Integrate!

 Try this thought experiment. Think of three wonderful conversations you have had. You might not remember what you said or even what you heard, but you remember the flow of words and the way you felt. Now look around each of those memories. Where did they happen? Now connect the "where" to the "what." Some wonderful conversations are wonderful because they make you feel so close. You feel that you and the other person (or even a group) are sharing a mind and heart. And often those conversations happen in close spaces, spaces where you share so much in your senses that it is easy to share similar thoughts and feelings. Other conversations require more space. High ceilings or wide open skies. The room to stretch your legs and create motion. An expanse around you that creates expansiveness in your thoughts. People get confused by science. They think that because science is rational, the only way to be practical is to pretend that our bodies are separate from our reason...

How many people do you think genuinely look forward to the season of endless small talk with people they haven't arranged to meet for months? If you would rather Netflix 'n chill than meet new people, you're not alone. It's really hard to have a good conversation with someone who is as uncomfortable as you are. Here are three ways you can do better and feel better, whether your holiday includes parties with extended family and friends or endless work socials. If you wouldn't want to meet someone who feels the way you do, change the way you feel. You can't become a different person but you can be a person in a different state. Listen to music, go for a walk or take a moment to remember just one time you met someone and it worked out beautifully. Repeat as often as necessary to find the self that people will look forward to meeting. Think about why you've shown up. If you're at a social you don't want to attend, there must be a pretty good r...

Sometimes you need to get people talking so that they can generate new conversations. Within conversation, it's possible to share beliefs, energy and facts in ways that lead to new thinking and new results. So how do you set up a productive conversation? Often, I work with people who do not yet know each other. I warm them up with a combination of slightly surprising perspectives and the larger surprise that someone is paying attention to them. I set them up with a question to explore or a story to tell and instructions to practice. And then they have conversations. Their phones stay on the table, and their eyes get brighter, and the noise and the energy in the room builds. They get curious and engaged and then they get satisfied. Because real conversation satisfies the need of the human animal to connect and move. © Can Stock Photo / edharcanstock Sometimes I work with people who already know each other. That's much harder for 3 reasons: It's hard to warm them ...

We have two illusions about solving problems. The first illusion is that smart people think best when they are alone. We imagine people hunched over computers or pacing in front of whiteboards until they have an AHA moment  and solve the problem using their solitary genius. The other illusion is that we only learn from experts.  We expect therapists to help us with emotional problems and subject matter experts to help us with everything else. After years of conditioning in schools, we think that the people who make us smarter are people who know more than we do. The result of these illusions is often that we stay stuck for much longer than is necessary. We wait for access to an expert. We beat ourselves up for not being smart enough or competent enough or confident enough to think it through all alone. But it's all based on a faulty premise: we believe that smart people think best on their own. Take a closer look at what really smart people are doing. They are hanging ...

Welcome to the view from the front steps of the building where we train. At this time of year, the garden is beautiful and the park is green and lively. Sitting on these steps, you can watch the traffic go by or you can let your thoughts drift. But if you want your life to change on these steps, you'll want someone to talk with. Front steps are a special place, a portal between inside and outside. They signal the movement of information and influence between what is kept behind closed doors and what circulates with the traffic outside. When two people meet in a space that is both inside and outside, remarkable conversations happen. They share a paradox, a space that is both private and public. And through that space, they are motivated to connect more fluidly and more deeply. It's possible to have a front-steps conversation at any time of year, but it's definitely best when the sun is shining and the air is warm. As you talk about whatever comes up, you feel both con...

I bet you've tried to talk about a problem with someone and come away more confused and unhappy than you started. It's happened to all of us. We know that other people's ideas hold some kind of key to finding what we need. Yet talking about our problems often leads to new problems. Here's a better way. Understand what kind of help you want and behave in ways that make it more likely you'll get it. Consider these three possibilities: Have a conversation to learn how someone else solved a similar problem. This means listening to their story and being curious about it. It doesn't mean leaping to conclusions or trying to apply it to your own situation before you've heard the whole story. Have a conversation to learn how someone was able to persist until they found a solution. This doesn't require that the problem they solved was like the problem you want to solve. Instead, as you listen to the story, ask questions about what was true in their attitu...

When was the last time you sat down for a really great conversation with someone you didn't know well? We know that conversations help people find the ideas that lead to innovation. There are examples in every field of people coming together to talk about ideas and information and then going away to make change happen. While you might spend lots of time locked away alone to develop an idea, ideas are generated in connections and conversations. Here are three things I think are critical if you want to have the kind of conversations that grow new and useful ideas: Listen more than you talk. The value is not in hearing your own ideas, but in allowing ideas to form as you connect with new ideas and new people.  Engage difference. This means finding people you can't predict because you don't already know what and how they think.  Follow your curiosity. Most people want to get to the point too quickly: if you want to have new thoughts, you won't recognize the ...

Silence doesn't sound scary while you're looking at a photo of a path through the woods. Primed by this photo, you are likely to imagine silence as calming or peaceful.  In the middle of an important conversation, this may not be your first reaction to silence. Most often, when we say something significant and get silence in reply, we are rattled. Silence is not processed as calming; it's processed as a warning. The quieter it is outside, the more alarms go off in our brains. "Danger!" Is silence always a bad sign? Probably not.  Think of a time when someone said something and your reaction was "I need to process this." The time when you were processing was best spent in silence (processing out loud is not always a good idea, even for extraverts). This processing time could have been used to do many things: to understand; to tease out an association at the edge of your awareness; to think several jumps ahead; or to disagree. Disagreement...

