**name deleted*, the learning part is in not inside of the notion that it can be done, but how do we go about getting it done?*

So you say want to model what I do. Here are more than a few pieces -- read on!!!

*name deleted*, again, about the notion of learning. It's not in the fact that my clients have reached their outcomes, but instead the art of learning is inside of the process of getting there, i.e., nothing I have attempted inside of what I already known has worked, what do I do next? What haven't I thought of yet that I could use here? If we were on a different planet, where this problem didn't exist, what would have to exist as a basis? What has to be there "first" for this person to even be able to maintain this pattern of behavior?

Which logical level does this need to addressed at? What was I overlooking that I can now bring into consciousness and use, the how of the effect of this difficulty that goes across contexts and classes of experiences that this individual experiences on a daily basis? How does this person do this? What lets this person know it is time to do this? Are there any counter-examples, where this person did something else? What are the ecological considerations here in regards to secondary gain? Primary gain? What's in it for this person to want to maintain this behavior?

What resources does this person already have that I haven't elicited yet and can use here? What kinds of experiences can I get this person to engage in that will build in the resources? What past experiences did this person have, how can I build in new ones, reframe old ones, how can I combine them together to create a state where this person can exist inside of the solution? How does this person code this unwanted behavior, what are the pieces that make it work? How, in the past, has this person successfully re-coded experienced behaviors that were isomorphic to the presenting problem? How can I use that here? What is this person's present criteria?

Will the arrangement of this person's present criteria support the desired outcome? If not, how do I best rearrange it to fit the desired outcome? What does this person dislike more than anything in his/her world model? What do they like more than anything? How can I amplify these representations and use them as a paradoxical propulsion system to move this person into the behavioral choices they want to have? Are there first and second attention conflicts to be solved first? Do I first need to create first and second attention conflicts as a means of moving the client far enough away from the problem in order to be effective in changing it? It is much more difficult to change the problem on the level of the problem, how do I effectively chunk up with this client? What are things that used to be challenging to this client? How can I move this there?

On another note:

Which pieces do I do in first attention? For which pieces do I offer meta comments or consciously recognizable analogies? At which places do I offer mixed metaphor? Deep metaphor? At what places in the communication do I have the client shift referential index? What parts of the communication do I want to the client to experience in first attention? Which parts in second attention? Which parts of the communication do I need to introduce at the level of spirit, the level of identity, the level of belief, the level of value, the level of behavior, etc.? At which points do I want to associate the client, at which point do I want to disassociate the client?

What states of conscious do I want the client in for each part of the communication? Do I want to make a quick global change here, or do I want to do this in steps by first moving the client into the possibility of change?

*name deleted*, the way I think, I can go on here forever and ever, never running out of choices. When I see a client I usually begin by changing the perception of time, both mine and the clients. All that I have written here goes through my mind, as I experience it, in a fraction of a second. The interesting thing is, even if I do not mention any of it out loud, the client is going to be responding to my nonverbal communication in a like fashion.

Just last week I gave a demonstration in front of a room of people who had a minimum of master practitioner certification. One of the pieces that I did was on being able to quickly suspend belief. I asked for a volunteer and purposefully picked a person who I knew was patterning a big part of their reality around the notion of synesthesia, mostly formed as see-feel circuits. Whenever I do a demonstration, I scan the room for the person who I think will offer the greatest challenge to me. Most anybody can do the easy ones, I want the most complicated structures I can find for use as a demonstration subject.

Before the person I had picked got out of their chair to come up to assist me, I had already began communicating with that person at a second attention level. And by the time that person did make it to the front of the room I already knew what I needed to communicate to that person as a means of getting the response that I wanted. I was able, in less than five seconds, to effectively bring five see-feel synesthesia patterns up into free suspended images that were now disassociated from this person's feelings.

Later after the demonstration was over, I had a man come up to me, who happened to be an NLP trainer, and offer the following statement. "I watched you very closely, and I will say that I have never seen someone communicate with such accuracy in a live demonstration. It's as if you always know what to do."

That may have been his perception, but it was far from accurate compared to what I had done. What this man didn't realize that I had taken several hundred guesses as to what I needed to do for this person. But, all of those guesses were communicated at an other than conscious level that existed inside of a loop with the demonstration subject, all of which occurred prior to my first verbal utterance, and well before the subject ever reached the front of the room.

The way I look at it is, I am always learning new things, but perhaps they are different things from your worldview. I learned a great deal about how that person was organized, and what I needed to do to get the response that I wanted to be able to successfully perform that demonstration. I don't see the challenge as being how we change the behavior, any behavior, for me it is greater than that. The challenge is just as much about making the best choices as in which direction to make change into. To be able to take into account the following:

The person before me and how what I will do will effect that person five, ten, even twenty years down the line?

