Michael Breen - Adv NLP Skills - Advanced Language Patterns Transcript PDF

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Tom: Hello everyone, it's Tom here and welcome to this evening's very special
tele-‐seminar entitled 'Advanced Language Suggestions and Thought Viruses'
presented by Master Trainer Michael Breen.

We've got a great session lined up for you. For the next 75 to 90 minutes, Michael
is going to go beyond the traditional mean that circulates in many NLP and
hypnosis circles-‐-‐ which is getting ideas inside people's minds is really all about
saying the so called right language patterns and using “Yes” sets covert
embedded suggestions and stacked presuppositions.

In fact, as you are going to learn today, that's an outdated view and that there are
many more cool ways for ceding suggestions that you can use through
unconscious influence by priming and also using context metaphor and elegant
use of Polya patterns.

So by the end of this event, you can look forward to much improved skills in
terms of language and what you can get with the technology of NLP.

So without further ado, I'd like to welcome Master Trainer Michael Breen on the
call. Michael are you there?

Michael: I'm here Tom. Good evening to everyone from London. Wherever you
are, I hope you are ready. We've got some really cool stuff.

Tom: So Michael, let's start off, we've got a lot to cover in the next 75 to 90
minutes or so. One of the things I thought would be interesting to start off with-‐-‐
what are the major areas that you've seen people traditionally use your approach
when they are using NLP for ceding suggestions or setting up thought viruses?

Michael: Are you talking about the kind of results?


Tom: The kind of results and also in terms of this idea within NLP that it's really
about using stacked pre-‐suppositions and there are certain magical phrases that
people can use and that if they do, they can get amazing results.

Michael: That's a fantastic place to start. One of the things that seems to have
happened over time is that because the language patterns can be quantified, they
can be broken down, you can write them out in a particular way that something
has been overcome which used to be present in training in the early days. And
this is, what are you using those patterns for? In other words, what's the
objective that your use of language is being put too.

When you put the emphasis on the tiny pieces, the components and parts but you
lose the overall sense of direction or overall sense of strategy. Then you end up
with a situation where people spent a lot of take stacking pre-‐suppositions and
learning the half-‐nelson suggestion and arm-‐twisting approaches and all the rest
of that, that they find that they don't get the results.

What we are going to start talking about tonight and also in some of the other
tele-‐seminars is how to get back to what is actually going on in the interaction
with another person. And how to make it so rather then trying to bend
somebody's arm in order to get them to accept a suggestion instead they pick it
up and they go because that's where they want to head…

It's the difference between keeping the emphasis on what you think your doing
and concentrating on the experience that the person or people that you are
talking with, their experience.

Tom: Perfect. And that brings up an important point Michael which we should
set out early on and that's this whole idea that we talk about in NLP, is what's
inside and outside should affect somebody's Meta model.


Michael: And this is an important distinction, especially if somebody who is
listening tonight who hasn't trained with me before.

When we use the meta model, there are a number of different ways that it can be
used. And the way that I teach it and the way that we use it takes the meta model
and puts it back into the cognitive processes that people are using when they are
making sense out of their experience. And this is based in the natural logic-‐-‐ the
unconscious logic of how people stick labels onto things and identifying what
things are. How they compare them with what's going on in their mind at the
moment and also where they are going.

So we talk about what is inside a person's Meta model and what is outside their
Meta model. When I say inside their map, what I mean is, from the words that
they are saying what can be inferred or presupposed must be so given what
they've said.

Outside the Meta model will be those things which cannot be inferred from what
they've said. But if we change the way that we are looking at what they said, it
could be within the domain.

So for example, when somebody says I can't give talks in public, I don't know if
you've heard this kind of thing before but I work in corporations and not a week
goes by when somebody doesn't approach me and say, 'Could you give me a hand
with this? I can't give talks.' What they are inferring is that it's not possible for
them to give talks.

What's inside their map, if I ask the question, what stops you? Is either their
explanation or the sequence of experience that leads them to conclude that they
can't give talks in public.

But that's right there from the language. What's not in their Meta model at that

particular time are all of the conditions where them talking in public might be
possible.

So for example, somebody says they can't give talks in public. But they could give
talks in public to a small group of children who are around them. Talk to kids at a
kids party and tell them what to do, that kind of thing. They are using a
statement that suggests that it is not possible for them-‐-‐ the inference being
under any circumstance. But what's actually the case is that it's a very specific set
of circumstances that causes the problem. Inside the model is what they'll
understand the cause to be. Outside the model are all the other possibilities that
they haven't included.

Why this is important is because when somebody presents you with a limitation
or an obstacle or any statement at all, if someone can make a statement, they
have a way of making that statement. There will have been experiences that
they've had or judgments that they would've made that led to that statement
being the correct statement, the right statement for them to make.

And so when we are asking questions about what is inside, we are getting them
to fill in their Meta model to specify. And that's the more traditional use of the
meta model which is getting people to fill in the blanks. So if somebody says, 'I'm
depressed,' if you follow what it says in chapter four of the Structure of Magic,
then the way that you'd answer that is 'about what?'

Do you get how if you ask somebody for more information about a state they are
in, they have to go deeper into the state in order to give you that information?
Whereas if you point outside of their Meta model, if you ask a question, who says
that you are depressed? Is this just you or does everybody think it?

They don't have that information. They won't have that in their minds. So that's
outside of their Meta model.

The way that we are going to us this later on is when we are talking about things
like ceding ideas or using Polya Patterns and truisms. We need to know or have a
good idea, be able to make a reasonable guess about what's inside that Meta
model before we go open up our mouths or picking out what forms the language
is going to take.

Tom: Exactly. And that brings up two other things that I wanted to highlight at
this early stage to those that haven't joined us on some of the tele-‐seminar series
before.

And that is obviously if you're talking about advanced language patterns and
ceding suggestions, it's in relation to some outcome. Which using your
terminology would be the outputs that one is pursuing.

Can you talk a little bit about that and also about the essential role of being
aware of the pre-‐suppositions and the expectations in terms of the impact your
communication has on somebody else?

Michael: Understand that while we are talking, that this is advanced use of
language. We are not talking here about somebody who is just learning how to
use suggestion or just beginning to work with pre-‐suppositions. The kinds of
things that we are talking about, I would expect some degree of familiarity with
the tools and approaches in NLP.

Nothing happens in NLP without us having a desired state adequately specified.
If you've been on the practitioner course or whatever courses you've been on,
there is usually a page somewhere where they talk about the well formedness
conditions for a goal or an outcome.

What those well formedness conditions are, they are a formalization of the tips,

hints and bits that if somebody has a goal or a notion of direction that they want
to head in that is adequately specified in order to be able to chose the right
approaches, the right tools and to also know when they are done.

If we want to talk about one thing that goes wrong more often then not when
people ask me to coach them and they are used to the tool-‐set, is that they don't
have an adequate representation of the differences that they want to see in the
person that they are working with when they finish compared to when they
start.

That difference between once you are done compared to when you begin, that's
what I call behavioral outputs.

Tom: So let's get the highlighter out because I found this myself is many times
lacking when you are working with somebody who is trying to persuade
somebody or trying to do something-‐-‐ Is they'll say I want the person to be happy
or I want the person to do something for me.

When you are talking about it, you are actually tying it down to something the
person can observe in the world as an actual tangible physical behavior.

Michael: Absolutely. How else are you going to judge or evaluate? On the basis of
how you feel? I tend to know who good trainers are when I ask them how they
know the jobs been done well and how they know if the training has been done
well. The poor trainers are the ones who talk about how great they feel.

You have to have observable criteria, externally focused, in order to be able to
test effectively. And when you are using the tote which is what we put the
desired state into, the comparison between where you are, where you want to
get to and the effect, the feedback, from the methods that you've chosen. Without
that observable external criteria, I have no idea what one is up to.

And that comes in terms of not doing it, what that comes from is people not
pushing their goal states far enough down into specifics. That's a training matter,
that's something that you have to train yourself to do. It's not about attending
more trainings, it's about training yourself to think. To break down the outcomes
into observables. To break the sequences down a little bit further.

Tom: Yeah and if people took just that one process and entrained themselves
with that with their existing language patterns and experience, they could
actually get a lot more mileage.

Michael: A huge amount of mileage because that's essentially what we are doing
with NLP. You might've heard or read that we are acting as human bio-‐feedback
through the process of communication. Without the tote, what are you doing?
How do you know whether you are doing something that is heading into a useful
direction or not? Intuition? You have a feeling that it's going well?

This is one of the reasons why as well in terms of goal setting and the tote-‐-‐ in
the Platinum Audio News Club, that was one of the first things that we put in
because it's the most common thing that people have left out. Even people who
have been on multiple Master Practitioner Trainings, quite often they've got their
head stuffed full of concepts but those foundational things.

