What People are saying about this book:"A readable, practical, and entertaining book about a challenging, original, and promising new discipline. I recommend it."—Dan Goleman, Associate Editor of Psychology Today."NLP represents a huge quantum jump in our understanding of human behavior and communication. It makes most current therapy and education totally obsolete."—John O. Stevens, author of Awareness and editor of Gestalt Therapy Verbatim and Gestalt is."This book shows you how to do a little magic and change the way you see, hear, feel, and imagine the world you live in. It presents new therapeutic techniques which can teach you some surprising things about yourself."—Sam Keen, Consulting Editor of Psychology Today and author of Beginnings Without End, To a Dancing God, and Apology for Wonder."How tiresome it is going from one limiting belief to another. How joyful to read Bandler and Grinder, who don't believe anything, yet use everything! NLP wears seven-league-boots, and takes 'therapy' or 'personal growth' far, far beyond any previous notions."—Barry Stevens, author of Don't Push the River, and co-author of Person to Person."Fritz Perls regarded John Stevens' Gestalt Therapy Verbatim as the best representation of his work in print. Grinder and Bandler have good reason to have the same regard for Frogs into Princes. Once again, it's the closest thing to actually being in the workshop."— Richard Price, Co-founder and director of Esalen Institute.
I have been studying education, therapies, growth experiences, and other methods for personal change since I was a graduate student with Abe Maslow over twenty years ago. Ten years later I met Fritz Perls and immersed myself in gestalt therapy because it seemed to be more effective than most other methods. Actually all methods work for some people and with some problems. Most methods claim much more than they can deliver, and most theories have little relationship to the methods they describe.
When I was first introduced to Neuro Linguistic Programming I was both fascinated and very skeptical. I had been heavily conditioned to believe that change is slow, and usually difficult and painful. I still have some difficulty realizing that I can usually cure a phobia or other similar long-term problem painlessly in less than an hour—even though I have done it repeatedly and seen that the results last. Everything written in this book is explicit, and can be verified quickly in your own experience. There is no hocus-pocus, and you will not be asked to take on any new beliefs. You will only be asked to suspend your own beliefs long enough to test the concepts and procedures of NLP in your own sensory experience. That won't take long; most of the statements and patterns in this book can be tested in a few minutes or a few hours. If you are skeptical, as I was, you owe it to your skepticism to check this out, and find out if the outrageous claims made in this book are valid.
NLP is an explicit and powerful model of human experience and communication. Using the principles of NLP it is possible to describe any human activity in a detailed way that allows you to make many deep and lasting changes quickly and easily.
A few specific examples of things you can learn to accomplish are: (1) cure phobias and other unpleasant feeling responses in less than an hour, (2) help children and adults with "learning disabilities" (spelling and reading problems, etc.) overcome these limitations, often in less than an hour, (3) eliminate most unwanted habits—smoking, drinking, over-eating, insomnia, etc., in a few sessions, (4) make changes in the interactions of couples, families and organizations so that they function in ways that are more satisfying and productive, (5) cure many physical problems—not only most of those recognized as "psychosomatic" but also some that are not—in a few sessions.
These are strong claims, and experienced NLP practitioners can back them up with solid, visible results. NLP in its present state can do a great deal, but it cannot do everything.
... if what we've demonstrated is something that you'd like to be able to do, you might as well spend your time learning it. There are lots and lots of things that we cannot do. If you can program yourself to look for things that will be useful for you and learn those, instead of trying to find out where what we are presenting to you falls apart, you'll find out where it falls apart, I guarantee you. If you use it congruently you will find lots of places that it won't work. And when it doesn't work, I suggest you do something else.
NLP is only about four years old, and many of the most useful patterns were created within the last year or two.
We haven't even begun to figure out what the possibilities are of how to use this material. And we are very, very, serious about that. What we are doing now is nothing more than the investigation of how to use this information. We have been unable to exhaust the variety of ways to put this stuff together and put it to use, and we don't know of any limitations on the ways that you can use this information. During this seminar we have mentioned and demonstrated several dozen ways that it can be used. It's the structure of experience. Period. When used systematically, it constitutes a full strategy for getting any behavioral gain.
Actually, NLP can do much more than the kinds of remedial work mentioned above. The same principles can be used to study people who unusually talented in any way, in order to determine the structure of that talent. That structure can then be quickly taught to others to give them the foundation for that same ability. This kind of intervention results in generative change, in which people learn to generate and create new talents and behaviors for themselves and others. A side effect of such generative change is that many of the problem behaviors that would otherwise have been targets for remedial change simply disappear.
In one sense nothing that NLP can accomplish is new: There have always been "spontaneous remissions," "miracle cures," and other sudden and puzzling changes in people's behavior, and there have always been people who somehow learned to use their abilities in exceptional ways.
