Eventually, all of these will be linked to descriptive pages on this site and the rest of the internet.

And now, without further due…

Here’s the list:

1. Aligning Perceptual Positions
2. Analogue Marking
3. Anchoring
4. Belief Chaining
5. Calibration
6. Cause and Effect Distortions
7. Chaining States
8. Changing Personal History
9. Chunking Down
10. Chunking Up
11. Circle Of Excellence
12. Collapsing Anchors
13. Comparative Deletions
14. Complex Equivalence
15. Compulsion Blow-Out
16. Conflict Resolution
17. Conflicting Beliefs Integration
18. Congruence
19. Conscious And Subconscious
20. Conversational Hypnosis
21. Conversational Postulate
22. Core Transformation
23. Criteria Installation
24. Decision Destroyer
25. Deletions
26. Denominalization
27. Disjunction
28. Distortions
29. Double Binds
30. Downtime
31. Ecology Check
32. Elicitation Of Learning Strategies
33. Eliciting Subconscious Responses
34. Embedded Commands
35. Emotional Pain Management
36. Extended Quotes
37. Generalizations
38. Hierarchy Of Criteria
39. Hypnosis
40. Implied Causes
41. Inducing Amnesia
42. Interrupting Limiting Associations
43. Intonation
44. Kinesthetic Criteria
45. Lack of Referential Index
46. Linguistic Ambiguities
47. Linking Words
48. Logical Levels
49. Lost Performatives
50. Meta Model
51. Meta Programs
52. Meta Transformation
53. Meta-Model Challenging
54. Meta-Model Intentional Usage
55. Meta-Model Violations
56. Metaphors
57. Meta-Programs Identification
58. Meta-states
59. Milton Model
60. Milton Model
61. Mind Reading
62. Mirroring
63. Modal Operators
64. Modeling: Second Position
65. Modeling: States Of Excellence
66. Modeling: Third Position
67. Nested Loops
68. Nesting
69. New Behavior Generator
70. Nominalization
71. Non-Verbal Cues Recognition
72. Parts Conflict Integration
73. Parts Negotiation
74. Pattern Interrupt
75. Perceptual Positions
76. Phobia Cure
77. Phonological Ambiguities
78. Presuppositions
79. Punctuation Ambiguities
80. Quotes pattern
81. Rapport: How To Create And Sustain Rapport
82. Rapport: Pacing & Matching
83. Rapport: Pacing and Leading
84. Re-Imprinting
85. Resolving Internal Conflicts
86. Resourceful States
87. Scope Ambiguities
88. Selectional Restriction Violations
89. Self Anchoring
90. Sensory Acuity
91. Six Steps Reframing
92. Sleight Of Mouth: Content Reframing
93. Sleight Of Mouth: Context Reframing
94. Sleight Of Mouth: Outframing
95. Sliding anchors
96. State Induction
97. State Of Consciousness Awareness
98. Stimulating Representational Systems: Auditory
99. Stimulating Representational Systems: Kinesthetic
100. Stimulating Representational Systems: Visual
101. Subliminal Persuasion
102. Submodalities: Digital Vs. Analogue
103. Submodality Overlapping
104. Swish Pattern
105. Syntactic Ambiguities
106. Tag Questions
107. Transderivational Search
108. Universal Quantifiers
109. Using Rep Systems
110. Utilization
111. Values Hierarchy Identification
112. Visual Squash
113. Well Defined Outcomes

When people are thinking, they demonstrate light and subtle behaviors that help them engage the appropriate sensory representational system. For example, moving their eyes, changing their vocal intonation, physical position, breathing and gestures.

Why is that useful to you (and any other NLP-trained person)?

These behaviors actually help you track which representational system someone is using to express themselves or to respond to you or to a situation. While they don’t necessarily reveal “what” the person is thinking, they will certainly help you figure out “how” the person is thinking about it.

Stop for a second a consider any interaction you may have had with people. Can you remember anyone ever:

• being almost out of breath;
• making noises or onomatopeic sounds;
• making faces;
• using particular gestures like raising their hands and moving them around;
• scratching themselves;

These physiological changes associated to mental processes, over time, become automated, predictable patterns, outside of conscious awareness. While Richard Bandler and John Grinder uncovered these patterns during the 1970′s, the AQAL model Ken Wilber presented in his masterpiece “Sex, Ecology, Spirituality” clearly accounts for the direct and simultaneous correlation between physical and mental processes.

