Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to erase phobias, delete negative emotions, and all while learning new and empowering life-skills?
Of course it would.
These are the kinds of promises that neuro linguistic programming, or NLP makes, and in our experience, it really can change your life for the better.
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Thousands of people worldwide get great results by applying NLP principles to their own lives, and the lives of their clients or patients. That’s because NLP is a model of change and personal excellence that can be aimed at virtually any area of your life.
So where does it come from?
Origins
NLP goes back to the 1970s when Richard Bandler and John Grinder observed and codified the work of three exceptional therapists: Virginia Satir, Fritz Perls, and Milton H. Erickson. They went on to refine the techniques they learned, and made them transferable to others. Back then it was difficult to get trained in NLP, because so few people were qualified to teach it.
Enter Tony Robbins!
With his Personal Power audio tapes sold on late night infomercials, Robbins did much to make NLP mainstream and accessible to anyone who had an open mind and a cassette player. His book Unlimited Power is still an NLP classic, and people around the world testify to its life-changing power.
Okay. I’ve convinced you, right? I mean who wouldn’t want to have a better life? If NLP is so powerful, it’s worth at least checking out.
The great news is, today you have available to you a smorgasbord of excellent resources that can enable you to learn practically anything; NLP being no exception.
But that raises the question: How do you learn it?
There are lots of great answers to that, so let's start with the least expensive information, which is FREE!
Free NLP Resources
Books are a great resource, especially if you’re able to borrow them. That’s where the public library comes in. If you live in a big metropolis, your local library may well have some NLP books. However, because the topic isn’t exactly mainstream, if you live in a small town, you might be out of luck.
Online is a totally different matter!
There is so much stuff online, that although a lot of it will be excellent, a newcomer may get lost in the weeds, attempting to figure out what’s good and what’s fanciful nonsense.
Nevertheless, you can get a feel for NLP by surfing the web and checking out blog posts, scholarly articles, and of course videos.
YouTube is an excellent source of free NLP videos. Here you’ll find everything from the mainstream material that goes back to the founders, Richard Bandler and John Grinder, to wild and wacky stuff that other people have come up with.
If you spend enough time watching NLP videos, you’ll quickly get a sense of what it’s all about. Once again, it won’t all be good, but it will all be free.
Inexpensive Options
Let’s go back to books for a minute. Even if your local library has zero NLP material, it’s really easy to find and buy NLP books online. Amazon will have a ton of them, and used bookstores like Abe.com will enable you to find the cheapest options. Besides Bandler and Grinder, there are other excellent authors. Books by Robert Dilts, Steve and Connirae Andreas, and Seymour and O’Connor are particularly good.
eBay can occasionally be a good source for used and discounted NLP training materials. DVDs, CDs and even cassette programs are sometimes available.
Premium Training
Although there’s a lot of free or inexpensive NLP material available, many people will still want a high-end option.
Without a doubt, the best way to learn NLP is through live training. Typically, this will take place at a hotel or conference centre, and will run for a week or longer.
The advantage of the classroom option is you’ll interact with other students and have adequate practice time. There will often be what are known as “open frames”, which are times devoted to getting your questions answered by the instructor.
Depending on the skill and personality of the trainer, live classes typically do a great job of immersing you in the topic. It’s a sad fact that there are many people who know a lot about NLP, but aren’t especially dynamic or interesting. You should always carefully check out NLP training before committing, and find out what other people say about it.
The disadvantage of the classroom option is you’ll usually have to travel, which can be very expensive. If you have to stay in another city for a week or two, you’ll have to pay for hotel rooms. When you factor in the cost of air travel as well as the cost of the training, you’re probably looking at several thousand dollars.
What if you are on a budget and want to go further than just reading books about NLP? Fortunately, there’s an affordable solution that provides excellent training without having to leave home!
Online Learning
A Google search will immediately reveal the huge number of online courses you can take in a vast array of subjects. With just a few keystrokes, you can begin to learn just about anything, from Japanese gardening, to backgammon, to NLP!
There are several excellent online NLP courses to choose from. Typically, these will be broad-based, and lean toward either Richard Bandler's NLP, or John Grinder’s NLP New Code. We’re partial to our own online training: NLP Essentials, which is a blend of both styles.
A good online course will give you all you need to start making powerful changes in yourself and other people too. We suggest a course that will give you lots of video content delivered in bite-sized chunks for maximum effectiveness. The best trainings will offer a certificate of completion too.
Naturally, if you do the online option, you’ll have to find people to practice your new skills with. However, many people find the online courses to be super convenient, and the video material can be reviewed as often as necessary.
Of course, you are free to choose to borrow a book from the library, attend a seminar, or purchase an online course when you are ready to begin learning.
The problem with all of this though is the lengthy amount of time you’ll have to do in your research in order to find a training that is right for you.
It can feel like sifting through sand with your fingers, hoping the right course or instructor will eventually show up. Others have told us they felt the same way over the years as we were developing the Mike Mandel Hypnosis Academy. That’s why we created NLP Essentials.
What we found is that by taking the best parts of our already widely successful video series and applying it with the absolute NLP essentials, students were able to remember the information and also be good at it.
NLP Essentials is affordable, has short, easy to watch videos, and focuses on the foundational principles, rather than filler or fluff.
In other words, we know the struggle you probably don’t want to go through with finding an NLP instructor, so we did the heavy lifting for you.
So now it’s up to you to jump right in and begin your NLP journey; a journey that will continue for the rest of your life.
When you’ve made the choice to learn NLP, then you’ll love just how affordable and easy NLP Essentials is to learn, and how fun NLP is to master.
Click here (NLP Essentials)