the front of the stage, while looking at 8,000 people making more noise than my own voice was making through two enormous stacks of speakers, was truly life-changing.  No, it didn't cause me to feel any need to become a concert musician (though I am a guitarist & more, and do enjoy music).  But I knew that if I could get comfortable with this, as I'd already become fully comfortable with making the announcements through the booth microphone, then there was no point in being afraid of doing other things with a  crowd that large, and especially with an even smaller group.  Other challenges just seem smaller.

Over the four Summers when I gave those pre-show announcements, I had to do them from the stage microphone a total of just three times, because for whatever reason, the booth microphone had failed and they didn't have another handy.  During that first experience at center stage, I was feeling overwhelmed by the experience, but comfortable with the vocal delivery (because that was a skill I'd honed already).  I was still nervous during the second such opportunity, and overwhelmed by it afterwards.  And then the third time was almost easy and I felt just great afterwards.

Fortunately, you don't need Trials By Fire!

If you have a fear of speaking in front of an audience, that fear can take many forms.  Once you unpack and explore the specific mechanism behind how you 'do' your fear, then NLP can help you rewire around that, and through certain interventions or training or experiences, you can actually have fun while building in resources that help you free yourself of those old concerns, without ever having to face your old fear or panic anymore.  I know because I've helped so many before you, and I've always been successful doing so.

Sometimes fear can be interrupted through "pattern interrrupts," leaving you feeling neutral or inspired, instead of fearful.  Sometimes you can replace negative emotional responses with positive emotional responses (anchoring).  Sometimes you can change your inner voice, or your inner visualizations, that are leading to old fear responses, and get completely different results.  Sometimes you can choose completely different desired outcomes for speaking, which changes your own expectations, and completely frees you up to become extraordinary.  Everyone is different.  I encourage you to consult with someone who understands alternative approaches to learning, who is good at behavioral and emotional modeling so that the coaching they do with you will be accurate and targeted, and who knows (truly knows) how easy it is to achieve comfort with the larger-than-life.

I certainly wish I'd known NLP at the age of 14!  I would still have gotten the same result, but faster.  I believe it would have helped me to have less of a shocked response during and after the first experience, and significantly sped up the rate at which I became comfortable with each new experience, either in the booth or on the stage.

I invite you to apply this story to any circumstance in your life, where you have been thinking about stepping things up to another level beyond where you currently find yourself.  Why fear it?  And then put yourself in my shoes.  Pretend you'd been given the opportunity at some early age, to become good at, and comfortable with, something even further beyond the level you want to reach currently.  Then imagine looking ahead to the situation you're currently facing, and knowing it's going to be difficult or impossible for such situations to seem insurmountable, by comparison.

And then when you find yourself making your future leap seem, sound, or feel incredibly easy... send me an email to let me know this blog post helped you do it!

How can I help you further?

If you want to develop your spoken voice so that you'll likely start actually getting compliments, not to mention people will make a stronger effort to hear more of what you have to say, I encourage you to consider my "Finding Your Irresistible Voice CDs or MP3s.  Check them out and explore how they can add measurable value to your life.

If you'd like to become a more compelling speaker, and you either want to get over your fear of public speaking, or dramatically improve how you package and communicate your message, for greater impact, join me at one of my next 5-day "Speaking Ingeniously" courses, which I limit to 15 people maximum per occasion, to guarantee a lot of personal attention and coaching, daily.  You'll be thanking yourself years into the future for having done so -- and I make it my business to ensure it!

Many more famous people have been trained in Ericksonian (indirect) Hypnosis and NLP than you might guess.  There are certainly far more who have strong interests here than have publically admitted so.  

Yet thanks to a recent seemingly inexplicable political shift, we can add at least one name to the list who've gone public with these interests.  (I'm going to add a second at the bottom of this page, as well).  And no, I'm not referring to American business magnate Donald Trump.

But Trump was our catalyst... for a recent public Ericksonian admission by another.

Trump ran for President several times in the past (and then dropped out), and decided to run again for the 2016 race.  This time, longer than has been the case in the past, he's been enjoying measured increases in his political popularity.  His poll numbers have climbed higher and remained higher much longer than most people would have expected.  Few people expected his popularity to remain high past the 2015 Summer.

