clc day 5

[Music] [Music] welcome to session number five. today we're going to learn a skill where if you did nothing else, I promise you could create massive change just by doing this one thing. but first, I've got to ask you, how was your assignment? did you practice your framing skills? if you did, congratulations. let's move on. now, if you didn't, I want you to turn this audio session off right now and go into it. this is like the gym. the only way you're going to make this work is if you're willing to lift some weight. and lifting some weight here means that you really need to give these tools a lot of practice. so let's get going. today, step three of the master steps: interrupt the pattern. you've learned tools to understand and appreciate a person's world, and you've learned ways to get leverage. and today, we're going to focus on how to break limiting or destructive patterns in order to create a new pattern of thinking, feeling, or behaving. you've got to first interrupt the old one. you don't start swimming until you stop the pattern of smoking, right? you don't start feeling love until you break the pattern of anger, do you? remember my friend and his daughter? he could only start connecting with that sense of unconditional love for his daughter once he could transcend that anger. well, that's what happens here too. remember in our first session where Tony talked about state and the three parts of the triad: physiology, focus, language, and meaning? you could make a huge difference just by breaking someone's pattern and changing their state. that's the way to contribute to the people around you and to yourself, as you will hear Tony talk about in our session today. any pattern that is continually broken will eventually be changed. so let's jump in and get started.

[Music] here's the first thing I want you to understand. all change, all change is nothing but the interruption of patterns. when you understand that, it makes the process so much easier. in other words, every time this woman thinks about being in a relationship, she gets all stressed out. she gets this feeling of frustration and hurt and sadness. to be frustrated, does that require a specific physiology? yes or no? a specific, probably language pattern, either internally in her head or externally? yes or no? a specific focus and belief? yes or no? all I have to do to help her, all I have to do is keep interrupting her pattern. even if I don't know how to create a new pattern, even if I don't know how to condition it, if I interrupt it enough, her brain will have to find something new because she isn't able to go there. so if all I do is take the CD in her head, that music in her head that keeps telling her relationships are horrible, and I scratch it up, and I scratch it up, make her laugh, I make her smile, make her do that, I get her to do a million different things, I scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch that CD. pretty soon, when she puts it in her head again, it will never play the same way again. if I do nothing else but that. now, if I don't consciously direct it, she might pick some other behavior. like now she stops smoking, but she starts eating. that's why the seven master steps are more valuable. but I want you to get, all it takes to change anyone is to interrupt their pattern enough. if you scramble it enough, their brain will look for a new way to meet their needs. it's like if you ever had somebody you're mad at, and they were smart enough that they were able to make you laugh. like, stop that. you wanted to be mad, but they just kept breaking your pattern. pretty soon, you just cracked up and gave up. how many people had one of these experiences? okay. so that process is the process of change. pattern interrupts a pattern. up is when you do something the person does not expect. if they expect it, it doesn't break their pattern. okay? so all change is really the interruption of a pattern. that's the first step. and the second part of it is you're bringing resources, feelings, physiologies, emotions, words, beliefs. you're bringing new resources to a situation. what does that mean? let's say I've got a client that comes to see me. like the old days, I used to do these private therapies. and the man is an Olympic athlete, a runner, a sprinter, and he's won the gold medal. but now he won the gold medals, all these speaking engagements, and he's freaked out of his mind, completely freaked. I'll give you an example. we have a speaker. have you ever seen this guy, Billy Blanks? his infomercials. guy.

