Thinking Out Loud

"The first great gift we can bestow on others is a good example." - Thomas Morell

Language is a powerful filter on our individual experience. Its part of the culture we’re born into and is difficult to change. It channels our thoughts in particular directions, making it easy to think in some ways it difficult to think and others.

Our language makes fine distinctions in some areas and not in others, depending on what’s important in the culture. For example, we have dozens of words for a hamburger and a multitude of different names for cars.

The world is as rich and varied as we choose to make it, and the language we inherit plays a crucial part in directing our attention to some parts of it and not others.

Our thoughts are not determined by language. While we can and do think in words, our thoughts are also a mixture of mental pictures, sounds and feelings. Knowing a language is knowing how to translate these into words.

The question we want to explore here is, what happens to our thoughts as we clothe them in language, and how faithfully are they preserved when our listeners undress them?

Language, of course, has its own ambiguities, for example the newspaper article headed: “Census Gives Facts On Men Broken Down By Age, Sex and Occupation.” Leaving these sorts of examples aside, words have different meanings to different people, because no two people have had the same experiences.

Words are anchors for sense experience, but the experience is not the reality, and the word is not the experience. Language is thus two moves from reality. To argue about the real meaning of a word is like arguing that one menu tastes better than the other because you prefer the food that is printed on it.

People who learn another language, nearly all its report, a radical change in the way they think about the world.

The Best is yet to come!

David Martin
Answer Concepts, S.A.
answerconcepts@msn.com

Where Do Your Values Come From?

"When you meet someone better than yourself, turn your thoughts to becoming his equal. When you meet someone not as good as you are, look within and examine your own self." - Confucius

You will have gathered values all your life, starting from the day you were born, and carried some of them into adulthood.

What are they? How did you get them? What influence are they having on you?

Inherited values are possibly the most common.

As a child, you'll have been influenced by what was important to your parents, siblings, extended family, teachers and group leaders. Later on, you will have become a little more selective, adapting the values of your chosen heroes from the world of sport, fashion, film, music, politics and so on.

By the time you reached adulthood your values were already forming a major part of your adult programs. For example, if you are always told to finish your food at meal times, you may now be eating much more than you need. If your parents were very academic you may put a high value on acquiring formal qualifications.

Compensatory values are formed when you go to the other extreme to compensate for something which didn't happen for you. For example, if you had a deprived childhood you may compensate for this by overindulging your own children.

Your own judgments, or the way you perceive your own experiences will have an impact on the value you place on. If you have ever been burgled or robbed you are likely to place a high value on security, which may or may not be appropriate in some circumstances.

On the surface these values may seem innocent enough. However, under closer inspection it is surprising, what a major role they play in determining the way your life pants out.

When you recognize an uncomfortable tone, a feeling that all is not well, examine your values to determine whether what you are doing is violating a deeply held value.

A significant part of one on one coaching involves eliciting and creating a hierarchy of your values. Keeping your values aligned with personal mission is critical for maintaining your motivation.

Send an email to answerconcepts@msn.com to schedule a one on one consultation on determining your most important values. Be sure to include your telephone number.

Show Up, Suit Up & Step Up! The Best is yet to come!

David Martin
Answer Concepts, S.A.
answerconcepts@msn.com

Being Congruent

"Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment." - Jim Rohn

Sometimes a change in behavior does not follow a change of thinking.

Have you ever been in a position where you have done something you didn’t want to do? Per haps you did it to please someone and then felt you had done yourself a disservice.

Or maybe you made a decision to lead a healthier lifestyle and take up running, aerobics, martial arts or yoga, but when the time came to attend a class or go to the gym you reverted to your previously conditioned bad habit. It’s at times like these you feel a misalignment.

This state of misalignment is what is known as “incongruence.” The behavior doesn’t match the level of desired or stated change. Deep inside you want to act a certain way, but when the time comes you resist the inner urge and say something like, “not this time” or “maybe next time.”

This is incongruence; it is not something that success thrives on. Success requires congruence and this means alignment on all levels from purpose, right down to behavior.

Only then can affect your environment in the way you really want. This is the process of building self-confidence – knowing that you have executed a change of mind and acted accordingly. Being able to recognize when you are being incongruent is the first step in making your desired change happen.

The feeling of incongruence doesn’t have to stem from a major life realization – it can happen during the course of a business meeting, a sales presentation or in a conversation with a partner. So whatever you’re doing, it pays to be able to be able to recognize feelings of incongruence.

When you take a close look at the times when you are being successful, chances are you are also feeling happy and confident. Of course you can imagine all sorts of bad things happening if you choose to, but when you’re engaged in the act of doing something superbly well is when you’ll be at your happiest.

There is an old saying, “if you have to ask yourself if you are happy then you are probably not.” Happiness is a state of mind, and you arrive at it through being congruent in your actions.

So now you know what comes next. It’s time for you to Show Up, Suit Up & Step Up!

The Best is yet to come!

David Martin
Answer Concepts, S.A.
answerconcepts@msn.com

NLP & Sales

"No tool is more beneficial than intelligence. No enemy is more harmful than ignorance." – unknown

Much has been written about sales and sales psychology. There are entire libraries of books to refer to when seeking to increase your skills in selling. I'm going to touch lightly on some of the possibilities using NLP to maximize your selling potential.

Selling is often misunderstood, like advertising. The popular definition describes advertising as the art of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it.

The whole purpose of sales, as the book "The One Minute Salesperson" puts very eloquently, is to help people get what they want. The more you help people get what they want, the more successful a salesperson you will be.

Many NLP ideas will work towards this purpose. Initial rapport is important. Anchoring resources will enable you to meet challenges in resourceful state. Feeling good about your work lets you do good work.

Future pacing can help to create the situations and feelings that you want, by mentally rehearsing them first. Setting the well formed outcomes is an invaluable skill in selling.

The same process that you applied in forming your own criteria during the development of your outcomes, can be used to help others become clear about what they want. This is a skill that is crucial in selling, because you can only satisfy the buyer if you know exactly what they want.

The idea of chunking up and chunking down can help you find out what people need. What are their criteria? What is important to them about a product?

Do they have an outcome in mind about what they are buying, and can you help them to realize it?

One of my clients is a partner in a top producing Real Estate office in Central America. You can stand on a street corner in Panama City, throw a rock and you're sure to get a Realtor. It's a super competitive market.

Several of the keys to her success are her ability to establish rapport with the customer, and her personal integrity and only selling a property that will help you achieve what you want to do with your real estate portfolio. Her company survives very well in the face of strong competition from major players.

In this model, she chunks up to find out the criteria and outcome of her customers, and then chunks down to exactly the specific property that best fits their need. Sometimes this involves a move sideways from what the customer initially asked for.

Sidestepping can be very useful to find out what a person likes about a product. What other good points? What are the points of difference that means one person chooses one product, versus another?

Exploring what a person truly wants, with emphasis in these directions, is a consistent pattern of the top producing salespeople. Congruence is essential. What a salesperson by or used the product he or she is selling? Does he or she you really believe in the advantage is that they promote?

Incongruence can leak out in tonality and posture, and make the buyer an easy.

