The Renewal Times

February 2003.
ISSN 1705-3773 The Renewal Times

The Renewal Times is a publication of Renewal Technologies and is edited by Roger Ellerton.

This newsletter may be republished without permission, provided it is reproduced in its entirety. To reproduce sections of the newsletter, please contact Renewal Technologies at info@renewal.ca.

Please feel free to forward this newsletter to friends and colleagues. To become a subscriber, send an e-mail to info@renewal.ca with subscribe in the subject line.

Please note: The material in this newsletter is presented for information only. It is not a substitute for medical, psychological or professional advice. Please consult a qualified professional.

Included in this newsletter:

• Thought for the day
  
• Health Notes
  
• Upcoming Seminars
  
• Feature Article
  
• News Items
  
• Humour
  
• Feedback
  
• More Information
  

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Thought for the Day
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Stay the Course

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all up hill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down with force,
Rest, if you must and - Stay the Course.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As everyone of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about,
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don’t give up, though the pace seems slow -
You might succeed with another blow.

Often, the goal is nearer than
It seems, to a faint and faltering man,
Often, the struggler has given up,
When he might have captured the victor’s cup,
And he learned too late; when the night slipped down -
How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out -
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt -
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you’re low on resource -
It’s when things seem worst that you must - Stay the Course!

           Author unknown, Modified by Roger Ellerton

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Health Notes
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Try an Energizing Breathing Exercise

Today, when you're feeling drowsy or mentally sluggish, wake yourself up with this breathing exercise:

1. Sit comfortably with your back straight, eyes closed, and your tongue in the yogic position (touch the tip of your tongue to the inner surface of your upper front teeth, just above the soft tissue between the teeth and the roof of the mouth). Keep it there for the length of this exercise.

2. Breathe in and out rapidly through the nose, keeping your mouth lightly closed. Inhalations and exhalations should be equal and short. You should feel some muscular effort at the base of your neck, just above the collarbones, and in your diaphragm. (Try putting your hands on these spots to get a sense of the movement.) The action of the chest should be rapid and mechanical. Your breath should be audible on both inhalations and exhalations (as rapid as three cycles per second if you can do that comfortably).

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Upcoming Seminars / Workshops
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We are pleased to offer the following public workshops/seminars:

NLP Master Practitioner Training

January 11 - 12, 24 - 26, February 21 - 23, March 21 - 23, April 25 - 27, May 23 - 25

NLP Practitioner Training

May 3o - 31, June 1, 6 - 8, 20 - 22

Life Skills for Teens

June 24 - 29

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Feature Article
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This article may be reproduced, provided it is reproduced in full, including author bio and a link to renewal.ca. If you republish this or any of our other articles without including the author's name, bio and a link to renewal.ca, you will be in violation of copyright law and sent an invoice.

NLP Communication Model, Part I

By Roger Ellerton Phd, ISP, CMC, Renewal Technologies www.renewal.ca

In simple terms, the NLP Communication Model is about how you make sense of your world and the behaviours that you manifest as a result. In this article, we will focus how you make sense of your world (i.e. filter information).

Conscious Awareness

It is estimated that your brain receives about four billion nerve impulses every second. Are you consciously aware of all of this information? No! For example, are you aware of how your shirt feels on your back? Unless your shirt is particularly tight or uncomfortable or you have a sunburn, I suspect that you were not aware of how your shirt felt until I mentioned it. Why? Because it was not important at the time and it was filtered out. Of the 4 billion bits of information, you are only consciously aware of about 2,000 bits, or about 0.00005 percent of all the potential information. To take in and process more of this information would either drive you crazy or be such a distraction that you could not function.

Filters - Deletions, Distortions and Generalizations

What happens to all of this other information? It is filtered from your conscious awareness by deleting (i.e how your shirt feels on your back), distorting (i.e. simplifying) or generalizing. What you actually delete, distort and generalize depends on your Beliefs, Language, Decisions, Values, Memories, Meta Programs (more about this topic in a later article), etc. Let us look at a few examples to gain an appreciation of how they work.

Beliefs

Suppose you have a belief that ‘You can’t do anything right’. How would you react when someone approaches you and says “You did a great job preparing that report.”? Depending on the circumstances, you may dismiss, discount or deflect their positive feedback. Internally you may think they have not looked at it in detail and when they do they will find something wrong and change their opinion. Suppose all day, people tell you that you have done a great job - do you really hear them? Not likely! And then one person points out that you made a couple of spelling mistakes on page 21. Does this resonate for you? You bet it does! It verifies your belief about yourself. From a ‘filter’ perspective, you have deleted and distorted the positive feedback and focused on the negative. What beliefs do you have about yourself, about others, about the world, that limit who you can be or what you can accomplish?

