But haven’t you noticed that some people can pick up amazing details that other people miss?

In a very early NLP training John Grinder referred to an exercise to help enhance your abilities in this domain leverages the Cocktail Party Effect. Here is a quick description of some steps:

1. Find yourself at a cocktail party, cafe, restaurant, on the subway or even alone in nature.
2. Deliberately direct your attention to aspects of the sensory experience. Notice what happens when you attend to a conversation at the adjoining table. Or the next table over. Notice what happens when you focus right in front of you, then shift that focus to something that is happening across the room, then broaden your focus so you can notice an increasingly large panorama of the scene.
3. Once you can notice the limits of your deliberate attention, start to stretch yourself. While carrying on a conversation with one person, match or mirror the body language of another person – or match some of the body language of one person, and some of the body language of another person. For instance, you might adopt the rhythm of the person in front of you, fold your legs like the person to your right and play with the napkin like the person to your left. Then take on the gross posture of someone else across the room. All while maintaining the conversation.

NLP has powerful skills, though it’s important to do the practice. Just learning the theory is great fun though if you don’t do the practice enough to habituate the skills (some call it getting it ‘in the muscle’), you risk being stuck having to think so hard about the technique that there’s no extra attentional capacity to allow for artistry.

• Better handle a specific challenging situation that is coming up,
• Handle pressure better right now, so it doesn’t turn into stress,
• Clean up unpleasant experience and negative memories… so you can put the past behind you,
• Get into a high performance state when you need it the most.

You will learn how to use and personally experience the New Code Change Format, a simple yet powerful technique developed by Co-Founder of NLP, Dr John Grinder, with yourself, your friends and your clients straight away.

Monday 22 August from 7pm in Central Shanghai

Here is one attempt at recoding Robert Dilts’ Neurological Levels prepared by Daniel Smith:

If you can imagine holding a set of chopsticks (or pickup sticks) in one hand, vertically, then letting them go so that they fall to the surface. The sticks will often cross each other at various points.

1. Choose a behaviour, characteristic, or idea with which an individual identifies for exploration. Framed by “explore the intentions to generate alignment”, secure support from the unconscious for the process. It may be useful to prime awareness of the rules for logical levels (especially heritability).
2. Using codewords and inviting suggestions from the unconscious, generate an hierarchy of intention (eg asking “What for?”). It could be convenient to spatially mark the various points.
3. Return to the starting point. Again using codewords and inviting suggestions from the unconscious, chunk down to how that behaviour are manifested.
4. Present the proposed hierarchy to the unconscious for approval or refinement.
5. Repeat steps 1-4 for different behaviour, characteristic or idea. Initially, have subsequent hierarchies non-overlapping (eg by having them parallel or skewed). From Third Position, compare subsequent hierarchies together, noticing any patterns. Check for similarities and overlap between terms in the heirachy; where they are similar, ensure support from the unconscious for having them treated as the same, so that the separate hierarchies can start to overlap.
6. Discovery Process (optional): Move between the various points that have been marked and a Third Position, only allowing enough time for an awareness of that point to be reached before moving randomly to another point. Continue for 10-15 minutes (or until the unconscious presents a signal that it is time to stop).

She described it as being a state when she stops trying to control the instrument, but rather one where she allows the music to be expressed through her. It doesn’t happen every time that she plays, though when it does, as you might imagine, it feels amazing.

So I asked, “How do you do that?”

Of course I wasn’t just asking about her theories of zen/ chan – since I know that she probably doesn’t know herself about the mechanism. (Especially since she’s a pretty small girl, and had indulged quite a bit of that pitcher herself!) And even if she had words to describe the experience, it wouldn’t be much use to me as her representations are shaped by who she is. Instead, I wanted to know how she could access that state. Since that’s something that I can try out for myself…

And it turned out that she would play a very short piece of music. Repeatedly. Perhaps a 30-second piece – even just a few bars – and play that over and over for 20-30 minutes. Simple enough that her extensive deliberate practice allowed her to play it without too much effort.

Now this pattern sounded familiar to me! This was like the strategy that we used in my karate training in learning kata. In learning to juggle. In drilling tennis shots. In several forms of meditation. And even in the New Code Games of New Code NLP. Almost like turning an ‘ordinary’ activity into a meditation.

I wonder whether we could use that state for other things… like taking that state into other areas of life, allowing the unconscious to find ways to use it.

As I’m getting ready to assist Dr John Grinder here in Taipei this week, I’m wondering what other insights we might discover here…

Should be fun to bring into our upcoming events in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou…

This is an important and powerful experience, perhaps only matched by our Master Practitioner training. But what then?

Personally, I was immersed in the world of Anthony Robbins events and trainings. You might repeat your Practitioner or Master Practitioner training with the same trainer or different trainers to get a different perspective on things. You might also focus on applications of NLP – whether it be Robert Dilts’ session in Shenzhen on Sleight of Mouth in April, or Dr John Grinder and Carmen Bostic St Clair’s course on New Code NLP in Taipei in May. Or you might focus on reading, practising and enjoying living your life.

