NLPhilia Blog

Rapport is a fundamental NLP skill, and if you can’t get rapport with the person you’re helping — or who is helping you — everything is much, much more difficult.

I doubt you’ve been in a more difficult situation that Dr. Jack Schafer, though. He is a former Supervisory Special Agent with the FBI, and part of his job was turning foreign spies into double-agents. His life depended on his ability to establish and maintain rapport with people who could be quite hostile if things went wrong.

He wrote a book, The Like Switch, on the topic, and I highly recommend it. (I highly recommend everything he’s written, for that matter.)

Podcaster Jordan Harbinger (an excellent interviewer, by the way) pulled Dr. Schafer in for a two-part interview on the skills taught in The Like Switch. Go have a listen:

1. Flipping The Like Switch, Part One
2. FLipping The Like Switch, Part Two

OK, so it isn’t NLP-related, but I know there are those of us who run trainings and who manage practice groups and such, and there are times when it’s useful to have professional-looking name tags for the folks in the room. So I’d like to draw your attention to FreeNameTags.net. They have more than 60 ready-to-use printable name tags that you can download and print for free. (They take Avery 5395 or compatible adhesive labels, or plain paper.)

The Employee name tags might be great for associate trainers or other helpers you’ve got, and the Hello tags for your participants. Unless you’ve got an interesting sense of humor, of course.

Incidentally, the folks who run that site have lots of other free printable stuff for your business, too.

(Thanks, Lifehacker!)

Are you always on the lookout for relaxing sounds to play in the background of your hypnosis sessions?

A recent Lifehacker.com post points (or, rather-re-points, as it had covered them before) to a very simple and very cool Web app that generates a wide variety of relaxing sounds and lets you mix them to your personal taste. Choose from drums, flutes, or “vibes”, add up to four choices of sound (birdsong, ocean waves, crickets, etc.), set the volume for each, and let it play.

Go check out Sound Sleeping. (Requires Flash.)

By the way, you can also download MP3 tracks of pre-mixed relaxation for a nominal price.

I received this from John LaValle and wanted to spread the word:

Just released on iTunes: MindSpa iMeditation by Dr. Richard Bandler. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch download immediately while it is free and make sure to give the app a 5-star rating with superlative reviews. This is the first of many apps coming.

The MindSpa application takes the unique capabilities of the iPhone and iPod Touch to a new level by simultaneously providing auditory and visual neural brainwave entrainment with biofeedback. This is the first iPhone application to combine three scientifically proven modalities to provide deep relaxation leading to a calmer mind and better sleep.
http://www.purenlp.com/iphone-app/index.html

Or use your iPhone or iTouch and look up keyword Bandler or Mindspa in applications.

This app is GREAT!! And it’s FREE for a very short period of time!

I’ve long loved Sun Tzu’s book, The Art of War. It’s a book on conflict resolution, not specific to war, and I’ve learned and used a great deal of its wisdom in my work.

Today I read an article by blogger Anil Polat at the foXnoMad blog, a blog about travel. Apparently, dealing with difficult airline ticket agents is an art form, and Mr. Polat has used Sun Tzu’s work to increse his own success:

Sun Tzu’s book, The Art of War, written more than 2,000 years ago is one of the world’s most famous books on strategy. While Tzu was writing for generals in the army, the fundamentals of his wisdom can help you overcome even the most stubborn airline representative.

I enjoyed the article tremendously, recognizing my approach with angry customers in it.

Read the full article, Use Sun Tzu’s The Art of War To Win Battles At The Ticket Counter, at the foXnoMad blog.

Here’s Lionel Giles’ translation of The Art of War at the Internet Classics Archive. (Free, but not prettily formatted.)

Here’s Thomas Cleary’s translation at amazon.com. (If you want to buy it, though, I encourage you to get it by way of the link in Mr. Polat’s article, so as to thank him for writing it.)

A January article from the Victoria News, published by the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, shares some research by Paul Sulzberger, PhD into the teaching of languages:

Dr Sulzberger has found that the best way to learn a language is through frequent exposure to its sound patterns – even if you haven’t a clue what it all means.

“However crazy it might sound, just listening to the language, even though you don’t understand it, is critical. A lot of language teachers may not accept that,” he says.

Now, people who are good at learning languages have long said that immersion makes a massive difference, but they’ve never talked about why that’s the case. Dr. Sulzberger asserts that aural exposure to the language actually changes the brain, re-wiring it to understand what is being said:

Dr Sulzberger’s research challenges existing language learning theory. His main hypothesis is that simply listening to a new language sets up the structures in the brain required to learn the words.

“Neural tissue required to learn and understand a new language will develop automatically from simple exposure to the language—which is how babies learn their first language,” Dr Sulzberger says.

It’s an interesting idea, and it makes a lot of sense to me. You can read the rest of the article here.

And in the spirit of this snippet from the article:

“Teachers should recognise the importance of extensive aural exposure to a language. One hour a day of studying French text in a classroom is not enough—but an extra hour listening to it on the iPod would make a huge difference,” Dr Sulzberger says.

…by way of Lifehacker, here is a master list of free online language lessons.

If you will read this post on Steve Andreas’ blog, you’ll find that NLP Comprehensive’s store is offering 20%-50% off select items for the holidays.

This article on Eyes for Lies points to what promises to be a very, very cool new TV series: Lie To Me. Based on the life and work of Dr. Paul Eckman:

DR. CAL LIGHTMAN (Tim Roth, “The Incredible Hulk,” “Reservoir Dogs”) can detect the truth by analyzing a person’s face, body, voice and speech. When someone shrugs one shoulder, rotates their hand or raises their lower lip, Lightman knows they’re lying. By analyzing facial expressions, he can read feelings – from hidden resentment to sexual attraction to jealousy. But as Lightman well knows, his scientific ability is both a blessing and a curse in his personal life, where family and friends deceive each other as readily as criminals and strangers do. Lightman is the world’s leading deception expert, a scientist who studies facial expressions and involuntary body language to discover not only if you are lying but why.

Premiers January 21 on Fox. (Hey, Honey, set the TiVo, please!)

Watch the trailer:

Elvis Keith Lester just released a hypnotic screencast. Great mellow music, beautiful photos of Yellowstone National Park, and a compelling hypno-voiceover.

Go experience some Natural Tranquility.

You can get the music from TranceLand.

I received this back in April, but just found it, neglected, among some other e-mail.

Doug O’Brien and Nick Kemp composed and recorded original music for their 2006 collaboration, “How Deep the Rabbit Hole.” While they were at it, they decided to create some music that anyone could use in their trance inductions. The “license” is as follows:

The music is 15 minutes in length. You are free to use it however you choose. We only ask, if you use it for a distributed recording, please give us a music credit. Thanks.

It sounds really cool. Go get it. If you like, let ’em know; maybe they’ll give you some more.