As I write this article I am amazed by a process happening right now under my eyes: it is nothing less than the process of establishing individual power and proficiency.
We are in the middle of our Sydney NLP Trainer’s Training. The students are working their way through learning the hypnotic language patterns of Milton Erickson. They’re bright and although challenged by this particular use of language they perform wonderfully. It is a real pleasure to watch them, to notice how good they are in their understanding of linguistics, and utilization of carefully crafted sentences. This is not an easy task although they all have gone through the language sections during the NLP Practitioner and Master Practitioner.
It’s an advanced approach to presentations and agreement building.
Let’s assume the following scenario.
You’ve got a long day behind you, and most likely you’re tired. Everybody is after such a long day and you’re most likely aware of your tiredness because all you want to do is get on the couch and turn on the television. This automatically means your brain gets a break. No one will disagree that relaxing at the end of a long and tiresome day is not only desired but also necessary. Your natural day/night body cycle wants rest and requires from you to do, well , nothing for the rest of the evening.
And as you sit comfortably in front of the television watching the , ahem,news,. there are a lot of things that escape your conscious analysis. You are going through a process without your knowing what is happening. Your guard is down, your critical analysis is half asleep and all the things broadcasted to you go straight into your Unconscious Mind. You are being programmed by the language used “on” you.
I have wrote many articles in the past regarding the programming effect of television so I will not recapitulate them here.
Remember one thing: your Unconscious Mind is listening all the time, registering everything whether you pay conscious attention or not. Television is an excellent trance inducing device. It takes anywhere between 7 and 15 seconds to get you into a trance. If your mind is not trained you don’t know what messages are actually being received by your Unconscious Mind. The fun part is that many people are still afraid of hypnosis. They don’t get – since they are not trained to understand how hypnosis works – that you don’t have to sit down in a formal setting with a hypnotist to be hypnotized. You do that every evening in front of your television set.
All right, I give you this much: you’re overworked, overloaded, running around all day long and you’re tired. The flood of information coming onto you from all directions is enormous. Information, misinformation, disinformation, all at the same time. Living in the information era is fun and exciting but also overwhelming.
The question is then how do you devise a workable approach to a critical analysis of this input, so you don’t go nuts?
Some people apply the ostrich principle – stick their heads in the sand and pretend nothing is happening that’s different from twenty years ago. Others retreat into the safety zone of refusing to deal with it (believe it or not there are still people who barely know how to use a computer, not talking about and Android or Ipad/Iphone/tablet device.
Here is the game – you either keep up with the technology or are left behind in the dust bin of good old times. This is a common conundrum we all face from time to time or ,.maybe all the time. Not enough free time to rest. Something has to go, but what? Browsing the news? Playing with the kids? Taking a vacation? Mowing the loan? Meeting with your friends? Sleeping enough?
If you experience any of these previous examples you are just like the rest of us. In need to change something in your life. In need to implement in a new and creative way some sort of a change that will (1). Speed up the efficiency with which you accomplish your tasks and (2). Get new skills and strategies to find more energy (many call this personal power), understand it, and use it to reach out into the world. This is what our students are doing right now.
Our students learn right now in the NLP Trainer’s Training not only skills for presenting and training, but something that goes far beyond what is normally taught in ordinary motivational seminars. In fact, several core exercises contradict ordinary Jill/Joe “normal” patterns of thinking and behavior. That’s right – normal is just that – average, ordinary and second-rate. Being exceptional requires something different. Our students are right now shooting for becoming exceptional. They dig inside themselves for untapped abilities and simultaneously reach outside in the training for advice and inspiration, and thus they gain access to inner resources that would otherwise be ignored. The exercises they perform are all about increasing their mental and emotional skills, the ability to become a charismatic presenters with lots of energy and stability.
But there is far more happening with our students in this process: they begin to access their inner energy core – every person has it although it is not available to those who don’t know how to access it. They begin to learn how to instantly (all right, almost instantly) connect with each and every person in the room, communicate verbally and non-verbally, build rapport with large groups of people, present in such a way that everybody understands the message, and so many more things.
During this process, they themselves become transformed into whole new people with increased energy, dynamism, independent thinking and self-reliant actions. Oh wait,independent thinking? Who would want that? Ah! Doesn’t matter! It’s happening anyway!
They learn to not give up – they learn to push through so they can achieve what they want. And so a remarkable thing begins to happen. They learn power. Personal power. It is not given to them by the outside world. They find it all by themselves. They find it where it has always been.
Inside.
And the television hypnotic effect can be overcome by the critical thinking of the trained Conscious Mind.
Until next time, be well.