Increasingly more of us are looking to find satisfaction on an inner level. Different people will call it by different names: personal development, personal evolution, self-development, self-actualization, spiritual development, or realizing more of our potential.
According to Peter Russell in his excellent book The Awakening Earth, the personal development field is a growing area and is roughly doubling every four years. Personal development in its widest sense covers a range of different activities including meditation, yoga and tai chi, counseling, Gestalt, psychotherapy, groupwork, transactional analysis, rebirthing, assertiveness training, stress management, prosperity consciousness, relationship training, and many more including, of course, NLP.
Each of us becomes drawn to one or another personal development path in different ways and at different times. The fact that you are reading this book indicates that you are at the moment drawn to explore NLP.
You are the best judge of which path is most appropriate for you at the moment. Whichever pathways you pursue, they will involve some investment in terms of time and money. They will involve organizing and traveling, buying books or tapes, and doing courses. You, in effect, invest some proportion of the money that flows through you in your own personal development. Each of us spends a different proportion at different times.
It is well worth taking a few minutes to work out roughly what percentage of your income you have invested in yourself over the last few years. First make a list of what you consider to be the personal development activities in your life. As a guideline here, these will have a lasting effect that is in some way generative. They go on producing benefits. Meditation has this quality, ice-cream does not.
Now make a rough estimate of the financial cost of each of these activities. Notice, too, the benefits you have got from each. Now total the cost. What percentage is this of your total income over the period?
It is worth comparing this to the proportion of income that companies spend on training and developing their people. For most companies in this country it is around one or two percent. For the most successful companies it is nearer ten percent.
The percentage of your income that you invest in yourself is a reflection of how much you value yourself. You are your own most valuable resource and investing in yourself may be the best investment you can make.
Do you invest as much in yourself as you want to? Quite apart from the inner benefits, there can be financial benefits too.
I have a friend who became dissatisfied with her life. She worked as a cook earning about $11,000 a year. Over three or four years, she invested about ten percent of her income in her own development and training, including NLP training. She has transformed herself and her lifestyle. She now finds life much more satisfying and also earns $32,000 a year.
The flow of money in our lives accurately reflects the flow of thoughts in our minds. So, if you want to change your bank balance, change your thinking. This is a central notion of prosperity consciousness.
On a more general level, if you want to change your external reality, change your inner reality first.
NLP is about changing our inner reality. Unless the benefits are sufficiently clear, there is no motivation to commit time and money. What are the benefits of investing in NLP training?
Everyone brings their own unique personality and potential to an NLP training course, and the benefits will vary from person to person. What you will get depends mainly on what you want to get, so it is well worth being clear about your personal outcomes.
Many people come primarily for personal development. They may be going through a period of change in their life, and want skills and tools for making changes. Others may simply be aware that there could be more to their life.
Some come mainly for professional reasons, although personal and professional development go hand in hand. NLP skills are invaluable as interpersonal skills. Many professionals use NLP in their work: teachers, trainers, counsellors, therapists, psychiatrists, nurses, social workers, probation officers, management consultants, and salespeople. NLP improves effectiveness at work and gives an enhanced sense of well-being. Many professionals use NLP to become more successful financially, so getting a tangible return in kind on their investment.
Participants often report a new dimension to experience, a new perspective on life, more choices, creative ideas, and new skills to apply. Enhanced awareness and flexibility revitalize both personal and professional life.
Last, but not least, NLP is fun. A course is something to look forward to, an occasion to enjoy and meet interesting people.
You can learn NLP from books, but NLP is experiential. It involves having the perceptual filters, the patterns and the skills in your behavior, rather than just as ideas in your head. Personal experience with others has so much more meaning and impact than the written word. NLP is to be used at the level of experience if it is to be of any value.
An NLP training seminar gives a safe environment in which to learn the patterns experientially with sympathetic people, under skilled supervision.
There is an old Chinese saying:
I hear and I forget.
I see and I remember.
I do and I understand.
Your investment in training is considerably more than your investment in books and warrants careful consideration. There are considerably more benefits too.
The only way you will find out if NLP training is for you is to do it. In the next section we offer our thoughts on how you go about choosing the course that is best for you.