In recent years, cognitive scientists have shown that a few simple techniques can reliably improve what matters most: how much a student learns from studying.

The findings can help anyone, from a fourth grader doing long division to a retiree taking on a new language. But they directly contradict much of the common wisdom about good study habits, and they have not caught on.

For instance, instead of sticking to one study location, simply alternating the room where a person studies improves retention. So does studying distinct but related skills or concepts in one sitting, rather than focusing intensely on a single thing.

Read the article on the NY Times website.

I find it interesting that a lot of the findings — such as varying study location, and varying what you study — parallel findings from animal training, as reported in Karen Pryor’s book Don’t Shoot the Dog!: The New Art of Teaching and Training.

Have you read the book Zimbaro mentions, The Geography of Time? (I haven’t.) If so, what do you think of it?

My busy dating life gives me plenty of opportunities to learn more about relationships. Which brings me to today’s topic, personal (relationship) chemistry.

What is personal chemistry?

My dictionary defines personal chemistry as the emotional and psychological way two people relate to each other, especially when experienced as a powerful mutual attraction. Example: “Their intense sexual chemistry almost tempted them into an affair.” When you’re not attracted to someone, that’s “no chemistry,” and when you dislike them on sight, that’s “bad chemistry.”

Take a moment now to vividly recall 3 experiences:

1. A time you met someone with whom you had great chemistry.
2. An interaction where you expected good chemistry, perhaps because the other person was smart or physically attractive, but instead you felt no chemistry.
3. A time when you had bad chemistry with someone. You immediately felt uncomfortable or disliked them — perhaps before either of you spoke!

Now compare: How easy was it to get and stay in rapport with each person?

Personal chemistry = rapport

In “good chemistry,” people have good rapport. Because their communication styles match or complement each other, and they make similar assumptions, it’s easy to create rapport, and they rarely bump each other out of rapport.

In “no chemistry,” people have a much harder time establishing rapport. Because of differing communication styles, habits, and assumptions, these people tend to disrupt what rapport they have.

In “bad chemistry,” people may be drastically out of rapport. Or they might be deep in negative rapport, where each person’s behavior triggers conflicting responses in the other.

Types of relationship chemistry

As you know from your NLP training, there are many ways to get in rapport with people. Personally, I like to think of chemistry in terms of:

• Sexual chemistry — physical attraction and rapport, which can occur with or without emotional rapport. Sexual chemistry alone can produce attraction to someone you don’t even like. (I disliked the first boy I had a crush on. What a weird, creepy feeling!)
• Romantic chemistry — a special type of emotional rapport that generates feelings of romantic love. When romantic and sexual chemistry occur together, people often refer to it as couple chemistry, dating chemistry, or marriage chemistry. Romantic love can also occur in friendships, without sexual chemistry or physical desire.
• Emotional chemistry — the kind of emotional rapport you have with people you immediately like and want to be friends with.
• Activity chemistry — you want to do particular activities with this person, even if you don’t have much else in common. This is your favorite hiking partner or gaming buddy.
• Team performance chemistry — great sports teams and music groups have physical rapport that helps the players play synergistically. In business, great teams have functional rapport that helps them perform at their best.
• Creative chemistry — you work well creating together. Every great jazz ensemble has this. So do synergistic inventors, engineers, programmers, artists, and improv theater groups.
• Intellectual chemistry — something I share with my NLP development buddies. When I work with equally talented people with whom I don’t have good intellectual rapport, we don’t accomplish nearly as much.
• Empowerment chemistry — you could also call this spiritual chemistry, though I dislike the term because it implies a belief in spirits. When you interact with someone on this level, the two of you empower each other and help each other develop as human beings.

What kinds of chemistry work for you?

As you think back to your best, worst, and ho-hum relationships, notice what patterns of chemistry (or lack of it) work best for you:

• What kinds of chemistry work well in your romantic relationships? Friendships? Work relationships?
• Where is it important to not have certain kinds of chemistry? Since my father did intellectual work, he enjoyed not having deep intellectual rapport with my mother. It gave him a chance to rest his mind and reconnect emotionally.

Even sexual chemistry is largely a learned skill. If you’d like more chemistry in your life and relationships (or you’d like to disrupt some chemistry that causes you problems), cultivate and apply your NLP rapport skills.

Joy

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Gary Chapman’s book The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts explores common convincer strategies for love. Chapman calls them love languages.

When someone gets plenty of convincing evidence they are loved — evidence that fits their convincer criteria — they feel loved and appreciated. In Chapman’s words, their “emotional gas tank” gets filled.

When people don’t get convincing evidence of love — or worse, when they get convincing evidence that they are not loved — their emotional gas tank gets depleted and they feel unloved, unappreciated… and often hurt, hostile, resentful, etc. This can happen even when they are receiving lots of love — because it’s in a form they don’t recognize as love.

