What a great language pattern!
Haven’t you heard something "like this" many times about the profession you choose to work in?
Yes, I’m sure we all have. It IS unfortunate that, to this date, there are no FORMAL
scientific studies performed and evidence that is DOES WORK. I know Robert Dilts is accumulating resources and money to put together clinical trials for NLP. So until THAT day arrives, hopefully soon, we all have to wait and continue to hone are craft/profession.

The real question here is NOT whether it works or not, it’s DO YOU WORK IT?
It’s about CONFIDENCE in yourself becoming a competent trainer, KNWOLEDGE about what you're communicating, and almost MOST importantly, MARKETING your services to your specific niche and/or community.

Can I ask you a question, WHAT marketing tactics, tips, & strategies are YOU using to promote your NLP, hypnosis or coaching business in todays (Jan. 2012) market? What could you share with everyone about what has worked best for YOU?

So here's your question; what ONE piece of advice would you have given yourself IN THE BEGINNING knowing what you know now???

If you'd like to lend your thoughts or ideas about the true, pure NLP you originally learned,
I'd love to hear from you. We're compiling a new book about the true nature of NLP.
What chapter titles should I include?
What should be the MAIN focus to teach beginngers?
What would make it EASY-IER to read?
What would YOU want to see it it? (visual question)
Any other ideas?

To Your Success, John James Santangelo
www.LANLP.com
Los Angeles' Premier NLP Training Company

To me the biggest problem of NLP is that in most cases it is taught like Math, Physics or any other school subject. After paying attention to a good math teacher or following a math book it is possible to use the knowledge gained to solve some problems taking a fair amount of time in a relax, safe and with no disturbances environment.

NLP is not like maths, NLP is like a sport, you have to apply it during the game when the opponents are against you and there is not time to think but just to react.

The only practical value that you can get out of an NLP book or seminar are the exercises that can be done in the comfort of your home. Even with those types of exercises if you want to get real long term results, you'll need to practice them regularly for a couple of weeks. Books and seminars never tell how often and for how long one needs to practice them.

Exercises and demonstrations in Seminars are designed only to work inside of the seminar, with people you already have rapport with and are into learning this type of stuff too. I've rarely seen exercises that can be applied in real world with day to day situations. And never seen a schedule saying how often one should do these exercises in order to transform this knowledge into a skill.

Also nobody explains some downsides of persuasion patterns. I know some very persuasive persons who are excellent at sleight of mouth that I just avoid completely because if I talk to them they'll prove me that they are right and that I should do what they want. They think they are good at convincing people and changing their believes but truth is that people just follows them because they do not want to argue anymore.

If you ask my opinion all this global economical crises is because of marketing, everybody has been fooled at least once by marketing exaggerations and miracle products. Money is nothing more than a trust document, thanks to marketing money is trust is disappearing and money is loosing its value. Yes Marketing gave a boom, brought false illusions and more money to the table, sooner or later we will have to pay for those lies.

So if I was a newbie I would like to know exactly what I would get out of NLP, no lies, no exaggerations.
I would also like to get a method to make NLP a skill and not just a fun type of knowledge that I can use to post some comments in forums and discuss about it with a few minority of geeky friends that I have.

Athletics and snooker are examples of sports where most the training is done solo... I think some parts of NLP are like this too... You train solo and then test and apply in the real world (and not NLP world).

This is why seminars/trainings fall short in the same way as books in my opinion, because the exercises are kind of worthless because of the faulty context. I mean, your exercise buddy knows exactly what is expected from him and he'll just do it, I've watched some videos of trainings and it just seems ridiculous, people all looking nicely up and to the left to remember a picture, rapport pace/lead junk, etc...

For me what would make a seminar/training truly efficient would be real world exercises, like:

"OK, now we've learned rapport, I want you to all go out in the street and see how many people you can build enough rapport with to be able to get 1£ of them, or go in a café and see if you can make someone scratch their nose at the same time as you, ..."

This is where NLP differs from maths or history, it's that for most of it you can only truly experiment undercover, you can't tell someone "I have a theory that people look up left when remembering a picture I want to test it with you, can you please think of your living room". You have to just say "hey, by the way, I'm repainting my living room, what are the main colours in your living room?" and then try to see where they're looking, then ask some others to see if it's constant.

Thus, training session are probably the worst place to go to train....

Therefore, for the book: I think something that could make a difference (because there're mountains of books out there) is a convenient set of exercises for each aspect which can be done undercover in the real world (in other words demonstrating real NLP and not NLP role playing). Most books include exercises designed for two people or more (aware of what's happening), so you get nothing from that I'd say. It's much harder to design real world undercover exercises (I've got myself a few) because you can't explicitly ask for feedback and give instructions, so this could be a good added value for a new book : "Learn NLP in the Real World"!

Chris2 wrote:

Thus, training session are probably the worst place to go to train....

I agree with a lot of what you've written Chris because a lot of the nlp I've seen being taught is just at a really terrible level. I don't think this means that it can't be taught well in a seminar but I think the typical process has to change somewhat. I'm definitely in favour of integrating real world exercises into the format. I also think that wheeling people through a 7 to 12 day seminar then leaving them to their own devices is shirking responsibility. Yes we're all grown ups and can take responsibility for our own development but the fact is people could get so much more from training if it was supported effectively post course.