Integrate!

Sometimes I get calls from people who are hoping for a little magic to help them help someone else. The evidence on magic isn't very conclusive. While there are widespread stories of its effectiveness, most of the evidence comes down on the side of small, repeated changes in state and perception that gradually lead to a new way of thinking and feeling. "Can't you speed it up through trance? I saw someone cure a phobia on youtube and it only took a minute or two." And behind the protests, I think I hear the voice of doubt whispering "maybe you're not as good as the magic ones." In my experience, there's limited magic in showing up once. Magic happens when you are willing to show up for the time it takes for sustainable, reliable change to happen. I liked Change or Die very much because it lined up with my reading and my experience. Change happens sustainably when it is supported by three elements: Reframe, Relate, Repeat. If you like the...

Yes. I am being pretty hard on you. I said that to someone in a coaching session last night. He was curious about how I decide when to challenge and when to support. He'd watch me do some metaphor coaching, which probably looked like fun from the outside. It was about stepping into the body of a powerful animal and exploring a landscape to which that particular animal was well-suited. Compared to that, some probing questions that led to uncomfortable answers were rough. The difference was that the first client knew what he wanted and so we were able to explore what he wanted using a metaphor. That metaphor protected his privacy while it allowed him to discover that he was stronger than he might have thought as he approached a challenge. The challenge was relatively well-defined, and since he picked the metaphor there was no danger that I was leading him to feel stronger than he really is. He  felt pushed a little anyway. Coaching is not about letting someone sit with their li...

As 2014 approaches, I am aware that I must soon sit down and put together my year end video. It's often a little unnerving to look ahead, especially since by the end of December I am tired and ready to climb into a burrow for some quiet alone time. I think winter brings that out in a lot of people. My job is to tempt people out of their burrows so that they forget to think about being comfortable and think instead about what could engage their full attention in a way that is satisfying and productive. Life is less about being and more about doing and I work to get people very busy being more fully alive. This means that I only get to retreat into a burrow when it is to be very engaged with deep, internal process that will eventually break through to cause more action. I have been reading other people's NLP practitioner manuals and guides, and I still believe that everything I teach is compatible with the best in NLP practice. Not everything is the best, and not everything i...

What do you think it means to edit something? We are familiar with the term from writing where, to most people, it means fixing the language and formatting so that the message is clear and presentable. But we might also know, somehow, that the Oscars have categories for sound editing and for film editors. Do they also fix errors and clean things up so the message is clear and presentable? When we edit our experience, we are stuck with the content of our raw material in precisely the same way that editors are stuck with the story, image or sound they are editing.  While minor cuts might be made, with care and discretion, most of what counts has to stay.  The editor can change the format or the grammar, can pull some parts into focus and let others blur, but the content remains. This is roughly the same as what happens when we look back at our past experience and make an effort to understand it in a new way.  What happened in the past cannot be changed. That doesn't mea...

I recently attended a workshop where the leader (an internationally acclaimed psychologist) often applied research on therapy to the practice of coaching. For instance, if it is true that therapy should be evaluated after 3 sessions and declines dramatically in effectiveness after 10 sessions, then that same metric will be true of coaching. The implication is that coaching, like therapy, is about returning people to a condition where they are capable of managing their lives without assistance. Is that what coaching does?  It's certainly true that coaching is often about solving problems and good coaches often enjoy solving a problem quickly and effectively.  However, from another point of view, if coaches wanted to solve problems they should a) solve their own and b) stop hanging out with top performers who also like solving problems. It may be true that elite athletes, actors and musicians require coaching throughout their careers because they are somehow constitutionally i...

One of my favourite things about my work is that it frequently reminds me that the best thing I can do for other people is to help them connect with their own best selves.  It's a little paradoxical: even when they come with questions for me, what they really need is the answers they will generate themselves. It's always easy to give advice: after all, any question will launch us on an internal search for an answer. And that's what we need to remember most of the time that people seek our advice.  We can give them information but the information we give will rarely give them any real help.  It can be a good way to keep a conversation going until we locate what they really need: a memory, a model, a hope that is within their experience and precisely what they need in the current situation.  They can find it more easily when they come to us, because we can ask them questions. And they, like us, find questions almost irresistible. In my personal life, when I am not ...

