The Drama Triangle is a psychological model generally used to describe dysfunctional relationships when people move through the roles of ‘victim’, ‘rescuer’ and ‘persecutor’ creating an emotional storm or drama. More generally, turn on a television, read a newsfeed or listen to a colleague, friend or family member who ...
What is mindfulness and how can it help manage stress ? I would define mindfulness as a mental state, where your conscious attention is taken up with experiencing the present moment. You are no longer dominated by your thoughts and feelings; you have a choice whether to engage with ...
Do you feel as if you want to change your life but the ‘how to’ somehow alludes you? In this post I will write about our ‘blind spots’ – we may want to change our life, but while that seems possible for others, it somehow doesn’t work out for ...
What is Transactional Analysis? Transactional Analysis (TA) was developed in the 1950’s and 60’s by Eric Berne, a Freudian trained psychiatrist. Berne wanted a theory which could be understood and available to everyone. He was a brilliant observer of human interaction with an eye for patterns of behaviour and ...
NLP Course – reviews and what to look for. If you are choosing an NLP Training or an NLP Practitioner course you are probably aware that there is a lot out there, and a huge variation in the cost, number of days and method of delivery. A pre recorded ...
NLP or Neuro Linguistic Programming, uses perceptual, behavioural, & communication techniques to help people change their thoughts & actions. NLP was originally developed by Dr Richard Bandler and John Grinder. They observed sessions by psychotherapists such as Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir and Milton Erickson, identifying common patterns and positive ...
Many managers and HR Professionals attend our NLP courses, and in this article, we explain some of the key benefits they gain by using NLP techniques. To manage and mentor competent people, especially millennials, using traditional management methods simply does not work, or worse, can alienate people, in today’s ...
Whether you are a newly qualified coach starting to build your confidence and experience, or have many coaching years under your belt, supervision is an invaluable resource. It offers an opportunity to meet with an individual or group who absolutely gets what you do for a living. It’s where ...
Working with beliefs in coaching is a fundamental part of helping clients achieve positive change. The Meta Model was the first model of NLP and was designed to help identify and categorise limiting beliefs into three groups: distortions, generalizations, and deletions. This post will give a summary of how ...
Why do so many of us feel we need to be perfect? Psychologist Carl Rogers emphasized the importance of self-acceptance and being enough rather than striving for an unachievable perfection. He also highlighted the significance of unconditional positive regard, both for ourselves and for others. Perceiving ourselves as good ...
Much of the material we work with as coaches ends up being about human relationships – at work, of course, but also at home. Drama-triangle Dysfunctional relationships eat away at clients’ time and energy.
This video explains some principles about identity coaching which I use to introduce my course next month. One of the key ideas I will be covering in this course will be a process called Rescripting. I often felt that I wanted to be both a happy and successful person, ...
Oftentimes it’s difficult to pinpoint where a problem is, many people report simply feeling generally overwhelmed or stressed. Did you like this post? Then check out our events and coursesSign up to our e-learning Where to find us For posts, events, free open days and more, follow NLP School ...
There is a saying in coaching and therapy: “The presenting problem is never the real problem.” Looking back to when I did my first NLP Practitioner training twenty years ago, I believed at that time that NLP would give me some new skills to help me manage my business ...
In this video, I cover principles of how our thoughts can be expressed as an inner-voice and some reasons why that inner-voice may not always be helpful to us. I also discuss the intriguing quote, “The child is father of the man” by William Wordsworth (another way of putting ...
As a budding author of fiction, my wife Anna arranged a creative writing lesson for me with her friend and author Hattie Edmonds. I was amazed to note how the ‘process’ fitted nearly exactly into Dilts’ & Gilligan’s six-step Generative Coaching structure. It also featured many principles I was ...
This question of what characteristics make for a successful and happy career is simple, but not simplistic: it is probably the most important question we need to ask of ourselves. For me, the answer comes in NLP’s essential approach to archetype psychology. Archetypes have existed throughout human history in ...
How can coaching help with Imposter Syndrome and other issues around our identity? So often people don’t feel fully comfortable in their own skin – I know that was the case for me when I qualified in NLP over 20 years ago. That was until something happened that changed ...
Apparently it was Henry Ford that first said this quote and it’s often used to demonstrate how much attitude can determine our success in any given pursuit. If someone uses the words I can’t in a sentence it’s worth further investigation, quite often I can’t is a legitimate expression ...
