My first interaction with Jason Dixon involving NLP was a 12 minute conversation.
Before the conversation, I was struggling with an old friend who was moving on. I was sad and confused.
12 minutes later, I was relaxed and open and felt good about my old friend.
We laughed at how fast that went!
Jason did several important things. First, he actually listened, deeply, to what I said. People Helpers have a well-earned reputation for giving advice before understanding and empathizing. He let me "spill" what was happening inside my head, so that he could respond to what was actually going on for me.
I think armchair NLPers (especially those who read books more than they practice!) miss this a lot: because changing a belief with NLP is much easier than other ways of changing a belief, people jump to the conclusion that whenever they notice a limiting belief, they should reframe the belief or pattern interrupt, and that'll do 'er. Unfortunately, these folks also miss the most important thing that must be in place for a short, conversational intervention to work: unconscious rapport.
But that's a story for another day.
Luckily for me, Jason doesn't play that way!
Second, Jason tried several different things and waited for feedback. Utilizing feedback from the client or class is a "must" in my book. Otherwise, they're just following a recipe -- a recipe that I could be following on my own, for myself.
And third, Jason treated me with a lot of heart. It's my belief that all this stuff is just easier with love.
I'm sure he did other things. But I certainly don't know what they were!
That's the fun of working with a skilled NLP coach, even if you know some NLP. It seems as though you just had a deep, heartfelt conversation. And then things change.
I really enjoyed the personal stories on Jason's website. And he has a Law of Attraction and NLP class coming up on December 13, too.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Diving Deeper on Facebook
Have you ever been swimming with dolphins?
Unless you're lucky enough to already know some dolphins who like you, you begin by going out into the ocean on a boat. Someone climbs into the "tuna tower" on top of the boat. From the vantage point of the tower, you can see patterns in the waves on the surface of the ocean.
If an area water looks like it's boiling, it's probably a school of tuna feeding at the surface. It could make for some good fishing.
Sea turtles often swim well below the surface, where they aren't visible from a tower. But when they do come up for air, their round heads pop up for a few seconds, and then go back down under the water. You can see the small wake their heads create by slicing through the surface for a few seconds, and then the line of the wake goes away. Line, no line. Line, no line. If you see that pattern, you know there are sea turtles there.
Dolphins cut quickly through the water, or play. You can find them by looking for lines in the surface water (bigger than sea turtles' lines) or random splashing. If they jump out of the water, they're really easy to see because they break the line of the horizon. Then, you can spot where to go to find out if they're interested in swimming with some Homo sapiens.
Facebook is the tower. It's the place I can go to quickly see what's happening on the surface of my friends' lives. If I want to only interact with what's on the surface, I can choose to do that.
But I can also choose to go beneath the surface. Based on the surface patterns that I see on Facebook, I can choose where to dive deeper below the surface, and who I want to swim with that day.
Unless you're lucky enough to already know some dolphins who like you, you begin by going out into the ocean on a boat. Someone climbs into the "tuna tower" on top of the boat. From the vantage point of the tower, you can see patterns in the waves on the surface of the ocean.
If an area water looks like it's boiling, it's probably a school of tuna feeding at the surface. It could make for some good fishing.
Sea turtles often swim well below the surface, where they aren't visible from a tower. But when they do come up for air, their round heads pop up for a few seconds, and then go back down under the water. You can see the small wake their heads create by slicing through the surface for a few seconds, and then the line of the wake goes away. Line, no line. Line, no line. If you see that pattern, you know there are sea turtles there.
Dolphins cut quickly through the water, or play. You can find them by looking for lines in the surface water (bigger than sea turtles' lines) or random splashing. If they jump out of the water, they're really easy to see because they break the line of the horizon. Then, you can spot where to go to find out if they're interested in swimming with some Homo sapiens.
Facebook is the tower. It's the place I can go to quickly see what's happening on the surface of my friends' lives. If I want to only interact with what's on the surface, I can choose to do that.
