Be sure to register for the National Guild of Hypnotists conference in August in Marlborough, MA  August 11-12!  I will be teaching the NLP Basic Practitioner Certification course  (Pre and Post Conference August 9-10 and 14-15.)  and a NLP Master Practitioner Certification course (Post Conference August 16-18).  Remember, there is a special price for auditing the classes if you are already certified.  It is important to keep our NLP skills polished, not just set aside/forgotten in our "skills box."

A special notice to all those going to the NGH conference-make sure you say hello to us at the booth, or one of our trainings. For information, check out www.NGH.net.  Look for these NFNLP members who are teaching:  Laura Amoroso, Melissa Barnes, Beryl Comar, Georgina Cannon, Nancy Curtis, Charlie Curtis, Elsom Eldridge, Devin Hastings, Theresa Forget, Jennifer Jennings, Eugene Kielmanowicz, Jeanette Laitner, Marie Looby, Ed Martin, Boris Opancha, Elana Schondorf, Franklin Sluijters, Walter Stock, Maureen Stock, Teresa Van Zeller, and Faith Wood. We wish them well and look forward to seeing them.

I just got Steve Andreas new books, "Six Blind Elephants, Understanding Ourselves and Each Other, Volumes 1 & 2". So far (I've just finished Volume I) I have enjoyed it so much that I have even recommended it to my wife to read.  Note, that means both NLPers and non-NLPers will find it fascinating. She has always been fascinated with how the mind and subconscious works and as I began to read the book I realized its worth immediately. Definitely add it to your library.  Their ISBN numbers are:  0-911226-41-9 and 0-911226-42-7. We will be offering the books for sale here and I'm sure you could also special order them at your favorite bookstore. Definitely pick them up!

Theory Into Practice:

This month's article is the first of 2 parts. If you want to hear the entire article by myself live, go to www.nlppodcasting.com

Reframing for Change!

Reframing can be one of the most powerful tools that you have to open up new levels of communication, or it can make you seem like a pushy manipulator who uses word games to swindle people. One of the bad raps about NLP comes from misuse of reframing.

So what is reframing? It is a way to use language to reset in someone's mind an event, belief, or feeling. To see, hear, or feel differently about it. Changing the frame of reference is called reframing in NLP. The purpose of reframing is to help a person experience their actions, the impact of their beliefs, behaviors, and feelings from a different perspective (frame) and potentially be more resourceful or have more choice in how they react.

An event, belief, feeling, has no meaning on it's own. It just is. People give it meaning according to their beliefs, values, preoccupations, like and dislikes.

During the 1984 campaign, there was considerable concern about Ronald Reagan's age. Speaking during the presidential debate with Walter Mondale, Reagan said "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience." Reagan's age was not an issue for the remainder of the campaign!

Reframing is changing the way you perceive an event and so changing the meaning. When the meaning changes, the response and behavior changes also.

There are 5 things you must know to have reframing be effective, and these are often over looked by NLP people, because they focus too much on the technique and being slick, and not enough on the big Five.

1. RAPPORT, you must be in Rapport or your reframe will come across as interfering and pushy.
2. Understanding of how the techniques work, not just theory, but understanding on a deeper level of what is happening in your targets mind.
3. Correct information, a reframe before you have all the information leads to technique interrupts, which well it make you look impudent.
4. Permission to offer it 
5. Reframes are natural if done right.

Then and only then will reframe do what it is suppose to do, now here is the big secret of reframing, it is not a complete technique by itself! That's right, I said it, it will, not in and of itself, do a complete change in someone. (I do not believe stories where a 1 line reframe totally shifted a person)

Reframe techniques are only meant to "open the doorway" to a person mind, it gives a glimpse of other possibilities, and you can use this momentary opening, with your rapport skills and correct information, to lead them in another direction.

In other words, the meaning of an experience is dependent on the context, or on the content.

One of the great reframes of all times comes from Thomas Edison, and it is still used to this day to reframe the idea of failure. When it was pointed out that it took 1000 (or 10,000 according to which story one hears) attempts to successfully get the electric light bulb to work, a reporter asked him how he felt about the 1000 failures. Edison replied, "We did not fail, we found 1000 ways that did not work".

Of course in NLP and hypnosis we often quote Milton Erickson, when asked about his failures with clients, he reframed it as "There is no failure, only feedback,  always be willing to try something else."

Then, there is a story about the first President of IBM. A young worker had made a mistake that lost IBM $1 M in business. She was called in to the President's office and as she walked in said, "Well, I guess you have called me here to fire me." "Fire you?" the president replied, "Why would I fire you? I just spent $1 M on your education! That is an MBA in real world experience."

There are two types of reframing:

Context Reframing

Almost all behaviors are useful in some context. A context reframe can be used to see that the behavior itself can be useful.
In what context would this behavior have value?