Trump's unexpected success thus far in his 2016 Presidential campaign seems to have been the initial catalyst for a self-admission from Scott Adams, the author of the hugely successful comic strip, named “Dilbert.”  Adams fashioned Dilbert as a generic office worker, with no last name, with no obvious specific job, working for a company with no name, who keeps finding himself in a wide array amusing and ironic contexts.  Anyone who has had a corporate job will inevitably often empathize with Dilbert's circumstances.

On August 17, 2015, Adams started blogging openly about how and why he believes Trump is enjoying this mystifying success, at least, for the moment.

To do this, he needed to share why he believes this to be true.  So he wrote a blog post that, for me, made August 2015, a Very Interesting Month, NLP-wise.  

Dilbert creator Scott Adams announced he'd been trained in Ericksonian techniques (and referenced NLP as well).

In my opinion, he framed his background education on Erickson and NLP so that he wouldn't be too heavily questioned about NLP.  Adams is well aware that NLP continues to spark a lot of debate in academic and scientific circles, so he acknowledged the controversy and used a 90%/10% reference to avoid jumping into that discussion.

I also believe that controversy is losing ground, thanks to the increasing numbers of recently published studies and articles in Psychology Today, that are essentially proving aspects of what NLP has been saying for years.  See some of our previous blog entries about this.

Adams mentioned NLP and Erickson and his perspective on hypnosis (verbal influence), and then described all of the above as simply a form of Wizardry, in the linguistic sense.  He wanted to set up an understanding of people who have used training in these fields to, essentially, become wizards.

My long-time subscribers will know that my longest running, most popular course over the years, was called “Linguistic Wizardry.”  So you'll understand better, now, why I was particularly attracted to Adams' recent blog posts and the admissions they contained.

Having grouped indirect influence a la Erickson & NLP under the term Wizardry, Adams then began a series of posts on his blog that explore these concepts, analyzing and exploring and identifying wizards and their methods.  So – here are just some of his blog posts in recent days.  There are quite a few more there than just what's listed here.  This is a subset (with missing posts in between these dated links).  He's been very busy! 

Aug 17:  Wizard Wars
Sept 1:  Identifying the Smart Voters
Sept 4:  The Time of Kings 
Sept 6:  How to Spot a Wizard
Sept 9:  A Demonstration of Persuasion Part of my Trump

If you have the time, I do encourage you to read his blog from August 17 forward, in full, to get the back story including all of Adams' predictions and analyses.  Make your own judgments!

If you're limited on time, what follows will be some of my preferred highlights from just the first post – his Ericksonian / NLP unveiling, as it were.  I'm going to share some short quotes and respond point by point.

You see, I don't agree with everything he's written.  And that's OK.  What I appreciate here is that he's opened a dialogue where these topics are now being explored by a well known voice, famous in mainstream entertainment.  I absolutely celebrate that, even where he and I might disagree.

I welcome the debate; my customers, students, and coaching clients know that what I do and what I train works profoundly well – and anyone who doesn't, yet, can find out a lot more about my NLP-based work in business, without having to buy anything or commit to any workshops up front  (go ahead and request a welcome-packet, here).

What does Adams actually think
of NLP and Hypnosis Wizards?

Adams refers to people with these skills, colloquially, as Wizards (whether they were formally trained, or not, or surround themselves with people who have formal training).  He also suggests they're using their skills to try to control, or at least shape, the messages and the dialogue in the election.

He shared a diluted characterization of NLP.  Dilbert's creator says: “In my experience, NLP is about 10% real and 90% marketing. But the real part is exceptionally powerful.”  Even that heavily-qualified endorsement is still really interesting, and valuable.  Naturally I'd like to think my courses and programs offer far more than just 10% real/powerful content;  Of course, there's no question I'm biased.

Admittedly, there is a lot more marketing hype than there used to be in NLP 15-20 years ago when business applications of NLP really started taking off.  There was less marketing still, 25-35 years ago, back when NLP was almost exclusively focused on faster and more effective methods of therapy and change-work.  With many poorer-quality training providers showing up more recently, many less experienced trainers needed to set prices low and shorten training course durations, to attract students away from more experienced trainers.  I have to work harder, today, to prove significantly higher value than would be available from some other choices.  I've been doing this since 1997 (18+ years, as of this post), and this is even more true for trainers who have been doing this longer than I have.  So I readily admit there is some marketing hype, but I don't think it's anywhere close to the level of Adams' assertion.  I think he used 90%/10% to avoid getting pulled into the debate of whether or not NLP works.