[Music] I really love this guy because he's so real. he comes across with such heart and soul. and we've been trying to book him as one of the speakers we have for a mega event where we have like eight speakers in a day for 20,000 people. and the thing is, we couldn't get him to go. and we thought it was an ego thing. we couldn't figure it out, you know, because the feedback we got was really harsh. I thought, it doesn't seem like him to be responding in that weird way. when I finally found out is he's scared to death to speak in public. everything there is choreographed. everything, even his class. he does only that thing. he's working up. he's a martial artist. he's used to knowing exactly those steps he's going to do. so to be out there, out on his own, freaked him out. but here's a guy who has unbelievable resources. he's, you know, he can handle anything except an audience, right? does he have a problem? no. we just need to interrupt this pattern. because whenever he thinks about being in an audience, he does a different triad than he does when he thinks about Tae Bo. you follow me on this? is he missing resources? no. he just has them misplaced. do you understand that? so what I do is I come in and take this track person. to use an actual example, somebody worked with in the past. this guy's gold medalist, man. when he's out there, he is unstoppable. but from an audience, he's freaking out. because when he's unstoppable, he has a different physiology. he has a different internal dialogue. he has a different tone of voice. he has a different focus, a different belief. he's from an audience, everything changes. shoulders change, breath changes, everything changes, right? he freaks out. so all I do is I break the what? pattern of associating an audience equals this. and then what I do is I replace this with the track star with Tae Bo. right? in this situation. so I bring the feelings they already have, the beliefs they already have, the physiology they already have. I bring it to this situation. and now dealing with this situation is easy. because with this triad, they get the same result with speaking as they do in punching. how many follow that process? say I. that is the essence of all change. interrupt the pattern and bring resources to where they are needed. that's it. we all have a place where we're extremely resourceful. so all change is really about is taking resources from one area of your life and bringing to an area where there aren't enough resources, and you'll be able to handle it. now, what I do once I get them there is I reinforce it. I condition it. does that make sense? reinforce it so that pretty soon it becomes automatic and they don't have to think about it. but that's all change is. so everything you're going to learn is really just a way to do that. so what I'm understanding is the first step: what am I looking for? what do they really want? and what is preventing them from getting it? which then really gives me a third question: which is, what do they need? and so it becomes obvious. what's preventing it is the physiology he's in. what's preventing it is the belief he has that speaking in public is a different thing than having a conversation with a friend, right? what's preventing it is he is bringing a physiology and a focus here about himself instead of focusing on who he's communicating to. great. so I know I need to break that pattern. but to be able to break the pattern, I first got to get enough what? leverage. and why do I want to know what he really wants? what he really wants is part of the leverage. why do I listen to him talk? I want to find out what else is important. is life something of enough consequence? now that I got the leverage, now I can interrupt the what? and then once I interrupt the pattern, what do you do? create an alternative. find some resources that are already within them and bring them here, right? then what do you do? condition it. then what do you do? check it out to make sure it's ecological. and then ideally, do something in the environment that reinforces them long term. does this make sense to you? the question then is, how do you get somebody to do those changes? pattern interrupts cause a radical change in focus or physiology for the most part. but in order to create a new pattern association, we must first interrupt the old pattern. this is the biggest reason people fail to change. they say, "I'm sick of being this way. I want to do this other thing." so they work on doing the other thing. but the problem is, the old pattern is still in place. it's like if you were listening to a piece of music on a CD player, and I want you to listen to a new piece of music, I want you to change it. and I take my piece of music and try and put it on top of your CD. is it going to work? yes or no? you gotta first take out the old CDs, scratch it up so that they don't wanna play anymore, and now it gets ejected, and there's room to put something new. most people try to make a change before interrupting the old pattern. you must interrupt the pattern. it's the most important skill of all. remember, I told you this is all you do. you can change people, your kids, anybody else. because you want to kill the monster while it's little. you don't want it to grow up to be a monster that eats the whole city. and what most people do is, like in an argument or something, they let the thing grow to such a size that even by the time you kill the monster, it destroys about 50% of the buildings in your household, right? it destroys the relationship. you got to kill the monster while it's only going to break the pattern right away. so today, the most important skill, it's the easiest skill because you all have it, is the ability to just break somebody's pattern. because if you did this, if somebody's being unresourceful, and you break their pattern, and they go back to intercessors, break their pattern, break their pattern, break their pattern, break their pattern. pretty soon, they won't be able to get back to it. you have scrambled it. you have annihilated. and now their brain has to find something else to do. and it may do something else that's not resourceful too. so break it, break it, break it. if you didn't know how to condition people, you know how to help them find what they want. but all you do is keep breaking their pattern until they get something resourceful. sooner or later, their brain will adapt. if you only had one skill to help people, it's breaking patterns. now, doing