But I can also choose to go beneath the surface. Based on the surface patterns that I see on Facebook, I can choose where to dive deeper below the surface, and who I want to swim with that day.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Rumi Does NLP
In NLP, there's a concept called the Parts Model. Whether it's neurologically true or not, many people experience the world as if they had a bunch of different parts running around within them. There's a part that wants to go to graduate school, a part that wants to eat chocolate cake, a part that wants to retire early, a part that wants a new car now.
Each part has a positive intention and behaviors that it's in charge of. Even the part that wants to eat the chocolate cake has a positive intention of feeling good now.
Many times, people experience these parts as warring with each other. "A part of me wants to disown my parents and never see them again, but another part of me tells me I won't follow through with it." These parts are described as "polarized." Polarized parts usually have limited behaviors (in this example, the behaviors are: disown my parents, and criticize the ability to do so).
And sometimes, lots of parts gang up on one part. "Nobody appreciates your stupid whining," parts seem to be saying to a younger, scared part. When this happens, we can be incredibly cruel to ourselves, blaming and shaming a part within.
Rumi describes what happens when we start to appreciate each part and its positive intent. Many people describe a similar feeling of "welcoming everyone within" when they go through an NLP Practitioner class and begin to work with their inner parts in kinder, gentler ways.
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Hildegard of Bingen
Hildegard of Bingen has sparked my interest.
Hildegard was an anchoress in 12th century Germany. To put her on a global mystics timeline, she died 38 years before Persian mystic Sufi poet Rumi was born.
Hildegard began reporting visions as a very young child. Oliver Sacks has since confirmed her descriptions as a common visual hallucination that often happens just before a migraine headache.
Luckily for us, no one told Hildegard that she was experiencing pre-migraine symptoms.
Instead, she became a student of the Catholic church.
When she was eight years old, Hildegard became a student of Jutta, a Catholic abess. When she was fourteen, she was enclosed as an anchoress, probably with Jutta. Jutta taught Hildegard to read and write, she taught Hildegard the psalms and the liturgy. Jutta was an extreme ascetic. When Jutta died, Hildegard took her place as abbess. Hildegard was more moderate.
And Hildegard was a mystic.
A mystic is someone who relates directly to the divine, and knows it. Many times, they relate to the divine like a lover, writing passionate poetry or music or through ecstatic, untiring dance. Mystics can be unusual folks. I think this is because they must experience the divine through their own map of the world (um, like we all do), and every person's map is different. Some mystics record that interaction with the divine through stories or poetry or music. That's the most personal expression in the world! Because we're all unique, our individual interactions with the divine are quite unique, and they can seem unusual to others.
But that's a story for another day. Back to anchoresses.
Anchoresses lived their lives in a small cell adjacent to a church, called an anchorage. Anchorages typically had 3 windows: one window into the church, in direct view of the high altar; one window through which they could communicate with assistants and scribes and receive food; and one window to communicate with the public.
Anchoresses tended to be very public hermits. Although they lived lives full of prayer and some solitude, they also wrote books and music, and people came to them for advice and prayers.
Hildegard even went on 4 preaching tours, the only woman of the Middle Ages to have done so.
Hildegard dictated the story of her life to her scribe. And she wrote music. Stunning, haunting, transcendent music. Hildegard is the first music composer for whom history has left a complete biography.
And we all go through life like an anchoress, set aside for life here in physical bodies, with "windows" into the world. Our windows are our experiences. It's how we manage what passes through those windows and the meaning we make of those experiences that dictates whether we become more open and connected, or less so.
Why am I so intrigued by Hildegard?
Hildegard was an anchoress in 12th century Germany. To put her on a global mystics timeline, she died 38 years before Persian mystic Sufi poet Rumi was born.
Hildegard began reporting visions as a very young child. Oliver Sacks has since confirmed her descriptions as a common visual hallucination that often happens just before a migraine headache.
Luckily for us, no one told Hildegard that she was experiencing pre-migraine symptoms.
Instead, she became a student of the Catholic church.