What did Scott Adams say
in his August 17 blog entry?

“If you have seen the Star Wars movies, you know all about the Jedi Mind Trick. Erickson’s power was like that, but slower, and with more words.”

Milton Erickson's power was very much like that.  And since part of NLP was modeled from Erickson's language and communication strategies, a lot of NLP does focus on gentle, indirect (conversationally hypnotic) influence (we call this 'the Milton Model.').  As a trainer of these skills, with a particular focus on using them in real-world business contexts, I agree with these comments 100%.

Regarding Adams' assertions that Donald Trump is friends with Anthony Robbins, “the most powerful wizard alive,” let's clarify a few things.  Robbins is most definitely NLP trained and used to run NLP courses before he published his first book, Unlimited Power.  Now he refers to 'his techniques' as Neuro-Associative Conditioning (NAC).  He gives his explanation behind the renaming in his second book.  We invite you to make your own judgment about that re-naming.

The rumor mill in NLP circles suggests that Robbins may have hired five top NLP Trainers to ghost-write multiple chapters each, for Unlimited Power.  And according to other NLP Trainer friends who have worked with Robbins, he himself is very skilled at NLP and does excellent work influencing individuals and groups.  No one can run a huge seminar room the way Tony does.  But he himself is not known for training deep levels of NLP skills.

His business model aims to give people transformational experiences, and tools.  His format is not designed to convey high skills with high levels of trainer feedback loops; trainers cannot accomplish that in vast audiences; that can only work in small groups with high levels of trainer personal attention.  So, by all means, if you want the transformational experiences he sells, then go to his seminars.  By contrast, if you want to become as skilled as Robbins is perceived to be at NLP, then go to more in-depth NLP courses (and learn some of the other things he learned, from the types of people he learned them from).  And for a point of comparison, one might compare a solid NLP Practitioner training ($2K - 3K) to Robbins' Mastery University for $10K+.  I'd rather pay the $3K and put the remaining $7K into my business or into other educational experiences.

As for Donald Trump, I still do not know of any evidence that Trump has any Ericksonian background, himself.  It wouldn't surprise me that he'd read NLP or Ericksonian books, or if he'd hired trainers for 1-on-1 training with an iron-clad nondisclosure agreement, but Donald Trump can't just show up at a public course as yet another student.  What I think is far more likely is that Trump is paying Ericksonian or NLP-trained advisors to strategize his political kill-shots.

Adams wrote:

“Erickson’s discovery is that words are like a UI for the mind. If you pick the right words, the mind goes into admin mode and you can rewire things at will. It might take lots of repetition, but you can get a lot done with that wiring over time.”

I agree with that in part;  Its nowhere near as simple as just picking the right words and repeating them.  The emotional state felt by the listener plays a very important role, as does the emotional state of the person aiming to influence.  The values of the person listening play a critical role, as do the types of values that would be satisfied by the words and influence being extended.  All these things have to line up well, for influence to take place.  

I have an entire audio program devoted to skill of influencing people emotionally, using a skill set called emotional-state-chaining.  This teaches listeners how to move people out of unresourceful or unresponsive emotional states, into more resourceful and responsive states, where they're more likely to agree with us, consider our perspective, and take the actions we'd like them to take.  Learn more about my "Creating the Automatic Yes" audio program.

Adams also pointed out that there is a great deal of misinformation out there about hypnosis, and then described stage hypnosis.  I agree fully with his assessment of stage hypnosis as (my paraphrasing:)  an entertaining experience that seeks to find the most obedient and least self-conscious people, and give them permission to do things they wouldn't ordinarily do.  

Then he goes on to say this:  

“Real hypnosis, in my view, is closer to the science of persuasion.”

I also agree fully with Adams' view above.  He goes on to say:  

“The best book on that topic is Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Dr. Robert Cialdini.”

Cialdini's Influence is an excellent book, and in it, he explores six major principles behind influence.  As a social psychologist, Cialdini only includes lessons that have been extensively studied through actual scientific experimentation.  Though by no means is it the only such book on persuasion.  Also, “Influence” truly does not delve into any of the Ericksonian or NLP -styled wizardry that Adams is discussing in recent blog entries.  There are many better books, audio programs, and courses available when one becomes ready to learn more of the actual skills being referenced in Adams' blog series.

