Kevin Hall.

I love to be surprised and this book surprised me in many ways.  There is so much in the personal development community that has become tired and re-hashed, but I found this book to be a breath of fresh air.  I was originally very skeptical with the premise that understanding the origin of words could make any real difference in ones life, let alone help someone discover their purpose in life.  In the past when I've heard people pontificate about the origin of a particular word it has sounded like an academic exercise only of interest to those who enjoy reading dictionaries in their spare time.

Little did I realize that pulling apart the origin of words does in fact lead to deeper meaning and causes real reflection.  Thinking about a new word from another culture has caused me to examine common, tired ideas in a fresh light.  Re-examining a familiar word in a new way, and thinking deeply about what it means has led me to think in a fresh way.  Kevin is a masterful storyteller who is able to pull out great examples of how these words apply in common, everyday life.  The book is fun and captivating and not at all some kind of dry, academic tome.

It's hard to find a favorite word from the book, but the one I have found myself reflecting on the most is Genshai which means to never treat another person in a way that would make them feel small.  The examples Kevin uses are inspiring, moving, and thought-provoking.

In addition Kevin begins to describe in this book some powerful strategies for journaling and learning more deeply from everyday experience.

The book is both illuminating and inspiring and at least in the Top 5 of all the books I've read in the past 10 years.  It's a truly amazing book.  Aspire! is currently only available on the Power of Words web-site: http://www.powerofwords.net.  Do yourself a favor and be one of the first people on the planet to read this book.

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Beautiful blue eyes

So far we have talked about representational systems and eye accessing cues. Now it's time to talk about how to apply this in normal, everyday life?

As you begin to be able to understand the ways that other people are representing the world, you can recognize it and do nothing, recognize it and utilize it, or recognize it and influence it.

Let's start with an example that is quite simple to understand, although depending on your life circumstances may or may not have immediate application.

NLP Spelling Strategy

In the early days of NLP, it was observed that people who were excellent spellers almost all did a couple of common things. They visualized the word they wanted to spell (eye access up and to the left for a normally organized person) and then they do a kinesthetic check (eyes down to the right) after spelling it to see if what they said or wrote, felt right. If you ask a good speller how they know if the word is spelled correctly they will say something like "It feels like its right" or "It looks right". When they see a mis-spelled word on a page, a good speller may literally feel uncomfortable. (In NLP, when two senses are linked together like this it is called a synesthesia.)

If we want to help someone learn to spell better we want to teach them this strategy by building this synesthesia. It is worth noting that poor spellers use all kinds of strategies, none of which happen to do this. Some will try to sound the word out using a phonetic strategy which is ironic since if you try to spell phonics that way you should end up with "fonnix".

So how to teach the strategy.
(1) Take a written word and position it at or above eye level slightly to the left.
(2) Think of a feeling that is confident, comfortable or relaxing.
(3) If you positioned the word straight ahead, look up and to the left and picture the correct spelling in your mind. Try spelling the word backwards. This is a great test that you are truly seeing the word.

This process when repeated will form a pattern of remembering words visually and generating a feeling when you are seeing the word correctly. This is the strategy of great spellers.

If you are teaching this strategy to someone else you will use language and gestures to guide them in accessing this correctly. You will direct them to look at the word while gesturing up towards their left (assuming they are normally organized).

If you want to prove this out, test it out by finding some great spellers and watch what they do.  (NOTE: I have only experimented with this in English, but it likely applies more broadly, although some languages, like Spanish, are easier to spell in phonetically).

Are they lying?

Another potentially interesting use of eye accessing cues is to help tell if someone is telling the truth. There are many cues you can use to determine lying and we won't go into them all here, but eye accessing is one way to help detect truth or lying.

So if you have asked someone some questions and you know how they access construct memories and recalled memories then you have the basis for determining when they are telling the truth (recall) and when they are making up an answer.

Imagine that you ask your friend, "Did you go to that party over at Harry's this weekend?"  Assuming you know that your friend is normally organized and they access Visual Construct and they say, "Why yes I did.  It was great."  They may be making up what it would have been like to be at that party.  If they access recall then they might be remembering the party.

Now when you do this in the real world you begin to realize that people don't just make one access and answer.  They might first access recall of what they actually did on the weekend and then construct something that they can tell you that they did.