Ken Wilber's AQAL Model

As you practice NLP, you will learn to decode and interpret these automatic behaviors by using calibration. This will allow you to influence others’ thought patterns. What follows is a list of patterns coded in NLP that you can use as a learning structure:

1. Kinesthetic mode accessing cues: Head and eyes down, gestures in direction of the body, breathing down in the abdomen, slower speech tempo, deeper voice.

2. Auditory mode accessing cues: Head and eyes leaning to the sides, gestures at ear level, diaphragmatic breathing, speech tempo alternating between faster and slower, varied intonation.

3. Visual mode accessing cues: Head and eyes up, gestures above the shoulders or upward, breathing up in the lungs, eyes semi-closed, high-pitched voice and higher-speeed speech tempo.

Now, let’s practice accessing cues

Get together with a practice buddy and follow these instructions. Then, ask your buddy to tell you what happened at each step.

1. Think of a fun experience you had.
2. First, focus on the physical feelings associated to that experience.
3. Now, let go of the feelings.
4. Second, focus on the images associated to that experience.
5. Now, let go of the images.
6. Third, focus on the sounds associated to that experience.
7. Now, let go of the sounds.

Ask your buddy to take note of what happens to your gestures, posture, breathing, facial expression and tone of voice.

Then, switch roles! Your partner goes through the instructions and you observe and report.

In this short article, you’ll discover the two elements that make up 95% of hypnosis. This will help you focus your practice and learning on the linchpins of the field.

In his book “The Forbidden Keys of Persuasion,” Blair Warren points out that hypnosis consists essentially of two things: distraction and suggestion.

You can use two other words if you want: trance and instruction.

Personally, I prefer the latter two for two reasons:

First, the notion of distraction is associated with “moving away” from something. You’re getting distracted from something supposedly important. Trance, on the other hand, is something you can “move towards.” This distinction makes it easier to teach and learn hypnosis.

Second, the notion of suggestion is vague at best and exists only in the lingo of hypnosis. Instruction, on the other hand, is a notion all of us are familiar with. From television manuals to standardized tests, we all have learned to follow instructions. Instructions consist in commands delivered in a step-by-step format, designed to produce a result.

When you learn hypnosis, you explore different ways of delivering instructions. Sometimes, you’ll be more direct. Sometimes, you’ll be more subtle – especially when using covert hypnosis. However way you do it, you’ll be delivering instructions.

Let’s have a closer look at the two of them.

Instructions

When I first started to learn hypnosis, all I could focus on was the part about instructions (or suggestions, if you will).

*** QUICK NOTE *** Whenever you hear me referring to “instructions,” you can equate this with “suggestions.” If you’re going through different programs to learn hypnosis, most of them will use the term “suggestion.” *** /QUICK NOTE ***

Many new students of hypnosis are attracted to the instruction portion. I sure was. The reason is that instructions is where you actually get to influence or help the other person. Instructions are the behavioral guidelines you offer to the subject.

When you learn hypnosis, you learn how to formulate instructions. Funny, they really don’t differ all that much from what you’d find in an “instruction” manual.

You start with a verb in the imperative. Then, you complete the sentence. Here are a few examples:

• Shut the door.
• Stop eating sugar.
• Brush your teeth.
• Forget about it.

All the previous sentences are examples of instructions.

Once you become more proficient at formulating instructions, you can begin playing with other linguistic structures to soften the instructions.

• “You might want to” shut the door.
• “You can” stop eating sugar.
• “You may remember to” brush your teeth.
• “Once you” forget about it, [...].

In other words, you will learn how to “hide” your instructions in more sophisticated sentences.

Simple, isn’t it?

Trance

Once I was through my instructions binge, I finally turned my attention to trance.

Let me tell you: it blew my mind!

I LOVE trance.

If hypnosis had only trance to offer and nothing else, I’d be a happy camper.

In the trance portion of hypnosis, you will learn how to work with altered states of consciousness. You will learn how to shift people’s normal, everyday awareness to states with different levels of focus, sensory and linguistic awareness.