it with elegance and doing it with rapport is very useful. because sometimes I'm just breaking their patterns, they're going to break something else in you. it'll break your pattern. so you got to have rapport, right? you got to have respect, connection. but you got respect and connection, and you break a pattern, it's okay. now, sometimes I don't have rapport, but I still break the pattern because it's a necessity. but I don't keep breaking it. I break the pattern, then I build a rapport afterwards, like a next millisecond or two, because you have to sometimes if somebody's in too bad of shape. so pattern interrupts are how you create change, and they're the easiest thing to do. and there's a million ways to do them. if you watch me, any of you, somebody over the years, you know that I'll do things that people don't expect, do things people don't expect. you've got to do things that people aren't ready for. let me give an example. when you look at what you're going to learn to create change, and you say, "If all I have to do is break patterns and get what I want, then why am I learning all these other skills?" because the other skills give you precision ways, once you broke the pattern, to sculpt somebody or yourself to where you want to go. and also knowing which pattern to break is very useful. and I'll tell you something, I realized over the years, it's taken me 20 plus years to figure it out, but I took everything I learned about human experience and I put into a couple areas in terms of change. one was, everything is about state. state is based on the pattern you're in. and there are only three patterns: a pattern of physiology, a pattern of language, and a pattern of focus and belief. when you do that, I just saved you 23 years of trying to figure stuff out through art to be able to make the science of it. so if someone's in another place, I look at three things to break. either got to break the pattern of the physiology, the pattern of the language, or the pattern of their focus and belief. ideally, you would break all three. but if I can even break one, I will start the process of changing. and by breaking physiology of the three, if you can break physiology dramatically, you will definitely change your state. if you can break focus dramatically, language by itself won't do it. it'll break it for the moment, but they'll probably get back to it. so today, one of the things we're going to do is we're going to take this emotion that you identify as not serving you. I want you to think of a place where you're incredibly unresourceful. you get out of control, or you get so sad that you can't do anything, or you get overwhelmed, or you just get apathetic, right? an area in your life when you go to a state, and when you go there, you know it does not serve your life. it hurts your business, or your relationships, or your health. I want you to pick an emotion that you know is totally destructive. today, today for you can be one of the most powerful days of your life. because I did this to myself. I created the process we're going to go through today for myself. mine was angry. because see, what I was is this giant magnifying glass. I spent my whole life thinking how to magnify emotions. but bam, I could reach somebody, you know, 20,000 person up in the top row of the stadium back there in my mega event and actually have them feel it and hold them, rivet them for 12 hours. to be able to do that, you got to magnify. so I magnified everything that was good. and the people around me developed the same pattern, magnifying what's good. but once you become a gigantic magnifier, when things did not work out, I was already at this level. so I magnified that too. so the rule was around Tony, you better not screw up. so I expected everyone else to be the exact standard I was. I expect everyone to have the same commitment I was. and not everybody does. so as a result, when they didn't, and they didn't, it affected my ability to serve people, which is my number one value and desire. and I felt like it hurt my ability to help people. I would move walls, let's just put it that way. now, what was interesting about this is it worked because people did everything they could not to screw up. because if they did a great job, I was the most loving human being on earth. but if I did a bad job, you were dead. so what's useful about that? it felt like is everybody's listening. and when I got in that state, things happened quickly. and I would even do it from the front of the stage. like somebody screwed up, you just see the steam coming out, give them a look like this. and sometimes I'd say something, and everybody would freaking scurry and everything else. the challenge of that, of course, is it isn't consistent with all my other values. but my attitude was, one or two times I'm doing it, why can't they do it? hey, listen, you can take a little pain for something we're trying to do to serve everybody else on earth. and all these stories about, but what it was really costing me was connection. I was hurting people I care about. and that's not something I'm willing to do. and the day I realized it was hurting people is the day I knew I had to stop it. it wasn't a should. now it was a what. and the reason is because it had what? but the leverage is not someone else telling me. because other people said, "This doesn't look good. People don't like that you do this." "I live my life by my standards. You can tell me whatever you want to do." that was my mindset. but when I saw it hurt somebody, that's whose values? my values. you understand the difference in leverage? there's external leverage. like, "You better do this, or I'm going to fine you." that works for a short time. but eventually, people rebel against that. it's like nobody likes to be in a position where they are being made to do something. the ultimate leverage is when you are making you to do it. the leverage is always inside. external leverage never lasts. you might get somebody to do something for the moment based on leverage, but the minute they can, they'll be out of that situation. so now you have leverage. it was a must to change. but the problem is, this was well-wired within me. so I made some changes. I used some NLP techniques because in those days, I taught Neuro-Linguistic Programming. I did some collapse anchors, I did a couple different things on it. I did a scramble technique. and what was interesting is it worked for about a week, and I was back doing it