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Part-Timer wrote:...I find that a lot of people really do fit in with their Sun signs. For example, the person who sits opposite me is very organised, tidy and carries anti-bacterial handspray/wipes. Anyone care to guess what sign she is?

It's a toss up between Virgo and Capricorn. I'll go with Virgo.

queen of clubs wrote:Ah, thank you! That's what I was trying to remember. Bandler is something different - isn't he the guy who wrote some of the most important books on NLP or something? (Again, showing my ignorance but hopefully my enthusiasm, too )

Queen of Clubs - don't tell me you're rubbishing astrology, but lapping up NLP?!

This looks like an excellent DVD, I'll almost certainly get it. It's well suited to me as I like being able to do mentalism stuff without getting into astrology, psychics, tarot, all that.

Bit busy. Quick summary of points:

You're right, there are no such tests. Astrology exploits a completely brilliant mental quirk called the personal validation fallacy. Beyond that, it's arbitrary and has more to do with the heuristic knowledge of the astrologer than any other factor. Research is still being reported looking into life choices and expectations carried by people being born in different months. Surprise surprise, those having birthdays in the summer tend to have a more positive outlook on life. What's far more useful as a predictor for attitudes, personality and life expectations is the prevailing social conditions in which kids grow up. They can be the difference between a saint and a sociopath.

NLP is a very large field, and some areas of it are pure nonsense. Having said that, there are some very good linguistic tools at its heart that came from Bandler and Grinder's original studies of Satir's, Perls', and Erickson's clinical techniques. Basically, I'm saying don't lump this functional, clinical core together with the bill of goods that's grown up around it.

Webster's chapter on tree reading in "Cold Reading Variations" is terse at best. He's basically retelling the story of meeting a woman who interprets tree sketches. The chapter runs to just two pages, and of those, there's only about 2/3 of a page that carries any interpretation and then it's very light. "The stranger the tree is to look at, the stranger the person who drew it will be."

I like this DVD. More propless mentalism in the world with greater accessibility and a more natural feel to it can only be a good thing.

Im glad my my lil post caused such much chatter for the four days I as a away........

For those of you who now have the dvd....tell me how fun it is!

Farlsborough wrote:Queen of Clubs - don't tell me you're rubbishing astrology, but lapping up NLP?!

No! But I've read in DB's book that the early books on NLP are worth it.

I bought Neuro-lingusitic Programmig for Dummies last week. It reads like a Scientology textbook. Complete waste of a small amount of money.

queen of clubs wrote:

Farlsborough wrote:Queen of Clubs - don't tell me you're rubbishing astrology, but lapping up NLP?!

No! But I've read in DB's book that the early books on NLP are worth it.

I bought Neuro-lingusitic Programmig for Dummies last week. It reads like a Scientology textbook. Complete waste of a small amount of money.

the nlp for dummies is actually rather good as long as you dont read it in a female american accent..and avoid the self-helpy type bits...good for a tenner...

now queenie - remember my prediction the other week? you're a cardician mate, a card-ician...step away from the smelly mentalism...



you'll be buying annemann's card magic book, then the slippery slope of his pdfs on lybrary.com, and before you know it - you'll be growing a beard and reading 13 steps...

still not watched the dvd! but if tomo and timer like it - that's good enough for me...

I was under the impression that astrology is based on incorrect calculations about the stars and planets (and conceived well before even some of the major planets were discovered).
And of course its easy to point out people with the same sign who are very similar. With the amount of people there are, it would be more suprising if there weren't similar people. Of course, we ignore those who have completely different lives.

Replicant wrote:It's a toss up between Virgo and Capricorn. I'll go with Virgo.

Correct!

Tomo wrote:Surprise surprise, those having birthdays in the summer tend to have a more positive outlook on life.

That explains why I'm a miserable bu99er then.

After reading the Review - and a few peoples posts i have decided to buy this DVD - I will post my thoughts on it, when i have had chance to digest it.

Queen of Clubs - If you want a book on NLP -
I heartily recommend 'The NLP Workbook'

www.amazon.co.uk/NLP-Practical-Achieving-Results
Workbook/dp/0007100035

Did you all know "The British Army even uses NLP Now!, they called it something different obviously"

I call it something else too...

To be honest - when it comes to NLP I'm with Tomo.
There genuinely is some excellent stuff there.
Apparently the earlier books are the best place for this but I imagine this has more to do with there being less c*** (not the best) in them.

Wade through the c*** (not the best) to find the good stuff in NLP as I understand it.

Unfrotunately as the books go on, they're being filled with more and more c*** (not the best) and less good stuff.

As far as I can fathom it, the secret to NLP is this: doing what people with good social skills do anyway. There are all sorts of technical names for perfectly natural "phenomenon", I just think it's a bit of a smokescreen so people can sell you books that tell you if you remember to make eye contact and smile people will like you.

...which is perfectly true, only I don't need a bedroom scholar to tell me that, and take the opportunity to introduce a load of jargon at the same time. Of course, if he was a bit of an introvert loner which - let's face it - a fair few amateur magicians and mentalists are, it probably did revolutionise their interpersonal interactions, but only by bringing them up to speed as it were.

Did anyone see what was probably the most recent "Come Dine With Me"? The one with the slightly... ahem... dwarfish guy, the two ladies and the young man? Well, I know the young man. Used to be very good friends with him, he serves at my local in Sheffield. He's got himself into an NLP business which in terms of general prosperity I wish him all the luck in the world with, but that's why he was so confident to the point of sounding arrogant in the beginning - he thought with his nifty NLP stuff he could simply blow everyone else out of the water.

