NLP Exercises: Six Easy Steps To Success

Neuro Linguistic Programming cannot be summed up in one or two clever sentences. However, trying some NLP exercises will help in tasting something of its many flavors. These exercises are many and varied, but I have chosen this particular one for its relative ease. If you have never heard of NLP, it is the product of two people: John Grinder and Richard Bandler. Their extensive studies focused on why some people could achieve consistently excellent results. The student of NLP can emulate those achievements by utilizing an assortment of these exercises and dynamically move them toward their various goals.

1. Know your outcome. This seems fairly obvious, but sometimes we forget our desired destination. NLP suggests that knowing where you want to be, what you want to do etc, will make it easier to remain focused on how to achieve your aims. Think of it as going to an airport and asking for a ticket to somewhere nice. If you don't know where 'somewhere nice' is, then it will be much harder to get there. The more specific, the more detail that you can build into 'somewhere nice' the more you can take the necessary steps to getting there. Think about your specific goal, think about how you will feel when you have it. Build up images of how this success looks, and likewise the sounds you may hear. Let's say you want a nice big house. How many rooms exactly? In what location? What style of house? What do the gardens look like? What is the interior like? Does it have a driveway? Can you smell the flowers as you walk up the driveway? Building up this various data, makes it specific. It is no longer some vague shapeless fog that will forever remain so until you sort out your OUTCOME.

2. Find a model of excellence. Do you know someone whose success you would like to emulate? If you do, that's great. If you don't, then you'll have to find someone. If you can't get in the physical vicinity of someone then watch videos of them. Observe everything you can about this person: the way they talk, the way they walk, the way they breathe. Practice doing exactly what they do. Do they speak loud or soft, slow or fast, high or low? In many ways you need to become that person. See if you can imagine stepping into the body of that person. You'll notice that you'll feel differently, that you'll experience an increased sense of confidence. When you step into a person in this way, you are taking on many characteristics of that person. Some time ago, I happened to stumble on a TV interview with Richard Branson, the British entrepreneur. I observed his ultra relaxed style, the easy smile, the steady enthusiasm. In particular I noticed that he held his head back slightly so that his chin stuck out. Over the next few days I started to push my head back and stick my chin out. It induces a real feeling of authority and power. A few weeks later I was stood at a crowded bar trying to get a drink. I always seem to be the last person the bar staff notice! So, I moved my head back and stuck my chin out. The next person served was me!

3. Have personal congruency. Has there ever been a time when you felt you were being completely yourself? That you were totally comfortable and at ease with everything and everybody around you? You could say, that is personal congruency. You are completely comfortable in your own skin. The most successful people are comfortable in their own skin. Everything they do and say has an alignment with themselves. They believe in what they say and do, and they can convey that in a powerful and convincing way. For example: If you are certain that you like potatoes and someone asks you if you like potatoes, then the reply you give will be completely congruent with that belief. A good way to improve your personal congruency is to analyze what your values are - then stick to them. Firmly! To discover a value, you could ask yourself this question: What do I really want, and what will it give me that I currently do not have?

Q. What do I really want?
A. I want a six-bedroom house, with an acre of land.
Q. What will it give me, that I don't currently have?
A. It will give me more space, and a large garden for the kids to enjoy.
Q How will that improve things?

You carry on like this until you can go no further up the ladder, and then you will see its value. This particular value is a material value, with practical benefits. We have lots of different values: love, honesty, integrity etc. The more you sift through these, and the more clarity you get, the more congruency you will have.

4. Take action. How Obvious is this? And yet haven't we all suffered at one time or another from not taking action? No matter how good the plan, how good the idea, how thrilling the potential, unless you take action you will forever be in the same place you are now. A really great bit of advice is that small steps lead to big changes. An action, is a small step. If you find you can't instigate something that you want to do, then you can Chunk Down. Think about what you can do; think about the smallest thing that you could do. If you need to pay a bill and you're putting off, ask yourself if you could pick up the pen to write the check. Then ask yourself if you could write the check. Then ask yourself if you could find an envelope. Keep going in small steps, and the big step will be achieved. In NLP, we call this Chunking Down.

5. Have sensory acuity. Have you ever been with someone who was woefully unaware of the negative effects they were having on a given situation? Perhaps you trying to close a deal and they kept saying the wrong thing. It could just as easily be a lack of sensitivity to know that you are offending someone. Sensory Acuity, is the refinement of feedback, both the information received and your personal experience. Whatever we say and do has an effect, and it will pay you in spades to be aware of the effect you're having on someone else. This can operate on many levels, and with increasing subtlety. Listening to the tone of someone's voice, looking at their breathing rate, their skin coloration changes, the position of their feet, a tense jaw, or a twinkling eye. All this information should be relaying something back to you - providing you're paying attention. Not only do you need to pay attention to another person, but you need to pay attention equally to how you yourself are feeling, the position of your body, your various tensions, pleasures, and your responses to those. Once you have increased your awareness of sensory acuity, you will be able to adjust, and change course (if necessary) to a more harmonious outcome. To do that you will also need...

6. Flexible behavior. This can be summed up very easily: If what you're doing isn't working, do something else! Einstein's definition of stupidity will serve our purposes well here. He said 'The definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.' You need to adjust. You need to act upon the information that is coming back to you, whether that is in a interpersonal relationship, or in a broader sense such as a business that is going wrong, the same thing applies. It's fine to have a fixed outcome in your mind, but to achieve that result, that outcome, will invariably involve you being flexible in your approach to achieving your aims.