When I talk about foundation, foundation does not mean beginner. If we are
talking about construction, the foundation of a building is what transfers the load
from the building above into the earth. The foundation is the thing that allows
you to build high. And if you don't have adequate foundations for the building,
the building falls over.

So foundations are the things that are always there. Strong foundations are what
allow you to build complex and high buildings up above.

Totes, strategies-‐-‐ those are foundational. Without having these foundational
things in place, you are just throwing stuff out in the air and hoping the
techniques or whatever else you are doing are going to act in some kind of-‐-‐ I'll
use the word and then I'll define it-‐-‐ a Procrustean bed. The Procrustean solution
is one which chops the person or the people that it's made for, chops them up in
order to fit the solution. And it comes from Greek myth-‐-‐ the myth of Thesis
where he stops on the road, where there is a little road side hut and the chap
who runs the-‐-‐ he has a kind of road side coffee place and where people can bed
down for the night-‐-‐ his name was Procruste. And what he would do was he
would give the travelers food and then the food would be a drug that knocks
them out. He'd take them to the side room and he'd put them on the bed that was
in the room. If their legs were too long for the bed, he would hack their legs off.
And if their legs were too short, he would put them on a rack and stretch them
out.

So a Procrustean solution is one which destroys the elites, distorts and
generalizes the world in order to make the word try to fit some abstract
conception.

If you want to talk about why things don't work or if people are having trouble
getting something to work using NLP as a Procrustean solution is usually the
source of the problem.

Tom: Cool. Talking about memes Michael, what exactly is a meme and what
function does it serve? And in terms of using your language skills to be able to set
one up?

Michael: There are a few things before we get to that. In order for you to be able
to work it in these subtler ways, the first thing that I want to make sure the
people understand is that the time to start going subtle is not after you've had

the door slammed in your face.

Sometimes when people ask me how they can get an idea into somebody's head
or how they can work conversationally, the example that they give me is a
situation where they just tried to arm twist somebody to do something they
didn't want to do. And then imagining the kind of things that we are talking
about here will act as some kind of magic words in order to suddenly make the
person want to do it. That's not how things work.

A lot of times in the talk about rapport people get stuck at the level of the 'here is
what you do to get rapport. You match people's non-‐verbal behaviour, you match
their tone of voice and their rate of speech etc. And then suddenly, they feel
“rapported”.

But the thing is, is that rapport is not a verb. It's an abstract description of a
process that goes on through relationship and communication. Before we talk
about memes and before we talk about all of the language patterns, the first thing
that I want people to take hold of is this notion that the meme, the ceded ideas,
the suggestions grow within someone's Meta model? They are not something
that you beat somebody over the head from outside with. Before you get to the
notion of placing ideas, before you get to the notion of these more subtle thought
viruses and memes. You have to be inside their Meta model. You are not meeting
somebody at their Meta model of the world. By the time you are ready to start
working, you should already be well inside.

In other words, you have to know how to make somebody right. What makes
whatever behaviour is appearing in front of you that you can recognize that it is
the correct choice for that person to make given the unique characteristics of
their Meta model and their understanding of the world.

You can have lots of change from many people. We have these as NLP pre-‐

suppositions as the kind of assumptions that we use to make the model. But
you've got to operationalize that notion-‐-‐ it's not an abstract generality that
people make the best choices they make given their Meta model of the world. It's
that when somebody tells you something or they have a problem or an issue or a
challenge. However they are formulating that is the right thing for them to think,
feel or say given what's going on on the inside of that map.

And this is one of the factors-‐-‐ stop arm wrestling people. Stop trying to make
them do what you want them to do. If you are having to arm twist or wrestle or
force, you haven't found out what's inside of that map that makes whatever it is
that they are doing the right thing to do. And that takes practice.

Now we've got some tools. We have things like the framing tool and how we
structure the use of the meta model that can help people do that. But the basic
point here is that before we can talk about how we'll be using things like truism,
class of metaphor and most importantly timing in order to make it easier for
people to follow it along, to say yes.

Ultimately, the purpose of rapport and of that process of getting into their Meta
model is to make it so they can say yes to you easily and follow what you are
doing.

So it's from inside the map first. Rather then start with the memes and the
thought viruses and all the other sexy sounding imagistic stuff, let's talk about
what is essential in the process. And that has to do with how ideas will act as
expectations or constraints on what somebody is willing to think about and what
they are willing to recognize.

So there is that phenomenon that works in many different areas. It works
conceptually, in other words over a whole span of ideas. It works at the semantic
level-‐-‐ word for word. It works at the perceptual level.

If we identify or think something is so, we will be more ready to accept or
recognize something that is associated or related to whatever that first thing
was. And let me give an example-‐-‐ if I were going to ask a series of questions and
then put down the speed at which somebody recognizes particular words-‐-‐ if one
of the words was Doctor and then the next word was Nurse, they would be able
to recognize in their brain that word nurse faster then if we put down the word
Doctor and then the second word was Avocado. The relationship with Doctor and
Nurse acts as priming for what comes after it.

Now this works for example at the conceptual level as well. This would've been
in the early 1990s. Here in London, one of the underground train lines, the
Central line, changed its trains. And it used to be that you would have to press a
button on the outside of the door to the left or the right in order to get the door
to open. And on the new trains, they had buttons that were on the center of the
door-‐-‐ more central.

So this was fairly soon after they had made the change to the trains and I was on
the train watching and there was a person there who looked a little bit
distracted-‐-‐ they had gotten onto the train and were absorbed in themselves. The
train got to their stop and they went to press the button on the outside to the
right or the left-‐-‐ they tried to press where the button wasn't, but where it had
been. They were primed in order to look for the button there.

So they went to the right and started pressing where there wasn't a button. Then
they went to the left and started pressing the wall there where there was no
button. Then they started kicking the door and shouting about the what a f***ing
stupid door as the train continued and pulled out of the station they wanted to
get out at.

Their previous experience had setup an expectation of how doors open. And

what they didn't do, was they didn't use their senses.

Now, with this priming, whether it's at the word level or the concept level or at
the perceptual level, we can very very powerfully make it so that somebody's
brain is more ready to hear what has to be said. More ready to accept what's
going to come afterwords. We can even change how somebody feels and we'll
evaluate us afterwords.

It's incredibly powerful. But priming and how we use priming doesn't exist at the
level of technique in the same way when people talk about well I stacked three
pre-‐suppostions, one on top of another and then I hit them with a direction
suggestion.

The priming exists at the topic level and it needs to be spaced out over time. So
consequently, when figuring out what direction you want to head in and what
the behavioural outputs are, then selecting the method that you are going to use.
And then thinking through what kind of states might facilitate using the strategy
and generating the outputs. We can then go ahead and think about how we might
climb.

Let me give you a specific example about how that might work. One of the things
that I do when I have people come over, almost always, is I offer them a drink
before we start. That could be a cup of tea, cup of coffee or whatever they'd like.
There is now evidence that indicates that if you hand somebody a cup of tea or
coffee and give them a procedure of something to follow, upon reflection the
warmth from the coffee seems to affect how they think and feel about what
happened.

This is incredibly powerful and incredibly subtle stuff.

But it's through this priming that we can set things up in such a way that when it

comes time to give the suggestion, whatever our magical phrases are going to be,
that it makes it more likely that the person is going to accept what we have to say
or not.

How is that? Is that clear?

Tom: Yeah, that's fascinating that at a perceptual level, they are getting heat
from the cup that they are holding and without their conscious awareness it
affects how they evaluate the person that they're meeting, in terms of how they
experience that person.

Michael: Absolutely, and I'll give you another example, these are actually at quite
a superficial level, but they have a profound effect. One of the other things that I
will do, and I actually showed this as a demonstration this past weekend, on a
training; always, at the front of the room, no matter what sort of a training you're
using, whether it's in a hotel, whether I'm in the offices of a client, no matter
where it is, I always make sure that there are flowers in the room. I put a bunch
of flowers up on the front table with me so that they're behind me and just next
to me. Preferably a pretty big display, we're talking a couple of feet worth of
flowers. I'm not talking here about taking some little tiny potted mint or herbs
and sticking them on the table. I'm talking big.

So I've got the flowers behind, or a very big fern, and then go ahead and teach.
What I did this past weekend, during a break, I took the flowers away, and put
them into a cupboard and then went back and taught another piece.

On the evaluation, on the de-‐briefing at the end I said, "Okay, how are you feeling
right now?" They went, "We don't know. Something's changed. That last frame
wasn't as good as the other ones. I don't know what it is." I said, "Just notice how
you feel." Then, I walked to the cupboard, got the flowers, stuck them on the
table. Boom! It's back again.

So the object there, affect state in a primary way, and then from that, from the
aesthetic response to that, I would then select various kinds of metaphor; things
about growing and blossoming and seeds and all of those type of metaphors. The
presence of the flowers has an aesthetic effect on people's states and it acts as
priming. That makes the content, then, a little bit easier for them to take in.

