A man who took great pride in his lawn found himself with a large crop of dandelions. He tried every method he knew to get rid of them. Still they plagued him.
Finally he wrote to the Department of Agriculture. He enumerated all the things he had tried and closed his letter with the question: “What shall I do now?”
In due course, the reply came: “We suggest you learn to love them.”
Category: Other
The Trainer’s Collection
Tad James
I have written previously about my admiration for Tad James’ ability to chunk NLP concepts appropriately to match the knowledge and experience of his readers/audience. He achieves the same result in this series of Audio programs which are based on his NLP Trainers Training program.
Tad James is probably the most influential trainer in NLP today apart from the original group of NLP people such as Grinder, Bandler, Dilts, Delozier etc. A search on the Internet for NLP processes will turn up many sites which present a process in the exact way that it is presented in Tad James’ training manuals. Much of this influence can be attributed to the long-term consistency and usefulness of his trainers’ training program, and allowing the trainers from his school to re-use his training materials. Of course, much of his wide-spread influence on thinking in NLP can also be attributed to his selling and marketing skills. He has a good product and he uses all of his knowledge and expertise in NLP and hypnosis to sell it effectively.
In this lengthy audio set, James covers a wide range of highly useful material including use of group trances, choosing demonstration subjects, making demonstrations, marketing of programs, using embedded multiple metaphors to engage the unconscious mind, and much much more. He teaches all of these concepts to both the conscious mind (through well-organized sequence of materials) and to the unconscious mind through trance, embedded suggestions, and embedded metaphors.
The series is recommended for anyone training NLP or thinking of doing so in the future. It is a long long listen that you will probably come back to more than once. It is available from this website.
When talking about hills and valleys,
most people speak of descending into the valley as a negative thing
as in “entering the valley of despair after a mountaintop experience.”
But as I walked down the last hill before I approached my apartment,
I realized that I expended less energy and was cooler that when I was walking at a higher elevation just a few minutes earlier.
I felt refreshed and renewed by my brief valley respite.
And as I got mentally prepared to climb the final hill
I realized that valleys have two types of transition
descending and ascending.
The time spent in the valley determines the nature of the transition into the next phase.
How do you spend your time in the valley?
Do you squander your time of rest?
Do you complain about the slower pace?
Or do you use the time to prepare, reflect, refine, retro fit, and retread?
The valley does not have to be a resting place for victims, it can be a place of preparation of victory.
Will you be ready to ascend?
I was working with my students today to help them develop better presentations and came up with the PRESENT model which incorporates a lot of important NLP ideas and presentation tips in an easy-to-remember mnemonic. Below, I have given a simple initial description of this model. Later, I hope to develop it in more detail and to use it as the basis for helping students and other people to make more effective presentations.
Perceptual Positions
As you practice and carry out the presentation, think of it as you see the audience and room out of your own eyes (first position). Also, think of how your audience perceives you (second position). Finally, imagine that you are standing at the side of the room watching both yourself and the audience (third position). Notice what you learn from each position that can help you to make a better presentation.
Rapport with the audience
Create strong rapport with your audience right from the beginning. Creating rapport with a group can be done in several ways. You could mingle with the group members and do an activity with the group in which you are taking part as a participant. Or if this is not feasible, try to identify the rapport leaders in each section of the audience and mirror/match their behaviour. All groups have natural rapport leaders that other people unconsciously follow. If you can create rapport with these rapport leaders, then the whole audience will come into rapport with you. You can test whether you have created solid rapport by trying to lead the audience in some way. For some example, when you nod your head, do they all nod along with you?
Express in VAK
This is the biggest item in the list. Of course, the words that you use should appeal to people in the audience no matter what their representational system is. So, you can use visual language such as ‘picture’, auditory language such as ‘listen’, and kinesthetic language such as ‘feel’.
You should also consider all representational systems in the non-verbal behaviours of your presentation. For visual, be sure that you are suitably dressed and that you are using clear pictures or graphs or similar. For auditory, talk in a clear loud voice at an appropriate speed. Vary your voice to match and enhance the content of your talk. For Kinesthetic, use gestures to organize the space around your body in ways that match your content. For example, you could anchor concept 1 on your left hand and anchor concept 2 on your right hand. You can also set up spatial anchors in the room to anchor states such as curiosity, agreement, etc.