Language (Words)

You may choose to over simplify (distort) how you and your spouse interact by referring to ‘our relationship’. Words are interesting. They are a form of code to represent your interpretation of something. If you want to have some fun, get a group of people together and have each independently write down five words that for them means ‘relationship’. I will bet that nobody comes up with the same five words as you do; and as a group you may not have any words in common. The word ‘relationship’ is code for what relationship means for you and I suspect that your spouse has a completely different meaning for this word. Yet, we enter into long and sometimes heated discussions with our loved ones about ‘our relationship’, without ever really discussing what ‘relationship’ means to each other. If this is a topic of concern for you, next time you may wish to ask “How are we relating that is not working for you (or supporting you)?” (and also what is working for you?). This will surface something that both of you can actually work on. We will discuss this in more detail in a later article.

Decisions

You make decisions (i.e. generalize) so that you do not have to relearn things every day. If you want to open a door, you learned a long time ago (made the generalization) that you grasp the doorknob, twist and pull or push and it opens - you do not have to go through the whole process of relearning how to open a door each and every time. Generalizations are useful and they can also get us into trouble. In an experiment, researchers put the doorknob on the same side of the door as the hinge. What do you think happened when they left adults in the room? They would go up to the door, grasp the doorknob, twist and then try to push or pull the door open. Of course, it would not open. As a result, the adults decided that the door was locked and they were locked in the room! Young children, on the other hand, who had not yet made the generalization about the doorknob, simply walked up to the door and pushed on it and exited the room. The adults, because of their decisions, created a reality of being locked in the room when in fact they were not. So how many of your decision (generalizations) about your spouse, your boss, the way it is at work, … leave you ‘locked in’, when others are not stopped by it?

For me, one of the benefits of NLP is to discover those filters I have put in place and how they affect what I see, hear, feel; how I react to others and what I create in my life. Once I become aware of filters that do not serve me, I can choose consciously or with the help of NLP techniques to modify or remove them.

And NLP is Much more than that!

In the next article, we will illustrate the effect your filters have on your behaviours and the reality that you create.

Author: Roger Ellerton is a certified NLP trainer, certified management consultant and the founder and managing partner of Renewal Technologies. He can be reached at Renewal Technologies www.renewal.ca or by e-mail info@renewal.ca

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News Items
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Would you like to discover what NLP is all about? Expand your knowledge of NLP? Meet some of the leaders in NLP?
Attend the 15th Annual Conference of the Canadian Association of Neurolinguistic Programming!

Details are as follows:
Theme: Inspiring Communities for Creative Change
Gain new insights into how we define ourselves and our relationship to our communities. Explore NLP applications in health care, business, or education. Move back into your own community, ready to inspire creative change.
Dates: April 12 - 13, with a pre-conference workshop by Steve Andreas on April 11.
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

For more information, please visit their website at www.canlp.com.

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Humour
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Performance Evaluation

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For other jokes and funny pictures, click here.

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Feedback
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We welcome feedback on our newsletter - things you liked, areas for improvement, … . Please write to us at info@renewal.ca. If we publish your comments, we will only identify you by your initials, city and country.

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More Information
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For more information, please visit our website or contact us at info@renewal.ca

Copyright © 2003, Renewal Technologies Inc. All rights reserved.

Books, ebooks and CDs by Roger Ellerton

Click on the following links to obtain more information on these products:

• Book/e-book: Live Your Dreams Let Reality Catch Up: NLP and Common Sense for Coaches, Managers and You.
• e-book: Live Your Dreams Let Reality Catch Up: 5 Step Action Plan.
• Book/e-book: Parents' Handbook: NLP and Common Sense Guide for Family Well-Being.
• e-book: NLP Techniques Anyone Can Use. Discover the power of NLP.
• CD: Ho'oponopono, a meditation to bringing balance into your life.
• CD: Balancing Modalities, a meditation to improve access to the visual, auditory, kinesthetic and auditory digital modalities.
• CD: Outcome MASTERY, a process and meditation to help you achieve what you desire - more comprehensive than SMART goals.

Renewal Technologies Inc.

Training and Coaching Centre
8B Sweetnam Drive
Ottawa (Stittsville), Ontario, Canada
K2S 1G2
www.renewal.ca
info@renewal.ca