This article is a transcription of the following video from our YouTube channel:
I often find in NLP coaching that my clients have already seen everyone else for their presenting problem, and that other person couldn’t fix it, and then they come to me. So how can I use kind of like a timeline talk, timeline linguistics, to sort of work to my advantage?
First of all, I break that pattern. I’m not like everyone else, so that’s one. I’m not going to offer the same style office, same style of coaching or therapy or whatever it is. I am that unique person that is out of the box with unique answers and solutions.
So what I do is I want to meet the client where they are right now, present tense. I’m not interested in what you said to that other person in the past because I am different. Then I start to focus on what this session is going to be like today and what our sessions in the future will be like and how that is going to be different from everybody else that they have worked with.
I also will start painting that picture, what it would be sound like and feel like when they are in the future with me as their coach for instance. I may even have them imagine what it would be like to have a different life, or reach a goal, or no longer have this problem and have the solution instead, and place myself inside that future so when you reach your goal you and I will, and imagine that that is right now that you’re reaching that goal, and I’m there cheering you on. In that moment in time, I start talking to that unconscious mind as if the future is today.
Additional benefits that come with that is that you can also really mark off that it’s the past where the problems are, and it’s the future where the possibilities are. I want to specifically determine what that future will be like and that you must do whatever it takes, and we are going to talk in terms of solutions, not in terms of problems.
So that would be my advice. Use your present, future, and past tenses in a very smart way and break the rules. Break the rules that all the other therapists have set. Those coaching relationships are going to be completely different from the relationship that you end up having with your client. Good luck.
