The Ultimate Introduction to NLP: How to build a successful life

COPYRIGHT

All characters in this book described as attending the NLP class are fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

HarperCollinsPublishers

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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2013

FIRST EDITION

© Richard Bandler, Alessio Roberti and Owen Fitzpatrick 2013

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Source ISBN: 9780007497416

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Version: 2019-09-27

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1: A Workshop with the Co-creator of NLP

2: A Brief History of NLP

3: How to Feel Good

4: How to Become a Masterful Communicator

5: How to Create a Wonderful Life

6: After the Workshop

7: Joe’s Journal

8: Techniques Used in This Book

Get Rid of Bad Memories

Trigger a Positive Feeling with the Skill of Anchoring

Amplify Positive Feelings

Eliminate Negative Feelings

The Power of Matching: Non-verbal Communication

Meta-Model Questions

Building a Better Future

A List of Submodalities

Resources

Recommended Reading

DVD and CD Products

Websites

The Society of Neuro-Linguistic Programming

About the Authors

Copyright

About the Publisher

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book would have never seen the light of day were it not for amazing help from the following people. We send out a huge thank you to all of them for their support, suggestions and hard work in making this book possible.

First to our agent, Robert Kirby, for his phenomenal support, hard work and belief in this book. Robert is a true professional, and his patience, insights and advice proved incredibly valuable.

Thanks to the wonderful team at HarperCollins, especially Carole Tonkinson and Victoria McGeown, who have been superb in their support and their faith in the book.

And last but not least, we thank all of our colleagues, the seminar attendees, support staff and Society of NLP trainers all over the world. Without you, there would be no life-changing seminars.

From Richard

I would like to thank my wife, Glenda, for her help, support and magical smile.

My thanks also go to 40 years of clients who faced the worst and taught me so much.

Thanks also to John and Kathleen La Valle for their friendship and ongoing assistance and encouragement.

From Alessio

I would like to thank Dr Richard Bandler, whose creativity and generosity in sharing his fabulous discoveries have made a significant contribution to my life and the entire field of personal change.

I owe an incredible debt of gratitude to John and Kathleen La Valle, who have supported, encouraged and championed my work so far. Their continuing feedback has helped me develop my NLP and coaching skills.

Thanks to the co-director of the NLP Italy Coaching School, Antonella Rizzuto, whose dedication helps more than 10,000 people every year to discover their potential.

And thanks to Mattia Bernardini and Alice Rifelli, whose professional and diligent work makes life-changing books possible.

Finally, I would like to thank the two most extraordinary people in my life, Cinzia and Damiamo, my world of love.

From Owen

I would like to thank my parents, Marjorie and Brian Fitzpatrick – quite simply the greatest parents one could wish to have and the people I look up to most in life.

Thanks to my gorgeous goddaughters, Lucy and Aoife, whose beauty makes me smile every day.

And to my incredible friends, including Brian, Theresa, Cristina, Sandra, Gillian, Elena, Kate and Rob, for their advice and support with the book.

My thanks also go to all my trainers and mentors over the years, particularly John and Kathleen La Valle for their invaluable advice. They have, quite simply, changed my life.

Lastly, thank you to Dr Richard Bandler. Meeting Richard as a teenager, I found his genius, advice and belief in me literally turned my world around. I’m blessed to have him as a teacher, mentor and friend in my life.

INTRODUCTION

A workshop between two covers, this is Richard Bandler’s most accessible book to date. It’s the story of a man named Joe who attends a one-day introductory course on NLP with Dr Richard Bandler, listens to Richard teaching, practises the techniques he teaches, meets other participants and learns as they all share their thoughts and insights on how to apply the content of the course in different areas of their personal and professional lives.

By reading this book, you too can become one of the participants of the course, hearing what they hear, seeing what they see, experiencing what they experience and learning what they learn!

We decided to write a story in which the participants of a course were the protagonists because it’s the participants who are at the centre of our training, each with their own needs, ambitions, problems, and desires, each looking for new ideas, tools and solutions.

For many years we were ourselves participants on Richard’s courses. We then both became trainers, working as assistants on Richard’s international courses for more than a decade. Nowadays, we are lucky to have become international trainers, sharing what we have learned from Richard all over the world. So, it’s a great pleasure and honour for us to co-author this book with him and share what we’ve learned from him and our students so far.

We have written this book because we believe there is a huge need for the core message of these pages to be shared globally. The world is changing rapidly and bringing with it the paradoxical realization that we have been given more and more resources than ever before and modern technology has allowed us to do amazing and wonderful things, yet depression, anxiety, fear, panic and stress are all still on the rise.