Professional sales can be fun. Understanding and applying the skills and strategies from NLP to sales can turn an ordinary sales position into a proverbial gold mine.

Mastering NLP means becoming a master of oneself. The Best is yet to come!

David Martin
Answer Concepts, S.A.
answerconcepts@msn.com

NLP & Coaching

"When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn." - Harriet Beecher Stowe

Coaching is about change, about making changes. A coach is a magician of change, who takes the cards you have it helps you to play your hand better or sometimes to even change the rules of the game.

Changes come from dreams of something better. When we have achieved one dream, we look forward and dream again. There is always the dream beyond the dream.

It's about bringing your dreams into reality and this is what a coach does for you. Coaching engages your imagination and at the same time, is immensely practical in the real world. It deals with goals and achievements.

It links your world of dreaming with your world of reality.

A coach is not only a magician of change, but also a coach can be a freedom fighter.

There are two aspects of freedom. The first is freedom from something and the second freedom to do something. Coaches work on both types of freedom. They help clients released themselves from unsatisfying or unpleasant circumstances. Then they open up choices and possibilities.

If you're engaged in a fight for freedom, who are your enemies? What stops the changes that you want to make?

Mostly, your enemy is Habit habitual actions, habitual thinking. Habits that have dug themselves in over time and are hard to remove. All habits accomplish something of value, otherwise they would not become habits in the first place. But times change and our habits may no longer serve our purpose.

Habits are maintained in numerous ways. We arrange our surroundings to support them. Other people expect us to behave in a predictable way and so treat us in a predictable way, reinforcing our habits.

Habits are like the cruise control on your car - they are set for a certain speed in a certain direction. Then the driver does not have to pay attention. To change the speed and direction, the driver does have to pay attention. Once habits are changed, the new habit will take them in a different direction down a different road.

A coach engages the habits that are holding the client back, sometimes by guerrilla warfare, sometimes by direct assault. Coaching will change the direction of your life. It may only be one small change at a time, but small changes at up.

Think of your life is a journey down the road. You don't know where you are heading, but the scenery is pleasant. After a while you begin to see that your life is being recycled. You see that the same thing comes around again.

Then you come to a branch in the road. Actually, there have been branches all along the road, but you haven't noticed that. Or, if you have, you were comfortable on that road, so you ignored them.

However now the game is different, you have a coach to alert you to the possibilities of change. You change direction, ever so slightly. You take a new road, one that diverges just a little from your original.

The first temptation maybe to think, "Huh! Hardly worth doing." It may be true that the change is only a small one in the short term. But the longer you maintain that change, further away from your original road you will travel. After a year, you will be an entirely different country. This will be so even if you never make another change.

The larger the change in direction, the shorter time it will take to come to new scenery. However, even the slightest change will take you on a different journey if you persist. You simply need to keep on the new track, even though the old one may call you back with seductive promises of familiar comforts.

"The devil you know is better than the devil you don't know." But is there a devil at all on the new road?

What is the role of a coach in this process? A coach does three things:

1. Shows you the track you are on
2. Points out the choices and helps you take the new road
3. Helps you persist in maintaining that change

In general, life is a series of small decisions. A big change is often many little changes saved up for the right moment. Each decision we make either keeps us on the same comfortable track or takes us toward what we truly want.

Coaching helps you to decide and that decision is uniquely yours.

The Best is yet to come!

David Martin.
Answer Concepts, S.A.
answerconcepts@msn.com

The Art of Negotiation - NLP Style

"There are no hopeless situations; there are only people who have grown hopeless about them." - Clare Boothe

Negotiation is communicating for the purpose of getting a joint decision, one that can be congruently agreed on by both sides. It is the process of getting what you want from others by giving to others what they want, and it takes place in any meeting or interests conflict.

Would that it were as easy to do as it is to describe. There is a balance in the dance between your integrity, values and outcomes, and those of the other participants. The dance of communication goes back and forth, some interests and values will be shared, some opposed.

In this sense, negotiation permeates everything we do. We are dealing here with the process of negotiation, rather than what you are actually negotiating over.

Negotiation often takes place about scarce resources. The key skill in negotiation is to dovetail outcomes: to fit them together so that everyone involved gets what they want (although that may not be the same as their demand at the beginning of the negotiation). The presupposition is that the best way to achieve your outcome is to make sure that everyone involved achieve theirs too.

The opposite of dovetail outcomes is regulation, or other people's wants are disregarded. There are four dragons that lie in wait for those that practice manipulation: remorse, resentment, recrimination and revenge.

When you negotiate by seeking to dovetail outcomes the other people involved become your allies, not your opponents. If the negotiation can be framed as allies solving a common problem, the problem is already partially solved. Dovetailing is finding that area of overlap.

Separate the people from the problem. It's worth remembering that most negotiations involve people with whom you have, or want, and ongoing relationship. Whether you are negotiating over a sale, salary or a holiday, if you get what you want at the other person's expense, or they think you have pulled a fast one, you will lose goodwill that may be worth much more in the long run than success in that one meeting.

You will be negotiating because you have different outcomes. You need to explore these differences, because they will point to areas where you can make trade-offs to mutual advantage. Interests that conflict at one level may be resolved if you can find ways of each party getting their outcome higher level.

This is where chunking up enables you to find and make use of alternative higher-level outcomes. The initial outcome is only one way of achieving a higher level outcome.

For example, in a negotiation over salary (initial outcome), more money is only one way of obtaining a better quality of life (higher-level outcome). There may be other ways of achieving a better quality of life, if money is not available - longer holidays, or more flexible working hours, for example. Chunking up builds bridges across points of difference.

People may want the same thing for different reasons. For example, imagine two people quarreling over a pumpkin. They both want it. However, when they explain exactly why they want it, you find that one wants the fruit to make a pie, and the other wants the rind to make a Halloween mask.

In reality, they are not fighting over the same thing at all. Many conflicts disappear when analyzed this way. This is a small example, but imagine all the different possibilities there are many apparent disagreements.

If there is a stalemate, and a person refuses to consider a particular step, you can ask the question, "what would have to happen for this not to be a problem?" or "under what circumstances would you be prepared to give way on this?"

This is a creative application of the As If frame in the answer can often break through the impasse. You're asking the person who made the plot to think away around it.

Set your limits before you start. It is confusing and self-defeating to negotiate with yourself when you need to be negotiating with someone else. You need what Roger Fisher and Williams Ury in their marvelous book on negotiation, "Getting to Yes," called BATNA, or Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement.

What will you do if despite all the efforts of both parties you cannot agree? Having a reasonable BATNA gives you more leverage in the negotiation and greater sense of security.

Focus on interests and intentions rather than behavior. It's easy to get drawn into winning points and condemning behavior, but nobody really wins in these situations.

A wise and durable agreement will take in community and ecological interests. A mutually satisfying solution will be based on a dovetailing of interests, a win/win, not a win/lose model. So what is important is the problem and not the people, the intentions not the behavior, the interests of the parties not their positions.

It's also essential to have an evidence procedure that is independent of the parties involved. If the negotiation is framed as a joint search for a solution, it will be governed by principles and not pressure. Yield only to principle, not pressure.

