Integrate!

From time to time, we are all writers. We all post and email and some of us prepare documents to communicate ideas or information. Writing can be a lonely activity: it feels like it's just you and the computer screen. As you try to wrestle your information into words, your vision might close in until there is nothing but you and the screen you are filling with your words. This is a terrible way to think about writing. Even your personal journal will make a better contribution to your well-being if you look up and around. You are not writing alone: you are writing because you are not alone. Even if the person who will read your writing is another version of you, you are writing so that someone can read what you have written and make sense of the world differently because of it. If you were writing code for a computer, the computer would carry out your instructions. The interchange might get ugly if you wrote ugly code, but there would be no escalation of bad feelings and bad ...

Welcome to our front step. There are other places to have an important conversation, but not better places. Lives change when people sit side by side on this step and look out at the park while they talk. Front steps are portals - spaces that mark a transition between one place and another. That's why this front step is such a good place to reflect on change. The space does not change anything in the situation described. It does change the attitude in which that situation can be considered. It invites you to sit far enough outside your life to see it differently, close enough to be back into the thick of it in a step or two. It's easy to get caught up in what you know and what words you will choose when you want to influence someone else, either to lead them through something or to support them through something. But the research suggests we're putting our focus on the wrong stuff. Most of what we say will be forgotten almost as soon as it is said. But we do remembe...

I was teaching a class this week on how to deliver bad news. They were feeling kind of late afternoon grumpy until I asked: "Would you like to hear about how I screwed up this week?" Yes, indeed. They were interested in hearing that story. When people come looking for magic words, they seldom expect to end up with these: I screwed up. Yet these little words said nicely do magic. They take a situation and turn it on a dime. Potential disaster becomes a chance for a stronger bond. But it's just a chance, just an opening. Even magic words need action to sustain them. In this case, action meant several things. "I screwed up" by email wasn't enough. Those three little words meant picking up a phone to have a difficult conversation. They meant formulating a plan to overcome the problem I had created, and sharing it immediately. They meant both asking for advice and following through with action. But still - without them, all the rest of the activity would ha...

I will always remember the training where I first realized that what I teach is sometimes a matter of life and death. One of the participants was a young soldier preparing for deployment to a war zone. His ability to anticipate the actions of others and to control his own state would, quite literally, be a matter of life or death. It's rare to think of self-development, self-reflection or communication in this way. Maybe it should be much less rare. Yesterday we held our annual NLP retreat, in which a small group gathers in a wonderfully inspiring location to reflect, share and practice. Our theme yesterday was "Finding Your Voice" and in many ways it looked like we were working on how to speak more effectively in conversation or presentations. While knowing yourself is a requirement for speaking with power and presence, we didn't seem to be doing any change work or tackling any major life issues. Except that there were some really big back stories in the room...

I sometimes say to people. "I am not a therapist. I do not want to be a therapist. I do not believe that people who work with me are broken." The result of working with me (one to one or in a class) is frequently that people feel better. We don't get there by focusing on what is wrong. This can be hard for people to understand. Like me, they learned to believe that focusing on what works is okay for academics, but not good enough for the "real" world. In the "real" world, people have problems that cause them real suffering. What kind of person would ignore those problems to focus on what works? It sounds a little like a case where the rich get richer, doesn't it? It is. The more we assume that we have the strengths, skills and resources to live satisfying lives, the more we live satisfying lives. The more we assume that we will become happy after our problems are solved, the more problems we find that need solving. Problems are like the Hydra -...

What's the difference between your best result and your typical result? Sometimes the world does align to support your performance and you get a personal best result. But that's probably not what came to mind first. Research shows that we usually attribute our best performances to our own skills, strengths and effort. We believe that we have more influence over our outcomes than is probably the case. What came to mind first was probably your own skill, attitude or effort. Before you rush in to correct this error, consider its usefulness. Whether or not it is true that our efforts determine our results, it is a useful belief that motivates us to change the only things we can change: the factors within our own control. To get a personal best, we believe that we need to be our personal best. We use a different version of this logic when we are managing the performance of others. We attribute much of their success to circumstances outside their control and blame their less-th...

How do you know what your purpose is? That's a big question. The answer begins with an equally big gateway. You begin by knowing how you know anything. How does your brain work with your mind to produce that mental sensation of knowing something? You might never have thought about it. I know is both a concept and a feeling. You know you have the right answer when you get the desired result and, often before that, when you have a feeling that the answer is right. Knowing is more than thinking: it is thinking with your whole self - brain and body and mind. This is how you know your purpose. It's not a matter of putting it into a slogan or motto. Those have their uses, but they are never a complete statement of what you want to be and to do. Purpose is the big container that lets you know whether a goal is right for you or just a distraction. Purpose is the path you are walking, even when it takes strange turns and you're not sure where it is leading. Purpose is the feelin...

When you were a kid, there were two situations in which you might be bored. One was at home where there was no structure to long days off and you might complain that 'there's nothing to do.' If you were bored at home, it was your fault. The antidote was clear. You needed to change your actions (go outside and play - at least in the olden days) so that your attitude were change. If you were bored at school, the rules were quite different. If you were bored at school, the consensus was that it was probably your teacher's fault. It was your teacher's job to engage you and interest you and supply you with activities. If you were bored, the teacher wasn't doing enough or wasn't doing the right things or was not supported by the right kind of system. The antidote was for the teacher to change or for you to change schools or systems so that you could be engaged enough to learn what you needed to learn. The system pays teachers to engage students. That seems pre...

