Most people don’t wake up one morning thinking:
“I know what would improve my life. Six days of NLP training.”
They notice something else first.
Perhaps they’re repeatedly overwhelmed by situations they ought to be able to handle.
They keep having the same argument with the same person, even though they promised themselves they would respond differently next time.
They know they need to make a decision but keep going around in circles.
Or they’ve read the books, listened to the podcasts, watched several enthusiastic people on YouTube and now possess an impressive amount of information they can’t quite put into practice.
Knowing about change and knowing how to change are not the same thing.
That is often where the curiosity about NLP training begins.
What is NLP training actually for?
NLP, or Neuro-Linguistic Programming, explores how we construct our experience through our thoughts, language, attention, memories, beliefs and patterns of behaviour.
That may sound a little grand. In practice, it means noticing things such as:
- what happens inside you when you begin to feel overwhelmed
- how the pictures and conversations in your mind affect your emotions
- why certain people can press your buttons with astonishing efficiency
- how your beliefs and values influence your choices
- how habitual patterns become automatic
- what helps you create a different response
You are already doing all of this.
You already use language, form internal pictures, remember experiences, make meaning, react emotionally and follow familiar patterns.
NLP training helps you become more aware of how you do it.
Once you can notice the structure of an experience, you have more opportunity to change it.
People arrive at NLP training for all sorts of reasons. After more than 25 years of teaching it, I’ve noticed that most of those reasons fit into five broad areas.
There is often a bit of overlap. Human beings are inconsiderate like that. We rarely fit neatly into one tidy box.
1. They’re tired of reacting in the same old ways
You may be perfectly capable, sensible and calm much of the time.
Then something happens.
Someone criticises your work.
A family member uses that tone.
Your plans change unexpectedly.
Your inbox develops ambitions of world domination.
Before you know it, you’re anxious, defensive, irritated, discouraged or mentally halfway to a small cabin where nobody can find you.
These reactions can feel automatic because, to a large extent, they are.
Your brain learns patterns
When it recognises something familiar, it responds according to what it learned before. That can be useful when the pattern still fits the situation. It is less useful when a response developed years ago is now running your meeting, relationship or Tuesday afternoon.
Learning to manage your state doesn’t mean suppressing emotion or forcing yourself to be relentlessly positive.
It means recognising what is happening early enough to have some influence over what happens next.
You can learn how to interrupt an unhelpful state, change your focus, settle overwhelm and respond with more choice.
Not perfectly. You’ll still be human at the end of the course.
But preferably a human with a few more options.
2. They know what they want to change but keep doing the same thing
It is surprisingly common to know exactly what you should do and still not do it.
You know you need to speak up.
Set the boundary.
Start the project.
Stop agreeing to things you resent.
Have the conversation.
Make the decision.
And yet, when the moment arrives, the old pattern quietly takes charge again.
This isn’t necessarily because you are lazy, weak-willed or incapable of change.
Often, the behaviour makes sense when you understand the beliefs, expectations, emotions and internal associations beneath it.
Perhaps staying quiet once kept you safe.
Perhaps saying yes helped you feel useful or accepted.
Perhaps procrastination protects you from finding out whether you can succeed.
Perhaps part of you wants the change while another part is deeply suspicious of it.
Simply telling yourself to behave differently may not address any of that.
NLP training offers practical ways to become curious about how a pattern works rather than treating yourself as the problem.
What triggers it?
What do you picture or say to yourself?
What meaning do you give the situation?
What are you trying to avoid, gain or preserve?
When you understand the structure of the pattern, you can begin to loosen it and create alternatives that fit who you are now.
3. They want to communicate better with actual people
People are peculiar.
What reassures one person irritates another. What motivates you may leave someone else entirely unaffected. A comment intended as helpful can be heard as criticism, while a carefully explained request somehow produces the opposite of what you expected.
This can be especially frustrating if you’re good at the technical part of your work.
You may know how to manage the project, teach the subject, diagnose the issue, design the system or run the business.
Then people become involved.
Suddenly, expertise alone is not enough.
Communication involves far more than choosing the correct words. It includes what you pay attention to, how well you listen, the assumptions you make, the questions you ask and whether you notice how the other person is responding.
NLP training helps you become more flexible in the way you communicate.
You begin to notice that people organise their experience differently. They have different priorities, interpretations and ways of processing information.
Understanding this does not mean agreeing with everyone or learning clever ways to manipulate them.
It means becoming less likely to assume that your map of the situation is the only available map.
That can make an enormous difference in leadership, coaching, education, health care, parenting, relationships and any other occupation involving humans.