To really learn hypnosis, you must master this. I’ll even suggest that you begin by learning how to induce and work with trance. Start right away.

Because trance is apparently the most “esoteric” of the two, it’s the one that students feel the most apprehension about.

It’s nothing to worry about. It’s nothing weird. You go into altered states constantly throughout the day. Now, you get to learn how to direct them voluntarily.

Let’s recap…

You want to learn hypnosis. So you’ll have to learn about two different areas:

First, how to deliver instructions. You accomplish this by phrasing imperative sentences.

Second, how to induce trance. You achieve this by shifting people’s ordinary state of awareness.

Now, practice

I strongly recommend you acquire “The Mystic Trance.” It’s a program I’ve created to teach new students how to induce trance. Those who have used it call it “The World’s Easiest Hypnotic Induction.”

Really easy to learn. You’ll try it on yourself and you’ll be surprised at how effective it is. In 3 minutes, you’ll be hooked. Then it’ll take you 10 minutes at most to learn how to use it on others.

That’s your drill for now. Get the Mystic Trance and practice using it on yourself and others. You’ll be glad you did.

To learn how to perform the world’s simplest hypnotic induction, visit http://mystictrance.howtomasternlp.com.

There are times in your life where you need to get the upper hand.

Perhaps your survival or that of a loved one is at stake.

Or maybe the future of your company and the jobs of all your employees are on the line.

You must get compliance. Period.

Just like pattern interrupts, covert hypnosis is an essential skill in your toolkit.

The easiest way to get the job done is to first get the other party into a trance. From there, you’ll be able to steer the situation even more rapidly in the direction that favors you.

Forget about the problem you’re facing in that instance. You must first take control of your state so that you can in turn take control of the other person’s.

Why use covert hypnosis?

The answer is simple. If you pull out a pendulum or start spinning a spiral in front of the other person’s eyes, there’s no way in a million years you’ll be able to guide them into a trance.

In order to achieve it, you’ll have to operate under the radar. That way, you’ll be able to gain their compliance faster, more elegantly, following the normal course of conversation.

Once you learn how to use covert hypnosis, you have in your hand a communication tool you can use as needed to gain compliance.

In the following section, I’m going to explain what you need to know to hypnotize anyone, anytime without them realizing what’s happening.

How to hypnotize anyone covertly

You’d be amazed at how simple it is to actually hypnotize someone. The reason for this is that we all have a natural trance mechanism within us.

Stop for a second to realize how often you move in and out of trance states through the day, and let me tell you how this works.

Have you ever been driving your vehicle, perhaps for several miles, and at some point “woke up” and wondered how far you’d gotten on the road? That in-between gap, where you were “lost in your thoughts”, clearly illustrates a state of trance.

Similarly, the secret on how to hypnotize someone is to help them get “lost in their thoughts.”

Covert hypnosis happens in two steps:

1. You induce a trance.
2. You give suggestions to your subject

How to induce a trance

As you begin the process, focus on the goal you want to achieve: captivate the person’s unconscious attention.

What does that mean?

Your goal is to focus their full attention on you and your voice. You can achieve this through several means:

• Take the other person somewhere where you are by yourselves
• Eliminate surrounding distractions
• Stand up and/or get closer to them

You want to dominate and captivate their undivided attention.

Once you have their undivided attention, shift your vocal tonality to the most full-bodied tone you’re capable of producing. The more pleasant your tone of voice, the easier it will be for them to surrender to it.

Now, put yourself and them on the same page. To accomplish this, you can:

• Pace your on-going sensory experience by describing your surroundings, or
• Tell a story of how the two of you got to where you are

These are the two easiest strategies to get the other person on the same page as you. Of course, many more strategies exist. But these two are the street-smart way to get the job done.

At this point, if you can, establish some sort of physical contact. Put your hand on their shoulder or simply touch their arm. Since you’ll be the one initiating the contact, you will instantaneously be in a position of power.

At this point, the other person is more than likely in a trance.

How to give suggestions

We use the word “suggestion” in NLP and covert hypnosis because the other person may or may not choose to follow suit with your requests.

However, a more adequate term to describe what you’re doing is “instructions.”

When you give suggestions, you instruct the other person on what to do, in a step-by-step manner.

