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NLP isn't only for creating change & modeling excellence... often its for tolerance!

Guest post by: Jonathan Altfeld

Article Overview: This article discusses how NLP & Life Coaching can be taken too far, into the realm of the "ALWAYS HAVE TO HELP PEOPLE IMPROVE NO MATTER WHAT" mindset -- which tends to poison relationships and make people feel inadequate all the time. Since for most people, family and friends are and will remain amongst our most important treasures, this article suggests ways of balancing a desire to help others with tolerance and acceptance.

NLP isn't only for creating change & modeling excellence... often its for tolerance!

Many people want the latest and greatest technique for persuasion and influence. Perhaps that's one of the more visible elements of marketing NLP, but hopefully it's not all people see. After all, some people really don't want to change their minds, and sometimes, it wouldn't be congruent or ecological to help them change their minds. It's nearly always incongruent and unecological to change their minds "for them" (after all, NLP can be very influential), with the rare extreme exceptions of dealing out interventions for drug and alcohol abusers and similar such situations.

For most normal day to day situations, while I strongly espouse finding ways to influence the world to help you build new possibilities for everyone, I'm not a big fan of pushing our persuasion and influence on people who aren't open to or ready for it.

I find that sometimes the act of deciding not to act with our skills -- is the optimal expression of our skills.

I also think a lot of NLP students, especially those focusing primarily on the persuasion and influence side of things, have forgotten or at least rely less than they could on the basic NLP foundation of gathering better information first, and using NLP's perceptual positions to consider multiple viewpoints in situations.

For example, I need more fingers than I have on both hands -- to count the number of times in just the past week that I used a range of NLP skills to decide NOT to use certain other NLP skills to change someone's mind.

This is the hammer-and-nail phenomenon I'm talking about. A lot of NLP students become so enamored of the power of their NLP skills to change minds, that every signal from another human being of being stuck or being disinterested in providing us what we ask for -- starts to look like a nail. So a "Hammer-and-Nail" guy would pull out one of his trusty hammers, and hammer away at the nail, not thinking of all the consequences. This is out of balance.

It behooves us to first understand people better, and to think of the bigger picture. It is not our job to change everyone. It's our job to enrich the lives of people when it's appropriate to do so -- including our own -- which, while I believe is often -- isn't "always, in all circumstances."

Sometimes it's best to tolerate people's stuck states. To tolerate their flaws, their inadequacies, their disappointment, and such. After all, I don't know a single perfect Neuro-Linguistic Programmer either, and I'm certainly not perfect. So maybe the Golden Rule -- which I heard somewhere actually pre-dates NLP -- might be useful to include here. :)

I spend a lot of my time aiming for excellence, directing attention towards productivity, creativity, proactiveness, action, and motivating people into more energized states. And I plan to continue to do so.

It's important to keep all that in balance. After all, how many of your family members want you to be changing their minds all the time? Not many, I'd bet. Sometimes it's more important to spend some time and effort to more deeply understand people, and just "be" with people -- and let them know behaviorally that that's also important to you.

Just a friendly reminder, amongst all the NLP-based messages you may be receiving from newsletters, from reading NLP books and listening to CDs, or watching videos... all espousing fast change techniques and positive thinking, that sometimes not using your NLP skills -- and just tolerating what's around you -- is your best possible use of NLP skills.

Here's an example from my own life -- I think it's great to want our kids to be smarter, more agile, more musical, more verbally gifted, more emotionally resourceful etc -- but we can go too far with this.

I noticed a few years ago with my older girl that every time I thought she could do better -- no matter how proud I was of her already -- if I always corrected or taught her something new -- she rapidly learned that I wasn't accepting what she was doing as 'good enough.' The signals of this were subtle, but I remember after two weeks of even more involved parenting, that her emotional responses to these additions were mixed. Perhaps some parents miss that signal and spend too many years behaving like that. Perhaps you know some like that.

After those two weeks, I changed my behavior and began to rely on a wider range of responses to show her that not only was I pleased with her no matter how she performed, but that occasionally I could also help her achieve better results.

In other words, I would show her total acceptance without question or criticism or even suggestions for improvement, sometimes when she performed less than ideally, sometimes when she performed well, and sometimes when she surprised all of us with her ramping excellence. I believe that taught her that I accepted her totally, at any level of performance.

Periodically, I would also offer suggestions for further growth, with the same tonality and language no matter what her prior performance (poor, good, excellent, didn't matter).

My aim was to prevent her from pattern-matching across my behavior and identifying uniquely consistent responses to different levels of her abilities or performance.

What I have found is that she still loves to show her parents when she does extremely well, but she also gets over her own disappointment from lower performance much more quickly than she used to. She knows she gets unconditional acceptance from us either way, which is teaching her

to do the same, for herself. So far so good!

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Article Tags: change, children, family and friends, life coaching, NLP, parenting, relating, relationships, tolerance, understanding



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Re: Old vs New Facebook - [quote="topeyinka":1b4rbthy]There isnt much difference from the oldand the new facebook except the interface.i think its a marketing strategy.no big deal.[/quote:1b4rbthy] I'm with you - what is the big deal? I don't know about you all, but there are far more critical things to worry about than a change in the look of Facebook. Now if someone wanted to oppose sending $700,000,000,000 of taxpaper money - that I would help oppose. Things change and sites evolve. I don't think its a stunt, the site has grown so much in the last 6 months that they might see the need for change. Besides what is the last thing any of us heard about that 100,000,000 people agreed on?? Shri
Re: When Moderators refuse to post - Hi there all of you, [color=#FF0000:1vdjzley]We need to take this advice seriously[/color:1vdjzley]. I know I was off for a month or earlier this year. I did feel very uncomfortable. At the same time the forum changed to this current one and I was also challenged with the change. As moderators we have a mandate of 25 posts a month and we have to strive to achieve it. I don't know exactly if there is a tolerance factor to stay on. Kevin does a good job to remind the moderators about their current position, if during successive months no contribution is made. I think with the new forum it is very helpful to select the posts with no reply, most active and latest contribution.
Re: Businesswomen in the news - Hey hey hey....Calm down. What you are forgetting and the press isnt taking into consideration the rise of entrepreneurship. Women arent leaving the workforce, they are starting their own workforces... A few years ago I was president of the Canadian Association of Women Executives. I got a call from Global National who wanted a comment on the fact that women were leaving corporate Canada in droves....and what did I think about it......was it the glass ceiling etc.. Well, its because women are flocking to entrepreneurship but ladies, that doesnt make the news. the media is looking for information that will prove their 'the economy is in a slump'.... It simply isnt true. There are more women starting and running their own businesses than we've ever seen. Dont forget that the media is out for the media and scare tactics and bad news gets the coverage.... J
Re: Old vs New Facebook - There isnt much difference from the oldand the new facebook except the interface.i think its a marketing strategy.no big deal.
thanks - Great article Kevin. There is no substitute for a strong work ethic, hard work and the desire for excellence. J


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