Bertrand Russell

In the world of Changework and NLP one of the most useful skills is exploring how to change and create beliefs. However in many instances this can lead to a highly unrealistic mind set where people actually believe that they have a capability which doesn’t translate in real life. Of course the seminar generation business is to a great extent responsible for fostering this idea as it helps sell courses! It’s in my view a shame that this focus has in some instances eclipsed a focus on generating real skills. Of course believing you have skills doesn’t make it so…

I read a thread online recently about a bunch of people reading a new book called “I can make you rich” and following the exercises in the belief that they will become rich! Time will tell if this manifests in real life, but in my experience hard work requires application and also an ability to identify opportunities and create opportunities. It’s said in show business that it takes ten years to become an overnight success and in my experience perseverance  is a key ingredient in creating any form of wealth whether this e financial or otherwise. Again believing its possible is useful, but don’t make it so…

I have previously blogged about how especially how the commercialization of some training companies has led to issuing certificates for almost anything in an attempt to create “ownership”. As I have said before we now have NLP certificates regarded by some as “qualifications” and NLP has attempted to make inroads into being seen as credible in the worlds of medicine and education while at the same time attaching itself to some quite wacky ideas including Shamanism! Amazingly people still believe that these are “qualifications” and there is a lot of whooping online as people obtain “new certificates” believing that these will create work opportunities when in reality it will make no real difference from a work opportunity perspective.

Perhaps the co creators would have benefited from some brand advice as the “NLP brand” has become so diluted it’s almost impossible to determine what NLP is with many holding the belief that NLP is “a cure all for all ills!” If only the co creators had been able to read Donna Heckler and Brian D Till’s “The Truth about Brands” it could all have been very different, especially chapter 50…

Great to meet up here with some stella musicians, writers and presenters for The Mindscapes weekend. We have a great group interested in learning and developing skills. Really pleased to be co presenting with Doug O Brien and Andrew T Austin, two very talented trainers so rare these days. Can't wait until Friday night, but plenty to do until then!

I was looking online today at a number of online postings on the internet while doing some research for a legal issue and discovered some of the most ludicrous and funny comments I have seen to date. It seems that especially in the field of NLP and other changework, practitioners and trainers feel the need to embellish and amplify comments to a farcical level. For a field that claims linguistic skills and precision, this seems to me to suggest a massive incongruity. Amazingly we now have some individuals claiming to cure whole groups of 50 phobics at a time with (100% success rate of course)  and others desperately trying to sell books claim to have “cured” thousands of phobics!  It reminds me of the wonderful Monty Python four Yorkshire sketch.

The culture of newsgroups and associated behaviours has in my view created some of the most dreadful behaviour that only damages the perception of the field. I have blogged previously about individuals who talk about “being qualified” in NLP, when in reality they have only attended a few brief days’s training. Others talk about getting “their Masters…” which actually in many cases means they sat in a workshop for a few days and “became” a “Master Practitioner” Some trainers actually fabricate having qualifications and add logos to their sites until they are outed by the professional body that runs the trainings who are understandably unimpressed by such misleading behaviour.

Of course without any regulation and in many cases professional standards, individuals can literally run riot and the internet is full of such examples of behaviour.

This gross exaggeration extends beyond inventing “qualifications” with many individuals regularly talking about billing thousands for corporate work while always seeming financially broke and having “huge success” with clients while lamenting a lack of regular client income. Some practitioners attempt to charge thousands of pounds for their services often referring to themselves as “success coaches” and “performance coaches” without any obvious factual evidence for any such “success” Other ludicrous sets of claims usually start with “The world’s greatest” (insert whatever you want after this initial proclamation…Often individuals will proclaim "I've got a client" online or "I've got a new training opportunity" which suggests to me a certain level their own surprise...

