Welcome to Episode 2
I love history because it is jam-packed full of interesting stories, extraordinary events, and fascinating people. History is the story of how we ended up where we are now. It is the reason that people speak certain languages; why countries have the borders that they do; and why people follow certain belief systems; as well as so much more. By understanding the past we can put the present into its proper context.
From a personal perspective, the past is a frame through which we evaluate the present. This is why I ask coaching clients to write out their life history and send it to me in advance of their first coaching session. It is important for any coach to understand how the client managed to get to where they are right now. You might see patterns in their past which are still playing out in their life. There might be underutilised resources from the past too. With this understanding in place the coach can then assist the client to move forward.
Therefore, to help you to put NLP and Coaching into their proper context the second Just Two Things pod cast is about the history of NLP and Coaching. For me these two disciplines are like two pieces of DNA interwoven together. I believe that the best way to use NLP is to fully integrate it into your life. After that NLP is most frequently used in coaching. And coaching works best if the coach utilises the NLP toolkit. To quote the late Tad James, “The future of NLP is coaching, and the future of coaching is NLP.”
NLP and Coaching are both solution focused disciplines. This means that once you understand someone’s past, the discussion shifts to what are they going to do to move forward. You then let go of the past and take action in the present to create the life you want in the future. The past can inform us, it can inspire us, and if we choose to, we can learn from the past too. But we also need to remember that we are not individually or collectively prisoners of the past. It is what we choose to do in the present that has the greatest power over what we experience in the future.
As far as the future of coaching is concerned, I would agree with Tad’s quote above. To be an effective coach you need the thinking, the sensory acuity, the rapport building, and the language skills inherent in NLP. On top of that NLP adds a range of change techniques to let go of habits, limiting beliefs, negative emotions, and to integrate internal conflict. All these techniques boost the client’s ability to make progress. I believe that the future of NLP is still rooted in personal development generally, a people helping application of which is coaching. I don’t think that the content of NLP, as is generally taught today, will change much either. But what I do believe is that people who fully integrate and utilise NLP will be able to bring their skill set into other areas of human development, like spirituality, artificial intelligence, social justice, climate change, and political leadership. To be considered as NLP there must be a focus on process, rather than content. And it is the processes that we use as humans that will need to change as we move forward into a New Paradigm. NLP will help us to get there, but first of all we need to appreciate the past.
“History never looks like history when you are living through it.” John W Gardner
