When Is A Board Not A Board?

When is a board not a board? Simple, when you believe it’s not.

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A strange introduction to this week’s article I hear you say! Well yes and no. Am I referring to the 26cm x 26cm x 2cm square of shelving board that we break with a one-inch punch during our Enhanced NLP Master Coach Practitioner Training, or something else entirely? Well yes and no. NLP thinking demonstrates that nothing is completely as it seems depending on your own personal filters.

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So when is a board not a board? When it’s not really there.

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Let’s enter the fascinating world of Quantum Physics for a moment, the study of the infinitesimally small. At the most fundamental level, everything we see around us, the fabric of our world is mostly space. Resonating within that space are the molecules, atoms and particles that vibrate at frequencies that allow them to be perceived as solid. The chair you are sitting on, the keyboard or phone you tap on, all mostly space. If we believe scientific principle, that everything is mostly space, then does that change our perception of reality?

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Huge questions I know. Within the discipline of NLP, we challenge this reality in a very simple way. At out Enhanced NLP Master Coach Practitioner Certification Training, we ask you to put your hand right through a solid piece of wood, thus breaking it clean in two and we only take an hour for you to model how to do it. The power of NLP Modelling technique means we don’t even need to teach you how to do it! After all, if the board follows the principles of physics, it’s mostly space, so why shouldn’t your hand pass right through space?

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Is this exercise only about breaking a board? No, the process has a number of highly transformative outcomes:

To teach you the process of Modelling.

NLP was born from modelling experts. Breaking down the procedures an expert uses to produce excellence in their field in terms of their physiology, their cognitive processing, their values and beliefs and their strategies. By recognising all of these elements in a detailed way, we can learn rapidly how to produce the excellent behaviour in a fraction of the time it took the expert to learn the skill in the first place. Imagine having the capability to produce the same excellence as the people you most admire and respect. Once you have the model of excellence you can teach it to others and so excellence spreads out like ripples on a pond moving from the central dropped pebble. How would that transform an organisation or team? What would that do for your own performance? Think of it!

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To challenge your beliefs.

I have to admit that when I received my board on the first day of my Enhanced NLP Master Coach Practitioner Certification Training, I thought that the trainer was mad and that this was impossible. I worried about it for a whole week. On the final day of the first week, we were going to break our boards and I still held the belief that I couldn’t do it. However, I was there for a reason, an important reason and so I diligently listened, watched and followed instructions to the letter, trusting in my trainer. Even when I stood up to take my turn and handed my board to my trainer to rest on the concrete blocks, I still wasn’t 100% certain of what would happen. I began my preparation in exactly the way I had modelled and suddenly I was sure. As I approached the board it began to disappear from my awareness, I raised my arm and brought it down pushing all of my built up energy in front of my hand. I heard a satisfying crack of wood and felt nothing. I looked down and there was the board in two equal pieces.

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That was a pivotal moment for me, from that point onward I believed that I could achieve anything I wanted to achieve and that solid and insurmountable barriers were of my own making. I created space by changing what was real for me.

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A metaphor for personal breakthrough.

Breaking through your self-imposed barriers to success and realising your goals and desires for creating a life that you want to live.

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The Enhanced NLP Master Coach Practitioner Certification Programme has been mindfully created to challenge your thinking and to have you generate new ideas with ways of thinking that you haven’t even imagined yet. You will leave the training thinking completely differently than you do now and the world will be open to you. You will know how to create excellence and how to succeed and create the life that you want to live.

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When is a board not a board? When you are a Master Coach Practitioner of NLP!

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