There are some specific ideas to keep in mind while negotiating. Do not make a counterproposal immediately after the other side has made a proposal. This is precisely the time when they are least interested in your offering. Discuss their proposal first. If you disagree, give the reasons first. Saying you disagree immediately is a good way to make the other person's deaf to your next few sentences.

All good negotiators use a lot of questions. In fact, two good negotiators will often start negotiating over the number of questions. "I've answered three of your questions, now you answer some of mine..."

Questions give you time to think and they are an alternative to disagreement. It's far better to get the other person to see the weakness in his position by asking him questions about it, rather than by telling him the weaknesses you perceive.

Good negotiators also explicitly signaled their questions. They will say something like, "May I ask you a question about that?" By doing so they focus the attention of the meeting on the answer and make it difficult for the person questioned to evade the point if he has agreed to answer the question.

It would seem that the more reason to give for your point of view, the better. Phrases like "the weight of the argument" seem to suggest it is good to pile arguments on the scales until it comes down on your side. In fact the opposite is true.

The fewer the reasons you give, the better, because a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. A weak argument dilutes a strong one, and if you are drawn into defending it, you are on poor ground.

Beware of a person who says, "Is that your only argument?" If you have a good one, say, "Yes". Do not get drawn into giving them another, necessarily weaker one. The follow-up may be, "Is that all?" If you take the bait you'll just give him ammunition. Hopefully, if the negotiation is framed as a joint search for a solution, this sort of trick will not occur.

Finally, you can use the As If frame and play the devil's advocate to test the agreement ("No, I don't really think this is going to work, it all seems too flimsy to me..."). If other people agree with you, you know that there is still work to be done. If they argue, all is well.

Negotiation can be tricky, and it can also be a lot of fun. Use the above checklists as a guide. Study, practice and adapt these prescribed strategies and make them your own.

Mastery starts with you. As I've said many times before, Master yourself and you'll Master your world.

The Best is yet to come!

David Martin.
Answer Concepts, S.A.
answerconcepts@msn.com

What Are Metaprograms?

"People who say that life is not worthwhile are really saying that they themselves have no personal goals which are worthwhile. Get yourself a goal worth working for. Better still, get yourself a project. Always have something ahead of you to look forward to...to work for and hope for." - Dr. Maxwell Maltz

Metaprograms are perceptual filters that we habitually act on. There is so much information we could attend to and most gets ignored as we have at most nine chunks of conscious attention available.

Metaprograms are patterns we use to determine what information gets through. For example, think of a glass full of water. Now imagine drinking half of it. Is the glass half full or half empty?

Both, of course, it's a matter of viewpoint. Some people notice what is positive about a situation, what is actually their others notice what is missing. Both ways of looking are useful in each person will favor one view or the other.

Metaprograms are systematic and habitual, and we do not usually question them if they serve us reasonably well. The patterns may be the same across contexts, but few people are consistently habitual, so metaprograms are likely to change with a change of context. What holds our attention in a work environment may be different from what we pay attention to at home.

So metaprograms filter the world to help us create our own map. You can notice other people's metaprograms both through their language and behavior. Because metaprograms filter experience and we pass on our experience with language, certain patterns of language are typical of certain metaprograms.

Metaprogram Summary

1. Proactive – Reactive
The proactive person initiates action. The reactive person waits for others to initiate action and for things to happen. He will take time to analyze and understand first.

2. Towards – Away
The towards person stays focused on his or her own goals and is motivated by achievement. The away person focuses on problems to be avoided rather than goals to be achieved.

3. Internal – External
The internal person has internal standards and decides for him or herself. The external person takes standards from outside and needs direction and instruction to come from others.

4. Options – Procedures
Options people want choices and are good at developing alternatives. Procedures people are good at following set courses of procedures. They are not action-motivated and are good at following a fixed series of steps.

5. General – Specific
General people are most comfortable dealing with large chunks of information. They do not pay attention to details. Specific people pay attention to details and meets small chunks to make sense of a larger picture.

6. Match – Mismatch
People who match will mostly notice points of similarity in a comparison. People who mismatch will notice differences when making a comparison.

7. Convincer Patterns
Channel:
Visual: Need to see the evidence.
Hear: Need to be told.
Read: Need to read.
Do: Need to act.

Mode:
Number of Examples: Need to have the information a certain number of times before becoming convinced.
Automatic: Need only partial information.
Consistent: Need to have the information every time to be convinced and then only for that example.
Period of Time: Need to have the information remained consistent for some period of time.

Metaprograms are not another way of pigeon-holing people. The important questions are: can you be aware of your own patterns? What choices can you give others? They are useful guiding patterns. Learn to identify only one pattern at a time. Learn to use the skills one at a time and only use them if they are useful.

The tools are available to make rapid, lasting changes in your life, the choice is uniquely yours as to what you do with them.

The Best is yet to come!

David Martin
Answer Concepts, S.A.
answerconcepts@msn.com

Calibrating the State

"Many a false step is made by standing still." - Chinese Proverb

Calibration is the NLP word that means recognizing when people are in different states. This is a skill that we all have and use in our everyday lives, and one that's well worth developing and refining.

You distinguish the subtly different expressions as others experience different memories, and different states. For example, when someone remembers a frightening experience, his lips may become thinner, his skin Taylor and his breathing shallower.

Whereas when he remembers a pleasurable experience, his lips are likely to be fuller, the skin color more flushed and his breathing will be deeper, with softening of the facial muscles.

Often are calibration is so poor that we only notice someone is upset when he starts to cry. We rely too much on people telling us verbally how they feel, instead of using our eyes and ears. We don't want to calibrate from a punch on the nose to know that the person is angry; nor do we want to hallucinate all sorts of possibilities from a twitch of an eyebrow.

There's an exercise in NLP training that you may like to try with a friend. Ask your friend to think of the person he likes very much. As he does this, notice his eye position, and the angle of his head.

Also notice his breathing, is it deep or shallow, fast or slow, high or low? Notice too the difference in facial muscle tone, skin color, lip size and tone of voice.

Pay attention to the subtle signs that are normally disregarded. They are the outward expression of inner thoughts. They are those thoughts in the physical dimension.

Now, ask your friend to think of someone he dislikes. Notice the difference in these signs. Ask your friend to think of one, than the other, until you are sure you can detect the differences in his physiology.

In NLP terms, you have now calibrated these two states of mind. You know what they look like. Ask your friend to think of one of the people, but without telling you which one. You'll know which one it is by reading the physical cues you've already identified.

It will seem as if you have the ability to read minds...

This is a skill that can be refined. We have a tendency to calibrate unconsciously. For example, if you ask a loved one whether he or she would like to go out for a meal, you will know intuitively, immediately, before they open their mouth what the answer will be.

The "yes" or "no" is the very last step in the thought process. We can't help but respond with body, mind and language because of the deep connection between the three.

You may have had the experience of talking to someone in getting an intuition that he or she was lying. You have probably calibrated this unconsciously, and you got the feeling without knowing why. The more you practice calibration, the better you will become adept. Some differences between states will be slight, and some will be unmistakable.

As you practice, subtle changes will become easier to detect. The changes, no matter how small, were always there. As your senses become sharper you'll be able to detect them with greater precision.