You may also like to use the charisma pattern (starting in K, moving to A, and then moving to V) which will ensure that you reach all of the audience effectively.
Stories
Stories are a great way to liven up a presentation. People are interested in your personal stories and it can be a great way to get their attention right from the beginning. You can use metaphors to support or exemplify the content of your presentation or to induce appropriate states in the audience. You can also use split stories (embedded metaphors) to embed your content within a story or to create a trance state in the listeners if that is appropriate.
Eyes Up
As you walk onto the stage, the audience is already watching you. Be sure that you have your eyes up and are watching the audience from the moment they can see you. Then walk confidently out onto the stage, take a pause, look around at the audience, ensure you have their attention, and only then say your initial greeting. Unless you are specifically trying to get another effect by using your eyes, keeping your eyes up throughout the presentation can be the most effective.
Notes
Too many presenters read from a script or even from their own slides on the screen. Make sure that you have made simple notes that you can speak from to reproduce your presentation. Practice with these notes until your presentation is perfect. This will make your presentation far more natural and spontaneous, and you will also feel much more confident.
Your notes don’t have to actually be ‘notes’ in the traditional sense. While keywords or a list of phrases might be most appropriate for one presenter, another presenter ‘notes’ could also perhaps mean physical anchors used as memory aides or perhaps visual anchors in the form of pictures, graphs, a mindmap, and so on. One advantage of visual notes is that a lot of complex information or relationships or large amounts of information can be shown more concisely than using words. Try different kinds of notes to learn what is best for you.
Timing
Make sure that your presentation fits into the allotted time period by practicing with a stopwatch or timer in advance. If there is a questions and answers section after your presentation, be sure to have included that in your timing.
***
This is just a brief introduction to the PRESENT model. Feedback is welcome! And here it is again:
Perceptual Positions
Rapport
Express in VAK
Stories
Eyes Up
Notes
Timing
—
©Copyright by Dr. Brian Cullen 2011
In a television interview the son of the author Maya Angelou was asked “What was it like growing up in your mother’s shadow?” He replied, “That’s funny, I always thought I was growing up in her light”.
Once Buddha was walking from one town to another town with a few of his followers. This was in the initial days. While they were travelling, they happened to pass a lake. They stopped there and Buddha told one of his disciples, “I am thirsty. Do get me some water from that lake there.”
The disciple walked up to the lake. When he reached it, he noticed that some people were washing clothes in the water and, right at that moment, a bullock cart started crossing through the lake. As a result, the water became very muddy, very turbid. The disciple thought, “How can I give this muddy water to Buddha to drink!” So he came back and told Buddha, “The water in there is very muddy. I don’t think it is fit to drink.”
After about half an hour, again Buddha asked the same disciple to go back to the lake and get him some water to drink. The disciple obediently went back to the lake. This time he found that the lake had absolutely clear water in it. The mud had settled down and the water above it looked fit to be had. So he collected some water in a pot and brought it to Buddha.
Buddha looked at the water, and then he looked up at the disciple and said, “See what you did to make the water clean. You let it be … and the mud settled down on its own – and you got clear water… Your mind is also like that. When it is disturbed, just let it be. Give it a little time. It will settle down on its own. You don’t have to put in any effort to calm it down. It will happen. It is effortless.”
What did Buddha emphasize here? He said, “It is effortless.” Having ‘peace of mind’ is not a strenuous job; it is an effortless process. When there is peace inside you, that peace permeates to the outside. It spreads around you and in the environment, such that people around start feeling that peace and grace.
There is a theory that there are other civilisations out there far more advanced that ours. They started tens of thousands of years before ours did and so have had more time to develop.
The truth is they only started fifteen minutes before and the reason they are so much more advanced is because they never had to rush to appointments.
Once upon a time, there was a man who was travelling and came to a river. The river was very wlde and wild, and he wondered how he might cross the river in order to continue his journey.
First, he thought that he might try to swim the river, but as soon as he stepped into the river, he realized that the water was too wild and that the river was too wide, and that he would be swept away by the strong current.
So he stood on the river bank for a long time and looked across the wide river and thought deeply about what he could do. And his head was full of crazy ideas and worries, and he even thought about just turning back and going back to the place where he had come from.
