Reflecting on Bill O’Hanlon’s delightful response, and his comments about ‘my voice’, made me realise what a momentous shift I’ve made.

I had written a previous ‘book’ which got absolutely no where.  I should have known its fate when even my friends couldn’t pretend they’d got beyond the third chapter.  I still think the content, well some of it, is worth an airing, but the style was its downfall.

The turning point for me came when I was browsing one of Bill’s books, and was taken with his easy use of the first person, and the flow of ‘casual’ comments.  I had started on The Experience Cookbook and wondered what it would be like if I did the same.  I took a deep breath and placed my first ‘I’, followed shortly by a ‘me’ and then a ‘my’.  The difference was instantantaeous.  It came alive.  I came alive.  What I had to say came alive.  And I didn’t feel embarrassed, or big headed.  It actually felt natural.

I see now that with the previous book, I didn’t really believe I had a right to join the grown ups.  Book writing and published authors were mixed up with academia, authority, and accepted establishment.  There were also the childhood injunctions of “Don’t be noisy.  Don’t draw attention to us.” which you’ll agree get in the way of stepping out onto a public platform.  Unconsciously, in an attempt to prove my worth and stay invisible, I slid into ‘proper speak’ – fairly big words, too long sentences and passive tense.  You can hear the zzzzzzzzs from here!

Putting in the ‘I’ transformed my self belief.  It gave me my voice and my confidence to own my thoughts and share my ideas.  I gave myself permission to be noisy.   The funny, authoritative, friendly trainer had at last arrived on the page.  What a huge personal threshold I’ve crossed. Without putting too fine a point on it, I am now able to fully claim my space.  And I feel different as a result.  Strangely, even if the Cookbook never gets published, this one quantum leap, this insertion of ‘I’, has turned out to be the difference that has made the difference.   How heartening to know it’s never too late!

I started off blogging my Experience Cookbook merely as a way of opening loops and advance marketing.  As events have progressed I realize that the whole experience of book writing is worth chronicling in greater depth.

Story so far: over Christmas and New Year I created The Experience Cookbook, with over 50 NLP exercises (recipes), plus lots of information about how to create them yourself, based on new thinking about exercise design.  Out of the 50, three I’ve borrowed with permission from other trainers, the rest I’ve devised myself, either from models I’ve also created or drawn from other sources.

Feeling very pleased with myself, I offered the early drafts to folks for comment and proofing, and was gratifyingly affirmed by the positive feedback I was receiving.  I also sent further tweaked copies to my mentors and anxiously awaited feedback from them.

We had a fabulous weekend where about 50 friends connected with the School came to test the exercises and give feedback on each of them.  Again a very positive response.

So I thought all that was left to do was to tidy up some of the rough edges, wait for the endorsements from the mentors and send the whole package to the publisher, almost as a fait accomplit.

Bill O’Hanlon, author of nearly 30 books, knows a thing or two about writing. He is insistent that you put forward your proposal, then get an agent/publisher, then write the book.  Not the other way round.  I had blithely disregarded his advice, with the Isadora Duncan mindset “If I could tell you I wouldn’t have to dance it”. I had set off fondly thinking I was producing the finished product to illustrate my intentions.

Pride and falls now enter the scene.  Wind out of sails etc.

One of my mentors came back and bless him to the last fibre of his cotton socks, gave some preliminary and highly detailed feedback on the Oeuvre, not quite suggesting a rewrite, but suggesting a mega rethink.  Knocked me back for a day, I can tell you!  As my lower lip ceased jutting, I was able to consider his comments, and inconvenient as it may be, his observations were spot on. Here was a perspective that was fully informed, courageous, respectful and loving.  I realised what I hadn’t done, and what I could usefully do instead. Thank God only half the world had seen it!

As I was going through this process, the emotions felt very very familiar.  This is exactly the emotional experience a modeler can go through in the process of creating a new model.  The ‘back to the drawing board’ experience is sooo inevitable, an integral part of the process.

It dawned on me that writing a book is a form of modelling:  Who is your reader?/Who is the End User?  What do you want them to do with it when they’ve finished reading it?/What behaviour do you want to replicate?  And then how are you going to select from all you know, and package this into a simple useful and accessible format?  Same old, same old!    First versions/drafts are just the first attempt at constructing the model.

With this frame in mind, I am actually now as interested in observing the meta process, as the writing itself!  I know I have more conversations to have, more testing of my thinking, more focus, more weeding out of intrusive vanity, and more rewriting.  I am in the midst of the reductionist stage in model creation.

