After a few too many requests to re-tell the story I thought I best just make you a video. Here’s my recount of my journey into the world of Richard Bandler and his crazy neuro linguistic programming (NLP) antics.
Despite the warnings and hoopla I still attended Design Human Engineering (DHE) and fortunately I wasn’t turned into a pumpkin or worse made impotent. In fact, I enjoyed it and I’m not afraid to admit it :)… I build a control panel in my mind and machines to take over the world.
Watch the video and let me know what do you think? Is NLP a little hokey or do you think it has some merit?
Cheers
Dave Jenyns.
Ps. Please share this Richard Bandler Video – post it on twitter, facebook or wherever.
PPs. If this post gets any interest I might even share my little dip into the even crazier world of Scientology.
Good Times With Richard Bandler
You know, I have been meaning to get into Richards stuff myself, but after hearing the story of how he made that dude impotent, I’m starting to reconsider. haha
Make a recommendation Dave, what should I go for first?
Nice video mate, love this kinda stuff.
I’ve done time line tinkering before — both forwards and backwards — and found it very effective, especially for envisioning what I want and exactly what needs to be done to make it happen.
We spent nearly four months studying NLP in clinical psychology class in college. Perhaps the most difficult aspect I found with this approach is determining the appropriate application of the linguistic and modelling elements in a multi cultural set-up. Plus, there’s also the issue of the resistant individual who enters a counseling session determined to keep closed and inaccessible.
I’ve dropped out of the counseling scene for a bit but always eager to know if there have been any new developments in NLP.
Never heard of Richard Bandler before this, and I must say, he’s got some mighty intriguing ideas! Never heard of NLP before, but it looks like it has the potential to be veeery useful in our line of work…
@Grace: Say what? 🙂 I’ll stick with Quantum Physics thank you very much…
Hi Dave,
I know Tony Robbins practices and teaches NLP. I mentioned that because I remember the movie ‘Shallow Hal’ wherein Tony hypnotizes Jack Black’s character. He changed Jack’s mental state. From that moment on, Jack sees the ‘inside beauty’ of a person which translates to his having these ‘hallucinations’ of seeing ugly people as physically beautiful. I know this is just a movie, but I was just wondering if this is some kind of NLP in action.
Having said that, where are you planning to use your NLP knowledge? Particularly in Internet marketing.
Whenever I hear NLP I remember how other people treat it as a type of hypnosis, taking over the minds of others. Interesting, but I know that there is a better way to understand it.
Now, from what I understand, this means more of having a vision on how you want to achieve things and setting a “control panel” (yes!) in your minds to get up and make it happen.
With that in mind, would you say that this is somewhat related to Law of Attraction? No wonder NLP has become popular among some businessmen and Internet marketing practitioners lately.
Just a quick few additions.
Kyle: Cheers
Ryan: Check out “Frogs Into Princes”
Grace: Ahhh “resistant individuals” that old chestnut 😉
Franz: Yeah he’s one interesting dude.
MJ: I think Shallow Hal might not be the best example… for me it gets incorporated into everything I do – it’s just the way I process the world.
Nhil: I think people “over play” the idea that you can “take over someone’s mind”… it’s just a fun way to look at the world. I suppose you could incorporate some “Law of Attraction” stuff but don’t think they’re closely linked. I might have to save that one for another blog post.
Your SEO Coach,
Dave
Is this NLP some sort of self motivation technique? When you said in your video that you would go into your timeline, particularly the past and tweek your mememories. Are you actually training your mind to remember an event different from what actually happened, or are you teaching yourself to process it differently in order to learn more from it? Thanks for the info.
Aspira CE offers online CEUs for MFT continuing education.
I’ve been a big fan of NLP ever since I started reading books about it 6 or 7 years ago. From that I grew interested in self-hypnosis and meditation. At the same time I gave up smoking – easily, just like that! – don’t know how it happened but it did. Since then I have always been grateful for being given almost a “second chance”.
Cheers Dave, thanks for the recommendation. Will add it to my list of books. Its about 3ft high at the moment, and that’s just the physical books, not including Kindle. 🙂
The power of the mind can never be underestimated, and I think anything that helps unlock its secrets and gives us greater control must be good. I’m certainly going to be looking into NLP!
I love all of Richard Bandler’s stuff. He is a very smart man.