The other people who make up this person's world, his family, his job, his friends, his hobbies, how will the new behaviors fit in the world?

How can we best make sure that we set up new unconscious loops that will support the new behaviors in the eyes of his family? The client is now with new changes in behavior. How do we do our best to assure that the client respects and honors the old loops he/she was once a part of and helped set up?

What parts of what we do together will be designed for more immediate gratification, which parts will be designed toward the wisdom of the long term?

For me, it is not the simple change of any behavior or set of behaviors that I find challenging, but instead how to help the client best fit those new changes into a world that can provide richness inside of the classes of contexts that this client occupies. I have worked successfully with all kinds of behaviors, that was the easy part. But what good would I have done, if any, if in helping someone with an eating disorder I overlooked the quality of their lives. So now they don't binge and purge, but they still can't get along inside of relationships they are a part of, or they don't like their jobs, or have yet to find the meaning of balance between work and play, etc.

Perhaps I am a bit too vague at times when posting, but to speak in deep structure inside of a world where people are taught to think in an over-generalized fashion, then the chances of many people reading the kind of detail it would take communicate with something that mirrors deep structure would be slim, at best. However, I have learned, since most people are entranced into overusing generalizations to deform the process of experience into events we call nominalizations, that when writing to a general audience, to use my language as a means of eliciting representations that form a general personal understanding - an effect that is akin to that of the skilled use of the Milton model. To even begin to think that the way you and I may understand the letters NLP, not to mention being inside of a behavioral set of methodologies as they relate to actual world model effect, is far too big of a jump.

I have a friend whose name is Nancy. She works as an airline pilot flying 747's. Me, I fly single and twin engine props. I once made the mistake of thinking that since we were both pilots that I could easily understand what she did. But that thought was merely a delusion. She took me to that airport, placed me behind the controls, and all I could do was be confused. I had realized that what I knew and was able to do as a airplane pilot was only a foundation for what she knew and could do inside of the meaning of the words airplane pilot. Same set of words? Yes - but the actual meanings for those words were very, very different!!!!!!

Some people read a book and think, "Gee - I understand NLP." Some people take a training or two and think "Gee -I know NLP." Me, I have devoted a good minimum of five hours a day for the last twenty years of my life toward learning what is termed NLP and, above all, have discovered one thing. I don't know much of anything, really. But what I have learned is how to do things, to be pragmatic, to use my senses more effectively. And to what end? So that I can live inside of journey of mystical proportions -- with new discoveries at every turn, new ways to relate and enjoy the people I love, the people I come into contact with. And still - I will say to you, there isn't anything that can't be done. And even more importantly - is what I am wanting to do worth doing? And on another logical level, what haven't I thought of yet that I can use to make my world a better place, not because I have to, only because I can. And besides all of that, for me it's one fantastic way to see, feel, hear, smell and taste the experiences that fit into the nominalization called life.

And finally, your notion of deleting, or somehow reframing failures so that I could represent what was done as a successful experience, let me add this.

I came into the field of NLP from the perspective of an electronics engineer. What I did was based on models of two way radio communications, a field that was under the strict guidelines of the FCC. When a radio device was designed to operate at two hundred megahertz plus or minus X percent, it had to operate within those parameters, no excuses! You couldn't say, "Well, you see your equipment may be telling you it is operating at four hundred megahertz, but in fact you are only picking up a multiplication based on secondary harmonics," they just wouldn't buy a reframe like that. And when you got down to the level of components that made up the circuitry, you had to be damned precise. If you were designing a device that was going to operate at four hundred megahertz, you had to start out by using a crystal, or a phased lock loop system that was designed to operate at a much lower frequency. Then you would design in, to exacting mathematical precision, a set of ringers, or multipliers, that would eventually bring the transmitted output signal to within the prescribed parameters. To put it simply, when you talk about the notion of deleting or reframing failure it doesn't compute, at least not for me.

That doesn't mean that I won't at times lead a client into a direction that I detect is more useful. Like the guy I worked with who was earning over five hundred thousand dollars a year while ignoring his family completely. He said that he wasn't earning enough and wanted to earn more. I took that to mean that he wanted to earn more in the way of quality of life and not just the pursuit of dollars. He wound up learning how to enjoy his children, his wife, and how to spend some of the five million dollars he had already saved. Did he get what he came to me for? No! He wound up with a great deal more!

Be well

Carmine Baffa