On modelling and learning

When we were infants, we didn't have language yet. Our whole world was new. We were open and abundantly curious as nothing seemed familiar. Everything that we experienced was a different world, and we were trying to adapt to our new reality. 

Surrounded by adults, walking around on two feet was one of the first things we noticed was very different. If we had language, we might have wondered, "how come I am down here, while everyone else is up there?" But back then, no language was needed, just the awareness of not being there, where everyone else seemed to be, was present.

And so began our first attempts, at mimicking the movement we saw others do so fluently. We were on all fours, wanting to be up on two's! Attempting to stand up didn't work, as we stumbled. But it didn't faze us. We changed our approach. We switched to looking for ways to prop ourselves up, use some support and see if that worked. Sometimes there was a sofa nearby, other times just a wall. But we kept at it. Putting our hands against something and checking if that can allow us to mimic this two-legged thing that the big people seem to be doing so well.

Then one day, we managed to balance our weight against a chair and push our legs against the floor. Et voila! We were up, and at a different height now. Our legs were wobbly, but we were holding to the chair. After a few moments though, we fell and were then seated on our bum! It was a magical feeling. The bum didn't hurt that much because the mystery of how we stood up for a few moments was still unsolved. The fascination still remained but having momentarily "done that", we got back to replaying the sequence back, and checking what we exactly did when in those brief moments, we were able to stand up, even if in a wobbly manner.

And then that sequence got tested a couple of times. Did we hold the chair first? Or push our feet against the floor? Or did we reach out and pull with our hands? A few attempts followed, some were unsuccessful. But then again, that magical moment came, and we found ourself standing on the ground, leaning against the chair, with our hands firmly on the seat of the chair. This time the wobble was still there but our hands were firmly holding on. This time there was no crash landing to the bum, but a voluntary surrender of the position because we got tired after standing for some time.

But what was done, could not be undone now!

We had learnt how to stand up, and in the many days to come, we would learn to do many things.

Unknowingly, we had learnt how to learn. We had learnt how to model someone else's behaviour, mimic it, observe it closely, replicate it in our own context, and then make it happen through sheer experimentation, sense of play, but constant refinement based on inputs of the previous attempt.

And this approach, became the foundation to how we grasped different experiences. We learnt:

• when to cry, and how to cry
• what gets our parent's attention
• what makes us sad and how to get sad
• what upsets us and how to get upset
• how to smile and laugh
• how to start speaking our first words

This is the beginning of the building blocks of our experience. And at the heart of it is the innate gift and ability to model from our surroundings. In early life, this is a necessity as everything is new and unfamiliar, and we want to be how others are. But later in life, we forget this superpower of modelling and miss out on its deliberate use. Rather, we get so good at modelling, we don't realise we are using it everywhere. Even to model things that don't help us!

Every model has its use - so experiencing heartbreak, being disappointed, expressing or suppressing anger - all of these are learnt, modelled and perfected just the same way we learn to make tea, or ride a bicycle or learn to add or subtract numbers. 

How we learnt to stand as toddlers, was the first ever structure of a learning model in our lives. Over the last weekend, I spent time with my lovely participants, in uncovering how they have modelled their lives, and helping them discover how they structure their experiences, the unconscious strategies they follow, and what makes things functional versus dysfunctional.

The spirit of the "Feet on the Ground" Event originated as practice sessions on Sundays, back in May 2020. While the Sunday sessions have evolved into the "Deepening the Roots" community of NLP practice, the FOTG Event (as it is lovingly known now), has become the central platform where all my virtual students gather for a weekend and integrate and strengthen their practice of NLP. On May 27-28, we descended upon Goa from different locations across the country and spent the two days unravelling how we are designed to learn and model and create our own unique approach to creating excellence in our lives. 

The process towards creation of excellence showed up different facets and patterns. For some, they found the comfort of reconnecting with their old selves, which they had lost somewhere along the way. Some others had a realization when we did a simple exercise in "falling". A few of us discovered how values play an important role even in the most common seeming activity. One of our participants volunteered to speak about her way of making a "homestyle chicken biryani", and in going through the recipe and method of the biryani, the true nature of the person emerged. 

We picked simple decisions, and broke them into recognizable parts of our unconscious, that revealed how layered the process of arriving at a decision usually is. And that further enabled us to gain insights into what motivates us, drives us and is important to us.

We also learnt a way of navigating conversations without focusing on words being said, but by fully focusing on how much information is revealed even in just 2 mins of observing non-verbal cues of a person! 

All in all, the May 2023 "Feet on the Ground" event, had loads of insights, a lot of reconnecting with basics, and rediscovering our hidden strengths - including a flair for comic timing, how music and laughs seem to be a universal mode of fun after the "serious" work of the day was done!

I owe a lot to my teachers and my mentors. But I must also mention all my lovely participants, who carry the practice of Neuro Linguistic Programming into different parts of their lives, in many cases, where those aspects of life are overlooked or left untouched. In their passion and willingness to shine the torch of NLP on their own lives, they illuminate my life with clarity and a sense of purpose!

The banner image is a not-so-serious picture from the event just before we hit the "serious cricket team" pose!

Some background: To anyone who is willing, I teach how to put NLP into their everyday lives and find more choices and create freedom for themselves. In my view, NLP is not limited to coaches or therapists or counsellors - but rather it is a life skill that each of us need to learn from when we are young. That these tools are available to us at a later age and can still allow us to live our lives with a smile and a sense of purpose, no matter when we start the practice, is down to the simplicity, versatility and applicability of NLP itself. That you probably didn't know this, is down to someone not spelling it out to you in a language that you grasp! In my writing and sharing, the endeavour is to bring the relevance of these skills to your life. So if you are up for it, please reach out to me, I would love to have a conversation with you. And thanks for your support in reading this article right till the end! It would mean a lot of if you shared this with people in your life who matter to you.