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(Steve Andreas sent his article to both Richard Bolstad and Michael Hall in advance of publication, in order to give them an opportunity to comment.)
What a pleasure to read Steve's article which both extends and critiques my comments on breakthrough experiences. Those who read my article will know that I enjoy the ability of NLP to question the emperor's new clothes, and Steve continues that process with my story about falling on a sword.
One of the main themes of Steve's article is that breakthrough experiences are digital and analog transitions may be more respectful of ecology as well as simply safer. He correctly challenges my use of the universal quantifier “anything” in my statement “I remind them that their success is evidence that they can do anything they decide to do.” Clearly, I do not want my students to overcommit their finances, or to stand in the way of a nuclear explosion. There is also, I agree, something rather disrespectful about the terminology of “breaking through” a limitation, if we accept that limitations were put there for a reason.
The actual process is more like seeing the limitation disappear in front of one's eyes, or—as Steve's metaphor suggests—feeling it melt away. The metaphorical learning from the board-break or a ropes course is perhaps that many of our worst fears are based on perceptual mistakes. Your hand can go safely through a board, and you can walk safely a considerable distance from the ground. You can also often find a career that you love, and create a relationship that is worth living in. In each case. it is important to preserve ecology. Sometimes, that means acting decisively and totally enough to be sure of success.
At the same time, I think there is some degree of wishful thinking in the idea that all change can be done slowly or gently. One cannot leap across a chasm a small step at a time, and it is my experience that the real world has chasms, just as a ropes course does. We do not do our students a service by trying to cover that up by finding ways that all their experiences are gradual. This may be a metaprogram difference between Steve and I. As a nurse, I have watched people facing life-or-death challenges where it seems to me that they need to make a clear, unequivocal decision, rather than do a little better than they have done. Let me give you a personal example:
When I ran my first two NLP Practitioner trainings and NLP weekends, I was employed teaching in a state tertiary institution. I had a stable income guaranteed, and was “transitioning” to private work, by running NLP seminars on my holidays and weekends. The first trainings worked like clockwork. Many of my friends and colleagues from round New Zealand enrolled, and my very first course was actually booked out. Then I ran a weekend that didn't attract so many people. In fact, I got about eight enrollments, so I canceled it in disgust. That was a bit puzzling.
I had another weekend coming up though, and this one was to be videotaped by a professional video company. It was costing me a few thousand dollars, but I figured that all the best trainers had videos out, and it might be a great way to get well known. On the Thursday evening before that weekend, it finally dawned on me that I had six people enrolled, that the course had to go ahead because I'd paid for the video, and that essentially I was in trouble. For the first time, I really needed a training to work!
That night I didn't sleep at all—not because I was worrying; but because I was working. I thought again about who might be interested in attending this particular weekend. I listed all the possible ways to get people onto a weekend training one day away. I worked out what advertising would be needed, and who could help distribute it. I produced the adverts by hand. I left home with the adverts and began distributing them at 5.00 am on Friday. Twenty-eight hours later the training began, and it was full.
That was the first time I actually took my business seriously. I stopped “transitioning,” stopped rehearsing, and treated it as real. I had learned that my slow, careful approach was not ecological. Of course, as Steve might point out, I still kept my day job, so in his sense I was still melting through. But there is no way I would describe that day psychologically as a melting through. It is in this sense that I hold to the value of the board-break as a metaphor.
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