Confusion Inducing Questions

1. What’s something really important that you’re just not thinking about right now?
2. If there’s no future in the past should you forget this tomorrow?
3. When can you continue to change if you’re about to decide that isn’t now a good time?
4. What wouldn’t happen if you didn’t?
5. How do you find that?
6. Where does that come from?
7. Only you’ll know what you’ve found until after you’ve found it.
8. And you know why I say that for?
9. What’s problem spelled backwards?
10. Is melborp problem spelled backwards?
11. What kind of problem would you have if you were only to STOP and actually realized that there is no difference between now and then?
12. If this is next week’s last week or next week’s last week this week, where would we put this weeks last week’s next week’s problem?
13. Have you failed to overcome the solution to your problem?
14. When we get out this far the only thing left is right.
15. If your problem is this and the solution is that, then this and not that is the solution to this or that problem?
16. Well that’s simple, how does corn grow?
17. How can you have a process without a functional structure?
18. What are all the things you won’t do to have your problem?
19. … Where was I…?
20. What’s sex spelled inwards?

How Embedded Commands

Influence Reader Awareness
(Special Note: This report was written in a rather «scholarly» format
for the purpose of presenting these strategies to the academic
community. This report will teach you the reasons these
types of Influence strategies work. Enjoy!)

Influencing people with language has been the object of study since at least the 5th century B.C., when the early Greeks developed the science of rhetoric as a way of persuading people. The following data is based on experimental findings in social psychology and information-processing theory.
Embedded commands are sophisticated techniques for communicating with readers subliminally, to help satisfy the needs of both the reader and the writer. They are hidden suggestions that fit into the sentence without calling attention to their existence. They are designed to create positive reader expectancies, while reducing the internal resistance of the reader and enhancing movement towards successful closure. Some of the forms these subliminal persuaders might take include:

• Use of italics
• Underlined words
• Hidden suggestions in a quote
• Embedded questions
• Implications
• Presuppositions
• Implied cause and effect statements
• Hidden double binds
• Embedded indirect commands within an anecdote
• Word associations
• Affect bridges
• Use of ambiguity
• Analogy
• Multiple-level communication
• Polarized yes/no responses
• Yes-sets
• Use of partial remarks

Embedded commands are composed of small segments of larger statements, which are marked out for the attention of the reader’s unconscious mind. Like post-hypnotic suggestions, subliminal commands evade scrutiny by normal waking consciousness and are retained in unconscious secondary memory, and may influence subsequent behavior without the reader being aware of what is determining his responses (Dixon, 1981)
According to Johnson (1988), embedded commands can reinforce potential behavior and help the reader come to a faster decision. These hidden commands are used effectively and frequently in newspaper and television advertising. In Buick commercials we hear «wouldn’t you really rather «have a Buick?» Of course, the embedded command used in the sentence is «have a Buick.»
According to a study conducted at Harvard University and reported by Johnson (1988), certain trigger words have a positive impact on motivating people to take action. Using subliminal commands acts similarly to these motivating triggers.

How Embedded Commands Work

The purpose of embedded commands is to by-pass the observing critical ego, to direct inner experience while modifying the reader’s awareness, and finally, to help alter his point of view on the topic presented. Utilizing both indirect and covert modification of reader attention, the casual writing style weaves suggestions for conscious alterations of reader awareness. The use of slight confusion depotentiates the reader’s habitual frame of reference. Then, as the reader follows the dialogue, the acquisition of right hemispheric functioning begins providing modifications of internal images. The writer’s use of questions, and direct and indirect suggestions, creates expectancies of behavioral changes in the reader. These implications to the reader’s subconscious mind help create an internal reality that is amenable to further modification using the linguistic techniques described above (Erickson and Rossi, 1979).
Thus, through a consistent series of linguistic maneuvers, the reader is taken further and further away from a rigid and resistant frame of reference and closer and closer to an ‘open-mindedness’ regarding the outcomes suggested by the writer.
Watzlawick (1985) describes the use of these linguistic patterns as practicing hypnotherapy without trance, and states «the use of these linguistic structures has a virtual hypnotic effect.»

Some Examples and Suggestions

Any and all of the techniques centered around the use of suggestions and language patterns contained in my Home Study course will increase the power of your writing exponentially. Care needs to be taken so as not to «load up» your writing with too many commands and language patterns. Some of the better patterns to use are:

A. Embedded Commands
B. Cause and Effect and Implied Cause and Effect
C. Single Binds
D. Any and all of the 18 most powerful words (Presuppositions)
E. Pacing and Leading
F. Time-released Suggestions/ Future-Pacing

Here are some examples of the use of Embedded Commands, along with some additional language patterns. Embedded Commands are marked out by both bolding and italicizing the commands. Note that the commands make sense on their own.

1. As you read this information, letting your eyes follow each word, you’ll discover the benefits of how this information can significantly make your life easier.
2. The ability to eliminate resistance in learning to persuade is paramount. In fact, the more you understand how to make someone believe in these concepts, the more success you’ll have in getting them to do what you want.
3. Reading this information enables you to understand why you are starting to become convinced that you should take the kind of action I’m suggesting you take and to do it now!
4. Thank you for having read this so far. Having done this identifies you as the kind of person who really wants to get ahead and is willing to take the kind of action necessary for that to happen. As you become aware of just how powerfully this information has affected you, now and into the future, have you decided just what will continue to signal you and remind you of your excitement about this? I could suggest that getting in your car, or talking with a business associate or friend, or just sitting and relaxing will be the signal that creates this – however – I think that you should decide for yourself what will cause that to happen.
5. Of the three most powerful techniques for persuading other, the one I’d like you to learn quickly is the subtle use of Verbal Pacing and Leading. In doing this, you can experience results fast so that your writing takes on a much more powerful and compelling personality. As this starts to take place and you find yourself starting to feel great about your ability, remember to use this knowledge more and more and also in all that you write that will be used to influence others.

Why You Should Use Embedded Commands In Your Writing

The literature is rich in experimental evidence in the area of subliminal perception (Zeig, 1985). This body of data suggests that information can be processed without conscious awareness.
The research in subliminal perception indicates that a stimulus of which the individual is unaware can elicit a response. Experimental psychology research supports the view that the unconscious mind can work autonomously and lead to behavioral change, without conscious awareness (Erickson, Rossi, and Rossi, 1976).
Embedded commands can circumvent and go beyond ego-defense boundaries. Defense mechanisms/resistance, exist within a linguistic framework, and therefore, alterations of resistance can be accomplished linguistically.
Wester (1985), reports these methods are extremely effective. The effectiveness of cognitive behavior therapy, which is related to these techniques, is well documented, (Maultsby and Ellis, 1974, Wilson, 1977, Meichenbaum, 1977).
As Wester further states convincingly, «imagery techniques and cognitive restructuring methods are actually hypnotic and we have mountainous evidence as to its efficacy, and in professional consulting, pragmatism is paramount, that which has been accepted at least since the early 1940’s has a validity that would be foolish to dismiss. When hypnosis is applied naturalistically, it may be used effectively by business people at all levels.»

Embedded Commands Can Improve Your Marketing Letters

The use of embedded commands allows the writer to:

• By-pass reader resistance
• Covertly give instructions
• Persuade on both conscious and unconscious levels
• Create positive reader expectancies
• Reduce the internal resistance of the reader
• Enhance movement towards successful closure
• Influence subsequent behavior without the reader being aware of what is determining his responses
• Help the reader come to a faster decision
• Motivate the reader to take action

Increases of 10-20% in the effectiveness of your marketing letters would not be an unrealistic expectation.