The tragedy of this kind of behaviour is that some people can (having seen such comments) then totally dismiss the entire field of NLP and changework as “kooky” and without any substance. Considering how useful some of these skills can be when used in the right hands this is a real shame. I have become pretty embarrassed (but not surprised) by such behaviour and am pleased that some groups such as ANLP and a few others advocate a set of ethics and standards and promote professionalism and accountability.  

PS a colleague just e-mailed me this which appeared online

"The best hypnosis 6 day certification training in the World"

The 36 provocative icons allow the therapist to adopt different perceptual positions when working with clients. The key to this approach is to work only “in the here and now” and to make suggestions and observations to the client by “running them up the flagpole and seeing if they salute them.” This produces a wonderfully improvised way of working that is in many ways the total opposite of standard talking therapy, hypnosis and NLP style approaches. The therapist can literally move in any direction at any speed to provoke new and more useful ways of thinking and feeling, from a new and greater perspective, without offering solutions, so that  the response appropriate for the client is literally” called forth” from them .

 Shifting from Disassociated and Associated Positions

Here are some of the phrases that can be used in moving a client’s way of thinking from an associated to disassociated perspective and vice versa

 Disassociated Phrases

• Some people say…
• I heard that…
• Studies have shown…

 Associated Phrases

• Do you consider yourself to be…
• Are you A, B or C?
• How long have you...?

 By using the Provocative Icon System™ in conjunction with these shifts, the client is moved from “a stuck state” when they are often extremely associated, into a new more useful state. Often the conversations that take place can appear to be quite surreal from an external viewpoint, but make perfect sense for the therapist and client.

Also take a look at articles on www.afpt.co.uk

Now I notice some people have discovered the term “provocative” and there is a serious danger of an outbreak of clumsy attempts to borrow the reputation of provocative therapy with little or no training in Farrelly’s work. We already have “provocative hypnosis” and goodness knows what will appear next. For anyone wanting to properly study how to use provocative skills-ie the ability to literally “call forth” the desired change from the client- as created by Frank Farrelly there are AFPT memberships, and, of course a code of conduct and standards that is all too often absent from so many fields.

AFPT code of ethics:

1.     Respect each person's right to self-determination in deciding upon therapeutic treatments

2.     Act at all times with integrity, professionalism and impartiality

3.     Represent themselves, their qualifications, experience and membership of professional bodies honestly, and also (to the best of their knowledge) the skills, qualifications and experience of any third party to whom they refer any of their clients.

4.     Only practise Provocative Therapy within the limits of their competency and to update skills and knowledge on an ongoing basis.

5.     Present PT as a professional and effective approach

6.     Respect legitimate needs and requirements for confidentiality at all times

7.     Ensure that clients' expectations, and the basis on which they will be met, are understood by both parties

8.     Act within the law and not encourage, assist, or collude with others engaged in unlawful conduct.

9.     Represent PT as an option rather than 'a certain solution' for any given problem.

                                        www.afpt.co.uk

In the world of change work and NLP there is a definite “pyramid selling” aspect to some trainings and those “assisting” mostly do so on a voluntary basis. In the world of NLP I chose to assist on a number of events for a few years between 2000 and 2003. I am glad that  I did so as it allowed me to see up close how to run an event and also to really see how skilled some celebrity trainers were, having witnessed these individuals many times over teaching the same material. I noticed that for some assisting on NLP events was a very big deal and in some cases such assistants planned their year’s activities around other trainer’s workshop schedules.  Of course for some aspiring trainers assisting and essentially promoting other people’s events can on the surface appear quite glamorous, but can actually be commercially disadvantageous. Often aspiring trainers who are spending time as volunteers on other people’s events are very limited time wise in what they can run themselves as there are key times of year to consider when hosting events. Typically school holidays, summer breaks, Jan and Dec are not great times for running events. There is also a limited number of people who will attend any kind of event and in recent times assisting staff have been given financial rewards for promoting their chosen trainer’s events. Nothing wrong with that except of course sometimes their own events then suffer and there can be all manner of conflicts of interests that occur.

