NLP: The Essential Guide to Neuro-Linguistic Programming

CONTENTS

Foreword: Trial by Fire: My Personal Introduction to NLP

Authors’ Note and Appreciation

Introduction: What You’ll Get Out of This Book

What Is NLP?

Two Important NLP Principles of Human Nature

What Is an NLP Power User?

Section 1: It’s All About You

Chapter 1: Understanding How You Think

What’s going on in there?

A Taste of NLP: A Firsthand Experience

Discovery Activity: Accessing Personal Resources

You First: Understanding How You Work

Ouch or Yahoo: How We Create Our Feelings

Autopilot: The Mind’s Three Favorite Options

A Well-Oiled Machine: Body, Brain, and Mind

Different Planets: The Worlds Inside Our Minds

Discovery Activity: Discovering Your Inner World

Not Just Basic Cable: Representational Modalities

Mental Sticky Notes: The Power of Anchors

Discovery Activity: Creating a Personal Anchor

Anchors at Work: Intentional and Unintentional Anchors

So What? How You Can Use This Information

An Easy Ride: How This Book Is Structured

Chapter 2: Managing Your Mind

Who’s driving the bus?

Where Do You Want to Go? Outcome Frames

Discovery Activity: Creating a Well-Formed Outcome

Being of Two Minds: Congruence/Incongruence

Discovery Activity: Recognizing Incongruence

Are You In or Out? Being Associated or Disassociated

Subtle Distinctions That Matter: Sub-Modalities

Discovery Activity: Tinkering with Visual Distinctions

What’s Your Day Going to Be Like? Sub-Modalities and Your Emotional State

The Way You Do the Things You Do: Understanding Motivation

Discovery Activity: Exploring Roots of Procrastination

That Damn Report: An Example of Procrastination

Two for the Road: Tips for Uncovering the Roots of Procrastination

Discovery Activity: Reducing Internal Resistance

Been Down Too Long? The Power of Inner Voices and the Auditory Swish

Discovery Activity: Removing Negative Auditory Cues

Emotions as Passengers, Not Drivers: Choosing and Changing Your State

Depression: Auditory Cues That Hold the Story

Shaping Your Experience: The Habit of Fine-Tuning Sub-Modalities

Chapter 3: Living in The Zone

Whoa, is my brake on?

High or Low? How Expectations Impact Performance

Discovery Activity: Exploring Your Expectations

In the Mind’s Eye: The Power of Mental Rehearsal

In Sync: The Link Between Physiology and Energy

Roadblock Removal: Eye Movement Integration

Discovery Activity: Decreasing Resistance or Trauma

Not Just Pollyanna: How Energy, Enthusiasm, and Optimism Act as Drivers

Discovery Activity: Understanding Your Motivation

Discovery Activity: Amping Up Your Confidence

Mission Critical: Motivation Tips from Navy SEALs Training

Messing with Hecklers: How to Silence Critical Inner Voices

More Than Maintenance: How to Increase Energy and Productivity

Discovery Activity: Strengthening Your Anchor

Chapter 4: Upgrading Your Self-Concept

How’d things get this way?

Life Vest First: How to Prevent and Reduce Stress

A Look in the Mirror: Who You Are Today and How You Got to Be This Way

Clues to Beliefs: The Deep Structure of Language and the Meta Model

Like That: How Our Language and Behavior Reveal Individual Preferences (Meta-Programs and Predicates)

Today’s You and the Desired You: The Impact of Self-Concept

Discovery Activity: Identifying Something You Like About Yourself

Discovery Activity: Adding Elements to Your Self-Concept

The Archaeological Dig: An Example of Self-Concept Work

Ripple Effects: How One Change Often Creates More Change

Section 2: It’s All About Relationship

Chapter 5: Making Comfortable Connections

How come we don’t connect?

Internal Systems: How You Work Is Similar to How Others Work

Inside Out: How to Adjust Your Inner World to Be Better Company

Discovery Activity: Identifying Ways That You’re Good Company

Friction on the Line? How the Three Parts of Your Brain Work Together

Instant Processing: What Your Filters Process First

Discovery Activity: Identifying Ways Other People Are Good Company

An Inside Job: How to Help Other People Feel Safe

Not Just Imitation: How Mirroring and Matching Help You Make Connections

A Focus on Them, Not You: How to Create a Sense of Being Felt

More Choice Is Better: How Being Versatile Helps You Connect

The Bird’s-Eye View: A High-Level Summary

Chapter 6: More Than Mind Reading Other People

What’s going on inside them for that to be true?