When she was eight years old, Hildegard became a student of Jutta, a Catholic abess. When she was fourteen, she was enclosed as an anchoress, probably with Jutta. Jutta taught Hildegard to read and write, she taught Hildegard the psalms and the liturgy. Jutta was an extreme ascetic. When Jutta died, Hildegard took her place as abbess. Hildegard was more moderate.
And Hildegard was a mystic.
A mystic is someone who relates directly to the divine, and knows it. Many times, they relate to the divine like a lover, writing passionate poetry or music or through ecstatic, untiring dance. Mystics can be unusual folks. I think this is because they must experience the divine through their own map of the world (um, like we all do), and every person's map is different. Some mystics record that interaction with the divine through stories or poetry or music. That's the most personal expression in the world! Because we're all unique, our individual interactions with the divine are quite unique, and they can seem unusual to others.
But that's a story for another day. Back to anchoresses.
Anchoresses lived their lives in a small cell adjacent to a church, called an anchorage. Anchorages typically had 3 windows: one window into the church, in direct view of the high altar; one window through which they could communicate with assistants and scribes and receive food; and one window to communicate with the public.
Anchoresses tended to be very public hermits. Although they lived lives full of prayer and some solitude, they also wrote books and music, and people came to them for advice and prayers.
Hildegard even went on 4 preaching tours, the only woman of the Middle Ages to have done so.
Hildegard dictated the story of her life to her scribe. And she wrote music. Stunning, haunting, transcendent music. Hildegard is the first music composer for whom history has left a complete biography.
And we all go through life like an anchoress, set aside for life here in physical bodies, with "windows" into the world. Our windows are our experiences. It's how we manage what passes through those windows and the meaning we make of those experiences that dictates whether we become more open and connected, or less so.
Why am I so intrigued by Hildegard?
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
In his new book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell proposes that people who succeed -- the best athletes, the richest people, the most talented professionals -- succeed not through sheer hard work. They succeed because they happened upon an unpredictably important series of opportunities, only noticeable in hindsight.
More about that in a minute.
In NLP, we use modeling to observe and replicate excellence. Often, "outliers" or people who are extremely successful, don't consciously know how they succeed. They may have suggestions or theories, but if they attempt to chunk down their success and make it useable for others, they often can't do it. Some of the worst teachers in the world are the best performers.
Modeling helps unpack what an outlier is doing, consciously and unconsciously, so that others can replicate their behaviors and beliefs and, hopefully, replicate the accompanying success of outliers. Many core techniques in NLP, such as the Outcome Frame and the Grief Process, come from modeling others.
But Gladwell proposes that it's not what the individual is doing by his or her own power that creates success. (By the way, these self-contained internal processes are often the focus of modeling.) Instead, unpredictably important opportunities come by way of:
And controlling the environment is tricky!
I highly recommend reading the book. Malcolm has his usual storyteller hat on, complete with twists and turns in plot. My favorite parts are:
There were a couple of uneven parts. I didn't care for the chapter on airplane crashes and the detailed black box transcripts of the hours and minutes before deadly crashes. He makes a very strong case for the strength of cultural norms in this chapter. It's just unpleasant to read about such tragedy, I guess. My CSI-inclined friends may like this one!
If you'd like to sample some of the book for yourself, he's posted excepts on his website, including a part of the chapter on the 10,000 Hour Rule.
More about that in a minute.
In NLP, we use modeling to observe and replicate excellence. Often, "outliers" or people who are extremely successful, don't consciously know how they succeed. They may have suggestions or theories, but if they attempt to chunk down their success and make it useable for others, they often can't do it. Some of the worst teachers in the world are the best performers.
Modeling helps unpack what an outlier is doing, consciously and unconsciously, so that others can replicate their behaviors and beliefs and, hopefully, replicate the accompanying success of outliers. Many core techniques in NLP, such as the Outcome Frame and the Grief Process, come from modeling others.