The core message of this book is that there are precise tools that can help you to take control of your life. In it, Richard is going to teach you how you can change your thinking and change your life – and how you can help others change their lives too.

We began writing this book in Rome, continued it in Dublin, worked on it in London and New York, and got feedback from people in Los Angeles, Tokyo and even Australia. It is the result of 20 years of interviewing thousands of people who have attended NLP workshops, the product of participants who shared their own experiences with us. It is an international project focused not on NLP but on how people can learn to use NLP to change their lives.

There is a huge need in the world today for a change in mentality. There is a huge need to inject hope for a better world. We stand at an important crossroads between letting ourselves be pushed along by the accelerating momentum of challenging circumstances or deciding to steer ourselves to where we want to go. We need a change of direction. We need a change of consciousness. We need to know that we can have a say in how the world turns out.

NLP is a movement. You can be part of it. Start now – it’s your time!

Alessio and Owen

Chapter 1
A WORKSHOP WITH THE CO-CREATOR OF NLP

Joe put his phone back into his pocket, took a deep breath and composed himself. Having just had an argument with his girlfriend, he certainly wasn’t in the best of moods. That said, he knew it was really important to get the most out of the day. He walked into the lobby of the hotel, where he immediately noticed a familiar face among the assistants taking care of registration.

Joe smiled. Seeing Alan cheered him up a bit.

‘Joe!’ Alan called out. ‘Fantastic to see you again.’

‘Likewise,’ Joe replied. ‘Yeah, I’ve been really looking forward to today. Finally I decided to find out more about this NLP stuff.’

NLP stood for ‘Neuro-Linguistic Programming’. Having seen many books on the topic, Joe had a sense of how popular it was. He’d understood it was an attitude and methodology that allowed people to think and communicate more effectively, and he needed to do both. Up until a year before, he had resigned himself to the idea that he was the way he was and his life was what it was and there was nothing he could do about it. But then he had learned that things could change, and now he really wanted to work on himself and make some improvements.

‘Just to give you the heads up on what’s in store,’ Alan began, ‘you’ve already seen Richard in action. Today, you’ll learn about the field of NLP itself.’

Alan was referring to Dr Richard Bandler, the co-founder of NLP. Joe had met Richard at a course he had attended a year previously. At the time, he had been alone and depressed. To help out, his sister, Maria, had given him a flyer for a three-day course entitled ‘Choose Freedom’, which had involved a workshop with Dr Bandler. That was where he had met Alan, who had been an assistant at the course.

Now Alan was saying, ‘And as ever, I’ll be around to help in any way I can.’

‘Great,’ Joe replied. ‘It’s much appreciated.’

Over the three days of the previous course, Joe had gradually come to the realization that it was possible to change things even when challenges seemed insurmountable. Now he was keen to learn more.

‘So, what are the highlights of today?’

‘Well, you’ll learn some remarkable strategies for accessing powerful emotional states, getting better at communicating with others and really improving the different areas of your life. Probably the best way to describe this stuff is that it’s the difference that makes the difference. It’s how to build a successful life.’

Joe really needed to succeed at this moment in time. He was facing two important issues. You see, after the first course, things had really changed for him. He had a good job now and a good relationship with a girl he was crazy about. He had everything he could wish for. But that meant he had a lot to lose. In fact he was feeling more nervous now than he had 12 months before! When he hadn’t really had much of a life, it hadn’t mattered much what happened to him or what he did. But now he knew that he needed to do something, and soon, if he wanted to hold on to the things that mattered to him.

Alan took him to one side. ‘So, how’s everything going? How’s that beautiful girlfriend of yours?’

‘She’s fine. I mean, we were getting on great … but nothing’s perfect, I suppose. It’s just that now – well, we’re considering moving in together.’

‘Moving in together? Wow! That’s fantastic news, Joe. I expect an invite to the big day!’

‘Hold your horses, Alan. Marriage is a whole other story! It is great, though.’

Joe paused. He knew he wasn’t sounding convincing.

‘Obviously, we’re getting to know each other a lot more now … and we have our differences. So that’s taking some getting used to.’

Joe looked down, thinking about the argument he’d just had with his girlfriend.

‘Joe,’ Alan said seriously, ‘if you feel she’s the one, you need to make sure you hold on to her. You’ll regret it for the rest of your life if you don’t.’

As Joe looked up, he noticed a certain intensity in Alan’s eyes. What was all that about? He knew Alan was right, but even talking about his relationship made him feel worse. He decided to change the subject.

