The Seven Habits of Highly Effective NLP Practice

The seven habits of highly effective NLP practice was written in honor of Stephen Covey, and the beautiful legacy he left in his teachings.

After learning NLP,students want to be as effective as their trainers or even more effective. This effectiveness can easily be achieved by practice, and setting a well formed outcome to do so.

Habit 1: Be Pro-active

It is up to you to take the initiative! Decide to practice little chunks of NLP every day. Make the decision now, and you will soon notice that you can easily become great at NLP. No one will do it for you. So you have to decide to start today!

Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind

Set a well formed outcome to become an NLP virtuoso. Just sit down and write the answers on a piece of paper (you can frame it too!) What is it that you would like to get out of life by being a stellar wiz at NLP? How does this align with who you are, your goals, your values? Do you have a mission and vision? Future pace yourself to that moment in time, already having reached it. What would happen if you did reach it? Act as if starting today, you are an amazing accomplished NLP Practitioner magician! It is important that you reach this goal, wouldn’t you agree?

Habit 3: Put First Things First

Start planning what you are going to do each day to practice NLP today. Divide NLP in little chunks, a chunk for each day. For instance, by spending 5 minutes a day practicing a language pattern. Set yourself a task every day how to practice on someone else, anything from eliciting a positive state, to paying attention to eye accessing, or noticing or matching predicates etc. If you are not actively doing any patterns with people, go out and find them, schedule! One a week, is better than none each week. And realize, this is not about urgency, this is about priority! It is about your priority to reach your well formed outcome! How can you align your day, to take action now?

Habit 4: Think Win-Win

Spend some time considering how you reaching your well formed outcome benefits your relationships. Of the people you love, at work, the people you encounter on a daily basis. How does you becoming the grand master of NLP impact the world even? How does it make you a better partner? Or a better mom/dad? How can others help you become a better NLP Practitioner? They have everything to gain if you do. What is it specifically that they gain?

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then be Understood

It is important in practicing, using and applying techniques on others that deep rapport is created. Not superficial rapport, where you match and mirror (where you assume you are all that and a bag of chips!) But where the match and mirror is truly created because you have interest in understanding others. You want to be able to step into the 2nd perceptual position of NLP, especially of those you care about. Have an open mind doing so. What makes someone else really tick? And how do you look at yourself through the eyes of someone else? Do this first, then use NLP involving others. It will not only make you a more effective NLP Practitioner, it makes you a kinder human being. If you have deep rapport, your work becomes more powerful than you can imagine. Where you operate from a place caring, respect, and problem solving. Listen, I mean really *listen!*

Habit 6: Synergize

Combining strengths to practice NLP is a great idea! Gather a group of NLP Practitioners, to talk NLP. Preferably in real life, otherwise on the internet. Get a small group of coaching clients to create a synergy that is mutually beneficial. Are there any models of accomplished NLP Practitioners around you? You may want to spend some time with this person, and model him or her. Or is there some close to you, maybe not someone in the world of NLP, who truly displays mastery in communication? Or another quality you admire.

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

Put your mind, emotions, AND your body in that spot for you to become the most powerful NLP Practitioner. It is interesting to consider the NLP pie, and how many NLP Practitioners are well versed in just mind and emotion (if that even.) The body part of NLP goes no further than creating rapport, notice state shifts, or reading some eye accessing. If you want to be that NLP model of excellence, if you have mastery over your mind and emotion…..doesn’t that require a healthy body? Would you be a better NLP Practitioner, if your body was energized, balanced, healthy? Would others respond differently to you? At the very least your own mind and emotion would benefit from a healthy balanced body full of energy. What body does a congruent leader have?

We will leave the 8th habit for some other time.

Thank you Stephen Covey.