But Gladwell proposes that it's not what the individual is doing by his or her own power that creates success. (By the way, these self-contained internal processes are often the focus of modeling.) Instead, unpredictably important opportunities come by way of:
- practical intelligence
- relative age to your peer group
- birth year and economic booms
- the power of collective support
- sheer chance meetings
- growing up in a culture of possibility
- having the time and motivation to acculumate 10,000 hours of experience in your field
- race and ethnicity (and not necessarily the most powerful or "desireable" race or ethnicity)
And controlling the environment is tricky!
I highly recommend reading the book. Malcolm has his usual storyteller hat on, complete with twists and turns in plot. My favorite parts are:
- The "10,000 Hour Rule" chapter, especially section 2, which tells the story of K. Anders Ericsson's research about "gifted" musicians. It's not talent, but 10 years of practice, that makes for a master.
- "Marita's Bargain." This chapter tells the story of what it takes to escape the orbit of poverty and non-possibility thinking: lots of hard work... and luck.
- "A Jamaican Story," which tells the story of Malcolm Gladwell's own grandparents and parents. He told this section with a lot of heart and verve.
There were a couple of uneven parts. I didn't care for the chapter on airplane crashes and the detailed black box transcripts of the hours and minutes before deadly crashes. He makes a very strong case for the strength of cultural norms in this chapter. It's just unpleasant to read about such tragedy, I guess. My CSI-inclined friends may like this one!
If you'd like to sample some of the book for yourself, he's posted excepts on his website, including a part of the chapter on the 10,000 Hour Rule.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Choose to Feel
If you enjoy hauntingly beautiful music that takes you to unexpected places, I highly recommend that you join Steve Daniel's email list, where he sends his didgeridoo upcoming events.
My husband Keith and I drove out to Bastrop State Park last weekend. There's a place outside the Austin city limits where the landscape transforms. Scrub mesquite and grasses give way to elm trees and pecan trees and tall pines. Bastrop State Park is in the middle of these tall trees.
Eighty feet high or more, this stretch of pine trees is probably the tallest group of trees you'll find in Central Texas. They're named the Lost Pines because they are "hidden away" in between the Hill Country brush land of Austin and the swamps of Beaumont and Louisiana.
I noticed a bumper sticker on a car during our ride: "Choose to Feel," it suggested.
I liked the sentiment. In a society plagued with distractions, feeling is something we must decide to do.... and that takes some courage. It turns out, there's a very good reason we slip into distractions: it can be uncomfortable to feel.
I wondered what the driver would look like. Keith sped up, and I looked at the neighboring driver.
He had a friendly, relaxed face... and then, I noticed he was didgeridoo player Steve Daniel!
"Choose to Feel," indeed.
The bumper sticker made sense. If you ever wanted to choose to feel and needed a little encouragement, or someone to help you to do that, listening to Steve Daniel play the didg is a good thing to do. He approaches everything from saying hello to blowing the voice of the didgeridoo, with presence, gentleness, and heart.
Steve's didg playing is all about opening and connection. The deep, percussive sound of the didg moves through listeners, taking them deeper and deeper into something very familiar. At least that's how I experience it. Listening to Steve is like a journey inward, yet even more familiar, even more primal, than the journey within. It's the journey back to something we all know, perhaps.
He makes his own didges, often out of hollowed-out agave stalks. At even given moment, he has several didges with him, each with a unique voice.
Steve's didges are surprisingly light. He brought one to a recent Best Resources Night Walking class. Whenever it was time to walk, he just propped a didg against his shoulder and took off.
But that's a story for another day.
My husband Keith and I drove out to Bastrop State Park last weekend. There's a place outside the Austin city limits where the landscape transforms. Scrub mesquite and grasses give way to elm trees and pecan trees and tall pines. Bastrop State Park is in the middle of these tall trees.
Eighty feet high or more, this stretch of pine trees is probably the tallest group of trees you'll find in Central Texas. They're named the Lost Pines because they are "hidden away" in between the Hill Country brush land of Austin and the swamps of Beaumont and Louisiana.
