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Is certification important?

You want something more, a change in your thinking, an edge to motivate you. You've been exploring NLP because you heard something or read something. But it's complicated. It's almost overwhelming. There are so many different trainings with official-sounding names and long lists of techniques. How do you know what you need? Here is one hard truth: anyone can print a certificate. Anyone can make up techniques and then give you a certificate to say that you were in the course.  If you are pursuing a certification to "prove" yourself or to find the difference that finally wins you the job or promotion, you will probably be disappointed. This is not what certification does well. Here is what our certification in NLP does very well. It trains you in a set of techniques (sometimes called patterns in the NLP jargon) that allow you to change what you give your attention so that you can change the opportunities you see and the results you get. The certificate is not im...
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Our story begins with banana bread

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Once upon a time, there was good coffee and homemade banana bread waiting for you early on a weekend morning. Somehow, although the weekend would be full of travel and challenges, time slowed down as you bit into the fresh, soft goodness. It was good. You were good. That's how our story starts. Whenever we gather for a course or event, I bake banana bread. Even the people who don't eat the banana bread like what it means for their weekends: you're starting from home; someone cares; you do have the energy for what you want to accomplish. It's hard to arrange this for yourself. If you bake your own banana bread, it's doesn't come with that little bit of surprise. If you seek it out at a favourite cafe, you get the treat, but not the same sense that it was made with you in mind, that it's reaching out like a hug. The public space is not often an anchor to home, and the public banana bread is not often exactly what we need to take us home. People take m...
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The hypnotic contract

Under what conditions would you allow someone else to tell you what to think?   If you have watched a stage hypnotist, you have seen what looks like one person exercising remarkable control over the thoughts and actions of another. It is fascinating, in part, because we have all seen it happen in real life. Suddenly someone we know seems to be relying on someone else to do the thinking.  Even if the influence is good, it is a little frightening. The secret is that there are no magic words.  In order to lead someone into hypnosis, that person has to be willing to go there. Often the people you see on stage are more than willing. For whatever reasons, they are enthusiastic about giving up self control and allowing someone else to take charge. They know that there are limits to what can happen on stage and they are only agreeing to give up control within those limits. What you see in hypnosis is an agreement between two people. Like all agreements between human beings, it stretches as far...
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