I thought this might be an interesting thread to start.

Mainly because when I first started NLP as I'm sure many of us had to learn trial by error. What advice could you give people to help them get good at NLP?

What Exercises, books to read, videos, beliefs, behaviors, strategies could you suggest?

For me I would suggest train with many different trainers. Each and every trainer in my opinion that you train with should be for a reason.

Train with people who are good at what you are presently weak at. If you need help with anchoring look for people who are good with that. If someone is good with Meta-Programs and you need that train with them.

This way you create your own hybrid art. In a very real way cross training in NLP as with like the martial arts gets you to the point where you can say there are no secrets.

Here's another thing that has worked well for me, it's silly to say but it's actually works, every NLP book i've read, or video, or training i've been to, if I see something done that I like, I actually go home and try it out on someone.

I'll say something like come here so I can play with your head for a second....this way I get to determine what works and what doesn't.

I'll give an example I once read about confusion to understanding pattern. I could never get that to work so when I was at PE2005 I told Bandler that. And he told me that he'd done it many times across the world with success and then he offered me some SBMD distinctions to make it work.

I went home an wha-la.

It worked with the first person that I did it with!

I then went and did it with someone else and it worked too.

So what i'm gonna do is keep practicing this. Also when I can't get something to work, I either try other ways to make it work, or I put on the shelf and attempt to identify new distinctions via, reading, watching videos, eliciting responses from forums such as these, or I simply go out of my way to contact trainers that I like and that I think are good.

Alot of these trainers are fairly good about returning emails.

Chris