It's Friday afternoon and you're looking back at a week of work. What did you accomplish this week? If it feels like nothing, look again. You did make progress and if you don't notice it, you will probably lose it. So if something is better now than it was on Monday, it's a good time to pay attention. Paying attention to progress helps stabilize it in your mind so that it becomes part of the assumptions you take into Monday morning. It's often not enough to prevent slippage. What you need is to add a little oomph to progress so that it stays in place until you can get back to it. Here's three ways to add oomph to your progress, illustrated with examples from my own week. Notice the progress and give it a metaphor.  For instance, this week I have been away at sea without my usual landmarks to chart progress.  But when it's dark, I can look at the stars and begin to notice that I have moved.  Sometimes it is only in the dark that we can focus on the sign...

Have you ever had a day when what you wanted most was to laugh?  It sometimes happens that thinking through problems and solutions is overwhelming and grinding out work is exhausting and the only real solution is to laugh.  This is hard for introverts, since we laugh more easily in the company of others (we all know that laugh tracks work because the quickest way to get someone to laugh is to laugh yourself). Several times a week, I spend time with my laughter coach. She does not charge by the hour, but she does value obedience and full engagement.  My coach is my 18 month old niece. She is a giggle expert, but she has also mastered the grin and the chuckle and the bemused half smile that indicates she can sometimes suffer fools with good humour. Although spending time with C means lifting and moving and sitting on the floor, my back is strangely compliant while I am with her.  Some of this is the value of love and some comes from the therapeutic touch of small a...

" The ICF defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential." Coaches talk people into thinking and behaving in ways that they wouldn't think or behave on their own. Their process is always about communicating through language and relationship so that their clients make changes in what they think and accept the task of changing what they do. This doesn't mean that coaches tell people what to do. The "partnering" in the ICF definition is meant to walk the fine line between having no influence and having too much. How can you lead a conversation so that your clients discover their own best approach to their problems or goals?  The best way is to DARE: to use a simple four step process that maximizes the effectiveness of the coaching relationship while minimizing the danger of undue influence and the resistance which accompanies that danger. DARE...

Often often do you catch yourself wishing you could change something about you? It can be easier to wish for change than to do the work to make it real, whether that change is personal (weight loss, addiction, or bad emotional habits) or professional (time management, diplomacy or confidence). We often know what we need but feel like it's unreachable. The change you want will be unreachable until you reach for it.  And then you need a process that will help you manage your will power and persistence until the change becomes natural. There is no road to intentional success that does not require some hard work and discipline. But the FACT process will allow you to be more effective with less suffering and no room for the self-loathing that sometimes accompanies failed efforts at personal change. FACT begins with focus. To get something you want, you have to be willing to know what it is that you want, to spend some time developing a representation of it that is detailed enough to...

I'm going to suggest that there are four things that everyone wants, and that you can chart them on a quadrant.  The first axis has autonomy (control over one's own life) at one extreme and relationship (connections with other people) at the other.  The second axis has living comfortably with one's body at one extreme and escaping the confines of one's body at the other.  Everything that people want falls into one or more of the quadrants. It seems that anything we want serves one quadrant at the expense of the others. If we want autonomy for our bodies (perhaps the ability to support ourselves financially), that comes at the expense of escaping the body through connection with others (perhaps through reading fiction). If we want to be physically connected (to hang out with people we like), that comes at the expense of setting our thoughts free.  It's obvious that we cannot simultaneous move to both ends of the axis. It's obvious, but it is not always true. ...

Coaches are people who get paid to believe that you have what you need to be more successful at work or at life. They can do lots of good work, but there is always a sliver of an out: they believe in you because it's their job to believe. That leaves just a little room for doubt. Friends are people who just believe that you have what you need to be more successful. There's no wiggle room.  They don't get a payoff for believing: they just do. This is why people who want to be depressed have to hide from their friends.  Friends would look at them and see possibility and hope and strength.  Accepting their belief would take so much attention and energy that there would be none left for being depressed. It's also hard to give up, quit, or walk away if you hang out with people who look at you and see strength and skill and resilience.  You might change direction or you might change activities but you would have to be very strong to overcome their belief in you and jus...

Silence is an interesting phenomenon in a conversation. It's a sort of keystone: everything else leans on the silence and changes according to its quality.  We teach people something of how to talk and sometimes even something of how to listen, but there is no teaching on how to be silent together. Silence is either the most excruciatingly awkward thing that can happen to a conversation or the sign that the conversation is deep and wide and wonderful. And we shy away from both. We shy away from the wonderful conversations because we are not sure what can measure up to the moments of full, rich silence or because we are afraid that the silence will ring so clear that we will reveal something, somehow, that we didn't mean to reveal. We are afraid because change happens in the silence. And yet, it's the fear at the top of the roller coaster, the fear of taking the first step onto stage, the fear before the whistle blows and the game begins. The fear that is also a hope tha...