Waltzing with Wolverines is an e-book about working with “at risk” teens by our son, Mark Andreas, based on his experiences leading a 24/7 wilderness therapy program in the mountains of Colorado.

When Mark gave Connirae and I the manuscript to review, we couldn’t put it down. We loved reading the stories — Mark’s sense of humor and creativity come through, as well as a lot of clear pointers that can make living and working with teens more rewarding for everyone involved. Even those who hope never to see a teenager in their entire life are likely to enjoy this book, because of its story value.

Here’s a link to read the intro free… (scroll down to the wolverine paw print)

Buy Waltzing with Wolverines on Amazon here…

And here’s what reviewers have to say…

In Waltzing with Wolverines, Andreas redefines how to build relationship and trust with so-called “troubled” youth.  In these pages, you’ll find a treasure trove of teaching and leadership stories, tools, and techniques. But this book is about much more than a list of behavior management strategies—it’s a clarion call to re-envision our relationship with our young people by creating relationships that are simultaneously more empowering and more effective for instructors and students alike. This is a must read for anyone working in the fields of wilderness therapy and outdoor education.            

—Dr. Jay Roberts, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Education, Earlham College

This book is a wonderful guide, not only for parents of “troubled” or “resistant” kids, but for every parent. If Mark had given only bullet points, like so many other books do, I’d have read and forgotten them by now. Instead, through the memorable stories Mark tells, the lessons are still clear in my mind. I wish I could have read this wise book when our children were younger, but I’ll buy it for them now before they make the same mistakes with our precious grandchildren.

—Ben Leichtling, Ph.D. Author of “How to stop bullies in their tracks” and “Bullies Below the Radar.”

Waltzing with Wolverines is a remarkable piece of work. This is a book of practical, nuts-and-bolts wisdom about working with youth on the edge. Anyone who works with young people will find useful ideas and inspiration in these pages.

—Mark Gerzon, author of Leading through Conflict (Harvard Business School Press)

If you are a parent, you need to commit the principles and techniques expressed in this book to your heart and mind so that you can remain sane during adolescence. If your child is already a teenager this book will become your and your child’s best friend. Using the techniques expressed so eloquently by the author allows you not only to reconcile problems expressed by your children, your spouse, your colleagues but also to reconcile the more frustrating and problematic non-expressed problems, all in a non-confronting manner. This book should be a mainstay of communication programs.

—Melissa J. Roth CHt., Ph.D.

Mark doesn’t just discuss theories and philosophies of becoming a master facilitator for “at risk” youth, he models how it works in almost any possible scenario with brilliance, patience and true genius! If you want to become a master leader with teens in any venue, then this book is your bible for how to do it with great humanness, compassion, humor and brilliance.

—Kimberly Kassner, author of, You’re a Genius—And I Can Prove It! and Founder of EmpowerMind

Order Waltzing with Wolverines on Amazon. And after you’ve read it, Mark would appreciate it if you post a review.

–Steve and Connirae

I’m really pleased to announce that Volume I of my e-book, (which was titled “Help with Negative Self-Talk”), is being published by Norton, a major New York publisher, now titled Transforming Negative Self-Talk. (118 pp. paperback, $17.50) One of Norton’s editors saw a presentation I did on a webcast; she really liked it and this book is the result.

This book is strongly recommended by a number of prominent therapists, including Michael Yapko, Jeff Zeig, Michael Hoyt, and Giorgio Nardone.

It’s already available on Amazon.com (including a Kindle e-book edition) or direct from Norton.

Samples from the book:

Earlier on this blog I posted a section from this book on affirmations—why most affirmations don’t work at all, and some backfire, and how to create an affirmation that will work well.

Volume 2 of the e-book, Help With Negative Self-Talk is still available from Real People Press.

Contents and excerpts can be found here.

*The new Norton paperback edition is the same book as volume 1 of Steve’s e-book, Help With Negative Self-Talk except that the Norton book has one additional chapter. Volume 1 is no longer available as a Real People Press e-book, but it is now available from Amazon on Kindle.

This is a passionate and moving story of courage and the influence of language. It’s a great example of entering another person’s world through mirroring — and much more — in an extremely dangerous situation.

We think you’ll enjoy this story, from Rosemary Lake-Liotta, sharing her experience working as an EMT in tough neighborhoods.

Her response was the opposite of the classic instructions in such situations. You are usually told to respond to conflict with placating words like “let’s all calm down and discuss this rationally.”  I think you can easily imagine how that would have worked here.

---

From the new book, Sweet Fruit from the Bitter Tree: 61 stories of creative and compassionate ways out of conflict.  Available on Amazon.

Words Save Lives

After my training to become an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) I was given an opportunity to further my learning. I would participate in a 120-hour unpaid internship riding with Chicago Fire Department Paramedics to learn further crisis intervention techniques in the field.

One of the paramedics who mentored me during my field internship said some things on my first day that I will never forget. “You are going to be seeing and meeting people who may be very different than you. They may not look like you, may not act like you, they may not share the same values as you, they may use foul language, and they may not have the same personal hygiene habits that you have. They may be homeless or living in poverty. They may have had horrible life experiences that have shaped the way they act and what they do. They may be deaf or blind. They may be from another country and not speak English. You must treat every person you come in contact with, regardless of who they are, with RESPECT.”

He continued, “The words you use and how you use them convey many things in this work. First, they must always convey respect. Next, you must be able to communicate with others in terms that they use and understand. You will have to learn to be very flexible and change with the circumstances. In any situation, you must always protect yourself and protect your patient. When you take a person onto your stretcher, their life becomes your total responsibility. It makes no difference if you’re in a hospital or in the projects; if a person is on your stretcher, that person is your responsibility.

“When you are here with us in the field,” he said, “I want you to keep your mouth shut and watch everything we do, listen to what we say, and especially observe people’s expressions as we interact with them.”

During the months that followed, I watched hundreds of faces. Each transport provided a wealth of knowledge regarding human behavior, and taught me to choose my words with care. All that training prepared me for the day that was to change my life…

I had taken a job working for a private ambulance company that had contracts with hospitals and nursing homes all over the Chicago area. Each ambulance was assigned a two-person team that included a driver and an attendant, both certified EMTs. Long before the era of cell phone technology, the ambulances were equipped with stationary CB radios. (The only portable radios available were carried by the paramedics who staffed the four mobile intensive-care ambulance units.) This meant that when we left the ambulance to get a patient, we had no radio contact with dispatch.

My partner and I that day were assigned a routine transport that was dispatched as a “patient pick up” at one of the housing projects, Cabrini Green. The patient was to be transported to a local hospital for physical therapy. I had been to Cabrini Green many times during my internship with the fire department. As part of my training, I had a crash course on gangs and gang violence. In effect, I had learned to “speak gang.”

The cement walls of the high-rise buildings were covered with gang graffiti, much of it dominated by The Vice Lords and The Latin Kings. Graffiti was one way the gangs claimed their territories, letting others know that this was their turf. The hallways were also cement and open to the air, being covered by chain-link fencing from the first floor to the top floors to prevent people from falling to their deaths. The elevators were in poor repair. We never knew beforehand if the elevator we needed would be working or not. Today we were lucky. The elevator doors opened. I pulled the stretcher in and my partner Joe pushed the button for the 14th floor. The doors closed. As we lurched upward the light in the elevator kept flashing on and off, and the elevator would stop all together and then jerk upward again. Perhaps the wiring had been gnawed on by rats, which were a common problem here.

When we arrived at the 14th floor we both cautiously stuck our heads out to see if the scene was safe. It looked clear so we pulled the stretcher out of the elevator and proceeded down the hall to apartment number 1407. Joe stood on one side of the door and I stood on the other side. We knew not to stand directly in front of the door because you never knew if there was a person on the other side with a gun. Joe pounded hard on the door. A voice came from the other side.

“What the hell you want?”

Joe said, “We’re EMTs here for Jessie.”

The door opened and a little boy of about 10 was standing there. “C’mon,” he said, “Jessie’s in here.”

We followed the boy with our stretcher in tow, passing through a small living room and into a bedroom. Sitting upright on the bed was a young man with thick white casts on both legs. He was wearing shorts that had been cut up the sides to make room for the casts that started at his hips.

“Jessie can’t move himself at all,” the little boy said. “You have to lift him up.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“I’m Henry, Jessie’s my brother.”

Jessie told his brother to go next door and stay with a neighbor while he was at the hospital. After Henry left I asked Jessie what had happened to him. He said that the Lords had broken both of his legs with baseball bats because he would not join their gang. He and his family were Jehovah’s Witnesses. He said that due to his religious beliefs he would never join the gang. He asked that I give him his Bible so that he could read at the hospital while he waited for his physical therapy appointment. When we had Jessie safely secured on the stretcher, we headed back out into the hall.

I was at the front of the stretcher as we pulled Jessie along to the elevator. I pushed the down button and again the elevator doors opened. This time three men were standing there. The man in the middle was holding a gun. He looked down at me and said, “WHAT THE HELL do you think you’re DOING with MY BOY?”

I glanced back at Jessie and saw sheer terror on his face. In that split second I knew that these were some of the men that had done this violence to him. I straightened to my full height of exactly five feet, looked up at the man with the gun, and said, “He’s NOT your boy, he’s on my stretcher, he’s on MY TURF. He’s MY boy!”

Shocked, the man looked at the gun he was holding, looked back down at me, and said, “SAY WHAT?”

So I said, “Now I can see that you’re a man that demands RESPECT.”
“YOU GOT THAT RIGHT.”

“I give you that RESPECT.” I said. “Now let me tell you about my gang.”

He said, “YOU in a gang?”

“Yeah! All these EMTs and Paramedics that come here when you call 911 are all part of MY GANG. Now, let me ask you, has there ever been a time when you called 911 and someone from MY GANG didn’t come to help you?”

“No, they be there,” he said.

“THAT’S RIGHT. If you mess with me or you mess with anyone on MY TURF,” I pointed to Jessie, “or you mess with anyone in MY GANG, WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK’S GOING TO HAPPEN THE NEXT TIME ONE OF YOUR BOYS IS BLEEDIN’ OUT BAD AND YOU CALL 911?”

