How do YOU define NLP?

In watching the (endless) food-fights about what NLP is (and isn't), and the bizarre ramblings on some NLP message boards, "I bet Grinder could take Bandler in an arm wrestle." "Oh yeah - well Bandler could EAT Grinder...and burp Dilts...nyaaa." I thought it would be useful to make a distinction between how the original founders define NLP and how it's come to be defined within the discipline.

We won't even talk about the silly distortions of the definition OUTSIDE the definition...

Let me frame it this way: NLP has a real definition and a well-known definition (that the founders rightly say doesn’t represent the technology they invented).

A 'Real' Definition of NLP:

NLP is a set of modeling tools to extract the step-by-step process of genius wherever it occurs, and create a model to allow others to reproduce that genius.

The geniuses that NLP modeled originally came from the world of therapy: Fritz Perls (Gestalt) Virginia Satir (Family Therapy) and Milton Erickson (Hypnotherapy). The founders John Grinder and Richard Bandler observed these three people noticing at a very deep specific level what they did to create change in their own clients and patients, often unconsciously. In other words, Bandler and Grinder sometimes highlighted things that Perls, Satir and Erickson didn’t even know they were doing to help their clients. When they knew what worked, and had eliminated unnecessary or irrelevant parts, Bandler and Grinder built a 'model' or step-by-step process, and tested it.

Well-Known Definition of NLP:

NLP is a set of distilled techniques (models) extracted from therapeutic geniuses that help people quickly and painlessly overcome significant obstacles in their lives.

These techniques create and support immediate and lasting behavioural changes in clients. For example, NLP has been successfully used to eliminate simple phobias (flying, animals, heights, small spaces, needles, dentists, doctors, etc) in about 10 minutes. NLP processes have also been successfully applied to countless situations helping people to repair relationships, overcome old trauma, help people move on after trauma (death, divorce, loss), and with the advent of the Coaching industry, NLP processes have been extremely effective in helping people move beyond inner and outer obstacles to achieve success in their lives.

So next time someone asks you what the *bleep* NLP is, you now have a couple of answers....at least!

Laid to Rest

I'm okay.

Friday afternoon at 1pm, we laid my mom to rest in Kemptville Ontario where she spent the last 16 years of her life. Carol eulogized my mom brilliantly including comments from each of the kids, grandkids and some friends.

I was going to write something to honour my mom; something poignant and funny but I realized Carol already did that on Friday afternoon, so I'll let that sit.

Instead I'll add a poem she read a couple of stanzas from. To be honest, when Carol said she was going to quote Rumi, I thought, "Ohhhh shit - I'm a goner." but then I relaxed and listened to the same words I read at a friend's funeral almost 10 years ago.

I took comfort in this poem back then, and again on Friday. Then as now, something shifted in me...something lifted.

Freed from the prison that was her body, she's more like my mother than she's been in years.

On that fatal day when my casket rolls along
Do not think my heart is in this world.
Do not cry, do not cry with anguished moans,
For that is a pit a demon has dug, and only that is sad.
When you see my procession, don't cry, "Gone, gone!"
For me it is a time of meeting and reunion.
As you lower me into the grave, don't say, "So long."
The grave is a veil before the gathering of paradise.
When you see that lowering down, consider a rising.
What harm is there in the setting of a sun or moon?
What seems a setting to you is a dawning.
Though it may seem a prison,
This vault releases the soul.
What seed goes into the earth and does not grow?
Why are you doubting this human seed?
What bucket goes down and does not come up full?
Why should the Joseph of the spirit resent the well?
Close your mouth on this side and open it beyond,
For in the nowhere air will be your song.

- Jelaluddin Rumi, 1207 - 1273

...for in the nowhere air will be your song.

Timelines, Perceptual Positions and Life

Over the past few days something has become apparent to me: Over a lifetime, our thinking around the relationships we make in our lives form around a few seminal events. Over time, between people, behaviours, vocabularies and thinking become frozen around those events.

After my Mom’s passing, I’ve been contacted by many people from the past; many of my childhood friends wanted to pass along their condolences for the funny, sweet lady who would answer the door when they came over. In their calls and e-mails, these old friends by and large talk to a “Hughie” who’s fixed in their mind back somewhere in time. In a way, by talking to someone who I used to be, they recreate the person I was for the length of that conversation. The way we spoke to one another quickly regressed to the way we did when we were 12 or 15 or whenever the reference event occurred.

When I conjure up thoughts of my mother, the time I was an adult with her is a time I can handle well enough. But when I remember her hands over mine as I stretched up on my toes to wash under the tap in the bathroom on Tait Street, the feelings of safety security, love and protection…that’s when it becomes tough. Reconciling the small lady inside the tortured body I said goodbye to last Saturday with those soft hands on the backs of mine is a hard job.

It's the job of mourning.

Mary Edith Blanche Comerford (Mulligan)

Mary Edith Blanche Comerford (Mulligan)
November 15, 1927 – September 5, 2006

First meeting her 11th grandchild Jack in June of 2004

In the last few years, whenever anyone asked about my mother, I’d always say that she had 7 children, gave birth 8 times, and had 9 lives. She had survived hip replacement surgery, pneumonia several times, hydrocephalus (cleared up by some brain surgery) and countless smaller ailments over the years.

Over the last several years, Mom probably averaged 7 days per year in the hospital and in this period slid from mild incapacitation into a nursing home.

At Sunday brunch, I joked with a friend that given my mom’s superhuman resilience, my siblings and I had become inured and had a generalized ‘crisis fatigue’ when it came to news of Mom’s health challenges.

This morning I received the call I’ve been expecting these last dozen years. She finally passed away.

I always suspected but today learned first hand that no matter how much you may expect death, it shocks with its stark arrival.

We hadn’t visited my mom in several months, but were in Montreal this past weekend and on Saturday drove out to the hospital where she had been admitted a few days earlier with digestive problems.

So Jennifer Jack and I spent about an hour with her on Saturday. At first she was groggy -- it took me about 20 minutes to wake her up – but when she became alert it was obvious she was pleased to see us and especially Jack.

We sat with her for a while; I wiped her mouth fed her some water through a straw washing down the crushed antibiotics (she couldn’t swallow pills) and pointed out it made for nice revenge, reminding her of the dozens of times she put crushed aspirin in a teaspoon of sugar and water when I was a child.

I then covered her feet which were cold and told her that everyone is healthy and happy, no-one's mad at her and she did a good job raising us all...and that we all loved her. And she was free to do whatever she needed to do…

When it was time to go, we all said goodbye. Just before we got into the hallway at the last second, I poked my head back in and told her one last time that I loved her.

I’ve said what I thought was that final goodbye to my Mom many times over the years, and I’m grateful I was fortunate enough to have the chance to do it right, so the last time I saw her, the only thing left to say was the best thing.