I have been involved in personal development since 1980 and during this time I have mostly been involved in writing articles and producing CDs and DVDs. In the last two years a number of professional colleagues have encouraged me to formally write a book. This main book on Provocative Change Works is a major undertaking currently standing at 90,000 words. The chapters include first meeting Frank Farrelly, the evolution of the PCW approach, practical considerations when working with clients, bespoke exercises for dealing with specific client issues, transcripts of client sessions, explaining The Provocative Icon System among other topics. In the meantime In the meantime I am pleased that a chapter on PCW has already been published by Crown House Publishing as part of “Innovations in NLP”. This chapter is an overview of the approach and the main challenge was to explain in 4000 words the core elements of PCW. Frank Farrelly’s Provocative Therapy is the primary influence on the first stage of PCW, but there’s also a lot more to explain in the following two stages.
 
I have been both surprised and delighted at what I am learning from the writing process. I have also realised the invaluable benefits of having a great editor. At a time when self publishing is an easy option and where often people don’t have formal editors for their books, I am keen that any final publication is of the highest quality. Writing a book or a chapter for a book is a different process to writing an article. An article is essentially one specific topic, usually around 1500 to 2000 words. A book is a much larger undertaking. Over the years I have reviewed many booking including books for Crown House Publishing and when I read such articles  I really want to be engaged and am mindful about the importance of how the book “flows” as a reading experience. I’m amazed at how some books don’t pay sufficient attention to basic grammar and spelling. Part of the reason for this is that would be authors are keen publish their ideas and are not prepared to invest the time and energy in refining their ideas. I have some sympathy for such individuals as author’s often consider their work as “their baby” and find it difficult to take on constructive criticism! That aside I have deep respect for anyone who engages in this process and especially those who are producing new and creative ideas which can spark the imagination of prospective readers.

Writing really focuses the mind and one of the side effects of these projects is that they have really made me reexamine my own thinking. As an author you also have to write in a manner that maintains the reader’s attention and makes sense! Sometimes I’ll review a chapter and think “Oh my god this is dreadful, what was I thinking?” and on other occasions I’ll think “This is pretty good” A good friend of mine once made the comment “great films are never finished they just escape” and Tom Waits once commented that songs try not to be “captured.” My own experience is that good writing requires a great deal of revision and refinement and any prospective author needs to have a great deal of patience and focus. When I was staying with the Andreas’s in Boulder this year it was fascinating to speak to three published authors, all of which demonstrated a real precision in their work. My intention is to release the major book in 2012 so it finally escapes into the public domain. I’m already thinking about the follow up and continue to be frustrated, delighted and genuinely surprised by the whole writing process

I just finished watching the first BBC programme on “Who wants to be a millionaire” It’s fascinating stuff and shows a mixture of quite reasonable ideas as well as a great deal of delusion. On the positive front many suggestions contained in wealth creation seminars and books are actually good common sense approaches to thinking about money differently. The bad news is that many such courses are priced at a very high level that they create a “seminar junkie” type mentality. I recognised this mindset on many large courses in the UK, where some course attendees have cranked up their visas in order to pay for trainings. I remember one person who asked about spending three thousand on a “trainer training” course with an additional five hundred pounds for accommodation in London. I tried to dissuade him but he was adamant that once he was “certified” as a trainer he would then be able to run courses full time and this would be his new source of income. He never ran a course despite setting up his website with the traditional quote about being one of the few “licensed trainers…” His wife left him and his life fell apart. This is just one example of what can be politely described as a naïve attitude and less politely described as a greedy lazy attitude. This is not the fault of the training, but how these trainings are over hyped and how solutions offered are over simplistic. Pay person X and get the life you want is a fine sentiment, but my observations are that in many instances people adopt an “X Factor” fast track to fame attitude.

In the BBC programme there were endless references to being confident and doing daily affirmations, BUT what is forgotten is the development and application of skills. The emphasis on “feeling good” and “being confident” alone is not enough and many “wealth gurus” are essentially running pyramid schemes where their lifestyle is funded by would be students paying for advice that doesn’t often translate into personal wealth for the students! Many trainers offer cut price or free courses then using the opportunity of a captive audience to up sell more expensive courses often paid for by seminar attendees on credit. Yes having a positive attitude is useful, but when many seminar attendees see certain celebrity trainers they forget or don’t do proper research as to how they achieved their statues. Some well known trainers were simply in the right place at the right time, others worked for years to achieve their positions. The problem with much of the “wealth syndrome” is that there is often a belief that wealth can be instant and positivity is all you need. On the programme one woman confessed to spending fifty thousand pounds on courses and then cranked up her credit cards to the point of being almost bankrupt. She claims to “have the knowledge to make money” and wants to make seven million pounds in 5 – 7 years! Another couple who owed large amounts when question about why then appeared not to be generating wealth in any measurable capacity hilariously commented “It’s not just about the money, it’s the mind set”. 