Most people respond to several love languages, yet have one they prefer most. That is the love language that fills their emotional gas tank the fastest. It’s also the love language whose opposite emotionally depletes them the most.

The 5 Love Languages

1. Physical Touch such as a hug, a hand on the shoulder, cuddling, sex. For people who use Touch as their primary love language, not being touched can feel like punishment, and getting pushed, slapped, hit, or sexually abused can be especially traumatic.
2. Words of Affirmation such as “I love you,” “It means a lot to me when you tell me you love me,” or “You are a wonderful friend.” For people who use this convincer, hearing harsh words and criticism quickly drain their emotional gas tank.
3. Quality Time means spending time together, often doing something one or both people value. If your partner loves hockey and you hate it, and they use the Quality Time love language, going to a game with them because they value it could mean a lot to them. Not spending time together depletes people who use this love language.
4. Acts of Service can be done with the loved one, or apart from them — the easiest way to distinguish this convincer from Quality Time. Harmful actions emotionally drain people who prefer this love language.
5. Gifts: people with this love language make a big deal out of even small gifts. They talk about them, show them off, display them. Not giving gifts — especially on occasions where they might expect them — drains these people.

How the 5 languages of love can make or break relationships

When couples court each other, Chapman says, they typically use a lot of the love languages, so both people’s needs get met.

However, once a relationship gets established, people tend to get lazier and express love primarily in their own love language. That works find if both people use the same convincer… but most couples don’t.

The result is a relationship where both people sincerely express their love for the other in the ways that would most satisfy themselves… yet each person ends up feeling unloved.

Classic example: His primary love language is Acts of Service, so he works hard to support the family, keeps the house and car in good repair, mows the lawn, and takes out the garbage. His wife thinks he doesn’t love her because he never brings her flowers (Gifts) or tells her he loves her (Words of Affirmation). He feels unloved because her verbal praise and gifts are meaningless to him; he wants her to do things for him the way he does things for her.

My coaching trainers say that a lot of the relationship problems they see in the couples they coach stem from people not feeling seen, heard, and appreciated by their partner. Teaching these couples to use the five languages of love often improves a bunch of relationship problems fast.

I find the love languages meta-program a very useful distinction. I use it with friends, dating, and relationships. This winter I also used it to more quickly recharge my emotional batteries after surgery, and reduce my emotional depletion during a rough relationship breakup.

I find that stacking activities so they express multiple love languages makes for a stronger love experience. For instance, I could just touch someone — but if I give them a massage (Physical Touch) as an Act of Service, I also say some heartfelt Words of Affirmation, and we make the whole situation Quality Time, it’s a better experience for both of us.

As an NLP modeler, I have noticed some additional fine distinctions in the love convincers. For instance, eye contact is important to some people, unimportant to others. Nevertheless, I think Chapman has done a good job of covering the basics. Love Languages are a great distinction we NLPers can put to good use.

Lovingly,

Joy

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Additional resource: The Five Love Languages of Children.

Take disassociation, for example. In your NLP training you might have learned that disassociated = not associated.

Wrong.

When my research buddy Jan “yon” Saeger and I started investigating disassociation, Jan quickly realized that, strictly speaking, disassociation doesn’t exist.

That’s because…

When you disassociate out of one point of view… you do it by associating into another point of view!

For instance, think of a pleasant memory. When you associate into a memory, you experience it from within, reliving at least part of it.

When you disassociate from that same memory, notice that you now observe it from somewhere. You have a perspective, a point of view. The memory is in some spatial relationship to where “you” now are. In your new location, you hear and see from where “you” are. And when you feel strong emotions while observing a memory from outside, that requires kinesthetics.

You see, your brain doesn’t have any way to make a coherent representation from no point of view. To make a visual image, it has to represent the image as being somewhere and viewed from somewhere. When constructing or remembering a sound, that sound has a location… and so do the ears hearing it. A feeling requires something to feel with, which again has location. Thus…

The difference between associated and disassociated is which parts of your experience you associate into

When you “associate” into a memory, you disassociate from your present-time body and awareness, and from Observer position.

When you observe a memory from a “disassociated” point of view, you associate into Observer position, and out of your real-time sensory experience.

When you associate into real-time sensory experience, you disassociate from your memories and your compelling internal representations.

You can also associate and disassociate from various sensory aspects of your experience. As I write this, I’m strongly associated into my constructed visual, auditory, and proprioceptive representations, and also into my emotions about the article. I’m also disassociated from my visual and auditory awareness of the room around me, and from real-time sensory body awareness outside my typing hands. This allowed me to forget my aching knee until I wrote this paragraph.