A $500,000 Example: Communication in All Three Channels

Powerful Telegraphing: What Your Nonverbals Communicate

Traffic Signals: How Other People’s Nonverbals Provide Direction

Discovery Activity: Recalling Nonverbals of a Positive Experience

Discovery Activity: Identifying Nonverbals from an Uncomfortable Situation

Galaxies Away: Why It’s Important to Step into Another’s World

The Grand Canyon: How Missing Details Create Gaps in Understanding

Zooming In and Out: Tips to Understanding Someone Else’s World

Detective Mode: How Questions Fill in Gaps and Facilitate Understanding

Different Journeys: How Beliefs Distinguish Our Inner Worlds

Discovery Activity: Identifying Your Beliefs

Discovery Activity: Exploring a Personal Belief

Wants and Needs: How Exploring Beliefs Uncovers Motivations and Meta-Outcomes

Beyond Belief: How Language Reveals Other Personal Preferences

A New Approach: How to Apply Your Understanding of Nonverbal Behavior, Beliefs, and Personal Preferences to Interactions with Others

Discovery Activity: Exploring Someone’s Inner World

Chapter 7: Making Your Point Easily

How can I help people understand what I mean?

Chronicle: High Points of the Journey So Far

Physical Connection: How Touch Enhances Connections and Impact

Oxygen Mask First: How Managing Your Inner State Keeps the Focus on Others

Rules of the Road: Quick Tips to Navigate Uncharted Territory

The Local Language: How to Communicate According to Someone Else’s Preferences

Discovery Activity: Using Predicates of Preferred Channels

A New View: How the Process of Reframing Expands Possibilities

Super-Glue Removal: How to Loosen and Unstick Beliefs

It’s Kind of Like That: How Metaphors and Stories Support Shifts

A Book and Its Cover: How Appearance and Environment Are Clues to Other Worlds

Toxic Relationships: How Difficult People Tax Your Personal Resources

Connecting the Dots: Linking Key Concepts and Skills to Opportunities

Discovery Activity: Applying Your Discoveries About Someone Else’s World

Chapter 8: Creatively Collaborating and Resolving Conflicts

How do we get from here to there?

An Embarrassing Example

Moving in the Same Direction: Effective Collaboration Using the Well-Formed Outcome Model

Creativity: How Imagination Expands Possibilities

Expert Advice: The Disney Creativity Strategy

Innovation: How to Use the Disney Strategy with Groups

Discovery Activity: Applying the Disney Strategy to One of Your Opportunities

Up Against the Wall: How the Conflict Integration Process Supports Creative Problem Solving

Discovery Activity: Identifying One of Your Conflicts

Internal Battles: How to Apply the Conflict Integration Process to Inner Conflicts

Discovery Activity: Applying the Conflict Integration Process to One of Your Opportunities

Discovery Activity: Examining Ways You Get Stuck or Make Things Harder

Different Strategies? What Conflict Integration and Negotiation Have in Common

Powerful Emotions: How to Facilitate Discussions with People Who Are Upset

The Unexpected Strategy: An Approach to Consider When You’re Upset

Chapter 9: Maintaining Your Momentum with NLP

What’s next?

Journey Highlights: What You Learned

Next Steps: Options for Additional Development

21-Day Guide: The Next Steps to Creating the Person You Want to Be

Afterword: A Lasting Legacy

Common NLP Terms

References

Acknowledgments

Index

About the Authors

Back Ad

Praise

Copyright

About the Publisher

TRIAL BY FIRE: MY PERSONAL INTRODUCTION TO NLP

Tracy Hoobyar

NLP has been a part of my life since the mid-1990s. My father began studying NLP to learn more about himself and those around him. Because my dad was the son of a preacher, anything he learned, we all learned!

As time went on and I listened to Dad tell me what he had learned, it all sounded interesting, but, after all, it was Dad’s thing. I was busy with a toddler and didn’t have time to worry too much about it.