He came fourth, which was a shame - especially because he's a really charming guy, and had he tried to ditch the "NLP" and just be his usual cheeky friendly self, he'd probably have faired better.

So yeah... NLP... harumph. In my humble opinion. An interesting jumper for mentalism effects to avoid the passe realms of spirits and mediums, which becomes more of an annoyance when clever showmen like Derren Brown manage to convince magicians and mentalists who really should know better that "the one with the bag and the coloured stones" was all done through NLP, and not that one wot's off the Max Maven DVD

When I was at college I sat next to this chap called Craig (yes, I attended lessons occasionally enough to know my classmates names!) and he was a bit of an NLP nut.
We'd go to the resource centre to work on a psychology assignment and he used to get this book on NLP out and read through it with tuts, laughs and general "oh my" faces.
He showed me a few things in his book and being young and impressionable it seemed sensible enough to me.

Of course, time went by, I stopped going to college and looked at NLP in the real world to find it didn't match this perfect model that was supposedly laid out.
Live and learn I guess.

Farlsborough wrote:As far as I can fathom it, the secret to NLP is this: doing what people with good social skills do anyway. There are all sorts of technical names for perfectly natural "phenomenon", I just think it's a bit of a smokescreen so people can sell you books that tell you if you remember to make eye contact and smile people will like you.

That's a very minimalistic view of NLP but to all extents and purposes seems to be correct.
I think the idea behind the older generation of NLP was that it was to exaggerate this idea and use a few more ideas which had come about through "real world" experience (as an interesting aside, someone once told me that NLP considers all generalisations to be false and have named them ePrime. Some of the later NLP books are apparently written completely without ePrime).
After all, the word rapport is almost synonymous with NLP these days.
So yes, it is about doing what people with good social skills do naturally, but exaggerated enough to have a noteable effect without being overpowering.

...which is perfectly true, only I don't need a bedroom scholar to tell me that, and take the opportunity to introduce a load of jargon at the same time. Of course, if he was a bit of an introvert loner which - let's face it - a fair few amateur magicians and mentalists are, it probably did revolutionise their interpersonal interactions, but only by bringing them up to speed as it were.

Some quite socially adept people could probably use a few ideas from NLP and get something from it - as long as they don't go too far and start getting into the silly "NLP is a masterful tool to make you the master of all" attitude.

Did anyone see what was probably the most recent "Come Dine With Me"? The one with the slightly... ahem... dwarfish guy, the two ladies and the young man? Well, I know the young man. Used to be very good friends with him, he serves at my local in Sheffield. He's got himself into an NLP business which in terms of general prosperity I wish him all the luck in the world with, but that's why he was so confident to the point of sounding arrogant in the beginning - he thought with his nifty NLP stuff he could simply blow everyone else out of the water.

And therein lies the problem. NLP, if believed and used at all should be used to enhance your natural charisma and charm - not instead of it.
Unfortunately a lot of the later stuff is all about replacing natural social skills with NLP and doesn't work.
(When I worked in the kitchen at Tesco a delivery driver came in one night and asked if he could use my coffee machine card. He had an NLP book on him which he sat down and started reading and when I asked him about it he seemed very smug and said "Yes, I used NLP when I asked you if I could borrow your card". Errr... what? Smiling and asking politely? Hmmm. Maybe NLP is taking itself a bit TOO seriously.)

So yeah... NLP... harumph. In my humble opinion. An interesting jumper for mentalism effects to avoid the passe realms of spirits and mediums, which becomes more of an annoyance when clever showmen like Derren Brown manage to convince magicians and mentalists who really should know better that "the one with the bag and the coloured stones" was all done through NLP, and not that one wot's off the Max Maven DVD

Hmm, Derren never claimed to use NLP to acheive his nefarious ends, but an interesting point.
If we can dress things up as pure psychology, or as psychic evidence or spirit manifestations etc, why not use NLP? After all, it will be no different than the lie we tell about guessing who got the black ball by studying psychology and a persons tiny subconscious responses.

Would be interesting to see if a mentalist could crash an NLP (an NLP? a NLP? An sounds better but a is more grammatically correct. Bah!) seminar and ply his trade there and see if he could get away with claiming NLP.
Would the practicioners believe this? And would they suggest that the mentalist was a person with an excellent grasp of NLP?

Derren Brown - we have stumbled across your new special!
£10k for the idea thanks!

EckoZero wrote:Would be interesting to see if a mentalist could crash an NLP (an NLP? a NLP? An sounds better but a is more grammatically correct. Bah!) seminar and ply his trade there and see if he could get away with claiming NLP.
Would the practicioners believe this? And would they suggest that the mentalist was a person with an excellent grasp of NLP?

Sleight of Mind (by Harling & Nyrup) discusses exactly this.
Martin Nyrup tells of his disillusionment of discovering that the NLP instructors who he was working with were perfectly happy to accept that the mentalism routines that he performed for them were, in fact, NLP techniques being used in extrordinary new ways.
He then says that the instructors proceeded to try and "model" his behaviours to see if they could "bring their skills" up to the same level...

I have been at a couple of courses where the instructors have mentioned the fact that Derren Brown is a shining example of the efficacy of NLP techniques.

What can you do, but laugh? (and hope that not too many people get sucked in)

iggy

Yeah, I have no problem whatsover with using it as mentalism patter.

Anyhoo, I've just received this DVD so I'm gonna grab a cup of tea and get drawing some trees!