I have blogged a lot about the balance between entertainment and learning and some of the courses I attended in 2002 and 2003 were great fun, but perhaps not the greatest learning experiences. However my original NLP training was just £499 for 7 days, now the same event can be 300% more expensive. I no longer bother for stock NLP events as they IMO are a bit limited and much of what’s taught is not especially of interest to me.  However I am pleased to be running more and more trainings on my own work in the UK, Europe and USA as well as India as well as releasing some really great products.  I recommend any aspiring trainer to assist on other people’s events for a time, but extensive assisting IMO really can dull skill levels and I have seen many examples of this over the years. One of the reasons is that assistants become very polarized in just one way of working, often not exploring other approaches.

Many training companies that seek volunteers or assistants to help out on courses can be notoriously political in their behaviour and it’s not uncommon to regularly hear the word “persona non grata” as people are considered “in and out of favour” in a similar manner to many corporate business concerns! One NLP colleague was bemused to find that she was skilled enough to run her own NLP courses (and be charged for certification fees by the parent franchise) but curiously not skilled enough to “assist” on courses teaching the same material by those who proclaimed her skills as a trainer.  So yes assisting can be useful for a time in developing skills, for a time…

Unfortunately most NLP forums are simply a giant advert to promote the forum owners favorite trainings. On one NLP forum, posters are not even allowed to add to their posts the kind of trainer they are as this is considered to be “an advert” while the site points all posters to just one style of NLP training. The quality of discussion is lamentably poor and it’s little wonder why NLP has such a dreadful reputation in some quarters…

So much for freedom of choice! It seems that in these tougher economic times some forum owners are desperate enough to try to set up clone forum sites and Andrew Austin outed a forum owner who set up a clone version on alt.psychology.nlp to try and drive traffic to his own site. He registered the exact same domain with the single difference of adding hyphens so an unsuspecting online surfer wouldn’t know the difference. On landing on the fraudulent site browsers see this

http://www.alt-psychology-nlp.com/nlp/1398-nlp-ad-nlp-hypnosis-practice-group-bath-somerset-uk.html

This kind of desperation also suggests that the social networking sites are really taking over as people increasingly find forums full of unemployed rather unpleasant characters who spend a great deal of time trying to attack each other online!

Facebook in particular is far less secular than online forums and there tends to be less evangelism in the discussions. I remember in 2005 when I was working from home I was working on one laptop and had another one on my desk as an experiment noted how long some people remained online on a particular forum. To my amazement some individuals literally spent 10 – 12 hours a day online posting! With the advent of mobile communication it’s very easy to post to Twitter and Facebook and Twitter in particular has become a popular mechanism for dispensing information. Online video resources have become a major players in this new era of global communication and most marketers have realized the benefits of linking these mechanisms with their websites and blogs.

In the world of NLP with the economic downturn there is increasingly an almost desperate attempt to use old style NLP forums alongside social media outlets to promote courses. Youtube has become flooded with clips which are essentially content free clips advertising forthcoming events! Many companies have realized that employees are spending increasing amounts of time online socially networking and often employers have blocked this capability during working hours. With the launch of the new ipad, it remains to be seen if the accent of this new medium is going to change how we read magazines and newspapers and my guess is that this will also contribute to the demise of old style forums.  I was talking to a co author of a major marketing book recently and he made the exact same comments about the rise of social networking mediums and it will be interesting to see how this develops in future years.