A very interesting experiment to try is, if you have meetings in airless, sunless
rooms with nothing alive, besides, purportedly, the people attending, try putting
some plants in, some ferns and whatnot, and notice the difference.

Alright, now those are more conceptual kinds of priming but there's another
phenomena with this, as well. If I were to show you pictures of a hamburger,
fireworks, an American Flag, and then a picture of Abraham Lincoln your brain
would be faster to detect and identify the picture of Abraham Lincoln than if
there was something else there. In other words, that chain or sequence, acts to
set the filters so that you're more ready to take in and connect.

Now, this is mission critical stuff if we're talking about how to move beyond the
use of truism and metaphor as, "Now, I'm going to tell you a story, here are my
three truisms in a row." You see, even though each of the pictures has their own
identity to them, the aggregate, the pile of them, tends to point in a certain
direction and it makes it easy for the person who is looking to draw the inference
to make the next step.

This is where things get really interesting. Because, rather than using truisms
just to stack up a bunch of trivial observations, you're here on the phone, you can
hear what I have to say and you're wondering what the next thing is and you're
going into a trance. That kind of thing, the kind of typical approach to using
truisms.


Now, in terms of how you select stories, yo can use the associations of the
truisms, along with how you tell your anecdotes and stories, in order to create a
state that amplifies, both by the demonstration that you offer and by the
inferences from the class of metaphor.

An example of that is, I think that I did it on the Platinum Audio News Club, and I
might have told it somewhere else, but it's a story that fits within a much bigger
piece, where I'm talking about learning to hear. what it is that isn't said. In other
words, learning to listen structurally, for what must be so and what can't be so.

So I tell this little story about a fellow that I know, and his kids, and I've known
his kids since they were tiny and the youngest child was 14 years old, and I was
there one day, at their house, and I was waiting for my friend to finish something.
The kid comes in. His name was Issac and he was just coming back from school
and I said, "Hey, Issac. How are yo doing?" He, as 14-‐year-‐olds are one to say, he
said, "Uh." I said, "What's up, man?" He said, "Uh." I said, "Issac, come on. What is
it?" He said, "Nobody likes me, nobody talks to me. Nobody likes me, and nobody
talks to me."

Pretty much anybody can see that there is something wrong with that statement.
Although, Issac might feel like nobody likes him, because, and that's kind in
parentheses, because nobody talks to him. What is the flaw with that, as a
statement?

Tom: That it's universal.

Michael: That it's everybody, but what's the problem?

Tom: Obviously, you're liking him, Michael.

Michael: I'm talking to him, right then and there. So, in other words, my

communication with him is not part of the map. So he says, "Nobody likes me and
nobody talks to me." So I said, "Well, I'm talking to you and I like you." What do
you think he said?

Tom: You're not important?

Michael: Well, he said, "You don't count."

Tom: [laughter]

Michael: So, what's the obvious next question?

Tom: Who does?

Michael: Who does count? Now, here's the thing; so he took a moment, he took a
beat, and he said, "The kids at school."

Now, here's the thing; the kids at school. "The kids," we have a non-‐referring
noun phrase, "The kids at school," more non-‐referring noun phrase. This is an
example of a pseudo-‐communication. There seems to be a communication going
on there, but there's actually nothing being said.

So, I could either follow the direction and say, "Well, which kids, specifically, are
we talking about please? Fill in the inside of your map for me, in detail, so that we
can have a conversation." Instead, I did something kind of clever, actually I was
having a good time just thinking about it. There were two things that came to my
mind while he was talking, two events that had happened, two little dots that
connected up with a third dot and gave me a wicked idea.

So, the first thing that had happened was that he had started, quite recently to
begin to take showers, but without having to be threatened to within an inch of

his life to take them. He would just take a shower each day, and not a problem.
He was combing his hair and trying the experiments with the shaving, even
though he really didn't have much of anything to shave off. So there's one thing.
Then another thing, and he did this and he almost killed his mother; he asked her
how to iron a shirt.

[laughter] So he started taking showers and how to iron a shirt and the very next
thing that I thought, given what he had said, was, well, you know, I could have
been wrong. Here's the thing, I could have been wrong. I could have said
something. There's lots of different ways to chop up kids at school. He could have
been bullied or it could be the kids in the senior class, or lots of different ways. It
could have been boys, it could have been girls, it could have been, who knows,
but I just thought that I would take the risk. I would make the leap.

So, I looked him right in the eye and I said, "What's her name?" I got the most
incredible response; he went red, then purple, then red again, then kind of a
green color. It was amazing hitting the target like that. I could have been wrong,
right? It could have been boys, right? It could have been a boy. It could have been
a completely different situation, and if I were wrong he would have corrected
me. "What's her name?"

He told me and I'm just looking at him and he's now flushed. Now we have the
real problem, the real issue. It's not that nobody likes him, because nobody will
talk to him. It's that this girl doesn't talk to him, so he thinks that she doesn't like
him.

Then, I did the meanest thing that you can do to anybody in the universe. Do you
know what that is? If you can apply their rules to them.

So I said, "Well, have you spoken with her?" He said, "No!" I said, "Well, first of all,
don't you think it's a good idea that you speak with her before you get married?

The second thing is maybe she thinks that you don't..." and I just let it hang.

He sat back in his chair, and his eyes de-‐focused, count of 1-‐2-‐3 and then it was
kind of like the machine came back to life, and his eyes flicked off to the left. Then
they flicked up to the right. Then he started turning his head a little bit from side
to side and he looked at me and he said, "Can I?" I said, "It would be a good idea,
before you get married, because she could be a total jerk."

Anyway, I'm sorry, what were we talking about? Yes, we were talking about
giving examples and priming. Now, I had already primed the bits for that story in
our previous comments and what we did there, did you notice that at certain
points I was going into a sentence fragment and then just leaving space?

Tom: Uh-‐huh.

Michael: Also, asking questions, which I was about to answer, and then you fill in
the blanks, yeah?

Tom: Yeah.

Michael: This is one of the ways that you could get people to take the ideas on,
where, even though I'm telling the story, you're filling in the blanks, following the
inferences and filling in those gaps. Most people already figure out, because I'm
really laying it on with the trowel and putting in these big pauses in the time.

Well, he started taking showers all by himself. Because people can connect the
dots in that way. So what happens is, rather than me explaining about how
inferences work, and the number of examples, and how a Napoleon pattern is
set-‐up, what we've created there is an example where the people who listen are
able to lead the head, and to draw the conclusions for themselves.


If I use this story, there's a couple of other stories that are from the same
category or class that I'll use before I teach the meta-‐model, and before I teach
certain patterns in the meta-‐model. So what happens is that by the time we get to
it they've already had 5, 6, 7 examples of them figuring out which is the right
pattern to use and I don't have to write it on the board and stick it out. The
important point there is that, because we've got the process to, it's called
'instanciation', making the connection between an abstract output and a specific
example. In other words, by doing it, and by the time we've done it 3 or 4 or 5 or
7 times, by the time we get to it, it's an explicit communication. It's dead easy.

Tom: It's pretty amazing, in terms of just there, and just recapping, there isn't
any major truisms going on, in terms of "yes sets" and various other bits and
pieces and the conventional tools that people usually think about.

Michael: I've already used the "yes sets" and conventional things. It's just that
we were talking about other stuff. See, this is actually one of the paradoxes or
dilemmas or subtle humor in the situation. When you teach, or when you're
working with somebody, you should be demonstrating what you're talking about
while you're doing it. That acts as priming, and if you do it enough and if you get
the sequence of activities in the right order, it will make what comes afterwards,
in terms of; how you request compliance, how you ask them to follow you, what
you ask them to do; it will make it much, much easier.

Even when it's pointed out, people will sometimes miss it. So I know, Tom,
you've seen me, and if anybody else has seen me doing a workshop, I sometimes
pull out an imaginary five-‐foot-‐long fluorescent, neon, yellow, highlighting
marker and with that imaginary marker I will highlight statements and
sentences, in order to show where the pieces are. Because that's a good way to
do it. You work with a transcript, you write the transcript down and then use a
highlighting marker and a pen.


Even so, because people are looking for something else, they're looking in the
wrong place for what it is that isn't there, and sometimes they miss what is
obvious and what is there. Have we heard that before, Tom?

Tom: Yes, we have, earlier in our call.

Michael: Yeah! What? You mean I don't just rattle off stories and anecdotes
because they're troancy and conversational? It all hooks up. That's one of the
things that makes it possible for people to recognize and take the next... You
know?

Tom: Exactly.

Michael: [laughter] That's reverse mind-‐reading, by the way, reverse mind-‐
reading. I set up the pattern several times and, going with the sentence fragment,
you filled in the blank. Then, in order to create an instance of something that I'm
talking about, I just left that space there and let you finish it. This is how you take
the next... Yeah?