You must format these instructions exactly the same way you’d find them in the manual for assembling and electronic device.

For instance, “1. Open the battery compartment.   2. Insert two AA batteries following the drawing on the back of the latch.” And so forth.

The most effective way to instruct the other person is to package the instructions inside a story. The following story will reveal to you how to package instructions.

“The other day, the President of the company came to visit our regional offices completely unannounced. Because this happens so rarely, everyone at the company was surprised. You know how sometimes, the unexpected can take you off-guard? And you wouldn’t believe the kind of opportunity this opens up.

Anyway, he talked to my secretary and asked to speak to me. My secretary called me on the phone and asked if he could come in. ‘Of course,’ I replied. He walked in and didn’t waste any time. He looked at me straight in the eye and said:

‘Good morning Steve. Let me cut to the chase. We’ve finally figured out how to solve your problem. Here’s the solution. We’ve wasted enough time on this issue in the past. Get it now and solve the problem once and for all. In a year, we’ll celebrate this moment at the top of the hill. I trust that you’ll get things going.’

Now, when someone high on the food chain gives you permission to go forward, you can just let go and actually do what you’ve been wanting to do for a long time but kept fumbling around with. So at that point, you just do it.

And it’s done.”

Read back on the following text and notice where the instructions are. If you have any questions about it, type in a comment below so we can discuss it.

Let’s recap…

You need compliance. And you need it now. So you have to know how to use covert hypnosis.

First, induce a trance. You do that by focusing their full attention on you, assuming a full-bodied tone of voice and putting the two of you on the same page.

Second, give them instructions (that’s how we call “suggestions” in Rogue NLP Training). You do that by embedding them into a story.

Now, practice

If you haven’t read this page on the importance of practice, make sure you do it now.

Drill 1:

1. Identify a goal you want someone to achieve or an action you want them to perform.
2. Write out a story that contains the instructions they must follow to carry out this action.

To learn how to perform the world’s simplest hypnotic induction, visit http://mystictrance.howtomasternlp.com.

NLP Modeling is incredibly exciting and rewarding. It leverages the behavioral learning skills that all of us used as small children to develop our first abilities. Unfortunately, most of us lose access to those skills after we grow up. But it’s never too late to bring them back…

Let’s first get a sense of the steps involved in NLP Modeling. There are six of them.

Step 1. Identify a model

This first step requires that we choose a top performer. Maintain as your most important criteria to choose someone who produces outstanding result or results consistently. For instance, you could model a soccer player’s unique way of dribbling. Or you could model a top salesperson’s closing skills. Or you could model a clinician who has an unmatched record for helping patients recover from illnesses. Find someone who can get a result you’d like to produce time and time again, consistently without fail.

Step 2. Assimilate their behavioral patterns unconsciously

Whereas in most modeling methods the modeler acts simply as an outside observer, NLP Modeling demands that the modeler actually step into the shoes of the outstanding performer. Through repeated imitation and practice, you will unconsciously absorb his or her behavioral patterns.

This is the crux of NLP Modeling. So let’s talk about this some more.

When using other modeling methods, you’d be constantly trying to figure out how the top performer is achieving those results. You’d be analyzing his movements, his behavior, his words, his tonality, and so forth, trying to understand consciously how he produces those astonishing results.

NLP Modeling is different. When doing NLP Modeling, you’re supposed to imitate the genius without trying to figure out what’s going on. Just do as he does. Or do as she does. Copy him. Mimic her. But not in a caricatural way. Do it in a genuine way, trying as best as you can to let that person mold you so you become just like her.

As an example, imagine you’d want to model an outstanding tennis player’s serve. In Step 2, you’d actually pretend to be the player, going through the same motions over and over, seeking to emulate the player’s behavior.

For how long should you do that? You do it all the way until you…

Step 3. Produce results similar to those of the top performer

You know you’ve unconsciously assimilated the behavioral patterns of the top performer when you produce similar results in roughly the same amount of time. Depending on the modeling project, this may take minutes, hours, days, weeks, months or even years. It all depends on the complexity of the skill you’re working on acquiring.

In the case of our example, you’d know you’ve unconsciously assimilated the other player’s serve once you were able to consistently produce a similar quality of serve.

