NLP Tip: Three Obstacles to Mastery - Part One

publication date: Aug 12, 2007

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author/source: Jamie Smart - www.saladltd.co.uk

Take the Broad View

John Grinder (co-developer of NLP) once said that the three main obstacles to mastery of any skill were over-reliance on focal vision, internal dialogue and hesitation. Let’s start by looking at vision.

Conscious Unfocus

The central part of your visual field – the part you use for focal vision – is useful for distinguishing fine detail. Most people rely to a high degree on focal vision, which you can think of as being connected to the conscious mind. Peripheral vision, on the other hand, allows you to see a wider field on all sides. Peripheral vision is good for detecting movement, and you can think of it as being connected to your unconscious.

Focus on the number 1. Now relax your gaze, and allow yourself to become aware of the edges of the page, then further out to each side, above and below.

This is your peripheral vision. Here are some more tips for opening it up:

Imagine you have an extra pair of eyes at the level of your belly button. Imagine you are looking out through those eyes.

Imagine that there is a tangerine, floating a few inches above and behind your head. Imagine seeing it while looking straight ahead.

Peripheral vision allows you to perceive the world with a wider, more relaxed gaze. Practise going into peripheral vision until you can do it at will. For most people, this is a relaxed and comfortable state to be in anyway!

When you use peripheral vision in a one-to-one situation you may notice things such as breathing rate, gestures, blink rate and other things that can be useful if you want to match or mirror. It also allows your unconscious to get in on the act, and you may start to get more intuitions about the other person and what’s going on for them. You may start to amaze yourself by noticing what you’re aware of that you weren’t before.

More advanced

In groups of people, peripheral vision allows you to notice what’s going on with all the people you’re not looking directly at. This means you can be looking at one person, and noticing the signals, gestures, and expressions of the people who think you can’t see them.

Click here to read Part Two of this article