Master yourself, master your world - the Best is yet to come!

David Martin.
Answer Concepts, S.A.
answerconcepts@msn.com

Eliciting Emotions

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born." - Anaïs Nin

Elicitation is the word used in NLP to describe the process of guiding someone into a particular state. This is an everyday skill under a different label; we are all greatly practiced in putting people into different moods, or bringing them out of moods.

We do it all the time by our words, tonality and gestures. However there are times we don't elicit what we want. How many times have you heard a phrase like, "What's the matter with him. All I said was..."

The simplest way to elicit an emotional state is to ask the person to remember a past time when he was experiencing that emotion. The more expressive you are, the more expressiveness you will elicit. If your voice tone, words, facial expression and body posture match the response you're asking for, you’re more likely to get it.

All of your efforts get results. If you are trying to put someone in a calm resourceful state, it's useless talking in a loud, fast tone of voice, breeding quickly and shallowly, and making lots of fidgety movements. Despite your soothing words, the other person will become more anxious.

You need to know what to say. So if you want to lead someone into a confident state, you ask him to remember a particular time when he was confident. You speak clearly, in a confident tone of voice, breathe evenly, with your head up and your posture direct. You act "confident". Remember this; if your words are not congruent with your body language and voice tone, people tend to follow the non-verbal message.

It's important also that the person remembers the experience as if inside it, not watching dissociated from the outside. Being associated in this situation will bring back the feelings more fully.

Imagine watching someone else eating your favorite fruit. Now imagine yourself eating the fruit. Which is the more tasteful experience? To elicit your own states, put yourself back in the experience as fully and as vividly as possible.

This is yet another avenue to travel in discovering where people are, before you take them where you want them to go.

The Best is yet to come!

David Martin.
Answer Concepts, S.A.
answerconcepts@msn.com

Physiology & Emotional Freedom

"Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one's better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a calculated risk, and to act." - Dr. Maxwell Maltz

When people are emotionally and physically low, we often say that they are in "an awful state." In the same way, we recognize that to make the most of a challenge we must be "in the right state of mind."

What is a state of mind? Quite simply it is all the thoughts, emotions and physiology that we express at the moment; the mental pictures, sounds, feelings and all the patterns of physical posture and breathing. Mind and body are completely interconnected, so our thoughts immediately influence our physiology, and vice versa.

Our state of mind changes continually and this is one of the few things about it we can rely on. When you change your state, your whole world changes too (or seems to). We are usually more conscious of our emotional state than of our physiology, posture, gesture and breathing patterns. In fact, emotions are often considered to be beyond conscious control, they are the visible tip of the iceberg.

We do not see the whole physiology and thought process that lies underneath and supports the emotions. These are the submerged nine tenths of the iceberg. To try to influence the emotions without changing state is as futile as trying to make the iceberg disappear by sawing the top off. More will simply surface, unless you spend an inordinate amount of energy holding it underwater, and this is what we often do; with drugs or willpower.

For us, the mind leads, and the body follows obedient. Thus habitual emotions can be stamped onto a person’s face and posture, because the person does not notice how the emotions mold his or her physiology.

Try this experiment. Take a moment to think of some enjoyable experience, a time when you felt really good. When you have thought of one, think yourself back into that experience. Spend a minute or two re-experiencing it as fully as you can.

As you enjoy these pleasant feelings, look around you and notice what you see and what sounds you are hearing as you re-live this memory.

Notice how you feel, and when you are ready, return to the present.

Notice the impact this has on your present state, especially your posture and your breathing.

Past experiences are not gone for ever; they can help you feel good in the present. Although the sights and sounds of the past are gone, when we mentally re-create them the actual feeling is still as real and as tangible as it was then. So regardless of what you were feeling before you read this, you have just put yourself in a more resourceful state.

Now, by contrast, think back to a slightly uncomfortable past experience. When one comes to mind, imagine yourself back in it again.

Back in that situation, what do you see?

What are you hearing?

Notice how you feel.

Do not stay with us experience for very long, return to the present and notice the effect this had on you. Become aware of how you feel after this experience compared with how you felt after the previous one. Notice also, your different posture and breathing pattern.

Now change your emotional state. Do some kind of physical activity, move your body and switch your attention from the memory you just accessed to something completely different. Look out of the window, jump up and down, run to the other side of the room and touch the wall, or bend down and touch your toes. Pay attention to the physical sensations of moving and to what you sense in the here and now.

This is known is changing state were breaking state in NLP terms, and is worth doing whenever you notice yourself feeling negative or unresourceful. Whenever you remember unpleasant memories and access unresourceful states, your entire body takes up these negative states and holds them as patterns of muscle tone, posture and breathing.

These physically stored memories can contaminate teacher experiences for minutes or hours. We all know what it is like "get out of the wrong side of the bed." People who suffer depression have unconsciously mastered the ability to maintain an unresourceful state for long periods.

Others have mastered the ability to change their emotional state at will, creating for themselves and emotional freedom that transforms the quality of their lives. They fully experience the emotional ups and downs of life. But they learn, move on, and not dwell on emotional pain unnecessarily.

As we go through life, we continually move through different emotional states, sometimes quickly, sometimes more gradually. For example, you may be feeling quite low and a friend telephones with some good news. Your spirits lighten. Or maybe it's a bright sunny day and you open your mail to find an unexpectedly large bill. Mental clouds can cover a real sun.

We can choose to influence our states, rather than simply to react to what happens on the outside. In the past few moments, you have felt good, then uncomfortable, then... however you feel now. And nothing has actually happened in the outside world. You have done this all yourself.

Your mind is your most powerful ally, how you choose to use it is uniquely up to you.

Joining me in creating a revolution for your mind, because the Best is yet to come!

David Martin
Answer Concepts, S.A.
answerconcepts@msn.com

Meetings & NLP

"Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone." - Thomas Carlyle

Although the context described here will be based on business meetings, the patterns apply equally to any context where two or more people meet for a common purpose. After you read this and come back for review, think of each pattern in whatever context is appropriate to you.

NLP has a lot to offer in a business context. The greatest resource of any business is the people in. The more effective the people become, the more effective the business will be.

A business is a team of people working towards a common goal. Their success will depend mainly on how well the deal with these key points:

a) Goal Setting
b) Communicating effectively within the group and to the outside world.
c) Reading their environment accurately. Keeping customer needs and responses in mind.
d) Commitment to success: congruence.

The resourcefulness, flexibility, perceptual filters, presentation and communication skills of the individuals in the business determine how successful it is. NLP addresses the precise skills that create success in the business world.

NLP goes to the heart of the business organization by refining and developing the effectiveness of each individual member carrying out these tasks. Business meetings are one place many of these skills will come together. We start by dealing with cooperative meetings were most people will probably agree about the outcome. Meetings where there are apparently conflicting outcomes will be dealt with under negotiation.

Meetings are purposeful and the purpose of co-operative meetings is likely to be explicit. For example, meeting with colleagues once a week to exchange information, make decisions and allocate responsibility. Other examples will be planning next year's budget, a performance appraisal, or a project review.

