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The Renewal Times

April, 2004.
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 forward this newsletter to friends and colleagues. To become a subscriber, please Click Here! or visit www.renewal.ca/newsletter.htm

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
Humour
Feedback
More Information

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Thought for the Day
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The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at once.

Samuel Smile

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Health Notes
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Start Your Day with a Glass of Orange Juice

Help keep your blood pressure under control by starting your day with a glass of orange juice.

Recent research adds to the theory that certain antioxidant vitamins, such as those found in vitamin C-rich fruits and juices, contribute to cardiovascular health. In a recent study, people whose blood levels of vitamin C were the highest tended to have the lowest risk of developing hypertension, or high blood pressure.

Serum antioxidant vitamins and blood pressure in the United States population. Chen, J., He, J., Hamm, L., Batuman, V., Whelton, P. K., Hypertension 2002 Dec;40(6):810-816.

Reduce Your Intra-Abdominal Fat

As people age, many tend to develop intra-abdominal fat, a dangerous kind of fat that slowly encases organs and is difficult to see externally. However, recent research shows that exercise that gets the heart rate up, such as brisk walking on most days of the week, can significantly reduce a person's intra-abdominal fat.

Effect of exercise on total and intra-abdominal body fat in postmenopausal women: a randomized controlled trial. Irwin, M. L., Yasui, Y., Ulrich, C. M., Bowen, D., Rudolph, R. E., Schwartz, R. S., Yukawa, M., Aiello, E., Potter, J. D., McTiernan, A., Journal of the American Medical Association 2003 Jan 15;289(3):323-330.

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Upcoming Seminars / Workshops
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Introduction to NLP
April 28, evening 7:00pm - 9:00pm (no charge)
or
June 2, 2004, evening 7:00pm - 9:00pm (no charge)

NLP Master Practitioner Training -- Take your NLP knowledge and abilities to the next level!
March 19 - 21, April 2 - 4, 23 - 25, May 14 - 16, 28 - 30

NLP Practitioner Training
July 12 - 18

NLP Practitioner Training
October 22 - 24, November 5 - 7, 19 - 21

For our most recent schedule and a description of these workshops/seminars, please Click Here!

For the location of our Training Centre, please Click Here!

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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.

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Perceptual Positions

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

Different Perspectives

Often, it is useful to assess an event or outcome from several different perspectives: From our own perspective, from the perspective of another person and from the perspective of an independent observer. John Grinder and Judith DeLozier refer to these perspectives as perceptual positions. Perceptual positions provide a balanced approach to thinking about an event or outcome. In situations where there is little or no understanding or progress, they can provide a way of developing new understandings and creating new choices.

The three perceptual positions are:

First Position: seeing, hearing and feeling the situation through your own eyes, ears and feelings. You think in terms of what is important to you, what you want to achieve.
Second Position: stepping into the shoes of the other person and experiencing (seeing, hearing and feeling) the situation as if you were them. You think in terms of how this situation would appear or be interpreted by the other person. You’ve heard the expression: “Before criticizing someone, walk a mile in their shoes.”
Third Position: standing back from a situation and experiencing it as if you were a detached observer. In your mind, you are able to see and hear yourself and the other person, as if you were a third person. You think in terms of what opinion, observations or advice would someone offer who is not involved. You need to be in a strong resourceful state and take an objective view of your own behaviour and look for opportunities to respond differently in order to achieve a different and more positive outcome.

Sometimes we get stuck in one of these positions:

Someone who lives his/her life in first position would tend to focus on his/her needs rather than the needs of others -- a “self-centered” attitude. We could say that addicts tend to see the world from first position.
Someone, who lives their life primarily in second position, is always thinking about the other person at the expense of their own needs. Co-dependents or enablers in a dysfunctional or addiction situation would fit this description. A saying about co-dependents is: “When a co-dependent dies, someone else’s life flashes before their eyes, rather than their own”.
Someone, who lives in third position, would be seen as rather aloof and a disinterested observer of life - always on the outside looking in.

