My introduction to NLP was as the subject of misuse. In the last of the three encounters, the one that spurred me to action, ended with a cocky lawyer saying, “I really enjoyed our time together, and I’m not just saying that.” But she was!

If it wasn’t for sloppiness, I would still not know. I wouldn’t have spent the last year obsessively working towards mastery and learning from my past ignorance.

When I first started learning, I was quite focused on Bandler and Grinder — the discoverers of the field — until I started to see the same sloppiness in them, particularly in Bandler’s post-diabetes phase. Because my introduction to NLP was the lesson that sloppiness and incongruity go hand in halting your efficiency with any application of NLP, I truly value the quality and depth of this review.

You’re absolutely correct in your concern about Bandler carelessly leading the field in a worse direction than what the best of us strive for. It’s bad enough that we’ve got unscrupulous salemen, sex fiends, and politicians on ‘the dark side’!

I believe that any hope of bringing NLP into the mainstream, into colleges, into the world in a way that contributes to our evolution as a species, is to begin to teach the science of NLP freely and thoroughly on the internet… and to critique the art of NLP similarly.

In the same way that I wonder how rapport is not taught to first graders, I wonder how a tv show like Ron Howard’s ‘Arrested Development’, an album like Madonna’s ‘Erotica’, or a novel like Foer’s ‘Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close’ are not dissected and critiqued in the public eye for the depth and mastery of the NLP techniques that are so much a part of their creation!

If any and all of us really want to focus the field and to direct it towards some higher purpose, could using the internet and embracing the implicit freedom of knowledge be the ideal medium for the sandbox you describe? And if we do create such a sandbox, what resources would we need to create for others to benefit in a way that is at least better than what Bandler can offer at the moment? Could it be that this discussion is the first step in developing that idea? Are we progressing towards that goal right now? And how will we continue to continue?

Thank you– I guess. My training in NLP began 30 years ago, and formally ended in 1981.

The single sentence which echoes after reading your commentary is: “The meaning of your communication is the response that you get.”

30 years ago, there WAS little dissension. We were so busy learning from one another, and modest innovation was all that was needed.

The proliferation of subsequent “innovations” may, in fact, be simple clouds of dust.

You’ve invited me out of my comfortable solitude, and the force of your gentleness is manifest in the joy with which I’m reopening doors.

Thank you, Steve.

The next chapter for me, and for the rest of us, will be written with a new willingness to listen, see, hear, smell, touch and taste.

You are the person your mother warned us about.

your fan
matthew

Great review and quite telling.

Maybe Richard would benefit from working with you again as an editor?

You seem to have actually used the Meta-Model to find what is good and what could be improved. Kudos to you!

The book can be quite worthwhile and with your precision comments it becomes so much more.

Cheers!

Thank you for the effort & time that you put into this. My action immediately has been to order the book so I could read this for myself.

This review has also given me new insights even after several readings of this, and the encouragement to continue on my NLP path.

Your thoughts and insights are welcomed and I hope that we once again meet in the future.

Blessings,

Rocky Romero