Price of everything; Value of Nothing

People know the price of everything but the value of nothing. Be careful when you, the consumer, complain about the price of something but don't understand its value. The woman who complained about the price of the photos but probably had a suit on that she purchased for $450 that was marked up around 350%. I can take my car for an oil change to 'Sir Speedy Oil'. But there is no comparison to Sewell. What is value to some is not value to others. Yes, i pay a lot more to go to Sewell. My clients pay more than a $97.00 online course but they get exponentially so much more. The value I get from Sewell far weighs the extra in money i pay in $. At Sir Speedy Oil I get to wait for my car in a dungy, filthy waiting room on uncomfortable chairs and drink burned old coffee and thumb through a 1997 Time Magazine or a paper read by 50 other people. At Sewell I get a loan car and I can use it to go back to my office or run errands. When I add up what I are getting, sometimes I wonder why they don't charge more. When I took my first NLP training, it was expensive for me. But what I got out of it was a new life. How much is that worth? No comparison. When comparing prices make sure it is apples to apples. Remember you pay for expertise and time, the most valuable com    See:  http://www.photoproworkshops.com/Blog/modities 

 

Developing Intimate Relationships

Dating, Dating, Dating....

So many people looking for love, connection, commitment with that one special person...

Here are some practical tips which will support your success especially for online dating.  These ideas ALSO apply to any dating situation.

First and foremost: you cannot tell who you are dealing with and what their true characteristics are for the first 90 days. 

Some call it the '90 day wonder.'  In the first 3 months of a dating relationship, people are on their best behavior.  They talk about all of their philosophy of relationships but not necessarily what they practice unconsciously.  For both men and women, they put their best foot forward and make themselves appealing to the other person.  You both will engage in heart to heart talks about what they believe, what they want, who they are looking for.  Positive feelings of well-being run high!
Then as if by magic, at the 90 day mark, their true character begins to come out.  It is as if another person shows up at the door.  They control their bad feelings less, their personal habits become more identifiable, they may become more controlling or less attentive.  They will go back to who they were before they met you.

Avoid being blind sided:

1. Don't talk about your past dating history, old flames or problems you've had before.  Women: don't call attention to what you perceive as your faults, especially with your body.  No man want to buy damaged goods.  And vise versa.
2. Keep conversation light and on current situations.  Avoid talking about problems with your family members or coworkers. 
3. Get to know the person through activity.  If you both like movies, or working out or trying new foods or restaurants do what you both like to do.   Think of how you dated in high school.  You spent time with a person because you liked them.
4. Avoid the 'looks good on paper' trap.  Spend time with them because of the way they treat you, treat others, and the fact they are likable.
5. Avoid believing things they say. Stick with the facts.  Look them up online if you want more information or have someone do a background report (this is especially recommended for online dating.)
6. AVOID HAVING SEX OR BEING INTIMATE FOR AS LONG AS POSSIBLE.  Once you have sex with someone it compromises your ability to think and understand information about the other person clearly and objectively.  I think this is one of the biggest mistakes couples make - having sex too early in the relationship. You'll know whether there is attraction and chemistry. 
7. Do not date serially.  In other words, especially with online dating, date as many as you can handle at once (which of course means you will not be having sex).  Get to know a variety of people who interest you.   Older adults make this mistake.  They start dating someone exclusively because 'they are the ONE,' only to find out later that they weren't THE ONE, and had to go looking again.
8. Set boundaries.  Do not have sex or do something you feel uncomfortable doing.  If they go away, they weren't worth it.  You are better off with someone else.
9. Have clear 'drop dead' criteria - things that you will not compromise on and then stick to them. I've seen too many people say, I don't want kids and really mean it and then end up raising someone else's kids because the ex-spouse didn't want the kids anymore or they became unfit as a parent.  If they have underage kids and you don't want kids, especially someone else's, MOVE ON.
10. If things start to get serious, go some research on them to make certain they are who they say they are.  Make sure they are not married to someone else, they are gainfully employed, like what they do, are honest and demonstrate integrity behaviorally.

Once you are thinking you might want to spend more time with this person....:

1. Do they do what they say they are going to do?
2. Have they demonstrated their ability to commit long term (if this is what you want?)
3. How do they treat their ex's and others in their life?
4. Do you catch them in little lies or are they forthcoming when they are not with you about what they are doing with their time?
5. Are they transparent about their finances?
6. Do they respect your boundaries?
7. Do they respect your values?
8. Do they have similar ideas about child rearing, money, faith?
9. Do you make excuses for them?
10. If you are a big family person, do they get along with your family members and do they like each other?

