An Ordeal for Timidity

There’s a cool little intervention/ordeal I read about in a book called Change, and I use it with a lot of the people I work with one on one. It’s designed to deal with issues of timidy.  What’s interesting to me about this intervention is that it is very counter-intuitive; it works to solve the problem indirectly.

There are certain problems that require “risky action” (action that might lead to pain). These type of problems can compound when the person uses safe solutions (solutions that the person perceives to be less painful) to deal with their problems (i.e. avoidance, self deception).

An example of this is the woman who is too scared to go on job interviews yet needs to go to them, because she is unemployed and her money is running out; so instead she goes to therapy to talk about her problem.

Another example of this is the man who is single and lonely but avoids meeting new people, because of fear of rejection; so instead practices his pick up lines in his head thousands of times in order to prepare himself to meet the woman of his dreams.

Another example of this is the man that needs to go to the dentist because his teeth are messed up but avoids it because of the fear of the drilling; so instead he buys the most expensive toothpaste in hopes that it will help.

In these cases the required action to solve these problems is quite simple, but the problem is that these people just don’t want to deal with the consequences that taking the action can create and thus engage in safe solutions to solve their problem.

Enter the “Devil’s Pact”

In the Devil’s pact the coach/therapist tells the client that he has a solution that is guaranteed to work, but that he can’t tell the client what the solution is unless the client promises to do it before knowing what it is. This puts the client in a bind situation. The client now has the choice to say yes or no. A no, terminates the therapy, but also frames the importance of the problem as something not that important for the client to solve and it puts the responsibility back on the client. That is, this intervention can bring the clients incongruous behavior to consciousness so that the client realizes that he/she doesn’t really want to deal with his/her problem. A yes, is risky as the person does not know what type of solution the therapist will come up with and thus gets the person to partake in something risky.

The beauty of this intervention is that it does not matter whether the client says yes or no to the therapist’s solution, as the therapist’s solution exposes the client to risk and thus completely changes the frame of the attempted solutions creating something called second order change.

What I REALLY Think About Changework….

I find it very fascinating how much I’ve changed since I started doing changework.  My operating beliefs about people and their capabilities have been shattered more times that I can count.  I’ve compiled a list of the  current operating beliefs that are infusing my changework sessions.  Some of these beliefs are probably going to change at some point, but for now, I find that these beliefs work quite well.

Here’s a partial list:

1) People are incredibly resilient, even the ones that claim to be broken.

2) Humor is healthy and part of emotional maturity.

3) People can change unbelievably fast no matter how long they have been doing their particular problematic pattern.

4) People do their symptoms because they get certain benefits from them, and people will protect their symptom.

5) If I react to a client’s symptom like everybody else, then I might as well refer the client to someone else.

6) Everybody has the same human needs.

7) Thresholds (the moment where a person reaches a point where “enough is enough”) are awesome and incredibly useful.

8 ) Some people need to get their asses kicked in order for them to change. Pain can be a VERY VALUABLE resource.

9) Reassuring a client that they have changed is useless.

10) The quality of our lives is proportional to the quality of our operating emotional patterns.

11) A client’s commitment to change has to be greater than their resistance to change.  Ordeals build commitment.

12) Reassuring a client’s self esteem is useless.

13) People have all the resources they need inside.

14) People will go to tremendous lengths to maintain their sense of identity (there is great leverage here).

15) The more real and authentic I can be with my clients while using my therapeutic/coaching skill the more profound the change.

16) The more emotional filled a session is, the better.

17) Honest straight up feedback is ENORMOUSLY useful for clients.  It builds trust.

18) Clients don’t have to like me for them to change.

19) Rapport is about getting the attention of the unconscious mind, not about connecting with the client.

Weird Left Tit: A Paradoxical Intervention

There is a certain class of problem in which the common sense solution makes the problem worse.  Issues with self-esteem can fall into this category. When a person continuously esteems themselves in a manner in which they create feelings of low self esteem, the solution that loved ones and even therapist sometimes employ is one of reassuring the person that their self evaluation of themselves is flawed.  This rarely works.

NLP offers a variety of ways of dealing with self-esteem issues, but today I want to talk about a somewhat more provocative approach. Some might even consider this approach callous or crazy…right up my alley.  I will say that when I first got into this fixing people’s problem thing, I was not congruent enough to pull this type of interventions off.  It takes a bunch of rapport and callibration skills to actually get these types of strategies to deliver results. Enough talk.

