You MEET people at their own level, just as you don’t discuss philosophy with a baby learning to talk . . . you make NOISES at the baby. Now there was an autistic child at Arizona State Hospital. $50,000 had been raised and the child had been sent to Chicago for very special care. And a lot of psychiatrists, psychoanalysts worked with the child until the $50,000 was gone and they sent her back completely unchanged. One of my patients was rather lonesome and she liked to be a do-gooder and she visited the Arizona State Hospital, saw that ten year old girl, and finally persuaded the authorities to let the girl go for a walk with her. And that girl went with her, grimacing, and mouthing sounds, and grunting, and twisting and acting very peculiar. And this patient decided to bring her to see me. She brought her in. She had told me first about the girl and I told her, Yes, I’d see the girl. I assured her I couldn’t take the girl as a patient but I’d see the girl once. And she brought the girl in, and introduced the girl to me and me to the girl. And the girl made a number of weird sounds and so I REPLIED with weird sounds, and we grunted and groaned and squeaked and squawked for about half an hour. And then the girl answered a few simple questions and very promptly returned to her autistic behavior. And we really had a good time squeaking and squawking and grunting and groaning at each other. And then she took the patient back to the hospital. In the ,night time she took the patient for a walk. She told me later, “that girl almost pulled my arm off, yanking me down the street, she wanted to see you. . . the one man who could really talk her language
Category: Other
There was an industrialist whose production line inexplicably breaks down, costing him millions per day. He finally tracks down an expert who takes out a screwdriver, turns one screw, and then – as the factory cranks back to life – presents a bill for £10,000.
Affronted, the factory owner demands an itemised version. The expert is happy to oblige: “For turning a screw: £1. For knowing which screw to turn: £9,999.”
Many years ago, when I worked as a volunteer at Stanford Hospital, I got to know a little girl named Liz who was suffering from a rare and serious disease.
Her only chance of recovery appeared to be a blood transfusion from her 5-year old brother, who had miraculously survived the same disease and had developed the antibodies needed to combat the illness.
The doctor explained the situation to her little brother, and asked the boy if he would be willing to give his blood to his sister. I saw him hesitate for only a moment before taking a deep breath and saying,”Yes, I’ll do it if it will save Liz.”
As the transfusion progressed, he lay in bed next to his sister and smiled, as we all did, seeing the color returning to her cheeks. Then his face grew pale and his smile faded.
He looked up at the doctor and asked with a trembling voice, “Will I start to die right away?”
Being young, the boy had misunderstood the doctor. He thought he was going to have to give his sister all of his blood.
After the great flood, the people of the world grew in number again and they all shared a single language.
After travelling, they came to the land of Shinar. And there, the leader of the people who was called Nimrod, decided to build a great tower that would reach high up into the sky – so high that its top would be in the heavens..
And God looked at the people and at the great tower that they were building and he said, “You are one people and you have one language, and you will be able to achieve whatever you put your mind to.”
So God decided to confound their speech – to confuse the tongues and the minds of the people. And the people became so confused by the multiple languages that they could no longer communicate easily with each other, and as a result they abandoned their efforts to build a great tower, and they abandoned many other things, too. They even began to forget that at one time, all people could communicate easily and that people can achieve whatever you put your mind to.
And much of communication turned out to babbling, little more than the sounds that a baby makes to pass time through the day. And so the tower that was never finished was called the Tower of Babel.
There are many stories of the Tower of Babel in different cultures, Indian, European, Hebrew. Perhaps one of the most interesting is the Kaballah story which tells us that …
… one third of the Tower builders were punished by being transformed into semi-demonic creatures and banished into three parallel dimensions, inhabited now by their descendants.
And when we see, hear, or feel the problems in our communication today, perhaps we are also living in three parallel dimensions.
A six year old boy asked his mother, “What is NLP?”
His mother answered, “I’ll tell you in a moment, but first go and ask your grandfather how his arthritis is today?”