He looked back down at the gun, then looked back at me and said, “DAMN, YOU A BITCH!”

“YOU GOT THAT RIGHT,” I yelled at him, “AND WHILE I GIVE YOU THAT RESPECT, I DON’T HAVE ALL DAY TO BE STANDIN’ HERE SHOOTIN’ THE SHIT WITH YOU!”

“Let the lady pass on by,” he said with a nod of his head.

I pulled the stretcher into the elevator, praying that he wouldn’t change his mind. Tears were streaming down Jessie’s face as the elevator doors closed. Joe and I took some deep breaths, doing our best to prepare for whatever might meet us on the ground floor. Thankfully, when the elevator doors opened again the scene was safe enough to proceed to the ambulance. We notified our dispatcher that an incident had occurred but that no injuries resulted and we would call him from the hospital. En route, I asked Jessie who the men were. He said he didn’t know their names. I asked him if they were some of the men that had broken his legs. He nodded and said, “If I tell anyone who they are, they will kill my family. I already talked to the police. What you don’t understand is that I have to live there.”

When I called my dispatcher, a meeting was arranged with the supervising field paramedic and the owner of the company to discuss what to do. Because the man with the gun did not actually point the gun directly at me and say he was going to kill me, and I did not know who the men were, filing a police report was not recommended. Thousands of people live in Chicago Housing Projects and many have guns. Paramedics and EMTs across the country face dangerous situations every single day. They continue to do their job. We were there to safely transport Jessie to physical therapy and back, not try to hunt down gang members. Following the meeting, I was promoted to become one of the company’s EMT trainers.

As a trainer, I went to pick up Jessie three times a week for the next six months with trainees under my charge. Every time I pulled up to Cabrini Green and got out of the ambulance, the gang scouts that were watching over their turf would say, “Hey, it’s that little white MEDIC BITCH again!” And then the call would come back, “He says let the lady pass on by.” I was never bothered by anyone there ever again.

~Rosemary Lake-Liotta

Excerpt from Sweet Fruit from the Bitter Tree: 61 stories of creative and compassionate ways out of conflict, by Mark Andreas. ©2011 Real People Press.

---

To read the entire collection of remarkable true stories, order now at Amazon.com.

Available locally at The Tattered Cover and The Boulder Bookstore.

If you’d like to order this book as a gift for friends or family, contact us for quantity discounts: order [at] realpeoplepress.com

Every time I read the inspiring stories in this book, I wind up with tears in my eyes. If you like the stories half as much as I do, you’ll really appreciate them. There is a lot of both wisdom and “heart” in these pages.

Over the past 7 years, our son Mark has been interviewing people who have a story to tell of how they dealt with a situation of potential conflict, and writing up their stories for this book. To this he’s added some great stories others have written, but which in most cases have not been easily accessible or well-known. Connirae and I are very pleased with the result, and happy to make it available to people around the world through Real People Press.

Below is the full description of the book, as well as endorsements from Dan Millman, William Ury, Mark Gerzon, Pamela Gerloff, Bill O’Hanlon, and a link to order.

— Steve Andreas

---

Sweet Fruit from the Bitter Tree is a book of fascinating stories of how real people dealt with conflict situations by responding in unusual and creative ways that most of us would never think of. Some intensely moving, some funny, some startling or surprising — these stories can open our hearts with a deep appreciation for what is possible.

These pages cover the full spectrum of life — from the kinds of conflicts that all of us face, to the intensity of war and threats of extreme violence. Here you will find stories that take place in the community, the workplace, the schoolyard, and the backyard. You’ll read stories from dark alleys, psych wards, jails, hostage hideouts, and wars.

These stories show how each person came face-to-face with a significant challenge and found their own unique way to meet it. There are no recipes here, no set of steps — just raw experience unfolding with a richness that will keep readers on the edge of their seats through the last page.

This unique and meaningful book includes stories from Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, Nonviolent Communication founder Marshall Rosenberg, Colonel Christopher P. Hughes, Milton H. Erickson, as well as many people like you and I — you may know some of these contributors.

• You’ll laugh out loud at the funny interventions used by a cop.
• Be touched by the forgiveness and generosity of heart that made resolution possible between people who suffered tragedy in the midst of war.
• Learn how an estranged husband and wife rediscovered their love for each other by studying their dog.
• Witness a creative teacher dealing with bullying on the school playground.
• And marvel at how a taxi driver with a gun to his head avoided being murdered by a “psycho.”

Two of these stories have appeared earlier on this blog:
“A Stunning Example of Rapport (and Pattern Interrupt)”
“The Plywood Artwork”

Order below to enjoy the other 59 stories!

What People are Saying about this book:

“As a sage once said, ‘God invented men and women, because God loves stories.’ The stories compiled by Mark Andreas in Sweet Fruit from the Bitter Tree, tasted one by one, each morning or evening, can transmit real-world reminders about how changing our behavior can change the behavior of others — and that the right words, used skillfully and with heart, can turn a life around.”
— Dan Millman, author of Way of the Peaceful Warrior and The Journeys of Socrates

“In the immortal words of songwriter Nick Lowe: What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding? This book is a charming and moving book about peace, love, creativity and understanding. I predict that you will be inspired by the stories in this book. One of them may even save your life someday.”
— Bill O’Hanlon, featured Oprah guest and author of Do One Thing Different

“There’s an old saying that some conflicts are so difficult that only a story can heal them. Mark Andreas has done us a great service with this collection of extraordinary stories that have this inspirational quality.”
— William Ury, co-author of Getting to Yes, author of The Power of a Positive No

“What a wonderful book this is — truly exceptional. The stories are so varied, so profound, so fun and surprising. The result is a sense of possibility awakened. If these ‘ordinary people’ can turn a tense or scary situation into harmony and peace, couldn’t the rest of us do that too? Sweet Fruit from the Bitter Tree subtly instructs us in the fine arts of possibility and peacemaking, as we savor its beauty and grace.”
— Dr. Pamela Gerloff, Founder of The Global Possibility Project, co-author of Dignity for All: How to Create a World without Rankism (Berrett-Koehler)

“The stories in this book can teach you more than any academic course or workshop. They are not ‘case studies;’ they are life itself.”
— Mark Gerzon, President of Mediators Foundation, author of Leading Through Conflict (Harvard Business School Press)

Order Your Copy!
If you are ordering a single copy and live in the United States, we suggest ordering from Amazon:

Order Sweet Fruit from the Bitter Tree From Amazon.com

(Amazon should ship out within 2-3 days and at this time has plenty of books in stock. Their long estimate on shipping time we think is their attempt to “play it safe” in case they are deluged with orders. However, please know that we will be shipping to them within 24 hrs. if their orders exceed supply.)

If you are ordering this book along with other Real People Press Products or live outside the U.S., use this link to go to the order page on the Real People Press website:

Order Sweet Fruit from the Bitter Tree from Real People Press

Often people congruently make a change, but it just never happens. Sometimes this is because the change wasn’t made appropriately, or because some important competing outcome wasn’t considered. But often it is simply because the change wasn’t securely programmed into a specific appropriate time and place in the future, what is called “future-pacing.” For instance, someone may sincerely decide to exercise. But if it isn’t programmed into a specific time and place, they may find themselves at the end of the day with no time left to do it. Then they may sincerely promise themselves that they will do it “tomorrow” — and then again find themselves at the end of the day not having done it.

For example, we live in the country, and our mailbox at the road is some 400 feet from the front door. Repeatedly I would drive up to the house and then realize that I had forgotten to pick up the mail. Annoyed, I would promise myself that I would notice the next day. But when I came home the next day, I would usually forget again. I was definitely motivated, but something was missing, so I decided to put what I know to work. I vividly imagined the context — being in my car as I approached the mailbox. Then I focused on the mailbox, and thought about what kind of event would definitely get my attention if it happened in the real world. Then I imagined the mailbox simultaneously turning bright pink and expanding into the size of a Volkswagen and then exploding with a loud pop — something that I found amusing, as well as attention-getting. This linked the external cue of seeing the mailbox with my internal representation of the large, pink, popping mailbox. The next few times I approached the mailbox, I became conscious of the exploding pink mailbox, and felt a small smile of enjoyment, but this gradually diminished, as my noticing the mailbox became more and more unconscious. Since then, I have never missed getting the mail.

In the mid 1980’s we posed the following question to an NLP practitioner training: “If, right now, you think of something that you want to do later, how do you program yourself, so that in fact you will do it at the appropriate time?” We gathered a variety of different responses from participants, noted the advantages and disadvantages of each, extracted the general principles involved, and summarized them into a general format for teaching others how to do this in a way that is effective and dependable. We have just resurrected the audio of doing this, and made it available as an hour and 19-minute MP3 download:

Future Pacing Audio

Virginia Satir was one of the pioneers of family therapy, and probably the greatest family therapist who ever lived. She was also a major source of NLP patterns and distinctions. In 1985 she presented a morning and afternoon keynote address to the National Association for NLP in Denver, Colorado. At the end of her afternoon talk, a man asked for help in applying her approach to his mental health work in a rural community, where he was encountering strong opposition from conservatives. In response, Virginia enacted a series of brief role-plays in which she demonstrated a wide variety of ways that he could respond in this situation.

Many people think that Satir had only one approach to working with people, but in these two videos we are treated to a rare display of Virginia’s flexibility, and her willingness to do anything to evoke a powerful response, knowing that all responses can be utilized as a way to connect with someone and initiate a process of change. This is based on a key principle of Virginia’s:

“Anybody on the outside of me — let’s put it like that — is someone whom I can respond to. They are never the definers of me. They can only be the definers of me if I have handed over my charge of myself to them. And you can do that in many ways. ‘How could I think differently from somebody?” “They will be mad if I don’t.’ ‘They will be hurt if I don’t.’ ‘Blah, blah, blah,’ you know. Can you fill in the ‘blah blah’s’? OK. All right.”

