Tips for Learning and Understanding NLP

Hello

When I read NLP Connection threads, it amazes me how much I miss or goes outside my awareness, yet when someone points it out in the thread, I get it . I have been reading some of the prominent posters and the subtle things that seem obvious to some or that get picked up, I miss or struggle to make the links. I image, that a lot has to do with state and practice, though maybe there is possibly something else that maybe helpful or that I am not aware of.

I am curious, how do you do it? I am very passionate about becoming a good, no a very good NLP'er, and was wondering if anyone had any tips, strategies or processes that you use to understand, comprehend and make things easier to take onboard and memorable?


A hint, my trainer gave me and which I am practicing, is to pick a part of the meta mode, write out a list of 100 examples of this and then write out a sleight of mouth bust next to it. For example, this week I am writing down examples of mind reading, then I practice busting the mind read using sleight of mouth. Great fun, I am now starting to discover just how much these sleight of mouth patterns appear in normal conversations and messages.

I an curious about trying out different states and strategies for learning and comprehension.

What is a good learning state to take in new information?

Does this learning process/state change if you're taking the information from a book, DVD's or CD, if so what specifically?

What do you do that makes comprehending things easy?

What did you do to consolidate your learning’s?

What did you find helpful in becoming fluent with the different aspects of NLP?.

Hopefully others will also find this thread helpful

Have a great day

Hi there, Frederic. These are my answers. I'm sure others' will be different. Or similar. Or the same. Let's find out!

What is a good learning state to take in new information?

Set aside my beliefs. Well, all except ONE: I am capable of learning.

Does this learning process/state change if you're taking the information from a book, DVD's or CD?

Of course!

What do you that you find makes comprehending things easier?

Easier than what?

What did you do to consolidate your learning’s?

All sorts of things. Mostly, I give up trying, and that seems to result in the most efficient way for me to learn. Amazing things seem to happen to me when I'm not looking! :cool:

What did you find helpful in becoming very good at the different aspects of NLP?.

I don't know what constitutes very good for me. Things just keep getting better, so maybe the answer to that is to not set limits on my learning, and expect the best learning to come in the most unexpected ways!

I have no idea if this is useful for you or not. If it is, good for you. If not, chuck it in the dustbin! Perhaps there are some real pros here on the forum that can give much more thorough answers than I. I can at least predict that some of them will be more lengthy, but then again, I like to consider myself to be a man of few words.

Cheers,

Phil

I think lots of people will be happy to give you answers frederic, for me it was time and practise. Like a doctor can make a more accurate diagnosis after having seen several hundred patients with a similiar type of condiition.

Some people don't like it but for me I learned the precision model before the meta model in unlimited power Anthony Robbins book in 86 and he teaches you to memorise it on your hand. Helped me already memorise at least half the meta model.

Frederic,

I find your post interesting on 2 fronts. I am impressed by your honest approach in wanting to be better that you already are and secondly, I find education, learning and memory an amazing topic.

I an curious about trying out different states and strategies for learning and comprehension.

First up, there are many different ways to take in information, there are strategies and concepts and most of which are based on good research and good intentions. Where the wheels come off is that finding what works for you is possible more difficult than learning what works for other people.

Maybe take a step back from looking for the answer for a moment and just think about what hobbies you have started and kept going over the last few years. The reason I ask that is that there may well be a link we can make between what you choose to do and what you are 'naturally' good at. Can you think what it is about the hobby that drew you in? Can you create a way of feeding, playing with or introducing what you want to learn into a similar template. Learn by playing, even for adults, I believe can be very productive.

What is a good learning state to take in new information?

Your call really, some people are motivated by anger, some by sitting on a park bench in the fresh air. Some like to digest information in a coffee bar and others like to hide on the edge of the earth and engulf them in their topic. You can make notes, speak key points into a dictophone or have a friend or partner on hand to chew over any new ideas. Or you my want to sit in isolation as if having a 1-1 dialogue with whatever is providing your information. Maybe 1 general rule is to define your time slot. "for the next 20 minutes, this (book, DVD or discussion) is my world and will get all of my focus"

Does this learning process/state change if you're taking the information from a book, DVD's or CD?

I think so, I spent a large chunk of my day listening to speeches, also spent a large chunk of my reading speeches, which do you think I will be re-experiencing as I goto sleep tonight? You can read a manuscript of Ghandi or you can let his words hynotise you with his passion, grace and delivery. Personally I find listening to CD's whilst driving a great way to digest new info. It is like when you over hear someone elses conversation, you are not always aware of every word but when you are asked about the info, you can more often than not recall it very well.