Tom: Exactly, yeah. The cool thing is, when you're doing that, obviously that's
another instance of instanciating whatever it is that you're looking to prime or
position, in terms of somebody's mind.

Michael: Doing what you're talking about while you're doing it.

Tom: Cool!

Michael: Cool! It's very straight-‐forward. This is the other thing, it's very
straight-‐forward but you have to have the other bits of the technology in hand.

It's not like a technique or a Procrustean bed, going back to earlier metaphors.

It's not a Procrustean bed, where you come up with some magic words and then
blame the client if they don't react.

Ericsson said, he was asked on a regular basis about what to do if the client
doesn't respond or react to a particular suggestion-‐-‐ and he always said, "I really
don't care if somebody responds or reacts to any particular suggestion."

It's the pattern overall. The word programming in NLP, I think leads people the
wrong way. Human beings are not machines. It's not like the old rock band joke.
When I was younger playing music, there were jokes from all the musical
instruments. And so the joke about drummers was, "What's the difference
between a drummer and a drum machine? You only have to punch your
instructions into a drum machine once."

People aren't like that. We don't punch our instructions into them and then they
respond. It's a dance and the significance is, and the place in which the work
occurs is inside the mind and inside the body of the people that we are talking
with.

We use the tools in order to change our behaviour in response to the feedback
that we are getting.

OK, let's talk a little bit about Polya. Because with priming, what the priming
does is it takes the stimulus from one point and it makes it more likely that
another stimulus at a future point is going to be recognized, observed, picked-‐up
etc.

Polya, because he was working in a completely different area and at a different
time, the psychologists haven't yet made the link but the basic Polya pattern-‐-‐ for
those who haven't heard the name before, George Polya was a famous
mathematician and he wrote a wonderful little book for school kids called "How

to Solve It," which was a little book on theorists, theoristic problem-‐solving for
math. His hobby, you know, he was one of these guys that loved math and loved
everything about it, and he would read the history of math and mathematician's
autobiographies and he became fascinated by the decision-‐making process that
mathematicians would go through, but particularly how they would make the
apparently magical leaps of logic, in order to reach some new principle, some
new whatever it was.

So he ended up writing two books; Patterns of Plausible Inference, and they are
about how mathematicians formulate generalizations and how they make leaps.
He illustrated a number of patterns, things that are present around how
plausible inferences are drawn, but there was a basic pattern behind them all,
and the basic pattern is; if something can be demonstrated or proven to be so
and what follows after it is also plausible or can be demonstrated to be so, and if
what comes from that is an inference that's plausible, then it makes the
increasing examples that are given seem more and more plausible. Plausibility is
built on the presumption of plausibility.

This is where, again, we're going to draw that distinction between using "yes
sets" as a mechanical trick that you pull on people to make them more likely to
say, "Yes," and into how we're going to use ideas and components and pieces
from within somebody's map or model, in order to increase the plausibility, the
credibility, for the suggestions and ideas that we're going to be giving. The idea
for the Polya patterns is quite simple. How you practice it and use it, it really
does all come down to practice.

Most people, when they learn truisms, learn them as either cliches or really big
statements, things that you wouldn't in your right mind try and challenge. Those
are things like cliches. Those are things like, "Well, it never rains but it pours," or
statements that can be validated immediately through the senses by the people
who are watching or listening. So, those of you who are listening to me here o the

call, there's an example of a truism. You could validat e Ericksonian
communication or hypnosis, one learns to put one of these and then another, and
then another and then just slide in a little presupposition at the end. So, let's say
you do five truisms in a row, and then one presupposition. Then, your next
whack at communication has four truisms followed by two pre-‐suppositions.
Then, three truisms, etc., Learning how to move back and forth between the two,
but this is something different.

This is where we're going to use other people's experience and what can be
inferred or concluded from what's inside the map or model, in order to create
examples and anecdotes and stories that will be very easy for them to situate
within their own experience. So, let me give you an example, the typical truism,
at the beginning of a trance session or at the beginning of a workshop.

So, you're sitting there in the chair and you're listening to the sound of my voice
and you're wondering what the experience of trance might be like. As you listen
and continue listening, you might become aware of certain sensations, and so it
goes, and it rolls and it rolls.

I want to tell you about a training that I was asked to do for one of the big four
consultancies, and I was asked to work with a specific population within the
organization. These people, they had been hired from other companies, after
they had retired. Basically, what this consultancy was attempting to do was to
use very successful business people, people that had long careers, very
successful careers as consultants. Very smart, it was a very clever idea. The only
challenge that they had was that these people were used to being the ones to give
orders and they weren't used to being consultants and having to ask the
questions, probe in a sensitive way, etc., and the other thing that they had
forgotten, if they ever had it, was how to ask for the business.

In other words, they were perfectly happy to tell somebody else what was

wrong. They were perfectly happy to give them advice, but they couldn't sell
their services, which of course made them practically useless. If you're a
consultant, if you're a coach, if you're a trainer, if you're anything, you're going to
be involved in sales at some point.

So they had tried in various ways, bringing in a variety of consultants and
trainers and other people to teach them about selling, and they had gotten very
bad results. So, I was invited in, and I was told to conduct a program with them
on influence for senior executives and senior consultants.

Here's what the Director of Training and Chief Executive said to me, I was called
into a meeting and I was told, "We just thought you should know, that this group
has eaten up and spit out more external consultants than you an imagine." This is
them trying to make me comfortable. I don't know. So I said, "So, you're telling
me this, why?" They said, "We just wanted you to be prepared..." For what?! For
being frog marched out of the building?"

I thanked them for their concern and I said, "I think you're going to be surprised.
I think you're going to be really surprised at how smoothly this is going to run."
The head of HR and the Chief Executive looked at each other and they looked at
me and they said, "Well, we admire your optimism, but we'll see."

So I went in the morning, but before I went in I had a think and I thought
through, "Alright, we've got a group of senior executives. These are people that
had long careers and they've been very successful. They're now consultants and
they now have to be taught how to persuade, influence and sell." So my question
was, "What would make chewing up and spitting out," their words, "an external
consultant the right thing to do? What would make it the necessary thing to do?"
Do you understand?

Rather than making them wrong, even though it is rude, even though I wouldn't

want to experience it, rather than making them wrong, "What would make that
the right choice?" I would be willing to bet that you could come up with a whole
big list of possibilities, even if you don't work in an organization. What's one
thing, Tom? What's one possibility that would make chewing up and spitting out
somebody the right thing to do?

Tom: Well, whoever the previous people were, that came in to do stuff with
them, came across as know-‐it-‐all or didn't treat them in the way that they
perceived they should be treated, given their seniority and experience, etc.

Michael: Absolutely! Perhaps they were patronized. Perhaps they thought that
there was nothing for them to learn. Perhaps it was just the perception of
arrogance. What else? There are lots of possibilities.

Tom: That they thought that it was a waste of time. That they actually felt
offended in the first instance, that they were even asked to be in the room.

Michael: They could, exactly, it may have nothing to do with the person who
comes in. It may be a political matter. There's lots and lots of possibilities, but it
was from those possibilities that I had a think.

Okay, so I'm thinking, "Class of metaphor." I'm thinking, "Statements that they
can recognize as being true." I'm thinking about inference and I"m thinking about
building up a pattern, using that pattern of, "If this is so, then it makes the next
one more likely to be so."

So, I went in the morning, and the director of personnel met me at the door and
went to the Chief Executive's Office, they looked a little nervous. They said, "How
are you?" I said, "I'm looking forward to a really great day." They said, "Well,
okay, alright. We'll take you down to the room."


Now, this office that they were in had wood paneling in the hallways and it was a
very long hallway. So, we're walking down this hallway, three abreast. I'm in the
center and they're on either side, like taking the guy to the execution. At the end
of the hallway there was door that was open and we could hear a lot of laughter
coming from the room. They sounded like a pretty lively bunch and they sounded
like they were good fun, but basically as soon as we got to the room they all went
silent in an instant.

They came in and the Chief Executive said, "Good morning people. This is
Michael Green, we asked him to come in and do this," and while that's going on,
I'm watching the group. You could see that they were just un-‐naturally still.
There wasn't a lot of movement. There wasn't a lot of breathing going on. I
thought to myself, "Hm, so then the head of HR made a few comments and they
made their way to the door.

In the door there were those little tiny square windows that they usually put
three or four of in a row so that you can look into a room without disturbing
what's going on in the room. So they closed the door and then they were hanging
out there. So, I said, "Good morning, everyone. My name is Michael Greene," and I
looked at the response and it was not good. i looked at the door and the two
faces. There were two little faces, of the Chief Executive and the Director of
Training. They were looking in through the door. I went, "Scat! Go! Sorry."