Children need attention (and love) and when they don’t receive this, they develop strategies to gain negative attention by making their parents angry or worried. This approach to gaining attention becomes more sophisticated as people grow older and they start to use more elaborate strategies. These strategies are psychological ...
Positive intention, secondary gain or payback as some people call it is the conscious or unconscious benefit we derive from any behaviour that we exhibit. Recognising that behind every behaviour is a positive intention is a primary assumption of NLP. It is a concept derived from humanistic psychologists like ...
Is loyalty to the first change system you learnt a hindrance? I have always been a sceptical person and that included during my original training in NLP over 20 years ago. I found that some in the NLP field seemed to be convinced that it was the ‘only way’ ...
Mindfulness reportedly has huge benefits to your health, happiness, wellbeing, energy and effectiveness. Why then doesn’t everyone simply do it? I believe the reason is that while you are learning how to master it, you need to also learn why you are doing it. Otherwise, it can simply become an unpleasant ...
At the 2020 NLP Conference I presented a session with the title ” Can models and theories co-exist” where, to cut a long story short, I made the argument that yes – indeed they can. In my Advanced NLP Coaching course I combine NLP Timelines with processes from Transactional ...
Changing the way we define ourselves (our identity) can have some huge benefits but can cause some significant issues. A good way to start is to consider an important question – How do we define our identity? This could include: Our perceived roles in life: work, family, aspirational, race, ...
In this video, I give some tips on business leadership and entrepreneurship. I am being interviewed in Tbilisi, Georgia by Nik Shurgaia – a close friend and an experienced bank CEO. Nik has gained a large following in Georgia by posting videos of his views on leadership and entrepreneurship ...
The Value of Santa Claus Having completed teaching our NLP Master Practitioner in Georgia yesterday, I wanted to explain some insights I shared around changing beliefs and identity. I started the training with Robert Dilts’ Belief Change Cycle, an elegant process based on the principle that most of our ...
Having recently completed creating Judy Delozier’s Somatic Coaching eLearning programmes, it struck me just how intuitive and powerful Somatic Archetype approaches are. In this blog I want to give a range of examples of how to use them in coaching and also in your own personal growth. Anchoring The ...
“The body never lies” – Martha Graham Somatic Coaching is a way of utilising both the words and movements of a client within a coaching session. It also teaches the coach how to become aware of how their own body communicates – both to the client, and to themselves, ...
In this blog, I wanted to share some reflections on NLP University. California Dreamin’ The first time I went to Santa Cruz to study at NLP University was in 2006 to do my NLP Trainer’s Training. Going down towards Highway 1 from SF airport, in a rented Ford Mustang ...
In organisations, or personal life, if resistance is experienced by a conflict or boundary issue, it is probably because a belief or value has been challenged. Conflict or distrust often originate from communication misunderstandings. Individual and team discussions around core values create better connections and greater understanding.
There is a saying in coaching and therapy: “The presenting problem is never the real problem.” Looking back to when I did my first NLP Practitioner training twenty years ago, I believed at that time that NLP would give me some new skills to help me manage my business ...
In this blog, I will explain three parts of an NLP goal coaching process which I will be covering in full during our free lunchtime zoom session on 9th Feb. Coaching is often taught as a process consisting of a list of different types of questions. Behind these questions ...
From business to existentialism, I hope this wide selection will have something for everyone this Christmas. I also recommend them all to coaches, therapists and those who love psychology. Chris Voss – Never Split the Difference Although books about negotiation may seem shallow, materialistic and potentially boring – I ...
In this week’s blog I cover one of the most powerful psychology shifts you can make in leadership and personal development; a shift in motivation from fear formed in your past, toward a vision you wish to create for your future. There are however some opposing forces that need ...
Much of the material we work with as coaches ends up being about human relationships – at work, of course, but also at home. Drama-triangle Dysfunctional relationships eat away at clients’ time and energy.
With lockdown measures starting again across the world, I wanted to write a blog on how to mentally ‘weather the storm’. I have revisited a mix of ideas from Stoicism (an ancient Greek and Roman philosophy), Transactional Analysis (a more modern psychology stating we have an inner parent, adult ...
With our Advanced Coaching training starting in early December, I have been revisiting a coaching process I created called Rescripting. The principle behind this is that one way of defining our identity is as a character in a story that has a specific script or destiny. What ties A ...
In today’s blog post, I want to discuss the basics of what NLP is, who it might be useful for, and what it could do for you, both personally and professionally. What is NLP? NLP stands for Neuro Linguistic Programming. Our brain and nervous system are programmed by the ...
