Posts Tagged ‘NLP’

This Too Shall Pass: Extending Scope in Time

Friday, September 30th, 2011

Mike Bundrant is an NLP trainer I’m currently learning a lot from. Here is a simple little exercise from Mike that allows you to get an experience of “this too shall pass” (or the Buddhist notion of impermanence) when in an anxious or other unpleasant state, thus decreasing its intensity significantly:

I found this to be a nice application of extending what Steve Andreas calls “scope in time” (from his Six Blind Elephants, vol 1) to get a larger perspective. One of the ways we create meaning from an event that then generates an emotional response is how we represent the experience in terms of time.

I just tried out this exercise from Mike in the video above and added another piece that worked well for me that I wanted to share. I visualized my timeline out in front of me, seeing it out there and seeing that past Duff in a movie frame having an unpleasant emotional experience over there. I made sure to zoom out far enough so that I could see the times with corresponding movies before and after when he was experiencing a more neutral or pleasant experience.

After just two examples from the past I could already get the sense of this new learning beginning to generalize. Try it out for yourself, see how it helps you get a larger perspective, and add your thoughts in the comments below (a free Intense Debate or WordPress.com account is required to post due to large volume of comment spam).

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Posted in Technology of the Self | 1 Comment »

How Much Change Can We Expect? Lessons from Juggling

Friday, January 28th, 2011

Most people with average coordination can learn to juggle three balls in an afternoon. Beginning with one, you practice throwing from one hand to the other and back without moving your catching hand. Once you have the perfect throw basically down, try with two. As the first reaches it’s peak, throw the other. At first they might collide, or go way out in front of you or to the side. But after 50 or 100 tries, you’ll get the hang of it. Then comes the tricky part, adding in the third ball again messes everything up. Your once-perfect throws seem possessed by an invisible force field only to fly out away from you. Perhaps you return to two balls again, get your confidence back, and then try three. After several or perhaps many unsuccessful but very close attempts—suddenly, “I’ve got it!” Miraculously, you catch all three balls on their descent.

It may take a week or up to a month to really master the three ball cascade (as jugglers call this basic maneuver), as you go from 3 catches in a row to 100 or more. Once you reach 100, you will rarely drop the balls at all—even if you stop practicing and only rarely try this trick with three oranges at the grocery store. But if you get cocky, you might find yourself making an embarrassing mess in public! (more…)

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Posted in personal development | 15 Comments »

You Can’t Change What You Don’t Notice

Tuesday, November 9th, 2010

How easy is it for a mechanic to fix a car without popping the hood? Virtually impossible. You can’t expect to change something you have no awareness of whatsoever. Most people have no awareness of their own inner, subjective experience, so they correspondingly can’t figure out how to make the changes they want to their thoughts and emotions (which then influence their behaviors). This is why the foundation of all inner change is mindfulness, also called paying attention.

Many times we are trying to fix our lives without popping the hood. Talking about why something might be going wrong and the guessing at solutions is purely hypothetical until we take a look inside. The first step is to simply become aware of what’s actually happening. The good news is that this isn’t really very hard, although it can take some courage and a willingness to learn. (more…)

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Posted in personal development | 35 Comments »

What Should We Do With Inner Critics?

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

Many personal development books and blogs talk about banishing, firing, destroying, maiming, or otherwise seriously injuring one’s inner critics. Inner critical voices seem to be obstacles to creating “awesome” things, to being authentic, or even to just being happy. What happens when we try to get rid of an inner critical voice? Can we embrace this unwanted experience without letting it run our behavior?

I know a kid who sometimes blames his hand for doing things. For instance if he knocks a cup filled with water over he’ll say, “it’s not my fault—my hand did it!” Getting rid of a critical voice is like cutting off your hand because it does stuff you don’t like. Want to quit smoking cigarettes? Cut off your offending hands! (more…)

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Posted in personal development | 50 Comments »

The Logic of Evil in Personal Development

Monday, October 11th, 2010

How does one go from sincere seeker to psychopathic guru?

There is a line of argument that I’ve seen again and again in many forms and from many individuals—in personal development, NLP, communication, spirituality, and philosophy. A seeker begins by questioning the nature of Reality, of behavior and emotion, and learns many techniques for changing their own and others’ state/behavior/beliefs…only to end up going down a very dark path of manipulation and control. It often happens so slowly that many others often get wrapped up with this individual until one day they realize they’ve been had (at least for the lucky ones that wake up).

How does this happen? This dark view has it’s own internal logic which sounds good at first yet leads to psychopathic conclusions. My hope is that by clarifying this logic, showing it’s inevitable destination, and pointing out it’s errors, unaware readers can wake up early and choose a different path (or guru) before it’s too late. In fact, I believe this evil logic can be a very real danger to anyone involved in personal development, philosophy, or spirituality of any kind if left unexamined. The good news is that “psychopathology leaves clues” (to invert Tony Robbins’ motto “success leaves clues”) and therefore red flags can be easily discovered by the critical observer.

The following is a kind of summary account of this evil logic, spoken as if from the first person. Please note that I do NOT believe the following argument—this is written as a mix of multiple gurus, all of whom I find to be manipulative in various ways. (If you think I might be making a strawman argument, I will be happy to provide more primary sources.) Also note that this post might be a trigger for anyone who has been psychologically or sexually abused. If that’s you, you might want to pass on this article. (more…)

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Posted in personal development | 64 Comments »

Which is More Real: Waking Life, Dreams, or Nothingness?

Monday, December 14th, 2009 
thewayitis
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What is Reality, really? Does Reality primarily consist of physical objects, spirits, or emptiness dancing? Or perhaps all of the above, or none of the above, or whatever you choose? Our answer determines our approach to personal development, so let’s explore some possibilities….

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Posted in reality | 75 Comments »

How Do I Stay Motivated? The Heuristics of Solving Life’s Little Problems

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

I’ve often heard this question, “How do I stay motivated?” This is usually not a useful question to ask, as it frames all problems of action as “motivation problems.” If you see something as a motivation problem, you need to get some of this “motivation” stuff to fix it, which usually means performing some technique of ego-inflation. This level of solution is like saying that the key to all unwanted emotions is to force a smile. While forcing a smile might be useful in some contexts, it’s hardly an elegant solution to the problems of unhappiness! Like happiness, motivation is the kind of thing that occurs naturally when all of you is aligned with your outcome, not something that you “do” directly.

The key to answering “how do I stay motivated?” is first to ask some more questions. If we simply take on some motivational strategy without getting more information, the solution will almost always make things worse. There are usually very good reasons for a lack of motivation that should be directly addressed if we want effective solutions to life’s problems.

I used to work in tech support in college. Some non-techie people were amazed at how I could figure out solutions to computer problems, and figured that I had some encyclopedic knowledge of all things technology. In fact, I had a terrible memory and little training, but I was willing to push buttons and try things until a solution emerged, or until I had spent quite a bit of time on it and it seemed unfixable (not unlike this hilarious comic from xkcd).

Similarly, people often tell me that coaching conversations with me are helpful, but I don’t necessarily have a robust theory of why people are broken or much official training, just some time pushing buttons and seeing what happens (as well as lots of independent study of methods of personal change). It would be hubris to say that I already know the answer to your motivation problem in advance, but in this article I’ll give you a bit of the heuristics that I use to solve such problems, using frameworks from the field of Neurolinguistic Programming (the Jedi side, not the Dark Side). That said, if these things aren’t of much help to you, then feel free to reject them!

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Posted in personal development | 51 Comments »