I said, "Before we begin the program for today, there's a few things that I think
need to be acknowledged. First and foremost, each and every person who is in
this room is here for a reason. Each one of you is here because you are incredibly
successful. in the work that you did. There's the expectation that you will be
incredibly successful in the job that you're doing now. It's important that you
understand that, first of all, there is nothing that I can teach you about how to do
your job better. You are the experts on your own job. Further than that, I think
that it's also important to recognize that, let's put it this way, there's a few more

notches on your gun holsters, most of you in this room, than I've got. You've got
more business experience than I could ever have," and while this is going on, as
I'm talking, I noticed that they started to relax, they started to breathe, they
started to get a few head nods.

So I carried on and I said, "Whilst I've got nothing to teach you about business or
about consultancy or about how to do it, what I do have, that you may or may not
be aware of, is some recent research around influencing people. In particular,
influencing people in senior positions. So, what I was thinking was that, over the
next couple of days, we would go through some of this, try some experiments, let
you have a look at the data and then you guys can make up your own minds
about what to do with it."

Then, I walked to the board and I picked up a marker. I was going to begin to
write the agenda, but I just stopped in the middle and I turned to them, and
there's one more thing; it is very important that you understand that I've already
been paid for this work we're about to go through. So it doesn't matter to me
whether we have the worst, most sullen time or whether we make this into the
most kick-‐ass, enjoyable experience you've ever had. The choice is up to you.
What do you think?"

This one chap, who looked like a ring-‐leader, he undid his tie a little bit, took his
jacket off, everybody started to chatter back and forth, and I went, "Oh boy! I've
got a live bunch here." So I said, "Right! I'll tell you what. Let me just take you
through the agenda here. I want to show you what I've been thinking and then
you can tell me if there's anything we need to add or anything we need to take
away. How's that? Excellent!"

So off we went. Do you know what? This wasn't a group of mean, dinosaur
external consultants chewing up people. This was a bunch of pussycats. We had a
fantastic time. All I did was, by starting to talk from within what was true and

what they already knew, and then built out from there, it was phenomenal, and
excellent time.

Basically, at lunchtime the two little faces appeared at the door, and we were
laughing and having a great time and I waved them in. They came in and they
just stood there and the Training Director's mouth just hung open and the Chief
Executive looked and he kind of went, "What's going on?" We laughed and I let
them go for lunch. He took them all out for lunch.

At the end of the day, after the day was over, the Chief Executive said, "Can I have
a word with you for a moment?" He said, "I had lunch with those people. What
did you do to them?" I said, "I didn't do anything to them. I just leveled with them
and I talked to them and gave them the respect that they deserved." Whereas,
actually what I did was listen. I went into their world view, their map or model,
and built up from there.

The bottom line on that one, which is really funny, the Chief Executive was
looking at me kind of doubtfully and he said, "They looked like you were all going
to take a house by the sea to get there." [laughter] I think that's one of the best
compliments that I was ever given.

Anyway, sorry, yes. We were talking about Polya and truisms.

Now, here's the thing; when you climb inside the world view and you talk from
within the world view, it's not patronizing. You need to get over this notion that
there's an outside and there's an inside. You're not using the royal "we". You're
not using, "I'm the expert talking to you about..." The truisms, so far as you use
them, have to be valid and true constructions, but they have to be true from
within the people or the person that you're speaking with's Meta model. That
may mean, for example, if you don't know them very well, being a little bit looser,
in terms of the construction. I had some information that I was able to do some

calculations and hypothesizing about. If it's somebody that you don't know that
well then you might have to use more general considerations but what you can
then do, within that, is you can then start to seed ideas for what's to come later
on, and then we can start to get to what I call "the thought viruses" or what you
call "the memes". So do you have any questions so far?

Tom: One that is a pattern that I noticed is the way that you shift between, when
you're, for example, priming and using truisms and various other aspects, is that
sometimes you'll say it directly, in terms of to them, and other times you're using
stories. So you're telling it within a story. "Is there a purpose behind that?" is the
question.

Michael: I'm going to hit it at every level, and I'm also going to switch the
referential index right in the middle of the sentence. Do you know what I mean?
I'm going to hit it from every direction. I'm going to put it in the first person, as a
narrative for me. In the middle of that I will switch it over into a third person
narrative. I will go to the side and ask them to find an example, "Have you ever
had something like that happen?" and collect it up, and build it into one state
overall.

Now, things that can help you are, for example, to get that recognition, that
priming experience, to work for you is keeping your metaphors within either one
or a few related classes of metaphor. So I was talking about things like notches
on your gun belt. I was talking about things like aiming for. I was talking about
things like shooting at, in order to use this notion of "business is war" and I
basically treated them as veterans, rather than as school kids.

What that does is it makes it a little bit easier, as we got through and I change the
stories and change the direction for people to connect up with what's heard. The
other thing is that, if you think through the classes of metaphor that you're using,
it makes it easier, in terms of your selection of sensory predicates and time and

space predicates, which are how we think about time and space, but also how we,
and where we establish certain sub-‐modalities, thing like; location, distance, etc.

You see, your words elicit responses, and quite often they'll elicit visual
responses for visual predicates, auditory responses for auditory predicates, etc.,
but more important is, rather than just getting them to make a picture, what's
more important is for them to have the feeling that they can recognize what it is
that you're talking about.

Michael: In their mind, as you're saying that, when you're describing going into
the room and being three abreast and the door at the end, and all of that, those,
to me, as I listen, and I'm sure for everyone else listening, I was in the experience,
I was there, associated, looking at the door and feeling the feelings that were
going on.

Tom: Absolutely! That's the idea. That's what we're creating there. Now, when
we're talking about getting ideas to stick, and particularly ones that have these
qualities of the "meme" quality, a "meme" is like an anchor that's attached to a
thought which creates an affect, in other words, a feeling experience that's self-‐
reinforcing and that also tends to spread and go from place to place.

I sat down earlier this year, I was thinking about, there's this little frame that I
teach, and I'm using a bit of martial arts and a bit of this and a bit of that in order
to make a learning up about all kinds of stuff, including anchoring, including
focus, including what you do with your awareness, intention, the whole lot. In it,
there is a kind of anchor phrase. It's more like a tagline or an easily recognized
line, and when I'm doing a demonstration with somebody I'll comment on them
and I'll say, "Strong like bull," and there's a certain gesture that goes with it as
well.

A few years ago I was watching an interview on television and it was Sandra

Bullock and Sandra Bernhard were being interviewed by somebody, and they
were talking about some film they were in, and they were going back to the
experience that they had of making it, and they both at the same time went,
"Strong like bull." Now, I first started teaching this in 1985 and my first kind of
exposure to that punchline, I guess there are other people who have been
stealing my act, because I taught it to 26 thousand people. We know, from the
Mckenna-‐Breen that there were 24,000 and then on top of that there were
probably another couple of thousand.

Anyway, point being, that line and that gesture has jumped from place to place.
I've never trained Sandra Bernhard or Sandra Bullock, but somehow that phrase
and that idea and the demonstration that goes with it, was powerful enough to
make the jump from place to place to place. Now here's the thing; if anybody else
claims to have invented that, or written the line, ask them where the line, "Strong
like bull," came from. I'll just tip you a little hint, it's only one half of the phrase.

So anyway, it's pride of authorship. Do you know what I'm saying? It's pride of
authorship. Now, those kinds of ideas, those kinds of anchors, aren't that difficult
to instanciate. One of the things that I will teach, for example, if I'm teaching
consultants, and I'm teaching, even coaches I'll teach this to, there's so much
material about building relationships with clients, about developing rapport,
about how you influence, and how you make it so that you're state is attractive
enough for other people to make you follow-‐able. There's lots and lots of
material and lots and lots of exercises. Which means that it's harder and more
likely that people won't actually do the practice that they need to do in order to
be able to become skilled at all of those different bits and places, but there's one
thing that you can do, which, if you do it consistently and you do it over time, it
influences how you approach every situation. It influences what you bring into
situations and it also influences how you respond to other people. I call it "5%".

No matter what the situation is, whether it's one person or whether it's 10,000

people in a space, whether it's when you go into work, into a meeting, whether
it's at home, whether it's with your kids or with your family, the rule is; bring 5%
more energy, intensity, humor. Even if such a thing is possible, I don't know, 5%
more listening, 5% more compassion, 5% more anything that you care to notice
that's going on in the room, bring 5% more than what's going on and keep your
contribution to the event at 5% above. It's not a competition, nor is it a
technique, as such, it's a direction that you want to head in, 5%.

If you want to develop your charisma, 5% more volume, 5% larger gestures, 5%
greater intensity around what you're talking about than what's going on in the
room. Just 5%. If you're running a meeting, just 5% more. If you've got kids
around, bring 5% more awareness, 5% more enjoyment to the process, 5%
more, and keep that level up.

Do this and, over time, what will happen is that; a) you will have developed the
muscle, the "energetic muscle" if you will, to be able to bring more and more, and
thus able to fulfill success principle number one, which is; if you want to succeed,
you've got to show up.

