Book: 20200906 to 20210102, "Introducing NLP" by Joseph O'Connor; John Seymour
20200906 - Introduction
Introduction to the Second Edition;
"NLP is about always increasing the choices you have, and we understand by acting and experimenting, not by thinking about it."
This reminds me of "The Power of Now". In many cases, "thinking" doesn't help.
Don't get scared. Just do it.
20200911 - Chapter 1
What is Neuro-Linguistic Programming?; Santa Cruz, California 1972; Santa Cruz, 1976; Maps and Filters; Learning, Unlearning and Relearning; The Three Minute Seminar; Outcomes; Present State and Desired State; Communication; Rapport; Pacing and Leading;
What is good painting? There are infinite possible observation of one object. When we are in different mood, we see a different world.
There is no failure. We only get two types of feedback: positive or negative. Positive feedback verify our assumption, and negative feedback reminds us to correct our perception.
The limitation of our perception is not like "territory", but more like "filter". Filter is necessary, as the world is too large and it contains too much details. But filter may cause a lot of illusions.
Language is a filter. This means that Neuralink can drastically improve our perception, which may leads to next generation of human being.
Our beliefs are also filters.
NLP basic filters:
1. An orientation toward outcomes rather than problem. We should focus on the cause, not the result.
2. Asking How rather than Why questions. For objective observation, it's always How, not Why.
3. Feedback versus Failure. Negative feedback means our perception needs adjustment. There is no failure.
4. Possibilities vs Necessities. There are always many options. It's rare that we have to do something.
5. Curiosity vs Assumptions. Assumptions make us forget to verify our opinion.
6. Confidence. "I think it’s possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary."
The four stages of learning:
1. Unconscious Incompetence
2. Conscious Incompetence
3. Conscious Competence
4. Unconscious Competence
Unlearning is 4 to 2; Relearning is 2 back to 4 with more choices.
Three factors of NLP:
Present state and desired state
Our outcome/goal is not really achievement, but "state". State include behavior, thoughts and feelings. We need resources and actions to migrate from the present state to the desired state.
Communication relies on body language(55%), voice tonality(38%) and words(7%). Effective communication needs rapport, and rapport leads to trust. If people like you, then it's much easier to communicate with them.
Rapport is like bridge among souls. It's bidirectional pacing and leading. We need to accept and respect each other first, and then we can affect each other, through graceful, enjoyable, and very effective communication.
Rapport is the key to get along with other people, especially with the people from different culture/background.
20200916 - Chapter 2
The Doors of Perception; Representational Systems; Preferred Representational Systems; Language and Representational Systems; Predicates; Lead System; Synesthesias, Overlap, and Translation; Eye Accessing Cues; Other Accessing Cues;Submodalities;
Our eyes, ears, etc. are just sensors. The image/sound/etc. information is generated in our brain based on the signals we got from those sensors. There is no difference between the information generated in our brain based on the real signals and the one generated based on memory/imagination.
To gain rapport, it would be much easier if match the predicate with the other person. This is because that effective communication depends on how much the other person can hear from you.
There are mainly three types of representational systems: by visualization, by sound, by feeling. This is why some people feel hard to associate other people's face with their name, and some people feel hard to recognize direction in unfamiliar place.
It also means different people should different method to meditate. The people using visualization to think should imagine that they are in a peaceful place, and who use sound to think should count from 1 to 10; and who use feeling to think should try to relax to calm down.
Meditation helps us to control our mind, and NLP helps us to understand our mind, which also helps us to control our mind. From this point of view, meditation means practice, and NLP means study.
When we understand more about our mind, we can do better communication, study and work more productively, and adjust our mood. We can associate our self identity with happy memory, and disassociate it with dark memory. The memory is all there, but can put them into different position in our brain warehouse. The happy one should be placed close to the doors and the windows, and the dark stuff is left in far deeper position.
Senses are the first things we need for communication. The sharper the senses, the bigger advantages we have over communication. And we can get it through correct methods and practices.
20200922 - Chapter 3
Physiological States and Emotional Freedom; Elicitation; Calibration; Anchors; Resource Anchoring; Chaining Anchors; Collapsing Anchors; Change Personal History; Future Pacing; New Behavior Generator;
Emotion is affected by at least three factors: current perception/illusion, memory and physical activity.
Live in the NOW can make us see through illusion and memory, it can lead us into a special peaceful state.
We should pay full attention when other people is talking. To pay full attention, we need not just about noticing they are saying, but about observing their facial expression and their body languages. That helps communication a lot. To do that, we need to calm down during the whole procedure.
Emotional Freedom is just like Financial Freedom: we don't need to be in good mood all the time, but we have more choices, which means we can switch among different moods if we want. Furthermore, we can help other people to switch to different mood. Then the first thing we need is to be able of perceiving other people's current mood (state).