A verbatim transcript of these Virginia Satir videos can be found at the following link:
Virginia Satir Video Transcript

To order videos (DVD or download) of both of Virginia’s keynote talks—3 delightful hours with one of the finest therapists the world has ever known—click here:

Virginia Satir Video

Case Report: NLP in Action*
Steve Andreas
© 2007

Cathy was a 55–year-old single client of a colleague. Her initial complaint was that although she was very competent in her work, she repeatedly raged at her boss and at co-workers. It soon emerged that she had a history of sexual abuse from her father, and had a very difficult time separating her own experience from others. This made it hard for her to know her own needs, and defend herself from the expectations and intrusions from others—what is often called “codependence,” or “enmeshment.”

My colleague had done a lot of work with her intermittently over a period of several years, and she had made a lot of progress, but they had reached a plateau. Cathy’s sense of herself was still wobbly and unclear, and she often felt numb, as if she were “just going through the motions,” and she wanted to feel “solid in my skin.” My colleague knew that one of my specialties was working with self-concept, so she asked me to do a session with Cathy while she observed.

When we first sat down, Cathy was obviously very anxious—tense and nervous about what might happen, and her attention was intently on me, rather than on herself, and what she wanted from our session. When I asked her what she was experiencing right now, she said that she was scared. When I asked her what she was scared of, she said, “You’re so big! You’re towering over me.” (Later she said, “At that moment I felt like a child; there I was, this little person with this big giant man towering over me, and all the bad memories of my father’s abuse just rushed in!”)

I immediately got out of my chair, which was a little higher than the couch she was sitting on, and sat down on the floor, and her whole body visibly relaxed. (Later, she told me, “If you hadn’t sat down on the floor, I can’t imagine how that session would have gone.”)

As she told me about her outcomes for the session, she repeatedly said, “Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself.” Knowing that what someone says is often literal, rather than metaphoric, I asked her to pause and take a step backward into herself. This was one of those times when I fervently wished that I was recording the session on video, because her transformation was so profound—I wish change was always so easy! We spent some time consolidating this new way of being in her body, but that moment when she stepped back into herself was the key that opened a door. In the absence of video, I offer Cathy’s report a year and a half later:

“When you said to ‘Take a step backward’—WOW, I can still feel it—I literally stepped back into my body, back inside my skin, and I felt so different. At first it kind of scared me—it was unsettling because it was so unfamiliar. I felt ‘connected,’ I felt ‘whole’ in a way I hadn’t known was possible. When I took a walk right after that session, I felt ‘in my body’ so intensely. I felt my skin and bones, a tingling sensation all over, even the movement of my blood through my veins, and all my ‘borders,’ my ‘edges’—where my body ends, and everything outside me begins.

“Before this, the world was kind of a ‘soupy’ place for me. I felt ‘the same as’ others. I thought everyone saw the world the same as I do, and I rarely made distinct choices—I just kind of shuffled along with the crowd. I’ve spent the majority of my life ‘a head of myself,’ in my head and in the future, rather than in my body in the present. I was making life choices based on experiences and beliefs I’d accepted as ‘law’ long ago and far away.

“I now know in my bones that I can choose, that I make choices every minute, and I no longer live from a place of fear. I know now when it’s appropriate to be afraid, and when it’s not. Since then I have become increasingly aware of who I am, what I want, where I stand in relation to others, and not being swayed by what others around me say or want—and this continues to grow. It’s all still amazing to me. And when I sometimes ‘get ahead of myself’ now, I notice it, and I just take a step backward—back to myself!”

It’s very important to recognize that all of Cathy’s insights were the result (not the cause) of taking the action of stepping back into herself, and her own life.  This is typical of how NLP works.  NLP offers a whole range of ways we can access the structure of our experience, and gives us keys to transform at that level.

You can read a wide range of effective NLP examples and methods in the NLP book, Heart of the Mind. It is an introduction to NLP (written without jargon), yet includes a lot of depth and methods often considered “advanced.”

*Originally published in the Milton H. Erickson Foundation Newsletter, 2007.

[Since this article is very long, we have prepared a PDF copy for easy printing and offline reading.]

NLP Book Review: Get the Life You Want: the secrets to quick and lasting life change with neuro-linguistic programming, by Richard Bandler.

Review by Steve Andreas

© 2009

Introduction

My wife Connirae and I trained often with Bandler from 1977 through 1990. During that time we also sponsored many seminars that he taught, and produced a number of videotapes of his trainings. We learned a great deal of our NLP knowledge and skills from him—including many finer distinctions and details that other trainers did not offer, such as careful ecology checks to be sure that changes did not have significant adverse consequences. We will both be forever grateful for his setting our feet on a path of fascinating and continuing discovery. We created the first four Bandler/Grinder books that many have said put NLP “on the map”— Frogs into Princes, Trance-formations, Reframing, and Using Your Brain for a Change—from transcripts of seminars. We are reasonably sure that Bandler did not read any of those books very closely—he was too busy doing much more interesting things. We think it is very likely that this was also the case with this book, “Get the Life You Want,” which lacks many of the finer distinctions, attention to detail, and ecology that make NLP work fast, easy, and elegant.

The basic message—that we can quickly and easily change what we do in our minds to make our lives better—is almost as revolutionary now as it was 30 years ago, because it is still virtually unknown in the larger field of psychology and psychiatry. By finding out how our minds work, we can choose to change how we think, what we do, and how we feel in response. Instead of punishing ourselves for our mistakes, we can enjoy using them as feedback in order to do better in the future. We can learn to prioritize and organize our time and activities to have more of the kind of experiences we want more of—more love, more enjoyment and satisfaction, more understanding and tolerance, and of course more money and sex—a message that is strongly emphasized in the book. For those of us who have learned from Bandler over many years, there is little in this book that is really new; for those who haven’t, there will be a great deal.

However, the book is much less clear and detailed about exactly how to accomplish this—without finding ourselves in even more trouble! Most of my commentary will be directed at clarifying this “how to,” because that is really what NLP offers the world that is new. For thousands of years saints, sages, and philosophers have set forth useful goals—but without telling us how to achieve them. As this book states:

“Human beings have the unique quality of being able to create their reality internally, and then superimpose it on the outside. If you’ve no control over that, you’re a schizophrenic. If you do have control over it, you’re a creative genius.” (p. 138)

Lack of control over internal reality is certainly a major problem for many. But control can also be a problem. Control can be clumsy, or directed toward goals that are self-defeating, or they may have many unanticipated consequences. It is important to learn how to use powerful tools carefully, or they may get results that are neither intended nor desired. There are tales in every culture about the results of being given power without the wisdom to use that power well. Often they take the form of being given three wishes—and the third wish is always used to undo the damage created by the first two wishes.

This is a review of the book, and of the many useful processes presented in it; it is not a review of the great variety of elegant distinctions and patterns that Richard Bandler has developed and offered to the world since the early 1970’s, or of his current trainings, or of anything else—only the book.

Overview

Overall, the book appears to be written for people with little or no exposure to NLP. Most of the book is a series of very short chapters that describe and illustrate a particular set of distinctions, and how they can be used to make changes, followed by an exercise for the reader to do. In the effort to make these processes easy for a novice reader to understand, they have been greatly simplified, and in my view often oversimplified. This necessarily omits a lot of “fine points,” such as specific language, ecology checks, criteria for a well-formed outcome, unique situations, “what ifs,” etc. that are often needed to make a pattern work well. The instructions are often incomplete, ambiguous, or contradictory—and in a few cases they are just plain wrong.

The result is a sort of “rough sketch” or crude caricature of the processes presented. Some readers will be able to follow the directions and be very satisfied with the results. Others will be happy initially, and only later find out that what they accomplished was not very useful because something crucial was left out. Yet others will find that the instructions are not detailed enough to enable them to deal with complicating factors or misunderstandings, and they are likely to be disappointed and put this book on a dusty shelf full of other self-help books that promised much more than they could deliver.

In the commentary that follows, I will work my way through the book from beginning to end, with page references, pointing out different aspects of what is presented. That makes it easy to verify quotations, examine the larger context in which they appear, and make your own determination of whether my comments are relevant and useful. Some readers may prefer to read only a few of them and then skip to the summary at the end. The comments can be read in any order.

My goal in doing this is to further develop the precision and understanding of NLP, which is all too often sadly lacking. Since Bandler is one of the original co-developers of NLP, it is likely that many readers will take the contents of this book as “gospel,” replacing “Freud said—” with “Bandler said—” rather than as a presentation of ideas and methods to be tested and evaluated by their results. As Bandler himself pointed out many years ago, that would be operating out of a “psychotheology,” making Bandler into a prophet or guru, in contrast to continually using feedback to evaluate the results of a pattern or recipe—the essence of science (with a small s).

Finally, I’d like to be clear that I am not “taking sides” in the considerable differences between the original co-developers, Richard Bandler and John Grinder. In their book, Whispering in the Wind, Carmen Bostic St. Clair and John Grinder wrote an extensive commentary on a number of issues in the field, mostly in regard to the nature of modeling, and they were often critical of others. In a concluding section they wrote, “Our intention is to provoke a professional high quality public dialogue among the practitioners of NLP, as an integral part of these developments,” (14, p. 348) an invitation that I strongly welcomed. In response I wrote a detailed review of their book, agreeing with some sections and issues, and disagreeing with others. http://www.steveandreas.com/Articles/whispering.html I provided them with the manuscript of my review in advance of publication, so that they could respond in the same issue. They wrote that they would respond in a future issue, but that has not happened, and after six years it does not seem to be forthcoming, casting some doubt on their stated intention to have a public dialogue. I have also reviewed the work of others, for example: http://www.steveandreas.com/Articles/breakthroughs.html who have typically responded with a personal attack, rather than discussing the substantive issues that I raised. I have also written two other articles taking issue with Grinder’s writing, to which Grinder has also made no response:

http://www.steveandreas.com/Articles/mmodeling.html http://www.steveandreas.com/Articles/EmperorReview.html

The kinds of issues that I will discuss in this review have been common in NLP for many years. Whether or not my views are correct, there are many significant differences, and they need to be discussed so that a consensus about what works best can be developed, and NLP can continue as a coherent discipline. Without this, what NLP has offered the world will be scattered, dissipated, and lost.

