Rule 14: All procedures should be Designed to increase choice.
This rule is so liberating. It opens up limitless potential.
Because almost everything in our life experience is contextual, it is important to use NLP to open up choices. Not guide people to what you think is the best outcome. You are not them. You don’t know what they REALLY want and desire. Even if they tell you, they could be lying. Shame and vanity are very motivating.
This is one of the more glorious things about NLP that blew me away learning it. Skilled NLP therapists can actually work people through huge life problems without even asking them to tell them what they are.
Many techniques don’t require the therapist to know the specifics. They can work with victims of childhood trauma, or PTSD, and have great success without making the victim retell the story. Because, with the principles and methods in NLP, all that matters is that the client knows what happened.
Even then, what really happened doesn’t matter. All that matters is what they think happened.
Then, when the therapist is working with the client, they still don’t tell them what they can do. They just expand their ability to see choices. New ideas an options of how to think about things. Different ways to view the event and their life since. Help them to see new ways they can choose to put that behind them and move forward.
We resist things that want to order us what to do. We love new ideas that we come up with. Those will be more powerful.
So when you are helping people in your life get through things, look to show them new options and new choices. Refrain from telling them what to do. They will like you better and be more likely to take action. When you use the other presuppositions in this series, you learn the skills you need to radically increase the probability of getting a good result.
And when you are really good, you can live the great Milton Erickson quote of: My clients are free to choose any option that they like…………from the selection I have given them. (hint: you aren’t that good yet)
