what inspires NLP legend Steve Andreas stay tuned hey this is Damon Cart from
NLP Gym in just a moment I'm going to get to my interview with Steve Andreas
but before I do that if you haven't already please click subscribe to this
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as some hypnotic inductions stay tuned for a special announcement at the end of
the video I'm here with Steve Andreas and really happy to be here and I really
appreciate you taking the time to sit and talk with me we'll see how it goes so first
of all I want to say thank you so much for your kindness and generosity over
the years since I first met you it's been about four years and in that time
you've taken to answer my questions and help me troubleshoot things and the
conversations that we've had can't tell you how much that has touched me and I
appreciate that well good freely given. And that
actually is with my questions are being based off here is three things that have
really impressed me about you and there's a lot more I think impresses me
but I wanted to pick three things that three things in particular and one is
out of the thousands so your kindness in your generosity your willingness to help
people now I I know that I'm not the only person that you've helped and I know
there had to be many more people emailing you and you working with them
the same way that you've worked with me what is so important to you about that
that you've helped people so much and given so much of your time to do that
without asking for anything in return? Well I think the two answers to that one
is that it's just enjoyable just to to give there's even some
research out that shows that when people give freely of their time and effort to
other people it makes them feel good it does it happens for me too the other is
that I'm really committed to the principles of NLP and I think you are
carrying them off in your own way and a creative way and I want to support
that definitely appreciate it I was I was digging up the old emails our very
first emails that we exchanged and it was it's interesting to kind of see like
a story arc of I didn't really know much about you didn't know much about
your work and you were answering all my questions so I kept coming back for more
and more and you finally got to a point where I think I was pulling in a asking
for too much of your time and he said I can't keep up with your questions here
go read this book which was Transforming Your Self and I mean almost overnight it
did transform me when I started doing the exercises I hadn't seen anything
this profound. NLP itself was probably one the most profound things
that I've ever studied or done or engaged in and here I came across this
model and I couldn't believe that I hadn't learned it already and that it
wasn't being taught in other places and that was my big surprise when I came
across it and I asked you about that I said you know why why they're not
teaching this in other places as it's not being taught at all because you told
me that no one was teaching it at the time you had stopped teaching it because
you were retired and well I guess my question is were you surprised that I
took to the model and that I was getting so much benefit out of it and that I
still working with it? Well I wouldn't say I was surprised I
was gratified as far as I know very few people are using it very much and I
think it's pretty special and not just because I developed it's
got a lot of precision and detail and so on. Originally NLP was based on
problem states and resource states. If you think about it if you went to a
doctor got a problem they say here this one
resource will cure it all. You would find another doctor right but NLP does
there's this idea that if you just access a resource state unspecified and
there's a problem state unspecified that there will be a match and it's
amazing how often that's good that's the case that if you'd if you do that you
anchor a resource state and you integrate it or chain it to the problem state people
feel different and behave differently and so on it's kind of amazing to me
looking back that that works at all because there's so undefined a problem
state so undefined and a resource state is so undefined and it's just unlikely
that there would be any kind of match at all. With more precision you can can match
the research to the problem and then you're really nail it. It is definitely a
very precise model and I think that was probably the point I had reached I was
experiencing a lot of confusion and kind of plateaued I had the basic NLP skills
down but that model was really what was able to give me that laser-like focus
on exactly the elements that I wanted to change but not just that is the when
you're working out the identity level it just it's so much more powerful and than
just solving behavioral problems. Well it depends on the problem you know if
somebody can't spell well you don't really need to work on the identity
level you can just... Well if I'm a bad speller or something like that you just
teach them the spelling strategy and they're done and so one principle is to
work at the lower logical level, lowest logical level that will get the job
done and identity level change does pervade is much more pervasive but it's
also a less specific so there's a trade-off. Yeah. If someone can't ski it
doesn't help them deal with their identity. Unless they're
overwhelmed with fear maybe of skiing. That's another thing I could take
off and run with for a long time, the idea of confidence, sometimes people have
the skill but they don't have the confidence to put it into practice in
that case if you anchor in some confidence and they can actually
actualize the skill that they already have but there's plenty of times when
that doesn't work because they don't have the competence to go with it and
then they have confidence without competence and that's dangerous. Robert
Fulghum says ignorance power and pride are a deadly combination. There are
plenty of people who are confident of doing things and they're actually incompetent
to do those particular things that might be good at something else and that's not
good that's what gets people into plane crashes and things like that.
