First of all, before I get into the body of my response to you, I want to qualify a few things, and offer a direct Suggestion.

(1) I am going to accept your hallucination of this person as purely academic. That is, since I am not collecting information directly through my own senses about this person, I have no clue of the accuracy of what you are sharing here. Not to say that you may not be very accurate, but rather there will always be slippage between what someone offers in the way of communication, and how that information is perceived by the person receiving it, and again distorted in the process of person two sharing with person three, what person two perceived while communicating with person one.

(2) I am not going to get into whether you ought to be doing this in the first place. What is your outcome? I figure you know what you are wanting to accomplish, and the reasons that you are wanting to accomplish this. Even if that information has yet to filter into conscious awareness.

Now for the direct suggestion. It is extremely important that you be able to maintain a Meta Position in relation to the person you are choosing to help. If you lose the ability to step out of the communication loop you are in with this person, you will also lose flexibility, and in effect, could instead wind up only installing more of what was there in the first place. If you offer a frontal approach and are being less than effective, the person you are communicating with might just dig into his word model only that much deeper. So the suggestion is that you take the time to first build in a skill for making certain that you can remain at least one logical level above the behavior(s) you are wanting to change. It is very difficult to change a problem on the Level of the problem. Chunk up. What goes before the problem behavior? What has to be there for these kinds of behavior to function?

Take someone who is not taking care of their own health. They are not eating correctly, exercising, practicing healthy hygiene, etc. Now, if you take it apart at the level of the behavior, you will have to deal with so many different patterns. But, if you stop and think about what this person is doing, what has to be there in the first place for all of these patterns to function, you will then be able to chunk to a higher level where changing one thing reconstructs the system back to consistency in the new direction.

What if we were to take the value of health for this person and effectively move it into what was most important to them? If you do this well, the person will come back as if this was always important, and the behaviors will change automatically.

Next, when you are teaching someone who seems to be holding on to what they are doing, but wants to change, you need to move your communication to a more unconscious level, open up a series of loops, and embed your message inside of them. It might also be valuable to build what you are going to install so that it comes in steps. And in this case you might also use softeners. Honor what is there, go from there, then move on to the installation.

AN EXAMPLE MIGHT BE.......

Look, listen, we have been at this for some time now. And you are still where you were when We started. And me, well I am getting frustrated, and am beginning to doubt myself, and my skills. In fact, I was also blaming you because I was not able to get MY point across to you. It's not your fault that I, up until now, have not stated by point clearly , but rather began making it personal..

When I was young I had friend who was not at all into religion. His parents forced him to go to church every Sunday. And he had to go, but, in spite of all that they tried in the way of communication with him, he simply stood his ground. We lost touch with one another over the years, and it wasn't until about ten years later that I ran into him again. It was a shock to my system when I did, because he had joined a religious cult and was hanging out at the airport, head shaved, and selling flowers. What happed to him was beyond me. Who would have thought?

But then again what happened to him is not that uncommon an experience for many. Because when I talked to him he told me that he always loved being a part of, belonging to the church. It was his parents he was fighting and not religion itself.

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I AM GOING to change directions here with this post to include this

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You see, no one is determined to be miserable. At least they are not born that way. And it is far too often that a therapist, not being able to help the client, in order to protect the image of self, they begin blaming the client. Rather than improve their own skills and abilities, they say it is YOU that can't change. You are miserable, you are wrong. I see it all the time with teachers and children. Don't have enough skill to help the kid, put him on drugs.

First of all, if you are going to represent NLP to yourself, start by thinking about, or getting back back in touch with all of the presuppositions of NLP. When I read your post, I saw that you had began blaming this guy for not following your directions. This became a personal conquest for you. Something you had to WIN. And in every game where there are exclusive winners, there are going to also be losers. Reread what you posted here about this guy, is it really his fault that you are not yet able to reach him? Do you really care if he does change, or is this just an opportunity for you to play. In this example is your use of NLP skills more important than the person you are lending a hand to? What would be the worst thing that could happen if you found out that YOU were not able to reach him? Would that not be an excellent opportunity for you to take your skill to another level? To dig deeper and find more? The minute you began blaming this person, is the same minute that YOU rendered yourself helpless in relation to being of any use to him. Do you not think that what you are feeling, thinking, saying to yourself about him is not coming across in you communications with him?

Stop, think about how these things coincide with who you really are. They do not. I know, because I have been there before. I once had the experience where my own success came before the client I was working with. What a great opportunity you now have to take what you know, and can do, to an entire new level. Don't try to slip things by. Talk TO the person You want to help. Ask them to try something on. Be respectful when you reach a plateau in your ability to use what you have learned in NLP. Learn more. Use this as an opportunity to stretch what You can do. Don't add more pounds of weight To this guy's shoulders by also blaming him for what you were not able to assist him in doing. It isn't his fault. According to you, he would benefit greatly by having someone understand that he is making the best choices available to him in his world model at that time, and in that context.

Stay well

Carmine