NLP and the degrading Training standards bringing it to its knees

As an NLP Trainer for some years and also having run trainings in a number of different countries, the standard of Trainers being produced and the momentum for a cash generating machine seen by the unethical seems to have brought a wonderful technique and tool to its knees.

Not only have we got badly trained NLP Practitioners being told they are “competent” and passed to go on to do some of the most appalling work I have seen including in the self-defense field and sport field which is nothing short of dangerous through to infective therapy and atrocious communication skills being touted as “experts”.

The integrity in my industry from a training point of view now has trainers producing 7 day courses with NO pre course study, high numbers and low prices on the courses making it impossible to properly assess if each student is in fact reaching a certifiable standard on each module. I am passionate about what I do and have seen the results well-trained students can get and also the ability to not only transform their own lives but also evolved the techniques even further but this is only possible if true understanding of the techniques is acquired.

On line training, now being market and the appearance of the “Diploma” in NLP which is NOT a certification  – it is a 3 or 2 day introduction ONLY and used as a sale technique in order to get people to buy full NLP Practitioner courses is killing the integrity of this industry. Along with that, certain governing bodies who will certify you as a trainer in only 3 days is probably the most irresponsible and damaging money-making scam I have seen in some time and of course as there is no real regulation, is allowed to carry on.

This is probably one  of the reasons I had decided to back away from the courses, as only taking 6 people and charging £900 is still more than if you choose to do it on line, will pass as long as you pay the money and really wont be assessed at all.

Unless a real governing body (NOT owned by a training company) is produced we will continue to see this once wonderful discipline fall into even more disrepute than it already has and I am now to a degree almost ashamed to say I am a Trainer of NLP due to the level so many have brought it to.

We really must (those that still have some integrity left) call for some regulatory body which hopefully will stop these practices and bring into place the continued upholding of real certification standards which is not run by or associated to a training company which is frankly unethical in its very being and bring this once ecological

NLP Training

discipline back to the ethical state it was once in.

Knives and futures

well, here I am, on a ferry to Dublin taking my shoulder with me to Belfast to all ow uncertsin fate to happen to it.
From the heights of winning the world powerifting championships and taking a new world bench press record, to the stark reality that Emma James and her NLP Sport performance cannot cure all, is making me a miserable passenger!
The one and only time the LNP mental coaching techniques I teach could not deal with the pain was from about 6 months prior to the World champions when an incidentof trying to not stand on the cat meant a sudden impact to an already buggered shoulder.
I am an NLP Trainer, I am a known leading therapist in weight, esting related disorders and sport and related problems, however, right now I am being human and having “what if” moments.
What if I cant compete again to the level after this operation, what if the lay off time after the op is longer than expected and it takes months before I can effectvely train, what if I end up being out of competition next year completely and so on.
However, whilst thinking about for what urpose I was running the “what if” it suddenly hit me this is a normal behviour. Was it causing me a long term issue?? No because I know I will deal with the outcome when it happens. So why change it if it is a natural reaction and I know I can change it if I become unresourceful. you could argue by having that thought process at all I was being unresourceful but I argue that if we take away every natural reaction that doesnt fit into a “happy place” we are not dealing the issues that are there and in fact never recognise them and long term cannot deal with them.
So – for now I will sit here on this creaky ship, await the outcome of my operation tomorrow and then adjust accordingly.
Hurrah for being human – woooohoooooo for having a down side to help us recognise when we have the ups and RaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaR for being able to have the choice to change it!

Polish, powerlifting, NLP sport and a motivated trainer!

Wonderful news from Poland – I have just been asked to run my NLP Sport course in Poland again the quality of the athletes is tremendous.
From years of competing internationally I know the level of commitment from the Polish and the other countries in that region and they were always very tough to beat. So, going back again to teach is more of an honour than a “job”.
What is really motivating is the level of drive all the people there I teach mental coaching and sport performance to have and the passion for what they do. Its very refreshing and although I would never tell them this, its also very similar to working the USA as well!

NLP Prac in Bath – getting ready…..

Today, like other days I am getting everything together for a new NLP Practitioner course. The emails have been sent, the tests have been marked and the usual pre course nerves for students and trainer are hovering in the background!
Yesterday I finalized dates for more NLP courses in Bath and Bristol and scuffled with the hotels over pricing for the venues. That’s the price for only taking small groups I suppose which creates that never ending need to provide a fabulous venue for not a huge cost! Well, off to teach some more fabulous NLP practitioners now.

