A Few Questions AnsweredA Few Questions Answered

Today I thought I’d answer a couple of good questions arising from my last blog.

1. Katie commented that she was new to NLP,and what was its purpose,and where does the Swish pattern fit in?

My take on NLP is that it is a methodology for understanding how excellent people do what they do,and a toolkit for replicating this excellence in others or yourself. Within the toolkit there are techniques for reprogramming your mind. One (of many) of these techniques is the Swish pattern,which replaces a negative behaviour with a more resourceful one –more in line with how a model of human excellence would react! There are other techniques for changing your beliefs,changing likes to dislikes (e.g. potato crisps),walking on fire,slowing down time (helps when trying to hit a fast-pitched baseball) and more.

2. Kate asked whether the Swish pattern was like the balloon technique –where you tie something into a thought balloon and let it drift off?

My understanding of the balloon technique is that it is about dampening negative emotions through acceptance and symbolic “letting go”. The Swish pattern is about changing your automatic response to a particular situation by reprogramming your brain! It does this by anchoring resourceful “thoughts”(internal representations) to a trigger,which in the past would have produced an unresourceful state (and behaviour).

Hope this helps.

Martin