Brain 101: How to Play the Brain Game for Fun and Profit

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.
The Brain Game
How Do We Run Our Own Brain?
So you want to run your own brain? Good for you. What a wonderful objective! And so rare. Many people talk about running their own brain and taking charge of their own mind, but just watch them when criticized or insulted. They go to pieces. Let one of their closely held beliefs be questioned, and watch out. Sudden it becomes semantic reaction time. They explode with rage, anger, stress, fear, shock, etc. If they truly "run their own brains," how is it that they lack state management skills in the moments when managing one's reactions really counts?
Running our own brain, and thinking freely in independent ways apart from rehashing worn-out or spoon fed thoughts necessitates several things. It necessitates that we develop mindfulness about our brains (or more accurately, our minds) so that we actually develop state management skills. It means we learn to play a new Game, The "Running My Own Brain" Game. So, with that in mind:
• What do you need to understand about brains to be able to run yours?
• Would you like to play the Brain Game?
SEVEN BRAIN FACTS
Here are seven things about your brain. They provide a description about how brains work. They also establish an understanding of the Game of Running Your Own Brain and so lead to the Rules of the Game.
#1: Brains Follow Directions
Brains follow directions. They take the directions that you give them and they follow them.
"John, did you see that red, white and blue cat yesterday? Yes, red, white and blue? in fact, the American Flag colors were bright red, white, and blue. Someone in the neighborhood must have thought it would be a patriotic thing to do. Where did I see it? On Linda's yellow car. It was being chased by a pair of French Poodles across the greenbelt by the swimming pool. That was just before King Kong climbed to the top of the school and beat his chest at the circling plane."
Provide a little description and the brain goes to work representing the information on our internal mental screen. Like a movie director, brains use the information as instructions for our mental Cinema. This explains why the following are very important questions for our states:
What directions are you giving your brain?
What are the default instructions that you've learned to give your brain?
What instructions did your parents or teachers provide you about yourself, life, others, etc.?
How useful, ecological, healthy, balanced, valuable, true, etc. are those instructions?
Do those instructions create empowering states for you?
Would you want to give those instructions to your children?
Do they map out an exciting and loving life?
Why are these questions so important? Because the quality of our lives is a function of the quality of the information processed by our brain. The quality of that information flows from the quality of its instructions. The most important thing you do in life then are the instructions that you give your brain. Are the instructions those that you would use to create a world-class movie?
Recently a young man wrote to me.
"I'm an extremely shy person. When I see a social situation, I avoid it because I say to myself that I'll have nothing to say and that I'll be a complete idiot because they will find me boring, then I'll feel depressed. So I just don't go. Every time I make a mistake, I feel stupid, then depressed. And that's what causes me to procrastinate. It's really stupid, and I know better, and I see it causing me to produce sub-optimally. I feel like these are insurmountable problems...."
I copied the words from the email, cut and pasted them back into my reply. I then asked him to step back from the words and view them as brain instructions.
"Just pretend for a moment that these are instructions for your brain. Are these ideas healthy or sick ones? Would you recommend this way of thinking? Suppose the most popular kid at the university thought this way. How much of a party would these instructions make his or her life?"
There's a principle in this. Namely, feed your brain toxic ideas and you enter into a toxic world. Your brain will go there because that's what brains do. Brains go places. Just this week I caught a Brain (thank God it wasn't mine) going to "Worst Case Scenario!" The person was talking about terrorism in the world. He then entertained unimaginable scenarios. Then he freaked out. Then he said, "This shouldn't happen!"
And I can tell you, these instructions did not put him in a very resourceful state.
Brains use words, pictures, sounds, tones, volumes, smells, tastes, all kinds of things as the basis for swishing us places. Mention a word and off your brain goes. But where? It depends on your learning history, experiences, memories, imaginations, hopes, etc. Brains are phenomenal at linking things. They do so very, very quickly. Actually, this is one of the chief problems we have with our brains. The problem is not that they don't learn, but that they learn too quickly. It's just what they learn that often times is just not true or useful.
Brains are also incredible instruments that never shut down. Even in sleep, we dream as brain wave activity continues. This becomes a problem if we don't give the brain lots of interesting things to process. The stimulus hunger of brains will trigger them to play the old B-rated movies or hallucinate freely.
#2: Brains Externalize Instructions
We can see a person's internal world of ideas and frames by noticing the person's external Games. External life reflects internal frames. The behavioral, speech, and action Games that we play on the outside are expressions of our internal frames of mind. They go together. Games and Rules of the Games.
The old proverb put it this way: "As a man thinks in his heart, so is he." The Roman philosopher Marcus Aurelius put this yet another way:
"As thy thoughts are so will thy mind be also; for the soul takes its coloring from thought."
"If you are pained by an external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs you?but your judgment about it." (The Meditations, 160 AD).
Brains manifest internal representation into the external world so that we externalize our internal frames and representations. What does this mean? Namely, that our external world will only be as exciting, vibrant, dramatic, and powerful as our internal frames of mind. So, as you decorate your internal world of mind, imagination, and memory with hopes, desires, wonders, delights, etc., you alter the quality and content of the instructions that you give to your brain.
This brings up several excellent questions for those of us who want to run our own brain to create a quality life:
What kind of images, sounds, words, sensations, etc. do you have running on the inside of your brain?
What kind of internal movies are you showing in the Cinema of your Mind?
Who does your interior decorating?
Does your internal world of frames need some better interior decorating?
#3: Brains Run on Representations
The cognitive and neuro-sciences have discovered that brains represent our external sensed experiences. It is not that we literally have an internal movie screen in our mind, yet it seems that we do. This phenomena of consciousness is how we experience thoughts and awareness's. It seems that we internally recall what our home, car, work, friends, parents, dogs, etc. look like, sound like, smell like, feel like, taste like. This sensory awareness on the inside of our brain has led neuro-scientists to designate parts of the brain the visual cortex, auditory cortex, the cortex where we process smells, tastes, sensations, balance, etc.
Korzybski and others noted that we operate upon the world, not directly, but via a map of the world. In NLP, Bandler and Grinder revolutionized psychology by putting the foundation of thought in terms of the sensory representations systems and using these modalities of awareness as the first "languages" of the mind. This facet of running our own brain seems so simple, yet it is so profound.
If we picture a beautiful day with blue sky and billowy white clouds and a green grass lawn facing the white sands of a gorgeous ocean view and imagine feeling the warm ocean breeze blowing through our hair and the smell of the salt water and the sounds of children playing and enjoy our favorite drink while getting a neck and back massage from our special loved one ...
Well, it doesn't take long before our body and neurology responds to those representations as if they were instructions about how to feel. Because brains run on representations, the more expressive, vivid, dramatic, and sensory-specific, the easier it is for us to tell our brains where to go and what to feel. Then the screen play is clearer and easier to follow.
Our brains represent things as it were on a mental screen of the mind. It's like there's an internal movie playing and we fill in the sensory details of that movie. Of course, we do not play out everything in that Cinema. We can't. We can't even input all that comes in. Our eyes only scan a very narrow part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Our ears only receive a very narrow band of sound wave frequencies. So we have to be pretty selective, as a movie director, about what we play on our internal Cinema. Choose well. It's your brain.
#4: Brains Transition In and Out of the Present Moment
With that last induction (three paragraphs above), did you leave where you are now and go somewhere else? If you didn't, perhaps you could use the words to do that. Try it out. Because we represent things, we can represent realities that are not immediately present and go there. This is the foundation of all day-dreaming, night-dreaming, fantasizing, learning, creativity, invention, thinking, conceptualizing, mathematizing, theorizing, etc. This is what we humans do best. We can leave our current situation and travel to distance places, times, and worlds.
We call this thinking. It's also hypnosis. It's also trance. It's many things: imagination, fantasy, creativity, and hallucination. This means that we are not stuck or limited to his present moment. We can represent things not present, never present, and even impossible things. What freedom of mind we have! It's a freedom of consciousness that's unique to our species. We have a consciousness that can transition from our current state to other states, hence the word "trance." Anytime we shift our awareness to something that is not part of our current awareness, we enter a trance state.
This means that most of our states of mind are trances. We mostly live in hypnotic states not sensory aware states in this present moment. Hypnosis is the norm, our default situation, not present time sensory acuity. We call hypnosis or trance "downtime" in NLP because we are down inside ourselves thinking, feeling, and experiencing other times, places, people, and ideas. We call present time sensory acuity "uptime" because we are "up" and noticing what our eyes see, ears hear, skin feels, etc.
"Hey, Tom! Tom, Earth to Tom!"
"What?"
Our brains love to zone out. Doesn't yours? It happens when you drive on long trips, it happens even when you drive to the grocery store. It happens when you wait in line, in an elevator, and when you're listening to a speech. Brains do that. It's no big deal. Well, it's not unless you have no guidance or control over it. Then it is a big deal. If you lack awareness of when you are present and when you're off on some mind-trip, then you are doing out-of-control hallucinating.
We all hallucinate. Those who do so mindfully and by choice are our greatest scholars, inventors, creators, designers, teachers, CEOs, etc. Those who don't do it by choice suffer from under-achieving and the ineffectiveness of not being able to manage their own mind. They don't run their own brains.
#5: Brains Induce States
Brains put us into neurological states. They affect our physiology, breathing, movement, and internal chemistry. To work up a good mad, we only have to think angry thoughts of injustice and violation. We only have to think about a dangerous threat and off we go into a fear state. And some representations of sexuality can induce our body to experience desire and lust.
Brains do this because they are part of the body. They sit at the top of the spinal cord and nervous system and bring in all of the nervous impulses processed by the end receptors. Out of the structure of our multi-layered brains emerge our sense of awareness we call "mind." Mind is an emergent property in the neurology of our brain. So it is always mind-body or body-mind, and never one without the other.
This explains why we mostly think or represent ourselves into our states but why we also can act our way into states. This gives us two royal roads into a mind-body state of consciousness whether it is confidence and joy and love or fear, anger, and sadness. We can use mind and all of our internal representations and we can use body (breathing, posture, movement, activity, etc.).
What state are you in? What state do you go into when any given stimulus or trigger occurs? You need look no further than the instructions you give yourself at the mental dimension or what you do in terms of your posture, muscle tension, breathing, etc. at the physiological dimension.
#6: Brains Go in Circles
Not only do our brains represent the world, go places, and put us into states, but brains also do flips, they roll over, they flip back on themselves, they go in circles. As there are feed forward and feedback loops in the physical structure of the brain so that nervous impulses are sent to the thalamus and the amygdala they are simultaneously passed on to the escorted and after processing there back to the lower brain structures. It's all inter-connected. We even have an associative cortex that keeps everything connected with everything else so that we have more cortical connections in the three trillion brain cells than atoms in the universe.
No wonder we loop around. No wonder we can worry about our humor and wonder if we are caring too much and then become afraid of our worry and then think something must be wrong with us that we are worry about something so silly as that. We get caught up in down spirals of negative thoughts and can become obsessive compulsive. We can get caught up in positive spiral of thoughts and suffer from insomnia due to our excitement.
Our brains are not strictly logical. To think in a straightforward way and to stay on that path for more than a few seconds is very difficult for our brains. That's why mathematics and formal logic seem so foreign to us. It's not the natural habit of our mind. We think in circles. Our brains go around in loops and spirals. We keep reprocessing the same tired old thoughts.
This reflexivity is what allows us to layer thought upon thought, feeling upon feeling, thought upon feeling, memory upon imagination, fear upon anger, dread upon worry, joy upon learning, etc. This creates the whole domain of our meta-states?our states of thoughts and feelings about other thoughts and feelings. And that's what creates the layering effect of our awareness so that we can create great complexity in our experiences.
We begin with a reference experience, bring it in and represent it, then develop thoughts and feelings about that, and so on until what was "out there" becomes a frame of reference, a frame of mind and then the very frameworks of four personality and orientation. This creates the Rules of the Game, or our highest frames of mind.
#7: Brains Frame Things
This is one of the greatest powers of our brain for health and sanity and for insanity and destructiveness. Our brains frame. They do so to create contextual meaning. Things, events, people, even words do not mean anything in and of themselves. It takes a brain to create meaning, a "thing" that does not exist out there but is a production of the brain.
Actually, the brain creates two levels of meaning. Associative meaning arises when we link up one thing with another thing. What does a cookie mean? It depends on what you have associated with a cookie. It could mean a sweet or junk food. It could mean reward or lack of nutrition. It could mean delight and fun, it could mean threat to my diet. It could mean survival, it could mean fat.
