Meet The Assistants 1: Jill Whitelam - in her own words

In the first of a series of interviews with the assistants who help out at Richard Bandler's trainings, NLP Trainer, Jill Whitelam talks about her experiences of NLP.

 

Jill Whitelam, NLP Trainer and Assistant at Richard Bandler's trainings.

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PROFILE

I first got into NLP by hearing my manager telling me some of Richard 's stories.  Then I saw an advert that said that Richard was coming over to London. I'm the sort of person who likes to hear things from the source, so I came along just to see the guy who told the stories.  And by an administrative error, I arrived on the Trainer Training course. 

So, my very first experience of NLP was Trainer Training.  I remember Richard saying on the first morning: "Make sure you're happy here on stage, because this afternoon you'll be teaching your fellow delegates what I'm about to teach you. And we'll be videoing you."

At that point, I thought: "Either I can change everything about myself right now, and go for it, or I can just leave now."  I said to myself: "I'm sure Richard wouldn't just let me leave now, so I had just better stay and get on with it."  And it was the most amazing experience - and I haven't stopped since then. 

That was in 2001, and one of the first things I thought - after I'd recovered from the shock of it all - was why didn't people tell me these things when I was small. My teenage years would have been so much easier, my relationships with my own children could have been so much better. And with that thought in mind I was drawn to teaching this to people earlier in their lives, rather than later.

That's why, nowadays, I work with children.  Until recently I was employed in a school, to help the children do things like how to have better learning strategies, how to feel comfort in exams rather than terror, even things like how to get a teenage boy to take control of his extremities - because he was all elbows and knees and he bumped into people in the corridor.

"I teach children how to spell easily, how to learn their tables unconsciously and how to just cope with life."

That one was lovely. Because when you are holding your energy to the centre and having more control, the rest of your life just becomes easier than when you were out of control. I also work with children privately.  I teach children how to spell easily, how to learn their tables unconsciously and how to just cope with life.  I also help children with eating disorders. 

My passion is strategies.  So I'm not about therapy, I'm not about fixing things, I'm all about teaching people a better strategy to get what they want. 

I work with children largely because they're really good at NLP and they're really easy!  They go: "Oh, that's a good idea, I can do that!" and off they go.  It's lovely and I really enjoy it.

Getting into this work happened naturally. My degree is in Chemistry, and I was employed in the school as a science technician preparing the experiments for the students and washing the test tubes afterwards.  But what so often happened was the the science teachers would come into our prep room and say something like: "Oh, Anthony, he does really well in class and at homework but when it comes to exams he just goes to pieces." I would say: "Bring him here for a spell."  And for 20 minutes in his lunchtime and mine, I would say to him: "Okay, so what's different between what you do at home and what you do when you're going to sit an exam?" And at home he would look at the paper, and he'd know what an answer looked like, whether it had a diagram or whether it had a bulletpoints.  And he would hallucinate his answer on the paper, and then he would just write over it. That's a good strategy.

In an exam, all the surroundings were different - he would look around, and he would hear his mum's voice in his head saying: "I really want you to do well!"  And so he had no attention left for looking at his paper and hallucinating the answer. So, we just practised that, and he started getting really good results.  In fact he was predicted to get "C" grades in his GCSE and instead he got "A" grades.  He's now studying languages at college.  When I had these results, the teachers said to me: "Oh, do some more," and in the end that's what I ended up doing full time.  No more time left for test tubes and experiments. 

I don't work at a school any more, but I do still see children privately. That's still my passion.  My current day job is acting as a telemarketer, where I use all my NLP skills in persuading people to actually to accept what's free...  Sounds funny, doesn't it? I work for an agency who makes phone calls on behalf of government or Government funded organizations to small businesses to get past the gatekeeper in small businesses to get to the decision maker takes all my rapport skills, my energy, my state control, my language patterns, so it's really intense practice for me and I really enjoy it.

It's great fun to come and assist on these courses with Richard. He is one of a kind. A unique individual with amazing ideas. And that's part of why I come down, too: to help the delegates, and to see Richard at work. He never ceases to amaze me, and I learn so much. It's great stuff!

For further information about Jill Whitelam, please email her: jillwhitelam@hotmail.com

Book now to attend our trainings with Richard and his assistants.