Sometimes you'll ask someone a question and they will access auditory first, which might mean they are repeating the question to themselves, then they access recall or construct as part of their answer.  Unfortunately it's not cut and dried, so you need to pay attention, ask questions, and learn.  The key is to understand that you can notice what people are doing and influence it.

Now some of this can be faked, and they may answer untruthfully by remembering something that has actually happened (perhaps not at that time and place or even not to them). It is an interesting indicator that you should experiment with.

A great source on this subject is Dr. Paul Ekman.

Play with these strategies and see what you can learn.  You might surprise yourself.

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Last week we described the basics of NLP Representational Systems and how to identify how another person is representing their own internal model of the world.  This week we are going to refine this a bit more by showing how the eyes reveal important information and and we'll follow that up with an article that will really explain how to put all this information together into useful applications.

Eye Accessing Cues

In the early days of NLP, Bandler and Grinder noticed that people who were visual tended to look up when accessing their thoughts; auditory people tended to look sideways; and kinesthetic people tended to look down.  These are somewhat generalizations, but are surprisingly accurate.  In addition they noticed that if you ask someone a question that requires that they acccess an image (e.g. "What did your first car look like?") about how something looks that they are remembering they will look to a different side than if you ask them to "make up" up an image (e.g. What would George Bush look like in a mini-dress and stiletto heels?").  So for the first question, it's quite likely (better than average chance) the person will look up to their left (at least for a moment), but for the second question they will look up and to their right.  The same basic pattern applies for accessing auditory representations.  It's useful to distinguish between what is called "Auditory Analog" and "Auditory Digital" as well.  Digital refers to words and analog refers to anything else you would hear including tones, tempo, pitch, etc.  So when someone is generating internal self-talk they will tend to access Auditory Digital (down to the left).

If you say to someone, "So how do you feel about that?"  They are likely to look down to their right.  When somone is looking for the words to describe something (Auditory digital) they are likely to look down and to their left.

The directions described above are for someone "normally organized". This simply means that most people look left for remembered and right for construction. Other people will be opposite and look right for remembered and left for construction (informal estimates are that about 90% of the population is normally organized).  This pattern appears to be highly consistent and independent of culture. John Grinder has noted that the only exception he's aware of is the Basques who don't follow a readily identifiable pattern.

It's worth a reminder at this point that these are generalizations.  You should test all of this and learn to notice for yourself the relationship between questions and how other people access their representations. A way to calibrate is to ask a series of questions relevant to the context you are in. So if you are in real estate and want to calibrate you might ask a colleague :

Q: Remind me, what is the color of that house we have listed on Elm Street?

This question already suggests that you want the person to remember, and then the question you ask presupposes a visual response (for the vast majority of people). You may notice as you ask questions that some people will continue to stay focused directly ahead and their pupils may dilate rather than moving horizontally or vertically. This usually indicates accessing information visually.

The chart below shows the eye accesses for people who are normally organized. 

NLP Eye Accessing Cues

So what use is this? First and foremost, once you are aware of how people around you are representing their world you can utilize that information to communicate more effectively. In upcoming articles we will be building on eye accessing cues and explain how to use them in many interesting ways. For now we recommend learning the basics of noticing what is going on and learning to ask good questions that let you isolate what is happening. That brings us to the exercises:

Exercise 1: Write out 3-5 questions that would let you calibrate the access (like the real estate example we gave above) for each of the 3 major representational systems: visual, auditory, kinesthetic.

Exercise 2: Use the questions you have written out with at least 10 people over the next week and see what you can notice.

Exercise 3: Watch people talk in a natural setting and see how people access information with their eyes.

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The lists below define the most common words and phrases that you can use to help identify the internal representations that someone else is using. There are a number of words that can refer to multiple systems, so you have to rely on other clues (as described in the earlier article) to determine their usage. For example the word pierce could be used with visual, auditory or kinesthetic representations. The word bouquet might bring to mind an image of a wedding with a bridal bouquet or the full bodied bouquet of a wine. Smell and taste are often linked and the words can easily refer to one or both, i.e. something can taste burnt and smell burnt.

Remember to use these with other cues. 

There are a well known set of words that are used fairly frequently and do not fall into either category. These are sometimes grouped into the Auditory Digital category. Since many people ask about these words, we include a short list of words and phrases here.

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