Blog entries by Robbie Steinhouse
There is a saying in coaching and therapy: “The presenting problem is never the real problem.” Looking back to when I did my first NLP Practitioner training twenty years ago, I believed at that time that NLP would give me some new skills to help me manage my business ...
In this video, I cover principles of how our thoughts can be expressed as an inner-voice and some reasons why that inner-voice may not always be helpful to us. I also discuss the intriguing quote, “The child is father of the man” by William Wordsworth (another way of putting ...
As a budding author of fiction, my wife Anna arranged a creative writing lesson for me with her friend and author Hattie Edmonds. I was amazed to note how the ‘process’ fitted nearly exactly into Dilts’ & Gilligan’s six-step Generative Coaching structure. It also featured many principles I was ...
This question of what characteristics make for a successful and happy career is simple, but not simplistic: it is probably the most important question we need to ask of ourselves. For me, the answer comes in NLP’s essential approach to archetype psychology. Archetypes have existed throughout human history in ...
How can coaching help with Imposter Syndrome and other issues around our identity? So often people don’t feel fully comfortable in their own skin – I know that was the case for me when I qualified in NLP over 20 years ago. That was until something happened that changed ...
Apparently it was Henry Ford that first said this quote and it’s often used to demonstrate how much attitude can determine our success in any given pursuit. If someone uses the words I can’t in a sentence it’s worth further investigation, quite often I can’t is a legitimate expression ...
Children need attention (and love) and when they don’t receive this, they develop strategies to gain negative attention by making their parents angry or worried. This approach to gaining attention becomes more sophisticated as people grow older and they start to use more elaborate strategies. These strategies are psychological ...
Positive intention, secondary gain or payback as some people call it is the conscious or unconscious benefit we derive from any behaviour that we exhibit. Recognising that behind every behaviour is a positive intention is a primary assumption of NLP. It is a concept derived from humanistic psychologists like ...
Is loyalty to the first change system you learnt a hindrance? I have always been a sceptical person and that included during my original training in NLP over 20 years ago. I found that some in the NLP field seemed to be convinced that it was the ‘only way’ ...
Mindfulness reportedly has huge benefits to your health, happiness, wellbeing, energy and effectiveness. Why then doesn’t everyone simply do it? I believe the reason is that while you are learning how to master it, you need to also learn why you are doing it. Otherwise, it can simply become an unpleasant ...
At the 2020 NLP Conference I presented a session with the title ” Can models and theories co-exist” where, to cut a long story short, I made the argument that yes – indeed they can. In my Advanced NLP Coaching course I combine NLP Timelines with processes from Transactional ...
Changing the way we define ourselves (our identity) can have some huge benefits but can cause some significant issues. A good way to start is to consider an important question – How do we define our identity? This could include: Our perceived roles in life: work, family, aspirational, race, ...
In this video, I give some tips on business leadership and entrepreneurship. I am being interviewed in Tbilisi, Georgia by Nik Shurgaia – a close friend and an experienced bank CEO. Nik has gained a large following in Georgia by posting videos of his views on leadership and entrepreneurship ...
The Value of Santa Claus Having completed teaching our NLP Master Practitioner in Georgia yesterday, I wanted to explain some insights I shared around changing beliefs and identity. I started the training with Robert Dilts’ Belief Change Cycle, an elegant process based on the principle that most of our ...
Having recently completed creating Judy Delozier’s Somatic Coaching eLearning programmes, it struck me just how intuitive and powerful Somatic Archetype approaches are. In this blog I want to give a range of examples of how to use them in coaching and also in your own personal growth. Anchoring The ...
“The body never lies” – Martha Graham Somatic Coaching is a way of utilising both the words and movements of a client within a coaching session. It also teaches the coach how to become aware of how their own body communicates – both to the client, and to themselves, ...
In this blog, I wanted to share some reflections on NLP University. California Dreamin’ The first time I went to Santa Cruz to study at NLP University was in 2006 to do my NLP Trainer’s Training. Going down towards Highway 1 from SF airport, in a rented Ford Mustang ...
There is a saying in coaching and therapy: “The presenting problem is never the real problem.” Looking back to when I did my first NLP Practitioner training twenty years ago, I believed at that time that NLP would give me some new skills to help me manage my business ...
In this blog, I will explain three parts of an NLP goal coaching process which I will be covering in full during our free lunchtime zoom session on 9th Feb. Coaching is often taught as a process consisting of a list of different types of questions. Behind these questions ...