I noticed a bumper sticker on a car during our ride: "Choose to Feel," it suggested.
I liked the sentiment. In a society plagued with distractions, feeling is something we must decide to do.... and that takes some courage. It turns out, there's a very good reason we slip into distractions: it can be uncomfortable to feel.
I wondered what the driver would look like. Keith sped up, and I looked at the neighboring driver.
He had a friendly, relaxed face... and then, I noticed he was didgeridoo player Steve Daniel!
"Choose to Feel," indeed.
The bumper sticker made sense. If you ever wanted to choose to feel and needed a little encouragement, or someone to help you to do that, listening to Steve Daniel play the didg is a good thing to do. He approaches everything from saying hello to blowing the voice of the didgeridoo, with presence, gentleness, and heart.
Steve's didg playing is all about opening and connection. The deep, percussive sound of the didg moves through listeners, taking them deeper and deeper into something very familiar. At least that's how I experience it. Listening to Steve is like a journey inward, yet even more familiar, even more primal, than the journey within. It's the journey back to something we all know, perhaps.
He makes his own didges, often out of hollowed-out agave stalks. At even given moment, he has several didges with him, each with a unique voice.
Steve's didges are surprisingly light. He brought one to a recent Best Resources Night Walking class. Whenever it was time to walk, he just propped a didg against his shoulder and took off.
But that's a story for another day.
Monday, December 1, 2008
What NLP Has Done for Me
It was very early one morning. Somehow, my husband and I started discussing one of those obstacle-laden subjects. In the dark. While we were still waking up.
I would not recommend this, by the way.
We argued. It reached such a vehement peak that I just left for work. I was angry. Sometimes you just have to take a break and let the old reptilian brain and automatic responses settle down.
I got into my car and started into work.
Now, I live in North Austin and I work in South Austin. Interstate 35 was my route between the two. If you have lived in Austin any time since 1962, the year I35 opened, you know it's been under construction. The whole time. Sometimes, they shut down the whole thing. Sometimes, they shut down a lane or two.
And they often like to do this shutting down very early in the morning.
So, I had a lot of time to think that morning, passing by the grinding machines and day-strength work lights, while traveling at 5 miles an hour.
I replayed the argument in my mind. What had escalated it?
Then, I realized it. I wasn't angry about the topic that Keith and I had discussed.
I was angry about the onions.
The night before, I had been chopping onions for dinner. I was pondering the old self-help cliche about peeling an onion... you know, as you go through life, you're peeling the layers of an onion. Layer upon layer upon layer, we peel the onion.
I was curious: what's at the middle of an onion? Why are we doing all this peeling anyways?
I carefully cut away the outside of the onion, leaving the smallest onion "kernel" in tact. I sliced through the middle of it.
Inside, there was.....nothing.
Absolutely nothing. Onions produce seed stalks, so there are no seeds inside an onion. It's just a little, empty space.
That's when I really got angry. What the heck? All this onion peeling is for.... nothing? Just some crummy old onion-scented air? I've been doing all this ridiculous self improvement yada yada so that.... so that nothing!! For no purpose at all!
So, the argument that morning had come out of my own existential onion crisis.
My day proceeded, and I mostly forgot about the whole thing. I came home that night, and there was a horrible smell in the house. Looking for something rotting in the pantry, I discovered an entire bag of rotting onions. They were full of green stalks, starting to grow right there in my pantry.
It seems that, given that I had had this whole existential onion crisis thing, I would have noticed that there were, indeed, onions in my life for the second night in a row.
But I didn't notice. It never crossed my mind. I took the onions outside and threw them away in the garbage can. I did not yet know that I was, apparently, on the path of the onion.
The next morning, I was sitting in the back yard in my garden and it hit me: the onions were onions. The onions I threw away were onions! I ran to the garbage can, tipped the can over, and dug through the garbage to retrieve the bag of onions.
I knew just what to do. I dug a hole and, one by one, planted the already-growing onions. I carefully watered and nurtured them for months to come.