Inspiring times – NLP in Bath/Bristol and the tardis

There is something about the West Country. Its almost like stepping into another dimension with a completely different atmosphere and houses made out of a substance not seen up here in the Northern dimension!

The NLP Practitioner courses I have run there have been outstanding and anyone from other galaxies who attends a course there – feels the same way I do! So, now I have another Practitioner course running there in July and August and also a Masters at their end of the year as I have to admit I believe I have found the best venue ever! This time though, not only do we have people from the local area, we also have people from up North and Germany as well attending, so the call of the West Country galactic zone is spreading!

As you can tell, I am in the middle of another Anton Wilson book and everything has gone very quantum so please excuse the references!

Something has happening over the last few months where the private clients I have been seeing have been some of the most talented and amazing individuals I have ever met. We all have our own barriers to break but some of these individuals have overcome such adversity, it is truly humbling. I have had the opportunity to watch as they changed their circumstances and came back from a place where they believed there was no hope, no future and no way out. When this happens, I know the decisions I made about keeping my courses to 6 people and ensuring they understand every aspect of the interventions and practicalities, were the right thing to do. It means that when they leave, they have the ability and depth of knowledge to deal with people in their chosen careers and make a real difference, not only with others but with themselves.

So many of my associates laughed when I said I was keeping my numbers to 6 on my own courses, “how could I make any serious money doing like that”, “its their responsibility to understand the course” and “that becomes too personal” were the comments I had. Unfortunately, this helped me see that I was doing the right thing and what was important to me was assisting people who wanted to do the course be the best they could be…….so I knew I was on the right track. Unfortunately this meant that the people who just wanted the certification to hang on the wall, wanted to just cruise and “just get by” were going to be deterred from my courses, but frankly, thats fine. 

As usual, I have gone off topic. Its all getting very exciting at the moment with my new book coming out shortly, the publisher made the mistake of allowing me to do the front cover which apparently has caused the printers a heart attack when they saw it! Well, it will give them more tolls then for the future I suppose! The trade marking process is in full swing and I am hoping will be finished soon and its all happening.

Remember, when you visit the West Country, take your teleporter with you as you will have trouble leaving to return to your own galaxy – you may not want to come back!

 

Being on the Outside

Greatness is the ability to be brilliant and yet still feel humility – the offset of that is that in order to be brilliant – you do have to think in a different way and life circumstances may mean you will feel on the outside. However, may I point out that those people out there going in the direction you are going, who will push you intellectually and you will push them. 

Every time you interact with someone you have the ability to learn something new, no matter who they are.

Life is a fact finding mission, a rich and complex mixture of diversity and every day you can breathe in those new ideas and thoughts, it adds to your own picture of life.

Make it so……I told you so

In the words of Jean Luc Picard – “make it so”.

And I did, well I had a damn good attempt at it. The “making it so” related to the formulation of a new course I was asked to put together on Comfort Eating and binge eating.

I thoguht it was going to be easy and after much tussling with PowerPoint’s and manual corrections plus a bit publisher it finally came together.

Its one thing being involved in treating eating disorders and issues, another writing a course on it. One major item I bang on about endlessly when I am teaching NLP Practitioner courses is the flexibility of the Practitioner to the client. Not to be rigid, ebb and flow with the client following the stream and the links they present and waiting for them gem of a sentence which will let you into thier private view of the world so you can see what the crucial secondary gain is or the key factor, for them, in the entire problem.

So, when writing a course for people who have a binge of comfort eating related problem it becomes difficult to eb and flow en mass!

It was much easier designing the course for already practicing therapists in how to deal with weight related problems and what to do if presented with a hidden eating disorder than to cover all the bases for individuals who are currently dealing with it. So, I suddenly found myself with a 75 day course instead of a 2 day one! Blimey! So, the editing began and one thing struck me – it was the fact that I was addressing each person who was sitting there, bending to their own model of the world and realistically, unless I stepped into thousands of parallel universes at the same time, that was never going to happen.

So, the learning of the entire profound experience was to strip it all back to easy to understand basics and teach them how to adapt it for them. In fact, that was very much the ethos if an entire morning – making it work for them and not expecting someone to wave a magic wand and solve the problem for them.

We teach practitioners how to move someone to cause, moving a group with a problem to cause is another matter. So, why not carry on the teaching principal of explaining about “being at cause”, treat them exactly the same as a room full of first day practitioner students and then give them the information to utilise for themselves.