Every motivational speaker will tell you reaching the next level is about setting goals and achieving them. The bigger and more audacious the goal, the better! So go on, get achieving! Now! But things don’t work that way… The trouble is, things don’t always work out that way. Life ...
With our first ever zoom blended learning Practitioner starting in just over two weeks, I wanted to write a blog about some of the important principles we cover in the training: profiling and learning styles. Profiling from Personal Preference Psychometric profiling has been a huge influence on organisations for ...
You can empower coaching clients by teaching them to own it. This is the new principle that I introduced as part of the client contracting process on my Coach Training with NLP, TA and Mindfulness course, which I am now teaching online. The principle was for participants to notice ...
An NLP concept I use a lot is that of Perceptual Positions – also known as ‘Different Perspectives’. The three most commonly used are: First Perceptual Position is the one we habitually use, seeing things from our own perspective. Second Perceptual Position is when we take another persons’ perspective. ...
With our online NLP Practitioner starting in less than a month, I wanted to share some ideas of how to manage your emotional state. These ideas are based on the emotional intelligence content from Robert Dilts at NLP University where I work as a faculty member and I presented ...
Are you your job role? The word identity has multiple possible meanings. It can be perceived as a job role such as an accountant or a marketing manager. However, when you meet people who work in these roles, they often have shifted this skill set to their actual identity, ...
In my Leadership Matrix model below, each character, or Archetype, represents a positive business energy. Each Archetype also has a Shadow – a potentially problematic manifestation of that Archetype. In this blog I will offer 5 tips around criticism, and relate them to the Archetypes I detail in my ...
In my model below, The Leadership Matrix, each character, or Archetype, represents a positive business energy. At the same time, each Archetype also has its own unique Shadow, or problematic manifestation. Last week I concluded that being truthful to yourself, especially on your weak spots, is an essential self-critical ...
In my model, The Leadership Matrix (see above), each character, or Archetype, represents a positive business energy. At the same time, each Archetype also has its own unique Shadow, or problematic manifestation. In this blog I will explain how aspects of the personality of leaders can diminish the benefits ...
In this blog, I shall look at the skills that make up effective leadership. The capability sets of leadership My model began life in the business world. If you find the tasks a bit ‘business-y’ on first appearance, please bear with me. I have subsequently found that they actually ...
The Leadership Matrix In this blog post, I want to discuss a model that I developed myself, called the Leadership Matrix (see above) from my book Mindful Business Leadership. Of course, I ‘stood on the shoulders of giants’ to create it. The idea of archetypes and archetypal energies has ...
1. What is the ‘source’ of NLP? It is important to find out from your training provider who is the source of their NLP. There were a number of key players who started and developed NLP during the 1970s around the campus of The University of California Santa Cruz ...
NLP was born in the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) in the early 1970s. It was started informally by a group of students and teachers as a way to study excellence and interests that fell outside of any of the academic faculties. This created a culture of creativity ...
Often clients come to a coaching session with quite simple, technical ‘presenting’ issues. They want to be more effective managers, to influence senior people or to delegate more effectively. But the thing underlying all of these desires is often much simpler – happiness. “If you solved this problem, how ...
One area that seems frowned upon in business is the idea of emotion. Business is generally conducted in a rational and steady way, and people who are ‘too emotional’ are often considered unprofessional or worse. However, it is also well known that when people repress their feelings totally, this ...
NLP started out back in the 1970s with a technological approach to therapy (analysing the linguistic structure of unhelpful beliefs). I like to think it has retained some of that early rigour and clarity, but in other ways it has softened and become more humanistic. One of the key ...
Many people come to a point in their career where they realize that continuing to practice the specialist skill they have mastered has become an impediment to fulfilling their ambitions in becoming leaders. We are brought up with a belief that the way to succeed at work is to ...
We live, we are told, in an anxious world. We’re anxious about our jobs, our families, our futures. This has been exacerbated by the current economic and global climate. So how can we ease our anxiety, and how can NLP help with this? I explore these questions, in this ...
2.6% of the adult population of the UK suffer from depression of some kind. This equates to over 1 million people. I feel very sad when I read a fact like this and think of all the suffering and wasted potential that lies behind it. I’d love to be ...
The presuppositions emerge over and over again in NLP, and can be particularly useful for people who are looking to review and revise their thinking patterns. ‘Presuppositions’ is probably not the best word for them (but is the standard NLP word used). The word implies a logical necessity: that ...
