Those of us who have tasted and experienced the structure of magic know that we have something very, very special in the model that we call NLP. It’s not always easy to explain when people ask. Sometimes, it’s not even easy to define. Yet the experience of magic in our lives—in running our own brains, in taking charge of our own states, in changing beliefs that limit us, in shaking ourselves out of unresourceful moods, in changing the structure of memories, decisions, understandings, our sense of “time,” etc.—entrances us, does it not?
And, once you’ve entered into the NLP Matrix and have learned to see the very structure of experience itself, it’s hard (if not impossible) to return to the old Aristotelian world. You can no longer blindly assume that your maps, and the maps of others, are “real.” You can no longer be tricked into thinking that the “spins” people, leaders, the media, etc. put on things are “the way it is.” Once you know the secrets of magic, you know how to “bend” the rules that govern the Matrix of life.
So, given all of the magic and wonder of NLP—what future lies before us? Where is NLP going? Or, perhaps more accurately, “Where do we want to aim it? How do we want to turn it loose in the world?”
I have some ideas and am pursuing them with my colleagues Bodenhamer and Lester as we’ve been modeling wealth building, accelerated learning, women in leadership, fitness and health, etc. using Meta–States. And I’m sure you have your ideas too. This is one of the wonderful things about NLP— how it promotes creativity, individuality, uniqueness, and discovery. It’s also one of the challenges that lie before us as a community, how do we work together, cooperate, collaborate, and unify when we all are doing our “own thing?”
Yet there is one man, one Neuro–Linguistic Programmer, among us who not only has ideas about such things, but like Martin Luther King, Jr., a man who has taken a stand and proclaimed that he “has a vision” and has invited others to be a part of that vision.
Planning a Focused Approach
for Launching NLP into the New Millennium
As we look back over the past twenty–five years since the publishing of the first NLP books, The Structure of Magic, Vol. I and II, we see a field rich in diversity and individuality, and weak in a unified front. There are lots of reasons and contributing influences for that. And we could invest lots of time analyzing such. But the real question before us concerns how do we use the tools and models and spirit of NLP itself to launch NLP into the new millennium with the power that it deserves.
Since the publishing of the first books which originally launched Neuro–Linguistic Programming as a field, as a meta–discipline, about the ery structure of subjective experience, there has been one person, one of the original co–developers, who has consistently been providing solid leadership. And that person has, year after year, decade after decade, continued to contribute more NLP models, patterns, and new applications. I’m speaking of none other than Robert Dilts.
Now to make this case for the powerful influence of Robert Dilts on NLP is easy. What would NLP have been like without him? John Grinder and Richard Bandler were obviously the two mad geniuses who began the whole adventure as they modeled the three “therapeutic wizards” (Perls, Satir, and Erickson). Yet it was Robert’s genius that organized and formulated so many of the NLP models so that, along with the Andreas’, he solidified the early NLP discoveries.
What is the case for Robert’s extensive influence? Do I need mention the number of books that he has authored and co-authored? Or the extensive number of patterns and models that originated with him? Or more recently, the growing list of application programs as Robert has been invading the world of business, the world of health, and the world of international corporations with the NLP model. Who else has done that to the extent that Robert has?
Obviously as an intellectual, a researcher, a developer, Robert’s genius has greatly influenced the form of NLP today. And yet his influence goes far beyond his intellectual contributions. He has also led the way in living and demonstrating NLP in his life, especially in terms of giving flesh–and–blood to the NLP presuppositions of positive intention, abundance, cooperation, communication, creativity, and collaboration. That seems to me to endow him with a moral and spiritual influence on a much higher ground, the persuasive power of his own integrity and uprightness. He has maintained life–long friendships with hundreds of key NLP trainers around the world and has been cultivating a vision about the future of NLP not only in the Twenty–first century, but in the new millennium.
Visionary Leadership
It was Robert Dilts who was originally commissioned to put together the first scholarly work on NLP, Neuro–Linguistic Programming, Volume I (1980). In that work he sketched out the way that we could use NLP as an enriched version of the TOTE model for following the internal processes of human thinking–and–feeling from original stimulus to final response. That work formulated the first model of strategies.