What do you that you find makes comprehending things easier?

For me, talking about them.

What did you do to consolidate your learning’s?

Again, I find talking about new ideas to a person who likes a good debate quite often allows me to gain a new working perspective on an idea within a few minutes and then the debate is an easier source of knowledge to recall as opposed to the origional source.

What did you find helpful in becoming very good at the different aspects of NLP?.

Just being happy to be wrong, quite alot! Learning anything is not about working towards a destination, it is about enjoying the journey of your imagination.

Always a pleasure Frederic,

Thanks

Matt

PS - On proof reading this post, I am tagging myself as an auditory dominant learner.
There are many surveys that claim to work out 'what kind of learner you are' here is one I picked from random from Google What kind of learner are you?

The truth being told, you can learn from every learning style invented and those that are not yet made up, what is more helpful is to realise which ones offer you fun and enjoyment.

Thanks Sam and Phil, I see that my questions need to be a little more specific. I am hoping to be able to model and try out different resourses and learning states.

Phil

Set aside my beliefs. Well, all except ONE: I am capable of learning.

If I wanted to hallucinate and step into your skin and try out your learning state, I imagine, that I would set the intent "I am capable of learning" and I would then clear clear my mind of pre concieved notions/beliefs about what I am learning thereby remaining open to new information. As I did this I noticed that I was tracking by difference, interesting as I normally track by sameness. :cool:

Does this learning process/state change if you're taking the information from a book, DVD's or CD?

Of course!

I am curious to specifically how does this change?

That's a good point Frederic. Generally you need to track by difference to learn.

If I wanted to hallucinate and step into your skin and try out your learning state, I imagine, that I would set the intent "I am capable of learning" and I would then clear clear my mind of pre concieved notions/beliefs about what I am learning thereby remaining open to new information. As I did this I noticed that I was tracking by difference, interesting as I normally track by sameness. :cool:


[/b][/font][/color]I am curious to specifically how does this change?

Cool, Frederic. Glad I helped you figure that out!:cool:

Well, video and audio are by nature much more auditory for me. Sometimes reading print is auditory, but naturally tends more towards visual (creating images in my head). Some people hear the words in their head as they read, but I am not one of those people (which is actually surprising, since I am a musician, and my auditory representational system is superkeen!). I sometimes create pictures when I read, and sometimes not. Sometimes I go into this really weird state when I'm reading, of just creating ideas in a system that I can't quite identify. If I were to try to pin it down, it would stop happening. It's been happening more and more as of recent, probably because I've worked through a BOATLOAD of books this summer (being a public school teacher, and having plenty of time on my hands). Now that's pretty freaky, because I've never verbalized that before! Thanks, Frederic!

I bet that gives you some food for thought!

Hi Matt

Maybe take a step back from looking for the answer for a moment and just think about what hobbies you have started and kept going over the last few years.

Your reply really got me to look at this from a totally different perspective and one that, for me, is very useful thank you.

Can you think what it is about the hobby that drew you in?

Surfing, absolutely love the feeling of being one with the wave and being able to gauge what move to perform next or where to be next to get the best from the ride.

Can you create a way of feeding, playing with or introducing what you want to learn into a similar template.

The times I have made the biggest improvements and had the most fun have been when I have visualised what I wanted to try out or do then just caught the wave and have not worried about technique. For example, when I was learning to stand up, I consciously did the 4 basic steps to stand up, every little success drove me on. I found some fine tuning/ hints from friends/coach helped. Then I found that I was concentrating on my position on the wave and not the 4 basic steps and standing up just happened. From memory, as I concentrated on what to do next and did not concentrate on the basics I kept progressing.

So a good learning method for me would be to learn the basics, practice the basics, fine tune and watch other more proficient people, Visualise what I want to do, have fun with it and move to next step and repeat.

Learn by playing, even for adults, I believe can be very productive.

Come to think of it, I seem to get bogged down when I try too hard and consciously concentrate on specifics - I get tense and berate myself when I don’t do it right, instead of concentrating on what I did do right. The best sessions have been the ones where I have fun and play and I am not concerned about the outcome.

define your time slot. "for the next 20 minutes, this (book, DVD or discussion) is my world and will get all of my focus"

I am trying something very similar as a motivation strategy and like the idea of also using it for learning (two birds with one stone). I had not considered trying out different venues though I also like this idea.

I tend to space out if I listen to Cd's and need to listen to then a few times to get the info, not a bad thing just time consuming. As new ideas come in, I tend to allow my mind to wander, compounded while driving . One to try out and play with some more in the future.