Detailed Commentary on Get the Life You Want

p. xxii: Aversion. In a discussion of approaches that don’t work, the book mentions aversive conditioning as one of them. “They would take smokers and give them a cigarette, and shock the hell out of them.”

However, on p. 85, step #5 of the exercise, “Falling out of love” the reader is instructed to use aversion: “Take something that is disgusting to you and move the image of the person into the submodalities of the disgusting image.”

There are differences between these two examples, but what is common in both is to associate an unpleasant experience with a behavior or response that you want to stop. On p. xxii this is criticized; on p. 85 it is recommended. Aversion can suppress behavior, giving someone something to go away from, but it does not provide a positive alternative to go toward. Aversion always creates conflict, and often people are very good at finding ways around the conflict. When you have something more attractive to go toward, there is no conflict, and aversion is not even required.

p. xxvi: Phobias/Fears. “Starting at about 1974, right up to the present date, I have yet to have a single individual come in with a genuine phobia and walk out with it.”

In Bandler’s two-part You Tube video “The Hypnotist” at the end of part 2, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RczTTZqBSYw the woman with a fear of flying has just completed a plane flight with Bandler on board the same plane with her. Bandler apparently spent most of a day working with her, since the video shows small segments of quite a variety of interventions in several different contexts. However, at the end of the flight, she is still apprehensive about flying, saying in a high-pitched strained voice (verbatim): “I didn’t put my seat back, though; I was too nervous. . . . I think I’m finally conquering the phobia I’ve had for over 22 years, and the biggest problem is that I have to do it all over again on the way back.” Clearly—both verbally and nonverbally—she is still struggling with being anxious about flying; “conquering” presupposes a conflict to be overcome by force, and not yet achieved, and “problem” indicates that flying is still difficult for her.

That is not the kind of resourceful response that occurs after a successful change, and it is very different from the responses of the clients in the three successful videotaped Bandler sessions from the 1980s that the book mentions on p. xxvii.

For a very striking example of how a client responds after a successful cure of a fear of flying, watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNtESnHSeUs in which a woman who had been afraid of heights and couldn’t fly stands happily in the open rear cargo door of an old military transport plane flying at 3,500 feet! I have some disagreement with how that was achieved, but you certainly can’t argue with such clear-cut results! Bandler’s claim to have never failed over a period of 35 years seems to have at least one recorded counterexample. There is no shame in failing at something, but claiming to have never failed is another matter altogether.

For another example of what a successful outcome of overcoming a fear looks like, see a follow-up test of Bandler’s method of spinning feelings, which is a method that is featured throughout the book: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWKwxWarJ54

p. xxvii: “I could teach it to people in a short twenty-minute session.” While this claim is usually true, in the video described above Bandler apparently spent much more than twenty minutes with the client, since they are shown together in an office, an elevator, a movie theater, a ride in a van, an airport, and finally on an airplane flight—yet without success. This indicates that Bandler’s claim in the book, “I have yet to have a single individual come in with a genuine phobia and walk out with it,” (p. xxvi) is more than a bit overblown.

pp. 10-11: Spinning Feelings. Bandler’s discovery of spinning feelings is a major advance in the field, one of the simplest and fastest change methods in NLP that I know of. I have been experimenting with it a lot, with great success. Based on this ongoing experimentation, I find the description in the book vastly oversimplified.

a. In the discussion of spinning feelings, the following statement is made:

“It is only by having them take their hand and rotate it forward and backward, to the right and to the left, that we can find out which way their feelings are moving in their body. These are the only dimensions really available.”

The illustration on p. 11 shows a vertical circle at the midline of the torso, and a horizontal circle in the chest area. But even if we restrict ourselves to a circle in one of the three major spatial dimensions, there is a third choice available, namely a vertical circle that moves left and right rather than front and back.

b. Both the illustrations and the text indicate that feelings always move in a circle, a closed loop that stays within the body. However, I have found that the loop is often not a circle, but a more convoluted loop, and that it sometimes leaves the body, moves through space, and then returns to the body. For instance, a feeling often starts in the lower abdomen, rises up the back to the head, and then comes forward, loops through the space in front of the body and reenters the lower abdomen. Sometimes it is a double loop rather than a single one, rising up both sides of the body in parallel loops.

c. However, often the feeling does not move in a loop at all. For instance, one of mine started in my right foot, rose up through my leg to my torso, and then in a diagonal toward my left shoulder. Other feelings have started in my lower right abdomen and then moved toward my left shoulder.

To summarize, the description and illustrations in the book are greatly oversimplified, omitting much of the individual variation that can occur, and which can sometimes be very interesting and useful in making changes.

p. 13: A great quote: “Since most problems are created by our imagination and are thus imaginary, all we need are imaginary solutions.”

pp. 14-15: “How to Feel Wonderful Exercise.”

“1. Think of a time you felt wonderful.

“2. Close your eyes and imagine that time in vivid detail. See the image clearly, hear the sounds loudly, remember the feelings as they were then.”

These two steps will be familiar to most NLPers as a way to elicit a full physiological response to a memory. However, “imagine” and “image” have connotations of being “made up” rather than real, so “re-experience” would be a better word.

Some wonderful memories are in candlelight so they won’t be clear, and the sounds may be soft rather than loud, so the instructions to see clearly and hear loudly may not match the client’s experience. It’s much better to simply say, “See what you see, hear what you hear, and feel what you feel,”—all in present tense to amplify the elicitation. “Remember the feelings as they were then” creates a distinction between the present and the past, and directs attention to the past, rather than present experience.

“3. Imagine yourself stepping into that experience and imagine being in that memory as if it’s happening now. See what you’d see, hear what you’d hear, feel how good you’d feel. Make the colors stronger and brighter if that helps. Notice how you were breathing back then, and breathe that way now.”

Here are two more uses of the word “imagine.” “Stepping into the experience” presupposes that the reader was previously outside the experience, dissociated (The previous instruction is not specific about association/dissociation) so that will be a bit of a jar to those who were already inside their experience.

The “as if” frame lends a bit of unreality, as does the repetitive use of “you’d,” which is future conditional tense, in contrast to present tense.

“Notice how you were breathing back then,” sends attention back to the past, and then “breathe that way now” brings it back to the present.

This kind of careless and sloppy use of verb tense and language is frequent throughout the book—so frequent that I will not comment on most of it. It may not make much difference to a flexible or compliant reader, but others will find it frustrating and annoying, and at best it will weaken the response that the exercise is designed to elicit.

pp. 26: Enough is Enough (Threshold Pattern).

First paragraph: “Over the years I have discovered that the moment people really change is when they simply decide that enough is enough.”

This is restated just as strongly in the next paragraph, and it certainly can create motivation to change. This is a pattern that Bandler developed, called the “The Last Straw” threshold pattern, which we wrote up long ago in Change your mind—and Keep the Change, ch. 6. However, many phobics reached this point of intense motivation decades ago, but without knowing how to be able to make the change they wanted so badly. It is certainly a good way to create motivation, which will impel people to seek ways to change, but it doesn’t necessarily result in change, as the book states.

pp. 26-28: Effortful Language There are three examples of using the word “push,” as in “Push the picture out into the distance.” “Push” has connotations of difficulty and resistance, so it is much more elegant to say something like, “Allow that picture to move out into the distance,” or “Watch as that picture moves out into the distance,” presupposing that it will do that unless the reader actively interferes with it.

p. 27: Moving an Image “You have to take a hold of the image and do something with it. You have to push it all the way off so that it’s twenty feet away, move it across your midline, and pull it up on the other side into the submodality qualities of uncertainty so that what was a strong belief becomes uncertainty.”

I agree that it is very useful to have someone physically hold the image and move it, utilizing the kinesthetic system to change their visualization. Bandler taught us to move an image out into the distance in order to move it past the midline in the early 1980s, and it certainly doesn’t hurt. However, I have found that it is seldom necessary, and only use it as a “back-up” method if the client has difficulty moving an image past their midline. This only appears to be necessary when the client has a “digital divide” between the right and left sides of their body. “Pull” (like “push”) also has connotations of effort, so again “Allow it to move” would be more graceful.

p. 27-28: “The Belief Change Technique (Belief Swish Pattern)”

“2. Think of a resourceful belief you do want to have. For example, that you will be free from your problem for the rest of your life and live very happily.”

In this exercise, no criteria are provided for the new resourceful belief, and the example given has serious problems. A really good resourceful belief is a well-formed outcome, for which NLP established a number of very important criteria many years ago. These include the absence of negation, appropriate contextualization, attention to process rather than result (“I can learn to be more decisive,” in contrast to “I am decisive,”) etc. In the description above, “free from the problem” is equivalent to “not problem” (negation), and ‘for the rest of your life” is an explicit absence of contextualization. It is also a violation of a fundamental NLP presupposition, that “Every behavior (including a “problem” one) is useful in some context.” “Happily” is a quality or aspect of some more satisfying behavior or process, but no process is specified.

A belief that is ill-formed will not work well. Either events in the real world will quickly weaken or destroy it, or the person will live in a delusion and deny corrective feedback. Lots of people also have “positive” beliefs that can be even more limiting than the negative beliefs discussed in this chapter, and I would have liked to see at least some discussion of these in the book. If this process is used without carefully specifying the new belief, it will create more of these.

This process is labeled as a “swish pattern.” However it is not a swish as originally developed and described by Bandler in Using Your Brain for a Change, ch. 9. Two other additional early sources on the swish pattern can be found in our books Change your mind—and Keep the Change, ch.3, and Heart of the Mind, ch. 17). A detailed description of the swish pattern can also be found in my article at: http://www.steveandreas.com/Articles/kinesthetic.html

The pattern in this chapter of the book takes a limiting belief and weakens it by moving it into the location of something uncertain, while at the same time that it takes a desired belief and strengthens it by moving it into the location of something certain. This is a very useful pattern, but it is not a swish. It was originally called the “submodalities belief change pattern” in Using Your Brain—for a Change, ch. 7. In later chapters of Get the Life You Want, several other different patterns are described as a swish. It doesn’t matter too much what a pattern is called, as long as the name is used consistently. Using the same name for different patterns, or different names for the same pattern, created confusion, making it very difficult to know what someone is talking about.

p. 31-33: Timelines

It’s perhaps a small point, but there is no credit given in this book for Connirae’s and my discovery and development of personal timelines, first published in Change your mind—and Keep the Change, ch. 1. Yet Bandler’s book obviously draws from our work, since it uses the same trivial behavior (brushing your teeth) that Connirae and I picked to use for our personal timelines exercise.