In this week’s blog I cover one of the most powerful psychology shifts you can make in leadership and personal development; a shift in motivation from fear formed in your past, toward a vision you wish to create for your future. There are however some opposing forces that need ...
Much of the material we work with as coaches ends up being about human relationships – at work, of course, but also at home. Drama-triangle Dysfunctional relationships eat away at clients’ time and energy.
With lockdown measures starting again across the world, I wanted to write a blog on how to mentally ‘weather the storm’. I have revisited a mix of ideas from Stoicism (an ancient Greek and Roman philosophy), Transactional Analysis (a more modern psychology stating we have an inner parent, adult ...
With our Advanced Coaching training starting in early December, I have been revisiting a coaching process I created called Rescripting. The principle behind this is that one way of defining our identity is as a character in a story that has a specific script or destiny. What ties A ...
In today’s blog post, I want to discuss the basics of what NLP is, who it might be useful for, and what it could do for you, both personally and professionally. What is NLP? NLP stands for Neuro Linguistic Programming. Our brain and nervous system are programmed by the ...
Every motivational speaker will tell you reaching the next level is about setting goals and achieving them. The bigger and more audacious the goal, the better! So go on, get achieving! Now! But things don’t work that way… The trouble is, things don’t always work out that way. Life ...
With our first ever zoom blended learning Practitioner starting in just over two weeks, I wanted to write a blog about some of the important principles we cover in the training: profiling and learning styles. Profiling from Personal Preference Psychometric profiling has been a huge influence on organisations for ...
You can empower coaching clients by teaching them to own it. This is the new principle that I introduced as part of the client contracting process on my Coach Training with NLP, TA and Mindfulness course, which I am now teaching online. The principle was for participants to notice ...
An NLP concept I use a lot is that of Perceptual Positions – also known as ‘Different Perspectives’. The three most commonly used are: First Perceptual Position is the one we habitually use, seeing things from our own perspective. Second Perceptual Position is when we take another persons’ perspective. ...
With our online NLP Practitioner starting in less than a month, I wanted to share some ideas of how to manage your emotional state. These ideas are based on the emotional intelligence content from Robert Dilts at NLP University where I work as a faculty member and I presented ...
Are you your job role? The word identity has multiple possible meanings. It can be perceived as a job role such as an accountant or a marketing manager. However, when you meet people who work in these roles, they often have shifted this skill set to their actual identity, ...
In my Leadership Matrix model below, each character, or Archetype, represents a positive business energy. Each Archetype also has a Shadow – a potentially problematic manifestation of that Archetype. In this blog I will offer 5 tips around criticism, and relate them to the Archetypes I detail in my ...
In my model below, The Leadership Matrix, each character, or Archetype, represents a positive business energy. At the same time, each Archetype also has its own unique Shadow, or problematic manifestation. Last week I concluded that being truthful to yourself, especially on your weak spots, is an essential self-critical ...
In my model, The Leadership Matrix (see above), each character, or Archetype, represents a positive business energy. At the same time, each Archetype also has its own unique Shadow, or problematic manifestation. In this blog I will explain how aspects of the personality of leaders can diminish the benefits ...
In this blog, I shall look at the skills that make up effective leadership. The capability sets of leadership My model began life in the business world. If you find the tasks a bit ‘business-y’ on first appearance, please bear with me. I have subsequently found that they actually ...
The Leadership Matrix In this blog post, I want to discuss a model that I developed myself, called the Leadership Matrix (see above) from my book Mindful Business Leadership. Of course, I ‘stood on the shoulders of giants’ to create it. The idea of archetypes and archetypal energies has ...
1. What is the ‘source’ of NLP? It is important to find out from your training provider who is the source of their NLP. There were a number of key players who started and developed NLP during the 1970s around the campus of University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC). ...
NLP was born in the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) in the early 1970s. It was started informally by a group of students and teachers as a way to study excellence and interests that fell outside of any of the academic faculties. This created a culture of creativity ...
Often clients come to a coaching session with quite simple, technical ‘presenting’ issues. They want to be more effective managers, to influence senior people or to delegate more effectively. But the thing underlying all of these desires is often much simpler – happiness. “If you solved this problem, how ...
One area that seems frowned upon in business is the idea of emotion. Business is generally conducted in a rational and steady way, and people who are ‘too emotional’ are often considered unprofessional or worse. However, it is also well known that when people repress their feelings totally, this ...
