NLP Essentials: Detecting Patterns
“Need to do something disruptive again”.
This message popped into my WhatsApp chat. Let’s call this individual Maya. I have worked with Maya previously on aspects relating to career choices. At that time, Maya had made a disruptive choice in her career as a result of our coaching conversations.
This time, Maya was concerned she hadn’t been able to put much focus on her health, having tried several things previously and then stopped. Some of these attempts had even lasted 3-6 months and given her results, but without consistency, Maya slipped back to the earlier version of herself. I asked how it made her feel to be this way and she promptly replied that she was unhappy and not content the way her health was. I asked if she remembered times where she has been content and happy – and she promptly replied, “whenever I have had those big wins or hit the large milestones, then I feel content“.
(Side note: By now, I had noticed that a few patterns had emerged, and with an understanding of how we linguistically build our world and presuppose it on an ongoing basis, I recognised that Maya’s construct of contentment was centered around large accomplishments. However, on noticing patterns, it is important not to jump to a conclusion, but to validate if the pattern indeed exists.)
I asked Maya “what precedes these big wins or large milestones?” and she indicated that it is usually some major crisis or event that now needs urgent attention. Which made me ask the next question, “So is it common that this happens before your big effort in creating contentment for yourself?” She paused, reflected and spoke in a dragged-out tone, “Yesssss, that’s what I do. I put things off, and when it becomes something huge, I spring into action, and when my action creates the desired result, then I am very content.“
I assisted her further by asking if this looks like a graph that has sudden declines followed by sharp spikes up? Again, she paused, and then confirmed this indeed was so. So I asked her what she made of this graph? That realisation crept in that she considers only large and big effort as a possible source of contentment. If there are smaller things to do, she almost dismisses them thinking these aren’t big enough.
Once she got this realisation, we worked further through the conversation where she realised she is missing to do small things each day that could create small bits of contentment, rather than large things that happen infrequently.
When I asked her if this was true only with health, or with other aspects of life, she paused again and then laughed to confirm this is how it had been in her career too (which is the conversation we had the first time around). I asked how this reflected in her academics, and she said she clearly remembered putting things off until a massive effort is required. She mentioned she noticed this same thread running in other areas of life too!
Had it not been my training in studying and deciphering patterns using Neuro-Linguistic Patterns, I would have probably slipped into a granular manner of coaching centered around motivation strategies to focus on health or options to work towards better health.
The advantage of working with patterns is that the individual starts finding their own answers once a pattern comes to the surface. Ownership is established. Patterns work without our awareness or subconsciously, and therefore, it is easy to notice patterns in others but not ourselves. But using Neuro-Linguistic Programming, one gains the lens of looking at our own patterns – and something that surfaces to our awareness cannot be unseen, unheard or unexperienced. It gives us a choice despite our design!
There are patterns that work for us, and those that don’t. When things are going well, we don’t think too much about what the underlying pattern is, that’s making things go our way. And when things don’t go well, instead of looking for patterns, we look for blame or fixing.
Discovery of our own patterns puts us in a place of choice and freedom – allowing us to deliberately utilise patterns that work for us. We also learn to interrupt old patterns that don’t and create new patterns that do. Thus, success isn’t accidental, and failure isn’t a surprise.
Stare at something long enough and you are bound to find a pattern. It is in our unconscious nature, and perceptive ability. Kids are able to notice a pattern in who treats them well and who doesn’t and use these patterns early on to figure out who they smile at or interact with, and who they ignore! These patterns form the foundation of what teacher they like, which friends they make and who makes them feel comfortable.
Training in Neuro-Linguistic Programming allows you to become an expert pattern spotter! And if you spot it, then you’ve got it! Observing patterns is what is what later led to further investigation and research that led to advances in science, our understanding of the universe, how markets work as well as how sports championships are won. There are many such patterns at play around us, in our daily lives!
If you are keen about growing, learning or being excellent in any endeavour of your choice, then the answers to the questions you seek, are most certainly waiting to be uncovered in the patterns that make us – and break us!