The Dilbert Comic Strip was intended
to hypnotize you starting from Day 1:

Adams says:

“Have you ever wondered why Dilbert has an uncommon first name, no last name, a nameless boss, and he works for a nameless company, making nameless products, while living in a nameless city? That’s hypnosis. By omitting those details I allow the reader to better feel some version of “That’s me!”

This is precisely the intent behind Ericksonian-style process language, so I want to validate this paragraph fully.  The nature of NLP's Milton Model is to understand that by being artfully vague in our language, the listener fills in the vagueness with their own details.  As Adams says, that's hypnosis (or, at least, part of it).

Here's an example.  If I say “it's cool in here” or “it's warm in here,”  I'm giving you my content, my judgment.  Some listeners will agree, some will disagree.  If by contrast I say “We can all feel the temperature in here.”  Everyone has to agree.  I'm giving you no content; I'm using process language to say the same thing, and everyone fills in the specifics with their own while agreeing.  More agreement, less resistance.  More process, less content.  This is classically Ericksonian communication.

Not everyone will end up empathizing with every situation Dilbert gets into, but Adams does maximize his comic-strip readership by leaving out as many details as he can.

Adams suggests that Steve Jobs, Bill
Clinton, and Donald Trump are all wizards.

Adams and I begin to differ more thoroughly on this point.  It comes down to how he and I view the term Wizard, differently.  I suppose in the highest sense of the word “wizard”, Adams' assertions about Jobs, Clinton and Trump apply, because these people all rose to international power and fame in one form or another.  So in that broadest sense, yes, these people are all wizards.  I use the term wizard to refer to someone who has been thoroughly trained in NLP and/or Ericksonian techniques -- not just exposed to them, not just having heard about them, but having these skills integrated into their abilities through years of training and feedback.

I do believe Bill Clinton is in a class by himself.  He has often been described as being extremely effective at many of the skills NLP-trained people seek to learn, including how to create profound rapport instantly, how to put people at ease and make them like him more, how to influence people's minds closer to his position during negotiations, how to tell stories (metaphors) to make an effective point and loosen up someone else's position, how to speak slowly and rhythmically in a slightly hypnotic fashion, and more.  Whether he got skilled at those abilities by reading books, by learning from audio programs or spending time with Robbins, or by just being an absolute natural and paying incredible levels of attention to other people, is anyone's guess.  It's probably some combination of all of the above and more.

I would however be shocked if Steve Jobs or Donald Trump actually knew much about either Erickson or NLP, first hand -- other than from an intellectual awareness -- and other than from having hired and possibly spent time with actually well-trained NLP and/or Ericksonian Practitioners, Master Practitioners, or Trainers.   I think they're far more likely to have succeeded thanks to other factors.  

Remember...

Not every successful person is trained in NLP/Ericksonian techniques.  

Not everyone trained in these techniques will necessarily become deeply skilled at them.

But there are some true "Jedi's" out there.  Quite a few of them work in political consulting.  These people's careers rise and fall based on the results they get.  So the NLP and Ericksonian wizards working for people like Trump (and everyone else at the Presidential race level) will be among the better ones out there (but not necessarily 'good wizards!').

My opinion about Donald Trump, regarding
NLP or Ericksonian techniques:

I strongly doubt Trump is personally trained in Ericksonian techniques from anyone reputable or skilled.  I think Trump has surrounded himself with deal makers, and movers and shakers for decades.  

I'm betting he's self-trained.  Developing the art of the deal, and dealing with millionaires and billionaires for years, trains a person to be confident in their assessments.  

Also, Anthony Robbins sounds like the type of guy Trump would connect with. Trump has been a keynote speaker or marquee speaker for so long, he might very well have met and shared stogies, drinks, and meals with all who run in the top speaker circuits.  But chatting over dinner will never equate to a transfer of Ericksonian or NLP language skills.

Trump may very well have acquired an iPod full of good conversational hypnosis training MP3s, but Trump himself could never call and order them personally without risking reputation issues.  And he could never just show up at a live course as a fellow attendee, for live practice. Which is to say, he really can only do his own self-training, while wheeling and dealing.  And yet, that is, of course, still some formidable experience.

