Effective Communication With NLP & The Enneagram

Have you ever had situations where you felt that you couldn’t achieve something? Or perhaps a friend of yours was lacking in motivation and felt that they wouldn’t be able to complete a task?

How do you normally handle such situations?
How do you empower yourself or your friends, and bring them from a “limitation state” into an empowered state?

One of the quickest way is to use “How Questions”. How questions allow you to turn people around easily. When faced with challenges, we usually think of limitations and things that we can’t do. This is normal, and very human.

So for example, a friend of yours tells you there is no way he or she would be able to complete the marathon you’ve both signed up for. Instead of just encouraging by saying things like “Of course you can!” or “I’m sure you can do it”, empower that person by asking “How can you start training up for the marathon?”

This puts the person in a state of mind where he or she must now think of actions to take, in order to be ready for the marathon.

Likewise, if someone were to say “I’m not confident enough to speak in front of people”, you can empower that person by asking “How can you start to be relaxed about public speaking?”

So the next time you encounter a situation where you face limitations, remind yourself that you can choose to continue concentrating on the limitations, or empower yourself and others by choosing to think about possibilities. Start using statements that shift your mind towards possibilities instead of limitations, and increase your influence today!

Yes. Believe it or not, being considerate is a form of non verbal communication and rapport building. I was at the train station waiting for the train to arrive today, and I saw this young lady approach the platform doors.

When the train arrived, she stood right in front of the door. So that obviously made it very hard for the passengers in the train to alight. Now here’s the interesting part.. After she forced her way in (while others are still trying their best to get out), she stood right next to the door and refused to budge!

So the rest of the boarding passengers, who had already gave way to the alighting ones, now have to “detour” around her just to get into the train. It was pretty amusing to see the number of eyes staring at her.

There’s always a lot of talk about creating a good first impression, yet there are many people who fail to realise that impressions are created not only when you meet someone face to face. Every moment where we have interaction with people results in some form of impression being created.

Imagine if the young lady were to meet a potential client later in the day, and that person happens to be one of those who had to detour around her. She would most probably face a hard time building up rapport. So remember folks, if you want to become a person of influence, start living and behaving like one, even when you’re alone in public.

Our mind works in such a way that it doesn’t recognise commands such as Don’t, or Do Not. When you tell someone not to do something, the image that appears in the person’s mind will be exactly the stuff that he or she isn’t suppose to do.

A few days back, I was waiting at the train station and I saw a mum trying to get her kids to stop shouting and running about. She went, “Don’t make so much noise!” As expected, the kids kinda ignored her and went on enjoying themselves.

You see, when you tell someone not to make so much noise, the message that gets registered in their heads will be making noise, rather than keeping quiet. To get someone to keep quiet, a more effective message would be simply, “Keep quiet!”.

Of course, you might argue that since they are kids, whatever you say probably won’t make a difference. Even if this is true, the mum will still stand a better chance by asking them to keep quiet instead of asking them not to make noise. This applies to many things in life.  If you want someone to be punctual, you tell them to “be early” instead of “don’t be late”.

So the next time you’re about to tell somebody not to do something, stop for a moment and think about what you want instead. Then rephrase and communicate what you want, and you’ll probably end up having more successes.

Very often, when we set a goal for ourselves and strive to achieve it, challenges will start appearing to test our determination and commitment. I’m quite sure you would have faced such situations before:

Just when you decided to keep yourself fit by going for a run in the morning, it rains the next day. Or how about the time when you decided you should start saving money for a year end holiday and you see your favourite shop having a sale in the papers one week later?

Now despite all these challenges and inconveniences, I’ve also realised that when we make a commitment to ourselves and give our fullest effort, things can happen. So the next time you set a goal for yourself and challenges appear,  hang in there. Continue to put in your fullest effort and very often when you least expect it, results start appearing.