This book’s section on timelines is very limited. Only the two major general categories of timeline are presented, “in time” (front to back) and “through time” (left to right). This is a huge oversimplification that omits the wide individual variations that occur within each category. Some timelines have some characteristics of “in time” and some aspects of “through time.” For instance, the past may be behind the person as in a typical “in time” configuration, while the future goes to the right, as is common in a “through time” configuration.

The diagram on p. 32 shows timelines as straight lines, which is another huge oversimplification, ignoring the greatly varied paths of most people’s timelines, which often have curves, and may have sharp bends, divergences, cusps, etc. There is also no mention of the different ways that images on the timeline can be represented. Images can be large or small, color or black and white, and can vary in many other ways—brightness, clarity, transparency, etc—on different portions of the timeline. These unique features are often very significant in creating a basis for people’s problems or skills, as we discussed in some detail over 20 years ago in Change your mind—and Keep the Change, ch. 1, and Heart of the Mind, ch. 19).

The diagram on p. 32 also shows a person standing on a timeline, indicating that it is external to the person and dissociated. In fact, many people have a timeline that goes through their body—usually at the abdomen or chest, and this arrangement results in more full-body association into experiences on the timeline. Making changes in this distinction can often be very significant and useful in altering someone’s experience. If you want access to a much wider range of material on timelines and how they can be utilized, check out the sources given in the previous paragraph (Change Your Mind and Heart of the Mind). These remain excellent sources for our original research in this area.

pp. 37-41: “Getting Over Bad Suggestions”

The example given in this section—a woman who got nervous around other people in response to a “negative suggestion” voice—includes several different interventions somewhat mixed together.

1. Changing the volume of the voice to change its impact.

2. Using a change in location to change the impact—move it closer, then farther away, then behind her, then farther and farther behind her.

3. Changing the tone of the voice to that of someone who you know is lying, so that it is no longer believable.

4. Eliciting the submodality differences between the “bad suggestion” and the “biggest lie,” and then transforming the bad suggestion into the submodalities of the lie.

Curiously, the exercise that follows uses only the last intervention, #4 above.

But more important, there is no ecology whatsoever. The goal is to “get rid of” the voice (p. 40) which is a negative outcome, and there is no inquiry whatsoever into any possible positive intention or protective function that the voice might have. Simply ignoring the voice might—and often does—eliminate a very important protective function. This lack of attention to ecology is evident in every exercise in the book, a very serious omission.

pp. 44-45: “Building Better Suggestions Exercise” (Changing Personal History)

First, this is not the “Changing Personal History” pattern as originally presented in Frogs into Princes, which was a simple anchoring process. This is a very sketchy outline of Bandler’s pattern, the “Decision Destroyer” in which you go back in time, create a positive experience, and then come forward through time carrying this new experience as a part of yourself, in order to change all relevant subsequent experiences. The decision destroyer is one of my most favorite interventions, both because it can be used with so many different kinds of problems, and because it changes them throughout the person’s life. It was first published in Heart of the Mind, ch. 4.

In step 1 there are no criteria whatsoever for what “a more useful suggestion that you want to believe” is. A reader who believed that they were worthless and undeserving could easily want the opposite belief, “I’m worthwhile and deserving, and everyone else is worthless.” Making this belief certain would create an arrogant, self-centered, insensitive prick—and I think there are quite enough of those in the world already.

There is also no mention of two essential aspects of creating a new experience: 1. Eliciting the submodalities of an actual life-changing experience and using those to build the new memory, and 2. Making sure that the new experience has a great deal of sensory detail, so that it is believable and compelling, and not just a vague intellectual construction.

Some people will be lucky enough to “fill in the blanks” in the exercise appropriately and have a good and lasting experience; most will not.

I have written up the decision destroyer, including all the different important aspects of it, in great detail at: http://www.steveandreas.com/Articles/DecisionD.html If you read my article, and compare it with the exercise in the book, it should be strikingly obvious what a “bare bones” outline the exercise in the book is, and how many very important details are left out.

pp. 47-50: “Enough is Enough Pattern (Threshold Pattern)”

This is a second presentation of what Bandler once called “The Last Straw Threshold” pattern, which is mentioned on p. 26, and which I discussed earlier.

pp. 51-52: “Fast Phobia Cure Exercise”

Again there is a “bare bones” sketch of Bandler’s very useful process which we described in much more detail, with an example, twenty years ago in Heart of the Mind, ch. 7. There is also a very serious error in sequence. Step 2 “Imagine yourself in a movie theater, watching yourself going through the scary experience” occurs before the second step of dissociation, which is not presented until step 3. If the client can successfully accomplish step 2 (and many will not be able to) then step 3 is unnecessary. Step 3 should come before “watching yourself going through the scary experience” in order to complete the two-step dissociation before running the movie of the disturbing memory. Even with the second step of dissociation, some people will not be able to maintain it without additional help. For instance, gently holding the head straight back in the “Marine” dissociation posture is one way to make it possible for them to do this—a “small point” that can make the difference between success and failure.

Another “small point that can make the difference between success and failure is to give instructions that result in occupying the kinesthetic system: “As you sit there in the theater seat, you can feel the hard arms of the chair under your arms, and that peculiar feel of the texture of the seat cushion under you.”

Finally, the introduction of circus music in step #5 introduces content that may not be useful. Many years ago I experimented with adding circus music to an experience. It works for some people, but others become annoyed or angered, and the pattern works fine without it, so it is unnecessary.

pp. 56-58: “Reversing Anxiety Exercise”

As mentioned before (pp. 10-11) the book says, in regard to the spinning of feelings that “it has to spin forward or backward, or to the right or to the left, because, geometrically, those are the only possibilities.” This is patently false, because geometrically there is certainly a third possibility: a circle that goes up one side of the body and down the other (or the reverse). The book also leaves out many other possible directions and loops that could combine any or all of these three fundamental spatial dimensions. For instance, the feeling could move from lower right front to upper left back, and then loop to the right and forward, and then back to the lower right, a path that utilizes all three spatial dimensions—and as I mentioned earlier, it doesn’t have to loop at all.

“See a set of red arrows” is an imposition of content that may not match the person’s experience. “Turn the circle blue” when reversing the movement is another imposition of content. It is much more respectful and elegant to simply ask the person what color the feeling is to begin with, and then ask them to change that to a more pleasant or comfortable color when reversing the direction, leaving the choice of colors completely up to them—a perfect match.

The book describes discovering the path of the feeling, and then asks which way the feeling is spinning along this path, and this is consistent with the illustrations on p. 11.

Nick Kemp’s version of spinning feelings includes an additional distinction, which I have found very useful. In Nick’s version, you ask, “Which way is it spinning as it moves along this path,” a slightly different question. For instance, the feeling could spiral to the left or to the right as it moves along the path. I have found reversing this kind of spin to be very effective, both for me personally, and for others I have worked with. For more detail about this, click on the URL below and scroll down to section 2, “Spinning Feelings.”

http://www.provocativechangeworks.com/provocative_change_works_process.php

pp. 66: “Changing Your Bad Memories Exercise”

“1. Think of a memory you want to stop thinking about.

“2. Notice the submodalities. Freeze-frame it and shrink it in size.” (Exactly which frame to freeze is unspecified.)

“3. Skip to the end of the memory and freeze-frame it, and imagine a whiteness knob and grab it, whiting it out really quickly.

“4. Repeat this three times.”

In the description that precedes the exercise, the reader is told to “literally grab a whiteness knob in your mind and turn it very quickly so that it goes blank-out white, phhhhhp. Very quickly, so the whiteness replaces the memory so you can’t see it.”

This intervention is very different than the previous ones that reduce or amplify feelings; it is one that creates amnesia. Whenever you create amnesia, there is always the danger that something very useful about the experience may be lost—some learning, some information about what kind of person or situation to avoid in the future, etc. Amnesia should only be used after a very careful check to be sure that all useful information is extracted and remembered. Even when this is done, I consider it an intervention of “last resort,” because you can never be sure that you have extracted all the useful learning from an experience. There is always the possibility that you could go back to it later and learn even more from it. If you white it out entirely, that possibility would no longer be available to you.

“5. See yourself in the end of the movie and run the movie backward, seeing the sights backward and the sounds backward and spin the feelings in your body in the opposite direction.”

First, if the memory is actually whited out completely several times to create amnesia, there should be no memory movie at this point that could be run backwards, so let’s assume that the memory is only weakened, not completely eliminated.

The reader is instructed to “see yourself” in the movie that is run backwards, so the reader is told to be outside the experience. However, in the fast phobia cure described in the book, (p. 51, step 5) running the movie backwards is done while being inside the experience. I have found that doing this inside the experience is far more effective.

If the whiting out process is done thoroughly, it should have already neutralized the feelings in response to the memory, so there should be no feelings to spin backwards, and this part of step #5 would be completely redundundant.

p. 73: “When people lose a child, they are, of course, going to hurt, and they’re going to hurt for a long time.”

About 20 years ago Connirae and I developed a dependable pattern for resolving grief, which was first published in 1989 in Heart of the Mind, ch. 11. In a 1987 videotaped session, “Resolving Grief,” Connirae used this pattern with a man who had recently lost a baby. There is a follow-up interview with him in which he describes finding himself happily playing peekaboo with a small child that evening at a restaurant. Previously any contact with a small child had evoked his grief; happily playing peekaboo was a nice spontaneous confirmation that his grief was completely resolved.

pp. 76-77: “Getting Over Grieving Exercise.” The general instructions given for resolving grief are appropriate, but again, it is only a “bare bones” outline. Connirae and I modeled grief resolution in detail many years ago, and created a complete process for doing it thoroughly. Compare the exercise in the Bandler Book with our article, “Resolving Grief,” available at: http://www.steveandreas.com/Articles/grief02.html

p. 82-84: “Falling Out of Love.” The book advocates using the “last straw” threshold pattern yet again—running a bunch of unpleasant memories of a loved person back to back. As I mentioned before, I think the threshold pattern should be a pattern of “last resort.” It only eliminates an existing set of responses or behaviors, without providing something else in its place, so it can leave a person in a very uncomfortable “limbo.”

p. 84: “Then I asked him to think of what he thought was the most disgusting thing he had seen on planet Earth, and he looked at me and said, ‘chopped liver—just the smell of it, the sight of it makes me want to puke.’ I had him look at a big plate of chopped liver and smell it until he got that bad feeling. In the center of that picture, I had him open up a picture of her smiling face to the point that every time he thought about her, it turned into chopped liver.”