In early 2002, things changed drastically for me. My then eleven-year-old daughter was hospitalized at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, at Stanford University, for anorexia. Her heart had been affected and was weak, her bones were brittle, and we were given a very bleak prognosis. After three weeks and more than sixty thousand dollars’ worth of care, they wanted to admit her to a residential psychiatric hospital out of state. We would get to visit her occasionally. We were told there were no other options—she wouldn’t survive if we didn’t follow their suggestions.

Against medical advice, we decided to check her out of the hospital. As you might imagine, the primary doctor was not impressed. He invited my entire family to find other care in the future, and wished us well. Outpatient services were unsatisfactory. Counseling was not productive. It really began to look like this was going to be as bad as they told us.

Unwilling to accept that, I talked to Dad about changing her prognosis. After a lot of hours, Dad and I devised a plan to help my daughter—to defy all the rules and statistics—and help her get better. Our plan? Use everything he knew from NLP, everything I knew about psychology, and work with her to help her recover. While we used a combination of techniques, the most effective, and the quickest, tools came from the NLP world.

We worked with my daughter to understand, and accept, the part of her that was struggling for control by restricting her food intake. With her, we explored what she was thinking and feeling. We played with different techniques until we found what worked.

We went to her doctor three times a week at first, then twice, and then only once a week. He monitored my daughter for the typical challenges anorexic kids encounter upon release from the hospital. He checked her vitals and urine tests, and evaluated her for improvement.

She was never hospitalized again, gained weight steadily, and worked through her demons with the support of NLP and those who loved her. The doctors thought we were crazy when my daughter would talk about how she pictured anorexia, how she was able to make changes in her relationship with this disease and with food by playing with the size and color of the picture—and other things that sounded equally odd to those trained traditionally.

It was not an easy road back, but it was well worth traveling.

Today, my daughter has spent more than ten years in recovery. I’m convinced that without NLP, we would have lost her. With my newfound belief in the power of NLP, Dad and I worked harder than ever at real-world, practical applications. We found ways to help kids dealing with abusive histories, elderly people dealing with chronic pain, and businesspeople dealing with day-to-day issues.

Our dream was always to put together a program to help real people deal with real problems. Dad had such an amazing way of presenting information. He would use stories to help people understand what he wanted them to learn. His genuine compassion for others, and desire to help them live better lives, guided his actions and writings.

What you hold in this book is the realization of the dream we shared. He spent countless hours in trainings, reading books, working with the experts, testing theories, and applying techniques to everyday challenges. He researched NLP and its applications in more detail than most people could ever imagine.

The amazing thing is that you’re going to benefit from all of that. He literally helped hundreds of people overcome their challenges; here, he shares the tools he used to do that. Whether the struggle you’re concerned with is a fear of public speaking, dealing with the hurdles of major life changes, living with chronic pain, or some other issue, Dad has used NLP to positively impact something like it—and he is going to show you how to do the same.

This book will show you how to use NLP to become the person you want to be. You will learn the skills and tools to reduce stress, manage your thoughts and feelings, improve your communications with anyone in your life, and live the life you want to live.

You will hear stories that will enlighten you about your own stories. You may even discover something you didn’t know about yourself. I know I did. Here’s what I can tell you. NLP offers many powerful tools to change your life—tools that can also change the lives of those around you, if they’re open to that.

This book takes years of information and presents it all in a friendly, simple-to-read format that is easy to understand, learn from, and implement. Every once in a while, you find a book that really speaks to you, that is just the right teacher at the just the right time. I think author and speaker Garrison Keillor said it best: A book is a gift you can open again and again. I’m very happy and proud to share this special gift from my father with you.

AUTHORS’ NOTE AND APPRECIATION

Tom Hoobyar was an avid learner and adventurous explorer who embraced life’s mysteries and questions. He was the originator of six patents and the majority of his forty-five years in business exposed him to diverse issues in small businesses, Fortune 500 firms, as well as twelve start-ups that grew to be number one in their industries.

While he was CEO of a Silicon Valley manufacturing company, Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) became a vital tool that enhanced his leadership skills and his company’s success. He later used NLP as the foundation for his writing and coaching practice, which enabled him to touch and change the lives of hundreds of people.

While compiling his secrets of success for this book, Tom died from pancreatic cancer. Tom dreamed that his message would live on long after him, and asked us to transform his notes and transcripts from his teachings into this book. To honor the confidentiality he promised clients, we’ve changed the names and situations of the people in his stories.

