Do you remember the stories from when you were growing up?

You might remember ancient myths. Or religious parables. Or maybe cartoons.

In the process of connecting with these story, we can internalize the patterns of these stories and live them out.

The stories that we hear shape our thinking and our lives by impacting upon our beliefs, attitudes and values. Yet so often these stories are presented to us without rhyme, reason or chance to review.

We move people through our stories. A great storyteller can sometimes get you to feel as if you were there. So your heart rate rises as the tension builds, you feel the tension in the characters as their journey takes an unexpected twist, and you might even feel warm and fuzzy (or laugh out loud or scream with terror) as the storyteller plans.

The patterns behind stories and metaphors are usually left lost in the stories themselves. And yet there are patterns.

Milton Erickson was just one of the famous figures modeled in NLP who used a lot of metaphors. Some of his clients were said to have reported that there was no hypnosis at all and that Erickson just told a few stories.

So the first session of the Year of the Tiger (another metaphor?) seems the perfect time to explore The Magic of Metaphor.

In this session led by Daniel Smith (GradCertNLP, Certified NLP Trainer and Certified New Code NLP Trainer):

• Discover some of your metaphors,
• Explore how to deliberately construct metaphors for influence and impact,
• Start to experiment with how to weave these deliberate metaphors into ordinary conversations.

This is not intended as an “introduction to NLP” session, but rather an opportunity to play with one of the advanced aspects of NLP.

The Magic of Metaphor will be held Wednesday, 17 March, from 7pm at the REV Office.

There will be no charge for this session though registrations are essential.
We are now fully booked – please put your details below to be kept on the waiting list. Thanks!

This event will be held in the REV Office: 15B Ladoll International Hotel, 831 Xinzha Lu at Shimen Er Lu, just north from Nanjing West subway station.

I personally discovered NLP by picking up Tony’s Unlimited Power, a book that some consider to be something of a stylized version of an NLP training.

Earlier today, I found out that Tony has just launched his new website.
Something that I found as I explored it was that you can now take his Personal Strengths Profile free of charge.

It’ll take about half-an-hour to run through it, but I just did it and thought it was good enough to suggest that you consider it too. It has a bit of Disc, but also a very interesting values assessment.

FYI I (Dan) have just finished the Graduate Certificate of NLP, and been certified as a Trainer of New Code NLP. As the first person in China to complete this, I’m pretty pleased about it. The GradCertNLP was 40 days of training, roughly equivalent to an advanced Master Practitioner training. It was a big commitment in time and energy, but I am really pleased with the results.

We are looking to having the first weekend of our Master Practitioner training at the end of March. This will be a great adventure for us, taking up some advanced NLP patterns, NLP Modeling, language patterns and an in-depth exploration of virtual questions, values and the core of what drives us. I am contemplating offering a Practitioner of New Code NLP training but we haven’t set any dates yet.

Jeff has given me the lead on this event that will be the first of it’s kind in Asia where you will be able to learn not just more advanced NLP techniques, but NLP Modeling. We’ll cover more advanced NLP techniques of course. Though more than just a collection of techniques, what most attracted me to NLP in the first place is how NLP provides a mechanism to get access to genius by absorbing their skills.

If you’ve looked at an infant – like our son Alexander – you’ll notice how they can have their eyes wide open as they look out at the world, absorbing whatever lies before them. They don’t ‘analyse’ or ‘think through’ what they are doing; instead they just absorb the behaviours of those around them. At the dawn of NLP, Grinder modeled Bandler to as they developed the Meta Model, and they did it together to develop the Milton Model and so much else. Learning to model deliberately helps us take NLP to an entirely new level.

We are looking to run this over four weekends, currently:

• March 26-28,
• April 24-25,
• May 8-9, then
• May 28-30.