People have habitual patterns of sensory association and disassociation. While working with athletes, my research buddy Michael Harris discovered that top gymnasts stay associated into kinesthetics that track body position, movement, and balance. They stay disassociated from their emotions so they don’t get upset by yelling coaches or making mistakes. You might know worriers who automatically associate into their emotions and constructed representations of what could go wrong — while disassociating from soothing representations and sensory experiences that would reassure or calm them.

Often a problem recurs because someone habitually disassociates from key information (such as the gut feeling warning them not do something), or associates into problematic representations (such as those worriers). A little tweaking of association and disassociation can sometimes make a big difference.

Use association cues to disassociate your clients

Since disassociation works by associating you into something else… you can use association techniques to disassociate people. Simply make sure the association cues you provide associate them into a different point of view or sensory experience — one you choose. In other words, associate the client into a “disassociated” point of view.

One of the most effective ways to do this is to specify submodalities in multiple representation systems — including several types of kinesthetics, such as tactile feelings, balance, and emotions. This forces people to build specific, associated representations — and that gets them associated right where you want them.

Joy

Gross! Anti-theft lunch bags printed with green mold blotches gross out your coworkers so they won’t steal your food. From ThinkOfThe.com.

Abstract thought prompts literal physical responses

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/science/02angier.html

Researcher subjects literally lean forward when thinking about the future, backward when thinking about the past. According to Nils B. Jostmann of the University of Amsterdam, “How we process information is related not just to our brains but to our entire body. We use every system available to us to come to a conclusion and make sense of what’s going on.”

Music in speech correlates with empathy in heart

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100127085550.htm

The same brain region (Broca’s area) understands and produces intonation in speech. The higher a person scores on standard tests of empathy, the more activity they have in their prosody-producing areas of the brain.

In NLP terms, I suspect that more prosody and more empathy correlate with association — something we NLPers have all observed in practice.

Brain scans show how hypnosis can paralyze a limb

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2009-06-24-paralyzed-hypnosis_N.htm

Under hypnotic suggestion that they couldn’t move their hand, the subjects’ motor cortex prepared for movement as usual. But then, instead of communicating with the brain area used in controlling movement, the motor cortex instead acted more in sync with an area used in mental imagery and memory about oneself.

More detailed article about brain scans exploring hypnosis:

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/47697/title/The_Mesmerized_Mind

Deciphering the brain’s dictionary

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100112201347.htm

Using nouns in different categories, researchers were able to correlate which brain areas activated to think about different types of nouns. They were then able to predict which brain areas would light up when exposed to novel nouns. They could even identify which of a list of 60 terms subjects were thinking of.

What does this have to do with NLP? For years researchers have known that human brains have functional modules, called inference systems, for perceiving and thinking about certain types of information. Information that “interests” one or more inference system tends to be more memorable. This experiment identified 3 factors the brain uses to categorize nouns:

1. how you physically interact with the object (how you hold it, kick it, twist it, etc.);
2. how it is related to eating (biting, sipping, tasting, swallowing); and
3. how it is related to shelter or enclosure.

Folk tales, which persist because they are memorable, often include odd combinations of these factors — such as a pumpkin big enough to live in (food + shelter), or a house made out of a giant shoe (physical interaction + shelter). Can we NLPers use these categories to help people memorize information?

Brain scans show similarities between memories and imagination

http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2007/0710-brain_scans_of_the_future.htm

Brain scientists used to think that imagining the future happened almost entirely in the brain’s frontal lobes. This 2007 study showed that “All the regions that we know are important for memory are just as important when we imagine our future,” according to researcher Karl Szpunar.

We NLPers know that imagining the future involves sensory representations, so we could have predicted that sensory and motor areas of the brain would activate.

For years I have read accounts of research in neuroscience and neuropsychology, and wondered, “Why don’t these labs have skilled NLP modelers on staff?” I’m still wondering…

Joy

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Extra: video “The world needs all kinds of minds” by autistic Temple Grandin.

In “NLP and the myth of the quick fix,” I discussed how promoting NLP as an instant cure-all causes problems for NLPers an our customers.

Unfortunately, NLP’s “quick fix” mentality also extends to NLP training.

Instant NLP mastery!

NLP includes advanced technology for quickly transferring skills. However, while training can expose students to skills and techniques, mastering skills takes practice. And practice takes time.

NLP’s content has expanded enormously since the early 1970s. But NLP trainings are still short. Especially compared to training in disciplines like therapy and psychiatry.

The expectation of “fast NLP mastery” combined with short, relatively inexpensive trainings has combined to create a business climate in which an NLP training long enough for students to actually master NLP skills would cost far more than most people are willing to spend.