When I am teaching both Frank Farrelly’s “classic” Provocative Therapy as well as my own Provocative Change Works™ material requires careful sequencing so the attendees don’t become totally confused. Both these approaches are very sophisticated multi layered ways of communicating and in my view far superior to other approaches I have studied including NLP. This way of working really requires the therapist to pay excellent attention to their own state and to be able to maintain excellent rapport with the person they are interacting with while at the same time being able to provoke or stimulate a wide range of responses.  For the casual observer much of what is occurring can seem at times like a scene out of “Alice in Wonderland”, truly surreal and with no immediate obvious thread, but as the training progresses people begin “to get it”

The ability to improvise is crucial to producing great results and I was very pleased with all the attendee questions during these events. It’s great to have individuals really think about what they are witnessing and asking good questions that also get me to think about this process in new ways. It has become clearer and clearer to me that creating The Provocative Icon System ™ was a very smart move in making this material more accessible. Using the different icons to demonstrate how the therapist can adopt a variety of “perceptual positions” allows me to really allow people to access a lot of what Frank does in an easier way and crucially in a way where they can then begin to use these tools. These approaches also require the therapist to have really good state control and to be able to provoke or stimulate a wide range of different behaviours and reactions in the Provocative interviews and exercises. This can at times be pretty challenging and at least one seasoned NLP/Hypnosis trainer felt they were well outside their comfort zone during the London training. I felt exactly the same way back in 2004 and absolutely loved the fact that I had discovered a great new way of producing excellent results with all the jargon and clunky techniques that are all to often present in some change work approaches. We filmed everything (thanks to Mark Zaretti for this) and a section of the filming will appear on the international Hypno Summit transmission in March this year.

I was also pleased to put a number of faces to names I had heard about in recent years and attendees for these three events came from all over the South of the UK with one London attendee travelling in from Paris! I have already started discussions about running a two day training on Provocative approaches for Tony’s  NLP Master Practitioner later this year and have a number of invitations to present at evening events in the UK. It’s a real pleasure to meet people who are both warm hearted and genuinely interested in learning. For those reading this who live in London , be assure “I’ll be back!” For everyone reading this, remember that in May I am running a weekend Provocative training with Frank Farrelly. As one of the co creators of NLP once remarked

“If you think I’m wild, you should meet Frank”

In personal jealousy situations this behaviour is often between two people in a relationship where one of them gets into a pattern of obsessive thinking about what the other person might be doing. I use the term “might be doing” here, but a jealous person “feels” that they “know” that what they imagine is actual fact and nothing will sway them from this assertion. The feeling of jealousy overwhelms all thinking and no amount of discussion alone will change this particular feeling.  The best way to resolve is to change the process that creates the ultimate feeling. It’s important to remember that a person can’t simply “get a feeling” there has to a thinking process that generates any kind of feeling. There are essentially four main ways in which a feeling is usually generated – seeing something externally, picturing something internally, hearing something externally, thinking or saying something to oneself internally.

I was warned some years ago that as I ran more events and released more products,  I would be the subject of other people’s jealousy. I thought this was quite ludicrous at the time as I don’t in any way consider myself as a high profile trainer and am really only interested in figuring out what is useful in helping others in a therapeutic and business context. I’m also not especially precious about “being right” but have provoked a lot of discussion about my blogs on some of what goes on in NLP and self help circles. I have some wonderful examples of this that I will publish someday!

I have have noticed that most jealous individuals are deeply unhappy and seem to constantly be searching for something in terms of an identity. They are often restless and fixate on other individuals rather than develop insights into their own ways of thinking. They also find it difficult to relax and tend to flit from one activity to another. Many such individuals have control issues and seek approval from others and are often obsessed with status. In their attempts to control everything and everyone around them they are often unwittingly advocates of censorship and spin, so get what “they feel” is appropriate.

Personally I am not a fan of censorship and spin and the only spin doctors I would endorse are the band of that exact same name! However jealousy is great for business in private prctice and I have excellent results with clients who seek help with this issue. It's great to help people become free from this kind of obsessive thinking.

 In these scenarios confidentiality is often breached and parties retort to stating “I was only making a comment” or “I didn’t mean to give that impression”, which is of course after the event and when the damage has already been done. Individuals who make such comments often feel “compelled” to speak out, when they would in my view be far better advised to think before joining in what essentially then becomes “a pack mentality”. In the Pratt case all four of the company’s benefactors resigned, which in my view was the right thing to do.  