So, all up, 8-10 days of training where you can learn to:

• Identify, apply and use advanced language patterns to influence and persuade,
• Connect with that state where you are at your very best whenever you want,
• Learn to apply NLP Modeling (those skills that Bandler and Grinder applied when they founded NLP) to learn whatever you want to learn,
• Get more clear about what is most important to you than ever before,
• Build rapport and understanding from those around you,
• Connect with the metaphors, questions and beliefs that drive your life,

More generally, you can walk away enjoying experiencing more excellence, more often.

For more information, on how to become a Master Practitioner of Neuro-linguistic Programming with Dan Smith, click here.

• Have you ever felt frustrated and disappointed going  back and forth between your dream and the thought that “it can’t be done”?
• Have you ever had an idea that seems going nowhere?
• Have you ever got stuck in a project and run out of ideas?
• Have you found it hopeless in finding options and choices?

The Disney Strategy shows in a simple and systematic manner how you can create a flow of creative yet realistic and viable ideas in business or personal life.

There is no charge for this event.

Cynthia Zhai: The Disney Model of Creativity
When: 7:00pm, Tuesday 9 February
Where: Shanghai

Fully booked – thanks!

Indentify your personal Vision in 2010 and remove the obstacles you Believe are in the way

John Dorris is leading the South China NLP Society is back to kick off the New Year and help you identify your vision for 2010 and give you the techniques to achieve it.

Have you or someone you know ever started the year with a vision to create a change to make a better life but given up before really getting started? What happened that kept you from achieving your vision for a better life that year? We will be looking at what you can do to make this year different.

If you want to find a way to move past the problems from last year, or to take a new path full adventure in 2010 then the good news is that there are techniques that you can use to get the life that you want. These tech­niques are simple to learn and easy to apply and can have a dramatic impact on your ability to achieve your vision in 2010.

John Dorris, South China NLP’s organizer will share the techniques he uses in coaching and facilitation as well as the techniques of NLP co-founder Richard Bandler in his book Get the Life You Want. We will look at how to identify the feelings and beliefs that empower you to take the next steps into your vision for 2010!

With a  new day and a new time to kick off this special session, we will be having brunch in Hooley’s in Guangzhou’s Tina He district on Saturday from 11:30 until about 2pm.

Hooley’s Irish Pub & Restaurant – Ground floor Bing Hua Hotel, 2 Tian He Bei Lu, Guangzhou

John Dorris: Be the Change that You Want to See
23 January from 11:30am in Guangzhou

To register, please email John directly or just complete the form below:

There are three basic levels of NLP training.

The first basic level of training is “Practitioner”. An NLP Practitioner will typically have been exposed to between 7 and 18 days of NLP training, focused on learning the fundamental patterns, techniques and attitudes.

The second basic level is “Master Practitioner”. Building on the Practitioner, Master Practitioner usually involves an extra 6-18 days of training. Sometimes this is focused on learning additional “advanced” patterns, while other trainers will focus Master Practitioner on Modeling.

The third basic level is “Trainer”. NLP Trainers Trainings are usually conducted over about three weeks, and is less focused on improving “NLP skills” and more focused on how to present NLP material.

In a sense, the fourth level would be the Graduate Certificate of NLP. The GradCertNLP is government accredited as equivalent to a third of a Masters degree and so there is a much higher standard of quality control. This incorporates Practitioner and Master Practitioner trainings into a 40-day period of training. To me, the Graduate Certificate of NLP sounds great, though it is still very new… Nobody in China has completed this level of training yet.

Some NLP trainers call themselves “Master Trainers”. The term was first coined by Richard Bandler when he and John Grinder split up, some might say as a way to position some trainers as “better” (others might suggest to ‘recognize seniority or skill’). There are a few other fancy titles floating around too.

Now: Not all trainings are equal.

There are different lengths of training, different styles of training and vastly different content. In general:

• A longer training will be better.
  You’ll learn more, experience greater personal shifts and develop better skills.
• A smaller group of participants will be better.
  You’ll get more attention from the trainer, your peers will help you more since they’ll know you better, and the training can move along faster.
• A more highly trained trainer is better.
  There is so much more to being the right NLP Trainer for you than just whether the person is calling themselves one. How many days have they spent learning and growing in the past year? How are they applying their skills? What are they best at?

