Book Description
This advanced NLP book builds on the
foundation established in Heart of the Mind, by the Andreases, and
Using Your Brain--for a CHANGE, by Richard Bandler. Presented in "live
seminar" format, this book offers rich information and specific
examples of how to work successfully in helping people change. Specific
methods are presented for changing habits, for congruently finally
saying "no" when that is appropriate, eliminating compulsions, building
self-concept, becoming more self-referenced and less vulnerable to
others' opinions, utilization of timelines and time frames for planning
and motivation, shifting the relative importance of criteria/values,
and much more.
From the Author
(from the Introduction) We
have presented the patterns in this book as explicitly and
systematically as we can, in order to make it easy for you to learn
them. Like a road map, these directions will only be useful if you take
the time to actually follow them, and use your senses to experience the
actual territory that they lead you to. We have presented them in great
detail, and warned you about all the mistakes we and others have made
with them, to make it hard for you to use them inappropriately. Once
you have taken the time to learn these methods thoroughly, you can
become more flexible and artistic in utilizing them with clients, with
confidence that your behavior will remain systematic and effective.
Many
people accuse NLP of being technological, with the implication that it
is cold and unfeeling. However, those same people are happy to use the
technology of central heating to help their houses warm, instead of the
smoky fire used by their ancestors. They also use antibiotics and
immunization to keep their children healthy without thinking about the
incredibly complex technology behind it.
Months of warm
feelings won't help a child who is a poor speller, or release him from
the resulting ridicule, feelings of failure and self-criticism; an hour
or two of NLP technology can teach him how to spell and provide him
with a sense of accomplishment and self-worth. All the empathy in the
world won't help a phobic; a half-hour of NLP technology can release
her from a life punctuated with terror. Holding the hand of a dying
friend may ease his passing; appropriate medical technology may save
his life.
Of course any technology can be misused by delivering
it in a cold, unfeeling way. We have listened to nurses whose "bedside
manner" must have been learned from a tape recording of Lucretia
Borgia, and therapists who speak in the tonality of Adolph Hitler. This
book is more technological than most, because we know that detailed
technology gets results, and that the "coldest" technology can be
delivered with humanity and respect.
We learned much of the
material in this book directly from Richard Bandler in a small seminar
in early 1984. In that seminar he taught us a number of specific
patterns, most of which are included in this book. But more important,
he demonstrated the tools of the trade: how to use fine distinctions,
specific questions, and procedures for further exploration and
discovery. Richard also often demonstrated without explaining,
described events cryptically, or dropped tantalizing hints. Although
this was often frustrating, it also whetted our curiosity and motivated
us to explore further. Since then, we have been using the tools he
taught us to follow up some of those tantalizing hints and develop
specific patterns in sufficient detail that they can be more easily
learned by others.
For over three years now we have been
teaching this material in our Advanced Submodality Trainings. Much of
this book has been edited from transcripts drawn from many different
trainings. These segments have been woven together and presented as if
they occurred in one training, both for your ease in reading, and to
retain the conversational style and format of the live teaching. Other
parts we have written without referring to tapes of transcripts. Most
of the time we do not indicate which of us is speaking; after months of
editing by both of us, we often don't know, and it doesn't matter
anyway. We do identify ourselves in transcripts of demonstrations which
are also available on videotape.
In many ways, this book is a
continuation of Richard Bandler's book, Using Your Brain--for a CHANGE,
which we edited two years ago. As we were writing this book we have
presupposed that readers will have read Using Your Brain, and will have
a background understanding of basic submodality patterns. If you don't
have that background, we strongly recommend that you acquire it before
reading this book, in order to get full value from the patterns in this
book.
We also strongly recommend that you read the chapters in
this book in order. Sequence, or syntax, of experience is a major
organizing principle in NLP, and the sequence of chapters in this book
has been carefully thought out. Many of the later chapters presuppose
that ;you have already read and understood earlier chapters. If you
read a later chapter without the background provided by earlier
chapters and Using Your Brain, it will be more difficult for you to
understand the material completely and thoroughly.
There is an
old joke about the human brain being "the only self-maintaining
all-purpose computer that can be created by unskilled labor." However,
it's also a computer without an owner's manual. The patterns developed
by NLP are essentially human "software"--ways to organize your
experience that can be learned, a cultural/social resource, like all
the other products of human creativity and inventiveness. The material
we present here explores the mental patterning that makes us who we
are, and provide tools that you can use to quickly change how you
respond. This book joins over 30 NLP books that have been published
since the first one was published by Richard Bandler and John Grinder
in 1975. And this is only the beginning . . .