There are some big presuppositions in the above ideas: (You must be the person you want to be with)

1. Do you know what your boundaries are and how to firmly set them?
2. Do you know how to communicate your wants and desires without fear of rejection?
3. Do you take responsibility for your own feelings and let them take responsibility for theirs?
4. Do you know what your values are?
5. Are you willing to compromise?
6. Are you willing to honor things that are important to the other person?  For example: If they like a particular holiday, do you make a big deal of it to honor them even though it is not a big deal to you?
7. Are you willing to give them the same kind of latitude in freedom that you want?
8. Are you jealous or feel uncomfortable when they spend time with others?
9. Do you trust yourself?  (Because if you don't, you cannot trust others.)
10. Can you objectively see things from another's point of view?  (If you cannot, you will make both of you miserable.)
11. Do you take things too personally or are you too sensitive?  Work on yourself. You'll never find someone that won't offend you at some point in time.

Talk is cheap.  It is the behavior you want to pay attention.  If you find yourself making excuses for this person, get out and find someone else.  Work on yourself.  NO ONE can make you happy or complete. 

To be in a healthy long term relationship, you must be willing to trust the trustable, know yourself, see things from another's point of view, set boundaries and keep them, honor other's boundaries and values, don't take things personally.

Know with all your being that there are no perfect people but there are perfect values. Spend time with someone you can be friends with first.  If you like them as a friend, you'll love them as partner.

Key: Manage activity in time

·         Plan, Plan, Plan.  Taking time to plan is essential to good activity management.  Otherwise you are just, as I call it, ‘running and gunning.’  You’ll start feeling like you are a pinball.

·         List of activities WRITTEN

·         How much time will each take? – be realistic BUT be generous

·         Do you have enough time to do the task next at hand?

·         How are tasks connected to something valuable – we tend to do things that are important to us or to someone else who is important to us

·         Prioritize – critical function or  ‘like to do’  Assign a number to  each task or activity from 1-5, 5 being the most important right now

·         Is what you are doing best accomplished IN TIME or THROUGH TIME?  Through Time is process: a number of steps to get there and those steps are taken over a period of time.  In Time are events that are single.

·         For Through Time activities, start with the end in mind and work backwards through the steps.

·         Set Boundaries WITH YOURSELF AND OTHERS – Strong internal and external boundaries are essential to be effective in managing activities.  Internal boundaries are about discipline: saying yes or no to you, inner control.  External boundaries are about others and your environment, saying yes or no to external situations.  If you need help with this, there are excellent books on the subject.

·         Focus:

o   Get focused, stay focused and stay on purpose

o   Focus on one thing at a time – you cannot do two things at once.  You may think you can, but the mind doesn’t work that way.  You may think you can talk to a customer while entering data on a spread sheet, but you cannot do a good job at either because you are not 100% present to either. .  Your customer will begin to sense that you go in and out of being present.  Determine which is most important and let the other go until later.

·         ELIMINATE DISTRACTIONS – A messy desk is distracting.  A ringing phone is distracting.  Checking your email every two seconds or texting people is distracting.

·         Tell yourself ‘I have plenty of Time’ rather than ‘I’m running out of time.’

·         Use MOVE TOWARDS language – ‘I want this……’ rather than ‘I don’t want this…’

·         Ask for help

·         Do what you do well, let someone else do the rest

·         Use appropriate OPERATING MODE words – how to you language things that you are motivated to do?  Do you ‘have to’, ‘need to do’, ‘want to do’, ‘should do’ them.  Then take what you want to do, are able to do, but don’t do and change your language around those activities.

·         Remember, stuff happens: the network goes down, you lose electricity, a family member needs attention, or  someone gets sick.  The best way to inoculate from these things is to plan for them because they happen.  Notice, even when people have to take off long periods of time because of disaster or sickness, eventually life goes back to normalcy and things get done.  Being flexible is the key and focusing on what you want and what you are moving towards rather than getting caught up in what is happening now.  Not every plan can be perfectly executed.

·         Effective management of activity is a process of learning.  If you need help, find someone who is excellent at it and model them.  Find out how they do what they do. 

·         Stress:

o   Find ways to reduce stress.  Undue stress causes memory loss and mistakes.  Mistakes are time wasters

o   Give yourself time off.  No one can safely live on adrenaline for long periods of time.

·         Know that you will be ‘screaming’ busy sometimes  and sometimes you won’t.  Enjoy the downtime.

 

 

Some people call it procrastination.  Procrastination is part of a person's motivation strategy.  It is how they motivate themselves.  It also has to do with the meta program distinction pattern of Patient or Wait (Reactive).  People with the Patient pattern wait and consider, analyze, analyze, consider some more.  As opposed to the Initiate Pattern which is proactive.  People with the Patient Pattern are very good at inside sales, cashiers, bank tellers, clerks, any where people have to wait for others to initiate.  Profile:

• Motivated to wait, analyze, consider and react
• Wait for others to initiate
• Situation must be right before they act
• Believe in luck and chance – world is not in their control
• Spend a lot of time waiting
• Good analysts
• Use of gerunds (-ing)

Watch people sit in a meeting.  The Initiators will move around a lot and be active in their seats and will change positions.  The Patient will sit and move very little or not at all.  So the next time you procrastinate, be OK with it.  It is a program your brain is running.  Instead of always wanting to change things about you, find where the pattern words best and go do it! 