But what then?

For some of us, the next step is their NLP Trainers’ Training. For me, it was like doing my Black Belt grading – challenging, demanding, and exciting. There are many places that you can do your Trainers’ Training… but which one to choose?

One of those places has just released a short document outlining some things to consider, and one of the authors, Chris Collingwood, has just authorized me to share this with China NLP. It is quite objective, and whether you end up training with them in Sydney (as I did), or NLPU in Santa Cruz, or NLP Comprehensive in Colorado, or NLP Academy in Brighton (as I also did), or Richard Bandler in Florida, it could be worth having a look at. You can download it here.

Some suggest that subsequent generations will be led by those biased against students who might surpass them, and that the ‘next great leader’ will only arise when the talent of the leaders is so corrupted that they don’t even recognize superior talent. But let’s hope not.

Besides, I was curious as to what was so special about O’Sensei, rather than the excuses.

One of the observations made by this master was that at some point, O’Sensei had become “enlightened”. While somewhat cliched, it occurred to me that perhaps one difference was that whereas other Masters might gain access to a powerful state of being, O’Sensei lived there.

I noticed something similar while I was in Brighton last month. There were Trainers, Trainer Assistants, and Trainer Candidates who had access to NLP techniques, methods and strategies. But there were a precious few who lived NLP. Who didn’t “do” NLP sometimes and live ‘normally’ the rest of the time, but who just experienced NLP as they lived their life.

Perhaps this is similar to the “personal congruence” that John Grinder and Carmen Bostic St Clair so actively promote the New Code of NLP.

We will explore some basics of NLP, particularly focused on Daniel’s extensive recent training with co-founder of NLP, Dr John Grinder in New Code NLP. We will be particularly introducing the Alphabet Game and the New Code Change Format, a simple but powerful tool for creating personal change and giving yourself more choice and freedom.

Whether you are new to NLP or more experienced, we look forward to exploring and interesting evening of “New Code Games”, the New Code Change Format and the adventures of spending weeks training directly with the genius himself.

And with an NLP Practitioner training in Guangzhou coming up in just a few weeks, this would be a great opportunity to find out more information.

And you can register here:

Thursday, 2 September, 6:30 for 7pm in Guangzhou

Please come along from 6:30 for socializing so we can start the session at 7pm.

Venue: 13 Factories, 7 Tian He Bei Jie, Ti Yu Xi Lu, Tianhe District
体育西路天河北街7号
Their phone number is （020）3884 9230

We will explore some basics of NLP, particularly focused on Daniel’s extensive recent training with co-founder of NLP, Dr John Grinder in New Code NLP.

Whether you are new to NLP or more experienced, we look forward to exploring and interesting evening of “New Code Games”, the New Code Change Format and other insights and adventures from spending weeks training directly with the genius himself.

New Code NLP offers simplicity, understanding and powerfully elegant methods for creating excellence.

After founding NLP in the 1970s, Bandler and Grinder went their separate ways, offering different styles of NLP in their trainings.

Along the way, many people missed the point of NLP. They got lost in techniques and ‘magic phrases’ instead of continuing to explore the structure of magic. New Code NLP brings together the work of Dr John Grinder in directing NLP to where it belongs – the most powerful tool in the pursuit of excellence in the world today.

In two hours with Daniel Smith, you can learn some fun basics of New Code NLP, experience some “New Code Games” and the “New Code Change Format”.

Quick summary: In this session, we explored the Breath of Life, the Rhythm of Life and applied them to the New Code Change Format. We also spoke about the origins of NLP, and how New Code NLP focuses upon modelling, unconscious signals, state manipulations (rather than behavioural manipulations), using New Code Games and working content free.
Thanks for a wonderful night!

The same thing happens when we want him to open his mouth to eat – we open our mouth nice and wide, and he responds by opening his mouth. It’s like magic

A few weeks back, I taught my son to blow raspberries. It’s a simple thing – you just stick your tongue out and blow, but he’s really mastered it now. Though he hasn’t yet figured out that he shouldn’t do it when he’s feeding…

I’m in Hangzhou assisting with the New Code Coaching training led by Dr John Grinder and Carmen Bostic St Clair, and one of the topics that just came up was ‘mirror neurons’ (or ‘镜神经元’). According to wikipedia, a mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. Mirror neurons offer the neurological basis for rapport and explain why we can connect with people by mirroring their body language, gestures, words and rhythm.

Another website describes them this way:

“Mirror neurons are active when the monkeys perform certain tasks, but they also fire when the monkeys watch someone else perform the same specific task. There is evidence that a similar observation/action matching system exists in humans. The mirror system is sometimes considered to represent a primitive version, or possibly a precursor in phylogeny, of a simulation heuristic that might underlie mindreading.”

If you’re interested in how to build stronger connections with the people around you, you might want to check out how our brains are wired to help us learn from other people, just by watching them.