Frank Farelly the genious and creator of Provocative Therapy makes the following hypotheses:

The first hypothesis addresses itself to the cliente’s attitudes towards himself, his self-concept: If provoked by the therapist (humorously, perceptively and within the client’s own internal frame of reference), the client will tend to move in the opposite direction from the therapist’s definition of the client as a person.

The second hypothesis focuses on the client’s overt behaviors: If urged provocatively (humorously and perceptively) by the therapist to continue his self-defeating, deviant behaviors, the client will tend to engage in self-and other-enhancing behaviors which more closely approximate the societal norm.

There is one intervention that Frank sites in his book Provocative Therapy that beautifully exemplifies how to effectively deliver an intervention that makes use of these two hypothesis.

A young girl came to him for issues with dating.  This young girl was born with one breast larger than the other one. This caused her much embarrassment. She didn’t want boys to see her deformity so she didn’t date any boy for longer than two dates.  Enter Frank. (Note that T = therapist in the text below)

The girl agreed and mentioned that she thought Frank’s assessment would be what would most likely happen, but that she could not be sure unless she tested it out in the real world. This was the end of the first interview.  In the next interview the girl came in to Frank’s office with a huge grin on her face.  She told Frank that she had seduced a guy and they had gone to his place.  As the guy was all heated up, she asked him to notice her breasts.  The guy looked at her and just went on with his business.  Enter Frank.

Therapy over.  The above beautifully displays the use a paradoxical intervention and the results speak for themselves.

I use this paradoxical techniques in my private practice.  I find that most people that have had chronic issues and problems have had many, many people reassure them.  I do the opposite. After I deliver my interventions and am testing for change, I get people to convince me that they have changed.  I even take it a step further and tell people that they are lying to me about having changed (all of this is done in a tongue in cheek fashion). By getting clients to convince me that they have changed, I get them to OWN the change.  Awesome stuff.

Action Is Required

This post is written more as a reminder for myself than anything else. Still, I think that other people can benefit from this simple concept.

Here it is:

Results are not based on what we believe, feel, or think. Results are based on the behaviors/rituals that we continually engage in in the real world.

I understand that our cognitive processes do affect our actions. Definitely. No doubt about it! What I want to emphasize is that ACTION IS VITAL. Without it, NOTHING GETS ACCOMPLISHED!

One of the patterns that I continually see is people who try and try to get their internal experience right before acting. That is, changing their internal experience (read: procrastination) becomes a safe problem or a distraction from actually having to take risky action (action that might lead to pain but whose reward can be colossal). This can go on for a very long time.

The reality is that there are stories and there are results, and results are determined by engaging in continous positive action.  Anything that stops us from engaging in continous positive action can be framed as a story.

So what’s your story?

Is it your past? Is it you lack of experience? Is it your emotions? Is it your low self-esteem? Or how about your daddy? Or maybe it is your mommy? Or maybe it is your ethnicity? Or how about our age? Or how about all of those?

I’ve heard them all and I’ve engaged in a bunch of them myself.

Uptime Trance: An Interview with Tamás Szigeti NLP Master Practitioner

Today I have the opportunity to chat with a good friend of mine.  He is one of those rare individuals actively experimenting with the nlp patterning and testing it’s limits.  He always has some awesome insights to share.  I am honored and humbled to introduce my friend and colleague Tamás Szigeti aka Xigi.

Martin: Hi dude…how are you?

Xigi: I’m pimping man…how are you?

M: For the people who don’t know you, and they should be embarrassed for not knowing you, who is Xigi?

X:  I’m an NLP Master Practitioner from Hungary, Europe.  I’ve been studying NLP for 3 years now, and I’m transiting to a new career in NLP therapy/coaching.

M: How did you get involved in brainwashing people?  Was there a defining moment?

X:  It all started in the last months of 2005. I had a profound experience, a kind of revelation. My perception shifted somehow, and I became more conscious of myself, my life.  I had started to read and try a lot of self-help junk before finding NLP, the technology that really works. I’ve been studying and applying NLP ever since.  I have used NLP in my own life to successfully deal with a bunch of limiting problems, strong anxieties, perhaps depression too, huge problems with socializing, work life etc. Of course I still have things to work on, but I have changed my life profoundly using NLP.

M: What are you most passionate about?

