Integrate!

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...

I've been at the beach. As you can see, it's not a metaphorical beach. This picture was taken in the national park on the north shore of Prince Edward Island. The bird in the foreground is a real seagull. This beach is a metaphor. It tells me exactly what I want in my experience as I encounter the clouds and the sunshine, the wind and the sand and the waves of life. It speaks to a paradoxical balance of elements, a balance of focus and soft edges, a balance of ground and flight. If you asked me to describe what I want REALLY, I would stumble and hesitate. I would contradict myself and backtrack. I would have commitment issues. If you asked me to tell you about this beach, you would know exactly what I choose as my experience and who I am choosing to be as I move forward. This is my desired future. But my desired future is not to stay on vacation - it's to bring this paradox into the clutter and contradiction and productivity that is my work and my life and my...

You've been waiting for this day for weeks - actively preparing so that you'll be at your best when you need to perform. You've researched and rehearsed and you are ready. Until the bug hits, the one that has been going around the office or the school. You're all set and you're sick. Now what? There are times when there is no choice. You're too sick to carry on and so you miss it. Other arrangements get made. What I want to think about now are the majority of days, the days when you have a wicked head cold and you have to face a 2 hour commute before presenting to a room filled with important people you want to influence. You have choices. You could cancel and begin the long, hard process of preparation again.  You could muddle through miserable and hope for sympathy points from your audience. Or you could excel despite the bug. You could be so committed to your outcome that you show up fully and let go of most of the rotten feelings until after you'...

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 ...

I have been involved with NLP (neurolinguistic programming) for more than ten years, and have been training NLP for almost that long. In that time, I have used NLP as a window into developments in the evolution of coaching and the discoveries of neuroscience. I have developed long-term relationships with clients who return to me for training because they find that my teaching is both powerful and practical. There are many, many things I love about neurolinguistic programming and the gifts it has given me in a decade. There is a lot I do not love about NLP. I hate having to justify and explain that what I do is different than a lot of bad, hokey, undisciplined practice. I hate having to separate myself from trainers who spout a lot of pseudo-technical terms and teach "information" that is current in NLP circles and nowhere else. I hate that much of NLP has come to be represented by people who do not understand academic disciplines and so do not have any reference point for N...

This week, I have listened to smart well-trained coaches who believe that any sustainable change takes at least three months, and to another smart, well-trained coach/therapist who says that research shows 3-10 sessions is the optimal length for helping someone make a desired change. Both camps insist that they get results for their clients, although the expert in brief interventions did not claim to get results for everyone. She claimed that it is only possible to get results from people who are ready to change. Both camps claim to be client-focused (which is to say that they claim the client is the expert on his/her own life), although the longer camp seems willing to be more "directive."  How is it possible that both camps are telling the truth?  Because the problem for someone who wants to change is that both camps are telling the truth, from a certain point of view. Directed change does take time. If I have to convince you, a little at a time, that change is ...