Step 4. Clean up the pattern

In anyone’s behavior, even that of a top performer, there will always be “white noise”. This simply means that certain parts of their behavior will not be necessary to produce outstanding results. In this step, after you’ve demonstrated that you’ve absorbed the pattern by producing outstanding results, you start testing what actually needs to be included in the pattern and what can be left out.

Let’s go back to our example:

Imagine that you were modeling an outstanding tennis player’s serve. One piece of the player’s behavior is to bounce the ball three times on the court prior to starting his serve motion.

During Step 4, you’d actually test serving without bouncing the ball three times on the court to verify whether that piece of the pattern is essential to maintaining the serve’s quality. You might discover that it’s absolutely necessary and you might also discover that it’s completely dispensable.

Step 5. Build a model

Once you’ve cleaned up the pattern, it’s time to figure out what’s going on and to create a description of what you and the outstanding performer are doing. The key here is to describe this in a way that anybody truly committed to mastering the pattern can do it.

Step 6. Pass it on

This is where the rubber meets the road. The last step and master purpose of the modeler’s job is to transfer or teach the pattern to someone else. In this step, you’d take the model you created in Step 5 and transfer it to a new person. If this proves difficult, you might find it necessary to modify the description you created of the pattern until transferring it becomes easy.

The most elegant models can be absorbed very quickly by a committed learner.

Conclusion

There you have it! The 6 Master Steps of NLP Modeling. If you’re interested in furthering your comprehension of NLP Modeling, read Whispering In The Wind by John Grinder and Carmen Bostic St Clair. The distinguishing characteristic of NLP Modeling exists in Step 2. In most other forms of modeling, the modeler acts as a mere observer. In NLP Modeling, the modeler gets deeply involved in the modeling process.

That’s how as a small child you developed your first behaviors. How about claiming that unique skill back and using it to increase your overall sense of personal excellence?

Throughout the years, NLP has become primarily associated with therapy due to the fact that Richard Bandler and John Grinder founded the field by modeling outstanding therapists. This close association has created much confusion for the field.

While NLP has produced exquisite techniques and tools to resolve personal problems, the field remains agnostic as to its applications. As a competent practicioner, you can derive applications in various fields, including therapy, counseling, leadership, writing, publishing, advertising and many others.

You’ll find it useful not to box NLP into a area of application. In the book “Whispering In The Wind“, John Grinder and Carmen Bostic StClair create a parallel between how physics relates to engineering and how NLP relates to communication.

Quoting them:

The required distinction is the same as the distinction between physics and engineering, or medical research and clinical practice, or chemistry and pharmacology. Physics, for example, is the study of the patterns that govern the physical phenomena about us. Such studies over centuries have resulted in the coding of certain patterns, principles, laws of nature… An engineer designing a bridge will draw upon this body of tested and verified patterning (especially the computational formulae) to carry out his work. He is said to be applying the principles of physics in order to work how specifically the bridge should be constructed. Physics – the study of the fundamental patterns of physical phenomena – can be applied in multiple instances from bridge building to the design of extraterrestrial vehicles. Such examples are applications of physics, pure and simple.

Comparably, the modeling of geniuses done by Grinder and Bandler created the field of NLP, resulting in a series of models of excellence. These models coded patterns that govern the patterns of interactions among people in certain contexts (change work, hypnosis…). A business consultant addressing a challenge within a client company will draw upon the patterns. She will be said to be applying this body of tested and verified patterns in order to determine how specifically to resolve the challenge.

NLP – the study of the fundamental patterns of excellence in human performance – can be applied (in the context of business practice, for example) to management practice, strategic planning, personnel, recruitment, new product design… Such examples are applications of NLP, pure and simple.

In other words, you’re studying the physics of thought and behavior. How you apply the principles you uncover will be up to you.

So keep your perception of NLP open, so as to tap into the full potential it holds in store for you.

If you read through this entire post, you’ll have figured out 99% of the NLP game. Many experienced NLPers that I’ve talked to haven’t understood the distinction I’m about to share with you. And yet, when you get it (and you will), you’ll breeze through any NLP material and assimilate it much more quickly, because you’ll have a framework with which to absorb it.