Have you ever listened in suprise as someone aggressively tells you they are kind, considerate and approachable? This is the difference between content and process – a key skill that NLP can teach you, and the essence of NLP coaching. What is content and process? Oftentimes the story that ...
London went into lockdown on March 23rd. Within a couple of days, I was reading articles on how to optimise my lockdown experience. How to use this time to tackle my self-improvement bucket list. Get fitter. Eat better. Meditate more. Start a juice cleanse. Do a 30 Day Yoga ...
Recently, the caring professions have been in the public eye, and the public’s mind. Helping people whose job it is to help others is more important now than ever before. With this in mind, I’ll be giving suggestions this week on how NLP can be used by caring professionals, ...
NLP is magical! Training in neuro linguistic programming (NLP) over twenty years ago is one of the best decisions I have made in my 30-year career. I did 3 courses over a two-year period, NLP practitioner, NLP masters and NLP coaching. What NLP has offered me Not only did ...
This week, in celebration of International Coaching Week, we decided to interview our two writers, Robbie and Sophie, to get their take on what Coaching is, and who it might be useful for. Our aim is to provide you with different perspectives on the same subject, and help you ...
The pandemic is putting a strain on many people, personally and in their close relationships. Between the unprecedented period of proximity for many families, and the underlying atmosphere of stress, uncertainty and fear on the global stage, this is understandable. I believe that good communication, as always, is the ...
Mindfulness reportedly has huge benefits to your health, happiness, wellbeing, energy and effectiveness. Why then doesn’t everyone simply do it? I believe the reason is that while you are learning how to master it, you need to also learn why you are doing it. Otherwise, it can simply become an unpleasant ...
In my coaching experience, one thing that particularly concerns some people is having to make a decision under pressure. Especially when someone is pushing them to say ‘yes’ and to do so right now! It often feels easiest to give in. Doing so is, of course, a decision in itself, ...
To celebrate the fact that all of Robbie’s books are now available directly from the NLP School website, this week’s post takes a look at a few other brilliant personal development books, and how they can help you during the lockdown. To find out more about Robbie’s books, click ...
Mindfulness can deliver more inner-peace. It is predicated on a slightly bizarre paradox: are we able to notice ourselves thinking, or is that just another kind of thinking?
“For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.”― Thich Nhat Hanh As the lockdown continues, many of us are trying to use the time to achieve certain goals. Whether it be writing, meditating or exercising more, there are goals, big ...
As our global collective gets used to the temporary new normal, we’re finding new ways to spend our time. Nights out have turned into Zoom Karaoke sessions. Going to the bookshop has been replaced with shopping your own home library (who doesn’t have shelves of books that they’ve never ...
Happiness has been a topic of discussion since the early philosophers. As a practice and a state, it is just as relevant in the present day. As the COVID-19 lockdown begins to affect people’s mood, many are starting to search for new ways of coping with uncertainty, bringing balance to ...
I’m familiar with fear. We’ve been together for a while now. Growing up, I was an anxious child. Quite literally afraid of the shadows (in post-Soviet Georgia, where I grew up, there were a lot of power cuts. Every time the power went out, and the shadows appeared, apparently ...
There is a saying: ‘charity begins at home’. Perhaps during these challenging times, we can change this to: ‘leadership begins at home’. In this blog I want to offer some ideas of how a leadership model can provide comfort and clarity in times of profound uncertainty and change. The ...
Two years ago I was invited to contribute to the book Inspirational, Fabulous and Over 40. Along with 11 incredibly courageous and inspirational women, I crafted my piece and concluded my chapter (“With Love, Fun and Gratitude”) with advice to ‘my younger self’. I reflected that my R & ...
Juggling education and employment can be really difficult. Let alone someone else’s education, and your own employment. In the past few weeks, many parents have found themselves having to teach their children from home. All while holding down a full-time job remotely. So for those of you who are ...
The lessons of Stoicism first resonated with me when I read Meditations. I was looking for direction in my life, and found it in Marcus Aurelius’ timeless text. Looking around today, I see a landscape similar to how I felt back then. So I wanted to write this blog, ...
In times of crisis, it is difficult to hold on to empathy. When faced with death, fear or scarcity, most of us retreat inwards. We put on our own masks first, before helping others. This is true of every situation which threatens to destabilise the normal order of things. And ...