X: I’m really passionate about the human mind and its possibilities to change a person’s subjective reality.  I love playing with minds – my own and other’s. As Richard Bandler puts it so well, it’s all about freedom, the freedom to choose your own experiences, to enjoy the world and your life the way you want to.  That’s my number one passion.

M: Awesome.  One of my favorite states is called uptime.  It’s bad ass and full of wonderful things.  What is uptime?

X:  Uptime is a mental state in which our attention is keenly directed away from inside us and more to our surroundings.

M: What is uptime used for?

X: The way I see it, uptime is the foundation of the most successfully mental states in several contexts. For example when making a sale, teaching people, being in a job interview, in most sports, and even in video games it’s much more useful to focus on the surroundings, on the other people rather than focusing inside.

I will note that  there are contexts where focusing inside (downtime state) is more useful, writing a book can be a good example.

M: Yeah, I like to think of this stuff in terms of usefulness.  That is, downtime has its place and uptime does as well.

X: It’s been proven through NLP modeling that high performing individuals are really good at being in an uptime state when they do what they are best in.  The use of uptime is important for those who want to be successful in doing what they love to do. And who doesn’t? We need to be in uptime to react and adapt to our surroundings, to other people’s responses. Without that we can only react to our inner thoughts, feelings, and those are already filtered by our inner world, our previous experiences, beliefs etc, and it’s far from what goes on in the real world. To achieve better results, we have to ‘come to our senses’ (uptime).

M: How can my beloved and awesome readers benefit from using uptime?

X: We all participate in different forms of communications every day.  The mere act of stepping into an uptime state when communicating, can itself make our life better. Being in uptime facilitates better understanding of each other, which can decrease interpersonal conflicts. Uptime also allows for more efficient ways to get through our intentions, etc. And it simply feels good to be in uptime.

M: What is the best strategy people can use to get into uptime?

X: There’s a concept and technique in NLP called anchoring. Without further explanation, you can associate states to any sensory experience. In this excercise, I will tell you to squeeze your thumb and middle finger on your right hand when the (uptime) state peaks (when the experience of the outward focus is the strongest). It’s important not to make any judgements when you focus on your surroundings. Just take in everything through your senses without naming or judging anything. You can do each part of the excercise as many times as you want, going inside and outside with your awareness will make the state stronger each time.

Here it is:

1. Find a quiet place where you can safely relax. Set aside some time when you can comfortably do the excercise. Once there, sit down, relax, and enjoy the world
2. Notice what you feel externally. Feel the temperature of the air on your skin. Feel the touch of the things you touch. Direct your awareness to everything that you feel, Feel the textures, edges, hardness of the objects around you. When the experience is the strongest, anchor it by squeezing your thumb and middle finger on your right hand.
3. Become aware of what you see around you. Do not make any internal pictures, if you see anything internally, just move away the pictures into the distance until they disappear. Become aware of the shapes, colors around you, notice any movements or stillness, distances, light patterns. Spread out your awareness into the peripheral so you can take in everything you see, and when your attention is really directed outwards, anchor it by squeezing your thumb and middle finger on your right hand.
4. Notice what you hear. Listen for the tones, pitches, the location of the sounds. If you hear other people talking, notice the tempo and pitch of their voice. Listen to the sound of your breath coming in and going out. When the experience is the strongest, anchor it by squeezing your thumb and middle finger on your right hand.
5. Notice what you smell. Pay attention to what you smell and anchor it to the squeeze of your thumb and middle finger on your right hand.
6. Do the same with any tastes. Direct your attention to any tastes and changes in your mouth. Anchor it to the squeeze of your thumb and middle finger on your right hand.
7. Break your state. Move around a bit, change your position, think about what you had for breakfast, and what are your plans for tonight.
8. Test it. Squeeze your thumb and middle finger on your right hand and notice how those internal pictures and sounds disappear while you become fully aware of your surroundings.
9. If it’s necessary, you can go back to step 2, making your uptime anchor stronger.

By using your uptime anchor frequently, you can make the process automatic.  Use it each time you find yourself in a situation when it’s appropriate and useful to be in uptime.  Take a walk in uptime. Talk to your children in uptime. Call your mother in uptime.

Enjoy!

(Credits: Michael L Hall & Bob Bodenheimer: The User’s Manual for the Brain)

M: How can people get better at this state?