Because brains link ideas, images, feelings, etc., things easily become associated. This creates triggers or anchors. One thing (a sight, sound, sensation, word, etc.) triggers another thing. Stimulus? Response. In this way we create structures of the mind that we call understandings or knowledge. These are not "things," but organizations of associations?how we have sequenced or ordered the frames in our movies.
What does an "authority figure" mean? Where does your brain go when you think about an "authority figure?" What state does it evoke? Pleasant or unpleasant? Resourceful or unresourceful? Just thoughts ... connected in your brain to memories, awareness's, meanings.
Then there is contextual or frame meaning. Once we have linked up and associated things and bring that association into our mind as our frame of reference, we develop higher level thoughts about it. We call these ideas "concepts." In this way we now look at things through a conceptual frame of mind. It becomes a filter. We call them meta-states and meta-programs. This establishes a mental context for thinking and feeling. This is how we turn associations into higher level maps. Doing so establishes the mental Rules of the Games that we then play.
We first associate a harsh tone of voice with being spanked. Later we develop ideas and concepts that people who strain their vocal chords are mean, hurtful, and nasty. Then we develop higher frames that "criticism is bad," "confrontation always ruins things," "I'm sensitive to criticism," "I cannot handle that tone of voice," etc. These thoughts create the higher frames of mind about an event and semantically load that event. So when someone strains the vocal chords, the meanings I experience in relation to that event puts me into very unresourceful states. All of this happens so quickly that on the inside it seems like and feels like "the criticism" (or harsh tonality) makes me upset, angry, or frustrated. This is how we set up and play the Games that we do.
Brains deal with data overload by making generalizations. They create categories for items; they organize things into groups. This allows us to develop contextual meanings from our frames, giving us an even higher way to interpret things.
"Oh, that's just information. Good. For a minute I thought that was criticism."
How we categorize a thing determines what it "is" to us? in our neurology. Yet as we frame, so we become. What we organize on the inside, in-forms us. We are all psychologically organized by our belief frame, value frames, identity frames, decision frames, etc. And the thing about the brain framing is that as we frame, so we play the frame games that we do.
HOW TO PLAY THE BRAIN GAME
Now that you know about brains (minds), what they do and how they work, you're ready to play the Brain Game. This is the Running Your Own Brain Game, one of the original visions of NLP. With Neuro-Semantics we take this even further to run our own brain at the highest levels of the mind (The Secrets of Personal Mastery <../Books/Personal_Mastery.htm>, 2000).
Rule #1: Quality Control Your Brain's Instructions.
Consider anything that isn't Top-Notch Quality for your Brain as Absurd.
Did I mention that brains are stupid? At least in one sense they are very stupid, in the aspect of quality. In that area, they are less intelligent than stomachs. Really. After all, if we feed our stomach garbage, it at least knows how to vomit. Not so the brain. Feed it garbage and it doesn't think twice, it just processes the garbage. Feed it toxic ideas, poisonous thoughts, limiting beliefs, irrational conclusions, and inaccurate mapping and it doesn't know any better than to represent it, assume it is real, and then believe it. Brains themselves are not discriminating about quality, at least not near as much as the stomach. Whether the information is accurate, useful, true, productive, hurtful, stupid, etc., it doesn't seem to matter.
So, given this stupidity of brains, we have to take charge of the Quality Control of the information we feed it. We call this "running an ecology check." Reality test the value, health, and balance of an idea in the whole system of your body, relationships, energy, etc. This is the first Rule of the Game.
If you don't do this, prepare yourself for trouble because trouble, problems, ill-health, incongruent, sabotage, conflict, etc. you will get. This Brain Game Rule says,
"Anything that does not create personal power, health, balance, joy, compassion, wealth, love, etc. is absurd."
Do you play the Game of Life by that rule?
I highly recommend it.
Consider anything that your brain produces in your body, emotions, speech, behavior, relationships that puts you in constant conflict, that keeps repeating patterns that don't work, that creates incongruity, ineffectiveness, unresourcefulness, etc. as absurd. Then stop it! If you follow this first rule, your life will probably radically change and transform in a matter of weeks. This is an extremely powerful and pervasive Rule.
If what you are doing, whether in communication to yourself or others, whether in relationship to your work, career, relationships, health, etc. is not working as an ongoing pattern, STOP. To keep repeating long term patterns that don't work while hoping for different results is a practical definition of "insanity." It is absolutely ludicrous to keep replaying the old movies of hurt and pain in the theater of your mind. Wasn't once enough? It's ludicrous because while the first time it happen to you, after that first time you have been doing it to yourself! It's your brain doing it. It's not happening "out there" anymore. If you're still watching that B-rated movie, and you are the director of the movie.
Quality control your thinking, higher frames of mind, beliefs, states, etc.
Does this enhance my life over the long-run?
Does this empower me as a person?
Does this make life a party?
This Rule will radically challenge everybody still whining over childhood aches and pains, feeling like a victim to a failed marriage or business, or blaming others for their lack of success. This Rule enables you to live in a different way and to play a different Game? a more passionate and ferocious Game, one where you move out into life looking for opportunities and taking risks and playing to your strengths.
Rule #2: Rise Up in your Mind to Become Aware of the Games
You Only Get to Run Your Own Brain if You have Meta-Awareness
Everybody does not get to run his or her own brain. There is one primary condition for getting to run your own brain, you have to know that you have a brain to run and awareness of how you are currently running it. The brain creates first level "awareness," awareness of the world. This is the consciousness of animals and small children. Awareness of that awareness, meta-awareness, moves us to a higher level of mind. If you don't know that you are running your own brain or how you are running it, then your unawareness will be unconscious. Then you won't get to run your own brain. Your Brain will run you!
This Rule ought to scare the hell out of out you! Does it? Unconsciousness means that you are not mindful of what's going on. Use that as a cue. Do you ever scratch your head wondering that? Do you have ask:
Hey, what's going on here? Why do I feel this way?
Why can't I seem to get ahead?
Why am I always running around in circles and never getting on with things?
I don't know what came over me; I just flipped out?
I don't seem to have control of my emotions.
When Rule #2 says that you only get to run your own brain when you develop meta-awareness of what you're doing, it posits awareness as the key condition. This is a big challenge for many. Over the years many have asked, "Would you just hypnotize me and make this problem go away?" I played that Game for awhile. Then I realized the toxicity in that attitude. It's the wrong attitude if you really want to have control over your own life. That attitude will not lead you on to personal mastery. That attitude indicates the failure to actively participate in your own life. And that's why it has to be refused.
In NLP and NS we know that the magic is in the structure. The structure of an experience itself is the magic. That's why we model. We model experts to learn how they do it. Do what? Run their own brain with regard to a specific area (selling, parenting, relating, communicating, wealth building, health and fitness, leadership, etc.). Once we know that, we know how to find the magic in any field or expertise.
This explains why we do the kind of trainings that we do. We seek to teach to the conscious mind. We want consciousness involved. So while we utilize processes for working with facets of mind outside of conscious awareness, we focus on empowering people to run their own brains without becoming dependent upon us. So we facilitate their self-awareness and ego-strength to look reality in the face, and laugh, and feel ferocious.
This rule leads to various questions and orientations.
What is the basic attitude that drives this experience?
What frame of mind do I need in order to experience this orientation?
How does he do that?
How can I adopt her frame of mind about that?
Rule #3: Beware of Your Frame Referencing
Just Because Your Brain Framed it Does Not Make it Useful
If your brain frames, and if the frames that you set create the Games that you play, take care what you reference and how. We all know people (perhaps we have been such) who experience one or more negative events in life and then (to make things worse), build their lives around that event. Talk about a program that sucks. This is the structure of sick magic: Center your life around a Tragedy, Misfortune, or Injustice! This violates Rule #1 for the Brain Game. It is failing to consider this way of representing and framing things as totally absurd.
Decided to build your life around great events. Find (or invent) wonderful references that you can center you life around.
What wonderful event could I build my life around?
What inspiring referent experience (real or imagined) would I like to commission at the center of my attention
and focus?
If I did, what else would have to change?
And what other supporting ideas or beliefs would enable me to frame things this way?
What you reference, how you reference in terms of the representation richness you encode it in and what you set as your governing frames makes all the difference in the world. It controls and governs the Games that you play. Are you playing the Games that you want to play? If not, then take a look at the entire referencing and framing sequence and design a more empowering one.
As everything habituates so do the neuro-pathways and the internal processing of the brain. When we habituate a way of thinking, an information processing style, or a direction for sending our brain, it eventually becomes our meta-programs or sorting styles. This defines our current trance that organizes our mind-body states. Frames become our software programs or default maps for how to operate in any given arena of life.
Rule #4: Lighten Up and Have Lots of Fun with your Brain
If you don't enjoy the process, you will get stupid.
Here's another rule in the Brain Frame Game. If you get serious about things, you will get stupid. Stupidity is the occupational hazard of getting serious about things. Getting serious typically undermines such graces as humor, laughter, enjoyment, playfulness, silliness, and ludicrousness. And yet these are the saving graces that keep us human. These are the saving graces for being real, being spiritual, and being authentic. Lose these and you will not be able to run your own brain with any dignity or grace.
Lose humor and laughter and you loose perspective. You'll even begin to be seduced into playing the God Game, thinking you are perfect (or should be), know it all (or should), and be everywhere and do everything (hence, indispensable). If any of that seems legitimate, you are in danger of getting stupid very rapidly.
Now the stupidity of seriousness causes people to become stiff and rigid. They get "right" (or so they think), then proud of being right. That leads to stuffiness, arrogance, and the closing of the mind. It's a pitiful thing to see. Yet it happens all too often. Many people pursue an advanced degree and then think the degree bestows upon them an All-Knowingness. They actually think that their every opinion is somehow sacred and should never be question. Doctors, educators, and bureaucrats often fall into this fallacy. All of this increases their stupidity because not only do they not know it all, but they cannot know it all, no one can, and if they did, it would make life less worth living. The fun is in the pursuit.
Rigid serious arrogance makes these people clowns when it comes to making a mistake. Talk about watching a fallible human being make an ass of himself. Watch one of these people do something wrong. The problem is that they can't be wrong. It's not allowed. Yet their pomposity won't allow them to simply say, "Oops. Missed that one."
This Rule in the Game of Running Your Own Brain says you have to enjoy and delight yourself in your complete fallibility. Your brain is fallible and that makes all you think fallible, all of your emotions, speech, behavior, and actions. It is all "liable to error." Don't just accept this, enjoy it. How easy is it for you to have fun with it? To poke fun at your own silliness? To be ridiculous, make a fool of yourself, blow it, and still maintain all of your dignity?
Serious people not only believe, they believe in their beliefs. This is what makes them dangerous. That leads them to being fanatical "true believers" who have closed their minds to the possibility of being wrong. Such serious people never see the high comedy of their ridiculous position. It's their lack of humor that leaves them with no perspective. So it is humor that's our saving grace, that frees us up, that allows us to lighten up and to know that all of our mental mapping is just that?fallible human mapping, at the best, the highest thinking we can do at the moment.
Lighten up and enjoy the ride especially when you get into a loop. Just flow with it. If you fight it, if you resist it, you add negative energy to the loop. The quickest and easiest way out is paradoxical? welcome it and enjoy the ride. It's just a loop of the mind. Play with it.
#5: Keep Teaching Your Brain New Tricks
Yes, your brain can (and will) learn new tricks. Count on it. Brains are always learning, that's the good news. The bad news is that if you don't take charge of what they are learning, they will learn trash. So in playing the Brain Game, aim to constantly be teaching your brain more productive things. Feed it the best data available: inspiring ideas, awesome thoughts, empowering beliefs, and supporting understandings. Keep coding and recoding the Cinema in your mind so that your internal world is dramatic, exciting, bigger than life, full of grace and love, power and energy, make it alive and vital. Create one new empowering frame of mind every week?in a year's time you'll have 52 enhancing frames for the Matrix of your Mind.
Set out on the exciting adventure of discovering, unpacking and replicating the strategies of the experts. Forget "why" things go wrong and people are stupid, focus on those who are producing excellence and search out their strategy. Find out what movies are playing in the Cinema of their Minds. Find out all of the cinematic features that make that movie so entertaining and the states and higher level states it creates. After you do that for a year or two, you'll have habituated the Movies of the Experts in your mind ... and body and emotions and life.
Summary
There's a new Game in town. It's the Game of Running Your Own Brain. Nor does it take a rocket scientist to understand the Game. Mostly it takes self-awareness, meta-awareness, and the willingness to have fun exploring how the brain creates the Matrix of Frames that then governs the Games of our lives.