It will be interesting to see the remaining two BBC programs and my hope is that people will realise that yes it’s good to think about financial strategy buy it’s also important to use discrimination when making choices.  Attending a weekend seminar, having a new FB business page and feeling great with daily aphorisms have never in my view been enough to create a financially secure future. The good news is that this will at least provoke some debate and discussion about these issues.

When I first saw Frank Farrelly working I was mystified and fascinated by what I saw and it took me a great deal of time to grasp the sophistication and elegance of his work. When working with a provocative approach, the practitioner’s role is to provoke or stimulate new ways of thinking and feeling for the client. This is done in a conversation manner ‘as if talking to an old friend” with the same kind of affection that would be reserved for such interactions. In recent times some have sought to use the term “provocative” as “aggressive” but this is a far cry from the spirit of both PT and PCW. Here the practitioner needs to have a great deal of flexibility and to be able to respond in a multitude of different ways often in an improvised manner. This is a very different way of working and the results can be astounding. These interactions don’t occur in the logical, digital and sequential manner many therapists adopt and NLPers often find they can’t fit this approach into their pre existing therapeutic frameworks. I have some sympathy for such folks as I tried to do just this in early years! Dr Graham Dawes best described this style of approach as “sophisticated simplicity” and wrote a wonderful article “The Bermuda Triangle of the Mind” See http://www.provocativetherapy.info/articles/2009/10/a-bermuda-triangle-of-the-mind.htm

Many clients I see in private practice have had longstanding problems that have not been usefully addressed using analytical approaches. As my good friend and Andrew T Austin commented all too often “client progress” is measured only by how the client “feels”. This is in my view not the best yardstick for judging effective and integrated change.  In many NLP courses I attended in days gone by, the mantra of “feel good for no reason” was regularly chanted and although there’s many good reasons to improve a person’s emotional well being, this alone is a very limited way to gauge useful progress. Changing a person’s emotional state doesn’t always result in a useful integrated behavioural change that improves their quality of life. Some talk therapy and NLP approaches can seek to interact with client in what I would call “a disassociated manner” sometimes with the idea of not influencing the client at all, yet still expecting useful change to occur. This may seem a contradiction (which of course it is) and its fair to say that in all forms of communication influence takes place as the very nature of communication requires interaction between two parties. My personal view is that Frank Farrelly was decades ahead of his time and a major influence on the creators of NLP. Back in 1960s and 1970s Frank was very controversial and even today many find his work extremely challenging.

One of the many reasons I like using a provocative approach is that it’s an honest, open, down to earth, jargon free way of interacting. Yes this can result in the client experiencing all manner of emotional shifts, but in my experience not engaging the client in honest and open discussion can be far more destructive. Many clients I see in private practice have previously spent years in therapy and spent hours talking about the issue without any actual useful change. In PCW and PT the practitioner doesn’t adopt the stereotypical therapist role where the therapist often takes on a superior professional role but instead talks to the client on an equal basis. Some more intellectual therapists shudder at such an idea, (which is entirely their right) but my experience this provocative style of working is that is a wonderfully eloquent and accelerated way of genuinely help others. Of course learning these skills requires more than a weekend course or a week long workshop! In 2012 I will be running a number of practice groups for those who have studied with me to date as well as offering courses in the UK, USA, Europe and Asia. Although requests for international events is at an all time high, my intention is to always maintain seeing private clients as this is where I really learn about how to best use this approach. Seeing private clients also keeps a trainer grounded and focused on what works in real life which can be very different to the theory of what is sometimes taught in workshops. 

I feel very privileged to be one of the few people who has both studied with Frank and crucially had hundreds of hours with him on a one to one basis. These insights have been invaluable in creating the first stage of the PCW process and the Provocative Icon System in particular has made it far easier to teach others how to adopt the numerous provocative stances essential in PT and PCW. In January 2012

see http://davidkey.com/newsite/provocative_change_works/

Great group in Warsaw

More from Warsaw