Is it really going to improve someone’s life to feel disgusted when they see all their memories of someone they once loved? I don’t think so. Experiences of being in love are very special resources. Making them all disgusting is worse than discarding them, because now the person has a bunch of additional disgusting experiences to think of.

p. 85: “Falling Out of Love Pattern Exercise”

“2. Remember all the good experiences about being with them by seeing yourself in the memories. See the movies run backward and make them all in black and white and small.”

This is truly “throwing out the baby with the bathwater,” because all those good experiences are positive resources. Dissociating from them by seeing yourself in them, and running them in black and white and small is a way to throw them in the trash heap. Someone might have 30 years of happy experiences with someone. Perhaps now it’s appropriate to fall out of love with them, but throwing away 30 years of happy experiences in order to do it is like killing a fly with a shotgun; it will work, but the cost is far too high.

On p. 74, the book offers opposite advice; Bandler speaks of working with a woman who had lost a 16-year-old son to cancer, and was still grieving deeply after three years. “I turned to her and asked if she would rather I put her in a hypnotic trance and give her amnesia, so it would be like she had never known her son. Would she give up all the memories of his sixteen years of life in exchange for not feeling the pain that she had now? She looked at me quite angrily and said no, and I said ‘Good. The reason you don’t want to give up those memories is because if you gave yourself amnesia from ever having known somebody you loved, you’d miss out on all the good times.’ ” This is the opposite of the instruction to the reader in step 2 above, and supports my contention that amnesia, as created by whiting out an image is seldom or never a good thing to do.

If you decide to use the last straw threshold pattern on bad experiences you have had with someone (which is steps 3 and 4 of this exercise) that should be more than adequate to fall out of love with them. There is no need to ruin all the good experiences you have had with them over the years.

Step 5 uses aversion to make your thought of the person disgusting, which is even more overkill—like using two shotgun blasts to kill a fly—and the result is to create yet another large set of disgusting memories, which is not what most people need in their lives.

pp. 88-89: “Shut up!” “Often we say nasty things to ourselves and criticize ourselves continuously. To change this, we can learn to interrupt these negative thought patterns by repeating a mantra. My favorite mantra is “Shut up!” because it works so well.”

“Shut up!” doesn’t work very well on other people, and it works no better on an internal voice; it is even more primitive and ineffective than a Gestalt Therapy dialogue, or the “talking back” to voices that is a basic process in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. It creates yet more conflict, in contrast to the resolution that can occur by asking the voice for its positive intent in order to join with it, find better ways for it to express its positive intention, and make it into a supportive ally. For more extensive discussion about attempting to stop internal voices, read my article, “Silencing Internal Voices” at:

http://realpeoplepress.com/blog/silencing-internal-voices

p. 90: “Changing Your Mood Exercise”

“3. Move the negative images away and replace them with positive images that make you feel the way you want to feel.

“4. Use the mantra [‘Shut up, shut up’] to stop your negative internal voice from saying whatever it says to make you feel bad. Replace it with good suggestions, statements, encouragement, and compliments to yourself.”

“5. Notice what direction the feeling is spinning. Spin the feeling in the opposite direction.”

Steps 3 and 4 replace unpleasant images and feelings with pleasant ones, so that after completing step 4, the reader is now feeling pleasant feelings. Then step 5 tells the reader to reverse the spin of these pleasant feelings, which will diminish them or eliminate them. This is a mistake. If readers actually did this, it would completely nullify the goal of the exercise.

(Again there are no criteria for the “good suggestions, statements, encouragement, and compliments to yourself.”)

p. 109: “Switching Your Craving (Swish Pattern) Exercise”

“The habit you have to build is saying to yourself powerfully, Not cigarettes. No.” This is a negative command. “Not cigarettes” works the same as “Not blue elephants,” creating an image of whatever is negated, and bringing it to your attention.

Again the pattern presented is not a swish, but a simple chain, starting with the craving, whiting out the image, and replacing it with “an image of yourself engaging in a new behavior, looking happy and being free.” If it were a swish pattern the self-image would be one of an evolved self, not engaging in a specific new behavior, and the two images would be linked by two different submodalities.

pp. 110-112: Whose Client?

The “clean freak” woman client is described in this book as a client of Bandler’s. However, this is the same client that is described in Reframing (pp. 5-7), where she is described as a client of Leslie Cameron-Bandler’s! If you compare the two stories, you will find that the more recent one is greatly embellished and exaggerated over the original 1982 story. This makes the reader wonder, “How many of Richard’s other stories about working successfully with clients were “borrowed” from others, and then embellished?”

pp. 115: “Become More Determined Exercise”

“1. Think about something you feel very determined about. Find out the submodalities for determination for you. Notice the feeling of determination and which way it spins in your body. (A)

“2. Stop this and think of a habit or compulsion you want to change. Find out the submodalities of it. (B)

“3. Imagine a small image of changing in the corner of this image of determination, (B) in the corner of (A).”

This is very confusing. First, what is the “image of changing”? Is it the image of what you want to change, or something else? Whatever it is, it is to be placed “in the corner of this image of determination, (B).” However, the image of determination has been labeled as A, not B. The next phrase, “in the corner of (A)” is also puzzling. So the instructions are to place a small image of “changing” in the image of determination, which is to be placed in the image of A, which is also determination? Ambiguous or incomplete instructions are one thing; contradictory and confusing ones are quite another.

p. 116: Label: A persnickety point. The label of one of the columns is “Determined” and the other is “Changed Behavior.” This label should be titled “Behavior to be Changed” or something similar, since that is what is being compared in the exercise.

p. 121: Disappointment “Disappointment always requires adequate planning” is a cute sentence that Bandler has used for years, drawing attention to the role of expectation in disappointment. If you have no expectations, you can’t be disappointed. However, on p. 135 we find an opposite statement, “The trick to getting through tests is adequate preparation.” Adequate preparation is also discussed on p. 126 in regard to planning to get back on a diet when someone falls off the diet.

The truth is that disappointment requires inadequate planning. If your planning is adequate, you won’t be disappointed, because your planning prepared you well for subsequent events.

Like many people, this section talks about being “on” a diet, and “falling off” of it, implying that you are higher than the diet, and that it is easy to accidentally “fall off” of it. It is much better to think of a diet that is something you are in, or under, so you would have to go to some conscious effort to climb up out of it, or out from under it.

“Abreaction is about having a polarity response.” Abreaction is defined as, “to release (repressed emotions) by acting out, as in words, behavior, or the imagination, the situation causing the conflict.” This is quite different than a polarity response, which is an opposite response to what someone has said or done—for instance, a “No” response to a “Yes” statement.

p. 127: Determination

“Every failure is something that you should ignore, and every failure should mean that you should try even more.”

First, notice that this is a universal statement, with “every failure” repeated, with the repeated “should,” a modal operator of necessity. Determination is the main theme of this chapter, and it is a very valuable skill that many people need more of. But every (yes, every) skill will also be a serious limitation in certain contexts. There are times when it is completely appropriate to give up on determination, because for whatever reasons, the goal isn’t worth the effort. There are times when failure should be paid very careful attention, because it might indicate that you are doing something ineffective, that your outcome—for instance perfection—is unattainable, or that it has serious ecology issues, that the goal would interfere with other important outcomes, etc.

p. 128: “When you would say to them [great musicians and concert pianists], ‘You are so fabulous,’ they would look at me and say, ‘Not really, I could be better,’ because they always believed they could be better so they kept getting better.”

That statement advocates continual improvement. However, on p. 135 the following statement advocates the opposite: “If people keep on revising things over and over again, all it does is create stress.” This book evidently followed the second statement rather than the first.

p. 135: Perfection

“If you can imagine the perfect state, that will work much better for you. What would you look like in the perfect state?”

The word “perfect” indicates that nothing could be better, in contrast to the musicians mentioned on p. 128 above, for whom continual improvement is always possible. Using the word “perfect” is a poor match for someone who believes in continual improvement, and will amplify the frustration for anyone who is troubled by struggling for unattainable perfectionism.

Happily, the exercise that follows, “Doing an Excellent Interview” does not use the word “perfect.” However, I would have liked some mention that feeling confident is not the same thing as being competent. This exercise is great for accessing an appropriate state for someone who is already competent. However, some very incompetent people are very confident, and that is not a good combination, particularly in airline pilots, politicians, doctors, and others who have responsibility for other people’s lives and property. If the reader is incompetent at something, and uses this exercise to become confident and get a job doing that, someone may suffer.

p. 139: “Getting Through Exams”

5. “Begin to answer each question, but imagine being back in your room.” [the study context]

“But” creates opposition between the first part of the sentence and the last part, and tends to diminish or erase the first part, and “imagine” introduces connotations of unreality. It would be much better to say, “As you begin to answer each question confidently, be aware of what it is like to be back in your room.” “As” joins the exam context and the study context (rather than separating them) and presupposes both “answering the question,” and “confidently,” which is an important theme of the exercise.

6. “See yourself vividly and notice the way you are smiling, breathing, standing, and moving. Move in that way.”