This chapter is mainly about self hypnosis. It's a bit like "spell". The spell can arouse some specific past state to handle the current situation. Feeling, sound and picture combined together is the spell.
I think my best spell is instant meditation. One deep breath with some sound and visual picture in mind is enough to trigger the state switch. But, like the author said, this self hypnosis needs a lot of practice to get fluent.
"Experience is not what happens to you, it is what you do with what happens to you" --- Aldous Huxley
Maybe I should try this to handle kids study headache.
For myself, the most needed skill is about how to focus on something for long time. I need to improve my productivity as I want.
What does "anchoring" mean? It means we make plan for the future difficult situation. When that day come, we can follow the plan to deal with it. As we have prepared for it, there is a big chance that we can get positive experience.
What does "change personal history" mean? It means we need to figure out how to handle the difficult situation which left us negative experience before, we need to make sure that we are not going to make the same mistake again. Then we know we are getting stronger, and we learned from our lessons.
No matter it's for the future or for the past, we use our imagination to make ourselves stronger, smarter and sharper. Is this self hypnosis? Yes and no. In the end, our perception and memory of the world is our imagination. If we can change our perception, or if we can understand our memory through different angle, then we can change the external world.
Feel good doesn't mean real improvement. However, when we feel good, we are more creative and more resilient to frustration and failures. This could change our life thanks for the compound effects. Anyway, what we really want is real improvement, not just good feeling. Good feeling could be another layer of illusion blocking us from the real world. Pain is meaningful in many cases.
Review and plan before bed. This could be the best point I learned from this book. If we revise our thoughts and behaviors every day, of course we will be better drastically. What I did wrong today? Which part am I happy about today? What important thing I missed today? How am I going to handle the challenge in the coming day/week/month/year? When we open our mind and realize what we can do to improve ourselves, we are progressing well.
If we can face our failure bravely, and then figure out a way to improve the situation, we are actually better, instead of just feel better. This ultimate improvement will make us better.
20201215 - Chapter 4
Loops and Systems; Learning Loops; Failure to Feedback; Levels of Learning; Descriptions of Reality; Triple Description; Robert Dilts' Unified Field of NLP; Beliefs;
Learning how to learn is consistent with this book.
How to find the pattern. First, try to see the reality instead of our own illusion.
How to see the reality? See from three points: self, the opposite side, the irrelevant side.
To get a good idea, you need many ideas. The more options, the smarter/more advantage.
What activities should we leave to habit, and what activities should we keep optimizing them?
Seven levels about learning and change:
1. Spiritual; "The Power Of Now"
2. Identity; "Mans Search for Meaning", "Walden"
3. Belief (perception); "Sapiens", "Guns, germs and steel", "Thinking, Fast and Slow", "The Power of Habit", "Business Adventures", "21 Lessons for the 21st Century", "The Lessons Of History", "Introducing NLP", "Being Mortal", "Start With Why"
4. Capability; "The Art of Learning", "The 4-Hour Workweek", "The 4-Hour Body", "The 48 Laws Of Power", "The Game", "Asking the Right Questions"
5. Behavior (habit);
6. Environment;
Every time when we say "I can't", we should ask ourselves:"Is that true? Or just illusion?"
We always think "I must......I should......I must not......", how many of them are illusion?
Don't forget the frog's eyes, or we may like frogs starving to death in a box of dead flies. There are infinite possibilities, we just cannot see their existence.
20201218 - Chapter 5
Words and Meanings; Thinking Out Loud; Making Sense of Words-The Meta Model; Saying it All-The Deep Structure; Unspecified Nouns; Unspecified Verbs; Comparisons; Judgments Nominalizations; Modal Operators of Possibility; Modal Operators of Necessity; Universal Quantifiers; Complex Equivalence; Presuppositions; Cause and Effect; Mind Reading;
Language is powerful tool, but it is also a huge restriction to our capability.
There are so many things in our mind and language are based on illusion, instead of facts. Language is another filter to distort our perception.
Sometimes, we are like the starving frog in the box full of dead flies. We cannot see the infinite potential, because we are lack of the perception of the real world.
20201222 - Chapter 6
Uptime and Downtime; The Milton Model; Pacing and Leading; The Search for Meaning; Distraction and Utilization of the Conscious Mind; Left and Right Brain Hemispheres; Accessing the Unconscious and Resources; Metaphor; The Prince and the Magician; Reframing and the Transformation of Meaning; Context Reframing; Content Reframing; Intention and Behavior; Six Step Reframing; Timelines; In Time and Through Time; Talking with Time;
For most of people, the left hemisphere of the brain is in charge of rationality (including language), and their right hemisphere is in charge of subconscious stuff (illogical stuff, including visuality, sound and feeling).
Hypnosis and story telling try to keep both hemispheres busy.
