Further Adventures

HTB Lab Notes

Why do people write? Sometimes I write when I have ideas to express. HTB has a different motivation. I write it to learn about myself and the world, and to share what I learn with others. I make this distinction because it helps explain why I haven't written an issue in over a month.

A few issues back I used a metaphor about standing in front of a crowd, deciding what I could teach them. I used this state when I wrote. It boosted my ego and kept me on track.

I call this state Authority, which means the power to author. I mistakenly believed that Authority came from having insights my audience lacked. I began to feel unqualified for the position.

I now believe Authority comes from being human and living in the world. I think communicating and sharing what we've learned should be universal, not reserved for those who know the most. By communicating our ideas and our beliefs, we invite others to challenge them, or to spread them, and thus we begin to make a difference in the people around us.

With these thoughts in mind, I'd like to welcome each of you back to Hacking the Buddha. Now let the hack begin!

Further Adventures

I broke the back off my chair long before I moved to Atlanta. I had another - a huge black armchair that I left behind when I moved. After six months without back support, I had enough. So I bought a new chair with my first paycheck from my new job.

Yes, I changed jobs. When people ask Carmine questions about work, he's quick to point out that NLP can't make you like a job you hate. By the same token, my apprenticeship to him didn't make up for the low pay and high stress of my job at the plastic surgery center. I had promised myself I'd try it for six months. When they passed, I quit.

I timed my notice so that my last day at the surgery center was the day before I left for my family reunion in Montana. My parents and my brother flew up from Texas. I hadn't seen Steve or Dad since I moved to Atlanta six months before. I hadn't seen most of my cousins in years.

Two things about the trip really affected me. First, I had a chance to work with Cody, one of my younger cousins, who was having trouble in school. I was explaining hypnosis to an older cousin, and on a whim, asked Cody to spell "geography."

He couldn't do it, and I saw why. He had tried to sound it out, rather than picturing the word and reading off the letters. I began teaching on the spot, and we both had a lot of fun. The most rewarding part was after we paused while I answered a phone call. Cody pulled my sleeve and asked to get back to the lesson.

The other thing that impacted me on that trip was a bridge, and the rush I felt as I hurled myself from it. Some of my older cousins and I went white water rafting near Glacier national park. The water was too calm for our tastes, so when we saw the bridge, we stopped there.

Several groups of people had gathered near the bridge to swim in the cool, clear water, and to jump from the bridge or the large rock formations closer to the shore. We decided to try the bridge.

High places used to terrify me more than anything, but NLP helped me change that. Even so, my heart pounded as I looked over the bridge's edge. I climbed under the rail onto a supporting beam, and found myself stuck to it. I told my cousins, most of whom had already jumped, "It's not that bad," and I jumped, only my hands and feet never left the bridge. I tried various mantras under my breath:

"Here goes!"

"Well, you only live once!"

"Yeehaa!"

I remained on the bridge for some time. The water was a long way down. I realized the entire concept was stupid. I couldn't do it. It was out of my worldview. I let go, sprang into the air, and dropped like a rock, screaming the whole way down. What a rush!

Quitting my job felt the same way, but milder. I had a sense of freedom to do anything. I considered going back to school, or spending some time at a commune I once visited outside of Austin. I put my resume on my website, and submitted it to a computer jobs finder service. Headhunters started calling me every day, but few of them had anything interesting to say. I had fun trying on different possibilities, but I already had a plan.

The plastic surgery center's practice management software came from a company based here in Atlanta. I had talked to people there on several technical support calls, and gone to their offices for training one day. By the time I quit the center, I knew enough that I could go work for them. I figured the two hour interview was a good sign, but I didn't know I had the job until just before I left for Montana.

I disliked my first two weeks there. I turned my life around and I felt disoriented. I didn't talk to people. I could see that there were better ways to do what they had me doing. I wondered if I made the right decision.

I'm not sure what changed. I started writing in my notebook at lunch. I collected my thoughts about my assignment and wrote up a memo about how it should be done, and they agreed with me. I got away from the computer and got to visit a doctor's office to help train them, which will eventually be one of my main tasks. I started listening to Tony Robbins tapes on the way to work. I got paid.

Another thing that really affected me was that I continued my job search. I plan to keep my current job for quite some time. I'm tired of switching my life around every few months, and I see this as a chance to settle down, enjoy my work, and have the time and money to work on my personal projects. But as a hobby, I like to try new realities on.

I hopped over to the Creative Loafing website and scanned the classifieds for anything that looked interesting. I called around and snagged two interviews: an after-school program and an environmental campaign group.

A lot of people first hear about NLP because of the idea of Rapport. Tony Robbins is big on it, and at least one bestseller was entirely devoted to that topic. Rapport means being in sync with someone. Tuned to the same channel. Grokking each other's vibes. We're born with the skill to build rapport, but many people grew up and forgot how. Those that remember are called "charismatic" or "easy to talk to."

NLP includes step by step models for building rapport, which comes in pretty handy whenever you deal with people. Random job interviews are one of many great contexts for building these kinds of skills, and I plan to go on more in the future.

I've learned a lot from my new interview hobby in another way, too. Not only am I building skills, and meeting some people who really enjoy what they're doing, but I'm stepping into realities I never thought I'd be interested in. Interviewers are great with the hypnotic inductions, building compelling futures. They tend to start out talking in possibilites, saying "If you get hired," "If we offer you the job", but the phrases get old fast, and it soon becomes, "You'll arrive every day at nine, and as you begin to learn more and more about our service, you'll start to..." And so on.

The hypnotic language patterns occur so easily in the conversation, so unconsciously, that with a few questions, we're able to build a completely new future reality for myself and the interviewer. "I've found in past jobs that as I learn more and more about my work, my value increases and I was given more responsibilities. Tell me a little about how my job here will work that way. What might I move on to?" And so on. You've got to love it.

Meanwhile, I'm happy with my current job, and it IS evolving in just that way. I plan to soon buy a better computer, so I can work on my website, use my computer to write some music, and maybe even create a few NLP, learning, and mind-related software programs. I'll finally have a machine, a phone line, an account, and some free time all aligned to open the internet to me whenever I want.

Keep The Meme Alive

At the time of this writing, HTB has 75 subscribers. I know many more people read this on the web or various newsgroups, but I can only track the number of subscribers, and I would like to see that number grow.

HTB is free, and I write it only for the satisfaction of being heard. If you're a subscriber and you enjoy this issue, please take a moment to consider a few friends who might like it, too. If you're not a subscriber and you like HTB, please subscribe! :)