‘Work is a lot better,’ he said confidently. ‘I got a promotion, so I’m obviously delighted with that. Although,’ he went on more slowly, ‘I have found myself struggling with the new role at times. I have a lot more interaction with customers now and it’s just … I don’t think I’m a very good people person.’

Suddenly aware that Alan was studying him, he felt embarrassed.

‘Anyway, I make it sound worse than it actually is. I just think there are a few things NLP could help me with. You asked!’

He smiled sheepishly.

‘Just remember,’ Alan said, smiling back, ‘there’s no such thing as a people person. What can help is to learn to feel comfortable around others and become better at communicating with them.’

Joe nodded.

‘The seminar should help,’ Alan said reassuringly. ‘That’s it, you’re registered now, Joe. Best of luck!’

‘Thanks!’

No sooner had Joe turned around and started to walk towards the seminar room than he saw another familiar face.

Teresa, an Irish doctor he had met at his first seminar with Richard Bandler, threw her arms around him.

‘Joe, what a lovely surprise! Allow me to introduce my beautiful daughter, Emily.’

Emily looked to be in her mid to late teens. She had long red hair and was dressed in jeans and a Minnie Mouse t-shirt. She smiled politely as she shook hands with Joe.

‘So,’ Joe said, hoping to break the ice, ‘are you also new to all this, or am I the only one?’

‘I’m a first-timer,’ Emily replied. ‘I’ve just read a couple of books we have at home, that’s all. She’s the NLP expert of the family.’ She gestured towards her mother with her thumb. ‘You know what they say: “An old broom knows the dirty corners best.”’

‘Very funny, dear, but the only dirty corners I know are in your room!’ Teresa said in her warm, maternal voice. ‘Sure, I’ve been studying NLP for a couple of years, and I use it in my daily practice as well as in my personal life, but I’m no expert. In fact, the best lesson I learned from NLP is that “you’re never done learning”, as they say, so if you have the feeling that you know everything there is to know, you’re obviously missing out on something! And the worst thing is that you’re so blinded by your own certainty that you don’t even realize that you’re missing it.’

‘Wow,’ Joe said to Emily with a cheeky smile, ‘your mum’s cool!’

‘The best,’ Emily confirmed. ‘Sometimes I wonder if she’s for real!’

‘Oh, come on, you two!’ And with that, Teresa playfully slapped Joe’s shoulder.

As the three of them made their way towards the seminar room, Joe and Teresa began to catch up on what had been happening since they had last met. At one point, they stopped talking for a moment as they noticed a lady rummaging through her handbag. She was red-faced and looked extremely worried. Then, just as Joe and Teresa were about to ask if she was OK, she heaved a deep sigh of relief as she pulled a small mirror out of her bag.

Joe and Teresa exchanged glances, and he shook his head. All that stress over a makeup mirror, he thought. If this seminar is anything like the last, she’s really going to benefit from it.

Joe, Teresa and Emily went into the seminar room and found three seats together halfway up the centre aisle. Joe found himself placed between Teresa and a man in his fifties wearing a sharp suit and a pair of red designer glasses.

‘Hi, I’m Joe.’

‘Edgar Martin’s the name, changing lives is the game,’ said the man with a laugh. ‘Nice to meet you, Joe. What brings you here today?’

Joe grinned. ‘Long story short? A year ago I was in a bad place in my life and struggling with things. My sister convinced me to go to a seminar and, well, that turned some things around for me. I know NLP was involved, so I’m here to learn about it. How about you?’

‘That’s an interesting path you took, Joe,’ Edgar said. ‘I’m here to add a few tools to my toolbox, so to speak. I’m not a plumber, though. Well, maybe a plumber of the mind!’ Once again he laughed at his own joke. ‘I’m a psychiatrist and a psychotherapist.’

Joe smiled politely. ‘Cool,’ he said as he took out his personal journal.

‘Nice journal there, Joe,’ Edgar commented. ‘Do you take it everywhere you go?’

Joe nodded. ‘Well, not everywhere.’ He winked as he tried to match Edgar’s sense of humour, but all he got was a blank stare in response. Slightly red-faced, he continued, ‘I know from the last time that Richard Bandler teaches through stories, so you absorb a lot of ideas unconsciously, yet I also wanted to consciously capture some of his most memorable insights and observations throughout the workshop. I find taking notes to be a great way to review the key concepts and techniques.’