There are also different streams of NLP. There is the “Robert Dilts/NLPU” and “Richard Bandler” and “ABNLP/Tad James” or “Tony Robbins” and even a few with “John Grinder/New Code”. And more spin off and brand themselves each year. Some trainers will be stuck in one ‘way’ while others will have explored a number of streams in depth and be focused on communicating their own or a combination.

Perhaps the biggest difference between my NLP training and my time at university is that you can keep redoing your NLP training. The best practitioners and trainers that I have seen are those that have jumped back into the arena and remained perpetual students, never getting too attached to what they know to learn something new. So wherever you are at now, I hope that you can start moving towards where you want to be in NLP.

As Lynda Dyer explains:

Today we must create great presentation and communication skills or miss out on the business coming our way due to vigorous competition in the marketplace. This Influencing and Presentation Skills presentation will show you how to get instant results from this “hands on” fun and informative workshop that is based on excellence.

• Imagine taking a quantum leap in your personal and professional development
• Imagine being a Master Communicator – assisting others to change with the power of words
• Imagine being a Master Communicator – taking your communication skills to the next level and accelerating your client’s results
• Imagine being a Master Presenter – see nerves disappear and widely increase your circle of influence
• Do you want to hear others praising your leadership abilities and seek your advice and expertise?
• Would you like to feel that natural confidence that happens when you are in touch with your core identity?

K. Beate Richter, Monday 18 January, from 7pm

At the REV office, 15B Ladoll International Hotel, 831 Xinzha Lu at Shimen Er Lu (just north from Nanjing West subway station on Line 2).

We only have space for about 12 3 more of you, so if you want to come, you might want to register quickly…

We are now fully booked for this session – thanks very much!

I couldn’t help but ask myself, “How?”

Rather than trying to reassure him that he wasn’t, or denying that he was a failure, I got curious and wondered how he could feel a failure after so much ’success’. And sure enough, the answers were clear too. For him,

“The goal of movie-making is to star in a film where your performance drives the film, and the film is either a soaring critical or commercial success, and I never had that.”

And although he starred in the 1990 action film The Hunt for Red October, which made more than $200m, it was successful because it was based on a popular Tom Clancy novel – not because of his performance.

He feels that his career is a failure not because it “is” – after all, how can we really define whether someone’s career is a success or a failure? But he feels that is is a failure because of how he defines success.

What do you want most? What drives you?

Success?

Happiness?

Joy?

Achievement?

Love?

Money?

Each of us have many things that drive us. Some things that pull us forward – that we want to experience something. And maybe there are other things that we desperately want to avoid.

We all want to experience different things. And that’s great – that’s one of the things that drives the rich and diverse world in which we live. Yet how well are we setting ourselves up to feel good? There are so many ways that we can find to feel bad. And there are so many things in the world today about which we could feel bad if we wanted.

But what could happen if you could feel better more and more often?

(from DanielSmith.info)

As a special offer to China NLP, Gabor is offering us the opportunity to take MQ at no charge.

Please register early, so you can complete the MQ questionnaire before 22 November.

24 November from 7:00pm at the REV Office

Thanks for a great evening, Gabor!

Michelle has a beautiful presence as a speaker and has shared with many of us from her heart some of her remarkable experiences. We love having her in Shanghai, and I’m pleased to let you know that as her public session is fully booked, she will be leading a session specifically for China NLP.

The venue has a limited size, so please let us know you’re coming.

For the session, bring along a wish or an intention about something you would like to clear or release… something that you will be willing to share with and work on in the group.

And thanks again for Gabor Nagy and Chris Malone for their sessions in the past few weeks!

Coming up in the next few weeks are likely to be sessions with Marga and Marc, followup sessions with both Gabor and Chris, and I’ll probably look to do one more session before I head off, probably next Monday or Tuesday night…

Have a great week – and get along for Michelle’s session this Friday night!