Hype creates unrealistic expectations

Before getting licensed to practice, therapists typically must complete years of school, then do hundreds of hours of work with clients, some under supervision by other professionals. NLPers get no such training to learn to use tools and techniques promoted as far more powerful. What’s wrong with this picture?

Many NLP students start courses with ridiculously inflated ideas of what they can expect to learn and do during and after their training. Some NLP trainers encourage students to believe that they can take a course or two (sometimes just a few days long) and gain “NLP mastery.”

(Think how hard you’d laugh at marketing that claimed “Master the skills of brain surgery when you take our 18-day Master Brain Surgeon training!” Yet this type of claim is so common in the NLP world that NLPers hardly notice.)

As a result of training hype, I’ve met all too many graduates of NLP trainings who were dangerously under-trained, yet overconfident. In fact, I used to be one of them. (Some people might argue I still am…)

“Instant mastery” trainings cost the NLP field

Because of poor-quality trainings and unreasonable expectations about NLP, NLP is rife with:

• Insecure newbie NLPers smart enough to know they really don’t have the skills they took classes to get. Many are afraid to apply what little they know. Far too many have no idea how to gain the skills they thought their training would give them.
• Arrogant newbie NLPers blind to the limitations of their skills and knowledge. Some of these newbies start practices, fumble a bit, and eventually turn into good practitioners. Others disappoint clients by giving them poor results, or even harm clients.
• “Professional” NLPers who don’t follow up with clients or trainees to make sure that what they do actually works. NLP is all about calibration, feedback, and course-correction… but all too many of us NLPers don’t apply that standard to the long-term outcomes of our own work! (I feel somewhat embarrassed by my own track record in this regard.)

What you can do

Frankly, I don’t know how to fix the problems with NLP trainings, although I’ll discuss some ideas in future posts.

In the meantime, what can you do about the problems I outlined?

As an NLP student:

• Expect to get what you pay and work for. If you want a few NLP skills, a short training might suffice. If you want to master NLP and do NLP professionally, take lengthy NLP trainings from first-rate trainers.
• Expect NLP to work differently outside the classroom. Your trainers picked demo subjects and issues that would be easy to succeed with. Real life isn’t like that! There are a lot more complex issues, mixed motivations, and risk.
• Do lots and lots of real-world application and practice. Start with calibration skills. Then practice simple, harmless techniques, such as anchoring good feelings, or using embedded commands to give people empowering suggestions. As your skills improve, work your way up.
• Protect the safety of the people you work with. Start with simple techniques applied to small issues whose outcomes don’t matter. This lets you gain skills and help people without significant risk to them. Notice your results, especially ecology issues, and make corrections to what you do. As your skills improve, work your way up to bigger issues and more complex interventions.
• Plan on spending hundreds to thousands of hours practicing, applying, and improving your skills before you achieve any kind of mastery. Some kind of daily practice will help, as will joining local practice groups. (Google NLP practice group to find a group near you. Somnambulistic Sleepwalkers is a member-run group that hosts free or low-cost NLP and hypnosis practice sessions in various cities worldwide.)

As a NLP practitioner:

Underestimate your skills and mastery. You probably got trained to overestimate your skills, so compensate.

• Base your skills evaluation on your actual results, not wishful thinking. Include not-so-good outcomes and failures.
• Pay attention to failures and mistakes. They provide useful feedback to help you improve.
• Do followup with people you work with. Tracking their long-term results will give you useful feedback about what you do that does (and doesn’t) work.
• Underestimate your results and undersell your skills. If a client thinks it will take 6 sessions to solve problem X, and you do it in 4, they’ll be thrilled — and they’ll get the beneficial outcome. If they think you can solve the problem in 3 sessions, they might leave before session 4 when they would have gotten results that would have benefitted them for a lifetime.

As an NLP trainer:

Help students set realistic expectations of your and other people’s NLP trainings.

• Sell realism, not hype. Market what your students will actually get in your trainings. (A bit of scoffing at other trainers’ unrealistic offerings might help your students reset their expectations to realistic levels.)
• Differentiate between learning skills, which students will do in your training, and mastering skills, which students will need to do on their own after your training ends.
• Tell your students that “NLP mastery” consists of having high-level skills, which requires practice and experience they won’t get in your training.
• Require your students to practice their skills as part of your training.
• Encourage your students to practice after training, and provide resources to help them do so.
• Start thinking about what it would take to shift at least part of the NLP training market from the “instant mastery” paradigm to something more like a college degree in therapy, complete with supervised practice with real clients.

World-renowned NLP trainer Steve Andreas has been saying for years, “What we really need is a 4-year college program for a BA in NLP. In four years, we could turn out Milton Ericksons by the hundreds!”

That kind of real result, not hype and unrealistic expectations, is something the NLP world desperately needs.

Joy