THE BRAIN GAME
BRAIN FACTS BRAIN GAME RULES #1: Brains Follow Directions #2: Brains Externalize their Instructions #3: Brains run on Representations #4: Brains Transition in and out of the present moment #5: Brains Induce States #6: Brains Go in Circles #7: Brains Frame Things #1: Quality Control your Brain Instructions #2: Rise Up in your Mind to become aware of the Games #3: Beware of your Frame Referencing #4: Lighten Up and Have Lots of Fun with Your #5: Keep Teaching Your Brain New Tricks References
Bodenhamer, Bob; Hall, L. Michael. (2000). Users manual of the brain <../Books/contents.htm>. Wales, UK: Crown House Publications.
Hall. L. Michael (2000). Meta-States: Managing the higher levels of your mind <../Books/MetaStates.htm>. Grand Jct. CO: Neuro-Semantics Publications.
Hall, L. Michael. (2000). Secrets of personal mastery: Advanced techniques for accessing your higher levels of consciousness <../Books/Personal_Mastery.htm>. Wales, UK: Crown House Publications.
Author:
L. Michael Hall, Ph.D., cognitive psychologist, international NLP trainer, entrepreneur; prolific author and international training; developer of Meta-States and co-developer of Neuro-Semantics. (P.O. Box 8, Clifton CO 81520), (970) 523-7877. www.neurosemantics.com .

©2002 L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. All rights reserved.

NLP Opening Lines For Conversation

I saw someone do this once...
I wonder if...
I don't know how soon...
I wonder could you...
I would like to suggest that...
I want you to bear in mind...
I want you to become aware...
I can remember...
I'd like you to pretend that...
I'm wondering...
I'm curious to know...
If you could...
In my experience...
Is it that you are...
Is it possible...
Is it that you have...
Is it that there is...
It is useful that...
It's just like...
It's impossible...
It's good to know that...
It's useful that...
It's good that...
It's either (A) or (B); which is it...
It's not important that...
It's as if...
People can loosen up easily...
Perhaps you are...
Perhaps you can...
Perhaps you could...
Perhaps you're wondering...
This can be learned easily...
What do you think would happen if...
What would happen if...
What's it like to...
When you notice... ...then...
Will you...
Would you...
You come to...
You are learning to anticipate...
You can become aware that...
You know about these things...
You will feel...
After you come to....
After you've...
And the more you (X)...the more you (Y)
And as you...
Are you curious about...
Are you aware that...
Are you still interested in...
As you hear these words they...
As you... ...then...
As you consider this...
Be aware of what you can sense...
Before you think...
Can you imagine...
Can I ask you to...
Can you visualise...
Can you...
Can you remember...
Could you...
Do you think that...
Do you remember when...
Do you...
Do you ever...
Don't think of...
Has it ever occurred to you that...
Have you noticed that...
Have you ever wondered...
Have you...
Have you ever...
How would you feel if...
How do you know that...
How do you feel when...
I don't want you to be...
I want you to learn...
I know you are curious...
I saw someone do this in minutes once...
I wonder if...
I don't know how soon...
I wonder could you...
I would like to suggest that...
I want you to bear in mind...
I want you to become aware...
I can remember...
I'd like you to pretend that...
I'm wondering...
I'm curious to know...
If you could...
In my experience...
Is it that you are...
Is it possible...
Is it that you have...
Is it that there is...
It is useful that...
It's just like...
It's impossible...
It's good to know that...
It's useful that...
It's good that...
It's either (A) or (B); which is it...
It's not important that...
It's as if...
People can loosen up easily...
Perhaps you are...
Perhaps you can...
Perhaps you could...
Perhaps you're wondering...
This can be learned easily...
What do you think would happen if...
What would happen if...
What's it like to...
When you notice... ...then...
Will you...
Would you...
You come to...
You are learning to anticipate...
You can become aware that...
You know about these things...
You will feel...

NLP AND ADVANCED TECHNIQUES OF RAPPORT

NLP boosts the power of rapport building techniques, allowing you to gain total leadership in any situation.

Are you experiencing relationship problems? Facing difficulties in conquering beautiful women? Well, now you are about to learn the key to solving all your relationship problems with a powerful set of communicational tools!

Rapport And The Art of Clear Communication
We will see how people process information and make sense out of things. In order to get people to understand what you mean, you first need to understand how they understand, or at least how they try to understand. When you understand how other people process information, you can organise your communication in a way that fits their modes of perception. We’ve still going to be talking about pacing (and leading), but we’ll be dealing mainly with less visible behaviour, that which goes on inside other people. In the latter part of this section, we’ll relate the information about how people understand to one of the most powerful techniques ever devised for mutual understanding and clear communication. This is the technique of active listening, pioneered in the early 1950’s by Carl Rogers. We’ll then take a step beyond active listening to probing for hidden meanings.


