The Curse of Knowledge and NLP

I’ve been reading “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” by Chip and Dan Heath and I decided I have the curse of knowledge about NLP. That I know so much about it, what it means and what it can do that I don’t know what it is to not know. Which makes it difficult to explain to others.
My friend Trish once told me she thought the NLP experts deliberately hold back the essence or the real steps in their books so you have to do their training. But I think it’s the curse of knowledge in action – it’s almost impossible to remember what skills and understandings you didn’t have as a newbie.

I tend to talk about and think about NLP abstractly and can’t go back to that beginners mind. Once you know something you want to go forward – to go into more complex areas. Once you know how to read, you don’t think about the letters. The way to get around this according to the book is to find the core message. If I were to go back to the core message of what Neuro Linguistic Programming is all about, it would be this.

Change can happen in an instant.

You can rewire your thinking immediately. It doesn’t have to take months or years like many psychologists believe. Change doesn’t have to be hard work.

Most of us have grown up with the idea that change is hard, long and painful, not to mention usually expensive. “Therapy” – to change something about a behavior, state or how you see yourself requires absolute commitment and sometimes a lifetime of control and dedication.

That the need to drink alcohol for instance can only be dealt with one day at a time. You can never relax. You must be ever vigilant and be prepared to do battle. It’s like living in a swamp and fighting the rising damp – you have to stay on top of it or it will quickly overwhelm you.

But those who have mastered NLP, understand that struggle is not only unnecessary, but often perpetuates the problem. They know that looking for “why” is a red herrying and that what is vital is finding the structure of the problem. For instance, with phobias, the structure of the problem involves the submodalities of association and dissociation.

I was watching the Biggest Loser the other night and the trainer asked “why do you eat like this?” and the contestant began crying and talking about her childhood. It doesn’t matter why or when it started. The structure is that when she feels empty (emotionally or physically) her brain sees eating fish and chips as a solution

I’ve been reading “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” by Chip and Dan Heath and I decided I have the curse of knowledge about NLP. That I know so much about it, what it means and what it can do that I don’t know what it is to not know. Which makes it difficult to explain to others.
My friend Trish once told me she thought the NLP experts deliberately hold back the essence or the real steps in their books so you have to do their training. But I think it’s the curse of knowledge in action – it’s almost impossible to remember what skills and understandings you didn’t have as a newbie.

I tend to talk about and think about NLP abstractly and can’t go back to that beginners mind. Once you know something you want to go forward – to go into more complex areas. Once you know how to read, you don’t think about the letters. The way to get around this according to the book is to find the core message. If I were to go back to the core message of what Neuro Linguistic Programming is all about, it would be this.

Change can happen in an instant.

You can rewire your thinking immediately. It doesn’t have to take months or years like many psychologists believe. Change doesn’t have to be hard work.

Most of us have grown up with the idea that change is hard, long and painful, not to mention usually expensive. “Therapy” – to change something about a behavior, state or how you see yourself requires absolute commitment and sometimes a lifetime of control and dedication.

That the need to drink alcohol for instance can only be dealt with one day at a time. You can never relax. You must be ever vigilant and be prepared to do battle. It’s like living in a swamp and fighting the rising damp – you have to stay on top of it or it will quickly overwhelm you.

But those who have mastered NLP, understand that struggle is not only unnecessary, but often perpetuates the problem. They know that looking for “why” is a red herrying and that what is vital is finding the structure of the problem. For instance, with phobias, the structure of the problem involves the submodalities of association and dissociation.

I was watching the Biggest Loser the other night and the trainer asked “why do you eat like this?” and the contestant began crying and talking about her childhood. It doesn’t matter why or when it started. The structure is that when she feels empty (emotionally or physically) her brain sees eating fish and chips as a solution