X: There are various ways:
1) by simply practicing it, one will get better with each uptime experience.
2) if a situation triggers a strong (negative) feeling (like anxiety, fear, anger), it can be difficult to reach a proper uptime state. Clearing out those feelings will make it easier.
3) The uptime state is a great foundation, but the experience can get better. For example, if you are really interested in the people you talk to, or curious about what they say, it will be easier to maintain a good uptime state. If you do something you love, it is easier to be in uptime – to be present. If you have confidence in what you do – same thing applies. The possibilities are endless.
4) The speed to switch between uptime and downtime can get better with practice too. Imagine a situation when somebody asks you a question, and you don’t have an answer ready. You might go inside for a second, and get back into uptime when you have put the pieces together.

M: How do you use uptime in your daily life?

X: I’ve built uptime states for communication so I use it every time I meet people. My favorite uptime state is when working with clients. Sometimes I just use it for fun, like walking in nature in uptime, or watching the people on the street. Cycling between lines of cars in Budapest downtown also requires a heightened awareness to my surroundings.

M: What are the pitfalls to avoid?

X:  Be patient with yourself. It might take some practice, but you will get good at this really soon. It’s useful to have your intentions aligned with your attention. When talking to someone you’d like to run away from, it’s pretty hard to stay in uptime.

M: I would like to thank you for taking the time for this interview. I really appreciate it and hope that my readers get some good value from it. I sure have.

Do You Like Your Problems?

Whenever the standard nlp stuff I use doesn’t deliver the results I think it should, one of the things I think about is the following:

People keep their problems because their problems allow them to meet their needs while not having to face their deepest fear – Robbins

Here’s an excerpt from a previous blog post that explains what I mean by “needs”:

In Human Needs Psychology there is a concept called the 6 Human needs.  The idea is that everyone has 6 Human needs, and these needs drive EVERYTHING we do.  These needs are hierarchical.  That is, each individual will value one need over all others.   An individual’s highest need will have a tremendous impact on his/her life.

The 6 human needs are: certainty, uncertainty, importance,  love, growth and contribution (the 6 Human needs model was developed by Tony Robbins).

What’s interesting to me, based on my interpretation of this model, is that although we all have the same human needs, we all have our own own unique ways of meeting these needs.  The ways of meeting our needs vary depending on our model of the world (beliefs, values, memories, identity, etc).

What’s obnoxiously fascinating to me is that people actually develop safe problems that meet their needs in order to not have to deal with stuff that might bring up their deepest fear.  Six Human Needs Psychology tells us that our two deepest fears are that we are not good enough and that since we are not good enough we do not deserve love. This can mean that in a coaching context a client might bring up a safe problem, instead of the REAL issue to work on.

Here are a couple of questions that I find useful:

Is there a problem in your life that IS POSSIBLE TO SOLVE but you’ve had for a LONG time? If so, which needs does the problem meet? Is there something that you know you should do but that you’ve been running away from?

Sometimes it takes a bit of a provocative attitude and even an in your face demeanor to get this stuff out in the open, which can take some balls. This is one of the reasons I really love this job.

Take care,

Martin

Neuro Linguistic What….?

It’s still kinda hard for me to explain to people what exactly I do.  Whenever I tell people I do Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), I usually get a blank stare.  I sometimes say I am a life coach.  This sometimes helps people get an idea of what I do, but I’m not satisfied with the associations that the term life coach can bring up.  Plus, I don’t really consider myself a life coach.  I think life coaching is kind cheesy.  Lately I just tell people I fix people’s emotional dramas fast and almost painlessly.  This seems to generates interest.  The reality is that NLP is a bit hard to explain.

In an effort to demystify what I do, I have posted a video of Paul Mckenna.  Paul is one of the most famous Neuro Linguistic Programers in the world. The video is a bit long, but you can watch the first 19:00 minutes of it to get a pretty good idea of the art that I am so passionate about.  I live for this stuff.  One thing I want to mention is that I DON’T do the tapping bit that Mckenna does.  I find it to be ineffective.

I remember watching Paul’s videos early on when I began my journey into this NLP thing, and these videos left a lasting impression on me.  Paul’s cool, but obviously he’s not as charismatic and good looking as me:P.

Take care,

Martin

Spoken Word

I’ve gotten interested in spoken word poetry.  For those of you that don’t know spoken word is.  Here’s a poet doing her thing.