He might have invited in a trainer for private training and required an iron-clad nondisclosure.  I've done similarly on occasion with some very famous people. You wouldn't believe it if I told you, but I only disclose such names where there's no nondisclosure and I get clear permission.

My belief is: Trump doesn't *need* Ericksonian skills -- his cult of personality, name, money, stature, wardrobe, image, and the company he keeps -- all speak a lot louder and at least as effectively as Ericksonian techniques.

I can't really see Trump saying, "I'm certainly not saying you're fired, but if you were to begin to feel a need to step out on your own... after all a rising tide raises all the boats in the harbor, and maybe this is truly the moment for your star to rise, for you to shine, this could be the dawn of your time. And no one would be happier than me to see it happen. Remember, the more you dream and take action, the more you get what you've always been destined to have created, now... so with all that in mind... what was it you weren't thinking about anymore, and what decision can you share with me that you just made?"  That would be an Ericksonian approach.

Nope. It's far better television to just say "You're fired."

Wouldn't it be fun to hear someone say that back to him on national television?

So what kind of Wizards are
supporting Political Candidates?

Many of the major candidates are having their dancing strings manipulated or, are at least informed, by wizards.  GOP and Democrats alike.  In my opinions, the best ones help their candidates use subtle influence instead of blunt force.  They aim to Influence with elegance instead of a steamroller.

But some play by their own rules.  For example, GOP political consultant Frank Luntz has authored multiple memoranda aimed at attempting to control the discourse between Republicans and Democrats (in the Republicans' favor).  Luntz got Newt Gingrich in some very hot water back in the 1980's, when he published a memo with two separate word groups, such that Republicans would use one group of words referring to themselves, and another group of words when referring to Democrats.  I personally know 2 people who've met Luntz, and mentioned his name in the comments section of Scott Adams' blog.  Mentioning Luntz there got this response from Adams himself -- which mirrors the opinions I've received from others.

“I shared a limo with Luntz after a speaking event years ago. Strange vibe from that guy. Not in a good way.”

Luntz has given some other people really bad vibes, too.  He was described to me (by one NLP'er who has had multiple experiences with him) as very, very smart, and seemingly utterly devoid of any ethical sense of right vs wrong.  Note -- I have no personal experience of him, apart from reading his troublesome memos for the GOP.

Not all wizards behave and influence with such impunity or indifference, but some do.  All the more reason for -everyone- to learn how to defend against unwanted influences.

Presume this:  Every Presidential candidate in modern races will have at least one if not several consultants, and at least one if not several speech-writers, who are all trained up in NLP or Ericksonian pattern language.  In today's political climate, you should assume there's unlikely to be more than a rare exception to the rule.

As for me, I've personally trained one current politician to the level of NLP Practitioner; he's a State Representative in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives (State level, not the US Congress, yet!).  And he is very, very good at Ericksonian patterning.  He was already a natural but needed refinement and feedback; taking live training just made him even more skilled.

One NLP Coach in England was a speech-writer for Prime Minister Tony Blair, as well as for other Ministers of Parliament (MP's), and has been quoted as saying “NLP Books were visible scattered on tables throughout #10 Downing Street.”

NLP and Ericksonian techniques are essential back-room political tactics now.  If you want better control over your mind, you'd better get good solid training, yourself.

The Best & Worst of
NLP in Political Speeches

The type of NLP examples I love to hear in political speeches are examples of communication that enable me to visualize very vividly.  They'll paint active, vivid pictures, and help me imagine the vision they bring to their leadership.  I remember their speeches more easily, I follow their communication naturally, and I have a better sense of where they'd like to take the country.  More to the point, their words match their deeds, and I am left with a sense of their congruence.

By contrast:  The type of NLP examples I hate to hear from politicians, are exclusively process communication with no content at all.  One of many big warning signs, for me, is when I hear politicians layering too many nominalizations in their language.  E.g., "The wisdom of finding grace under pressure, and having more choice for the future.  Layering nominalizations is one great way to slow down listeners' minds, and while audiences struggle to process the complex meaning of these specific word forms, the politicians drop in their suggestions.  When I hear layered nominalizations, I know they're being intentionally slippery; they're trying to sound meaningful, while speaking in largely meaningless terms.  In self-improvement courses, it can be a powerfully valuable technique for all, audiences included.  In politics, it's manipulative.  So when I hear this from politicians, I am left with a sense of their incongruence or lack of trustworthiness.