Yes. I tend to coin NLP with the word ‘hypnosis’ because the acronym was introduced to me through a TV show talking about ‘hypnosis’.
I agree with what you said that we are all given the same stimulus and what differs is the way we respond to it and that defines whether we are to be successful in a field or not.
I guess NLP suggests a ‘mind over matter’ thing like a ‘everything can be done’ way of thinking.
David,
Thank you for the informative review of Richard’s DHE workshop. I really appreciate Richard’s amazing insights and abilities. I took training with Richard (and other trainers in NLP) and hung around with him and his buddies for some time in Southern Cal. I have used NLP a lot in sales, marketing and other methods of communicating.
I have no doubt that the DHE training has a lot of interest, insights and value…however a couple of things about your description of the workshop match up with what I’ve seen in recent Bandler videos, and really amaze me.
First is that DHE truly is nothing other than NLP techniques (namely submodalities) by another name no matter how much Bandler spouts BS that is ‘different’. Uses mental control knobs for your external submodalities (what you’re calling “subconscious processes”) is something we heard about and played with long before Bandler called invented the name DHE.
Good stuff, yes…but nothing earth-shattering or new in my experience….normal hypnotic phenomena and NLP stuff…at least if you’ve worked with NLP techniques and submodalities in depth for a while….
I could be quite wrong, but I suspect Bandler really, and I mean *really* disliked having to sign the agreement he did with Grinder acknowledging that BOTH of them jointly founded NLP and that they were not to disparage each other in any way (he seemed to want people to believe he was the sole genius behind NLP) and in he addition ached for something that he could be the SOLE originator of…so he took a piece of hypnosis/NLP (altering your submodalities) and made an entire system and workshop out it, calling it DHE (he used to call it “virtually the ‘opposite’ of NLP….now its “NLP 2.0/running NLP on yourself” which any serious NLP person would automatically do.)
He keeps DHE mysterious-seeming by mumbo-jumbo about how “different/new” it is to NLP and he teaches it infrequently as a “special” workshop, making it mazelike to understand so no one else can teach it and he can have it a system to himself, like he wanted the credit for founding NLP all for himself.
I see the above as Bandler’s trademark mixture of undeniable insight and talents laced with massive heaps of BS about the origins and descriptions of the methods.
Secondly, it seems apparent that Bandler’s material has moved ahead virtually –not at all– in the last 15-20 years. The only new thing I see in that time is the “spinning your feelings” in the torso thing which is good. (No, submodalities control panels are not new….it just training yourself to pay attention to parts of your external sensory experience that you normally don’t. Shamans and warriors do it all the time.)
Otherwise, point me to a single new development, method or technique in that time; even the stories, jokes, one-liners he regurgitates (“impotent guy”, etc. story for the thousandth time! give me a break) are all so repeated and hackneyed that his performance now is pure shtick. The competent speller rap repeated now literally for the 1,500th time and probably composed of pure vapor–completely ridiculous.
Modeling experts…pure NLP…nothing new whatsoever. Tesla building machines in his head, again same story repeated for the billionth time; yes Tesla supposedly did it, but if it had any relevance, Bandler could have already won the Nobel Prize for physics (glad it worked for your sleep learning anyway 🙂 Time line therapy…yes great, but 100% standard NLP…nothing new here.
DHE = NLP, end of story; nothing wrong with that, –except pretending DHE is “new and improved”– if it is, its only to those people who never learned or used NLP seriously from the start.
Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE what Bandler created, I use it and its great, really good, some of the best methods out there.
But I see nothing new happening in the field, specifically with Bandler, and there hasn’t been for a long time and his performance itself has risen (descended?) to the level of vaudeville.
@David – true, he is just regurgitating the same material in similar ways, although you can still learn from every workshop or video you watch of his because of this(you’ll find how he embeds commands, his embedded and looped story’s, his multiple meanings/phonological ambiguities/semantic density and eventually you will get to the deepest level he was talking from, to himself… )
btw – the spinning feelings is about as real as a control knob in your brain, It’s just a creative way in that it describes how to increase a mood with a self-perpetuating/propagating motion… logic, as you know your unconscious now, will understand this right away or wait till its left for a better day…. LoL people read to much about NLP and don’t experience enough.
Good review.
Cool technology, use it as a person not a robot.