In step 5, the reader is already told to associate into the experience of the exam. In step 6, the reader is told to “see yourself” which is dissociated, and then to “move in that way,” which implies association again. However, the use of “that” indicates something far away, implying separation and dissociation; “this” would support association better. To summarize, in these two steps the reader is instructed to associate, then dissociate, then associate, yet with “that” which implies disassociation. This kind of sloppy, careless use of language is also evident in other steps in this exercise, and in most of the other exercises in the book.

pp. 177: “Changing Your Feelings About Something (Visual Squash)”

Putting an image of your future goal in your right hand, and an image of your present state in your left, and then filling in all the images in between is an excellent way to develop a specific and detailed pathway in order to reach a goal. However it would be better to title this process “step-wise planning,” “backward planning,” or something similar, because that is what it accomplishes. Although it will also result in a change in feeling, the important part is creating a continuous pathway of images that show you exactly what to do to reach your goal, not the change in feeling.

The instruction to put the goal in the right hand, and the present state in the left hand will be a good match for someone who has a typical “through time” timeline that goes from left to right, with the future on the right; but it will be a poor match for someone with a reversed timeline that has their future on the left. And for someone with an “in time” timeline with their future in front of them, it would be much better to match that by filling in the images from where the reader is to the future image in front of them.

Although this is a very useful and worthwhile pattern, it is not a visual squash, which was first described by Bandler and Grinder in 1976 as “sorting and integration of polarities” in The Structure of Magic, volume II, (pp 77-78), and a detailed example was provided in Heart of the Mind, ch. 13. Although the visual squash is a very dramatic process, it is also somewhat violent and crude, requiring some time for the person to unconsciously integrate and organize the jumble of experiences that result from using it successfully. There is no ecology within the process itself, and the results of using it are varied and unpredictable. Since polarities often—if not usually—involve conflicting aspects of identity, the methods presented in my book, Transforming Your Self offer much gentler and more ecological ways to achieve the same kind of integration.

I could comment on many other aspects of this book, but I have probably already offered more than most people are interested in reading.

Summary

NLP is a wonderful set of methods, which is why I have chosen to devote much of the last 32 years of my life to developing them further. As an old proverb says, “The devil is in the details,” which have not been well attended to in this book. Someone with a lot of good training and experience of NLP could use this book as a point of departure for trying any unfamiliar processes, as long as they examine them very carefully, and they are able to fill in the missing details.

However, the book appears to have been written for people who are just being introduced to NLP, and I don’t recommend this book for newcomers. It has far too many mistakes in procedure, language, confusing instructions, lack of ecology, lack of detail, and other omissions. It only provides a crude caricature of NLP, so it can’t give a novice a current and effective “state of the art” experience. It is oversimplified, shoddy, sloppy.

Since the book is authored by one of the original co-developers, it is likely that many might accept its contents at face value, and that would be a huge mistake. This book ignores almost all of the finer distinctions that Bandler himself made over twenty years ago! It also ignores all the developments that have been made by others in the field during the last 25 years. If the book were to be widely taken as authoritative, it would set back the development of the field enormously. I have written this detailed review in the hope that I might be able to keep that from happening. This ends my book review; what follows is some commentary about the “field” of NLP, stimulated by the many problems in this book.

About the Field of NLP: a Historical Perspective

How has this kind of situation come about? Primarily because of the lack of communication between different people doing NLP, and in particular the lack of the kind of critical feedback that I have written above. This is particularly ironic, because from the very beginning, one of the key aspects of NLP that distinguished it from mainstream psychology and psychology was the use of immediate feedback—both verbal and nonverbal—to verify that someone had actually accomplished what they had been asked to do at each step of an NLP process. This lack of communication and feedback in the field has a long history.

Until 1981 NLP was a very small club; although there were differences of opinion, pretty much everyone talked to everyone else. That ended with the split between the co-developers and their colleagues and students in 1981. For the next several years there were three different major training organizations, run by Richard Bandler, John Grinder, and Leslie Cameron-Bandler. Although each initially had a somewhat different orientation and specialization, they all embraced the same underlying presuppositions and methodology. Connirae and I were the only students who refused to “choose up sides,” because we wanted to continue to learn from all of them—a diplomatic dance that was often difficult, but also very valuable to us. The three different groups continued to diverge and develop in different directions, and their students also began to explore different developments.

While this separation of organizations sometimes enabled original new patterns and discoveries to emerge, free of the restrictions of any particular orthodoxy. But it also resulted in further fragmentation, and sometimes more vigorous confrontation and conflict. Having to sell NLP trainings in a very competitive marketplace—what I call the curse of marketing—has led many to assert huge differences between trainings, whether or not that was true, and often to make exaggerated promises. Articles in the few—and usually short-lived—NLP magazines have little or no new content, and are mostly self-serving “infomercials,” rather like the parallel play of very small children who do not really interact with each other. Sometimes NLP has been combined with other approaches with very different foundations and assumptions, making these divisions deeper and more fractious.

Over the years, this fragmentation has increased exponentially. Most trainers don’t attend trainings by other trainers, and neither do their students. They speak with only a small number of other trainers who agree with them, and many will not talk to each other at all, so most have little or no direct experience of others’ work, and no opportunities to exchange or discuss ideas, or compare processes.

Annual conferences (only once every two years in the US) are more like trade shows for lawn furniture or outdoor barbecues. At both trainings and conferences the purpose is usually to teach specific skills and processes. Each trainer presents, while participants mostly listen, and many trainers do not attend. There really isn’t a forum in the field for differing views to be presented and vigorously discussed.

As a result, the title “NLP” is now used for a very wide range of trainings, presenting very different—and sometimes contradictory—patterns, theories, and attitudes. Many trainers provide trainings that have only a very loose connection with NLP principles, while some others include a variety of ancient tribal teachings, numerology, or shamanism, and are much more like religious cults. This is like what typically happens in many religions as they fragment into various different churches, each with their own individual prophets, holy scripture, and rituals.

Although behavioral testing and immediate feedback at every step is an integral part of every NLP pattern, many have said that NLP cannot be tested scientifically, a curious contradiction that places NLP squarely in the realm of superstition.

As a result, NLP has a very mixed reputation. Some people have been disappointed by one trainer, and come to the quite reasonable conclusion that what they experienced is true of all of NLP. Others have been impressed with the power of what they have learned, and then been puzzled (or shocked) by what they found in other very different trainings. I know many NLP-trained business consultants who never mention that what they are doing is NLP, in order to avoid the concerns, objections, and discussion that would usually follow.

An Invitation, and a Call to Action

If NLP is to become a coherent field, rather than “a herd of cats,” and if it is to gain any kind of wider acceptance and scientific respectability, we will need to find ways to foster more communication and exchanges of ideas. And we need to follow this with some rigorous testing of differing ideas and methods, in order winnow the wheat from the all too abundant chaff.

The “What” I think a useful first step would be to create a list of some simple definitions and understandings that we could all agree upon, as a basis for further discussion. The questions given below are simply examples of the kinds of topics that I have in mind. There may well be a better list.

“What are the different modalities or representational systems?”

“What words, tones of voice, head postures, etc. are dependable indicators that someone is using a given modality, and which are ambiguous?”

“Shall we describe the vestibular system as an independent representational system, or as a result of comparing information from the kinesthetic and visual systems?” “What list of submodalities can we define and agree upon?”

“Is ‘sparkle’ an independent submodality, or is it a combination of brightness, location, and changing intensity?”

“What are dependable behavioral cues that indicate use of a particular submodality, such as association/dissociation?”

“What are the essential components of a swish pattern?”

“Can a swish pattern begin with a dissociated cue?”

“What are the differences between a swish pattern and a simple chain?”

“What is an operational definition of a ‘logical level’?”

“What are the different kinds of nonverbal signals that we can all agree are evidence of incongruity, or internal conflict?”

If we can’t agree on a topic, we could set that one aside for later discussion, and move on to something else that we can agree on. And we can always return to a topic and redefine it in the light of further investigation or reflection, as any scientific field does. Perhaps other questions would be more useful to discuss, but we need to find some way to build a foundation of agreement or we may as well stop pretending that NLP is a “field.”

The “How?” With some basic agreement on what we are talking about, we could begin to build on this foundation by establishing ways to clarify how we think about the “what.” When there are different/conflicting ideas or processes, we could create some agreement on how to test them to determine which is more useful, as all other branches of science do.

“How can we distinguish clearly between content and process?”

“When is it appropriate to introduce a content change, and when is it appropriate to make a pure process change?”

“If an image has an overall color (such as rosy tint) shall we call that a submodality variable (color vs black and white) or is that content—one color out of the spectrum of colors?”

“If we ignore nonverbal incongruence in a client’s stated outcome, are there any consequences, and if so, what are they?”

“Is it more effective (or efficient) to deal with an incongruence before an intervention to reach the stated outcome, or is it more effective (or efficient) to deal with it later?”

“Is it ever appropriate to use aversive conditioning, and if so, when?”

“For a simple habit change, is a swish more effective than a simple chain, and how could we make a decision about that?”

“If someone is associated into an experience in the moment, while simultaneously viewing a dissociated image of themselves from a different point of view on an imaginary TV screen, shall we call that associated, or dissociated, or both?”

Again, these may not be the most useful questions to use to reach agreement, but they are examples of the kinds of topics that we might discuss. As in any developing field, there is no end to the fascinating questions that we could ask, and hopefully often answer. With this kind of foundation of shared understanding, NLP could begin to create a basis for a scientific field, rather than being only a basket of different unfounded and untested superstitions.

Those who are not interested in coming to this kind of agreement, or who believe that NLP is not a science, or could never be, might be willing to do what they do elsewhere under a different name.

Or perhaps those of us who believe that some coherence could emerge from the current chaos of NLP could separate ourselves from the chaos by creating a new name for what we want to accomplish, and go play in a different sandbox.

This is really the question that has motivated me to spend so much time reviewing Bandler’s book, which so clearly illustrates the mess that the “field” is in now.