Becoming Unconsiously Skilled: Understanding progressive learning

I have taught NLP for 23 years. I consider the designations of NLP to delineate and distinguish different levels of NLP. When a person reaches a masters level I think of that level as mastery of oneself. Skill integration takes time and practice as with other disciplines. The Master designation needs to be defined.

I have a Masters Degree in Information Science. What this designates is I have completed a certain amount of course work at a certain level. It qualifies me to get certain positions which other people without that degree would not be eligible for. This does not (or did not) mean I have all the tacit knowlegde I need to run an organization. The only way to get the knowledge is to work in the field. I've done several NLP Master tracts and assisted in several Master tracts. The knowledge and know-how I have today is gained from working and teahcing in the NLP field for so long. It is knowlegde you cannot get from another individual or classroom.

Richard Bolstad wrote an article in 1997 in Anchor Point called Teaching NLP: How to be consciously unconsciously skilled. It was based on research that Stuart and Hubert Dreyfus did at the University of California with chess players and airline pilots. Patricia Benner researched nursing graduates along the same line. Richard mapped it over to NLP students. Here is a brief synopsis
There are 5 stages of development of unconscious skill from conscious skill:
Novice: must have context free rules to guide what they do; do not know what rule takes precedent. (early in practitioner class)

Advanced beginner: given guidelines instead of rules; not black or white. (at the end of a successful practitioner)

Competent: Manage complexities of actual situations; combine processes and design interventions as a part of longer range goals; apply a vast array of guidelines. (AFTER SEVERAL WEEKS OF NLP PRACTICAL WORK and/or after a Master practitioner class)

Proficient: Unconsciously skilled at things the Competent only manages, accesses vast array of EXPERIENCES instead of guidelines. Deciding what to do with a client comes as a response to hundreds of accesses sensory based memories rather than Ad principles.

Expert: Intuitive grasp of the stiuation and zeros in on the issues that need attention without wasted time in problem solving, challenge rules and guidelines, says things like, "it just felt right.", practice becomes holistic rather than step-by-step.

Notice that a person is only half way through the process of developing unconscous skill when finishing a Master tract. And of course, this article was written in the days when people actually took real NLP courses that lasted long enough for them to actually develop some skill in class. When my master students leave my class, my goal is for them to be Competent. Some of them reach beyond that but nothing takes the place of field work. (We call that in the dance world, Floor Time. You do not learn to dance in class, you learn to dance on the floor).

 The Difference between Prediction and Vision

Prediction says what will be, vision what can be.  Predication is a quest for certainties, vision is a quest for possibilities.  Prediction is based on analysis, which means taking things apart; vision is bases on systhesis, which means putting things together.  Prediction is almost always inaccurate, but vision can't be--any more than a dream can be wrong.  And this the most important distinction, prediction takes place in the future, but vision exists in the present. 

Vision is what we see now, brought into focus by all our experience and emotion.  Scientist estimate that 80 percent of what we see in the real world is already present in our brains, such as the memories, judgments, and emotions that fill the gaps that sight alone is incapable of processing.  Though the images pass through our eyeballs, vision actioually takes place in our minds.  To some degree, everything we see depends on what we are thinking when we envision it....The practice of envisioning can shape the future.  Imagination, or rather seeing through the mind's eye, exposes new possibilities and eliminates unworthiness. 

Though we'll never predict the future, we can, it seem, enact it through the visions we hold today....Want to lower your blood pressure ten points?  Recall an image of yourself under a scarlet Pacific sunset, sand all around, and project yourself under there.  Even scientists, with all their rigor and precision, would be nothing without visions, which they refer to as theories.  As Einstein said: "Our  theories determine what we measure."...tomorrow's reality springs from today's vision.
Quote from Thomas Petzinger, Jr.

Ever wonder why technology companies change their products so often?  It is so frustrating for people to just get used to Windows XP and Vista.  Now Windows 7 is out and soon Windows8.  Apple continues to assault our decision-making processes by introducing new products, it seems to me, weekly.  In fact, if you live long enough, you'll have every product that you've ever loved discontinued.

Here is why:
Technology people have a short clock.  This means that they like change and get depressed if change doesn't happen fast enough.  They thrive on the revolutionary.  This is one of the reason they change jobs every 18 months to 3 years.  So it stands to reason that they design products that have short use spans.

The problem is most of the population like change to EVOLVE over 5-7 years. (The 7 year itch thing).  They like improved updated products, not radically new.  When they have to change products too frequently they find it annoying, frustrating and inconvenient.   It is the reason so many people put off changing to new systems or phones or computers.  It doesn't fit their 'clock'.  NLP has more information on this.  These filters are called Meta Programs.