Understanding How Other People Understand

“Misunderstandings can result when people automatically assume that others think as they do.” — Robert Sommer, The Mind’s Eye, p.67, 68, 69.

A way of looking at the different modes of perception was suggested by Carl Jung. He placed thinking and feeling at opposite ends of one axis and intuition and sensation at opposite ends of a cross-axis.



He felt that everyone uses all four of these modes, but that, for example, a person could be typed by his or her using predominantly thinking and sensation, and using less intuition and feeling. In addition, Jung felt that a person could be more introverted than extroverted, or vice versa.

One of the major uses Jung made of this model of human character was to describe some differences in the way women and men are trained to behave in society.

Women- trained to act on intuition and feeling.

Men- trained to act on thinking and sensation (using sensory data).

These differences can be very significant for both personal and business relationships. Jung, as well as many other leading thinkers today, believed that a person can become whole by learning to function in modes they are not trained to. Again, having requiste variety and the range to cover all modes of perception will help you establish rapport more easily.

The feeling mode is the one most people in our culture have most difficulty understanding. This, no doubt, is a major reason why body and emotive theories have become so popular in recent years. We want to get back in touch with our bodies and feelings, and it seems we need the help of professionals to do so. Perhaps the cause of this is that as children we were often punished for expressing our feelings, especially when those feelings went counter to the desires of our parents and other adult authority figures. And for safety’s sake, small children are often admonished to look but don’t touch.

The fact that different people process information in different modes is, of course, critically important. Communication means different things to different people. Couples go into counselling because of communication problems arising from the differences over what communication means. In a typical interview the counsellor would ask what the problem is -- the wife may say that her husband doesn’t listen to her whilst he may say she doesn’t look at him when he talks to her. Or either may feel that the other’s unfeeling or uncaring because they’re not very affectionate or emotionally responsive. When a mismatching of perceptual modes is involved in the problem, the counsellor would first make the couple aware of what’s going on, to point out to them that each is asking something alien for the other. The next step might be to get each person to learn to communicate in ways that are meaningful to the other. In the case above, for example, the counsellor might encourage the husband to pay more attention to what the wife is saying. The wife might be advised to establish eye contact with her husband more frequently to show him that she’s paying attention to him.


NLP Basics:
Seeing Is Believing,
Hearing Is Believing, Feeling Is Believing

Each of us has, at any one time, a dominant or primary mode of perception. Bandler and Grinder observed psychiatrist Erikson and therapists Satir and Perl and referred to the three ways people generally process information as representational systems. They describe the process this way ; When you make initial contact with a person, they will probably be thinking in one of the three main representational systems. Internally they will be generating visual, images, having feelings, or talking to themselves and hearing sounds.


How To Identify Perceptual Modes With NLP

One of the simplest ways to identify another person’s dominant perceptual mode is to pay close attention to the words, phrases, and images he uses.

Predominant Modes:

VISUAL- words used, “I see what you mean,” “This idea looks good to me,” “ I want the big picture……we’ll focus on details later,” “ My point of view is….,” and so on.

AUDITORY- words used, “ Tell me again….I’m not sure I heard you right,” “That sounds like a good idea,” “Let me use you as a sounding board for an idea I have,” “ Yes that’s clear as a bell,” or, “Something just went click in my mind.”

FEELING- words used, “I sense what you mean,” “That idea feels right,” “I can’t get a handle on this concept,” and “He’s the kind of guy who can take an idea and run with it.”

Semantically, “That idea looks good,” “That idea sounds good,” and “That idea feels good,” all mean the same thing. But psychologically they involve entirely different processes. Identifying which mode is dominant in other people at any given time is an important key to their pattern of understanding, and is therefore an important element both in understanding them and getting them to understand you.

Another way to find out which perceptual mode is preferred by another person is simply to ask, “How would you like this information presented to you?” people are usually aware enough of their own process to give fairly accurate answers to this question. Some people, for example, will ask you to write it down for them (including graphs, charts, or pictures). Whilst others will just ask you to tell them what you want. Still, others will tell you that they want to get a good feeling for the situation and that it’s important for them to know they can trust you (such individuals may often say that they’d appreciate it if you’d stay in touch with them).


How To Get Others To Understand You With NLP

When you use the other person’s dominant perceptual mode, he or she will respond.

Sometimes it’s not readily apparent which form of communication a person will respond to. In such cases you may require using a trial and error approach. For example, if you’re not sure whether another person is responding to you in a visual, auditory, or feeling mode, you might pause periodically to ask, “Does this idea look good to you?” or, “Can you see yourself using this system?” or, “How does this sound to you?” or, “Does it answer some of the questions you have been asking yourself?” or, “I’d like to know: how you feel about this program?” or, “Does this seem like something you can run with?”

If you don’t get a meaningful response to the question presented in a visual mode, switch to auditory and if there’s still no response move to the feeling level. A frequent mistake people make when they’re presenting ideas to others is to interpret a lack of meaningful responses as resistance, when in fact the other person’s response may simply mean that you have failed to communicate in a way that they can make sense of. By having flexibility (requisite variety) to switch from one perceptual mode to another, you will be able to reach most people most of the time, and they will clearly understand what you want. This will enable you to get their co-operation and support more easily.


NLP And Custom-Designed Word Pictures

Having correctly identified and made the necessary connection to someone’s mode, you can then proceed to more sophisticated use of perceptual modes, that of perceptual overlap. The basic idea is to heighten other people’s receptivity to an idea by presenting it so that they can see, hear and feel themselves experiencing the benefits of the idea.

Perceptual overlapping allows you to custom-design the word picture to fit the primary and secondary perceptual modes of the person you are attempting to persuade.



NLP And Active Listening For Building Rapport

We’ve seen how different people organise their perceptions, in the visual, auditory, or feeling modes and how to gain greater trust and understanding by being aware of these differences and then matching the other person’s dominant perceptual mode.

An important strategy in effectively communicating what you mean to another person and ensuring that you understand what the other person means is active listening. The term grew out of research and practice in the 1940’s and 1950’s. One of the best statements on this technique is in an article by Carl Rogers, that appeared in the Harvard Business Review in 1952, entitled “Barriers and Gateways to Communication.” Rogers identifies what he believes to be the major barrier to effective communication: our tendency to evaluate or judge the ideas of another person or group.

The way to accomplish empathic understanding according to Rogers, is by following this rule, “Each person can speak up for himself only after he has first restated the ideas and feelings of the previous speaker accurately and to that speaker’s satisfaction.”

To listen actively to another person means, then, that you learn to see, hear, and feel in the same way that he or she sees, hears, and feels. In effect, it is another form of pacing, of establishing rapport. We believe that active listening, as described by Rogers, can be enhanced by pacing some of the other behaviours mentioned in part one. By pacing, or synchronising, your mood, body language, speech rate, and even breathing with the other person, you achieve strong rapport while maximising mutual understanding. In addition, by matching perceptual modes you further ensure that you and the other person are communicating on the same level.

Sometimes when you paraphrase what you think someone has said, they will modify or clarify what was actually intended. In other words, you might not have misunderstood but, on hearing you restate it, they will realise that they have left something out. This statement summarises nicely the problems of clear communication. “I know you think you understood what you think I said, but I wonder if you realise what I said is not what I meant.”

Clear communication can be difficult.



Probing With NLP For Hidden Messages

Active listening means listening emphatically so that you share, insofar as possible, the other person’s experience, so that you receive his or her communication in precisely the way it is intended. This is an extremely useful practice. But there is a potential problem here, even if you receive the speaker’s intended meaning, because people are not always completely aware of what they mean when they make statements. For example in the statement, “I’m confused,” the speaker is probably confused because they are not aware of something that they want or need to be conscious of. In this case active listening is not likely to produce much more than mutual confusion.

Most people know that almost every sentence we utter omits something either intentionally or unintentionally. When someone speaks to us our choice is either to guess at what is missing or ask for clarification.

A question used to probe for hidden meanings is “Why?” This useful question unearths a wealth of information about another person. But “Why?” can also be a potential barrier to effective probing. When asked to justify a certain action or behaviour, the form of the question is usually, for example, “Why are you so late?” or “Why did / didn’t you do that?” such questions can be intimidating and may generate defensiveness in another person. Coupled with an accusing tone, they strongly convey judgement and evaluation of a negative kind. One limitation involves the structure of our language. A “Why?” question can easily be answered with the “Because….” construction.

Q: “Why are you confused?”

A: “Because I don’t understand.”

The answers would not give any additional information. A more effective approach to probing for the unexpressed or hidden is to ask “What” questions (and it’s variations- Who, Which, when, Where, and How)-asked in a non threatening tone will usually produce a specific response:

Q: “What, specifically are you confused about?”

A: “Well, I don’t quite understand the exact relation between A and B.”

Note however that “Why?” questions are not always inappropriate nor that “What?” questions will always get you the specific information you want. But “Why?” will frequently result in generalisations, rationalisations, denials, or justifications. “What?” questions tend to produce specifics.

Person A: “I’ve made my decision and it’s final.”

Person B: “Why?”

A: “Because I said so!”

Now see the “What” approach-

A: “I’ve made my decision and it’s final.”