Is it odd to find a Comic Strip Author as a Wizard?  Not that odd!  The writer of another major Comic Strip attended one of my NLP courses in 2002!

Highly trained NLP and Ericksonian enthusiasts are all around us!  And, Scott Adams is not the only Comic Strip author who has sought out such training.

I'm so grateful to have just received permission to share this tidbit with you!

Back in March 2002... I had the pleasure of meeting a man who had arrived to attend my “Linguistic Wizardry” three-day course in Cincinnati Ohio.  The LW course was designed to share some NLP skills for higher awareness, persuasive language, and influential communication frames.  Some of the attendees were new to NLP so it was also a great course for dipping one's toes in the NLP pool of ideas; after all, three days isn't a particularly long course duration.

I think it was lunch on the second day when I and some of the other attendees learned that the quiet, friendly gentleman we'd met, was Craig Boldman, writer of the internationally famous “ARCHIE” Comic Strip.  Yes, the same Archie comic strip with characters like Archie, Jughead, Veronica, & Betty! You can learn more about Craig at his website, www.craigboldman.com

Thanks, Craig!  I hope we get to reconnect sometime soon.  Maybe my readers can catch you at a comic-con!

Might there not be others to add to our list?

Are there any other comic strip authors or famous names who were trained in NLP and/or Ericksonian techniques?  Please comment below!  Or send us a web message!

I've attempted to reach a few others, and if I get positive responses, I'll add their names here.

Thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed this blogpost!

Share widely, and I welcome your engagement below!

author: Jonathan Altfeld
 photo credit: Donald Trump via photopin (license)

On January 1, 2015, Jonathan Altfeld and 20 other co-authors released a digital book entitled "Creating Business Growth."

On its first day of release, the book reached the #1 book in its class on Amazon.com in the UK (6.5 hours) and the U.S. (7 hours). Then the book reached best seller status on Amazon in 6 more countries over the next few days.  A print-on-demand version was made available shortly afterwards.

Jonathan's chapter is titled "Using NLP to Draw in Rabidly-Hungry, Highly-Qualified Leads," and the other chapters each focus on specific marketing techniques, succeeding with various digital platforms, and business development.

There's a big price difference between the paperback print-on-demand version and the Kindle version, due to the size/weight of the printed book. This is because the kindle version is 452 pp! Not a small book, to be sure!

We hope you enjoy and get great value from the book! Download, enjoy -- and please do remember to leave a review on Amazon!

Don't see the book image and link?  Please turn off your browser's Ad-Blocker software for altfeld.com. 

Affliate Notice: The book image and text to the upper right is an affiliate link, so the owner of this site (and also co-author of the book) does receive a very small credit if you click through to the book and ultimately choose to purchase.

What are the Four Stages of Learning?  Why is it that Mastery is not among them?

Some would have you believe that being unconsciously great at something is equivalent to mastery of that thing. Becoming unconsciously great at a skill is a wonderful goal, and is certainly an accomplishment that attracts attention. It may even be what earns you a fabulous living. But... that's not mastery.

When you master a thing, you're taking a step beyond just being great. You're going beyond unconscious competence, and re-learning all the details you probably forgot, when you were getting unconsciously great at a skill.

What are the Four Stages of Learning?

You've likely heard of these before. If you want more information on the source of this model for learning, this link to Wikipedia will help. Essentially, here's a summary:

• Unconscious Incompetence
• Conscious Incompetence
• Conscious Competence
• Unconscious Competence

Essentially, when you first approach learning a new skill, you're unconsciously incompetent.  You don't even know how bad you are at it.  And if you try it and fail, you often can't even tell why you fail at it.

As you practice a skill, you gain conscious incompetence, and you begin to know why you're not yet good at the skill.  You build awareness and filters and you don't have skill yet, you make a lot of mistakes, but you start learning from them.

As you continue to practice, you eventually find yourself getting better results.  But its not easy to keep getting those results, becaue you have to keep working hard at it.  You become consciously competent.   And eventually, if you keep practicing, your brain starts to chunk all those hard-to-remember details into a higher level process.  And you start getting better and better results, without even thinking about what you're doing.  Pretty soon, you're on autopilot, because you're unconsciously competent.  But there is one enormous problem looming ahead:

Unconscious Competence breeds
Complacency and False Sense of Expertise.