Tom’s wide-ranging background and rich life experience enabled him to bring a special perspective and approach to NLP, which makes his insights and message more useful outside the training room or coaching session. We’ve done our best to preserve how easily accessible he made NLP to others.

Because Tom Hoobyar had a unique gift for communicating and making complex subjects fun and easy to understand, this essential guide is written in the present tense—enabling you to have an engaging conversation with him that can change your life.

Many people contributed to making this book possible. With this in mind, we’d like to especially thank:

•      Robert McDonald, whose precise and heartfelt teaching style inspired Tom Dotz to train with NLP Comprehensive and then found NLP California, where Tom Hoobyar and Susan Sanders were likewise inspired with the possibilities NLP made real.

•      Steve and Connirae Andreas for their creativity in developing new processes, their generous spirit of teaching, and their leadership in the NLP community. Without them, Tom Hoobyar and the two of us would not have met or shared our journeys of learning NLP.

•      The NLP Comprehensive Training Team for continually bringing NLP concepts, skills, and processes to life for thousands of students—in particular, Charles Faulkner and Steve Andreas, who were the chief editors on NLP Comprehensive’s first book, NLP: The New Technology of Achievement.

•      Adam Korn and Trish Daly at HarperCollins for embracing this project and shepherding it through to completion.

INTRODUCTION

What You’ll Get Out of This Book

There are hundreds of potential turning points in each person’s life—and this book will be an important one in yours. How’s that possible?

Here’s how. You’ll discover HOW your one-of-a-kind, never-to-be-duplicated special mind actually works. You’ll find out how you were able to use your brain before you could even say a word. Even better, you’ll be able to get under the hood of your own thoughts and adjust them to fit your current needs. Since most of our beliefs and values were created when we were children, this is a good thing. Some of those patterns might benefit from a little updating, don’t you think?

In this book, you’ll get specific processes for updating these old patterns and creating new ones. You’ll explore simple, solid solutions to issues including anxieties, procrastination, and motivation. You’ll learn and practice powerful strategies for immediate, lasting results in areas like self-confidence.

These may seem like pretty big promises, and yet the possibilities are not overstated. The basis for this is NLP, or Neuro-Linguistic Programming. It’s a funny name for an essential function of life: understanding and managing your own mind. NLP is famous for its fast fixes for phobias and long-held fears and anxieties—and much more.

Like many great ideas, the concepts of NLP have been embraced by many leaders in their fields—now, several decades since its inception, echoes of NLP appear in all kinds of books, training courses, coaching, and motivational speeches. As you go through this book and learn more about NLP, you’ll find yourself recognizing the many places and people who have adopted it as part of their work.

This essential guide provides you with multiple ways to create and maintain motivation to keep you moving forward toward your goals. You’ll also learn two tremendously important processes for selecting and validating your goals. That alone is worth the price of admission. When you truly know what you want, and that what you want is worth having, you’ll find all your internal resources aligning. You’ll find the friction, distractions, and hesitations melting away. You’ll learn what NLP calls internal congruence, and that gives you a strong running start.

You’ll discover new ways of relating to and understanding other people that will make getting cooperation and giving direction easier and more satisfying than ever before. And I’m speaking as a guy who used to have real issues with shyness and public speaking.

You see, I know firsthand what a difference using NLP has made in my own life. Using its concepts and techniques can have powerful and long-lasting effects. I have trained hundreds of people in NLP concepts and techniques—and have seen people make remarkable changes in their lives.

You’ll also get a new understanding of other people because you’ll have a better idea about what’s going on inside them. For the most part, many people don’t know how they work inside. They really are unable to tell you what makes them think a particular thought, or do what they do. You’ll learn about other people’s inner workings by simply observing behaviors and noticing the right key signals.

Having this awareness also helps you to be a little more approachable, a little more simpatico, and a little smoother when you’re communicating. Of course, the reward here is the power of influence. The knowledge you’ll gain about how people work gives you real persuasive power.

Your relationships will improve across the board because you will become more understanding, and more understood. That combination makes you an easier person to be around. Frankly, it makes you more attractive.

You’ll find your performance at work improving. Mine certainly did. I became a better team player. And, even though I was the boss, I became much more approachable to my employees. You’ll become healthier, too, because you’ll be better able to manage your motivations to exercise, to eat well, and to reduce or do away with some of your poor health habits.

