Why is the new 7 Day NLP Practitioner better?

by Paul McKenna

There is an old saying: “The only person who likes changes is a wet baby”. It’s certainly true for some people and definitely true for some NLP’ers. In 1993 we sat down with Richard Bandler to talk about what was going on with people using NLP. Richard said: “So many of these people are just copying what they’ve heard from someone else who copied it from someone else who copied it from me - I can’t believe people think that 21 days or 24 days or any amount of days is what makes a practitioner training. It’s who is teaching, how they are teaching and what they are teaching.”

So we decided to start again from “a clean slate” - reconstruct how to deliver the practitioner, remove some of the “mistakes of personal history” which Richard speaks about but most importantly to ensure that the material is delivered using the best methods and latest applications of NLP technology available.

For some reason many people seem to believe that modelling - one of the methodologies used in creating NLP is merely copying what someone else does and coding it in some hopefully usable form. But modelling, as it is practised by Richard Bandler, is more than mere copying. Modelling for NLP’ers is the discovery of organising principles behind a group of selected behaviours and then applying those principles to create something new - perhaps something not seen before. For example, some people have tried to say that there is nothing new in the Meta model, that it is all transformation grammar. Not true, transformational linguists come up with descriptions of behaviour (language) in order to explain how language structures are generated through a set of equations common to all languages. But they do not tell you how to do things with language, how to record information from a person’s statement of reality - their model. They do not show you how to calculate either a question or a response which will require another person to move outside of their current model.

The Meta model is all of these and more. The Meta model is a creation utilising principles from transformational grammar, symbolic logic, and calculus (among other things) to be able to do something different - beyond what was done before. So much of what people think they know about NLP is only on the surface. That’s why the old NLP’ers are wondering how its possible to learn the practitioner in 7 days when it took them 21. There are several reasons; most people teaching NLP trained in the 70’s or 80’s using the old models and they don’t understand how Richard’s new technology for ‘Accelerated Unconscious Installation’T works. They think because they spent longer learning something they know it better. Well, if you bought a computer in the 70’s it would be big, slow and costly. However, nowadays they are smaller, faster, cheaper.

The traditional ways of teaching are far too slow and boring, using them it would be impossible to do it in 7 days.

Most of the traditional teachers of NLP are unable to do it for a start.

That’s why ‘Accelerated Unconscious Installation’T is the future for teaching NLP. Richard Bandler compares the old way of teaching small chunks of information one step at a time to ‘masturbating one stroke a day’. 21 days was a figure that Richard made up in the 70’s, but times have changed. However, we can understand why taking such a long time appeals to some institutes because it means they can charge you more money.

The other problem with traditional NLP training is that people learn about NLP and not how to do it. When you train using Richard’s latest technology often you find you start to do truly amazing things, but you don’t necessarily know how you did it. One gentleman who attended our Danish trainings, upon returning to work found that one of his colleagues had also been on an NLP training, although it was the old 21 type. Interestingly his colleague could explain everything about NLP, but she could hardly do any of it. He, on the other hand could demonstrate everything she talked about, but he couldn’t necessarily explain it. What would you prefer to be able to do?

Cast your mind back to Milton Erickson - what was the first response he would make to someone asking a question in a teaching context. His most usual response was a story and somewhere along the line a trance would develop and learning and change would just seem to happen. Trance, whether spontaneous or induced, is the natural place for learning.

As soon as the conscious mind is in the way, learning slows to a crawl - only a few tiny concepts at a time pass through the filter of conscious attention and you ended up making the new things exactly like what had come before.

But human beings are natural, quick learners when given the appropriate environment. That’s why we teach by doing - whole patterns first, then details - keep the conscious mind engaged in enjoyment and challenge and build skill without too much conscious interference.

The old institutes who are using the 21 day model are using unconscious installation, however it’s not accelerated or fun. Instead what they are installing is that it takes ages to learn and change. Moreover, many of the ‘woolly jumper brigade’ are also inadvertently installing the idea that NLP is some kind of boring intellectual doctrine. We heard about one NLP training company who recently failed half the people who attended their practitioner. The best part is that they believe it’s because ‘their standards are so high’. They don’t appreciate the irony that their standards are so high that not even they are competent to teach them. People like that could take 21 years to teach a practitioner and it wouldn’t make any difference.

Anyone who believes that the next ten years for NLP are going to be just like the last is in for a big surprise! The new seven day practitioner utilises the very best of old NLP with best of the new.

Some people will take 21 days to teach the practitioner - because they have to. Others will be able to do it in 10 days. It isn’t the number of days, but the quality of the experience that makes the difference. Right now more people are choosing the new 7 day practitioner above any other NLP training. If you haven’t discovered why that is yet, and your curious, adventurous and open-minded then it might be right for you.