I also know that that ‘settled’ feeling will arrive, which will tell me that my model is complete.  Then I will approach the publishers.   Watch this space.

Onwards and forwards.

In a comment to the previous post, Em Coste said, “At this stage, I find myself thinking that the relationship one has with potential matters more than potential or accomplishment.”

I totally agree with Em that our relationship with our Potential is critical.  If we fear it, we will pull our punches, keep our head below the parapet and give ourselves permission to believe our excuses.  If we embrace it, then we will open ourselves up to who we are here to be, and learn to live with our magnificence.

I was talking about my ideas on potential with a new group on the first weekend of our NLP Practitioner programme. I compared potential as being like having the front room for high days and holidays, and the back room where all the day to day living took place; or like having a frock or suit for ‘best’ and rarely wearing it even though we feel great when we do.

One of the students queried all of this saying that potential and goals were the fuel of life.  I felt he was confusing potential with ability.  I had a fabulous boss who was the MD of a company I worked in.  He had started as the proverbial postroom boy of a large organisation which was a household name, and duly worked himself up through the ranks to become a director.  He then moved across to our company, which was associated, and  became MD.  He then moved to take up the Big One – CEO at the parent company (our company was disbanded in the process).  Once in post, he fairly quickly went down hill never to really recover.

I feel that potential has to be connected to Identity, Purpose and Mission.  As we learn and grow, so do our possibilities, but not the core of who we are.  Is our potential more a quest to connect with our original blueprint and once we touch this source of congruence and alignment, we can truly say that we ARE our potential?

Enlightenment wasn’t my intended destination point and I sit under the big toe of giants.  Our Learner said “If you have your potential, then what?  There’s nothing else to do!”  Except the next moment, and the next, I expect.

We have just received this email from Martin Snoddon, a student with the Northern School of NLP and man for whom I have great respect.

The mail speaks for itself and if you feel moved to respond you have the thanks of all involved.

Dear All

Ref. Haiti appeal:

Last October I was invited to Haiti to deliver a series of workshops with people from Port au Prince, these workshops were sponsored by a partnership between Glencree Peace & Reconciliation Centre, Ireland, and Concern Worldwide, Haiti local office.  I worked with three different groups, each group had approximately 20 members and during my time there I met quite a number of other Haitian people.  The Glencree and Concern partnership had reached out and connected with many more Haitians in its efforts to support a transition to peace. Read the rest of this entry »

At the same workshop, I became taken with the ideas around Passion, and how it is manifested in people and received by others.

In our unique British way, Passion and the expression of it, is a tad embarrassing.  All that emotion displayed for all to witness.  There is something unseemly about it.  Often when someone has spoken passionately about something, it is followed by the need to shuffle feet, look sheepish and mutter an apology.

Every family conditions its young into what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.  We learn that one individual’s desires can be an imposition on another.  In the process, we may also learn that Passion is something to be curbed, lest we disgrace our community. How much passion for life was expressed in your family?

Curbing our Passion is a recipe for mediocrity.

Hopefully the embarrassment is just over the strength of our feelings, and not the message.  There is a need for ecology and aligned congruence.  Since it is through our Passion that we know who we are and what we’re here for. When we touch our Passion, we generate vital energy.  We can inspire others.  We can collaborate to create something even larger.

Society needs constraints and limitations.  the question is – Can we afford to have Passion as one of them?

When I was in my 20’s, a long time ago. I lived in a shared flat in Highgate.  On my wall, above my bed was a Snoopy poster with Charlie Brown on the pitcher mound saying “There is no heavier burden than an great potential.”  After two years, I took the poster down since nothing had changed!

At the recent Passion with Action with Judith Lowe and Judy Delozier at PPD Learning Ltd, I reconnected with notion of Potential.  It seems to me that Potential is a future based concept, something that we haven’t fully realised yet, something that is still to come into fruition.  I am here and my potential is there.  Even if my potential is within me, it is still in the time frame of tomorrow and not today.  Which leads to the conclusions that we will never reach our potential because each day it moves that bit further away.

This got me to wondering what it would be like to bring my Potential into my present – instead of waiting for my ship to come, get on board immediately.  The word had to change – my Power, my Magnificence, my Purpose.  When this happens, hesitation is banished, excuses are irrelevant, accountability and responsibility become immediate.  I am what I came here to be.

Which could be a bit too scary.  Marianne Williamson knew a thing or two – “Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond all measure.”

So maybe there has been a linguistic conspiracy passed down over the centuries to keep our Potential tantalisingly just out of harm’s way, to allow us to continue with our mediocre worlds untravailed by demands of greatness.