Smartness normally means the left hemisphere is powerful, and wisdom comes from the right hemisphere.
To memorize something, we need the help of association. This "association" means connection and communication between the left and the right half of brain.
So, meditation is all about the right hemisphere. Noisy thoughts all come from the left hemisphere. Meditation lets us to learn to stop the left half, and to focus on, subconscious?
We have more than one "personalities". They have different, sometimes conflicting desires. To change a habit, we need to find an alternative habit to replace the old one. To do that, we need to negotiate with all those personalities, and then get their approval/support.
I am a "through time" person. Feel hard to stay "in the moment", but like do thing on time. The past is past, I don't care much about them. The future is always hiding in the mist.
After reading this chapter, now I know what to do in negative mood: analyze the real reason, and figure out some solution to improve it.
20201226 - Chapter 7
Conflict and Congruence; Identifying Your Congruence Signal; Identifying Your Incongruence Signal; Values and Criteria; Hierarchy of Criteria; Chutes and Ladders-Stepping Up and Stepping Down; Metaprograms; Selling; Frames; Meetings; Negotiation;
We need to set up correct perception of this world. We need reading to acquire knowledge. But the key to solve problems is creativity.
NLP needs a lot of practice. It seems quite hard to practice alone.
For meeting, rapport is the critical prerequisite. Need to let every attendants understand the purpose of the meeting. For any proposal, make sure we can verify its validity, and who is going to follow it up at what time.
For negotiation, viewpoint is more important than people.
If we don't agree about something, it's better to list the strongest point, than listing quite a few points.
Instead of disagreements, it's better to start with questions.
20201228 - Chapter 8
Psychotherapy; First Order Change; The Phobis Cure; The Swish Pattern; Second Order Change; Internal Conflict;
This chapter is more or less like magic. It sounds like "how to cheat ourselves"?
No doubt it works, after quite a lot of practicing. I am wondering, whether it is possible to utilize those tips during meditation?
I don't have much existing obvious problems to solve, but I am left in mist, and have no idea where I should go to.
20210101 - Chapter 9
Learning as Modeling; How NLP Modeling Began; Modeling; Beliefs; Psysiology; Strategies; A Recipe for Success; Music Strategy; Memory Strategy; Spelling Strategy; Strategy for Creativity; Back to Modeling; NLP, Modeling and Accelerted Learning; User's Guide;
Everything can be modeled. We can learn to be good at playing basketball, swimming, playing violin, playing chess, speak in another language......in much shorter time. There is no magic, but it does look like magic. For example, if we use all three senses(picture, sound, feeling) to memorize something, then it's much easier; if we use "association" to memorize the spelling of new word, we can memorize many more words in short time.
If someone rely mainly rely on one sense, he/she should try to utilize the other two senses. In other words, if someone is bad at something, such as painting or music or meditation, he/she should practice more on them.
Mimic is a shortcut. If we always try to think/act like a scientist, then it would be much easier for us to become a real scientist. If we think/act like a billionaire, it would be much easier to become a billionaire.
For any problem, we need to think from three standpoints: as a dreamer, as a realist, and as a critic. All of them are important to get creative ideas, and then turn them into good solutions.
There are two different types of capabilities. One is similar to language, swimming, painting, basketball, etc. We can learn from up to bottom, which means learn "the whole" directly, then figure out all details eventually. Another one is similar to Mathematics, chess, etc. We have to start from the bottom, then eventually go up. Even for the latter, when facing some new content, we still can try to learn it from up to bottom. That could be much faster.
One tip is to memorize through picture. For example, we can learn "backward" memorize new words. It needs some practice, but it could be easier than it feels like. I am going to try it.
When we understand more about our emotion and thoughts, we have more choices. We are not the slave of our experiences, we are more likely to be the one we want to be.
20210102 - Epilogue
Chaos Effect/Butterfly Effect tells us that the universe is not predictable; Quantum Effect tells us that we are part of the system, and there is no way to observe other objects without affect them.
This book tells us how to be wise, and not just how to be clever. Wisdom is much more complex than IQ.
NLP tells us how to change ourselves to change the external world more effectively.
The world is an infinitely complicated system. There is no way to know what is right and what is wrong in absolute confidence. So, what we can do is to do the things that we are pretty sure it is right, and avoid doing things that are highly likely wrong. For all the others, we need to be very cautious, and keep our mind opening and ready to change at any time.
20210102 - Investing in yourself
NLP is mainly about perception improvements. It affects our thoughts and behaviors indirectly, let us waste less effort in reaching our goals.
Can NLP let us make more money? Quite possible. But I think the major reason behind this change is: you are looking for opportunities to improve yourself, and take action on it.
Anyone who can do that would make more money. NLP is one of the effective approach.
Yes, NLP is more about experience and practicing, and is less about ideas.
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