And yet that was not Robert’s only book on modeling. Not by a long shot. Completely caught up in the spirit of NLP in finding and modeling the structure of subjectivity, Robert produced a series of books on Strategies of Genius, and more recently collected many of the models that he developed for the purposes of modeling (Modeling With NLP, 1998).
In these and other projects, Robert has modeled many visionary leaders in the world, some ancient leaders and some current ones. On the international scene he has entered numerous corporations to study and model the best kind of leadership for the next generation. And it was Robert Dilts along with Judith DeLozier and Teresa Epstein who called together the first Community Leadership Project in Santa Cruz in 1997. Probably in the NLP field at that time, only he could have issued such a call and have 190 NLP trainers from 25 countries gather in Santa Cruz for connecting, networking, and seeding a vision. At that time the worldwide NLP community began to construct a vision of what we could do in the next generation.
That was the beginning.
Today, Robert, Judith, and Teresa are at it again. With their Millennial Project scheduled for Santa Cruz this summer (which Judith Pearson described in the May 2000 Anchor Point), they want to move from the stage of Dreamer to that of Realist and begin to make some more definite plans about how we can use and take NLP to bring about world–changing Transformation.
If modeling excellence lies at the very heart of the magic and spirit of NLP and if Robert Dilts has lived that in his life, perhaps we would do well to model him, especially in his ability to balance individual uniqueness and community teamwork.
Robert’s Vision for NLP in the New Millennium
Now into the third decade of using and practicing NLP, Robert has been turning his eye to the future with a vengeance. As primarily a researcher and developer of new applications, he has been turning his attention to teaching others to do what he’s been doing so that a whole community of people rises up to his level in terms of creativity, vision, modeling, writing books, and championing new applications. This makes modeling him easy.
I like this for several reasons. After all, it’s not easy to keep a “movement” alive and dynamic. We certainly won’t do that by fighting over intellectual property, acting out a Scarcity Model, fearing or envying each other. We will only do that by learning and modeling the secrets of creativity, exploration, and abundance. And for that, I know of no one better to take the lead and establish the benchmark for excellence than Robert Dilts.
That NLP first appeared and revolutionized the field of psychotherapy is no surprise. After all, the first three persons modeled by Bandler and Grinder were three therapeutic wizards. Since then NLP–ers have been using our models for modeling in many other areas: education, health, medicine, fitness, leadership, creativity, etc.
What other new application areas are there? What new areas will arise in the next twenty–five years?
Robert has some ideas. In recent years he has been consulting with numerous futuristic companies, which has allowed him to study areas such as meta–leadership, visionary leaders, managing complex projects, building successful teams, etc. This means that he has done what very few others have—he has taken the NLP models into various corporate contexts and there demonstrated their power and usefulness. Unlike so many who walk into “the business world” and hide NLP under a bushel and seek to camouflage it in other terms, he has been talking openly about it and thereby legitimizing NLP.
For many years Robert has talked about the heart of leadership as involving creating “a community to which people want to belong.” And he’s been building that via NLP University. Obviously if we’re to launch NLP into the future, we have to do it together, we have to develop some models and processes that allow us to run our own brains and still operate as a community. And without knowing fully what Robert and his team have in store, I believe that he has some of the tools and models that can put us on the path to that kind of community. After all, he’s been working with team building, developing self–organizing processes, meta–leadership, systemic thinking, how to create Win/Win situations, higher level modeling, creativity, and much more.
“I Have Seen the Promised Land”
In the USA, we remember Martin Luther King, Jr. for this “I’ve got a Vision” speech. He set forth a vision of blacks and whites working together apart from prejudice, hatred, and conflict. Visionary leaders do that. They set a Vision. They see a promised land and begin talking about it. They describe a big, bold, bright, and compelling vision of an exciting future. They then set that vision above and beyond their own domains and interests. They set a vision that will transcend their own models and concerns. They set a vision for the next generation and the generations beyond that. Robert has that kind of a vision; he also has the courage to say so and to facilitate a group mind for creating it.