Edgar looked impressed. ‘It didn’t occur to me to bring along a journal, but I might look for one at the first break. Although really I should have brought my iPad – so I could have synchronized my database up here with my external memory!’

Pointing to his head, Edgar laughed again, while Joe nodded, this time failing to smile.

‘This is my first time learning from Richard,’ Edgar continued. ‘It’s just … I got so much from Alan, my first NLP trainer, that I figured it was time I learned from his mentor. Actually, Alan’s here today too, as an assistant.’

‘Oh, yes, I know Alan,’ Joe replied, suddenly intrigued. ‘What’s he like as a trainer?’

Before Edgar could answer, music began and Richard Bandler appeared at the back of the room. With a glance and a nod of the head, Edgar and Joe silently agreed to postpone their conversation. The seminar was about to begin.

Chapter 2
A BRIEF HISTORY OF NLP

As Richard Bandler walked towards the stage, Joe stared at him curiously. He had heard that top executives, Olympic athletes and even presidents of countries had benefited from NLP, but he still wasn’t sure what it was all about. He really wanted to understand it properly, and as Richard Bandler had been one of the co-creators of the field in the early 1970s, this seminar seemed the perfect place to start. He opened his journal as Richard began to speak:

Let me begin by giving you the background to all of this. When it started out – well, it was actually a fluke. My training was primarily in mathematics, logic and science, and when I was in college I moved into a house owned by a psychiatrist, and it was filled with books. Being an avid reader, I started reading them, waiting to get to the point where they said what you could do to help a patient.

Unfortunately the only book that I found that told you how to do anything was the book that told you how to prescribe drugs. If people were depressed, you could prescribe antidepressants for them. The worst part was that many of the people who took antidepressants were still depressed. It’s not much good when you take the drug and you go, ‘My life is still all screwed up.’

Being the practical guy that I am, I couldn’t believe that was it, so I started investigating further.

Now, if there’s one thing that’s kept me moving over the years, it’s the will to find simple ways to do difficult things. And this search has brought me in touch with some truly amazing human beings. Today I’ll tell you a little about some of them and the things I had the chance to learn from them.

In the beginning, all I did was go out and explore how people behaved: I was convinced there had to be a better way to organize information about how humans do things. When I met schizophrenics, I thought they were much like my neighbours – I couldn’t really tell the difference. They just had different ways of thinking about the world than others did. Their models or maps didn’t match other people’s experience.

In fact, the concept that the map is not the territory is one of the ideas that laid the foundations of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. It means that your understanding of the world is based on how you represent it – your map – and not on the world itself.

Joe had the feeling that this was important, so he paid close attention as Richard continued:

In order to understand the world, we map it in our brains. Now, to make a map, you go through three basic processes.

First, you delete part of the information. On a city map, you don’t draw the cars, you don’t see what the rooftops look like, and so on. And this a useful process – until you delete something important like a whole block of buildings and then try to drive through it because your map says there’s nothing there.

How many of you have experienced this: you’re walking down a familiar street and all of a sudden you notice what looks like a new shop. You walk in, ask how long it’s been open and find out it’s been there for five years!

The audience nodded. Joe remembered having that experience often.

Next, when making a map, you generalize. On a map, all state roads are represented the same way, regardless of how they actually look, and when you see a blue-coloured shape you expect it to be a lake or the sea.

Generalization is part of the learning process. You play with fire, you get burned, you learn not to touch things when they’re too hot. It’s a good thing. But then you have a partner who cheats on you and you decide all men are pigs – that might be an over-generalization. It’s not the process itself that is good or bad, it’s when and how you use it.

Last, you distort part of the information. A city map is usually smaller than the city itself, right? And it’s flat: it’s a print on a piece of paper. In life, you distort information every time you blow things out of proportion, whether you make them bigger than they actually are or whether you make them smaller.

Another, subtler way you distort things is this: you attach meaning to something that happened, or something that someone said or did. A colleague enters the room and she doesn’t greet you: you figure she’s angry, or upset, or offended.

And again, I don’t mean to say that distortion is necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it can lead to fairly accurate conclusions. What’s important is that you realize there’s a process going on and that the way you see things and the way they really are may be very different. And most important of all: whatever you think is going on, I want you to remember that it’s just a map. And it doesn’t necessarily match the map of the people around you.

Think about that the next time you end up arguing about who’s right and who’s wrong. As long as you stay with your own map, you’ll also stay convinced that you’re probably right. And the other person will stay convinced they’re probably right. When your map and the maps of the people around you don’t match, that’s when the trouble begins.