B: “What could cause you to change your mind?” or “Under what circumstances might you change your mind?”

A: “Well, I might change my mind if ………”



Summary on Rapport and NLP

People organise their experiences in three perceptual modes; the visual, the auditory, or the feeling. Bandler and Grinder have observed in their work with Erikson , that each of us has, at any one time a dominant perceptual mode, or representational system, to which the others are secondary. In our culture, for most people most of the time, the visual mode is primary. The expressions, “Seeing is believing,” and, “I saw it with my own eyes” are indicative of the importance we attach to visually processed information.

Auditory mode; the next most frequently used mode, a person attends to tonal qualities (sounds) of the information being processed, or constructs dialogues to organise his or her perceptions. These dialogues may be silent, internal ones, or they be uttered aloud. Often, people having conversations with themselves are not consciously aware of what they’re doing. In contrast to the visualizer, who is creating mental pictures, the person in an auditory mode is continually talking to themselves.

Still other people tend to organize their perceptions primarily around their feelings and sensations in their responses to the world.

Everyone uses and has access to all these modes regardless of what their bias is. What’s important to note is that this phenomenon of (unconscious) bias exists. As communicators, we can dramatically increase the effectiveness of our communicators.

By using active listening techniques, you can reach closer mutual understandings with others. Active listening involves a reflection back to other people of what you understand them to be saying.

By combining active listening with an awareness of perceptual modes and other pacing techniques, you can help to ensure that you see, hear, and feel what the other person is experiencing.

To move beyond active listening, to probe for hidden meanings, it is necessary to ask questions. “What?” questions produce more specific responses than “why?” questions which often result in defensiveness or generalisations.



Suggestions For Practice of NLP-Rapport Techniques

1) During conversations with clients, colleagues, and friends and while listening to radio or television pay attention to the words and phrases people use to describe their experiences. Try to identify their dominant perceptual modes.

2) Keep a notebook to jot down words and phrases that indicate perceptual modes.

3) Practice using the same words and phrases as others in your conversations with them. Vary this practice by choosing different words while remaining within the same perceptual mode.

4) In your conversations with others, practice active listening. Reflect back to them your understanding of what they’ve said or intended. Remain in their dominant perceptual mode while doing this. You might also pace some of their other behaviours to strengthen the bond of rapport you are creating.

5) Whenever someone says something important that you don’t fully understand, probe for hidden meaning by asking “What?” questions. Vary this by asking “Why?” questions to determine the difference in responses.

NLP Anchoring:

A Powerful Unconscious Resource
Anchoring is one of the most useful nlp techniques, it's a method for using the powerful unconscious resources of others to get the responses you desire.
It is the process by which a memory, a feeling or some other response is associated with (anchored to) something else. Anchoring is a natural process that usually occurs without our awareness. For examole, when you were young, you undoubdtedly participated in family activities that gave you great pleasure. The pleasure was assssociated with the activity itself, so when you think of the activity or are reminded of it you tend to re-experience some pleasurable feeling. In this way anchors are reactivated or, triggered.
Anchoring Examples in Everyday Life
Here are a few examples:
• Flicking through an old family photo album stirs pleasant memories and some of the feelings associated with them.
• An old love song re-awakens a romantic mood.
• The smell of freshly baked apple pies brings back memories of a happy care-free childhood.

The Power of NLP Anchoring
NLP anchoring is a process that goes on around and within us all the time, whether we are aware of it or not. Most of the time we are not aware of it, which makes it a much more powerful force in our lives. NLP training enables you to take counscious partecipation in establishing/removing anchors within yourself and/or others.
Anchoring is also used by skillful film makers to evoke suspense in the audience. Think of your own psychological changes that occurred when you heard the soundtrack’s amplified, pounding heartbeat rhythm in the moments leading up to each of the appearances of the huge killer shark in the movie ‘Jaws.’ What anchor was established in you by the crescendo of the sound of the music meeting the shark? Did your heartbeat increase? Did your palms begin to sweat? Did you have to see the shark, or was the thumping music enough to start your slide to the edge of your seat?
Leitmotivs —recurring themes— in music and literature also serve to restimulate a previously established response.
This same anchoring process appears naturally and spontaneously in our dealings with others, and often determines the outcome of these interactions.

An Example of NLP Anchoring From Real-Life Salesmanship
Before taking a client to see a house, California real estate dealer Gael Himmah always visits the property owners for the purpose of discovering the ‘emotional appeal’ their homes particularly hold for them. Who else could better know? “what,” he asks, “do you like best about your home? What features mean the most to you? One answer given in an especially run down house, led to an incident that reveals the powerful effects of the emotional recollections.
His question to the women of the house led to a trip into the kitchen where she pointed proudly out of the window towards a colourless, run down garage. In the springtime, “I plant sweet peas in that bed. There’s something in the soil, and the temperature against the side of the garage, we’re not sure what causes it, but the sweet peas grow all over the side of the garage and onto the roof and they’re the biggest sweet peas anyone has evcer seen. People from all over come to see our sweet peas,” she explained.
Himmah now had his emotional feature neatly tucked away, and before too long he had the house sold to another couple. Some time later, he returned to find out from the new owners just what had prompted them to buy. In this case, however, he was not prepared for the husband’s angry answer.
“Do you now what you’ve done to me?” he asked, his voice seething with menace.
“I just wandered how you like your new house?” I countered.
He wasn’t having any. “Do you now what you’ve done to me?” he repeated.
“Not really,” I said. It was a totally honest statement. I didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about. Buyers can get strange.
“You and your damn sweet peas,” he exploded. “That’s all my wife could talk about after you showed us this house. Those damn sweet peas. When she was a little girl in New Jersey, she and her mother used to plant sweet peas and Iceland poppies every year. They took care of them together. She hadn’t seen sweet peas since we moved to California ten years ago.”
“This spring,” he went on, fire in his eyes. “I’m going to have to send an airline ticket to my mother in law in New Jersey and she’s flying out here and she and my wife are going to plant those damn sweet peas and she’s going to stay all summer with us to watch them grow.” By this time he was breathless, the thought of his mother in law’s prolonged visit working him into a rage.

How We Anchor And Are Anchored
When we are with another person which experiences some strong emotion, whatever we are doing or saying becomes associated with that emotion. Usually this process occurs at the unconscious level. Subsequently, whenever we do or say the same thing in the same way in his presence we will tend to re-stimulate for him/her some portion of the previous feeling.
Being aware of this phenomenon through knowledge of neurolinguistic programming enables us to be aware of the kinds of responses we are anchoring in others, how we are doing it, and conversely, what kinds of responses are being anchored in ourselves and how. This awareness enables us to anchor for mutually productive outcomes.

How To Elicit Desired Responses With NLP
The process of eliciting and re-eliciting desired responses from bosses, clients, friends, or spouses is a fairly simple one. Ask the particular individual involved to recall a past experience that is likely to contain the desired response. For example – if you want the other person to experience a pleasure response ask him/her to recall a pleasant incident. In doing so, the person will bring up, with that memory, many of the feelings felt at the time of the incident.
The purpose of eliciting certain responses is to establish a more favourable and receptive ground for communicating your ideas effectively. The person’s state of mind – his/her feelings, the things he/she is attending to (both consciously and unconsciously) will be of critical significance with regard to how they receive your ideas and suggestions. By eliciting the kinds of responses you want when you present your idea, you increase the chances of having your idea favourably received and acted on. This will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever tried to sell anything, but even the most sophisticated salesperson often ignores this basic fact.

Summary:
The Process of Anchoring With NLP
1) Wait for the desired response to occur spontaneously, or evoke the response by making appropriate suggestions or by asking questions such as:
• “What excites you about…..?”
• “What do you like about…..?”
• “Can you recall the last time you felt….?”
By asking the other person to recall a specific experience, some of the feelings associated with that memory will be reactivated and can then be nlp-anchored.
2) Anchor the response with the following nlp technique: when the response reaches its peak anchor it with some behaviour of your own, such as one or more of the following:
• Verbal marking (“That’s a great story!”)
• A touch on the other person’s arm
• A sound, such as snapping your fingers, or a particular expressive facial expression.
3) Trigger the anchor at the desired moment by performing exactly the same action as in step two (in the case of the verbal anchor, you might change the wording to “Let me tell you a great story!” In any case, the anchor here is primarily the word ‘great’ and should itself suffice as an anchor).

‘Practice Makes Perfect’
NLP anchoring, like any new skill, requires a certain amount of practice. Practice anchoring good feelings on your family, friends and business associates. It will make both them and you feel good. It will also enable you eventually to do it unconsciously and appropriately to create a more receptive climate for your ideas and suggestions.
When you’ve learned to time your anchoring correctly, you should be able to anchor a response with only one attempt. In the meantime, just enjoy the pleasure of practising a new skill that will give you and the people you live and work with many happy hours. With experience, you will be able to effectively and appropriately anchor responses without even thinking about it, which is the ultimate goal.
An effectively established nlp anchor will last until some stronger emotional event intervenes to weaken the response. If this happens, simply re-establish the anchor in the same manner.
A Word of Advice...
As nlp anchoring is such a powerful process, and therefore of all the techniques known so far offers the greatest opportunity for misuse —manipulation in the negative sense of the word— you are advised to be particularly careful when and how you use it. Remember misused tools have a habit of boomeranging or blowing up in your face. Your self-respect is one of your greatest assets, if you lose it, you really do lose

NLP’s Embedded Commands

Embedded nlp commands/suggestions are words and phrases enclosed (embedded) within a larger context. They are units of meaning that can often have an impact beyond that which is apparent in or intended by the larger structure within which they appear.
For example, ‘A’ says to ‘B’: “I feel really bad today, B.” What is happening here goes beyonds what is intended. The phrase, “feel really bad today, B,” is an embedded suggestion to ‘B’ to feel bad — even though the apparent reference is to the speaker ‘A’ and not to the listener ‘B’. If the speaker uses enough of these embedded commands, very soon you will begin to respond to these suggestions, perhaps without being consciously aware of doing so.
NLP teaches you how to master the art of embedding commands in ordinary everyday conversations.

