are or whether you make them smaller.
Another, subtler way you distort things is this: you attach meaning to something that happened, or something that someone said or did. A colleague enters the room and she doesn’t greet you: you figure she’s angry, or upset, or offended.
And again, I don’t mean to say that distortion is necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it can lead to fairly accurate conclusions. What’s important is that you realize there’s a process going on and that the way you see things and the way they really are may be very different. And most important of all: whatever you think is going on, I want you to remember that it’s just a map. And it doesn’t necessarily match the map of the people around you.
Think about that the next time you end up arguing about who’s right and who’s wrong. As long as you stay with your own map, you’ll also stay convinced that you’re probably right. And the other person will stay convinced they’re probably right. When your map and the maps of the people around you don’t match, that’s when the trouble begins.
Once I realized that, I understood that in order to have better options, better feelings, better interactions with others, you need to expand your map. You need to be able to look at the same things from different perspectives. The more detailed your map is, the more freedom and flexibility you have.
Joe jotted down in his journal what he was taking from this. He thought about his relationship with his girlfriend, the issues and misunderstandings they had been having recently and how they made him painfully aware of how scared he was of losing her. He loved her, but he would often find himself taking offence to what she said and believing that she didn’t understand him and was growing distant from him. Now he realized that she obviously had her map and her way of thinking about their relationship, just as he had his.
As he continued to listen to Richard, Joe decided that it would be a good idea to talk to his girlfriend and find out more about what she was thinking and feeling about things, rather than focusing purely on his own perceptions and concerns.
And Richard was offering valuable guidance:
A good piece of advice is this: do a reality check from time to time. Make sure that your map is up to date, because when people stop looking at what’s out there and only rely on their old map, they mess up in one of two ways: either they imagine limits and constraints where there are none, or they act as if something should work, and when it doesn’t, they just do more of the same.
I know many of you generalize the experiences you’ve had so far and then project them into your future. The fact is that your future hasn’t been written yet. Life is full of opportunities, and opportunities lie ahead, in the future. Don’t let anyone, not even your own map, convince you of the contrary.
For example, just because you have had some negative experiences with your business partners, it doesn’t mean that all human beings will stab you in the back over money. Perhaps it means you should learn to protect your interests; perhaps it means that you should change the way you select your business partners.
Imagine what life would be if the future could only be a repetition of what you have already experienced in the past: what a sad, sad world this would be. Not to mention the fact that we would still be living in caves and feeding off raw meat and bitter roots.
Luckily there’s an evolutionary drive in the universe, a force so strong that it defies chaos, and that force is what animates human beings.
Joe felt a sense of lightness as he came to a realization. In his journal, he wrote: ‘It’s not about who’s right and who’s wrong. It’s not about what’s “true”, either. A good map is a map that gets you to see things from different perspectives and that helps you feel as resourceful as possible about your situation.’
Richard was getting down to what was most important:
Now, NLP isn’t something that you can learn just by reading about it or talking about it. You learn NLP through practice! That’s why today’s programme is rich in techniques and exercises.
I want you to know that even though this is a short workshop, I’m going to put lots of stuff inside your mind that is going to come out later. You might not understand all of it now, but remember, your unconscious is also listening.
This all started with a simple idea: I would go out and find people who had done something successfully, and I would discover the unconscious process that they used.
Joe heard Emily whispering to Teresa. ‘What does he mean by “unconscious process”?’
Teresa responded quietly, ‘Unconscious processes are the recipes that you follow to produce thoughts, feelings and behaviour. By becoming aware of these processes, you can then deliberately improve them or change them.’
Emily nodded as she thought this through.
I would then teach people to consciously engage in these processes, so that their problems would get solved or they could acquire specific skills.
What people say they do, or believe they do – well, it’s often far removed from what they actually do.
The thing that, for me, makes NLP revolutionary is this: it’s the first time that we have been able to deliberately reshape the inside of our minds. We have the tools to find out where the crap we don’t want is and to replace it with things we actually do want.
Joe wasn’t convinced. Although his life had changed quite radically since his first seminar experience with Richard, the idea that you could reshape the inside of your mind seemed a bit far-fetched to him.
Richard, however, was moving forward:
You weren’t born with your bad habits. You weren’t born with your skills. You weren’t born with your beliefs. The vast majority of the things that you do, you learned – just like you learned to walk or to shake hands automatically.
Even fears are learned! Do you know there are only two natural fears? The fear of loud noises and the fear of falling – that’s it. All the rest are learned. Now, some of them are useful, like being afraid of rattlesnakes, and some of them are less useful. You don’t want to get rid of fear altogether; you just want to learn to be afraid of the appropriate thing at the appropriate time. Like having a phobia about cheating on your partner! That’s a phobia worth having.
When I started out, people kept telling me things like, ‘You don’t understand, Richard. Change is slow and painful.’
But I’m not an understanding person – I refuse to accept limiting beliefs just because I’m told to. I believe that most often people change rapidly without any of this nonsense. I mean, all kind of things happen. You watch a movie or read a book, you talk to a friend, or even to a stranger on the bus, and your life is transformed by it. Instantly. You don’t need to read the same sentence for 13 years – you just read it once and you go, ‘Wow! That makes a lot of sense!’
You can’t argue with the man’s logic, Joe thought to himself.
And here’s another of those things people still tell me: they come to me and go, ‘You have to discover who you really are and to accept yourself.’ Well, I’m here to tell you you don’t. You don’t have to be anything you don’t want to be. Because you’ve acted like a shy person up till now doesn’t mean you’re doomed to play shy for the rest of your life. The fact that you might have acted lazy or reckless doesn’t make you so – it’s a behavioural pattern, not who you are. You can be whoever you choose to be.
Change happens all the time – it’s the only constant in life. The point is, are you going to choose the direction your life will take and the kind of person you will become, or will you just sit back and wait for life to happen to you?
With NLP, you get to change how you think, feel and behave. You get to take what you are doing – both inside your head and in the real world – and reprogram yourself so that you can make powerful changes in your mind. So, you see, here you have the chance to take control of your life, but it only works if you do