I can't resist another martial arts parallel. In Taiji there is an exercise called push hands. Simply explained, the idea is to unbalance a partner with a minimal use of force. People who have a good level of skill can throw bigger, stronger partners around with incredible ease. I have pushed hands with old men who repeatedly bounced me into walls without my ever understanding how they did it, or being able to stop them.
With hours of daily training I found that I could consistently replicate (with a degree less grace) what the old teachers were doing with people who had less skill in push hands. The people I pushed around didn't understand what I was doing either!
Now, if those people came to pushing hands with a superstitious sense of what Taiji is, perhaps with ideas of mysterious qi power - the ancient Chinese equivalent of the Force - then I could pass myself across as magical. A sort of short eared master Yoda!
But my understanding of push hands is probably 70% biomechanics and 30% psychology (awareness and mental state).
I make it a point of trying to make it as clear as possible to the people I work with what I am doing. That they can pick it up faster, and so the general level of play improves. Once certain teachers actually took the trouble to break down and explain what they were doing, my progress in Taiji improved immensely. That's an attitude I'm grateful for and carry on when I teach.
Some people, even without skill or experience would be tricky for me to push. At first I didn't like working with them. Then I understood that I could learn lots working with them. In my solo practise I'd analyse what went wrong with them and train the qualities that would help me deal with it in future. I used to work hard outside of class.
Before I could push hands consistently I had to work with a lot of people, change my body (through physical graft), get my ass handed to me, and learn to learn from it.
It's the same with NLP. NLP techniques are written out as clearly as we can. They still take skill to apply in a live situation. I run patterns with my clients and they don't always work perfectly. It's usually because I've missed some cue the client has given me, or ignored some aspect of my own state, or both. Then I know that I'm in for a good learning experience.
In fact I'll seek out the kind of client or the kind of situation, that will push my NLP skills.
Some students who come on our courses take their manuals home, read them overnight, arrange to practise with their friends and family and really apply themselves. They come back to class and tell us great stories. I remember one woman who sat next to a depressed person at a dinner party. Over the course of the evening I watched them move into a more positive state and view of their life.
That's what NLP is about. A learned skill to adapt the way you act in the world, which helps create the kind of changes you want in your life, and help others do the same. Part of learning the skill is real world application, and part is the controlled situation training and experimentation. The two sides overlap and compliment each other.
When I lived in England I trained in a boxing gym. Someone had written on the wall 'train hard, fight easy'. That's a great reminder for boxing, perhaps outside of the square ring we can say 'train smart, live easy'
If any of this article makes sense to you perhaps you can ask yourself if there are general areas, or specific situations where you could take a bit of time out to develop your skills. Perhaps it's with a person you don't have the most constructive or enjoyable relationship with. Perhaps it's a situation that you look forward to with dread.
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