After a doctor's appointment on the Wednesday I remembered why I hate doctor's surgeries. Rude receptionists, appointment's running late (this time 40 minutes), other people staring at you trying to work out why on earth you're there and the worst thing is the people that are clearly sick. I'm talking about the snorting, coughing and spluttering where you can practically hear their lungs fill up with something pretty gross. *Shudder*
Luckily I managed to not catch anything (memo to self to check temperature) and saw the week out by having dinner with a friend at The Boatman and had a nice long walk in the rain today. Turns out that the ducks in Guildford will come to you when you make kissy noises at them.... not too sure what worries me the most. That they will walk towards you or that I chose to make the kissy noises.
Today I would like to share my six favourite NLP presuppositions. Wow sounds exciting right? Well I think so but then I am a nerd.
I mentioned a while ago, albeit briefly, that I am studying a NLP Practioner home study course and slowly but surely I am making my way through it. What I covered today was the 15 NLP presuppositions and at the end of that half of the module they asked us to write down our favourite six and why. I'm not going to write down why I am choosing the six but I will include the six and the explanation behind it.
So here goes:-
1. Respect other people's model of the world.
We all have an internal representation of the world. I say the word 'chocolate' to you and what comes into your head? Do you just see the word? Do you see a brand? Do you see a product? The chocolate itself? Maybe you think of some chocolate you ate and at a particular time. Maybe you even see the Aztecs.
Everyone has different perceptions, beliefs and experiences and it's this rich tapestry of our backgrounds that provide our model of the world and no one's is the same. You don't have to like someone else's model of the world, you don't have to agree with it but you have to understand that this is their model, their interpretation of the world and it's not wrong just because it's not yours. Respect other people's model of the world and you will find you have greater success at understanding where they are coming from.
2. People are not their behaviour.
Ever have a bad day? Ever lost your temper at someone? Last week I got so overwhelmed that I snapped at a colleague and walked off. Completely out of character and not a behaviour that I am proud of. If everyone assumed that I am that behaviour then they would think that I am not a particularly nice person. That would suck. I like to think I am a perfectly nice person just on that day I was tired, overworked and irritable.
I am not that behaviour. Other people that are shit to you are not that behaviour. Again, like everyone's model of the world you don't have to like or agree with the behaviour you just have to understand that the person isn't their behaviour. People might not be able to be changed but behaviour can be.
3. All behaviour has a positive intention.
If this presupposition is in your mind when you interact with others it will change your view on how they are behaving and even on how you are behaving. Even if there is a behaviour you don't like if you think that the intent behind it is positive than you can start to try and understand why someone is behaving that way and also change your own behaviour to it.
4. The most important information about a person at any moment is how someone is behaving.
Essentially not what someone is saying but what they are doing. If someone is sat in front of you sobbing saying that they are ok there is something incongruent going on. It works on more subtler levels as well. Sounds obvious right? You'd be amazed at how something as obvious as this clearly doesn't translate as much as you would think.
5. No failure, only feedback.
So you didn't get the result you wanted? You set out to achieve A and you acheived B? Failure right? Well no. Ok you achieved B but the whole point is you achieved B. If you've achieved anything it isn't a failure but a result. If it isn't the intended result what needs to happen is you need to listen to the feedback, take the unintended result as something to learn from and go back and do it again until you get the intended result.
I guess this one is a case of wash, rinse, repeat. Adjust until it works, this presupposition takes you from affect to cause. Instead of accepting an unintended result as an affect on you, put yourself as the cause of the action and then you become the cause to action.
6. The meaning of the communication is the response you get.
You're talking to someone and they start getting angry with you. Or they start crying. Must mean something is wrong with them. They are really not listening to what you are saying.
Well this one is saying that actually, the meaning of the communication is in their response not what you intended to communicate. If you are getting a response that you didn't think you were going to get you need to do a check on the way you are getting your point across. It isn't the person you are communicating to's responsibility to understand you, it's your responsibility to communicate effectively so that people understand you. If they respond in a way you weren't intending you need to change the way you communicate.
As a personal example I was having a conversation last week with two people tha,t from their perspective, was coming from a good place. During this conversation I started to get upset and reacted in a way that surprised them both. For a while I was thinking, why I am acting like this if they are telling me this feedback is coming from a good place. Actually I understand now that if I was reacting in a way they weren't expecting (which I was by starting to become emotional) then they needed to change the way they were communicating their message.
So there are my six. You may find the information above some of the most interesting information ever or you may think you just wasted 5 minutes of your life. If it's the latter maybe I didn't do my job of communicating to you properly, but hey give me my feedback :)
As a quick aside my squee moment of the week involves this company:-
I was organising my toiletries over the weekend because I have way more than a human being should have and I have a lot from Soap and Glory. So much so they should just hire me to be one of their testers which I would gladly do. I now have my products arranged in a way so that I can actually find things I need and as part of this re-organisation and product finding mission I have started to use a lot of stuff I didn't know I had, including my Soap and Glory items.
My legs are now so smooth that if we had lino instead of carpets in our home I would be happily getting from room to room by sliding on my bum.
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