Then he decided to build a raft and he spent some time finding the wood along the side of the river and building the raft by tying the pieces of wood together. But when he tried to sail out upon the river, he found that he was immediately pulled down by the current and his raft began to come apart. Quickly he swam back to the safety of the shore before the river could pull him down or that he would be washed away by the river to the sea instead of being able to cross to the other side.
And after waiting a long time, he saw some other travellers who were travelling along beside the river and he called out to them for help. Most of them wouldn’t even stop but instead passed on their own way. One did stop and told him that he was crazy to try to cross the river. That person had already decided that it was impossible and was turning back.
So the man stood frustrated on the banks of the river and wondered what was the best way to go forward, to cross the river.
Eventually, he decided to take a walk to get a new perspective – to see what the river looked like a little further along the shore. And he found something very interesting – something surprising that he hadn’t even imagined.
For as he walked, eventually he came around a bend in the river and ahead of him, he saw a bridge – a lovely old wooden bridge – that crossed the river.
So he smiled to himself and laughed a little at the worries that were already slipping away and he crossed the bridge easily to the other side of the river.
And when he looked back from the other shore of that river, it was strange, but it seemed to him that the river was much smaller than it had been before. He shrugged his shoulders and thought to himself that things can indeed look different from a new perspective. Even crossing the river didn’t seem like such a big thing after all.
And then he looked further beyond the river that he had just crossed, and he saw back in the countryside beyond – the place that he had come from – that there were many rivers. And he realized and remembered that he had already crossed many many rivers.
Participants in this experiment are fitted with a fake facial scar and told they are to be interviewed to see how their deformity influences the way they are treated. Just before the interview last minute adjustments are made to the scar but in fact, and unbeknown to the participant the scar is removed entirely.
Right after the interview, in almost every case, the participants were full of all kinds of examples of how the interviewer behaved negatively due to their “deformity”. Amazingly, in some cases the belief continued even after they were shown on video that the scar had been removed.
One day a man was tending his garden, which bordered the desert in Arizona. Dusk was descending and he heard in the distance the sound of motorbikes.
A gang of Hell’s Angels rode up, attacked him, tied him to the back of one of the bikes, and drove him into the desert. There they left him barely alive as night fell.
The man survived the night and began to regain consciousness as the sun appeared above the horizon. He knew that the sun in the desert means certain death. Without food, water, or shelter he stood no chance of survival.
Then at his side he noticed a small bush. He crawled underneath and curled up using the little shade there was to protect himself from the burning rays of the sun. He felt despair—no one knew where he was.
Just at that moment he saw a falcon landing on the branch of the bush. To the man’s amazement the falcon spoke and asked, “Can I help you?” Shocked, the man replied, “I am dying of thirst, my mouth and tongue are swollen. To survive I need water.” “Look behind you,” said the falcon. “There is a snake. Follow the snake, for it knows where the water seeps out of the rocks. There you will be able to drink.”
The man returned to the bush, and the next day the falcon came back. “How are you?” the falcon asked. “I have drunk but I need food to survive—water alone is not enough.” “Stay quiet and wait until the antelope passes by. When it does, follow it—it can show you where the cactus plants are whose flesh you can eat.” Sure enough, when the man followed the antelope he found food and was able to eat.
Feeling fitter, he returned to the bush and once again the falcon arrived. “Can I do anything for you?” it asked. “Yes,” replied the man. “Although I have drunk and eaten I still need salt to survive. How can I get the salt I need to live?” “Have no fear,” replied the falcon. “The fox also needs salt. If you follow the fox you will see where it finds the rocks to lick that will give you the salt you need.”
The man did as the falcon said and the next day returned to find that the bush under which he had sheltered was burned and charred. “What will I do now?” asked the man. “I have no shelter, I will burn to death.”
Then the man realized he had been out in the desert each day following the animals. He had learned how to find food, water, and salt. He knew how to survive.
He noticed the rich colors of the sky as the sun dipped low on the horizon, the blues, the purples, and the gold of the sun itself. He heard the exquisite songs of the birds in the distance and he felt an inner peace and joy. “Shall I show you the way home?” asked the falcon. The man thought for a moment and then said, “I think I’ll stay a little longer.”