Turning Frogs into Princes using the Enrichment Approach

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"Turning Frogs into Princes using the Enrichment Approach"

Colin G Smith - All Rights reserved

"If you ask a hundred people 'What would you like for
yourself,' ninety-nine will say 'I want to stop doing X.'"

And continuing with an extract from the classic book, 'Frogs into Princes':

"There is an entirely different way to look at change, which we call the generative or enrichment approach. Instead of looking for what's wrong and fixing it, it's possible simply to think of ways that your life could be enriched: 'What would be fun to do, or interesting to be able to do?' 'What new capacities or abilities could I invent for myself?' 'How can I make things really groovy?'"

Your Wish List

For the following exercise, rather than thinking of material goals, think instead about how you wish people would behave toward you?

Examples:

I wish people would be more friendly towards me.

How will you know when the wish is being fulfilled? What will you be seeing, hearing and feeling?

- Genuine smiles, friendly voices, eye contact.

Now for each wish ask yourself, 'What's important about that?'

So for the first example, of people being more friendly, the importance of that could be; to feel safer.

And what's important about feeling safer? - Inner Calm

What you are doing here of course is eliciting values. These are the values that you are motivated towards. You could ask the question again about the new value too and get a deeper value or is it a higher value? hmmm...

'Be the Change'

Wasn't it Gandhi that said, "Be the change you want to see in the world."

So pick one of the behaviours from your wish list. Now ask yourself, 'Where could I practice this behaviour and with whom?'

Imagine seeing yourself in that situation interacting with the other person using the new behaviour.

Simply allow yourself to see and hear that interaction.

Now step into yourself and experience what it will actually be like in reality. What will you be seeing, hearing and feeling as you are interacting with this person?

Build bridges into the future

What is the first thing you will see or hear that will allow you to know it is appropriate to do the new behaviour?

Run through the 'New Behaviour Generator' steps above with a few more situations because doing this now will allow your unconscious to generalise the new behaviour.

And to help you get into the habit of enriching your life more often I suggest you put a note on your calendar to practice techniques, like the one above, in say, seven days time.

To end this little article I'd like to present you with another quote from 'Frogs into Princes' which sums up the enrichment approach nicely:

"When I was first doing therapy a man came in and said, 'I want to have better relationships with people.' I said, 'Oh, so you have trouble relating to people?' He said 'No, I get along fine with people. I enjoy my relationships a lot. I'd like to be able to do it even better.'"

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Colin G Smith is a licensed Master Practitioner of
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and author of
'The NLP ToolBox' & 'The Half Second Rule.'
For more information please visit the following website
where you can also get a FREE NLP Course
==> http://www.NLPToolBox.com
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