In an age of instant communication more than ever people press a button to make a public comment without engaging brain first. What many people don’t fully realize is that once they make comments in the public domain, there is usually a record of such happenings. For example when someone posts on facebook, even if they withdraw a comment the communication still is sent to all those on that particular thread. Similarly sometimes individuals can make ill advised comments on websites not realizing that prior website versions are usually archived and facilities such as http://www.archive.org/web/web.php will reveal previous versions.

Newsgroups of all kinds are similarly full of quite ludicrous comments which in some instances can be quite libelous. Anyone is considering any form of legal action is advised to obtain screen shots of any such comments as sometimes these are conveniently altered or deleted at a later date! Similarly text messages can often be retrieved from phones and often when people make impulsive comments they do so without any real thought only to later regret their actions.  In the Sarah Pratt situation it’s unclear whether she herself will resign. My own view is that anyone who is unable to be discreet and maintain professional confidentiality should not be in such a position of responsibility, whether this is in a political, private or the self help arena.

I started playing the guitar in the 1970s and had a very basic acoustic. These days I can afford much better instruments and of course instruments made by Stephan Sobell, Santa Cruz and Collings are a joy to play. I started learning guitar from Martin Simpson a few years ago and regularly have lessons which remain one of the most inspirational elements in life today. He is one of the very best singers and songwriters and it’s an honour to spend time with him.

In the world of Changework I have explored meditation since 1979 and although many will know me for my work in NLP, Hypnosis and Provocative Therapy, I was involved in exploring meditative systems way before I ever can across those fields. I still regularly meditate and teach others in the UK. In 2004 I first met Frank Farrelly and he remains a great friend and professional colleague who has taught me an extraordinary amount about working in therapy. I consider myself privileged to be able to regularly have him come to stay in the UK and to discuss client issues as well as our mutual love of films.

Travelling is another inspiration and in recent times I have been fortunate enough to visit the USA and parts of Europe for my work. My favorite city remains New York and I’ll be there again in a few short weeks time. There’s something wonderful about a city waking up and seeing all the sights and sounds that accompany this process. In many ways I know NY better than London and have some great friends there. I was lucky enough to see some wonderful music when I visited including seeing Les Paul, Bill Frissell, Michael Franti among many others.

Inspiration comes in many forms and of course being married to my wife and simple things in life remind me just how amazing life can be. One thing for sure is that there’s never a dull moment and I wouldn’t exchange it for anything!

 It appears that virtually anyone can be a success coach and here are some of the taglines that you could consider adding to your literature and website if you too want to join this elite group –

“I ignite your essence…”

 “When results are the only option”

“Enlightened entrepreneur”

“I bring together ideas from the worlds of modern psychology, behavioural science, physiotherapy, brain training, meditation and esoteric traditions... (List goes on and on!)

My question is

 “How successful are such individuals and how are they able to successfully coach others to be successful?”

There are undoubtedly great coaches just as there are great teachers, and yet it seems that anyone can become “a success coach” regardless of their success or lack of success in life, whether this is financially or creatively. Certainly many of the websites offering such services don’t to me appear that well designed and often a closer look shows that the individual making these claims often has little in the way of consistent work history, although of course that is not the ultimate determining factor for being a successful success coach.  

As I have blogged recently, some apparent “success coaches” have not been able to successfully keep their businesses from becoming insolvent while at the same time suggesting they can coach others in developing great business strategy! A co director in a company I worked in the 1990s was so taken by the marketing of a success coach, that he wanted to agree a 3 hour training session which would cost a mere £1,500. When I quizzed the “business success coach” I discovered that his “training” in becoming a coach solely consisted of a 7 day course in Las Vegas and that he would then give back 10% of all future client revenues back to his trainer. (This may sound familiar…)

