Orlando (12 July 2010)
Debra and I had an uneventful drive down. We stopped in Franklin, Tennessee, for a quick dinner with my son and his family and then went on to Manchester, Tennessee, before stopping for the night. The next day we went through Chattanooga and the adjacent mountains on our way down through Georgia. While I was driving, Debra took some video, and we will put it online as time and Internet connection permit. We stopped for a late lunch at a good Thai restaurant in Valdosta, Georgia, before going on into Florida. We arrived in Orlando at about 5 p.m. on Thursday, 8 July. Friday was a day for us to recover from the trip, get reacquainted with Orlando, and run to the grocery story for a variety of odds and ends.
Also on Friday, we discovered that the WiFi connection at the motel where we are staying is not fast enough to support video uploads. That may be just as well, as it is looking as though we won't have time to edit the video we have been shooting. The workshop started Saturday morning (the 10th), and we had a very busy day, which didn't end until almost 7 p.m. Richard Bandler and John La Valle are both in fine form this year.
Among the important learnings from Day One of the workshop were the following:
- Once your brain works better, everything works better.
- Understanding doesn't produce change; change produces understanding.
- Optimize rather than simply change.
Another comment Richard made was that the "as if" frame (the only model in NLP that did not originate with Richard), in which you act "as if" you already had the desired skill or attribute, doesn't work because it does not include competence. You act "as if" you had a skill without going through a process of learning that includes evidence of increasing expertise.
Taken together, these comments help illustrate the principal differences between NLP and psychotherapy. Psychotherapy focuses on fixing what's wrong, but NLP focuses on optimizing the human experience. One of the reasons that NLP can eliminate phobias, anxieties, and even Post-traumatic Stress Disorder in 60 minutes or less (often a lot less) is that it bypasses probing the problem and concentrates on creating the mental processes that simply eliminate the fear-based response. Rather than a lengthy and painful process of "desensitizing" an individual to the situation that produced the fear, NLP teaches the individual to process information in a new way. Once your brain works better, everything works better....
On Day Two Richard discussed research that shows that the happier you are, the smarter you will be. The goal of NLP is to teach people to process information differently. It's your brain, and you can choose how you use it. You can be incomplete, but not wrong—so find the missing pieces to complete the picture. You can be prepared or unprepared for Life, and you want to be prepared to live life exquisitely. Choose to be an "expansion" rather than a "contraction" person by looking for options and possibilities.
Teaser: When you hear a person (perhaps yourself) use the word "just" ("It is just a matter of looking for options..."), be aware that the person is on the edge between conscious processing and unconscious processing.