I have been thinking – with all of the deluge of information on the Corona Virus this week, is there anything worthwhile I could add from an NLP perspective? Two things came to mind, from some of the ideas from Robert Dilts that we teach at NLP University: We ...
Human beings are naturally drawn to binary thinking. It helps us make sense of the world, which is large, confusing, and ultimately unknowable. Instead, we prefer to believe that, in any given situation, something is either X or Y, with nothing in-between. Never X and Y. This is because the human ...
Facing Frustration I remember first listening to Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, a couple of years ago. At the time, I was feeling frustrated in every single way. I was frustrated in my corporate job, where my biggest creative outlet was choosing which shade of magenta to use on ...
The Negative Feeling Cycle Do you ever find that your mind goes around in circles — thinking and rethinking certain problems, your mental state worsening, with no more clarity as to how to solve the problem? Perhaps you also feel victimised, in conflict with other people? In this blog, I will give ...
Confidence is so important to us because it acts as an antidote to anxiety. Being confident means not fearing the future, the present or the past. Being confident means knowing that, no matter what, you will be able to handle it. This level of self-confidence is extremely attainable. Your capacity ...
It’s that time of year again — when the best-laid goals of New Year’s Eve slowly start to crumble. You go to the gym five times a week in January, twice a week in February, until, eventually, you stop going altogether. The worst part is — it’s the same every single ...
In a world of increased automation, creativity is the one thing that remains exclusively human. Machines might take over the world, but they will have to be created first. Creativity, in other words, is inherently human. But just because something’s natural, that doesn’t make it easy. Most of us struggle ...
This blog covers how aspects of NLP can be used to help to manage mental health, and discusses an accompanying process called “Mentalisation Based Therapy”. Mental Health is a Spectrum Psychology often seems to imply that there are two groups of people – those with mental health issues and ...
Many people start their journey of NLP and coach training because they are at a ‘cross-roads’ in their life. They are often in a life-transition phase – dealing with big changes, or a lack of purpose – and are looking for some answers. I have found that people often ...
Most people come to NLP looking for answers. But the biggest question we face is the question of what to do with our lives. Our answers to this are formed in childhood. When we grow up, our specific dreams tend to change, but our aspirations do not. Most of ...
Welcome to 2020! A number for perfect vision and new beginnings. Each year, we resolve to become a little better, and take one step closer to our ideal versions of ourselves. But in our quest for perfection, the New Year can start to feel like a test. One that ...
One of the things I come across as a coach (and also personally) is having strong negative feelings when someone behaves in an aggressive or angry way. In this blog, I would like to give some suggestions to help cope with, and understand, negative feelings. I will be covering ...
In this blog, I will cover a theme that stays pretty constant for coaches : how to help a client during a significant period of life transition. To misquote Shakespeare (in Twelfth Night) — some are born to cope with change, some become able to cope with change and some have change ...
Some subjects are difficult to examine because they are complex, others because they are emotionally charged. The environment and your place in it is both. This is one reason that many of us don’t make the best environmental choices. The subject is complex, there are conflicting explanations of what ...
In this blog I will share some techniques for inner peace, drawn from the ancient Greek and Roman philosophy of Stoicism and modern NLP. I will also discuss how these techniques can help us live happier and more productive lives. But first, a brief bit of background; there are ...
This week, we have a guest blog from Ed Hines, who will be teaching our upcoming Environment, Identity and Vision – Your Purpose and Planning on a Changing Planet workshop with Robbie. This week he explores stoicism – its roots, what it is, and how it can help you. ...
Change for a New Era As I begin preparation for our course with Ed Hines, one of the key themes we will be covering is: how do you provide new coaching tools to deal with some the problems that we all face today? There is concern about major issues ...
Each year at NLP University in California a general vision is set. This summer it was ‘caring for the collective’. This naturally lead to many discussions about caring for our environment, not just for future generations, but for us now. This coincided perfectly with one of the reasons Ed ...
This week, we have the pleasure of having a guest blog written by Ed Hines. In this blog, Ed explains an all too familiar phenomenon, and what you can do to combat it. There is a dynamic that most of us are familiar with – which we get used ...
I was highly focused entrepreneur until my late 30s, when the ‘call’ to change was spurred by the ideas in Steven Covey’s business book, The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. Starting an industry placement as part of my degree in my early 20s, I joined the sales force ...
Team Profiling and NLP One of the important principles from NLP is the idea that people can have the same desired outcome, but the way they express it can be so different that it leads to major problems in a team. NLP has its own profiling methodology (like an ...
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