NLPhilia Blog

An August 19 article in The Guardian, written by psychotherapist Andrew Feldmár, talks about the benefits of using hallucinogenic drugs alongside conventional treatment:

After three LSD sessions, a patient emerged from what was labelled chronic psychotic depression (she had attempted suicide three times, had been hospitalised, and given several courses of ECT, major antipsychotics and antidepressants), and was able to hold a job, derive pleasure from her days, and look forward to cultivating a varied garden of delights. She moved from cursing me for not letting her die to blessing me for the surprising freedom that opened up for her as a result of her LSD experiences. Psychotherapy, without LSD, would not have been enough, I’m afraid.

I’ve been curious about such methods ever since reading Aldous Huxley‘s book, The Doors of Perception. (Not curious enough to try the stuff, though.) I’m wondering what it is, exactly, that helps the mentally ill get better so much faster with such drugs than without them. If we could determine that, we could determine how to duplicate the results more safely and consistently… perhaps even without the drugs.

Go read Psychedelic Drugs Could Heal Thousands.

(Thanks, BoingBoing, for the pointer.)

A little while back, BoingBoing pointed me to an article in Harvard Magazine. It’s a video and a transcript of author J. K. Rowling’s commencement address, and it’s amazing. One of my favorite parts:

…failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life. I love it.

Go read The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination, and/or watch the video.

My old friend Quentin Grady sent me this. Do you know where phones go when we put them out to pasture?

A quick Googling showed they were created by artist Jean-Luc Cornec for the Museum of Telecommunication in Frankfurt, Germany.

I’m trying out the Journalist Theme for WordPress by Lucian Marin. What do you think?

This post from Dumb Little Man pointed me to this beautiful toy: Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary and thesaurus

Look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. Produce diagrams reminiscent of a neural net. Learn how words associate.

Enter words into the search box to look them up or double-click a node to expand the tree. Click and drag the background to pan around and use the mouse wheel to zoom. Hover over nodes to see the definition and click and drag individual nodes to move them around to help clarify connections.

Go play!

While reading this NLP Connections thread I was reminded of my early reading of Transactional Analysis. Books like I’m OK, You’re OK, Games People Play, and Beyond Games and Scripts really piqued my interest in psychology and therapeutic interaction.

(I know Richard likes to poke fun at TA, but what I really think he pokes fun of is how people can’t tell metaphor or model from reality.)

Anyway, in the above-linked thread, one of the participants mentioned something I hadn’t seen before: The Karpman Drama Triangle. I thought you might like it too. Here’s the link to an article on the topic: The Three Faces of Victim.

Over at the Art of Manliness blog (yes, I read it, and it’s very good!) there’s an article about how your life’s soundtrack influences your life, and how making targeted changes to it can make targeted life changes. (Richard has been touting that for ages.)

OK, it’s not that general. That wouldn’t be suitably manly, I think. It’s specific to exercise. We’re good at extrapolating from a good idea, though.

Go give 52 Workout Songs To Help You Get Bigger, Stronger, and Faster a serious read.

This time, though, it’s a Web-based discussion forum. I’ve browsed it a bit and will join after I’ve “lurked” for a time. (That’s one of my rules for myself.) It looks like a lot of fun.

Go check out Andrew T. Austin’s NLP Forum.

Stever Robbins has recently finished a great new project:

You open your inbox first thing in the morning and are cheerily greeted by 400 new emails, all demanding your time and attention. Janice needs the numbers, now Frank wants your opinion And your mom has sent you a picture of a kitten wearing a hat. Adorable. But, Mom? I’m busy over here. You had grand plans to work on that report, but now its lunchtime and you’ve been dealing with things your inbox has thrown at you all morning. Wasn’t email supposed to make us more productive?

No matter what Stever does, you can believe it’ll be first class. Go get his new audio program, You Are Not Your Inbox, now!

It’s been a while since anything at Lifehack.org caught the attention of the NLPer in me. Don’t get me wrong — it’s always good — but this one is truly excellent:

Success, however it’s defined, takes action, and taking good and appropriate action takes skills. Some of these skills (not enough, though) are taught in school (not well enough, either), others are taught on the job, and still others we learn from general life experience.

Dustin goes on to elaborate on the following ten skills:

1. Public Speaking
2. Writing
3. Self-Management
4. Networking
5. Critical Thinking
6. Decision-Making
7. Math
8. Research
9. Relaxation
10. Basic Accounting

Now, those are all modelable and learnable skills. And each of us probably knows someone who can do each of them well!

Go read the full article at 10 Skills You Need to Succeed at Almost Anything.