NLP started out back in the 1970s with a technological approach to therapy (analysing the linguistic structure of unhelpful beliefs). I like to think it has retained some of that early rigour and clarity, but in other ways it has softened and become more humanistic. One of the key ...
Many people come to a point in their career where they realize that continuing to practice the specialist skill they have mastered has become an impediment to fulfilling their ambitions in becoming leaders. We are brought up with a belief that the way to succeed at work is to ...
We live, we are told, in an anxious world. We’re anxious about our jobs, our families, our futures. This has been exacerbated by the current economic and global climate. So how can we ease our anxiety, and how can NLP help with this? I explore these questions, in this ...
2.6% of the adult population of the UK suffer from depression of some kind. This equates to over 1 million people. I feel very sad when I read a fact like this and think of all the suffering and wasted potential that lies behind it. I’d love to be ...
The presuppositions emerge over and over again in NLP, and can be particularly useful for people who are looking to review and revise their thinking patterns. ‘Presuppositions’ is probably not the best word for them (but is the standard NLP word used). The word implies a logical necessity: that ...
Have you ever listened in suprise as someone aggressively tells you they are kind, considerate and approachable? This is the difference between content and process – a key skill that NLP can teach you, and the essence of NLP coaching. What is content and process? Oftentimes the story that ...
Recently, the caring professions have been in the public eye, and the public’s mind. Helping people whose job it is to help others is more important now than ever before. With this in mind, I’ll be giving suggestions this week on how NLP can be used by caring professionals, ...
Mindfulness reportedly has huge benefits to your health, happiness, wellbeing, energy and effectiveness. Why then doesn’t everyone simply do it? I believe the reason is that while you are learning how to master it, you need to also learn why you are doing it. Otherwise, it can simply become an unpleasant ...
In my coaching experience, one thing that particularly concerns some people is having to make a decision under pressure. Especially when someone is pushing them to say ‘yes’ and to do so right now! It often feels easiest to give in. Doing so is, of course, a decision in itself, ...
Mindfulness can deliver more inner-peace. It is predicated on a slightly bizarre paradox: are we able to notice ourselves thinking, or is that just another kind of thinking?
Happiness has been a topic of discussion since the early philosophers. As a practice and a state, it is just as relevant in the present day. As the COVID-19 lockdown begins to affect people’s mood, many are starting to search for new ways of coping with uncertainty, bringing balance to ...
There is a saying: ‘charity begins at home’. Perhaps during these challenging times, we can change this to: ‘leadership begins at home’. In this blog I want to offer some ideas of how a leadership model can provide comfort and clarity in times of profound uncertainty and change. The ...
I have been thinking – with all of the deluge of information on the Corona Virus this week, is there anything worthwhile I could add from an NLP perspective? Two things came to mind, from some of the ideas from Robert Dilts that we teach at NLP University: We ...
The Negative Feeling Cycle Do you ever find that your mind goes around in circles — thinking and rethinking certain problems, your mental state worsening, with no more clarity as to how to solve the problem? Perhaps you also feel victimised, in conflict with other people? In this blog, I will give ...
This blog covers how aspects of NLP can be used to help to manage mental health, and discusses an accompanying process called “Mentalisation Based Therapy”. Mental Health is a Spectrum Psychology often seems to imply that there are two groups of people – those with mental health issues and ...
Many people start their journey of NLP and coach training because they are at a ‘cross-roads’ in their life. They are often in a life-transition phase – dealing with big changes, or a lack of purpose – and are looking for some answers. I have found that people often ...
Welcome to 2020! A number for perfect vision and new beginnings. Each year, we resolve to become a little better, and take one step closer to our ideal versions of ourselves. But in our quest for perfection, the New Year can start to feel like a test. One that ...
One of the things I come across as a coach (and also personally) is having strong negative feelings when someone behaves in an aggressive or angry way. In this blog, I would like to give some suggestions to help cope with, and understand, negative feelings. I will be covering ...
In this blog, I will cover a theme that stays pretty constant for coaches : how to help a client during a significant period of life transition. To misquote Shakespeare (in Twelfth Night) — some are born to cope with change, some become able to cope with change and some have change ...
Some subjects are difficult to examine because they are complex, others because they are emotionally charged. The environment and your place in it is both. This is one reason that many of us don’t make the best environmental choices. The subject is complex, there are conflicting explanations of what ...
