Posted by Jamie Dixon on Aug 9, 2009 in
Articles Today was my 400th Twitter Tweet and in celebration, I’ve published a short piece from a book I’m writing on NLP and how to become a great NLPer.
The article is about attitude and is followed up in the book by a chapter on how to go about building attitude and using it to become even better at whatever you do. I hope you enjoy this so please comment and let me know your thoughts.
Bite off more than you can chew, then chew it. – Ella Williams
John La Valle says that “It’s not about having AN attitude, it’s about having attitude” and when you’re from New Jersey that goes without saying. Attitude is one of the most important and fundamental aspects of being good at NLP and at the same time, it doesn’t really exist. This means that even though it exists inside our heads and is exhibited in our behaviours, it’s a concept and not an object that exists in the physical world. What we’re talking about when we use the word attitude is a collection of beliefs and values that when brought together, create actions and thoughts that go in a specific direction and get specific results.
One evening when I was watching Richard Bandler teach an introductory seminar on NLP he said something along the following lines: “When I watched Virginia1 working I started taking note of how she did what she was doing. When I asked her followers whether they could do what she did, they replied that ‘No, only Virginia can do what she does’”. This a fantastic comparison of attitude vs non-attitude. The fact is, if you look at what you want to be able to do and you do it in a way that inside you say to yourself:
How does this person do what they do and if i had to teach someone else to do it, what would be the key steps
then you start to create inside yourself an attitude and determination that allows you to do more things.
I remember talking to a friend of mine who’s one of the most motivated people I know. I asked him one day about how he does his motivation and determination and he told me the following: “When I decide what I want and it feels like something I want to do, something inside me rumbles and I know I’m going to achieve what I want”.
This was a key element in my own learning and as i found out more and more about how he did his determination and motivation, and I began to try out his strategy for myself, the more motivated and determined I became about the things I wanted to do.
When I think about my own attitude and what that means for me, I get the following answers:
- Attitude is about being curious.
- Attitude is exploration.
- Attitude is about being tenacious.
- Attitude is walking away when it’s right too.
- Attitude is loving every moment of doing what i do.
- Attitude is always knowing that deep down, whatever happens in the outside world, I get to be in charge of what goes on in my inside world.
To be great at NLP you have to be curious about what it is that makes things how they are. You have to be willing to explore and question the things you don’t already know about and often the things you do know about. You have to be tenacious about the way in which you go about doing what you do and at the same time, you have to do this in a way that makes you feel amazing from the inside out and creates a light inside you that motivates you even more to learn new things and discover what’s yet to be discovered.
This is what I call the NLP attitude and this is just the beginning!
How about you? What does attitude mean for you and how do you use it?
Footnotes:
1 Virginia Satir was a family therapist who Richard met and studied whilst at university, the result of which formed a large part of Richards first book (co-authored with John Grinder) – The Structure of Magic.
Posted by Jamie Dixon on Jul 20, 2009 in
Articles This month I’m pleased to announce that I have a new article published in The Healing Pool Magazine: Special NLP Edition.
It feels like quite an honour to have an article published in the same magazine as such great people as Eric Robbie, Kathleen LaValle, Phil Farber and Robert Dilts.
This edition of The Healing Pool Magazine also contains an interview with Richard Bandler as well as articles by other great names in the NLP world. You can order your copy of The Healing Pool Magazine here. Here’s what they’re saying about The Healing Pool Magazine:
NLP perspectives on Healing, Health and Well-being from top NLP Trainers in the field – including an exclusive interview with Richard Bandler. Review by Eric Robbie “Wow, what an assembly of talent you have here! It sure is one helluva magazine you’re publishing. And I say that as someone who has worked in magazines, and who guest-edited the 60th issue of the ANLP’s Rapport magazine. I think anyone who reads it will learn a lot – whether they already know nlp or whether they’re just interested in the subject of healing. And if the latter, they will also learn quite a bit about nlp. Nice work. 
))”
Posted by Jamie Dixon on Jun 10, 2009 in
Articles,
Podcasts 
Today I wanted to tell you about a question that I ask many of my clients who themselves are coaches or aiming to become coaches. This seems to be one of those questions that gets that “aha!” light bulb moment from everyone I’ve asked it too and I hope you have a similar experience too.
Tags: audio, joy, media, Podcasts, questions
Posted by Jamie Dixon on Jan 28, 2009 in
Articles I recently replied to a video by Dr Harlen Kilstein over at nlpcopywriting.com in which he stated that if anyone had any ideas about how submodalities might be related to copywriting he’d be interested in learning more.
I wrote a reply to Dr Kilstein and I realised that it could be useful for more people to read what I wrote. After I commented on Dr Kilsteins video article, he later made my comments into a seperate article on his website at nlpcopywriting.com. Here are the comments I made on the topic for your reading pleasure: Read more…
Posted by Jamie Dixon on Jan 5, 2009 in
Articles 
Photo by: tomhauburn
It’s the New Year and just as I have, I’m sure many of you have decided on new changes you want for this New Year.
Whether that’s to stop smoking, to lose weight, to finally motivate yourself to do that one thing you’ve been putting off, whether it’s to find your life partner or make a million, most of us have set up something that we plan to achieve in this new year. Read more…
Posted by Jamie Dixon on Dec 25, 2008 in
Articles 
Photo by: beebo wallace
There comes a time in most people’s lives where they feel the need to break free from the family nest and go off to do their own thing. In my case, I moved 200 miles away from my family to be in London, the place I know I’m meant to be right now. As much as I love my family and I look forward to a time when I’m back to living close by them and enjoying their company more regularly, I know for the moment that London is the place I need to be in for the things I want and need to do. Read more…
Posted by Jamie Dixon on Nov 19, 2008 in
Articles 
Photo by Katarina
Since I started studying many different areas of both human and personal development including NLP, Hypnosis, parts of Hinduism, parts of Sikhism, Yoga, Western and Eastern energy systems and much more, there has been one area that consistently jumps out at me and seems to be the basis of so much of each of these things.
That area is breathing. Read more…
Posted by Jamie Dixon on Nov 12, 2008 in
Articles In the software engineering world, test driven development or TDD is the concept whereby you write tests for your code before you even begin writing the code it’s self. This has some huge benefits including: More elegant code, full regression testing taking only a few minutes, no repeat bugs and the idea that more time is spent on new developments than there is going back to fix old bugs and new bugs caused by updates to code.
Since I’ve been learning more and more about different ways of engineering software for computers and I’ve come across new and different ideas, I’ve begun to change the way in which I think about how people operate and the different ways that we can go about doing installations in order to change behaviours.
Read more…
Posted by Jamie Dixon on Nov 7, 2008 in
Articles A person will be called to account on Judgment Day for every permissible thing he might have enjoyed but did not. – The Talmud
It’s just gone 1pm on a Thursday afternoon in Central London and the IT staff in a large financial firm have just been told that they no longer need to ask the management when they want to do new things.
The instructions are simple, “If you want to do something to improve the way you work, to make things better for you, and to make things better for the company, get on with it”. This is all part of their new AGILE approach.
Read more…
Posted by Jamie Dixon on Oct 30, 2008 in
Articles 
Photo by Matt Burrard-Lucas
“Draw the curtain, the fraud is over.” – Francois Rabelais
Whilst I was talking to one of my clients just the other day, who also happens to be a life coach, he was telling me some of the reasons he isn’t making the kind of money he really would like to be making. One of his ideas was that if more people knew about him and his services then at some point people would start to realise just how stupid he really was. I think he used the phrase “People will realise I’m a fraud”.
Read more…
