The NLP world can now count with an additional book: The BIG Book of NLP Technique, written by Shlomo Vaknin, of NLPweekly.com.
While it’s pretty cool to have a pattern encyclopedia like this one — although Michael Hall had already published one entitled “The Sourcebook of Magic“, I honestly don’t think the field needs more of these books right now.
Patterns are the end game of NLP. They are the leaves, if not the fruit, of the tree.
And we’re in dire need of more books that discuss the roots. The discipline, the methodology, the attitude, the history, the modeling, the epistemology, the ontology. Deep stuff that grounds practitioners into NLP fertility.
Actually, if you’re serious about learning and mastering NLP, that’s what you should delve into. Look for the Structure of Magic, Turtles All The Way Down, Whispering In The Wind, Phoenix, and others like that. Not necessarily for their content, although the content is great.
What you want is to absorb a bit of the maverick spirit that took over the guys in the early days to get them to figure out how geniuses produce results. Period.
If you can bolster that spirit in you, forget the patterns. You won’t care for them. You’ll be on a plane where you’ll come up with patterns spontaneously — the way geniuses do. And the best thing is, you won’t sound weird!!!! (The way most beginning NLP students and practitioners sound) You’ll communicate like a normal human being — something few trainers, like Michael Breen, can claim — albeit empowered with powerful communication tools.
Screw the patterns. They’re not nearly as important as the scientific tools, epistemology and spirit in getting you to the promised land.