When you ask yourself: "What do I want more of?" the first answer that comes to mind is often something like "vacations!" It's easy to want more time away, more adventures to beautiful places, more freedom. Yes. All good. And yet, how does that change what you are doing in the next hour?  When you think "What do I want more of in this day?" the answers change. For me, the answers are: more wonderfully engaging connections and conversations more control over my state and my choices more focus and more energy so that I can accomplish more And all of these are achievable. I have the knowledge and the resources to seek out better connections, to choose better experiences for myself, to take care of mind and body so that I have the energy I need to do what I want to do. Every step is a simple step, and still it is hard. Still the road has curves and bumps that make it easy to say "I can't. I won't. It's not my fault." ...

One of the many things I love about my work is that I get to know great people who are as dedicated to learning and language as I am. One of those people is Sheri Andrunyk. Sheri and I connected over tea one day, and we have been supporting each other as teachers and writers ever since. I'm very proud to have trained Sheri in NLP, and it has been fun to cheer her on as she founded and has nurtured I C Publishing. Here's the short version of what Sheri has contributed to so many writers, entrepreneurs and coaches: "Sheri Andrunyk is the founder of I C Publishing (tour sponsor) and the I C Bookstore, entrepreneur expert, mentor, and author of Working From Home & Making It Work and Hearts Linked by Courage. She is writing two more books this year, and is extremely passionate about providing more choices, resources, and high level support to other writers, business professionals, wellness coaches, and spiritual mentors." In my contribution to this year...

It is interesting to me that most of the NLP (neurolinguistic programming) conferences of which I am aware run exactly like other conferences: they put experts talking at the front of the room (usually with powerpoint) in unremarkable hotel rooms. This seems to me unfortunate. Why not use the practices and principles of NLP to create format that satisfies people's goals for attending a conference? While it is certainly true that people go to conferences to learn new things, it is more true that most people go to conferences to learn while making new connections and planting seeds for further development and networking. Most NLP conferences do no better or no worse than other mainstream conferences in giving participants opportunities to meet those goals. People sit and listen, and then mingle and make small talk during breaks. Whether or not the speakers are good is not really the point. The point is that the framing doesn't really facilitate meeting the outcomes. At NL...

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 ...

NLP (neurolinguistic programming) gained fame for two things: the promise that you could achieve anything you could clearly imagine and the promise that you could read people accurately enough to detect deception or perform amazing acts of covert influence.  It seemed like magic, and people flocked to it to find out how to become magicians. When I started in NLP, I was the smart, conventional one and my partner was the one with the magic: he was the one who could freak people out with mind-reading and hypnotic presence. Over the years, as I began to work on my own more often, I learned to do a little quiet magic of my own.  Sometimes now, the magic is less quiet, more - well, more magical. But I am a teacher, not a magician. So I will tell you the one thing I think you need to learn to do magical acts of reading and influencing other people.  The secret is: metaphor. In case you've forgotten your high school English course, here is how Wikipedia defines metaphor: ...

Have you ever been astonished by a decision made by someone close to you? You know this person well. You respect them. And then - apparently out of the blue - they make a decision you didn't see coming. Sometimes, of course, the person who makes an astonishing decision is even closer to us: we all surprise ourselves from time to time.  As much as we gather information and perspective, as much as we truly believe that it's important to think things through, as much as we are committed to living smart, intentional lives: we surprise ourselves. There's actually quite a lot of information on how people make decisions. Daniel Kahneman's book, Thinking Fast and Slow , is likely to be a classic on the subject for some years.  For those who prefer a little less density and a more direct line to application, there's Decisive by the Heath brothers. There's no reason for someone who is involved in motivating, coaching or managing not to have at least a little familiar...

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...

We often talk about passion as though it inevitably flares up and disappears.  I wonder if passion is really fleeting. While romance certainly changes over time, there are other things that inspire passion in us. Yesterday I had coffee with friends from my days as an undergraduate at Trent University.  We last saw each other thirty years ago. (Yes - thirty years.  It freaked all of us out a little). The meeting happened because we connected on Linked In. It was a case of social media doing actual good. What I discovered through the meeting was that we have had widely diverse experiences since Trent and we are still so strongly committed to the ideas and ideals that inspired us that our conversation was deep and wide and much too short.  Apparently we did know what we liked and what was important thirty years ago, because those same things seem to be important to us now.  The world has shifted and we have changed (not as much as we might have feared), but we ...

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...

There are two kinds of conversations that are great. The first kind happens when you want it to happen. By this I mean, you choose to talk to someone you expect to have a great conversation with and you set up a context where conversation is likely.  Sometimes this means sitting someplace quiet; sometimes it means attending an event and following up with an opportunity to talk; sometimes it means going for a walk or a drive.  In all of these situations, you are intentional about who is part of the conversation and where it happens. There's another kind of great conversation. It's the kind you don't intend and don't expect. These conversations happen in rich environments where people are in that interesting state of being enlivened by their work (whether or not it's paid work) and temporarily detached from it (maybe they've stepped out for a bio break or maybe they are doing an errand, for instance). Lots of research shows that creativity happens when lots of d...