Just because you're really good at something does not mean you know how to teach it.  It doesn't mean you can explain it.  In fact, because moving from CC to UC requires the brain to chunk up and combine details into a higher level representation, any attempt to teach or train what you're good at, to others, is bound to fail.  Because the very process of becoming unconsciously competent required you to forget conscious access to the detailed how-to knowledge.

Now, today, too many fields are chock full of consciously or unconsciously competent "experts" who couldn't possibly impart deep skill to you.  Why?  Because...

Mastery of anything requires a minimum of
two passes through the Four Learning Stages.

Due to how learning/chunking works, you can only occupy ONE learning stage at a time for any given skill (or area of skill). Once you push through a threshold from one stage to the other, your brain generalizes what it learned and then can not access it the same way it did, previously. This is why  people who reach unconscious competence often can't easily explain what they know  (and this is another reason why it takes an NLP Modeler to really figure out what experts actually know).

Many, many people aren't aware of this  -- or are, and probably wish you weren't aware of this phenomenon, because they'll be losing money once you are.  Here's why:

To train anything, congruently, a teacher has to be able to both demonstrate it elegantly and masterfully -- and explain it well, to varied ears. Demonstrating it both consciously and unconsciously well.  That can never happen when a teacher is still going through their first pass through the learning stages. It's not neurologically possible.

For someone to be able to explain or train something well, they need to reach UC, and then go back to the foundation and re-learn it from the ground up. This time, they're re-learning the foundation after having already acquired unconscious competence, so as to remind themselves of the conscious details they'd long since forgotten (that chunked up, en route to unconscious competence).

This is why it's unreasonable whenever someone suggests they want to send someone to an event, and have them come back and explain what they've learned or teach it to others. They'll be able to NAME what they've learned, but they won't be able to both explain it and demonstrate it, well.

Wanting to master something is a wonderful pursuit. If you want to master it AND teach it, you'll need to go to school, so to speak, at least twice, through the same material.

Mastery is Stage Five.

We all know that once we become unconsciously competent, the very act of doing so requires that we chunk details up, and that causes us to forget specifics. If we try to explain specifics after that happens, our explanations would have come out sloppy, and incomplete.

The only way to have both unconscious competence AND conscious competence at the same time -- is to go back to school and re-learn everything a second time. It can't happen otherwise.

What people find, when and if they do this, is that (a) we spend almost no time in "unconscious incompetence" the second time through, and also, the time it takes to go through conscious incompetence back into conscious competence is much shorter the second time. But just because its faster the second time, does not make this process any less necessary.

We re-approach the details of the skills we became great at doing, and we re-learn those details. Yes, they make more sense this time. But everyone who does this has some rude awakenings, because doing this inevitably brings our attention to details we didn't realize we'd forgotten (during our pursuit of unconscious competence). So it's incredibly valuable for everyone when we do this process. New students will need those details, and if we hadn't gone through this second run-through of the learning stages, we might have forgotten to train these to new students!

That re-discovery is exactly what happens when we move through the learning stages again, all the way up to conscious competence (and we never lose our unconscious competence as long as we keep practicing it).

Choose teachers or trainers who have
gone through the learning stages, twice.

How can you tell if your trainer or teacher has done this?

1. Can they demonstrate what they're training at high or real-time speed, without either delay or note-checking? Can they do it conversationally while they do other things without seeming to think about it?
2. When asked for a breakdown, can they explain what took place in detail, and, are you finding their comments 100% accurate according to your memory? Or are they referring only to clues that they know you're not yet trained to notice?
3. Do well-known more experienced trainers or master trainers say good things about them as trainers/teachers? What about other students who have also trained with those more experienced trainers? What do people with better-trained filters than your own, say about the teacher you plan to learn from?  New students do not yet have the awareness or metnal filters to be able to pick up the relevant nuances.

These aren't the only criteria I can think of, but they're among the best. The most important thing to know is that any expert can be unconsciously competent but be confused by details, OR, be gifted at explaining but not be able to demonstrate real-time elegance with the skill in question. Either of these qualities are clear evidence showing that expert has not gone on to real mastery -- which is the combination of unconscious competence AND conscious competence.

Here's my perspective: unless I'm intentionally doing NLP modeling of an expert's expertise, I won't personally invest in attending a class unless I can somehow first verify the teacher has already reached mastery of their expertise. Why invest in anything less?