As a participant in an important meeting, you need to be in a strong, resourceful state, and congruent about the part you have to play. Anchors can help, both before a meeting to get you in a good state, and during a meeting if things start to go awry.

Remember other people will be anchors for you, and you are an anchor to others. The room itself may be an anchor. An office is often a place full of the trappings of personal power and success of the person behind the desk. You may need all the resources you can get.

The membership and agenda of the meeting need to be settled in advance. You must be clear about your outcome. You also need an evidence procedure: how will you know if you achieve it. You need to be very clear about what you would want to see, hear and feel. If you have no outcome for the meeting, you're probably wasting your time.

The basic format for successful meetings resembles the "Elevator Seminar", discussed in an earlier newsletter:

1. Know what you want.
2. Know what others want.
3. Find ways in which you can all get it.

This seems simple and obvious, but it is often lost in the rough and tumble, and step three may be difficult, if there are widely conflicting interests.

When the meeting starts, get consensus on a shared outcome. It is important that all agree on an outcome for the meeting, some common issues to be dealt with. When you have the outcome, anchor it. The easiest way to do this is to use a key phrase, and write it up on a board or flip chart.

You will also need to agree on the evidence that will show that the outcome has been achieved. How will everyone know when they have it? Use the evidence frame.

Once again, rapport is an essential step. You will need to establish rapport with the other participants, if you do not have it already, by using non-verbal skills and matching language. Be sensitive to any incongruence in any of the participants about the shared outcome. There may be hidden agendas, and it is better to know about these at the outset, rather than later.

During the discussion, the evidence, ecology, backtrack, and As If frames may be useful. One problem that besets meetings is that they go off track. Before you know it, the time is up and the decision or outcome is not been achieved. Many a meeting has gone off at a tempting tangent and ended up in a cul-de-sac.

The outcome frame can be used to challenge the relevance of any contribution in so keep the meeting on track. Suppose a colleague makes a contribution to the discussion that does not seem to relate to the mutually agreed outcome. It may be interesting, informative and true, but not relevant.

You can say something like, "I have trouble seeing how that could bring us nearer to our outcome; can you tell us how it fits into this meeting?" You can anchor this relevancy challenge visually with a hand or head movement. The speaker must show how his contribution is relevant. If it is not, then valuable time is saved.

The contribution may be important in another context, in which case recognize it as such, and agree that it be dealt with at another time. Close and summarize each issue as it arises, fitting it into the agreed outcome or agreed to defer it to another meeting.

If someone is disrupting a meeting or leading it seriously off-track, you might say something like, "I appreciate that you feel strongly about this issue and it is clearly important to you. However, we agreed that this is not the place to discuss it. Can we meet later to settle this?" Calibrate for congruence when you make these sorts of proposals.

Calibration may tell you that X lights a cigarette when she is happy with the outcome. Y always looks down when he objects (so you ask what he would need to feel okay about the issue). Z bites his nails when unhappy. There are so many ways that you can be aware on a deeper level how the meeting is progressing and sidestep trouble before it arises.

At the close of the meeting, use the backtrack frame and get agreement on progress in the outcome. Clearly defined and get agreement on what actions are to be taken and by whom.

Sometimes there is not a full agreement, so the close is dependent on certain actions. So you may say something like, "If this happened and if X did this and if we persuade Y that this is all right, then we proceed?" This is known as a conditional close.

Anchor the agreement with keywords and future pace. What will remind the participants to do what they have agreed? Project the agreement out of the room and make sure it is connected to other independent events that can act as signals to remind the people to take the agreed action.

Research has shown that we remember things best when they occur in the first or last few minutes of the meeting. Take advantage of this and place important points at the beginning and the end of the meeting.

Meeting Format Summary

A) Before the meeting:

1. Set your outcome(s) in the evidence that will let you know that you have reached it (them).
2. Determine the membership and agenda for the meeting.

B) During the meeting:

1. Be in a resourceful state. Use resource anchors if necessary.
2. Establish rapport.
3. Get consensus on a shared outcome any evidence for it.
4. Use the relevancy challenge to keep the meeting on track.
5. If information is not available, use the As If frame.
6. Use of the backtrack frame to summarize key agreements.
7. Keep moving towards your outcome, by using the Meta Model or any other tools needed.

C) Closing the meeting:

1. Check for congruence and agreement of the other participants.
2. Summarize the actions to be taken. Use the backtrack frame to take advantage of the fact that we remember endings more easily.
3. Test agreement if necessary.
4. Use a conditional close if necessary.
5. Future pace the decisions.

Personal Mastery through NLP - Your Best is yet to come!

David Martin.
Answer Concepts, S.A.
answerconcepts@msn.com

Frames - Giving Things Meaning

"In the long run you hit only what you aim at. Therefore, though you should fail immediately, you had better aim at something high." - Henry David Thoreau

Framing in NLP refers to the way we put things into different contexts to give them different meanings; what we make important at that moment.

Here are five useful ways of framing events. Some have been implicit in other aspects of NLP, and it is worth making them explicit here.

OUTCOME FRAME

This is evaluating in terms of outcomes. Firstly, know your own outcome, and make sure it is well-formed. Is it positive? Is it under your control? Is it specific enough and the right size? What is the evidence? Do you have the resources to carry it out? How does it fit with your other outcomes?

Secondly, you may need to elicit outcomes from any other people involved, to help them get clear what they want, so you can all move forward. Thirdly, there is dovetailing outcomes. Once you have your outcome any other person's outcome, you can see how they fit together. You may need to negotiate over any differences between them.

Lastly, by keeping outcomes in mind, you can notice if you are moving towards them. If you are not, you need to do something different.

The outcome frame is an extremely useful pair of spectacles with which to view your actions. In business, if executives do not have a clear view of their outcome, they have no firm basis for decisions and no way of judging and action is useful or not.

ECOLOGY FRAME

Again this has been dealt with explicitly with outcomes and implicitly in this newsletter, the website and other areas of NLP training. How do my actions fit into the wider systems of family, friends, professional interests? Is it expressive of my overall integrity as a human being? And doesn't respect the integrity of the other people involved?

Congruence is the way our unconscious mind lets us know about ecology, and is a prerequisite of acting with wisdom.

EVIDENCE FRAME

This concentrates on clear and specific details. In particular, how will you know when you have attained your outcome? What will you see, hear and feel? This forms part of the outcome frame, and is sometimes useful to apply on its own, especially to criteria.

AS IF FRAME

This frame is a way of creative problem-solving by pretending that something has happened in order to explore possibilities. Start with the words, "if this happened..." or, "let's suppose that..." There are many ways this can be useful.

For example, if a key person is missing from a meeting, you can ask, "if X were here, what would she do?" If someone knows X well the answers they come up with can be very helpful. (Always check back with X later if important decisions are to be made).

Another way of using the idea is to project yourself six months or a year into a successful future, and then looking back, ask yourself, "What were the steps that we took then, that led us to this state now?" From this perspective, you can often discover important information that you can't see easily in the present, because you're too close to it.

Another way is to take the worst case that could happen. What would you do if the worst happened? What options and plans do you have? "As if" can be used to explore the worst case as a specific example of a more general and very useful process known as "Downside Planning." (this is a well known process insurance companies used to make a great deal of money).