Once I realized that, I understood that in order to have better options, better feelings, better interactions with others, you need to expand your map. You need to be able to look at the same things from different perspectives. The more detailed your map is, the more freedom and flexibility you have.

Joe jotted down in his journal what he was taking from this. He thought about his relationship with his girlfriend, the issues and misunderstandings they had been having recently and how they made him painfully aware of how scared he was of losing her. He loved her, but he would often find himself taking offence to what she said and believing that she didn’t understand him and was growing distant from him. Now he realized that she obviously had her map and her way of thinking about their relationship, just as he had his.

As he continued to listen to Richard, Joe decided that it would be a good idea to talk to his girlfriend and find out more about what she was thinking and feeling about things, rather than focusing purely on his own perceptions and concerns.

And Richard was offering valuable guidance:

A good piece of advice is this: do a reality check from time to time. Make sure that your map is up to date, because when people stop looking at what’s out there and only rely on their old map, they mess up in one of two ways: either they imagine limits and constraints where there are none, or they act as if something should work, and when it doesn’t, they just do more of the same.

I know many of you generalize the experiences you’ve had so far and then project them into your future. The fact is that your future hasn’t been written yet. Life is full of opportunities, and opportunities lie ahead, in the future. Don’t let anyone, not even your own map, convince you of the contrary.

For example, just because you have had some negative experiences with your business partners, it doesn’t mean that all human beings will stab you in the back over money. Perhaps it means you should learn to protect your interests; perhaps it means that you should change the way you select your business partners.

Imagine what life would be if the future could only be a repetition of what you have already experienced in the past: what a sad, sad world this would be. Not to mention the fact that we would still be living in caves and feeding off raw meat and bitter roots.

Luckily there’s an evolutionary drive in the universe, a force so strong that it defies chaos, and that force is what animates human beings.

Joe felt a sense of lightness as he came to a realization. In his journal, he wrote: ‘It’s not about who’s right and who’s wrong. It’s not about what’s “true”, either. A good map is a map that gets you to see things from different perspectives and that helps you feel as resourceful as possible about your situation.’

Richard was getting down to what was most important:

Now, NLP isn’t something that you can learn just by reading about it or talking about it. You learn NLP through practice! That’s why today’s programme is rich in techniques and exercises.

I want you to know that even though this is a short workshop, I’m going to put lots of stuff inside your mind that is going to come out later. You might not understand all of it now, but remember, your unconscious is also listening.

This all started with a simple idea: I would go out and find people who had done something successfully, and I would discover the unconscious process that they used.

Joe heard Emily whispering to Teresa. ‘What does he mean by “unconscious process”?’

Teresa responded quietly, ‘Unconscious processes are the recipes that you follow to produce thoughts, feelings and behaviour. By becoming aware of these processes, you can then deliberately improve them or change them.’

Emily nodded as she thought this through.

I would then teach people to consciously engage in these processes, so that their problems would get solved or they could acquire specific skills.

What people say they do, or believe they do – well, it’s often far removed from what they actually do.

The thing that, for me, makes NLP revolutionary is this: it’s the first time that we have been able to deliberately reshape the inside of our minds. We have the tools to find out where the crap we don’t want is and to replace it with things we actually do want.

Joe wasn’t convinced. Although his life had changed quite radically since his first seminar experience with Richard, the idea that you could reshape the inside of your mind seemed a bit far-fetched to him.

Richard, however, was moving forward:

You weren’t born with your bad habits. You weren’t born with your skills. You weren’t born with your beliefs. The vast majority of the things that you do, you learned – just like you learned to walk or to shake hands automatically.

Even fears are learned! Do you know there are only two natural fears? The fear of loud noises and the fear of falling – that’s it. All the rest are learned. Now, some of them are useful, like being afraid of rattlesnakes, and some of them are less useful. You don’t want to get rid of fear altogether; you just want to learn to be afraid of the appropriate thing at the appropriate time. Like having a phobia about cheating on your partner! That’s a phobia worth having.

When I started out, people kept telling me things like, ‘You don’t understand, Richard. Change is slow and painful.’

But I’m not an understanding person – I refuse to accept limiting beliefs just because I’m told to. I believe that most often people change rapidly without any of this nonsense. I mean, all kind of things happen. You watch a movie or read a book, you talk to a friend, or even to a stranger on the bus, and your life is transformed by it. Instantly. You don’t need to read the same sentence for 13 years – you just read it once and you go, ‘Wow! That makes a lot of sense!’

You can’t argue with the man’s logic, Joe thought to himself.