Apparently, everyone knows what the space in the middle of an onion is really for, except for me. I told this story to my friend Virginia Brodie. "Katie, do you know how an onion grows?"
I didn't know.
Virginia continued: "The space in the middle of the onion is for the new shoot to grow. It forms a green bulb and grows out from there. Without the space in the middle of the onion, it would never grow."
Oh, I said.
NLP is the space at the middle of the onion, the place from which growth can occur. Taking an NLP Practitioner class is like bypassing all the layer-peeling and going straight to the center.
NLP has helped me to notice my reactions and change them, and it's given me the ability to dig through the garbage, reclaim the onions, and plant and nurture them. My life is so much longer and fuller because I can peel the layers, knowing there's "nothing" waiting for me in the center.
I would not recommend this, by the way.
We argued. It reached such a vehement peak that I just left for work. I was angry. Sometimes you just have to take a break and let the old reptilian brain and automatic responses settle down.
I got into my car and started into work.
Now, I live in North Austin and I work in South Austin. Interstate 35 was my route between the two. If you have lived in Austin any time since 1962, the year I35 opened, you know it's been under construction. The whole time. Sometimes, they shut down the whole thing. Sometimes, they shut down a lane or two.
And they often like to do this shutting down very early in the morning.
So, I had a lot of time to think that morning, passing by the grinding machines and day-strength work lights, while traveling at 5 miles an hour.
I replayed the argument in my mind. What had escalated it?
Then, I realized it. I wasn't angry about the topic that Keith and I had discussed.
I was angry about the onions.
The night before, I had been chopping onions for dinner. I was pondering the old self-help cliche about peeling an onion... you know, as you go through life, you're peeling the layers of an onion. Layer upon layer upon layer, we peel the onion.
I was curious: what's at the middle of an onion? Why are we doing all this peeling anyways?
I carefully cut away the outside of the onion, leaving the smallest onion "kernel" in tact. I sliced through the middle of it.
Inside, there was.....nothing.
Absolutely nothing. Onions produce seed stalks, so there are no seeds inside an onion. It's just a little, empty space.
That's when I really got angry. What the heck? All this onion peeling is for.... nothing? Just some crummy old onion-scented air? I've been doing all this ridiculous self improvement yada yada so that.... so that nothing!! For no purpose at all!
So, the argument that morning had come out of my own existential onion crisis.
My day proceeded, and I mostly forgot about the whole thing. I came home that night, and there was a horrible smell in the house. Looking for something rotting in the pantry, I discovered an entire bag of rotting onions. They were full of green stalks, starting to grow right there in my pantry.
It seems that, given that I had had this whole existential onion crisis thing, I would have noticed that there were, indeed, onions in my life for the second night in a row.
But I didn't notice. It never crossed my mind. I took the onions outside and threw them away in the garbage can. I did not yet know that I was, apparently, on the path of the onion.
The next morning, I was sitting in the back yard in my garden and it hit me: the onions were onions. The onions I threw away were onions! I ran to the garbage can, tipped the can over, and dug through the garbage to retrieve the bag of onions.
I knew just what to do. I dug a hole and, one by one, planted the already-growing onions. I carefully watered and nurtured them for months to come.
Apparently, everyone knows what the space in the middle of an onion is really for, except for me. I told this story to my friend Virginia Brodie. "Katie, do you know how an onion grows?"
I didn't know.
Virginia continued: "The space in the middle of the onion is for the new shoot to grow. It forms a green bulb and grows out from there. Without the space in the middle of the onion, it would never grow."
Oh, I said.
NLP is the space at the middle of the onion, the place from which growth can occur. Taking an NLP Practitioner class is like bypassing all the layer-peeling and going straight to the center.
NLP has helped me to notice my reactions and change them, and it's given me the ability to dig through the garbage, reclaim the onions, and plant and nurture them. My life is so much longer and fuller because I can peel the layers, knowing there's "nothing" waiting for me in the center.
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