In this blog I will share some techniques for inner peace, drawn from the ancient Greek and Roman philosophy of Stoicism and modern NLP. I will also discuss how these techniques can help us live happier and more productive lives. But first, a brief bit of background; there are ...
Change for a New Era As I begin preparation for our course with Ed Hines, one of the key themes we will be covering is: how do you provide new coaching tools to deal with some the problems that we all face today? There is concern about major issues ...
Each year at NLP University in California a general vision is set. This summer it was ‘caring for the collective’. This naturally lead to many discussions about caring for our environment, not just for future generations, but for us now. This coincided perfectly with one of the reasons Ed ...
I was highly focused entrepreneur until my late 30s, when the ‘call’ to change was spurred by the ideas in Steven Covey’s business book, The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. Starting an industry placement as part of my degree in my early 20s, I joined the sales force ...
Team Profiling and NLP One of the important principles from NLP is the idea that people can have the same desired outcome, but the way they express it can be so different that it leads to major problems in a team. NLP has its own profiling methodology (like an ...
During some recent coaching sessions, I was surprised to hear a number of people in senior roles saying they had ‘Imposter Syndrome’. What is Imposter Syndrome? Imposter Syndrome a phenomenon where individuals doubt their accomplishments and progress. Instead, they feel like they are on the brink of being exposed ...
Confidence is something we all talk about, we all strive for, and we all look to build. But what are the “layers” we need to build confidence? Some ideas in the beginning may be obvious or may not apply to you. Go through the list and be honest with ...
In this week’s blog, a brief segue into the psychology of relationship games. I will be using some principles from Transactional Analysis (TA) to help frame and understand the source of people’s problems: those of psychological games and scripts. What are Relationship Games? A relationship game is basically a ...
One of the parts of the Advanced Coaching training day I especially enjoy is covering a powerful, yet rapid process to help people discover their life purpose. Working as a coach, I have always found it remarkable how such a short yet powerful exercise can have such a dramatic ...
There is a saying in coaching and therapy: “The presenting problem is never the real problem.” Looking back to when I did my first NLP Practitioner training twenty years ago, I believed at that time that NLP would give me some new skills to help me manage my business ...
How do you spot if someone is playing a psychological game with you? A good way to work it out is through energy: if after you have interacted with someone you feel your energy has been drained and the other person seems somehow uplifted and re-energised – you have ...
Understanding Archetypes – The Key to Success and Balance This blog will discuss how innate human energies or archetypes can give an answer to one of life’s most important questions: “What is the secret of finding emotional balance in life?” A Deeper Understanding For me, the answer to this ...
People behave differently under stress – some are forceful, some withdraw and others try to distract themselves. The idea of ‘boundaries’ has become increasingly used in popular psychology as a way of addressing stressful situations but it can be simplistic, with the message being that all you need to ...
Arguably learning to understand (and manage) your own state is one of the most helpful tools in personal development.You were in such a state, what a state you are in! What a fantastic state of mind. What is State? The OED defines state as “The particular condition that someone ...
I try and avoid focusing on negative topics, but this week I want to discuss NLP ‘s reputation – both good and bad. A metaphor I use is one of martial arts. Founders of martial arts schools are often held in a certain reverence by their students. Sadly, some teachers ...
Anxiety is one of the most common problems in modern life – not just worrying about some particular thing, but a general sense of worry that won’t go away. What can you do if you experience it? Here are some suggestions… Acceptance Accept how you feel. Anxiety can ramp ...
This week’s blog is about a life-changing process that I created, called Rescripting. The basic idea behind it is that successful people often have the following belief: “You can be happy and a loser, or you can be successful and stressed; you can’t have happiness and success.” The idea ...
In a previous blog, I talked about what coaching is and how, at a general level, it works. Now I want to be more specific, and look at the relationship between coaching and NLP, an area I have worked in for many years. I believe very strongly that both ...
What is coaching? Coaching is a way of helping people deal with issues that are concerning them. It is also a way of developing people’s skills and abilities, and of boosting performance. It is done in a spirit of curiously and non-judgement and creates a safe supportive environment, where ...
In the first part of this post, I talked about the ‘lower’ end of the NLP LogicalLevels, the light that this concept throws on the question of confidence, and how NLP can help. Now I want to move ‘up’ the levels, to more abstract ones. Remember that the three ...
In the next two blogs, I’d like to go back to my roots in NLP and look at the subject of confidence through one of the most powerful conceptual tools in the NLP armoury – the Logical Levels. These were created by Robert Dilts, as a way of checking where coaching ...
