NLP - What It Did For Me - What It Can Do For You - by Rosemarie Blackthorn
Rosemarie Blackthorn writes about her personal experience of what NLP did for her.
Rosemarie Blackthorn, attended the April/May 2011 NLP Practitioner
Rosemarie, a marketing assistant with a financial company, attended The Great NLP Extravaganza at the beginning of 2011 and found its message resonated with her. From there, she took the leap and booked on to the NLP Practitioner training the following April. From that moment on, she says, she never looked back.
When I say to people I am an NLP Practitioner, they often ask: what’s NLP? I find it difficult to find a simple one-line definition. NLP means many things to me. Here are a few of them.
- It’s an attitude. Shit happens. I can’t control it, but I can control how I deal with it and how much I let stick to me.
- It’s freedom. My emotional state is my choice. I can choose to moulder over a problem, an issue that I’m struggling to resolve or I can pick myself up and get on with the stuff that needs doing.
- It’s independence. NLP enables me to hear and act on my inner wisdom. The good news is that at last I can hear it now that the chattering monkeys of my insecurities, doubts and fears have shut up!
- It’s about a hunger for learning and a striving for excellence. It’s a constant process of asking ‘how can I do this better?’
I am a divorced single parent. I come with a full set of matching designer luggage full of Issues. Before I went on my NLP training, I felt that much of my life was beyond my control. (In fact it was, but that's always going to be the case.) What I had lost sight of was the fundamental part of my life I could get control over: my emotional state.
Instead of doing that, I had lost years trying to "understand" and "come to terms with" my divorce. To be honest, during that time, I went out and did some pretty daft things that were really not in my best interests. The result? Mess upon mess.
When I attended the NLP Practitioner training, one of the first things Richard Bandler said to us is that the great thing about The Past is that it’s done. It doesn’t have to be brought forward from there into the present, and it certainly doesn't need to be taken with us into the future. It was quite a realisation. Just because something happened, it doesn’t mean it will happen again. I began to realise I don’t have to live out my old patterns, nor am I at the mercy of other peoples’ patterns. And it wasn't just an idea. Richard showed us practical ways to stop doing the things we didn't want to do, and start doing the things we did.
Since that week of training, my perspective has completely changed. Now, my past is way behind me. I can stand up and say there are things I am not proud of, but I’ve learnt from them and now I am making better choices. That's a real difference.
I feel this unmistakable sensation of making a decision based on my values whenever I do it. And I confess, the more I do it, the better I get at it and the more I feel great. There's a whole mindset underlining those decisions: I can’t make anyone do anything; people have to make their own choices. And that’s all fine. It’s how it should be. Because I get to make my own choices for me, too.
Of course, life didn't suddenly become perfect after the NLP training. Actually, that isn't the point at all of NLP. Some of the course was about learning to live in an imperfect world without freaking out, and getting on with life whatever it throws at you. I won’t say that since my Prac training, Life has been difficulty-free - but here's the news: it has been mess-free!
That I'd say is the start of something wonderful!
Next month, Rosemarie talks about the changes NLP made in her family life, and for her teenage son.