BACKTRACK FRAME

This frame is simple. You recapitulate the information you have up to that point using the other person's key words and tonalities in the backtrack. This is what makes it different to a summary, which often systematically distorts the other person's words.

Backtrack is useful to open a discussion, to update new people in a group, and to check agreement and understanding of the participants in the meeting. It helps build rapport and is invaluable anytime you get lost; it clarifies the way forward.

Many messages seem to come to agreement, but the participants go away with totally different ideas about what was agreed. Backtrack can keep you on course towards the desired outcome.

As you can see from these five examples, the tools and strategies available via NLP can assist you to become a Master of communications.

Master yourself; Master your world. The Best is yet to come!

David Martin.
Answer Concepts, S.A.
answerconcepts@msn.com

Preferred Representational Systems

"This is as true in everyday life as it is in battle: We are given one life, and the decision is ours whether to wait for circumstances to make up our mind or whether to act and, in acting, to live." - Omar Bradley

We use all our senses externally all the time, although we will pay attention to one since more than another depending on what we are doing. In an art gallery we'll use mostly our eyes, in a concert, our ears.

What is surprising is that when we think, we tend to favor one, perhaps two representational systems regardless of what we are thinking about. We are able to use them all, however by the age of 11 or 12 we already have clear preferences.

Many people can make clear mental images and think mainly in pictures. Others find this viewpoint difficult. They may talk to themselves a good deal, while others base their actions mostly on their feel for a situation.

When a person tends to use one internal sense habitually, this is called their preferred or primary system in NLP; they are likely to be more discriminating and be able to make finer distinctions in this system and the others.

This means some people are naturally better, or "talented" at particular tasks or skills. They have learned to become more adept at using one or two internal senses and these have become smooth and practiced, running without effort or awareness.

Sometimes a representational system is not so well developed and this makes certain skills more difficult. For example, music is a difficult art without the ability to hear sounds internally.

No system is better in an absolute sense than another, it depends what you want to do.

Athletes need a well-developed kinesthetic awareness and it's difficult to be a successful architect without a facility for making clear, constructed mental pictures. One skill shared by outstanding performers in any field is to be able to move easily through all the representational systems and use the most appropriate one for the task at hand.

Different psychotherapies even show a representation system bias. The bodywork therapies are primarily kinesthetic; psychoanalysis is predominantly verbal and auditory. Art therapy and Jungian symbolism are examples of work visually-based therapies.

So whether you use pictures, sounds, or feelings. It's important for you to understand the power of Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic representational systems. Doors that once seemed locked will begin to open, exposing exciting new worlds.

The Best is yet to come!

David Martin.
Answer Concepts, S.A.
answerconcepts@msn.com

PS – for a one on one exploration of what NLP can do for you in your pursuit of excellence, email me at answerconcepts@msn.com. Include your phone number and I will call you to schedule.

Be Congruent in Your Pursuit of Excellence

"The trouble with life isn't that there is no answer, it's that there are so many answers." - Ruth Benedict

We all live in the same world and because we make different models of it, we come into conflict. Two people can look at the same event, hear the same words and make completely different meanings.

From these models and meanings we get the rich plurality of human values, politics, religions, interests and motives. This particular section explores negotiation and meetings to reconcile conflicting interests and some of the ways these are being successfully used in the world of business.

Some of the most important parts of our map are the beliefs and values that shape our lives and give them purpose. They govern what we do and may bring us into conflict with others. Values define what is important to us; conflict starts if we insist that what is important to us should be important to others too.

Sometimes our own values coexist and easily, and we have to make difficult choices. Do I tell a lie for a friend? Should I take the boring job with more money, or the exciting work is poorly paid?

Different parts of us embody different values, followed different interests, have different intentions, and so come into conflict. Our ability to go for an outcome is radically altered by how we reconcile and creatively manage these different parts of ourselves.

It's rare to be able to go wholeheartedly or completely congruently for an outcome, and the larger the outcome, the more parts of ourselves will be drawn in and the more possibility of conflicting interests. Through exploration we'll learn how to resolve some of these internal conflicts.

Internal congruence gives strength and personal power. We are congruent when all our verbal and non-verbal behavior supports our specified outcome. All parts are in harmony, and we have free access to our resources.

Example - small children are nearly always congruent. When they want something they want it with their whole being.

Being in harmony does not mean all the parts are playing the same tune. In an orchestra, the different instruments blend together, the total tune is more than any one instrument could produce on its own and it is the difference between them which gives the music its color, interest and harmony. So when we are congruent, our beliefs, values and interests act together to give us the energy to pursue our aims.

When you make a decision and you are congruent about it, then you know you can proceed with every chance of success. The question becomes, how do you know when you are congruent?

Here is a simple exercise to identify your internal congruence signal:

IDENTIFYING YOUR CONGRUENCE SIGNAL

Remember a time when you really wanted something…that particular treat, present or experience you really looked forward to. As you think back and associate to that time and event, you can begin to recognize what it feels like to be congruent.

Become familiar with this feeling so that you can use it in the future to know if you're fully congruent about an outcome. Notice how you feel, notice the submodalities of the experience as you think back to it. Can you find some internal feeling, sight or sound that will unmistakably define that you are congruent?

Incongruence is mixed messages - an instrument out of tune in orchestra, a splash of color that does not fit into the picture. Mixed internal messages will project an ambiguous message to the other person and result muddled actions and self-sabotage.

When you face a decision and are incongruent about it, this represents invaluable information from your unconscious mind. It is saying that it is not wise to proceed and that it is time to think, to gather more information, to create more choices, or explore other outcomes. The question here is, how do you know when you are incongruent?

Do the following exercise to increase your awareness of your incongruent signal:

IDENTIFYING YOUR INCONGRUENCE SIGNAL

Think back to a time when you had reservations about some plan. You may have felt was a good idea, but something told you it could lead to trouble. Or you could see yourself doing it but still got that uncertain feeling.

As you think about the reservations you had, there will be a certain feeling in part of your body, maybe some particular image or sound that lets you know that you are not fully committed. This is your incongruent signal - make yourself familiar with it. It's a good friend, and it can save you a lot of money.

You may want to check it for several different experiences in which you know you had doubts or reservations. Being able to detect incongruence in yourself will save you from making many mistakes.

Used car salesmen have a poor reputation for congruence. Incongruence also comes out in Freudian slips; someone who extols "state of the ‘ark’ technology" is clearly not truly impressed with the software.

Detecting incongruence in others is essential if you are to deal with them sensitively and effectively. For example, a teacher explaining an idea will ask if the student understands. The student may say, "Yes," but her tone of voice or expression may contradict the words.

In selling, a salesman who does not detect and deal with incongruence and the buyer is unlikely to make a sale, or if he does, he will generate buyer's remorse, and no further business.

The paths that we can take via NLP are many. This newsletter, "the answer" is designed to provide you with an introduction as to which path is best for you. For a one-on-one exploration into the benefits of NLP, contact me directly at 505-821-0157 or via e-mail - answerconcepts@msn.com.

Remember, the best is yet to come!