It amazes me that people will go to events, go to meetings, go to situations, they'll
hold a coaching session, and they don't actually show up. If you want somebody
to follow you, you've got to be follow-‐able. If you want somebody to follow,
you've got to be interesting enough, attractive enough, have enough energy for
them to know which way to go, that 5% solution, that 5%.

That one chap, he brought a little square block of post-‐it notes. What are they?
Two inches by two inches by two and half inches, and he just wrote 5% in big
marker on them and he sticks them up everywhere to remind him. Five percent
note on the computer, five percent note on the fridge. Five percent less, in that
instance, 5%. Five percent.


Curiously enough, it doesn't tire you out. Interestingly enough, it energizes. It's
one of the coolest things, and it's one of the most effective ways. Do that for a
week and notice the differences. What will start to happen is, not only will you be
more charismatic, listen more, you'll notice more. Funny old world, your stories
will be more interesting. Your metaphors will be more interesting. You'll have
more stuff to bring forward, which leads me on to talking about cooking.

[laughter] I'm sorry. Brain slip. Do you have any questions about what came
before?

Tom: First question is from Praveen in India.

Michael: Praveen in India. Hello, Praveen.

Tom: Can a complete piece of change work, for example, curing phobias, be done
using just language patterns, or are there limitations to what's possible?"

Michael: What a lovely question, and the presuppositions in the question are
very interesting. When you say, "A complete piece of change work," do you mean,
somebody doing something different? It happens all of the time. Language
doesn't exist separate from all of the other parts of the communication and
conversation. The simple answer to your question is; yes, but you may not have
enough representations to be able to see how that's possible. I'll give you a
couple of examples, quickly. What did she say was the whole piece of work?

Tom: In this case, the example was in relation to curing phobias. Can it be done?

Michael: Oh, curing phobias. Okay, keep in mind that phobias are not a disease
and so, therefore, they are not cured. Phobias are an example of a one-‐trial
learning, and that's a situation where only one experience, an intense enough
experience of the body creating a fight or flight to the normally not dangerous

stimulus, in order for the pattern to be set up, but absolutely! Just using
language, and even in the short space of time.

1995, I took part in a documentary on the secrets of hypnosis and I did three
demonstrations on camera for how phobias can be removed, and one of them I
did with a fairly conventional NLP style phobia removal. One of them I did with
an unusual kind of priming language approach, but it was the third one, the one
with the, what was her name? Julia, and she was travel agent, of all things. She
was terrified of flying and hadn't been on a flight without being sedated or drunk
in her entire life, and she wasn't able to take her daughters to Disneyworld and
she wanted to go to a friend's wedding following Spring and wasn't able to say,
"Yes," and wanted to get rid of her fear.

So, basically, I met Julia during the selection process and then I met her once for
about 20 minutes, and this experience was the time when I acquired my phobia
of documentary makers. Because they just did horrible things to the people who
were involved, because it had to be televisual. So, what do you do if somebody
says that they're afraid of flying? How do you make that televisual?

Tom: Get them in the plane, terrorize them.

Michael: Right, you terrorize them. So what they did was they told her to bring
her passport and an overnight bag to Heathrow at a certain time and I would be
waiting there. Basically, what they did was they took her and they walked her
through customs and the security process and got her to gauge her fear on a
scale of zero to ten and, of course, it was at 1001. [laughter] Okay, great.

So, anyway, it was the end of January when we did the work. We were taken out
to RAF Lyneham, which is an Air Force base in England, and it was cold and it
was raining and there was a small break in the dorming. They were going to, as a
test, to show that she had gotten over her phobia, they were going to take us up

in a Hercules, which is a warehouse with wings, and they were going to open the
back door.

See, I don't think that's a great measure for how well somebody has gotten over
their fear of flying.

Tom: For many people, I think they might be afraid, even if they were
comfortable flyers.

Michael: Hell, I didn't even know what it was before I got in there, and I was
afraid. I had to do the work that I did with her in my own head. So, anyway, the
way that they said it was going to work was; they were going to out and set up
some cameras, shoot some shots, and I was going to have an hour or two to do
the work, and then we were going to take the plane up and we were going to
shoot the test of the work.

We had just been shown into this little side room, when the Director came in and
said, "Guys, we have to be ready to go in less than 15 minutes. The clouds are
coming in and they're going to cancel all of the flights for the day, so we have to
leave really soon." I said, "Okay, well I'll be done in a couple of minutes. What
should we do with the extra time?" He looked at me like I was nuts. I just sat
down with the woman, her name was Julia, and I said, "Okay, Julia. Tell me why
you want to do this." First step, right, motivation; why do you want to do this?
She told me about the daughters again, told me about the friend's wedding, and
then I said, "Okay, wouldn't it be terrible if the girls, as they got older, were never
able to go on a holiday with mum, going to Disneyworld because mum wouldn't
get over her problem?"

So, we're talking like this for a few minutes and she's going, "Let's just get rid of
it, shall we? Please." That's called motivation. In other words, get her to say, "I
don't care, let's just do it." I said, "How do you want it to be? What do you want it

to be like?" She said, "It would be great if it were just like going to Tesco on a
Saturday afternoon."

[laughter] Flying a plane like going to Tescos, whatever. So, we're having this
conversation. I asked her what it was like going to Tescos, the kind of things that
she thought about, etc., etc. I said, "You know, its kind of interesting. I wonder
what it would be like if you're sitting there on the plane, you're thinking about
exactly those things that you told me about when you're going to Tescos, which
is; what we're going to cook this weekend, the kinds of things we're going to do,
what kind of things have to be picked up. You're getting on the plane thinking
about where you're going and what you're going to be doing. You put the seat-‐
belt on," and basically what I had her do was I had her create an associated
representation, through the stories, all in, "Wouldn't it be wild if," and, "I wonder
what would happen," without actually saying, "Now, make a picture of what it's
like when you're driving to Tescos." Instead, it was all just conversational and
hypotheticals, "Look at it this way; wouldn't it be cool if you just think about it
exactly like you do?" I just did the work conversationally with her, and covertly.

I then did two more tiny little things with her, just to make sure that I would
have a way to bring her out if she went inside and freaked. Then, finally, I said,
"Alright, so who's going to be the first person that you're going to call when we
touch down and you've been successful?" She said, "Oh, I've got to call my
husband. He doesn't think that I'm going to be able to do it." I said, "What a
schmuck. Have you made a bet with him?"

So, we're talking and they kind of collect us and we're kind of still talking as
we're walking out to the plane, and I'm just going through all of the possibilities
of this stuff; people are dumb, they try and talk you out of, if you felt good or
made a change, they talk you out of it, we're talking through all of these things as
we're going. There's been no hypnosis, there's been no technique. It's just a
conversation. It took less than ten minutes. We were just chatting and walking

out to the plane.

Suddenly, this plane just loomed up over me. This thing was like stories high.
This was like 3 stories high, this plane. It was like a giant warehouse, and you
climb into it and there's no seats in it. They put us on either side of the plane and
we were quite far away and we were sitting on this tiny little wooden bench, and
they pulled down this kind of nylon webbing around us.

Then, on to my flight jacket, they put a nylon cord, and then hooked it to a wire
that was threaded to the top of the plane, and they switched on the engines and I
couldn't hear a damn thing. I put on a helmet, and now we're talking through
headphones, and they were explaining what we would have to do if I wanted to
talk to Julia or if I wanted to talk to the Director. Then, the flight controller said,
"Please look up above your head. Please ensure that the cord that's attached to
your jacket is hooked to the wire there because when we open the back door,
that's going to be the only thing keeping you in." At that point, this little voice in
the back of my head went, "Oh shit! This is dangerous." See, that's not the kind of
thing you want to say in the middle of the experience, in which you're pointing
your mind in that direction. So, anyway, I'm looking over at Julia and she's just
fine. She's just fine, same non-‐verbal as when she was talking about going to
Tescos on a Saturday. I'm having kittens. I'm looking at the director on the other
side, and he's just looking forward to getting up in the air.

I just noticed the time. There's more to that story. [laughter] It's just language.
It's do just through talking. By the way, that took ten minutes. The actual work
itself took ten minutes.

Another occasion, now here's another example, a different one. On another
occasion, I infrequently will teach people how to do hypnotic process without
trance, without trance ritual. We had about 60 people in the course, one of whom
was a woman who was a hypnotherapist, who had worked as a nurse in the NHS

for years and years, was a senior nurse, had been the negotiator for her trade
union, was just a little fireball. Just recently retired, and she had a fear of spiders.
Now, she had tried all kinds of stuff. She had tried hypnosis. She tried the phobia
cure with somebody else. This is the point; it's not the techniques [empty]
person does in their head.

