The last few weeks have changed me in the same capacity as when I first went through self-concept work in NLP, and I want to share why. It started with my job at the airline. Years ago, when this coworker first showed up with his nasty attitude of constant complaining and harassment, I was the only one who didn't let it slide. That's when he challenged me to a fight. He had no idea I train. I accepted right there, pulled out my phone, gave him my number, and we booked a time to meet. Other people had to pull him aside and tell him I train, and that's when his back suddenly started hurting and he backed off. Ever since then he's been trying to get under my skin and get back at me, unsuccessfully, since he can't physically or mentally take me. A few weeks ago he started bullying and harassing another coworker, and that's when I stepped in to defend them. He used it as his chance and filed an HR complaint trying to get me fired. He thought it would get me fired, but instead it kicked off a full investigation where both of us got suspended pending an investigation that might lead to termination. On paper that sounds like a disaster. In reality it was the permission I needed to admit something I'd been avoiding for a long time. That job was never aligned with who I am. The only real reason I kept it was the flight benefits, I was using them constantly. But this whole situation woke me up to a truth I needed to hear: if I build a successful business, I don't need a job for discount flights, I can just buy the tickets. Nobody I admire and look up to would ever go through what I went through for a discounted plane ticket. They make enough money to buy everybody in that break room a ticket and then some. That benefit was playing small. It was the last safety net I needed to let go of. The suspension didn't break me. It woke me up. Around the same time, I went through a separation from my girlfriend. I won't pretend it didn't hurt, but having real NLP tools to work through it made the difference between spiraling or progressing. I came out the other side stable. Running the resolving grief pattern gave me a real sense of appreciation for the time we had and for who she is, she's amazing, we just want different things out of life, which means we want different things out of each other.

Most people think NLP is about changing the way you talk to yourself, language patterns, changing your physiology, or changing one state. None of those are wrong, they're just incomplete. NLP goes deeper than that, into the internal programming, the patterns running underneath behavior, and physiology is one piece feeding into that programming, not the whole picture. Neuroscience is now backing this up directly, and the first lesson in Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain reframes a lot of what people assume change work is actually doing. The lesson is called "Your Brain Is Not for Thinking." The title is intentionally surprising. The core finding is that the brain's primary function isn't to think, reason, or solve problems. Its most important job is to manage your body's resources so you stay alive and healthy. The technical term for this is allostasis, the body budgeting nickname is just the accessible version of it, and once you see it, you realize NLP has been working with this mechanism since the beginning, just without the biology to explain why it works. State is simply the sum of your physiology and where your attention is focused in any given moment. It's easy to assume state is the target, get into a resourceful state and the work is done. But state isn't the target. State is the output. The allostasis or body budget concept names the engine that's actually generating it, which means the real work goes deeper than the state itself. It means changing the programming that decides what state a person defaults to before they've even thought a thought. Picture your body as a bank account. Sleep deposits into it. Good food deposits into it. Exercise builds the account over time. Stress, worry, illness, and lack of sleep withdraw from it. The brain is constantly tracking these deposits and withdrawals across energy, water, salt, glucose, hormones, and oxygen, predicting what the body will need next and trying to prepare for it before there's any conscious awareness of the need. This is the program running underneath every state someone walks into a room with. You can change the state for an afternoon. You can't out technique a depleted budget.

Hey everyone sorry I couldn't make it to the lab call today I was in transit back home

I just got in contact with a gentleman who has been working with one of the original founders of NLP. Back before it was called Neuro-Linguistic Programming, it was called Meta. Everybody attributes the creation of NLP to Richard Bandler and John Grinder, but those two would have never been successful in creating it without their first student and co-creator, the third and often hidden gem, Frank Pucelik, who was a Vietnam veteran suffering from the turmoil of being in combat and was one of the first to be transformed by NLP. P.S. Still looking to practice some of the advanced processes that I am learning with anybody who is willing, before I go back to my day job. Hit me up. https://youtu.be/XFAULwn5mNM?si=LDtCixf1O1oqkHG4

I just had an interesting practice session using the metaprogram outline in these master practitioner manuals I got my hands on, combining it with core values elicitation. I was always wondering how we can change metaprograms, and whether it's even ethical to change them. I'm starting to see a pattern where simply opening up the scope of someone's metaprogram and giving them more choice, guided by their core values, has been extremely interesting. I'm still looking for people to practice with before my schedule goes back to normal. My part-time job, coaching sessions, and jiu-jitsu fill up my calendar fast. Feel free to hit me up.