At first glance, mindfulness and confidence seem to be very different states. Mindfulness is thoughtful, measured and inward-looking, while confidence is breezy, spontaneous and outgoing. How can the former assist the latter? Removing Barriers to confidence One way mindfulness helps is by removing our barriers to confidence. Lack of confidence is ...
NLP can be used everyday in practical situations – at work creating rapport with clients, in personal development by creating healthy relationships, in sales by getting a better understanding of customers issues and showing confidence. There are so many areas of life that can benefit with NLP, So I ...
I’m not trying to say that you too, could have the charisma of Bill Clinton if you come on our three day NLP course. But I find it interesting how successful people use, or have used, the skills we teach and reckon that we can all learn from them. Actually, Bill ...
In this article, we explain the Meta Model within the context of NLP techniques. NLP has been described as the study of the structure of subjective experience. What does this mean? One of the central presuppositions of NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) is that ‘the map is not the territory’. The ...
NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) is a set of tools for personal development, based on a study of how we access, store and express ‘information’. Much of the accessing is done via ‘filters’ that can distort reality, and the same is true for storage: what lessons do we learn and ...
Our Master Practitioner course begins on 1st March. Judith Lowe will be teaching part of the module on modelling, and will also run two optional one day modelling workshops, which will be free for attendees. This will be a great chance to work in small groups with one of ...
New Year is traditionally a time for resolutions. It is also traditional that these don’t last very long. But we shouldn’t short-change ourselves like this. If you made a lunch date with someone, would you show up? Of course. Yet when we make commitments to ourselves, we are often ...
Belief Change Techniques - Learn how our beliefs held over years often turn out to be wrong. As such, they make our world a smaller place. They are a kind of internal prison that we carry round with us, a self-imposed yoke, a limitation.
Students of NLP will be familiar with Robert Dilts’ ‘Logical Levels’ (also known as the Neurological Levels). I have found this incredibly useful in all sorts of ways – it’s one of those concepts that seems to shed light on almost everything. For those of you who are unfamiliar ...
What is Master Practitioner Training? One of the distinguishing features of Master Practitioner is its focus on turning the principles of famous psychology books into NLP Processes. For example the NLP processes: Robert Dilt’s – Hero’s Journey (*1) Judith Delozier’s – Tracking Transitions Are based on: Joseph Campbell’s “Hero with ...
The subject of leadership has fascinated me for years. This is partly, of course, because I found myself having to practice it, without any formal training. Once I started my own business I was, whether I wanted it or not, in charge of something, and when I started employing ...
Up until the last moment, a substantial number of voters in the recent referendum were ‘undecided’ (or so the polls claimed, anyway). As author of a book and an ebook on decision making, I was asked to help one such voter make his mind up live on national radio. ...
The Psychologist Paul Ekman (who is best known for his work on facial expressions, a topic I shall blog on more in the future) makes the important distinction between our natural emotional responses (happiness, sadness, anger, disgust etc.) and when our reaction seems as if it has ‘triggered’ something ...
Psychometric Profiling can play an important role in modern Leadership Development. I am a fan of them – up to a point. It is useful for people to learn what their strengths are. But it can become all too easy to see people who are different to you as ...
Having written two books on decision-making, I often wonder why this subject gets so little interest. Good decisions are the key to a successful life. So is the avoidance of bad ones, which can destroy lives – stories of which go back far into history: Napoleon’s decision to invade ...
I recently read some research about what constitutes success and happiness. The results were a surprise. The Grant Study, a ‘longitudinal’ study (following people over a long period of their lives) carried out at Harvard Medical School, concluded that ‘warmth of relationships throughout life’ is the most powerful force ...
Clients often express negative thinking, which they imagine to be objectively true, but which are actually not true at all. A classic example is “I could never do that.” As coaches we learn to challenge these, for example by asking, “What would actually happen if you did?” These sorts ...
Three good robust questions about Mindfulness leap to mind. First, what is it? Second, what can it do for me? And third, is it a fad that will soon pass? Taking these one a time… What is mindfulness? Mindfulness is simply living in the ‘now’, being aware of your ...
Having just finished teaching an NLPU Master Practitioner in Malaysia, I continue to be astonished at the amazing transformational power of Robert Dilts’ Re-imprinting Process for trauma, and how closely it can relate to the Drama Triangle. I use the combination of NLP and TA when I find that ...