The little boy went over to his grandfather and asked the question and his grandfather replied, “oh it’s terrible, my legs and hands are very painful today. It’s very hard.” And as he spoke, the little boy saw his grandfather’s face grimace and wrinkle in pain.
So the little boy went back to his mother and asked again, “What is NLP?”
His mother said, “OK, I’ll tell you in a moment, but first go and ask your grandfather what is the funniest thing that you ever did.”
The little boy asked the grandfather and immediately his grandfather’s smile broke out into a big smile. “Oh that’s easy”, he said. “I remember when you and your brother decided to play as Santa Claus and you decided you needed snow. So you put white talcum powder all over the bathroom and made it completely white! That was so funny.” Grandfather looked so happy and then said, “Or maybe it was the time that you were singing in the street as we walked together and a stranger asked you to be quiet.” You turned to him and said “If you don’t like my singing, you can just stay at home. Oh yes, you were a funny little fellow. So grandfather continued smiling and laughing to himself and looked so happy and the little boy went back to his mother and asked again, “What is NLP?”
His mother replied, “That’s NLP – with just a few words, you completely changed how your grandfather felt.”
This is a work-in-progress–an attempt to make a list and discussion of NLP resources for treating addictions. Please get in touch if you would like to suggest a useful resource.
- Decision Strategies: A major point in addictions recovery.
- Addiction – Some Notes
- NLP: The Quantum Leap (this is only the first couple of pages. The original appeared in NLP World).
When doing NLP work with people who have substance-abuse issues, particularly alcohol, there is almost invariably a mention of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). There is no doubt that AA has helped a lot of people, but it is not without its critics. One such article at http://www.orange-papers.org/ does raise some interesting points and potential problems with AA. However, while I recommend this article, I do find that it is a little overly critical and unbalanced – please keep that in mind as you read!
For a slightly more balanced critique of Alcoholic Anonymous and some interesting insights into other treatments for addiction, have a look at Richard Bolstad’s article.
In another post, I have described the Brooklyn Program and the freely downloadable manual is a great resource for an NLP-based approach to addictions.
All of the above is not intended to be a criticism of AA, just information about the wider range of possibilities available for people with issues with alcohol or other substance abuse.
So I was enjoying my first watermelon of the season with my two boys today, and I realized that they had never had real watermelon, only the seedless variety. It hit me like a ton of bricks, a revelation if you will. All of today’s problems can be traced back to the invention of the seedless watermelon.
Now you may think this statement strange, or perhaps attribute it to the meanderings of a feeble mind. Nevertheless I assure you that the statement is correct. Be it terrorism, the plight of the homeless, the ever-widening rift between rich and poor, the seeming disappearance of family values, or something as mundane as rush hour traffic. All are directly attributable to the seedless watermelon. In fact, I challenge anyone to come up with a single modern day problem, social or otherwise, that isn’t directly related to the seedless watermelon phenomenon. Let me explain.
In the pre-seedless watermelon age, life was simpler. We would sit up on our sun decks, or in our backyards and enjoy a good old-fashioned slice of watermelon. We’d take our time, picking seeds out with a spoon, tongue, or even an old stick. Take a big juicy bite, and slowly, with intense concentration, tongue-wrangle all the seeds into that space between our teeth and our cheek, seeing who could hold the most. Basking in the full sticky sweetness on our lips and gums, the cool watery freshness in our mouth and throat. Then with glee we’d spit the seeds out. Machine gun style, like Al Pacino. Or perhaps Clint Eastwood style, one by one real deliberate-like. We’d take pride in our distance, or marksmanship, perhaps even holding competitions with friends or siblings. Occasionally war broke out and it was every man for himself. Afterward we could line the seeds up, or watch as they clung tenaciously to picnic bench or windowpane, betting on which would fall first. As we ate, our elders would tell tall tales of young boys who’d mistakenly swallowed the seeds, only to have their belly burst 3 months later as a vine grew inside him. Of course we didn’t believe the stories, but we’d double- and triple-check before we swallowed just the same. And we would enjoy the watermelon, and we would enjoy our friends and family, and we would enjoy the heat, the breeze, the day, idling away eating our watermelon. All this made possible because the seeds slowed down the moment. Because of those little black seeds we were forced to take our time, notice the details, and in the end, really enjoy the experience, the whole experience, not just the fruit. And sure, we’d curse and swear at the darn things and jokingly say, someday they’ll invent a watermelon without seeds, and everyone would laugh, knowing full well in our hearts that we loved the ritual perhaps even more than the fruit. Besides, a watermelon without seeds? Well that would be impossible…. little did we know.