I think I’m so fascinated by this kind of medium of expression, because I understand the power of language.  I also like spoken word for the therapeutic aspect of it (check out my Authenticity and Selling Chickens video blog).   I think that this artform can help me become more congruent and aligned as a man.  There’s a lot of stuff inside me that I haven’t had the courage to express yet.  The reality is that giving speeches about stuff that I haven’t had the guts to share until now is intimidating to me, but I think that this will be a good way to get it out and also to contribute to others.

There’s a pretty cool spoken word culture here in Texas and more specifically in Downtown Fort Worth. Mike Guinn, a poet that was 13^th at the 06 World Poetry Slam Championships, leads an open mic night every Thursday night in Fort Worth at the Embargo.  One really cool thing about this open mic night is that I can promote my services as a coach for free.  So I’m thinking that if my speeches are good, I might also attract some clients. I’m going to check it out this week and see if I get up the nerve to give my first speech.  If not, I’m committed to giving my first speech next week.  So if you want to help me with my accountability ask me:

“Hey Martin…did you DOMINATE the Embargo?”

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Martin

Is Rocky Balboa a Hypnotist?

This blog article will be kinda like taking a peak into my way of thinking when coaching someone.  When I coach people, one of my main goals is to detect the patterns a person uses in order to create their problem.  This includes patterns of physiology, speech, and behavior.  In order to detect pattern easily, I pay very close attention to the structure of what a person says and put a lot less importance on the content of what the person says.  In my way of thinking, pattern recognition is one of the core fundamental skills of coaching.

I will be breaking down a lot of the patterns present in the communication between Rocky and his son in the video below.  So, play the video and once you’re done, scroll down for a step by step unpacking of what is going on.

Cool vid…huh?

I will talk about the video in time intervals and talk about the patterns present in each time interval.  This will allow you to go back to the clip above and follow along.  If this sounds a bit confusing, keep reading it’ll all make perfect sense in a second.

Let’s get it on!

Son

0.32 seconds – 0.38 seconds

Son: “You know, living with you hasn’t been easy.” (This is a belief.  The son has created the following complex equivalence: living with you = not easy).

Son: “People see me and they think of you” (This is a mind read.  That is, the son claims to know what people think of him when others see him).

0.39 seconds – .41 seconds

Son: “Now with all this going on, it’s going to be worst then ever:” (This is a cause effect belief.  Something is going happen that is going to make something else happen).

.42 seconds – 1.10 minutes

Son: blah..blah…blah..bitching…whining…etc. (The main thing the is displaying here is that he is blaming external circumstances for his problems.  In nlp talk, he is being at effect rather than at cause.  This is a VERY common pattern, and it’s annoying as hell:).

1.11 minutes – 1.22 minutes

Son: “Don’t you care what people think? Doesn’t it bother you that people are making you out to be a joke and I’m going to be included in that? (The glaring pattern in this sentence is the external reference metaprogram.  That is, he is using other people’s judgements to determine how he  feels).

ENOUGH BITCHING! LET’S PUT SOME SENSE IN THIS BOY!

ENTER ROCKY

1.30 min

Rocky: “You aint gonna believe this, but you used to fit right here…” (Here Rocky starts to use temporal language and starts to bring his son to the past… aka regression).

1.49 min

Rocky: “But somewhere along the line you changed.  You stopped being you.” (Here Rocky starts to talk about a decision that his son made. That is, he puts him at cause rather then effect).

1.58 min

Rocky: “And when things got hard, you started looking for something to blame…” (Here Rocky is meta-commenting on his son’s pattern and thus making the choice point conscious).

2.22 min

Rocky: “..but it aint about how hard you hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward….if you know what you’re worth, then go out and get what you’re worth, but you got to be willing to take the hits…and not point fingers…cowards do that and that aint you…you’re better than that.” (Here Rocky really steps up with his hypnotic powers.  He uses a boxing metaphor to teach his son how to re-claim responsibility for his actions).

Cools stuff.  Who knew Rocky was a hypnotist.  I hope you enjoyed, and I know I missed a lot of the patterns that went on in this communication. Leave a comment and let me know which ones I missed.  Take care.

Martin

Authenticity and Selling Chickens

Martin Lanzas: NLP Practitioner

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I’ve been thinking a lot about using non-congnitive strategies to change limiting patterns of behavior.  This info has been hot in my brain lately.  I hope you enjoy.  Also, please leave a comment.