I respond best to interactive discussion type activities where I can think out loud, rehash the information and make sense of it (Ahhh Haaa) . This may just be a TOTE, I wonder.

Learning anything is not about working towards a destination, it is about enjoying the journey of your imagination.

Nice, very nice.

Thank for the link too, I will have some fun discovering more tonight.

Have a great day
Frederic

Frederic,

I had an interesting thought tonight as I was putting away the dishes--I often do when I'm doing routine chores.

It's very interesting how I go through the process of putting away those dishes. I just sort them out and get the job done with the fewest possible steps, and Frederic, I...
... don't give it too much thought. The plates and cups are nearest to the dishwasher. And then there's all those utensils, and the plastic storage containers, both three and a half steps away...and then I start sorting the silverware, and each different eating utensil has a
different shape and size, and sometimes color, and somehow I
just naturally sort all of that out in my mind without too much thought. And how I get that job done...sometime is just amazes me how
quickly and effortlessly it can happen now... like so many things I do around the house...or in the garden! I'm in that garden a LOT these days...and when I'm out under the magnolia tree, weeding out the trailing periwinkle, if I stop and think about it, and LOOK at it, I just can't seem to see those weeds too much. Maybe one or two or...or five here or there. However, often
something very interesting can happen, if I
start to just allow my hand to begin to work through that bed, under and over the vines, and around the roots of the tree, and the trunk, it
just seems to know exactly where those weeds are, and Frederic,
can know how to differentiate between a weed and a periwinkle vine...and before I know it, that bed is looking spit-spot top shape! That garden is a great place! I like it best because it's a place where
lots of learning about growing things takes place, that's for sure. And some of the best times I have working in that garden are times when nothing else is going on, like early in the morning, for instance. Even the crickets are quiet at 6:00 a.m. in MY garden! Hush you chirpers, while I'm cultivating my Hemerocallis! The birds don't bother me too much. And even with distractions of the chirping variety, they don't seem to distract the work that my hands do, at that time of day...

Nice Weave Phil,

Looking foward to some funky dreams tonight, :cool: now, I wonder, am I going to be weeding the garden and talking to birds at 6 am 2morrow ?????

My partner will appreciate my new found interest in the garden and my new found skills for sorting out the dishwasher too, .

Seriously thank you, I will put my Phil suit on, re read it and try it out when I get home tonight, love the chunking sidewards.

Have a great night

Nice Weave Phil,

Glad that you enjoyed it! It's been a hobby of mine (look around at some of my other posts) ever since I read My Voice Will Go With You. I would only dream of doing it half as well as Milton did!

Happy expanding!

Cheers,

Phil

p.s. Rain this morning, so I won't be in MY garden!

Hi Phil

Rain here too this morning, ...no birds, just happy plants and a few cats and dogs.

Last night, I remembered that my partner frequently mentions that her moments of clarity and her best ideas have come from doing the routine and often mundane tasks.

I was watching one of the Bandler NHR DVD's last night and learning some new stuff. Later, as I was packing the dishwasher, ideas just popped into my awareness.... oddly, while doing a routine tasks. Anyway, I found myself wondering about how the information from the DVD fitted into learning.

As I mentioned, I got onto the tangent of the Bandler DVD.... mmmmm, I wonder why!!.... and understood at a much deeper level that we are the ones in control of all of our experiences. Not only how we react to others but also how we interact to ourselves, specifically our internal dialogue. I find it very interesting, how we can either talk ourselves into and out off doing something, interesting thing is that when we are fully in the moment, there is next to no internal dialogue.

"This is hard" , "I can't do this", "I don't get it" " This is "boring" (for me this is mainly apparent when I am consciously undertaking or contemplating a task) we then become anxious, tense or stressed about what we are doing. In the example of taking in new learning’s, quite possibly one reason for not absorbing and understanding the new information.

One thing my trainer mentioned was "a pattern taught belongs to the teacher, a pattern discovered belongs to the discoverer". These threads are a great way to discover new learning’s. This is just an observation of my experience.

Have a great day

Frederic

Frederic,

So glad that you are enjoying wearing the Phil suit! Let me know a little more about the Frederic suit, and perhaps I can do some sideways chunking myself!

It's all good, mate, and it just gets better. Trust me!