Examples of Embedded Commands
• “This place is enough to drive you crazy.”
• “I wish I had a penny for every time that guy gave me a hard time.”
• “This environment is really depressing.”
• “Don’t let me keep you from working.”
So pay attention to the embedded suggestions people give you and avoid, insofar as possible, those people who are practising (however unwittingly) black magic on you. If your work demands that you be around such people for extended periods of time, you can neutralise their effect on you by embedding positive suggestions of your own.

Embedded Commands in Pacing & Leading
For example, you might pace the other person by saying “Yes I know how you feel. I’ve felt that way before, too,” and then lead with, “but I could feel better, (his name), by making myself get out of here for a while.”

Embedded Commands in Commercial Ads
Any word or phrase can be thought of as an embedded suggestion. The next time you turn on the radio or television, pay attention to the words, phrases, and images used in the commercials. If the commercial has been skillfully constructed, the language used will be carefully crafted to produce a desired response. In this respect, embedded suggestions tug at the unconscious, awakening associations. These associations have the particular state of mind, or set of experiences. Words such as warm, soft, clean, powerful, bigger, and better, when repeated in varios combinations, have the cumulative effect of leading the listener to particular state of mind, or set experiences. Words such as tight, tense, anxious, afraid, weak, and helpless, can cause us to have the feelings associated with the words.
Similarly, the words, phrases, and images we use in conversation also lead our listeners to a particular state of mind or set of experiences. The critical question, “Is it the result we want?”

NLP-Embedded Questions And Commands
Two types of nlp embedded suggestions — questions and commands — deserve special attention.
1. NLP Embedded Questions
An nlp embedded questions is an implied questions that is embedded in a larger context — usually a statement.
For example:
• “I wonder what your name is.”
• “I’m curious to know how old you are.”
• “I don’t know what your income is.”
• “Whether you’d like to come me is something we haven’t discussed yet.”
2. NLP Embedded Commands
An nlp embedded command is simply a command that is embedded in a larger context ;
• “I think you’ll be wise if you invest in this property today.”
• “My mother used to tell me that the best way to get over a cold is stay in bed and get plenty of rest.”
• “If anyone has any questions, I’d appreciate it if you’d wait until after the lecture and come up to talk to me then.”
As you can see we use embedded suggestions — both questions and commands — all of the time. They’re so pervasive as to be virtually invisible. Therein lies their power.
This is a good reason for learning with nlp how to use them constructively, to help us communicate more effectively with others.

The Secret of NLP Embedded Commands
NLP’s embedded questions and commands work so effectively because, being almost invisible, they operate for the most part at the unconscious level, and thus they are not likely to cause resistance.
They will be responded-to below the level of awareness. The cumulative effect is to gently lead the other person in the direction we want them to go. This operates whether the person is consciously paying attention or not. So nlp embedded suggestions is an excellent approach to use with people who always seem too busy to give us their full attention.
Consider the boss who fiddles with paperwork when you’re trying to get him to listen to an idea. Instead of being frustrated by his behaviour, you might welcome it as an opportunity to embed suggestions using NLP. His mind is already distracted, you can easily continue talking while embedding appropriate nlp suggestions that will be responded-to unconsciously.
The net effect will be to give some ‘food for thought’ to be digested unconsciously later on! You might be pleasantly surprised to hear him voicing your ideas as if he had thought of them himself, or spontaneously acting on the suggestions you embedded earlier.

NLP Embedded Command Techniques
The tone of your voice and the emphasis suggestions are also very important. As you deliver the nlp embedded suggestions, it’s a good idea to tonally mark the parts you especially want the other person to respond to.
Additionally, by inserting someone’s name next to the suggestion you want him to attend to, you are further ensuring that he will respond to it. Our name is perhaps the most important word in our vocabulary. When we hear it mentioned, we listen more attentively.
Embedded nlp suggestions will work wonders for you when you use them with the people in your life. They will be responded to at the unconscious level, so that resistance by the other person is avoided.

How To Control A Conversation With NLP
There are at least two useful observations to keep in mind when you’re dealing with other people.
1) People like to talk more than to listen.
2) The listener controls the conversation.
The first idea hardly needs documentation. The second is a bit more elusive.
The NLP Power of Active Listening
The reason why the listener controls it is that the listener is similar to the driver of a car. The speaker is the engine, which provides the motive power, but the listener is at the wheel and provides the direction. By judiciously asking questions or making appropriate statements, the listener can guide the flow of conversation.
Speaker: “What we need is the marketing group to come up with a game plan for our region.”
Listener: “That’s an interesting idea. Can you tell me how that will generate more sales in the region?”
Speaker: “Sure, first of all it will...”
The NLP Power of Active Questioning
The listener can also establish and maintain control of the flow of conversation by asking questions to clarify or re-direct:
• “Does that mean...?”
• “What specifically do you mean by...?”
or by paraphrasing:
• “What I understand you to say is ... Is that correct?”
In addition to being an excellent active listening technique, paraphrasing has the effect of reinforcing the speaker, so that he/she continues to talk more.
The NLP Power of Agreement
Another NLP way to get the speaker to say more is to voice agreement. We’ve discussed at some length in the section on rapport the importance of being in agreement or alignment, with the other person. By verbally agreeing with the speaker, you are reinforcing him/her, thereby increasing the likelihood that he/she will continue talking.

Silence Imposition Technique
If you want someone to stop talking, short of asking them to be quiet, there are at least two effective nlp methods of winding down their continuos urge to speak.
You can remain perfectly silent, or you can disagree. Either of these will usually prompt the other to seek companionship elsewhere.
1. The No-Feedback NLP Technique
Silence is the absence of any verbal feedback whatever. In behaviourist jargon, it is a form of ‘extinction,’ which is simply the refusal to reinforce a particular behaviour. Extinction has been shown to be the most effective method for eliminating a behaviour from a person’s repertoire, even more effective than punishment (which, to be effective, must be administrated with each instance of the undesirable behaviour).
This is why solitary confinement, the absence of any reinforcement or feedback from other humans, is even more feared than physical punishment. One mistake many parents make when they want to quiet down noisy children is that they attempt to ‘punish’ children for making noise, but often only succeed to reinforce the very behaviour they want to eliminate. Punitive attention, it seems, is preferable to none at all. so if you want someone else to be quiet, don’t pay attention to him/her, and they will eventually go away.
2. The Negative-Feedback NLP Technique
The other effective nlp means of getting someone go away and leave you alone is to disagree. This being the opposite of pacing and building rapport.
Initially you might get an argumentative response, but if you maintain your contrariness long enough the other person will eventually go away and find someone else to talk with. It’s important for us to find people who will validate our beliefs and opinions, and we all tend to ‘drop’ people who disagree.
Silence and disagreement, of course, are rather drastic measures. Usually, simply telling the other person you’ve had enough for now will be sufficient. Still, it’s useful to know there are other options if candor fails to work.

Summary:
How To Get What You Want With NLP
The first rule is to know what you want, then ask for it. In addition, make sure that you ask in a way that makes sense to the other person. If you’ve paced him, you have an inner feeling about him, because you have established an emphatic bond of rapport. In addition, emphasise to the other the benefits of going along with your idea.
Identify and use his decision strategies in order to design an nlp-engineered presentation that is virtually irresistible. Anchor desirable responses during the course of your interactions with the other person, and then trigger those anchors appropriately to create an even more receptive climate for your ideas. Use embedded suggestions, questions and commands to produce favourable responses and to avoid resistance at the unconscious level.
The listener controls the flow of the conversation by asking questions to redirect or clarify. By paraphrasing or agreeing with other people, you get them to talk more. By remaining silent or disagreeing with them, you terminate the discussion.
Finally, because of the power inherent in these techniques, use them wisely for mutually productive outcomes.

Suggestions For Practice
1. Practice asking for what you want. Regard rejection as a positive rather than a negative thing. It simply means getting closer to acceptance.
2. Identifying the decision strategy of friends until the process becomes comfortable and natural for you. Then begin to identify the strategies of people you work with. Translate these decision strategies into presentation strategies when you want them to accept an idea. Notice how much easier it is to get your ideas accepted.
3. Anchor and then trigger pleasurable responses in the people you live and work with. Notice how much better you and they feel when your in each other’s presence.
4. Pay attention to embedded suggestions people give you. This will help you identify your real friends.
Make a list of words and phrases that suggest the kind of attitudes and feeling you’d like other people to have while being with you or thinking of you. For example: “Feel comfortable,” “Have a nice day,” “keep an open mind,” “Learn more,” “be more productive,” “feel more confident.” Consciously embed these phrases in your conversations with others until you’ve developed the habit. Then notice how people begin to ‘magically’ transform around you.