I would say that I've used NLP to solve a lot of those lower level
problems and in my life I think I was dealing with meaning and purpose and not
as much self-esteem and confidence but overall happiness and when I took... I did
a value elicitation and then looked at those values as how do they show up as
qualities in my identity and mapped those over and then realized that those
qualities were ambiguous to me and then I used the model to make them
certain qualities and that was a huge game-changer I mean my life took on a
level of meaning and purpose I'd never experienced before
Great yeah. What inspires you? Curiosity really I got a bunch of examples of that when I
was in high school I read in a book somewhere a puzzle that said if you have
an inner-tube a Taurus like a big hollow donut you cut a little hole on the side
and you reach here you pull everything through what does it look like
and I couldn't couldn't visualize it and I puzzled over it for about two weeks
and then I finally went out in the garage and got an inner tube and cut a
hole in the side dragged it all through and figured out what it was so puzzles
stay with me. Another example is you know in a car at night you tilt, you have,
have a tilt up rearview mirror so you tilt it like that
I couldn't figure out how that worked, this is much more recently, and finally I
took one apart now you can go online and find out how they work without taking one apart. It can be
as simple as seeing a reflection of light in the ceiling and wondering you
know where does that coming from how is that what's bouncing off of what to put
a light on the ceiling it's an attitude of curiosity and how does
something work. I think Francis Bacon said wonder is the seed of knowledge. See
something and wonder how it works if you're really interested in it. Would you say
that you basically applied that to people and psychology and... Yeah. And would
you say you got that start when you went in the program that you had told me about
with Abraham Maslow or was it, did it predate that? Well it didn't have anything to do with Maslow. Maslow was a nice guy but
but he was all talk and no walk. I'm forever grateful that he had admitted me into
grad school without a psychology degree as an entry point but
he was a disappointment personally. Where would you say that came from that
curiosity applying it to psychology and and people? Oh well I had that all the way
through high school at least and in college. Your mother was a Gestalt
therapist is that correct. Well sort of she hung out with Fritz Perls a bunch
did Gestalt groups, well her own version of them. With the inspiration, going back to the
inspiration I noticed that I mean you're you're pretty active still.You
respond to my emails pretty quickly I see lots of books around here. I know
that you're working on some stuff right now reorganizing the scope and category
reframing patterns. What's inspiring you now?
Well precious little actually I'm less and less able to read if I, my eyes
are watering you may notice oh yeah my eyes periodically because my eyes
water and then I can't see very well makes it hard to read more than a few
pages at a time and I'm hoping to get that
reorganization of the reframing patterns done but at this point it's a little
less than inspiring it's more like something I want to finish and get
done but I may not have the wherewithal to get it done I just have a lot less
energy now. Things that used to be very very simple like just picking a piece
of paper up off the floor now it's like do I really have the energy to do that?
Is it worth it? Do I wanna bother? I had commented, it was probably a few
months ago, your comfort level with death and dying and you were you seem to
comment on it with without any fear or hesitance and I was a really impressed
by that and I told you that people have told me the same thing that I seem to be
extremely comfortable with it at the same time
they've also commented well you're not also not experiencing it right now. Not in the process of it.
Are experiencing the threat of it. Well it's a big big difference between
death and dying. Death doesn't scare me because as far as I know it's like a big
sleep. Remember I mentioned yesterday Mark Twain said I'm not afraid of death
I was dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, it gave me not the
slightest trouble. Dying is another thing dying is uncomfortable and there are various
ways of dying and one thing of getting close close to that myself was it gives
me an empathy, I'm having a lot more empathy with other people who are
handicapped in some way or injured, or have various illnesses. I have empathy
for them in a way that I never did before. If I had a lot of energy I'd
write about the limits of empathy is that you know we, it's a nice thing and I
wish more people had it but even the even the best of us empathy is a fairly
shallow thing. I remember one of the first things that brought... we had a flood
about four years ago here on the bottom bottom floor of the house got all messed
up and soggy and we filled a dumpster with with trash with soggy trash 20-foot
dumpster and I had read about floods in the Mississippi and valley and things like
that and other places and thought you know that would be hard but I had no idea how hard
it was no idea until it was us doing it and me ripping up soggy carpet off the
floor and hauling it out to the dumpster and not having clean water to clean up
with I really realized how a little empathy I really had and that's true of
a lot of things I can see someone else is in pain or discomfort and my empathy is
inadequate for the job let's put it that way
yeah I agree it's always fascinating to me like you'll have these really
hardlined politicians who are pushing these policies that are to me seem very
inconsiderate unempathetic and then suddenly they have an experience of where someone
they know or they have to experience something that has to do with their
policy and they completely do a 180 and change their mind so there's something
to- I wish there were more like that. I know there's something to that experience of a...
When it happens to me then oh yeah now I understand now I have that
perspective so it changes everything. Right. I do talk to a lot of people who have a
fear of dying not not so much the process like you were just discussing
but like I guess what's on the other side. Was there, were you always
like that are you just didn't have a... it didn't bother you or did you have a kind of
coming to terms with it at some point. I think you're probably always had it.
I was kind of a born atheist. When I was very small I would, as my mother
tells me this I don't remember it, but when I was very small I would ask her to tell me
there were no angels. She said she would tell me well I don't know I don't know
if that's the case. So I've never seen an angel and I don't think there are angels but I don't
know. I kept insisting on it that she tell me there were no such thing as
angels so seemed to start pretty early. My father was an atheist too
probably had something to do with it. Now your grandfather was actually a
preacher right? My grandfather and his father and his father all Baptist
preachers in Burma. And then your father decides to. He went the other way
yeah went the other direction. Similar to my experience my family is very
religious and I went the other way and what I've heard before is there's no
atheists in a foxhole. They'd to say- Well that's a lie yeah and even if it were
true it would mean that fear was the motivation and if there is
a God I don't not think he'd be that respectful of fear as a main
motivation to believe in him. That's a pretty shallow kind of God who would
scare the shit out of somebody in order for them to believe. That was my upbringing...
using that fear perspective and it was funny too because as I got older and I
met other Catholics and I told them about my experience of Catholicism with
the fear they were surprised and that was when it opened my perspective to
realize that not everybody was brought up that way. Yeah some people have
different reasons for believing in higher-power. Check out my website
nlp-gym.com just today I opened enrollment for Transforming Your Self the online
training this is the model that I referred to in this interview to me is
the most powerful NLP model ever created it was taught to me by Steve Andreas and
now I can bring it to you online and you can take the training at your leisure
whenever you feel like it whenever you want to do it and you have lifetime
access to it when you purchase this training I will include link down below
so you can click on it and go directly to the landing page so you can find out
more information about it take care