The bottom line is that by reading this book and doing the recommended activities, you’ll develop the skills to become better at just about everything you do. You’ll gain powerful tools to be able to overcome whatever you believe is your number-one problem.

If I were you, I might be thinking, Why should I trust this guy—and invest my time exploring these ideas? Here’s why. For most of my career, I’ve made my living as an inventor, engineer, and entrepreneur, and after NLP training, as a consultant to people dealing with personal and professional performance issues.

I know what’s proved most useful to me over the last fifteen years and that’s what I’m going to share with you. This book is not simply an encyclopedia of NLP. Instead, this is an interactive user guide that puts the power of NLP at your fingertips right now. I am, first and foremost, an NLP user. It’s how I navigate life.

Let me start with how NLP really got my attention. It’s the story of how, after thirty-six years, I found a way to stop smoking. I had been trying to quit for eighteen of those thirty-six years. Nothing worked for me. I tried hypnosis, putting money in a jar every time I would break down and have a smoke, telling all my friends and family that I quit, drinking myself to sleep for one stretch of six nonsmoking months. Nothing worked. Every time I quit, I would find an excuse to start smoking again. Once I even used my dad’s death as an excuse to stop on the way to his house to buy a pack of cigarettes. Emergency, I told myself. I’ll quit again when I get through this.

Yeah, right. And I felt like an idiot. Here I was in charge of a start-up firm, and I was the only smoker in the company. Out of consideration for our employees, I had declared our offices a nonsmoking zone. So I would be alone, standing outside in all kinds of weather pounding down a quick cigarette before meeting with my staff, stinking like an ashtray and knowing that I was broadcasting my weakness. Then, one day, I saw an NLP process in a book. I thought I might as well try it.

That was more than twenty years ago and I haven’t lit a cigarette since. A few years later, when the company was on solid footing and I had a little breathing space, I started taking NLP training. Wow.

I had spent my entire adult life figuring out processes and technologies, but this new discipline blew those strategies away. As my questions about human nature (and my own inner workings) were answered for me, I realized that I had stumbled on to the coolest technology yet—the technology of human behavior.

What Is NLP?

NLP is a revolutionary study of the PROCESS of human thought. In other words, it’s the study of what’s actually going on when we think. I don’t mean the physical or electrochemical reactions, but what we would notice if we looked at the step-by-step activity of thinking.

The interesting thing about the mind is that if you take a brain and cut it open, you can’t find the mind. You can’t find a poem or the taste of chocolate or the feeling of a first kiss or the music from the prom dance. All you find is a bunch of nerve tissue. The nerve tissue in your brain acts as a substrate. It’s almost like your computer. It acts like your hard drive or your motherboard, and basically it’s designed to store various bits of data and to assemble, reassemble, and rearrange them and call them up whenever you want.

NLP is an understanding—not of the brain—but of how the mind, using the brain, expresses itself in your life and creates what you call your experience.

Right now, for instance, you’re reading these words. But these words by themselves are not your experience. Your experience is these words blended with what else you’re seeing around you at the moment, where you’re sitting, and how your body is feeling. Part of your experience right now is composed of the things you’re saying to yourself, like, Geez, I wish he’d say more about that point, or That’s interesting, or I don’t know if that’s true or not, or Am I really going to get my money’s worth out of all this time I’m spending?

The comments you make as you go on, coupled with your visual and your physical sensations as you read, blended with my words—all of that combined becomes your experience. Now, how does your brain do all that? Before I answer that, let me give you a little background information about NLP.

NLP started at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the early 1970s and has grown rapidly since then. NLP differs from psychology because its philosophy and techniques are derived from a specialized form of studying people called Modeling. NLP researchers interviewed and observed people doing many activities—and then shared the huge body of knowledge they accumulated about how people think when they’re falling in love, grieving a personal loss, shooting a gun, flying a plane, learning a language, or falling asleep. Thousands of people have been studied over the years, and much has been learned about how we think, and how we can adjust our own internal thought processes.

NLP popularized the Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic learning styles in addition to many new technologies utilized in education, psychotherapy, and communication. It’s used in business for interviewing, hiring, training, management, and sales. Entertainment and business professionals, as well as athletes and coaches in amateur, professional, and Olympic sports, use NLP coaching to improve performance.

In the beginning, I studied NLP because I wanted help inventing products and being a better CEO of the high-tech company that I had founded, and I got it!