All three positions are of equal importance and it is useful to consciously or unconsciously cycle through these positions as we go about our daily activities.

An Exercise

To illustrate the usefulness of perceptual positions, consider the following exercise, which you can do alone or have someone guide you through the steps. Think of a conversation, discussion or disagreement that you had recently with another person that did not go as well as you had hoped and the situation remains unresolved. For ease of discussion, I will assume the other person is a male.

Are you prepared to explore this situation to find other ways to handled it, should a similar situation occur in the future? This is an important question. If you are committed to holding the other person as wrong and not prepared to learn from your experiences, no matter what, then it is not worth your time proceeding for this particular situation. Pick another situation.
Assuming you answered, “yes” to the first question, get yourself into a comfortable position, close your eyes and go back to that event looking through your own eyes seeing what you saw, hearing what you heard and feeling what you felt during that interaction. You can do this quickly, as the purpose here is mainly to remind you of the event and what you experienced. Here you are experiencing the event from first position. When you are finished, open your eyes, look around the room, stand, stretch your body - this is called a break state and the intention is to clear your mind of the internal representations (see NLP Communication Model Part II) of the event.
Again make yourself comfortable, close your eyes and this time put yourself into the other person’s body, take on his physiology looking through his eyes, seeing what he saw, hearing what he heard, and to the best of your ability experiencing how he felt being to be in a conversation with the person that looks and acts like you! From this other perspective, notice the facial expressions, body language, hand gestures, tone of voice and words that are used by this person that looks, behaves and sounds like you. Does this give you some understanding of why he reacted the way he did? If you were to give the person that looks like you some advice, from this perspective, on how to handle the situation differently, what would that advice be? When you are ready, open your eyes, look around the room, stand up and stretch. Did you learn something about yourself and how you could handle it differently next time with potentially a different result? Often people do and sometimes, they learn even more in the next step.
Make yourself comfortable, close your eyes and this time look at the event as if you were a fly on the wall. Some distance in front of you, you can see a person that looks, behaves and sounds like you and the other person(s). From this other perspective, notice the facial expressions, body language, hand gestures, tone of voice and words that that this person who looks, behaves and sounds like you is using. Can you give this person some advice on how the situation could be handled differently and just maybe achieve a different, more positive result? When you are ready, open your eyes, look around the room, stand up and stretch. How about this time, did you learn something about yourself?
Repeat steps 2 -5. This time use the new behaviours and resources that you identified in steps 3 and 4. Did you notice anything different this time? Perhaps, an opportunity to achieve a different more positive result?

I often use this exercise in public presentations. I remember at one event, as I finished the exercise, a young lady got out of her chair and quickly left the room. She returned to the room about 20 minutes later and at the next break came up to me and apologized for leaving the room the way she had. She went on to explain that about two weeks earlier, she had had a major fight with her roommate and long-time close friend that resulted in her moving out and the two of them had not spoken to each other since. As a result of doing the exercise, she realized how she could have handled the situation differently and left the room to have a conversation with her friend. As a result of this new conversation, she was moving back in with her friend and roommate that very evening.

This reminds me of two NLP Presuppositions: ‘The system (person) with the most flexibility of behaviour will have the most influence on the system’ and ‘There is no failure only feedback’ and the second of the Five Steps for Success -- take action!

Have fun with this exercise, it is easy to do and very powerful!

You can use perceptual positions to review an event in the past or to prepare for an event in the future.

And NLP is Much more than that!

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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Humour
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Dentists

What does the dentist of the year get?

A little plaque.

Why did the dentist make a poor date with the manicurist?

Because they fought both tooth and nail!

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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

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Books, ebooks and CDs by Roger Ellerton

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

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.
NEW! 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.

Ottawa - Kingston - Gananoque
Ontario, Canada
K2S 1G2
www.renewal.ca
info@renewal.ca