The interesting thing was that during therapy work, this pre framing with a client could take anything up to an hour on an individual basis and you are adapting to the client as you work, so the risk was that applying the Practitioner Course teaching to a group of clients wouldnt work for them.

Anyway, I taught the course, the group took on the entire lecture of moving to cause and what “being at effect” really was and that it is all our responsibility to make the changes that we need and to reap that information for ourselves instead of alsways searching for that one person who can fix us. We need to “make it so” ourselves. Out of that 25 full course of comfort and binge eating sufferers, 80% of them all came back in 48 hours to say that they had stopped, the other 20% had positive results and had other issues attached which just needed and final step.

The perceived risk was expecting individuals in a group setting without group interaction to resist being moved to cause and happily they shifted relatively smoothly which for me was a big learning and I have to admit having anxiety about the approach I was taking as it would be perceived to be reasonably “confrontational”.

I thought I would share that, it may help some, others may wonder what the point of the post was, however, sometimes the simplest of  tasks can be overcomplicated by our own knowledge when in fact we should trust in others abilities to grasp the concept of which we are talking.

Onwards and Upwards

So, here we are the last day of the practitioner and one hell of a week.

Aside from a most inspiring group, a couple of people really made the job of, the training. the time, the effort, the wishes for every person – completely worthwhile.

Isnt it amazing when you watch some people, you just see the potential bristling within and waiting to be seen by everyone when they leave the course. It also brings the fact home to you that you are very much that people are amazing creatures and the couragiousness and “leaps of faith” they take on a daily basis. they constanly surprise me!

So – next week, more sports optimisation courses, more therapy clients and getting “that damn” book finished and seeing people change and grow and haing my beliefs and universe once again turned on its access.

AND tonight apprently I am apparently presenting someone a World Title Belt although I am not quite sure what for! From my competing career I still get requests for these things although when you are running a course its almost as thought world stops and nothing exists apart from those people on the course and I only manage to sort my life out each evening into my training at the gym and grabbing a protein shake!

I’m sure I will find out what the event is when I get there!!

Better more coherent writings tomorrow!

Until then…………………….

We’re all doomed Captain!

that was phrase which came up whilst doing examples of pre suppositions! And the appropriate responce was “How specifically are we all doomed?!”

Its been a great week so far with some amazing people.

Every time you run a course you actually go on a voyage of discovery yourself. Perceptions, awareness of your own state as well as assessing and monitoring the states of all the participants in the group. Each day brings with it new learnings abotu the people you are teaching – thier own dreams and aspirations, thier own events in thier lives they have had to overcome, the changes they need and want to make during the course.

The challenge is making sure that each day you become more aware of that and create the environment for change and give the assistance which is needed at every step of the process.

However, one thing which frequently comes up is the fact that I cant in change them – NLP is a do “with”, not a do to process so taking on the ethos that you are repsonsible for your own changes, how you react to others, how you deal with your own past and present events etc can be more difficult to take in than they realise.

In other words – getting to the point that the mist lifts and you realise that not one person “MAKES” us feel any particular way can be a huge shift in the access of our worlds and can be hugely liberating for some and somewhat daunting for others.

Once that shift occurs and you realise that your own responce to everything which happens to you is completely a choice and YOU are the only person who can initiate, continue and project that responce the world seems a very different place.

Setting up

So here we are, the day before another prac course in Manchester.

Certificates – done

Projector checked – done

throat spray – checked!

Any friz spray for hair due to air conditioning – done

Handouts – done

Pre course exams – marked

Pre course nerves hoping that everyone will enjoy it – engaged

Pictures of wombles and Jean Luke Picard inserted in powerpoint – made it so

Rolled up newspapers for students to batter eachother with – cellotaped

Well – looks like we are ready to rock and roll. Its the usual scenario of wondering what everyone will be like. You think you are the only ones? You wonder about how people will use the course, enjoy like I did when Bruce Farrow taught me, open doors for people, create new beginnings and just hope that these people will get out of it what I did.

So the daunting task of setting up the room starts today, the carpet tape, the endless calls to staff to help with chairs, the deciding what to leave in case it is pinched by someone night staff (which has happened before) and the wondering if when you come in the next morning, your entire equipment and room arrangement has been packed up by the night porter thinking he is “tidying” after hours of preperation – see Belfast Holiday Inn Express for that one.

Apparently I’m not the only trainer that has happened to and I hope that the others reacted slightly better than I did!

So, adrenaline at the ready and here we go!