So she insisted that there was nobody else who could talk with her except me,
and I was trying to keep my eye on the rest of the group. So two assistants
marched her up and I asked what the situation was. She said, "You're the only
one who can do it." I said, "I'm not going to do it. You're going to have to tell me.
What do you do for a living? How long have you done this spider phobia thing?
Where do you live? Who do you live with? Do you have family?" While she's
talking, she's doing it all in the same tone of voice, all with the same non-‐verbals,
all just sounding terrified because there was going to be a Chilean rose tarantula
in a few minutes, and even the idea of it, she found to be terrifying.

We don't sort of turn one loose, by the way, that's not how it's done. I have an
animal handler, somebody who gives animals for films. So we have a stunt
spider, a people spider, a film actress who is a spider.

So, anyway, we're chatting and she says she's married, she's been married for X
amount of time, she's got a son, she's got a granddaughter called April. When she
talks about April, suddenly her whole state changes, just the whole thing, in one
go she changes. I went, "Right, grandmother." [silence] Very, very much available
for leverage.

So, as time was short, all I said to her was, "Oh, my goodness. It sounds like you
love April very much. [noise] Does she follow you?" "Yes, she does everything
that I do and we have the best time together." [noise] "You care about what
happens to her?" [noise] "'Wouldn't it be terrible if, in addition to the family
recipes, and the stories that you tell, and all of the wonderful things you've done

together, what if, in addition to all of that, you also passed on, by demonstration,
this fear of spiders to April?"

She started to tear up and her lower lip started to tremor, and I said, "Oh, boy.
What if, inadvertently, April passed that on to her children, just by
demonstration, or worse, her grandchildren?" At which point, this woman, she
pulls herself up and she says, "Where's that goddamn spider?"

[laughter] She was going to push me out of the way, right? Basically, when the
motivation is there, people will do things. I said, "Hold on a minute! You're going
to kill the spider. She's an actress. She's a stunt spider. She's a people spider. You
have to be gentle."

So I showed her what she would have to do and how she would have to handle
the spider and then I said, "Okay, alright. If you're going to go off and do that, first
of all, are you going to show April how to do this, how to get over the fear and
how to feel good about this?" She said, "I'm going to show everybody." I said,
"Okay, why don't you go get in the line, and go have a word with Octavia the
Spider, and come back when you're done." We chatted. It was just a simple chat,
maybe about ten or fifteen minutes, just finding out what was what.

She went up, she handled the spider, there was no fear whatsoever, and so then I
said to her, "Yeah, but who is going to doubt that you actually did this?" She said,
"Oh, my husband." I said, "Let's figure out what we're going to do about him.
What's his name?" She told me his name.

So we figured out that what she was going to do when she went home and, by the
way, she lived on a farm, spiders everywhere, was that She go on a spider hunt
and go find a spider and pick one up.

Now, this woman lives in England. She lives on a farm in the middle of nowhere.

If it were Borneo or if it were Australia, that's a little different situation, context-‐
dependent. The advice there is, in Australia, if you see a spider, it's quite likely it
wants to kill you. So, kill it. Whereas, in England, they're just like house spiders.

So, anyway I showed her several ways to pick up a spider. Then I said, "What do
you think? Shall we go on a spider hunt? Let's do it now." So we went outside for
a few minutes and we looked around in the bushes until she found a spider. She
picked it up and held it and went, "Oh, that is so cool! Are you going to do that
with your husband?" She said, "Yeah." We carried on, we talked about it a little
bit more and off she went. At no time did we do any sort of obvious technique,
obvious from a listener or a watcher's point of view. Whereas, actually what I
was doing was finding counter-‐examples that would allow the trigger to be split
off from the automatic response, and something more important being
substituted. In other words, the desire to be a good grandmother and a good
example, to take it's place. Then, the sheer joy of proving her husband wrong.
That organized the strategies. Do you understand? When you get the desired
state strong enough or rich enough, quite often, the resources organize
themselves.

I told you about Izee, that young chap, a little earlier. If that thing about ironing
the shirts and taking the showers probably came about because he saw
something, something that he wanted and he figured out for himself what he had
to do. Understand, he wasn't pushed to do that. The desire organized the search
for the resources and he just had a little bit of trouble putting it in gear.

So, the limitations are not so much in technique as they are in how you use the
tool. Practice more. Language is a means, it's not the end in itself. Language
patterns are a means, they are put into the service of goals and creation of
outputs, etc. With enough practice, your skill, as a tool set, gets better, but it's
always a case of; what do you want to create? What's the best tool, and what's
the person for using that tool? If you give a crayon to a five-‐year-‐old you'll get

one thing. If you give a crayon to Picasso you would get something else. The
difference is how the tool is used.

Tom: Cool. Another question from Praveen, Michael; is language always
processed through the body? For example, if an anxious person is told to relax,
will they momentarily physiologically relax?

Michael: Not necessarily. Language is always processed through the body
because I can't think of any other place for it to be processed. It has to go through
the ears, it has to go through the body. Whether somebody is going to be able to
respond to a suggestion depends on this priming thing that we talked about
before, but also, for example, if somebody is paralyzed with fear, you can tell
them to relax all you want. It's the same thing. Haven't you had somebody, if you
were uncertain about doing something, you're uptight about it, you felt bad and
somebody else told you, "Hey, just relax, will you?" What do you think? You think
about hurting that other person.

if somebody is nervous, there's an old intervention in strategic therapy called
"paradoxical intention" or "paradoxical injunction" and in the example of
somebody who is paralyzed with fear, if you just tell them to relax, their body is
so fully engaged in responding to terror that they may not have sufficient control,
but if you reinsert a way for their conscious intention to enter the process, you
can create enough space for them to be able to respond physically.

So, I used this once with a chap. It's an old strategic and brief therapy
intervention, which is, if somebody has got a problem, you get them to do the
problem more.

So this chap was terrified, about to give a talk, and he was shaking all over and I
said, "Well, you may be terrified, you may be shaking all over, but I would be
willing to bet that one of your legs is shaking more than the other, which one is

it? So he starts checking back and forth. In other words, he started to evaluate
which leg was shaking more, and he went, "My left leg." I said, "Okay, you say that
you're left is shaking more. Is it the upper part of your leg that's shaking more, or
the lower part? It's got to be one or the other." It was the lower part of his leg.

While he's doing that, the rest of his body was relaxing because he was
concentrating on something else. Eventually, we got down to that he had very
nervous ankles. His left ankle was very nervous but he wasn't shaking anywhere
else. So we were able to get him to just relax that shaking and make it so that it
was okay for him to have those nervous ankles and get on and do what he had to
do.

The answer is; yes. Everything is processed through the body, but what it's going
to take to get any particular individual to respond may be different. I hope that
answers your question.

Tom: Matt, Michael, has asked about training groups.

Michael: Who is this?

Tom: Matt from New Castle.

Michael: Matt, M-‐A-‐T-‐T.

Michael: Oh, Matt, M-‐A-‐T-‐T. Hello, Matt from New Castle.

Tom: Matt says he runs training groups and, basically, the people who attend his
training groups are typically told by their employers that they must attend, it's
mandatory rather than optional and he's curious if you have any techniques,
tools, or thoughts on how he may be able to help overcome that very
understandable resistance that he encounters amongst the people that attend

the trainings that are mandated?

Michael: Well, Matt, I think you already have a few ideas from earlier on.
Basically, it's funny, you said he's from New Castle?

Tom: Yeah.

Michael: In 1991 I was working for a hotel group and we were doing trainings
up and down the country, and there were a group of managers who had been
forced to come onto a training. I didn't know this, but basically they arrived
surly. They arrived pissed off.

Whenever anybody is forced to do something that they don't want to do, it's
going to generate its own resistance. So, what you've got to do, Matt, is you've got
to start thinking through what they're bringing into the room with them. I don't
know if you're familiar with the concept of setting-‐up the communication. This is
something that we teach. I'm going to be teaching this on the training mastery
course that I'm going to be doing in November. It's part of how you create these
truisms and these kind of suggestions and put together your design, in such a
way that people are willing to join you, even if the conditions weren't ideal.

So, what you do is you think through what they're going to be bringing through
and what they're going to be bringing in with them, in terms of expectations, in
terms of judgments, in terms of concerns. The basic principle is; if something can
be talked about overtly, it does not become something that is used as an excuse
for passive-‐aggression. If, in the comments that you make, you are able to hit on;
their thinking, inside their map or model, some of the concerns, then what tends
to happen is that when you offer them possibilities or ways to move forward
with it, they're more likely to say, "Yes." There's less reason for them to object.
There's less reason for them to be covert and then trying to destroy the situation
there because you're open about it and you're willing to talk about it.

