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