In short, NLP is a modeling technology. Its central purpose can be expressed in three sequential activities:

1. Identify people who produce outstanding results in a particular field of activity (sports, communication, management, leadership, therapy, learning, education, etc.)
2. Model those people in order to create an explicit model of how they produce those outstanding results. The peculiar way this is done in NLP will be shared in greater detail in a later post, but it’s important to distinguish NLP modeling from other types of modeling.
3. Teach or transfer that model to others. The modeling project will be successful if the person who learns the model can produce results comparable to those of the outstanding performer. One of the key criteria of this transfer is that ANYONE who is committed to master the model can do so.

I’ve come to adopt the perspective that NLP is a field that lends its discoveries to other fields. Let me give you an example so you can easily understand this.

If you’re new to NLP, you’ll soon study the Milton Model, which consists of a collection of language patterns distilled from modelling Milton Erickson, the most prominent practicioner of hypnotherapy.

Most NLPers would tell you that the Milton Model is an NLP model. I prefer to say that NLP practicioners produced a hypnosis model called the Milton Model.

Likewise, I’d rather say that a practicioner of NLP produced a financial mastery model, a soccer dribbling model, a seduction model and so forth and so on. Each field to its own. Our field is the field of modeling. And our tools are those tools that make modeling possible.

This of course, is only my point of view and I’d be surprised if NLPers agreed with me. Nevertheless, I find it more useful to classify those models as such.

In future posts, I’ll begin to distinguish which of the classical tools of NLP belong to NLP and which ones belong to other fields.

How can we understand what they are talking about? What is content? What is process? Let’s use a metaphor to start understanding this.

Imagine a bag of apples. We’ll use this bag of apples as our example for content.

Now, imagine a fork, a blender and a juicer. We’ll use these tools as our example for process.

An apple can be processed in many different ways. Among them, you can squash them with a fork, you can purée them using a blender and you can juice them with a juicer. All the time, the content will remain the same: apples. But the way you process the apples will change the final outcome.

Now take this analogy over to thinking.

What you think is the content. How or the way you think it is the process.

Let’s take a lightly uncomfortable example. Let’s say you had an argument with a teacher when you were a kid and that episode marked you and let’s suppose that you keep rethinking that episode over and over, seeing a movie of your teacher arguing with you and hearing his voice in your memory.

The argument itself is the content. The movie and the voice is the process.

What would happen if you started processing the argument differently. First of all, accelerate the speed of the movie lightly, so that it’s playing at twice the speed. Next, blur it a bit and dim the lighting on the image. Next, pay attention to the accelerated voice, which is starting to sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks. Accelerate the whole thing until the sounds fades into a hum and the movie just becomes white light.

Now, how do you feel about it?

You altered the process, you altered the emotional outcome.

Now, why is this distinction important?

In most forms of changework, the therapist seeks to alter the content of his client’s thoughts. Returning to our apples analogy, the therapist would suggest that his client process oranges or bananas. Sometimes, this is just not possible or even ethical. It might mean imposing or forcing your view of the world and your beliefs on someone else. Working on process makes it possible to retain full integrity and respect of the client’s model of the world while allowing content shifts to occur naturally and spontaneously.

The motivational cliché “if life sends you lemons, make lemonade” illustrates the content-process distinction quite appropriately. Shift the process and you’ll shift the outcome.

When we start speaking of modality distinctions in future posts, you’ll learn all the ways in which you can modulate your own and other people’s thinking processes.

Meanwhile, begin playing with the content-process distinction. Let’s try a few games:

1. Process the thought of a train through your kinesthetic or “feeling” channel.
2. Process the thought of your mother through your olfactory or “smell” channel.
3. Process the thought of your final exams through your gustatory or “taste” channel.
4. Process the thought of your favorite food through your auditory or “hearing” channel.
5. Process the thought of water rehydrating all of your body cells through your visual or “seeing” channel.

Give these exercises a shot and send me an email at steve@howtomasternlp.com to let me know what you discovered!

So let’s look immediately at the first one:

1. The Number 1 NLP Skill

This one is listed in detail in the free report The Number 1 NLP Skill You Must Master. If you haven’t yet, request your free report by filling out the form on the top right of your screen. I must insist! Learn and master this skill and your overall competence will soar!