Cheers,

Phil

Hi Phil

The Frederic suit. Its best feature is as a leisure suit, something you wear to relax, trance out and feel good. Some suits are real good power suits to wear when you need to focus or get something done, my suit is the preferred option when you want to zone out and get in touch. Just like sitting down after a hard day … relaxing in your favourite chair, you can become a part of that chair. Similar to fully absorbing yourself in a TV show, now, Phil, I know that you are a teacher and have a love for music … so you know how to loose yourself to the words or the melody of a song, don’t you …. You take the music with you to the shops, while walking, even in the gardening with you, thanks to your I pod, now that great isn’t it. Different song for different occasions, conspicuous and in easy reach... the suit is like that ... a different fit that fits perfectly and differently in different situations, yet it produces that comfortable and relaxed feeling .

The design, I imagine ,is a bit like planning, seeding and tending a garden, nurturing your plants, adding the right amount of fertiliser here , giving the the plants a drink of water there , removing a weed ... even talking to them.

The suit is super sensitive to how it fits, it moulds into your body, you can feel the tight spots the ones that need loosening It shows the creases ...so you know where the suit needs to be adjusted. A bit like removing the weeds from the garden to allow the plants to grow, you know the ones that congest the plants. To plant new plants where the garden is bare, you should prepare the ground ... get the right supplies, sort and store these supplies and tools, mix them up … then you use the proper tools .... to get the maximum results and benefit , from the supplies. Then you can really enjoy watching the plants blossom and thrive.

I remember we were doing an activity of using metaphors .. we started out linking one topic to another by making up a story up to linkthem to one another. For example, an egg = a boat or a dinosaur = universe. Just start rambling about the egg and before you know it the links to the boat become apparent, an unconcious response. If you have not done it before, try it is great fun. :cool: From there, we upped the ante and used this process in a clean therapeutic sense to be artfully vague while achieving the desired outcome. I imagine, something you would be interested in, knowing you are reading “My Voice Will Go With You” .

Have you ever seen the movie the “Yes Men” they have a prototype management suit there, where you can observe and control all that is happening in your sphere of responsibility. It is still in the prototype design stage. Ironing out the bugs, trying different material, keeping what suits, trialling new technology … like me they launched the prototype of the suit while sorting out the technology ... this can take time, new wiring harnesses, communication mediums, software and hardware compatibilities… trying on different suits is good fun ...best of all you get great feedback…like my suit , it is a work in progress.

The end product is the goal, the more refined the prototype the better the design and features in the end product, then everyone can enjoy the benefits. The finished suit is an easy wearing, comfortable, smart looking and practical, all the resources within easy reach. The smart man's suit for all occasions.

One of the guys I know .. visualises a control panel .. he uses this to create ideas ..... he turns different coloured knobs and dials, these control zoom, pan, tile, move, blend, brighten, contrast ... basically all the V and A aspects of the ideas and he uses the K as feedback. Wild way to do it but it work well for him.

Me, I like idea of the “Yes Men’s suit viewing and control panel” Maybe not quite as gold but the concept is good. Beyond the golden parachute | The Yes Men

Have a great day

Frederic,

You just spun me into a golden trance, you cheeky monkey! How'd you do that???

I'm getting going right now! Shower, shave, coffee, and FREDERIC SUIT in the garden with the dayliliies, roses, rudbeckias, ecinaceas, and lord knows what else...

And yes, I DO have an iPod. Did I tell you that? Or did you just know...

Cheers!

Phil

Ah Phil you are too kind
Glad you enjoyed it, It is amazing the things you learn in the threads!!!! For one, I myself have learnt some new plant names today rudbeckias, ecinaceas, and as you said "lord knows what else". You're right ... it just keeps getting better.

A friend lent me the manuscript from Trance Camp, so it can only get better. I had a quick read last night and learning more about trance will be great. I am working with a friend who has ADD and suffers from massive panic attacks, so I look forward to doing a custom hypnosis session for her. When I did my prac course, I chained and collapsed a series of anchors to allow her to regain control of her state when she becomes overwhelmed.

For example, she might be shopping and has a panic attack and freezes. She can now fire off the anchor and either leave the complex or continue shopping. I imagine, she has not figured out that this anchor will work equally as well at work as it does shopping.

I also took her through the trauma reduction pattern .... unfortunately it had an adverse effect ... more from practitioner error than the pattern ... when it was pointed out that to me that doing a super fast fwd, does not work nearly as well as doing a super fast rewind. In fact the fast fwd brings the phobia on quicker.

It makes a great story on how anything that you do can be as easily undone. Or maybe I just wanted to see how quickly she could have a phobic reaction. It was one of those occasions that you learn from the experience and pick up another matchstick. :cool:

Currently, I am working towards setting up some free community NLP work.

Have a great day.