Every day I was managing people, making phone calls, negotiating with vendors and customers in the business world. NLP really influenced my view of my employees. Even though I could see that some of them could probably resolve some issues and be happier (not to mention, be better employees), I wasn’t licensed to be their therapist. I was their boss.

Even though I was getting very excited by the things I was learning about human nature, I couldn’t really talk much about my discoveries. I certainly couldn’t ask other people, What pictures are you making in your head right now? or Are you hearing a voice? It wasn’t safe to try that and it certainly wouldn’t have been very effective.

So I decided to use this growing knowledge for my own personal development, and allow it to change my language and my gestures to get results for me first. Then I discovered how this also allowed me to get results with other people. You see, the funny thing was that when I changed, the people around me changed, too.

It actually turned out remarkably well—and that’s what I want to share with you. My goal with this book is for you to learn about the operating principles of NLP, about how you think and how others think. You’ll be able to manage your life more easily, and to dramatically improve your communications with other people.

What I didn’t know back then was that there would be so many additional benefits from using NLP skills. NLP has helped me be a better husband, father, and grandfather. It’s helped me be happier, easier to get along with, a better family member, and more productive in my professional work.

Since retiring from manufacturing, I’ve worked with clients as a consultant and coach. NLP has helped me to share my skills and experience with thousands of people in many walks of life and in many situations.

I’m an NLP Master Practitioner and Training Coach. I have a lot of other certifications for NLP and related training because I found the field so fascinating. In my home library, there are hundreds of books on the subject. I’m also the founder of the international NLP alumni group, the NLP Café. In this book, I’ve distilled the best of everything I’ve learned from NLP—which is a lot! You don’t have to be as focused on NLP as I am to reap many benefits from this information. You’re sure to find a payoff within your first hour.

Two Important NLP Principles of Human Nature

NLP researchers originally studied therapists who were famous for getting almost miraculous results with their clients. One of the psychotherapists initially studied was Fritz Perls, who developed be-here-now Gestalt therapy. He was a genius at reading body language and at getting immediate changes. His unique approach was the direct opposite of psychoanalysis, which requires years of therapy and self-study to develop an understanding of how one came to be who they are.

The second therapist was Virginia Satir, the brilliant developer of family therapy. Instead of working with just the one person in the family who was disruptive or troubled, she dealt with the entire family. She felt that each person and their behavior were part of the family dynamic. She found that if she addressed only the one person, they’d go back to the family structure and get a little crazy again, so she worked with the entire family.

The third person they studied was Milton Erickson, a medical doctor who was the primary developer of clinical hypnotherapy. A genius, with a completely different approach to therapy from Perls and Satir, Erickson also produced results that appeared to be magic. The fourth subject of initial study was a man named Moshe Feldenkrais, a body worker who did brilliant healing work with his hands.

NLP’s underlying operating principles, called Presuppositions, reflect the underlying unifying beliefs of these key individuals who were studied to discover what was most effective—and these became the operating principles of NLP.

The interesting thing about these distinctively different leaders was that their deep beliefs about human nature were pretty much the same. Two of the beliefs I want to emphasize for you are important because they flow through everything we do—and they contradict a lot of what most of us have been taught.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN INNER ENEMY.

One belief is There is no such thing as an inner enemy. There’s no monster within. You’re not broken. You can really let go of old beliefs like this.

When people do things that are not good for them—and it doesn’t matter whether it’s biting their fingernails or committing serial murders—they are doing what they are doing because some part of them thinks it’s essential. A part of them believes that it’s necessary for survival, for their well-being. While some behaviors may not be sane, healthy, or anything most people would condone, it’s important to understand that in that individual’s worldview, in their mind, that behavior is absolutely necessary.

BEHIND EVERY BEHAVIOR IS A POSITIVE INTENTION.

So suppose you have an issue—let’s say there’s a certain person you just can’t confront. Every time you see them, your knees turn to jelly and you start stuttering. Maybe it’s an attractive coworker, somebody’s boss, your mother-in-law, your spouse, or maybe it’s one of your children. The thing is, you’re not broken, and there’s nothing wrong. The reason you have such a reaction is that part of your mind thinks that not confronting them is what’s essential for you to do to survive.