2. Calibration

This skill enables you to “read” people. Have you ever met someone who claimed to know how you were feeling or what you were thinking but was completely wrong? This happened because that person didn’t calibrate to your state appropriately. Calibration is the process by which you link a person’s state to the physiology being displayed at any point in time. You’ll see spectacular calibration taking place at the World Poker Championships. Each poker player is constantly looking for other players’ “tells”, the little quirky behaviors that give away how they’re feeling about their cards, whether they’re bluffing or they have a strong game.

3. Detecting patterns

NLP revolves around patterns. As such, to be a successful NLP Practicioner, you must always look out for patterns. But what exactly is a pattern? Let’s allow Gregory Bateson, one of the godfathers of NLP, to answer that question (as taken from Whispering in the Wind, by John Grinder and Carmen Bostic St Clair):

any aggregate of events or objects (e.g. a sequence of phonemes, a painting, or a frog or a culture) shall be said to contain a “redundancy” or a “pattern” if the aggregate can be divided in any way by a “slash mark” such that an observer perceiving only what is on one side of the slash mark can guess with better than random success, what is on the other side of the slash mark…. Or, again from the point of view of a cybernetic observer, the information available on one side of the slash will restrain) i.e. reduce the probability of) wrong guessing.

This simply means that when you can predict from one piece of behavior what will happen next, you have detected a pattern. For example, let’s say you notice that every time your uncle comes home, he immediately heads to the kitchen to have a cup of tea. You observe this behavior once, twice, three times and yet again. The next time your uncle arrives at home, you predict he will head to the kitchen to have a cup of tea – and he does! Congratulations! You have detected a pattern.

Now you must apply this skill to detecting the patterns of excellence of outstanding performers.

4. Questioning

The quality of the information you can gather directly correlates to the quality of question you ask. Work on your questioning skills constantly? How can you become more precise? How can you become more involving? What specifically does the other person mean when she says “just feel the beat”? The Meta-Model offers simple and useful tools that will assist you in beefing up your questioning skills. I’ll talk about the Meta-Model in greater detail soon.

5. Reading eye accessing cues

If you haven’t yet come across information on eye accessing cues, do a search on Google for the phrase “eye accessing cues.” I believe that only NLP uses such terminology to describe this skill. Once you master reading eye accessing cues, you’ll effectively track the thinking process of those you interact with. You’ll be able to understand whether they’re accessing their visual, auditory or kinesthetic channel.

Of course these aren’t the only skills you must exercize to develop your NLP skills. These five answers offer a solid pointer as to where you should focus your attention. Practice! Every day!

This article will be very short and to the point but nevertheless one of the most important I will post. The distinctions you learn in this one will allow you to map out your areas of learning in NLP.

With that said, let’s get to our 4 areas:

1. NLP Modeling

This is THE main area of NLP, as I’ve constantly harped on since starting this blog. NLP You’re modeling any time you’re coding behavioral patterns into explicit strategies or models, more specifically the behavior of geniuses who produce outstanding results in a specific field. You can also be said to be modeling when you craft useful descriptions or maps of phenomena that you observe (for instance, eye movements tied to the use of a specific representational system).

2. NLP Design

As you become more proficient in modeling, you will inevitably be drawn to design. You are designing any time you’re using NLP variables to create new patterns with the intent of producing a specific result. For example, you might design a specific sequence of sentences that trigger specific sensory channels whose goal is to persuade a client to buy a house.

3. NLP Installation

Installation has to do with the actual “Programming” of NLP. You’re installing whenever you’re transferring, conditioning or programming a pattern in yourself or another person using anchoring, hypnotic language, chaining states or any combination of the former. For instance, you’re installing when you run someone through a swish pattern.

4. NLP Training

Training deals with teaching specific skills to a student. Either you’re training or you’re being trained. You’re training whenever you’re explaining, describing or exemplifying a specific pattern or model for a student to learn how apply that specific pattern or model. While writing or reading this blog can’t exactly be considered training, it would fall in this generic category. This is what we’ve been doing together all along.

Now, don’t take all of this for cash. These categories don’t really exist. I just made them up because they make learning NLP much easier. They help you to understand what’s going on and serve as a crutch to make sense of the patterning coming your way.

Ideally, as you progress in learning NLP, you’ll create your own categories (your models). Please share your models with other learners as it will enrich and stimulate your learning even more.