As I was coming back from a seminar recently, I realized there’s an interesting pattern in the difference between how I approach mastering hypnosis and NLP, versus some of my friends and colleagues…

For example, my good friend Josh Houghton (with a hypnosis training blog) is the type of guy who likes to really master things before moving on to another subject.

It has led to an interesting dynamic between us — I’ll be talking to him on the phone, “Josh, you have to check out X Y and Z’s latest NLP technique which combines sliding anchors with time lines, this is amazing!” and he’ll say “Well Taylor right now in my life I’m mastering the Dave Elman Induction and maybe I’ll check out this stuff next year or so.”

This attitude totally drives me nuts, and I could never do it, but it’s the “slow and steady wins the race” philosophy. It’s the idea that if something is worth mastering, it’s worth mastering well.

My business partner in my clinical practice also likes to take things step by step. For her it is about studying the work of her mentors almost exclusively. One of the reasons I posted about Gil Boyne Online on the blog is because she studied everything he had to offer. For her, it makes more sense to really master one thing fully, than to spread your resources on many things all at once.

Clearly, there is no best way here. For me it is the excitement of new learnings that keeps me going. When I really need a special tool or technique, it will come into my mind, even years later. And most importantly, I find that there are an abundance of brilliant people out there who are doing things just slightly differently and getting results.

I was at an Andrew Austin event recently, and right after the event I had a client that had an issue that was similar to what we had talked about, so I decided to launch right into what I had just learned — pretty much abandoning my current skills and framework on the fly to test out a new approach.

To be honest, I found that I’m not a huge fan of the way Andrew does his changework. It seems to represent a style that someone who worked in the health field and was trained in NLP primarily (not hypnosis) would come up with. But I think it’s very intelligent none-the-less and that’s why I would use it with my clients… just to see what happens.

One of the things we learned in his class was to shift the brain patterns of someone with a traumatic event by having them physically pass a ball between their hands in a specific way. The explanation given was that it creates a balance in the brain activity.

Although it didn’t make an immediate change in my client as she was remembering the event, it got me thinking — how ELSE can I work that essentially “forces” a change in brain chemistry, and perhaps utilizes the principles of Energy Medicine / Energy Psychology?

This is pretty much what EFT does, by the way.

So given that — which type of learner are you? Are you more focused on mastering a skillset exclusively (I’m guessing this is metaprogram related), or are you the type who likes to explore an entire range of different things in order to get to where you need to be?

I see advantages in both. And I would love to test this, but ultimately this is a long-term strategy. And for me, I just love learning new stuff.

It’s funny, someone described to me one time that Ericksonian hypnosis is “white collar hypnosis,” and that “I’m a blue collar hypnotist, so I stick with Elman’s style!”

It’s food for thought. Which way do you learn best, and how does it impact your sessions?

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