So what that means is that you have to be prepared to deal with and answer,
sometimes, very legitimate concerns. So, for example, if you come into a group
and they've been forced to attend, and they've been on other training courses,
and the training courses didn't help them in any way, somebody coming into
your session who is feeling like, "This is going to be a waste of time," you've got
to have a way to address that. So, one of those, as part of the set up, may be,
"Alright, now look, ladies and gentlemen. I know that you've been asked to
attend this. You've been told that you're going to attend it. I've been on trainings
before where I didn't have a choice, I wasn't allowed to make the choice about
whether I attended or not, but let me tell you what this is about and how you can
make the most out of the time that we've got together. First of all," and then you
tell them how to deal with the situation, or how it should be addressed. You do
this one, twice, three times, and what starts to happen is that they start to realize
that you're not going to talk down to them, and they start to realize that it makes
it possible for them to follow your instructions.

Technical expression is; they become response-‐attentive. That response-‐
attentiveness, in other words, when you ask for something, that they respond to
you, is your minimum bid, before you can actually carry forward with a group
process. It all happens during the setup. During those times when you're
welcoming people, thanking them, and going through the agenda. So this is a
matter of incorporating more of their points of view as truism, but then also
saying how the various things can or should be resolved, and what will happen if
they agree to follow your instructions.

So, for example, within the set up would go things like, "Alright, now I know that
we're away from the office for a couple of days, and I know that people are
concerned about getting out as early as possible. Believe me, I'm with you on this
one. If you will cooperate with me on the break times, we're going to have breaks
at 11AM and at 3PM, just a quick break for 15 minutes. Then, we get back in the

room, we get back to work. With lunches, we keep them to 45 minutes or an
hour, whatever it is, let you get back in and on time. I'll do my very best to get
you out the door by 5:00. Will you do that? Are you willing to help me?" More of
that on training mastery and, at some point, we will do something for NLP Times
for trainers, specifically on the topic. Does that answer the question?

Tom: Yes, it does indeed. So the next question that we've got is from Shawn in
Rockaway.

Michael: Shawn in Rockaway. Okay.

Tom: Yeah, first question is; what are some of the ways to mix suggestion within
casual conversation without setting off the alarm bells or it sounding unnatural?

Michael: Shawn, I love this question. It's great, although I have never actually set
off alarm bells with a suggestion. Well, actually, [laughter] okay.

Mixing suggestions within a casual -‐ Shawn, you already do this. It's a part of our
natural conversational practice as human beings. You're already making
suggestions, making offers, making little bits and pieces. One of the things that
happens when you learn something like NLP or hypnosis, is that it seems like
you're learning a specific procedural technique. It is not that. When we're having
the conversation and we're doing a piece of work with someone, we are pursuing
an agenda. There are things that have to happen, there are things that will have
to work, but it's not like you suddenly become some other species.

When you're talking with somebody, it's always appropriate and easy to use
analog marking, and it doesn't have to sound like that. It can be as simple as,
"Look, when you're having an ordinary conversation, you can use analog
marking. It's a normal part of the conversation." Do you understand?


All of these things are just a part of the flow. What you've got to do is shift you're
attitude and intention around what you're doing. Sometimes people have
problems because they treat NLP, or the work that they're doing with it, as if they
were doing something weird, or some kind of an alien autopsy on people. So they
behave strangely and they sound strange. It's all just simple conversations.

I suppose the fear around things, like making suggestions or analog marking, is
that it may be too subtle. Whereas, actually, as I mentioned before, Erickson
would often repeat things several times and Erickson didn't have a vast range of
possibilities in his non-‐verbal behavior because he was in a wheelchair and had
three known forms of polio. He didn't have a tremendous amount of tonal
variation.

I'm lucky. I'm trained. I've got a very flexible voice. I'll use all kinds of voices, I'll
use caricature. I'll sing, even, if I have to. Even if it's just about putting a little
pause in before you make the suggestion and then carry on the thinking. It's not
that difficult as long as you are attempting to communicate meaningfully and
purposefully with the person that you're speaking with.

It takes a bit of practice. It takes a bit of practice but, also, the first thing that we
talked about, in using the TOTE model and using the goal-‐based communication,
it's not that different from when we have conversations with people ordinarily.
Even if you're talking about, you're having a conversation with a significant other
and it's the first part of the conversation. You might want to find out how she's
doing, or he's doing. Even at that point, you've got a desired state in mind, which
is, "I want to find out how they're doing." Now, in that instance it's a fairly
obvious thing, so you ask, "How was your day?" You then listen, and if that
matches the criteria that you've got around giving the answer you want, well
there you are. You move onto the next thing.

When you are using the NLP tool-‐set, there are more of these behavioral outputs,

more of these desired states that you have to learn to track, but that doesn't
make your communication unnatural. That doesn't mean that the client doesn't
interrupt. That doesn't mean that there are significant side-‐roads that are taken.
It's all in a very normal tone of voice.

My applications, the way that I use NLP, I work with senior executives. we are
sitting in either their offices, or we're in meeting rooms, or sometimes if I'm
facilitating for a group, it's a slightly bigger group, but it's always in a corporate
environment. At no time does the conversation ever turn to, "Now, make a
picture inside. Make it brighter. Make it bigger. Pull it closer." It's all done
through the quality of the anecdotes that I use. The suggestions are all there in
normal conversation. It's just a matter of practice.

If you started on the Platinum Audio News Club, there's some stuff on this in
there, but I think we're going to be doing more on telling multiple stories,
unconscious communication at little bit later on in the teleconference series. I
think probably if you write in one more question, clarifying question, and let me
know how much experience you've got, I can give you a specific example, a
specific exercise about how to move forward. How's that?

Tom: That sounds good. Just in, again from Shawn; how do you work with people
who seem to disagree with everything you say, whether it be a suggestion or just
feeding back to them what they said?

Michael: Okay, Shawn, there's a phenomena called "polarity responding" and
these are people or situations where whatever is presented, the people will go in
a different direction. It comes in two basic flavors. One is polarity mismatching
by counter-‐example. These are the, "Yes, but," people. These are the last word
freaks. These are the ones who, whatever you say, they've got to come up with
something slightly different. The other ones are the mismatchers by polarity.
That means that if you say, "Yes," they say, "No." There's a number of different

possibilities around that. One of them being that they just don't like the shape of
your head. There are some people who, if they don't like you, they're just going
to say the opposite, just because they don't like the shape of your head. Those
people are rare, fortunately.

Sometimes there are some folks who, when they do this polarity responding,
they do it because that's their life. They've got to be the ones who make the
decisions, make the choice. We had one of these chaps, I finished a program this
past weekend, and right from the word "go", for every damned exercise, he was a
nightmare for the people who were around him at first. A lovely chap, but as
soon as somebody told him to do something, or asked him to do something, he
would say, "No," or go in the opposite direction. For that kind of person, anything
that comes from the outside is treated as if it's an attempt to take control. So with
this chap, what he realized is that all he cares about is control. So, in giving him
information or suggestions, it would have to be put into the third person, and it
would have to be put in what I call "a laundry list".

In other words, you don't tell him what to do, you don't tell him what the right
thing is, you don't make the offer. You offer a number of things, a bracket, a small
list of possibilities. You do it in the third person. You give the list three to five
items and then you say, "Of course, you have to make up your own mind. You've
got to make the decision on this one," and that puts them into a double-‐bind.
Because if you say, "You'll have to make the decision," they won't want to have to
and they'll pick from the list.

Yeah, a polarity responder is like a three-‐year-‐old who doesn't want to put their
sweater on, "No!" "Come on, it's time to put the sweater on." "No!" So, what you
have to do is you have to attack in the other direction. If somebody is a mis-‐
matcher by counter-‐example, knowing that's the case gives them room to do it.
In other words, relinquish your own need to be the one who gives all of the
examples, and make sure that if you're doing something, create space so that

they can create with it.

and if you're clever enough, and it takes a little bit of practice, you can make it so
that they will attack away from you, in order to go in the direction that you want
them to go, but that's a much longer conversation. Basically, if you're not getting
the response that you hoped for, you need to change what you're doing, bottom
line.

You probably haven't either set up the relationship adequately, asked enough
questions to find out what it is that they want or, if that pattern maintains there,
then it's just simply a matter of, "That's how they do things." So the methods that
you choose have to make it so that they can carry on doing that.

The metaphor is; yes, indeed, you can push water uphill, but you've got to have
some damn good plumbing to do it. It's a much longer conversation for another
evening, but I hope that gives you an idea of the direction to head in.

Tom: That's great, Michael. So that's it for this evening, everyone. I want to thank
you so much for joining us on this, I think, it has been a really good teleseminar.

Michael's given us so much great content on advanced language patterns and I
know that you're going to look forward to reviewing the audios. We're going to
send out some assignments in the coming week, and if you really want to get
good with this, as Michael has been saying, it comes down to practice.

So make sure that you do all of the assignments. We would also encourage you to
re-‐listen and review the call so that you can identify what are the things, in terms
of priming, seeding suggestions, setting up inferences in order to become a more
effective communicator, influencer, and persuader. With that said, on behalf of
Michael and I, thanks again for joining us and we look forward to seeing you on
another NLP Times Live Teleseminar again soon.

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they can create with it.

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