Part I: Introducing NLP A wise person said that ‘If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.’ Remember these great words of wisdom as you begin the journey into NLP territory for yourself. In this part, you start to get a feel for what NLP can do for you. As you begin, bear one thing in mind: suspend your disbelief or assumptions that may get in the way of your learning. In this part, we invite you to think about the best NLP question of all, which is ‘What do I want?’, and then to delve into what’s happening behind the scenes in your brain and your unconscious thinking. Interesting stuff, we hope you agree. Part II: Winning Friends and Influencing People Ever considered how easy life would be if others just did what you wanted them to do? We’re not claiming to be magicians – that we can make your worst enemies smooth putty in your hands – but rapport is such a key theme in NLP that the heart of this book explores it hand-in-hand with you. In this part, we give you tools for understanding other people’s points of view. We show you how to take responsibility for making changes in how you connect with the key people in your life, and how to discover becoming more flexible in your own behaviour. Part III: Opening the Toolkit The heart of NLP opens up before you in this part, as we let you loose on the core NLP toolkit. Loads of practical stuff is here for you to keep coming back to. You discover how you can adapt and manage your own thinking to tackle situations that you find difficult, plus how you can get the resources to change habits that no longer help you. You also whiz into the future and work with concepts of time to resolve old issues and create a more compelling path ahead of you.
Part IV: Using Words to Entrance This part focuses on how the language you use doesn’t just describe an experience, but has the power to create it. Just imagine how great you’d feel to have an audience eating out of your hands. Building on the skills and styles of powerful communicators, we explain how to get audiences coming back with an appetite for more, and if you consider that life can be described as a series of stories, you find out how to write your own winning narrative.
Part V: Integrating Your Learning In this part we encourage you to bring together what you read and experiment within the book, and apply it to your own life. You find out about modelling and how to learn from your choice of role model to achieve excellence in your chosen field. In addition, we take a look at what happens in times of change and how you can move forward with grace and ease. Part VI: The Part of Tens If you’re impatient to get your answers about NLP sorted quickly, start here. This part takes you straight to some top ten tips and lists, such as applications of NLP, the resources and books to guide you, plus more besides. We design this part for those of you who always like to read the end of a book first and to understand the meaty stuff inside. Part VII: Appendixes In the appendixes we include an NLP resource list of useful addresses and websites, plus the two most important templates to use every day to achieve the following ends: ✓ Making your desired outcomes real – we explain more in Chapter 4. ✓ Building rapport with other people – we explore this aspect in Chapter 7.