Of course in the area of sports a coach either is able to deliver the results, or they are seen to fail in trying to do so. Certainly in this field there is the ability to measure the actual results against the promised results. The best and most successful coaches build their own reputations, and don’t need to hype themselves in their advertising, in a manner which suggests a level of skill that simply is not there.  The best and most successful coaches produce measurable success where lesser mortals simply can’t get the job done! Such individuals have the ability to inspire as well as the ability to teach those technical skills that produce excellence for those they coach. The English football team has apparently discovered that coaches from overseas hold greater promise than home grown talent in recent years. The wonderful “Mike Bassett England manager “fictitious movie was perhaps too close to real life, when as a coach Bassett was totally out of his depth, and when asked for direction from the team was heard to famously comment

“How am I supposed to know? Just do whatever you want” It is however unclear from the screenplay whether Bassett considered himself to be a success coach or manager of the team.

 So in the world of the self development business, why would someone call themselves “a success coach” rather than simply a “personal coach” or “coach?” I’m not sure how a person’s essence can be ignited and how such ignitions could in fact be measured!  I have met a number of individuals who call themselves “success coaches” who perhaps would be more accurately described as “aspiring to success coach?” Maybe a competition could be arranged in the style of “The Apprentice” to test them out to see just how these claims of success can translate in the real world. My guess is that, quite reasonably, the results would at best be variable on any scale of “success…”  So how do you recognize a genuine Success Coach? Well the proof for me is in the delivery according to agreed goals rather than how many people they can attract to events to create even more would be coaches! The world needs great coaches and teachers and I welcome those who are able to genuinely help others.

Skilled coaches provide a great service to those lucky enough to be coached by them and they are in my opinion worth their weight in gold. They deliver the results in real life and are often so successful that they come across as being quite modest…

Not a week goes by without seeing a client who is "diagnosed" with one condition or another and in many instances this kind of "professional suggestion, aka diagnosis" is excellent in getting the client to THINK MORE and FEEL MORE bout "the problem"

That having said my favourite client conditions are anger and jealousy and I see these most weeks in my private practice and have great success with these issues.

 In recent years, events heavily advertised, only to be cancelled, have had a “How to be Charismatic” event cancelled due to lack of interest, “How to be Successful and Happy” (two for the price of one?) also cancelled (due to lack of success?). I can only think that the promoter wasn’t happy about this either. Sometimes the clips on You-tube don’t come across particularly well at all. I noticed today an event that suggests for 100 quid you can learn how to become a genius on selling on e-bay, what next?

 Sometimes, the title of the event is sufficiently ill conceived that it was never going to work, and sometimes the whole idea is not really well thought through. There are those events which aim to charge thousands for just a few days, my favorite from days gone by being “Esoterica Hypnotica” pitched at 3k for 3 days. Yup-that’s three thousand pounds for three days! When I enquired about what the content of the event would be, the sales member at the promoting office wonderfully said “We don’t know, it’s a secret…” Unsurprisingly the event was also cancelled!

One of the benefits of the economic downturn is that the public are more wary of parting with money when booking events and are more discriminating. Instead of being “personally upgraded” many folks are focusing on paying the mortgage and dealing with more pressing matters. I have blogged about the downturn in interest for some NLP trainings and my view is that the market has changed significantly in recent times, and I think for the better.

 Some companies are so disorganized that they don’t even realize who they are mailing out to. The company I trained in NLP with for 5 years, and so was on their mailing list, kept sending me invites to attend NLP Prac events as a delegate, years after I had done one. Also, continuing even when I had been part of the assisting team on the very same Practitioner events for years. Of course there are some excellent companies, running great trainings .My advice is always to speak to who is running the event, ahead of booking, and check the hosting company is not in financial trouble. Some companies still offer great value and I suspect that these are the ones that will stand the test of time. I recall last year Steve Andreas sold out an entire event purely by word of mouth alone. He is a wonderful example of a Trainer who is extremely skilled, and very experienced, with enormous personal integrity.

So, my advice is, go for the courses with genuine content, which fulfills the desired function for yourself, from a trainer who really can deliver a quality training that is great value.

Perhaps in these times never was there a greater case for Caveat emptor?