And then someone, probably that kid in grade eight that no one liked, actually made it happen. And the watermelon lost it’s magic, and our lives lost meaning..
Now I can eat my watermelon so fast and with such ease that no concentration is required whatsoever. It’s so easy I can eat it while driving down the freeway. Why, I need not even taste it. How can we enjoy the fruits of our labour when it’s already washed pre-cut and even seeded!? I especially feel for the little ones, now they can eat their watermelon in 30 seconds flat and run on in to catch the next cartoon, in their air-conditioned townhouse. No more feeling the heat, enjoying the juices as they refresh the body and soul. No more listening to tales of burst bellies, of giggling over our own fears. No more arguments over who spat farthest, fastest or mostest. No more learning that good things take time and effort. The beautiful ritual has been reduced to a quick, efficient intake of vitamin C and vital fluids, then back to the everyday. No more magic. And herein lies all the problems of the modern day world. Bigger, better, faster, and right now. This is what our children learn from the seedless watermelon, and this has become the ethos of our world.
Bigger, better, faster and right now…….Bigger, better, faster and right now. We have no time for the unemployed or homeless looking to do some odds and ends in exchange for food. Bigger, better, faster and right now. No time to regale our children with tall tales, and anyway, the cartoon network can do it better, not to mention bigger, faster and at the immediate flick of a switch. Bigger, better, faster and right now. Why car-pool, bike or transit? That brand new SUV is bigger, better, faster, and at zero down and no payments for 90 days, we can have it right now!
We’ve lost sight of the details. We’ve lost the precious moments. We’ve lost the magic. We’ve lost our childhood, and our children may never have one. But hey, at least we don t have those darn black seeds in our watermelon! My point exactly.
We lost something when we lost those little black seeds. Perhaps it was nature’s way of counterbalancing the hectic pace of life, and now we’re the ones that are lost.
I blame it all on the seedless watermelon.
There is a story about Thomas Watson Sr., the first president of IBM. A young worker had made a mistake that lost IBM one million dollars in business. She was called in to the president’s office, and as she walked in, she said: “Well, I guess you have called me here to fire me.” “Fire you?” Mr. Watson replied, “I just spent one million on your education!”
This parable is told of a farmer who owned an old mule. The mule fell into the farmer’s well. The farmer heard the mule praying or whatever mules do when they fall into wells. After carefully assessing the situation, the farmer sympathized with the mule, but decided that neither the mule nor the well was worth the trouble of saving. Instead, he called his neighbors together, told them what had happened, and enlisted them to help haul dirt to bury the old mule in the well and put him out of his misery.
Initially the old mule was hysterical! But as the farmer and his neighbors continued shoveling and the dirt hit his back, a thought struck him. It suddenly dawned on him that every time a shovel load of dirt landed on his back, HE WOULD SHAKE IT OFF AND STEP UP!
This he did, blow after blow. “Shake it off and step up…shake it off and step up…shake it off and step up!” He repeated to encourage himself. No matter how painful the blows, or how distressing the situation seemed, the old mule fought panic and just kept right on SHAKING IT OFF AND STEPPING UP!
It wasn’t long before the old mule, battered and exhausted, stepped triumphantly over the wall of that well! What seemed like it would bury him actually helped him . . . all because of the manner in which he handled his adversity.
THAT’S LIFE! If we face our problems and respond to them positively, and refuse to give in to panic, bitterness, or self-pity.