References

1. Andreas, Connirae. “Resolving Grief” (DVD) Evergreen, CO, NLP Comprehensive, 1987.

2. Andreas, Steve. Transforming Your Self: becoming who you want to be. Boulder CO, Real People Press, 2002.

3. Andreas, Steve. Book review of Whispering in the Wind by Carmen Bostic St. Clair, and John Grinder. 2003.http://www.steveandreas.com/Articles/whispering.html

4. Andreas, Steve. “Breakthroughs and Meltthroughs” 2003 http://www.steveandreas.com/Articles/breakthroughs.html

5. Andreas, Steve. “Modeling Modeling.” 2006.http://www.steveandreas.com/Articles/mmodeling.html

6. Andreas, Steve “The Emperor’s New Prose” 2006. http://www.steveandreas.com/Articles/EmperorReview.html

7. Andreas, Connirae, and Andreas, Steve. Heart of the Mind, Boulder CO, Real People Press, 1987.

8. Andreas, Steve; and Andreas, Connirae. Change Your Mind—and Keep the Change, Boulder CO, Real People Press, 1987.

9. Bandler, Richard. Magic in Action. Cupertino, CA. Meta Publications, 1984

10. Bandler, Richard. Using Your Brain—for a Change, Boulder CO, Real People Press, 1985.

11. Bandler, Richard; and Grinder, John. Reframing. Boulder CO, Real People Press, 1982.

12. Grinder, John; and Bandler, Richard. The Structure of Magic, volume II. Cupertino, CA. Meta Publications, 1976.

13. Kemp, Nick. “Provocative Change Works.” http://www.provocativechangeworks.com/provocative_change_works_process.php

14. St. Clair, Carmen Bostic, and Grinder, John, Whispering in the Wind. Scotts Valley, CA. J & C Enterprises, 2001.

by Gerry Schmidt
© 2009 Real People Press

It was the summer of 1992, the last day of a residential NLP training in the Rocky Mountains in Winter Park, Colorado. A group of 75 people had bonded very strongly over the past 20 days, and one thing they did as part of their group process was to create a piece of visual artwork representing “our community” or “who we are.” The group started with a big sheet of plywood which they covered with a collaborative painting symbolizing their experience together. It was painted with red, white, black, and yellow to symbolize all the peoples of the earth, and it was filled with a collage of handprints, spirals, a yin-yang, and the individual contributions of every participant. The finished piece was very meaningful to everyone.

Now we were at the very end of a packed three weeks and the group was about to finish their time together and head home. Only one thing remained to be done. The question before the group was, “What are we going to do with this piece of art that is ‘us’?” The group discussion started, and since I was the closing trainer I was somewhat involved with helping facilitate this process. Soon it became clear that most of the group’s opinion was that it should be kept safe and given to somebody who would be the custodian. But the question remained, “How the heck are we going to do this?” We had people from all over the world, and it was not a small piece of plywood. Who was going to take it and how were they going to get it there?

Then one man spoke up.

“Well,” he said, “because this is so challenging, and because we’re spread out all over the planet—we’ve got people from Europe and Asia—my proposal is we destroy it. If we burn it, it will be like everybody has it.”

I could feel the tension in the room mount instantly. It was clear that the group was generally very opposed to the idea of destroying it. It was the end of 20 days, and everyone was tired and ready to leave. I could see in their faces that to most of them, burning the artwork would seem like a great offense to what it represented. The man who had offered the suggestion was thinking on a more abstract level, but most everyone else wanted to keep this piece of art that represented the close-knit community they had formed over the past weeks. They did not want it destroyed.

I was trying to facilitate the conversation and I was not particularly effective. After about 15 minutes we hadn’t made any progress toward a solution, and I had my eye on the clock because we were already going overtime and I needed to get everybody out of the room. It was obvious to me that this was not going to resolve quickly. Even on the “keep it” side there were many different opinions, but that side was becoming more and more polarized against this guy who was saying, “destroy it.” People were getting frustrated and upset, and the prospect of a satisfying group closing was unraveling by the second. At this point somebody in the group stood up and proposed to have a vote at least to get past the “keep it” or “destroy it” alternatives. But before I could respond, a Native American from the MicMac tribe in eastern Canada stood up and faced me directly.

“Gerry, can I take over?” He asked. “I have an approach, and if you give me ten minutes by the clock, I’ll have it solved.”

I had no idea what he had in mind, but I was more than glad to let him take this problem off my hands. I was tired and the discussion wasn’t going anywhere useful, so I told him to go ahead.

He came up to the front of the room and first he asked, “Everybody’s agreeing that we’re ready to get a resolution?” People nodded, so he continued. “I have the solution if you’re all willing to go along.”

Everyone said, “Yeah, yeah, go ahead.”

Then he turned to the man who wanted to destroy the artwork, and gesturing to him he spoke in a soft, deep voice that seemed utterly unconstrained by time.
“In my Native American tradition, when we have a group which is all on one side, and we have one person who is on another side, we would never have a vote to overrule him, because it’s obvious that the majority will win, making him isolated.

“We would never do that to someone.

“The solution is we’re going to turn over the responsibility for the decision to you—the one who’s the isolated person. We’re going to let you decide for all of us.”

There was no mistaking that the words of the Native American were wholeheartedly genuine and sincere. He was really completely giving over the decision to this man.

I could hear people’s jaws hitting the floor, and as I looked around the room I saw eyes wide with surprise. It was an amazing thing to watch the wave of shock move through the room. But then very quickly I began to see that certain people started to get the wisdom in what the Native American had done, and they relaxed a little.

The man who had been given responsibility to make the decision went through his own initial shock. Right at first there was a little bit of glint in his eye which I’m guessing was his self-interest side, but then I could see a change taking place inside of him as well. His face went through several emotional swings, though I couldn’t tell exactly what they meant. Pretty soon he stood up to speak.

“Well I think it’s obvious that we need to find a way that satisfies all of us,” he said.

I could feel the tension in the room disappear. Earlier it had been clear in the man’s argumentative tone that he had set himself against the rest of the group, but as soon as the responsibility was completely in his hands, his resistance simply melted away. It was wonderful. He immediately started moving in the other direction.

“My objection was that there wasn’t a place where we could put the artwork,” he said, “And I want to honor the spirit of what we all did together. Is there a place where we could put this piece of art where everybody would have access to it, and it would feel fair to all of us?”

Very quickly someone who had not been involved in the earlier discussion spoke up.

“I have a place,” she said. “It’s a big barn in the central US where I could hang it. I also have a truck here; we could cut the piece in half to transport it, and once it’s hanging up I can take a picture of it and send it to everybody, and anyone can drop by and visit it at any time.”

Immediately it was done. The shift was profound. The emotional ripple through the room was huge. You can tell the difference between people who are just agreeing because they want an argument to be over, and people who are deeply and fully satisfied. It was quite a wonderful moment. Everybody was really pleased, including the man who had originally objected. The whole group was suddenly aligned and there was a powerful sense of completion.

I think part of the reason it worked so well was because the guy who was given the responsibility had such a strong relationship with the group. The wisdom of the Native American in trusting so much responsibility with this one man made me imagine a culture in which that kind of approach was a common practice. That conception of community would create a profoundly different way of working together.

My MicMac friend looked at his watch and said, “Seven minutes.”

*This story will appear in a forthcoming book about peaceful conflict resolution edited by Mark Andreas.  © 2009 Real People Press.

Mark is seeking more stories. If you know of a story, or have one of your own that you think might be appropriate to include in this book, please contact Mark at: andrema [at] earlham.edu or 303-810-9611.  These stories can be from any context including home & family, school, work, community. “I’m looking for any story where a potential conflict was transformed. They could be stories of extraordinary situations, or of everyday life. Sometimes it might be someone’s sense of humor that saved the day, the ability to think quickly, or someone’s loving presence.”

You don’t need to be a writer to contribute. If you prefer, Mark will interview you on the phone, record the conversation, and write the story for you. You will always have final approval before anything goes into print.

Please forward the link to this story to anyone you think may be interested: http://realpeoplepress.com/blog/the-plywood-artwork

For more information about the project, click here to go to Mark’s website.

NLP in Advertising--Salvation Army Poster

The poster shown above was used by the Salvation Army in the UK. The first version of the poster was exactly the same as shown above, except that the word “CARE” after the words, “For God’s sake” was omitted. This first version was very successful in raising a lot of money. Then they added the word “CARE” as shown above, and donations dropped precipitously. How did the addition of this one word ruin a great ad?

The image of the small child who looks very confused and in need of help is probably what first meets the eye for most people, eliciting a theme of need and a response of caring.

But the words are important, too, including the words on the top of the poster eliciting sympathy for the child. The statement that the child could run faster backward than forward is particularly unique and evocative. Elegant.

The typography is also relevant. Using letters of different fonts, irregularly placed, looks like whoever made the poster was also quite needy. (Imagine the same poster, but with slick, nicely aligned typography, and notice the difference in your response.) And the blotchy look of the photo and the poster as a whole echoes this.

“Nice child” adds an amplification; not only has the child suffered, but it is a nice child, who surely doesn’t deserve such treatment.

“Who cares?” is an rhetorical question that is covertly directed at the reader, and which most people will respond to—either consciously or un—with feeling caring or empathy, and an inner “I do”—a very graceful amplification of what the reader is already feeling in response to the previous image and words. Everything at the top and middle of the poster is congruent in expressing need and eliciting caring.

“For God’s sake, give us a quid,” is a simple command, and again the whole focus is on the needy child, congruent with the words at the top of the page, and the neediness implied by the haphazard typography, etc. So the whole message is very direct and congruent, focused solely on the child’s need. Very elegant.

However, when the last sentence was changed to “For God’s sake, CARE, give us a quid,” that one word changes the focus, diverting attention from the congruent message that has been so artfully established. Now it is two separate commands, directing the reader’s attention in two different ways:

“For God’s sake, CARE,” commands the reader to CARE, directing attention to the reader’s feelings, a shift AWAY from attention to the child’s need.

Then “Give us a quid,” directs attention to the child’s need again; but it is too late; the carefully woven spell has been broken. How? Not only by the interruption of “For God’s sake, CARE,” but because this command has an uncomplimentary implication—that the reader doesn’t already care.

If the poster assumed that the reader was already caring, there would be no need to command the reader to care. If we assume that the reader is a caring person who has been responding congruently to the poster’s multiple eloquent pleas, the command to CARE (CARE emphasized by CAPITAL letters, which is a bit crude or rude in itself) is something of an insult, and not likely to induce them to give. And it didn’t.

–by Steve Andreas