Here in Toronto, it's Thanksgiving weekend.  It seems to me that thanksgiving is the most NLP of all the holidays. It involves knowing what you want and recognizing it in what you already have. When we pay attention to something, it tends to become bigger. Whether this is because we attract more of it, or because we simply notice it more, is not as important as the impact on how we experience our lives. When we recognize the value in what we already have, we feel better about ourselves and our world. Practically speaking, the fastest way to make your life better is to pay attention to what is already working. It's hard to be thankful when you are focused on what is broken, lost or out of reach. If you're feeling thankful now, stop reading and go celebrate. If you're not feeling thankful yet, if the holiday feels like words without meaning, then take a moment and think about what you would fight to save. It's easier to think about fighting than gratitude when you...

The best collaboration gets almost magical results.  Working together, people produce ideas that no one would have generated working alone and everyone discovers that their skills are a fit for one another and for the task. Yet we all have experiences of collaboration that are much less than the sum of the parts, times when we have worked with others and been less inspired and less effective than we would have been on our own.  An NLP approach to the problem is to ask: what's the difference? What makes collaboration work? It may be that focus is the difference that makes the difference. Groups that focus on developing a shared outcome and a shared state might be more effective than groups that focus on the problem they are solving or the task they want to complete. One of the things we know for sure is that states are easily transferred from one group member to another and that the strongest state in the group is the one that is likely to dominate. Groups that focus on w...

"But in jazz music, there’s no escaping what came before you. Each new player does their best to understand the contributions made by others before them and to expand, reinterpret or say something new with that knowledge in hand. History is vital to jazz music." Chris Ferguson, SteelCity Jazzfest Full disclosure: I take some credit for this quotation because I raised the guy who wrote it.  And I am very proud that I raised someone who is immune to the opportunism and amnesia that plague both our businesses and our self-help movements.  Every day I see Facebook memes that suggest dumping anyone who does not seem to be immediately useful to you. They do this in the name of owning your energy and developing personal power.  It's nonsense. Power comes from congruence and congruence comes from owning your situation. Some of your situation is the history you carry within you, the accumulation of events and beliefs that your past has given you. Some of these are old news...

On Wednesdays, I teach from 3pm to 6pm. It's a terrible time slot: students are tired, distracted, and when the sun is shining outside, a little hyper. They care enough to show up, but once in the room they can have a hard time tuning in for more than a few moments at a time. I love it. It reminds me that this is the world into which I am sending most of my words. The people who are looking at my emails (and deciding whether or not to open them) are just as busy and distracted and, I think, just as well-meaning and energetic as my classes. Here's what I do with my class: I pay a lot of attention to them. I move to them instead of waiting for them to look up and find me. I repeat things in different ways. I spend much less time than I used to worrying about information and much more time working to give my students incentive to uncover and own information.  Most of my words are spent persuading them with my tone that what we're doing is worthwhile and that I believe they...

This became a refrain in our house when my kids were young.  I'd say: do you want to go to the park or to the library or watch Star Wars?  They'd say "Don't make us choose. There are too many fun things to do." Yes, it is a first world problem.  We don't worry about having too many good choices when we are sick or stuck or broke. We worry about just one thing.  But first world problems are problems too. In some ways, they are the most interesting problems. In the exhibit Massive Change, Bruce Mau asked the question "Now that we can do anything, what will we do?" It's a way of waking up in the morning. While most of us do not feel that "we can do anything", we can do a lot of things. We are more often afraid that we will be embarrassed than we are than we will starve. We are more often afraid that we won't make it to the gym than we are that we won't be able to get out of bed.  So we can do a lot of things, and that means th...

There are lots of sexy gifts that we wish we had: wisdom, charisma, strength or acuity.  They are characteristics of the successful and powerful, the characteristics we associate with being better and doing better.  Persistence is not sexy. Courage is sexier than persistence. We admire courage although if we are wise and honest, we hope that we won't need courage very much or very often. Courage is a gift that means you're in big trouble and it will probably hurt before it gets better. Courage is sometimes so like persistence that they might be twins. Persistence is the quiet twin, the one who knows how to make herself inconspicuous when the company arrives. She is often found with her equally undesirable cousin, Patience.  The two are hard to notice and yet, when we look we find them both wherever people are able to maintain success. You might be lucky once, but if you are lucky repeatedly, it's because you have made room for persistence. I think if I were a fairy ...

Of all the training available, there's a tremendous interest in buying training on influence and leadership.  This means two things. The first is that our conventional education system doesn't cover influence and leadership effectively.  The second is that both individuals and corporations recognize that the ability to influence effectively needs to be developed. It's not just an inborn talent available to a lucky few. It's a skillset that requires the same ongoing development as technical skills. The problem is finding a model that works.  Sales training is well-developed and widespread. It teaches people to have more predictable influence in predictable situations. It works well when people can know their products and their markets. It works less well when markets and products are in transition. Leadership training is supposed to train people to exert influence in situations where both outcomes and contexts are less predictable.  Our education system is designe...

Have you ever known that you were absolutely in the wrong mood for what you had to do next? You know that your attitude changes your effectiveness.  The question becomes how you can change your own attitude. Your current attitude colours all your perceptions. That makes it very hard to perceive the differences that would allow you to build a different attitude.  Many people don't even try. They just wait it out, hoping that the next mood that hits will be more useful. Or they pretend that attitude is something that only happens to other people. A more useful approach has three steps: 1) Move your body. 2) Connect with a new rhythm. 3) Borrow the best available attitude. It's hard to change your own mind. It's easier to change your body.  If you want to signal yourself to get moving, try moving.  A walk, a run, a climb up stairs: any of them will get the blood flowing, adjust your breathing and rhythms, and suggest to your whole brain that it look for ways o...