David Martin
Answer Concepts, S.A.
answerconcepts@msn.com

What Are Values?

"If you borrow $2,000 dollars from a bank and can't pay it back, you have a problem, but if you borrow a million and can't repay, they have a problem." – Anonymous

Our values powerfully affect whether we are congruent about an outcome. Values embody what is important to us and are supported by beliefs. We acquire them, like beliefs, from our experiences and from modeling family and friends.

Values are related to our identity, we really care about them; they are the fundamental principles we live by. To act against our values will make us incongruent. Values give us motivation and direction; they are the important places, the capital cities, in our map of the world.

The most lasting influential values are freely chosen and not imposed. They are chosen with awareness of the consequences, and carry many positive feelings.

Yet values are usually unconscious and we seldom explore them in any clear way. To rise in the company you'll need to adopt company values. If these are different to your own this could lead to incongruence. A company may only be employing half a person if the key worker has values that clash with his work.

NLP uses the word criteria to describe those values that are important in a particular context. Criteria are less general and wide-ranging than values. Criteria are the reasons you do something and what you get out of it.

They are usually nominalizations like wealth, success, fun, health, ecstasy, love, learning, etc. Our criteria govern why it we work, we work for, when we marry (if at all), how we make relationships and where we live. They determine the car we drive, the clothes we buy or where we go for a meal out.

Pacing another person's values or criteria will build good rapport. If you pace his body but mismatches values, you are unlikely to get rapport. Pacing other people's values does not mean you have to agree with them, but it shows you respect them.

Make a list of the 10 most important values in your life. You can do this alone or with a friend to help you. You can elicit your answers by asking questions like:

What's important to me?
What truly motivates me?
What has to be truth for me?

Criteria and values must be expressed positively. Avoiding ill health might be a possible value, but it would be better to phrase it as good health. You may find it fairly easy to come up with the values that motivate.

Criteria are likely to be nominalizations, and you need the Meta-Model to untangle them. What do they mean in real, practical terms? The way to find this out is by asking for the evidence that lets you know, the criterion has been met. It may not always be easy to find the answers, but the question to ask is:

How would you know, if you got them?

If one of your criteria is learning, what are you going to learn about and how will you do it? What are the possibilities? And how will you know when you have learned something? A feeling? The ability to do something that you have not been able to do?

The specific questions are very valuable. Criteria tend to disappear in a smokescreen when they come into contact with the real world.

When you have found out what these criteria really mean to you, you can ask whether they are realistic. If by success you mean a five figure salary, a Ferrari, a town house, a country cottage and a high-powered job in the City all before your next birthday, you may well be disappointed.

It has been said that disappointment requires adequate planning. To be really disappointed, you must have fantasized a great length about what you want to happen.

Criteria are vague and can be interpreted very differently by other people. Let's look at an example of a couple.

For the woman, confidence may mean that she has actually done some task successfully. It’s simply descriptive and not a highly valued criterion.

For the man, confidence may mean the feeling that he can do a task if he puts his mind to it. Feeling competent in this way gives him self-esteem, and that is highly valued.

If she calls him incompetent, he could get very upset - until he understands what she actually means. How different people see the criterion of male and female attractiveness is the force that makes the world go round.

The study of values and criterion will play a major role in your personal ability to move mountains. Stay the course; your pursuit of excellence is not only once a year, it’s everyday.

The Best is yet to come!

David Martin
Answer Concepts, S.A.
answerconcepts@msn.com

The Basics of Communications (cont.)

"Try not to become a man of success, but rather a man of value." - Albert Einstein

David Martin at an international conference in Cancun, Mexico
presented the concept of "Connecting to Wealth"

Communication starts with our thoughts, the words we use, and the tonality and the body language convey them to the other person.

And what our thoughts?

There are many different scientific answers, yet everyone knows intimately, what thinking is for themselves. One useful way of thinking about thinking is that we are using our senses internally.

When we think about what we see, hear and feel, we re-create the sights, sounds and feelings inwardly. We re-experience information in the sensory form in which we first perceived it. Sometimes we are aware of doing this, sometimes not.

Can you remember where you went to your last holiday? Now, how do you remember it? Maybe pictures of the place come into your mind. Perhaps you say the name or hear sounds. Or maybe you recall what you felt.

Thinking is such an obvious, commonplace activity we never give it a second thought. We tend to think about what we think about, not how we think about. Also we assume other people think in the same way that we do.

So one way we think is consciously or unconsciously remembering the sights, sounds, feelings, tastes and smells we have experienced. Through the medium of language we can even create varieties of sense experience without having had the actual experiences. Read the following three paragraphs as slowly as you comfortably can.

Take a moment to think about walking in a forest of pine trees. The trees tower above you, rising up on every side. You see the colors of the forest all around you and the sun makes leafy shadows and mosaics on the forest floor. You walk through a patch of sunlight that has broken through the cool ceiling of leaves above you.

As you walk, you become aware of the stillness, broken only by the birds calling in the crunching sound of your feet as you tread on the debris of the forest floor. There is the occasional sharp crack as you snap a dried plague underfoot. You reach out and touch a tree trunk, feeling the roughness of the bark on to your hand.

As you gradually become aware of a gentle breeze stroking your face, you notice the aromatic smell of pine mingling with the more earthy smells of the forest. Wandering onto you remember that supper will be ready soon. It is one of your favorite meals. You can almost taste the food in your mouth in anticipation…

To make sense of the above paragraphs, you went through those experiences in your mind, using your senses inwardly to represent the experience that was conjured up by the words. You probably created the scene sufficiently enough to imagine the taste of food in an already imaginary situation.

If you have ever walked in a pine forest, you may have remembered specific experiences from that occasion. If you have not, you may have constructed the experience from other similar experiences or used material from television, films, books or similar sources. Your experience was a mosaic of memories and imagination. Much of our thinking is typically a mixture of these remembered and constructed sense impressions.

We use the same neurological pathways to represent experience inwardly as we do to experience it directly. The same neurons generate electrochemical charges which can be measured by electromyographic readings. Thought has direct physical effects; mind and body are one system. Take a moment to imagine eating your favorite fruit. The fruit may be imaginary but the salivation is not.

We use our senses outwardly to perceive the world, and inwardly to ‘re-present’ experience to ourselves. In NLP the ways we take in, store and code information in our minds –seeing, hearing, feeling, taste and smell – are known as representational systems.

The visual system, often abbreviated to ’V’, can be used externally (e) when we are looking at the outside world (Ve), or internally (i) when we are mentally visualizing (Vi).

In the same way, the auditory system (A) can be divided into hearing external sounds (Ae), or internal (Ai).

The feeling sense is called the kinesthetic system (K). External kinesthetics (Ke), include tactile sensations like touch, temperature and moisture. Internal kinesthetics (Ki), include remembered sensations, emotions and the inner feelings of balance and bodily awareness, known as the proprioceptive sense, which provides us with feedback about our movements.

Without them we could not control our bodies in space with our eyes closed. The vestibular system is an important part of the kinesthetic system. It deals with our sense of balance, maintaining the equilibrium of our whole body in space. We have many metaphors about this system such as losing our balance, falling for somebody, or being put in a spin. The vestibular system is very influential and is often treated as a separate representational system.

