 June 2010
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NLP Canada Trai ning Inc. Newsletter
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Wednesdays in July
Small groups considering interesting topics from 7:30pm to 9:30pm. All programs by PWYC donation to the Canadian Cancer Society.
Wed. July 7 Stories Well Told
Wed. July 14 Raising Kids who Write Well
Wed. July 21 Healing and Helping
Details will be posted soon.
Call 416-928-2394 to reserve places for you and a friend.
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Greetings!
What kind of summer will you have?
To answer a question about the future, even a relatively straightforward question about the relatively near future, requires that we think about how we know that we have choices. Scientists tell us that human beings are not very good at predicting the results of the choices they make. We know this in our own experience, yet all of us would rather have choices than be trapped or stuck.
The training we do at NLP Canada Training Inc. is about how people know when and how to make a choice. We train people to pay attention to the connections between what people notice, what they do, and how they communicate their experience. That attention creates new possibilities. When we notice more, we have more choices.
Imagine the extreme case. You are stuck in a box, with light and air and the necessities of life. You can move freely within the box, but there is no door. What do you do? You become the world's foremost expert on that box. You learn every centimetre of the space you have. You reach out with your senses and your imagination to think about what is on the other sides of the walls. If none of that gives you a way out, you finally begin to pay attention to learning what goes on inside of you. You explore the nature and limits of your perception.
Hamlet says, "There's nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so." His words are echoed by psychologists who study happiness. They say that what we think makes more difference to our happiness than external circumstances do. In the box, you can decide to stay and be happy. Or you can stretch your perceptions until you perceive a way out of the box.
The work we do at NLP Canada Training will help you know that there's always a choice. Whether you learn to be happy in the box or to be happy you can get out of it is up to you. In a world of constant change, there are always possibilities. Even in a box, there are choices.
What kind of summer will you choose to have?
We hope it includes a visit to us. We would love to have you join a program or practitioner certification. In a world of choice and chance, it's good to learn with interesting people - like you.
Linda & Chris
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 Your summer intensive might remind you of a cruise or a camp
Choosing between our weekend programs and the summer intensives is like choosing one child over another. Of course, we love them both! That being said, let us tell you a little bit more about what it's like to be part of a summer intensive training.
NLP practitioners take six consecutive days of training during a summer intensive. Master practitioners take eight consecutive days. It's not like a marathon though: it's more like a cruise. You pull away from everything that keeps you in one place, and you keep moving until your regular daily schedule is only a faint memory.
Many people are nervous about signing on for six consecutive days of training. I know this because they look at halfway through, they shake their heads a little, and say something like: I didn't think I'd last this long. The confessions often come from high-performing business people who are productive in their jobs because they move from one activity to another really quickly. They describe themselves as having short attention spans, and they often squirm restlessly through a conventional training session. They are surprised to find they love the long, active days of NLP training.
NLP training feels more like being at the kind of resort that provides a great mix of activity and time to chill out and reflect in comfortable surroundings. Toronto in the summer is a tourist destination and Queen's Park is a highlight of Toronto in the summer. Our summer classes take their exercises out to the park as frequently as weather and schedule allows. They are as wide awake and energized as the tourists seeing Toronto for the first time. They are also using the park to test new awareness of mind/body connections, to stretch their sensory acuity, and to walk off the intensity of learning something new about themselves.
If NLP training were about learning a ton of technical content, the long days and beautiful summer setting would be a distraction. NLP training is about learning with new precision how you make the choices that get the results you are getting and how you can change those choices when you want different results. It is about noticing natural patterns of thought, behaviour and relationship. When you pay attention to these patterns, you can leverage them to get great results more often. The long summer days are a perfect time to access the self you take on your best vacations, the self that moves with confidence through a world of great possibilities.
I love watching the practitioners in the summer. They begin like kids at camp: a little hesitant about what we are asking them to do and more than a little curious about what will happen next. As each day goes by, I watch them become more engaged and more energized, more playful and more thoughtful. And they report that at the end of the day they are like kids at camp again, ready to fall into bed and sleep deeply and well until morning.
When was the last time you got up early, were engaged and active until dinner time and found yourself pleasantly tired and ready for bed at the end of the day? When was the last time you chose to play, to learn and to grow? Isn't it time you chose it again?
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Purpose and Presence: Here's What You Missed
 We didn't actually put rainbows in the room, but we did spend a great Sunday in May considering what it might mean to have a goal big enough to last a lifetime (or at least a sense of direction for your life journey). We worked between this intention for our lives and the ability to focus all our thoughts in the moment. Purpose is powerful. Presence is powerful. Moving intentionally between them is the key to a life that is both meaningful and fully experienced.
Maybe you wished you could join us as we spent a day applying the tools of NLP to some of the big questions. We hope you'll come next time, but for now we have published the handout for the day on our website. You can find it here. If you want to know more, email Linda with your questions.
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 How to Learn in the Summer
It's been a truly beautiful spring, a time for all of us to wake up, get outside and pay attention with all our senses. You might think that's playing, and it is. It is also a prerequisite for your most intensive learning.
Learning is a combination of bringing in new information and giving it meaning that allows it to stick. Meaningless information (a spider running across your hand) acquires meaning if it is linked to something with strong emotional impact (something heavy falls near you just as you see the spider). Other information becomes meaningful when you incorporate it into a pattern of information you already know.
Stress causes tunnel vision: you lose track of context and focus all your attention on a very small range of vision. This is as true metaphorically as it is neurologically. When you get tense, you lose perspective. You get the information (it might even stick as emotionally charged) but you lose the context that would give it meaning and make learning useful. When you relax, your range of vision opens up and new possibilities, new meanings, become apparent. You still need to acquire the information, but the moment when you create meaning is often surprisingly relaxed and fun.
Summer is the perfect time to relax and gather new information, trusting that the problems to which you are seeking solutions will sit in the back of your mind. When you find what you need, it will slide into the problem pattern so naturally that you might even forget you ever thought of it as a problem. As you open your senses to the wider perspective that beckons in the good weather, you also open your thinking to the states that foster creativity and connection.
The work of learning is the work of learning that play is serious and yields specific, applicable results. There's no better time to learn naturally and well.
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