Maybe the behavior is intended to keep you safe. Maybe it’s to preserve your self-respect, or self-love. Maybe it’s to get justice. No matter how weird or inappropriate it may seem, for that person there is an inner logic that makes perfect sense. It sounds a little crazy, doesn’t it? Why would this logic be true? Well, in the example above, if we did a little looking, we might find that your mind reached that conclusion when you were three or four years old.

Long ago, you might have had a difficult experience with someone who reminds you (in some way) of the person in your present life. It doesn’t have to be obvious—it could be how they look, their tone of voice, their role in your life, or just the way your unconscious sees them in relationship to you. When we use NLP, we look inside the mind, to find out exactly what pattern is operating to produce that response, and then we can alter it. By reading this book and putting the principles into practice, you’ll be able to do this, too!

The two things I’d like you to hold in mind are that there is no such thing as an inner enemy and that behind every behavior is a positive intention. Your mind—as well as everybody else’s mind—is operating the best way it currently knows how. It may be wrong and it may need an adjustment, simply because most brains decide how to operate when people are four or five years old.

But enough about NLP and me. Let’s talk about what’s ahead for you.

What Is an NLP Power User?

There are many reasons people study NLP. Some people are just curious about how human nature operates. Others want to discover how they themselves think. Power Users want to use NLP in the real world, where this skill set makes a tremendous difference for them.

There is a world of difference between knowing how and being able. My goal is to make you able. I’ve known many NLP Trainers and Practitioners who were pioneers and Power Users in this field. I’ve also studied the methods taught to hostage negotiators, Navy SEALs, and Army Rangers. I’ve studied other skills that I’ve found useful in life, such as the self-management skills of entrepreneurs, actors, and therapists. I’ve adapted the best of these here for your use.

NLP is more important today than ever before. Here’s why. In our world of ever-evolving technology, we are constantly connecting—with people we work with, people we love, people who have information and/or access to others. We’re so busy responding, we hardly have time to think. So in the following pages, I’m going to guide you through dozens of Discovery Activities, where you will be able to explore your personal thinking patterns—and learn how to manage and change them if you wish. You’ll also learn about whole new ways of dealing with other people and understanding how they are thinking and feeling.

Ready? Curious? I hope so—this oughta be fun.

Section One: It’s All About You

CHAPTER ONE: UNDERSTANDING HOW YOU THINK

What’s going on in there?

Life consists of what a man is thinking of all day.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

You know what you think, right? We all do. You’re thinking about what you like or don’t like, and what you want or don’t want. You also probably think of what you wish you wanted less of, like gorging on chocolate ice cream, TV, Web-surfing, shopping, drinking, or working.

In fact, when anyone talks about thinking, they talk about what they’re thinking about. They don’t talk about how we go about thinking those thoughts. What you’ll learn from this book is how you go about forming your thoughts, the effect that has on you and others, and how to change it to better suit you.

The understanding you’ll gain here is largely based on Neuro-Linguistic Programming, which is commonly referred to as NLP. NLP is based on the theory that all human thinking occurs in pictures, sounds, feelings, smells, and/or taste: the five senses. No one has yet ever effectively challenged this theory by giving me an example of a thought that isn’t expressed in some combination of words, pictures, smells, tastes, or feelings.

Can you do that? Right now, try having a thought that’s not an image, sound, feeling, smell, or taste. Just kinda makes your brain stop for a minute, doesn’t it?

After you have a thought, you have a response. Maybe it’s a funny feeling, followed by a comment like This guy is nuts, or some other internal dialogue, picture, or feeling.

All and each of us operate this way, and yet each of us is distinctively different in the exact thought patterns we have created as a result of our sensory-based thinking. We all live inside our self-created minds. Our unique reality is a result of our individual biology and the influence of our individual, mostly random personal history. Understanding that we all live in and operate from a personal model of reality is the key to making our lives better serve us.

By understanding this, you can truly understand yourself and other people, how you and they do the sometimes strange and sometimes pleasing things people do. You can figure out how to give yourself more of what you do want and less of what you don’t.

Most important, you’re going to find out how to assess what you really want and how to know that it’s really right for you. In this book, you’ll be introduced to processes you can easily put to use right away to give you relief from what you don’t want and more satisfaction with what you do.

An inner picture or sound can truly be a resource. Rather than just talk about how this is true, let’s play with this concept by doing a process together. Having a little experience with