Visual, auditory and kinesthetic are the primary representation systems used in Western cultures. The sense of taste, gustatory (G), and smell, olfactory (O), are not as important and are often included in the kinesthetic sense. They often serve as powerful and immediately links to the sights, sounds and pictures associated with them.

We use all three of the primary systems all the time, although we are not equally aware of them all and we tend to favor some over others. For example, many people have an inner voice that runs in the auditory system, creating an internal dialogue. They rehearse arguments, rehear speeches, makeup replies and generally talk things over with themselves. This is however, only one way of thinking.

Representational systems are not mutually exclusive. It is possible to visualize the scene, have the associated feelings and hear the sound simultaneously, although it may be difficult to pay attention to all three at the same time. Some parts of the thought process will be unconscious.

The more a person is absorbed in their inner world of sights, sounds and feelings, the less he or she will be able to pay attention to the external world.

There is a story of a famous chess player in an international tournament, who was so engrossed in the position he was seeing in his mind's eye that he had two full dinners in one evening. He had completely forgotten eating the first. Being "lost in thought" is a very apt description. People experiencing strong inner emotions are also less vulnerable to external pain.

Our behavior is generated from a mixture of internal and external sense experience. At any time, you will be paying attention to different parts of our experience. While you read this you will be focusing on the text and probably not aware of the feeling in your left foot... until I just mentioned it...

As I write this I am mostly aware of my internal dialogue pacing itself to my rate of writing with the computer. I would be distracted if I paid attention to outside sounds. Not being a very good typist, I look at the keys and feel them under my fingers as I type, so my visual and kinesthetic senses are being used outwardly. This would change if I stopped to visualize a scene I wanted to describe.

There are some emergency signals that would get my immediate attention: a sudden pain, my name being called, the smell of smoke, or if I'm hungry, the smell of food.

Understanding the primary representational systems will assist you in your ability to connect at a deeper level with people, whether it is in business or personal relationships.

Put everything you have into your study of Human Interaction & Connection, it’s the difference that makes the difference. And remember, the Best is yet to come!

David Martin
Answer Concepts, S.A.
answerconcepts@msn.com

Outcome Development

"Will beats skill - the tougher you are mentally, the better the chance you have to win." - David Martin

Let’s begin at the beginning, in regard to outcomes and goals. The more precisely and positively you can define what you want, and the more you program your brain to seek out and notice possibilities, the more likely you are to get what you want.

Opportunities exist when they are recognized as opportunities.

To live the life you want, you need to know what you want. Being effective in the world means producing the results you choose. The first step is to choose. If you don’t, there are plenty of people willing to choose for you.

How do you know what you want? You make it up. Now there are some rules for doing this, so that you have the best chance of success. In NLP, using the appropriate language, you’ll choose a well formed outcome. That is, an outcome that is well formed in terms of the following criteria.

First, it must be stated in the positive. It’s easier to move toward what you want and away from what you don’t want. However, you can’t move toward something if you don’t know what it is.

Here’s an example, just for a moment think of a rabbit.

Are you thinking of a rabbit? Good.

Now, stop thinking of the rabbit while you finish reading this paragraph. Don’t let the idea of a rabbit come into your mind for the next 60 seconds or so. Are you not thinking of that pesky rabbit? (ode to Bugs!)

Now think of what you’ll be doing tomorrow…

To get rid of that persistent rabbit, you have to think of something else that is positive.

The point that I’m trying to make here is that the brain can only understand a negative by turning it into a positive. In order to avoid something, you must first know what it is you are avoiding, and then keep your attention on it. You have to think of it to know what not to think of, just as you have to keep an object in view in your attempt to avoid bumping into it. Whatever you resist, persists.

This is one reason why giving up smoking is so difficult – you continually have to think about smoking in order to give it up.

Secondly, you must play an active part; the outcome must be reasonably within your control. Outcomes that rely primarily on other people taking action are not well formed. If people do not respond the way you want, your stuck.

Concentrate instead on what you need to do to elicit those responses. So for example, instead of waiting for someone to make friends, think of what you could do to become friendly with them.

Think of your outcome as specifically as possible, what will you see, hear and feel? Imagine it through and describe it to yourself or write it down in terms of who, what, where, when, and how. The fuller the idea of what you want, the more your brain can rehearse it and notice opportunities to achieve it. In what context do you want it? Are there contexts where you don’t want it?

How will you know that you have achieved your outcome? What is the sensory-based evidence that will let you know that you have what you want? What will you see, hear and feel when you have achieved it? Some outcomes are so open ended that they could take several lifetimes to achieve. You might also like to set a time limit on when you want to have it.

Do you have the resources to initiate and maintain the outcome? What do you need? Do you already have it? If not, how are you going to get it? This is an issue that needs to be thoroughly explored.

These resources may be internal (specific skills, or positive state of mind), or external. If you feel you need external resources, you may need to set a subsidiary outcome to get them.

The outcome needs to be an appropriate size. It could be too big, in which case it needs to be split into several smaller, more easily achievable objectives. For example, you might set outcome to be a top tennis player. This is obviously not going to happen by next week, it’s too vague and long-term.

It needs breaking down into smaller chunks, so ask yourself, “What stops me from achieving this?” This question will highlight some obvious problems. For example you don’t have a good tennis racket, and you require coaching from a professional player.

Now convert these problems into outcomes by asking yourself, “What do I want instead?” I need to buy a good racket and find a coach. The problem is simply an outcome in reverse.

You may have to go through this process several times with a very big outcome before arriving at a reasonably sized and achievable first step. Even the longest journey starts with the first step (in the right direction of course).

On the other hand, the outcome may seem too small and trivial to motivate you. For example, I might set out to tidy up the office a small and not very exciting task. To bring some energy to this, I need to forge a link with a larger, more important, more motivating outcome.

So I ask myself, “If I got this outcome, what would it do for me?” In this example, it might be a necessary step in order to create a working space for doing something else that is much more interesting. Having made that connection, I can tackle the small outcome of energy drawing from the larger purpose.

The final frame around choosing outcomes is ecology. No one exists in isolation; we are all part of larger systems, family, work, friendship networks, and society in general. You need to consider the consequences of achieving your outcome in the context of these wider relationships. Would there be any undesirable by-products? What would you have to give up, or take on, to achieve it?

For example you might want more freelance work. This would take up more time, so you’ll spend less time with your family. Achieving a big contract might increase your workflow to such an extent that you could not do the job adequately. Make sure your outcome is in harmony with you as a whole person.

Outcomes are not about getting what you want at the expense of others. The most valuable and satisfying results are achieved by negotiating and cooperating to establish shared outcomes where everyone wins. This automatically takes care of the ecology issue.

These sorts of issues may make you revise your outcome, or change to another outcome that serves the same intention without having the undesirable byproducts. The classic example of choosing an un-ecological outcome was King Midas. He wanted everything he touched to turn to gold. He soon found out that instead of an asset, this ability was a distinct liability.

Be all or be part of what you were designed to be. The choice is uniquely yours.

The Best is yet to come!

David Martin
Answer Concepts, S.A.
answerconcepts@msn.com