NLP and Rapport

This free tutorial on rapport provides you useful techniques to master building rapport. Establishing rapport is an art, so keep in mind these experts' tips.

Remember that rapport is the key to succesful relationships!

The Verbal Language of Rapport
Pacing verbal communication strongly influences the depth of rapport you establish with another person

Pacing volume is also a useful tactic. Someone who speaks softly will appreciate someone else who speaks softly. Likewise someone who speaks loudly will often have more respect for you and will recognise a kindred spirit if you match their volume. As a matter of fact , on occasion you might even want to exceed the others’ volume to get them to speak more softly.

By giving somebody a reflection of themselves and even exaggerating that reflection somewhat you can often cause them to modify their behaviour.

Some people find that they can control others by going out of control, they exploit the predictable behaviour of those around them. The plan to go out of control in such a way that other people will acquiesce and placate Children may learn to scream and throw temper tantrums in order to control other people. If you pace that behaviour by also throwing a tantrum (not at the child, but with the child) a miraculous and amusing calm can set in. The child’s astonishment can then give way to humour and the act is broken.

The message to remember is –If you want to change someone else’s behaviour, the best approach is to change your own. The resulting change in the system will often prompt the other person to change themselves in order to re-establish the balance and the illusion of control.



Dig Speech and Unburry Rapport Treasures
Words, phrases and images people use give us important information about the inner worlds they inhabit. By pacing this aspect of their speech, you are telling them that you understand them and they can trust you. When you’re talking with other people, it’s a good idea to incorporate as many of their words, phrases, and their images into your conversation as comfortably as you can. Don't mimic other people's accent or speak a jargon you don’t have mastery of. You should be sensitive of their level of vocabulary and imagery and try to reflect it as closely as you comfortably can. Avoid in your own speech any jargon that the other person doesn’t understand.

Putting someone in the position of either appearing stupid or feeling stupid will only make them resent you. –pendantry blocks rapport. An individual may reject your idea not because it’s weak but because they may not understand it the way you’ve presented it. Having requisite variety means being able to avoid those styles that inadvertently turn other people away.

Having the flexibility to use words, phrases and images familiar to other people is important. If we listen carefully to the language other people use, we will know what words, phrases, and images they feel at home with.

In the world of business, it helps to learn a few words of a foreign associates language. It would be seen as a goodwill gesture. Also, body language can help to bridge the gap. However, be careful of gestures as they could bear different meaning in other cultures.

Speak more like others and you’ll see that they’ll respond more positively towards you. They’ll appreciate you more, you’ll dramatically increase your effectiveness in getting their co-operation and support.



Pacing Beliefs And Opinions
Keep in mind that the goal of pacing is to be able to lead the other person in the direction you want him to go.

Here come a fine technique from the repertory of the art of persuasion: Validate something other people know to be true, and then lead them to consider and finally to accept other possibilities.

However well intentioned and correct our efforts to enlighten others might be, they are doomed to be jeopardised from start if we begin by informing the erratic that they are in error. The most likely result of such a course is defensiveness. To an extent our reality is made up of our beliefs, therefore, to tamper with people’s beliefs is to tamper with their reality. Tread lightly. Pace the belief and then lead with your suggestion.

You should not compromise your integrity or pretend to believe in something you do not. Find some way of validating another part of their belief or some experience of theirs.

As Thomas Jefferson once said, “In matters of principle, stand firm like a rock; in matters of opinion flow like a river.”

Find a point of agreement on which to build your case, then if necessary move into areas of disagreement or misunderstanding.

Remember ;It’s much easier and much more effective to move from agreement to agreement than from disagreement to agreement.



Pacing Breathing
Nothing is more vital to us than the voluntary and involuntary inhaling and exhaling of air. But we seldom think about it.

The synchronisation of breathing is one of the oldest rapport building techniques on record. In some variations of tantra yoga, where the objective is to achieve a spiritual merging, two individuals hold each other gently and breathe together until the apparent barriers separating them drop away and the experience is one of unity, the inspiration and expiration of a single organism, not two separate entities.



Next Step: Leading
When you have achieved rapport with someone, the next step you take they are apt/likely to follow.

When you’re with someone you are either pacing (doing something similar ) or leading (doing something different). There are no other possibilities.

If your primary objective is to simply get along with another person then pacing some of their behaviour is sufficient. But if your objective is to persuade, to bring them to a new awareness, then you must lead. Using this model, the strategy is to pace first then lead. Meet the person where they already are and then suggest some new options. This approach works more frequently and more effectively than any other. Sometimes it’s not appropriate to lead quickly, sometimes it’s wiser to back off and not to lead at all. Different situations will dictate different approaches

As a rule, the “pace then lead” strategy is a very effective way to persuade.



How To Test For Rapport
Before trying to lead someone it’s a good idea to find out if you’ve effectively established rapport. This can be done unobtrusively at the non verbal level by synchronising with some aspect of their body language, such as posture. Mirror the other person for a short time (a few minutes are sufficient). Then change your posture and wait to see if they respond. Their response could be a move to mirror your new posture, or it might be a shifting, a settling in on their part to restore balance to the system. What you are looking for here is a congruent, or complementary, response by the other person.



When Not To Pace
Whenever you’re doing something that isn’t working, stop and do something else. That’s why it’s useful to have enough variety in your responses for your purposes. It’s a good idea not to pace something the other person is not comfortable with, such as stuttering, limping, or asthmatic breathing. Don’t pace accents. Avoid tics and nervous mannerisms that might call attention to what you’re doing. In a matter of beliefs don’t agree with something that violates your cherished principles. There’s usually enough in another persons belief system to align yourself with for the purpose of establishing common ground.

Should you pace resistant behaviour?

Some experts say that you shouldn’t; whilst others say you should pace and then lead the behaviour to become more open.

Also, remember that gestures and postures do not have a universal meaning.



Outcomes of Pacing And Rapport
Pacing creates a harmonious climate for your ideas and suggestions because what you are doing is: accepting the other person. You’re saying (whether literally or figuratively) that you both speak the same language, you’re on the same wave length and you are sharing a common experience. Your acceptance leads to their acceptance of you. Pacing reduces resistance because -- no matter what they do -- you can synchronise, go with the flow and then redirect it. When pacing you’re telling the other person that you’re alike and this creates rapport and with it an atmosphere of trust and credibility.

When pacing someone you also do significant things to and for yourself. Pacing effectively will take the attention off yourself. You don’t have to worry about what to do with your hands or feet, how to sit, how fast to move, at what rate to speak, what level of vocabulary to use and so on. You take the cues from the other person and get in synch with him. When you act like another person, you begin to feel many of that person’s feelings. One advantage of this is that you begin to know intuitively what to suggest and when to make the suggestion.

Pacing is one of the secrets of the power of suggestion.



Summary of Rapport Tutorial
Rapport is a relation marked by harmony, conformity, accord, or affinity. In persuasion, it is important that you are able to establish a strong bond of rapport with the person you want to influence. Pacing may be thought of as holding a mirror up to people so what they see, hear, or feel is consistent with their experience of themselves and their reality. Pacing involves getting into alignment or agreement with the other person and communicating the message “I’m like you, you can trust me, I’m on your side. Pacing, when used effectively enables you to achieve a profound level of empathy with other human beings. Pacing not only has a powerful effect on others, it has a dramatic effect on you. A major objective of pacing is to so closely match the other person’s ongoing experience so that the distinction between what they’re doing and what you’re doing becomes blurred (at the unconscious level). This enables you to successfully lead them into new areas of experience. When you’re in rapport with another person, the next step you take they are likely to follow it.



Suggestions For Practicing Establishing Rapport
1) Many people find that speech rate is the easiest thing to pace initially. Listen to the rate of people’s speech and reproduce it in your conversations with them. After a short while, you’ll find that you can do this without even thinking about it. You find that you are already doing it with people. The aim is to do it without conscious effort, so that it becomes an automatic part of your behaviour, like riding a bike or driving a car.

2) Speaking rates vary considerably. Some people speak slowly, pausing to find the words or phrases. Others speak rapidly and seem to have no trouble at all finding words, the only difficulty they seem to have is in getting the words out quickly enough. If your style is to speak more slowly, you might have difficulty pacing a rapid speaker, but with practice it can be done. You’ll find that your thought processes alter as you change your speech rate. This is one of the most effective ways you’ll ever find to approach another person’s mind. After you’ve become adept at pacing, you’ll begin to notice that you’ve become much more adept at anticipating what the other person is about to say. What happens when this occurs is that you have so attuned yourself to the other person’s way of speaking, thinking, and behaving that you are able to engage in a form of mind reading. The two of you will become one, so to speak.

3)As with any new skill, pacing is something that comes easily after you practice it systematically. It’s a good idea to practice one thing at a time -- mood, body language, rate of speech, and so on. After you become proficient at pacing, you will be able do it without thinking about it. It will come naturally and easily.

4) Every day, practice pacing some aspect of another person’s ongoing experience. Take one thing at a time until it becomes natural and comfortable for you.

5) As you watch television, practice sitting in the same position as someone you’re watching. Notice how your feelings and experience off yourself change as you assume different postures. Talk shows are good for this exercise, because you often have an opportunity to pace several different individuals.