KEY WORDS

There are a few little extra’s you can add into your linguistic patterns to make your “Neuro Linguistic Programming” even more effective. These tend to be adjectives; or describing words. There are many different “Key words” which we use everyday, but sometimes they will back up and enhance our desired outcome, sometimes they will not. You will realise after reading this section that there are lots of words I have not included here, that is because there are lots of them, I will include the ones I prefer to use, if you find some that are effective for you; great, use them. Whatever works for you is best.

EXPLANATION

I like to explain this as the “HOW? WHAT? WHEN? WHY?” sentence.
Our sentences will be good if we use carefully selected words to enhance the desired outcome, but if we can include “Key words” into each one of these elements, we will have the perfect NLP sentence.

HOW?
How words explain to the subject how something is going to happen, how it will feel to them.
Examples are “NATURALLY”, “STRIAGHT AWAY”.

WHAT?
What words explain what the subject is going to experience, what is going to happen.
Examples are “UNDERSTAND”, “NOTICE”, “EXPERIENCE”, “SENSATION”.

WHEN?
When words explain when the desired outcome is going to happen, in relationship to the future and present tenses.
Examples are “DURING”, “NOW”, “SOON”, “AFTER”.

WHY?
Why words are the beginnings of explaining why the subject will ‘feel the sensation’ for example. The basis behind it is “X does one thing so Y does another”
Examples are “CAUSES”, “BECAUSE”, “SO THAT”.

EXAMPLE
“Naturally you have discovered, that soon after I began to speak to you; you started to feel really relaxed, and the more that we speak to each other; the more relaxed you might feel.”
As you can see when we look at this statement, it is far more effective at getting a person to feel relaxed than saying “the more I speak, the more you will relax” this is because we are aiming for the unconscious to come into play with the detailed statement, where as the last version is purely directed at the conscious.

If you go back to page 9 now, you will see an Example about the netball girl. If you would care to look at the last thing I said to her, you will notice I use the same format as I have just explained.

“Don’t worry, Naturally, I’m sure if you take the time to think (scratch neck) you might realise that you are actually in a really good mood now, and may even want to go out tonight with your friends. What do you think?”

I bet you didn’t notice anything was special about what I had said to her when you first read it, did you? So you can also understand now just how unnoticed this pattern goes when used and the sentence still sounds perfectly normal, but will do a lot more for your persuasion and suggestion.

Another element is extremely important when you are telling someone what to feel, think or do. We do not want a person to think that we are forcing them into anything, we want everything we do and say to seem very natural to the subject. Using NLP and suggestion is a double-edged sword. You want to be seen as being on the same side as the subject, not against them, if you are seen as being on the same side then your suggestions will be far more effective and persuasive. Certain words will make the person think unconsciously that you are against them; this is where many hypnotist and suggestion artists fail, because they don’t seem to grasp the idea. So I will attempt to explain it so that we all understand what we should and shouldn’t say, and why.

THE INDEFINATE DEFINATE

Through lots of experience using suggestion and NLP I have discovered something I feel many people have failed to notice, so I decided to write this down to help all other people understand why there suggestions sometimes don’t work as well, and ultimately this knowledge will improve their performance. In the example above with the netball girl, you may notice that I did not say, “You WILL realise that you are actually in a good mood” I say “You MIGHT ….” This is because if you tell a person what they will feel, they will unconsciously try to resist this as it feels to them as though you are trying to dominate them, remember:

NO ONE LIKES TO BE TOLD WHAT TO DO!!!

I have found that if you use the word “might” the person feels as though this is far less threatening to them and they have freedom of choice, it also makes you seem more relaxed as you put your faith into the person feeling or doing what you say to them. As I said before; many people have not come across this option and as a result, their suggestion and NLP is less effective, I have actually found far greater success using “might” rather than “will” so I strongly suggest trying this out.

YOU LIKE ME (LOVE CHEESE)
I guess the title has amused you a little. This technique is again a way of enforcing the fact that a person likes you. It has a similar outcome to using quotes except this is very direct and involves no third parties. The technique does use the hidden command of “you like me” although the content is nothing to do with either you or your subject. Before I explain how we can use this, let’s have a look at an example.

EXAMPLE

You are talking to the subject at a café; you are standing in line waiting to choose which sandwich you want today. The subject reaches over and takes a hold of a cheese and Branston pickle sandwich. (☺) Here is what you say:

“Ahh, you like me, love cheese!”

The command here is “you like me” so unconsciously the subject is reinforced of his/her affection for you. Notice the tonality of voice and the use of pauses is different in comparison to how we would normally say this sentence. Here is how we would usually say the sentence if the focus point was “love cheese”

“Ahh, you, like me, love cheese!” (emphasis on “love”)

This takes a whole new meaning to the sentence and the subject will only focus on the “love cheese” section, but as we want the subject to like us, all we do is get rid of the first pause after “you” and say this part as if we are actually only going to say “you like me”. We then take a small pause and say “love cheese” or whatever your criteria is.

FOR EVERY GOOD, THERE’S A BAD

We know that there are a lot of words that can enhance our suggestion and persuasion techniques, but are there any words that can make out skills less effective?
Well, it would be nice if there weren’t, but there are.
One thing we must remember is never to use negatives. If I said “do not think of a blue frog” you think of a blue frog. This is because the command is still “think of a blue frog”. Our brain has to first picture the image to not think about it, if you understand me.

Words like “try” should never be used in suggestion too. This is because try is associated with “nice try” which we know means that you have failed whatever it is you were doing. To ask someone to try and feel better for example will not work because:
TRY = FAIL.
Another word that is no good for suggestion is “BUT”. The word ‘but;’ negates anything that has been stated before it, therefore it is useless in suggestion. Negative words such as “Could have” and “Don’t” shouldn’t be used as they draw on past events that haven’t happened, and are classed as pointless.