Which, inconveniently, is most of them.
“I’ve had a massive increase in awareness around language and how it is used by different people. This will help me enormously throughout my life, both personally and professionally.
One of the biggest things I learnt was the difference between reflective listening, using another person’s language, and paraphrasing, using my own language.
My motivation wasn’t to become an NLP Practitioner, but to learn more about NLP and how the mind works. The six days of The Power of Personal Change were fantastic. I’ve continued to study, practise and find out what works and what doesn’t.
I’ve already recommended that our CEO attend the course to help him relate better to people. It shows you how to get more from personal interactions and understand the importance of listening.”
Brian Watson, Company Director – Read Brian’s full experience of The Power of Personal Change
4. They’ve lost sight of what matters to them
Sometimes people aren’t dramatically stuck.
Nothing is obviously wrong.
Work is fine. Life is busy. They are getting things done, meeting their responsibilities and functioning reasonably well.
But something feels off.
They may have spent so long responding to other people’s needs and expectations that they have lost touch with their own.
They know what they ought to want.
They know what would look sensible.
They may even have achieved goals they once believed would make them happy.
Yet they’re no clearer about what they want next.
Values are an important part of NLP training because they influence our motivation, decisions, satisfaction and conflict.
When your choices fit what matters deeply to you, effort tends to feel more worthwhile.
When they don’t, you can achieve a great deal and still feel strangely unmoved by it.
Exploring your values is not about producing an impressive list of words such as freedom, integrity and connection, then putting it in a drawer.
It involves understanding what those words mean to you, how they show up in everyday life and where your current choices support or contradict them.
That can help you make clearer decisions without requiring you to discover one magnificent life purpose before lunch.
5. They want practical skills, not more information
There is no shortage of information about personal change.
You can read about communication, emotional regulation, beliefs, habits, values and the workings of the mind for years.
I know. I’ve done a fair bit of it myself.
Books, articles and videos can introduce ideas, create insight and help you recognise what might be possible.
But reading about a skill is different from using it while another human being is sitting in front of you.
Immersive training gives you time to learn an idea, try it, receive feedback, notice what happened and try again.
It also allows your own patterns to become visible.
You may think you listen well until you notice how quickly you begin preparing your reply.
You may believe you are clear until three people interpret your instructions differently.
You may understand intellectually that changing your focus affects your emotional state, but experiencing that shift is what makes the idea usable.
This is one reason The Power of Personal Change takes place over six consecutive days.
It gives us enough time to move beyond collecting interesting concepts.
You’ll learn, practise and explore practical ways to:
- manage your own state
- recognise what contributes to overwhelm
- notice automatic patterns and interrupt them
- understand how thoughts, language and attention shape experience
- clarify values and what matters to you
- listen more carefully
- communicate with greater flexibility
- help yourself and others think differently about problems
The intention is not to produce a new, improved personality by Friday afternoon.
It is to help you understand more about how you currently operate and develop skills you can continue using afterwards.
Do you need to want an NLP qualification?
No.
The Power of Personal Change is designed as a standalone six-day training.
You might attend because you want to handle pressure differently, improve your communication, understand yourself better or become more effective in the work you already do.
You do not need to want to become an NLP Practitioner, coach or trainer.
There may also be an opportunity to continue into full NLP Practitioner Training if enough people are interested. The six-day course can provide the foundation for that longer pathway, but continuing is optional.
You can take what you learn and use it in your life, work, relationships and decisions without adding another string of letters to your name.
Would it be useful for you?
NLP training isn’t the answer to every problem, and I’m wary of anyone claiming that it is.
It does, however, provide a practical way to explore how you create your experience and what you might do differently.
You may find it useful if you recognise that:
- you keep getting caught in the same emotional or behavioural patterns
- you want to respond more calmly under pressure
- your communication isn’t having the effect you intended
- you want more clarity about what matters to you
- you are good at understanding ideas but struggle to apply them
- you want practical skills you can use with yourself and other people
The more useful question may not be, “Do I need NLP training?”
It may be:
“Would understanding how I currently think, react and communicate give me more choice about what I do next?”
Only you can answer that.
But it’s not a bad place to begin.
Looking back, I had every one of these reasons for learning NLP when I was working as an HR and Corporate Services Manager.
I wanted to understand people better, communicate more effectively, manage my own reactions and work out what I wanted to do next.
I didn’t know then quite how much it would change the direction of my life and work.
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Tags: Interpersonal skills, Resilience, Self-awareness, Self-confidence and self-esteem, Thinking and mindset
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