Treating myself to some NLP

admin ♦ May 10, 2012 ♦ 2 Comments

Even as a parent myself, my own parents still have the ability to make me feel like a child again.

Hang on!

As I feel that emotion, I know instinctively that I need to treat myself to some NLP. So what happened?

On arrival at my parents’ home where we were visiting for lunch (bringing it with us actually) I gave my Mum a copy of the Market Research book that had only just come out. It was published by Hodder and was only my second book published by a Traditional Publisher so I was very proud. Doubly so because it was about Market Research which had been my career for 25 years before I became a writer and NLP Coach. I was hurt when she just looked briefly at it and told me to put it ‘over there’ (out of the way basically). Later at lunch when talking about keeping oneself healthy my Dad told me ‘you just need to lose weight’.

Now according to NLP we can reframe negative feedback as learning and I tell other people this all the time. But I was still hurt even knowing Dad was probably right (although I’m by no means fat!) and that Mums was probably just busy with lunch and it simply wasn’t a good time to show her something important. By ‘over there’ she just meant out of the way so it wouldn’t get marked and could be given suitable attention later as opposed to the meaning I chose to take that ‘over there’ meant ‘out of my way’ and ‘not of interest’.

I spoke to my Dad yesterday on Skype and he was quite mystified as to where the book disappeared to because when they wanted to sit down and give it some attention after we’d left, it had gone.

Yes, even NLP Master Practitioners and Trainers need to remind themselves to apply the NLP principles we teach others. In the case of Sunday I would have been well advised to look for the positive intention which was to keep my precious book clean and safe and that my Dad loves me and simply wants me to be healthy.