again. they didn't teach me NLP. no one taught me about the six needs. I didn't realize that the behavior was actually fulfilling me in many ways. so when I realized that, that helped a bit more. but then I began to realize, you know, a pattern is not just tied into your physiology. it's tied into language. if I said a language pattern, it was like, ah, a hypnosis. it was like a tentacle that pulled me right back into that state. even though I cut off four of the other arms of the monster, he'd have about 15 different arms or tentacles that could pull me back into that state. so today, we're going to chop every arm off, every single one. the way we're going to chop it off is radically, continuously interrupt the. and we're going to do it in all the areas of the physiology, of the language, of all the beliefs, and of all the focus patterns. then you'll really be free. and then we can't just eliminate something. you can't just stop smoking. you've got to start doing something else. so we're going to replace it with something new. and then we're going to reinforce it until it becomes your real behavior. I can tell you, I did this one day. I have actually a transcript. I was reading it this morning so I would be associated to the value of this for you. and it's staggering to see the things I used to believe, things I used to feel. and by the way, they were all based on an undercurrent of beliefs that were, "It's all up to me." when all hell breaks loose, everybody else leaves. because at that stage in my career, that was true. I was left holding the bag, going bankrupt in a business where my whole goal was not to make money, was to help people. when I was helping people, I was going bankrupt because other people screwed up. and then they screwed up, they just left. and so I felt like no one cares as much as I care. and it all came down to, I felt like if they didn't do these things, little things, if they dropped out, little things, they didn't care at all. and I really linked those. they didn't care about. who do you guess I linked up? in my head, didn't care about me. there's a portion here where you'll be brainstorming out, "What would I have to believe in order to feel this way?" and you're supposed to just not think about it, write it. and I wrote that, "They don't love me. That I'm the only one. That I'm totally alone." I was like, I didn't believe that. I had that in my head. so then I found the truth. I attracted people that stayed with me. and some of them have been with me for more than a decade. as soon as I changed my belief, I had all the evidence around me. and you could say, "Well, it's true. All the people have done every time they've left, and he's done holding the bag." when I finally said, "That's full. It's not about me. It's not about them not caring about me. It's about them dropping something out. It's about them not holding something high enough priority in their own life." I came up with new beliefs. and also not attracted what I desire. I'm going to give you a quick review of some of the tools that you're going to learn. I have thousands, probably an underestimate, not hyperbole, of different tools that I have to change somebody. but how many of them do I really use? about a dozen. it's art for me at this stage. it's not, "Can I create the change?" it's, "How will I do it this time?" I love to see it unfold. but when I used to just try and teach everybody, I used to do a 14-day program to teach everybody all the techniques, individual techniques that I have. and that program, I call certification. that was maybe 10 years ago, 15 years ago. when I did that program, people had enormous skills, and they could help almost everybody. but they didn't usually use them on themselves. they used to help other people, and they had more skills than they needed. so what I'm going to give you in the core skills that are the simplest, fastest, easiest, and that I can make any change in anybody, from a child who is unmotivated to clean their room, to a president, to a president, from somebody's in a position where they are splitting 52 personalities, the same 10 tools I'm going to give you are the ones I use. there's nothing you can't change with these 10. what it really will come down to is understanding this incredible tool called the six human needs, so you know why people are doing things, what they're trying to get, and showing them a better way to get it. because I look at what I do as being a designer of patterns. really, what I do is I help people to close the gap in their life from where they are to where they want to be by helping them find a new pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving that'll get them there. that's all it is. but to design a new pattern, you got to first interrupt the old. how did I make the changes in Tim yesterday? how do we trigger those in Jen? how do we make those happen? the only tool I used was questions. did you see that? I rewired his entire brain just by leading his brain through questions. now, what do questions do? they stimulate a very specific pattern of the use of your brain. if I said to you right now, all of you in this room right now, take a deep breath in, exhale, and moan. I want you to feel really good. I want you to answer a question for me. what are you really, really happy about in your life right now? or what could you be happy about if you wanted to be really happy? what could you be happy about if you really wanted to be happy right now? what could you be happy about? how does it feel to be really happy? if you want to be. how many feeling pretty good right now? say I. now, what just happened is I used a simple stimulus, using English language, to guide your nervous system to the point where it would fire off very specific biochemicals that will create a sensation in your body. this should affect even the next moment, what you'll do or not do with a question. so questions are the most powerful tool because they're completely non-invasive. on the surface, I'm not touching you. I'm not doing to you. I'm not demanding anything. I'm merely asking. do you remember Columbo? Columbo? I don't know who that guy is. oh god, he's around the world, obviously. Columbo. how did he catch the crooks? how did he do things? did he do it with force? did he do it by confronting them? as I did it? no. he just was always confused. "I'm not sure. I'm curious. Can you help me out?" right? and he would just wind them right where they want to go. questions are the most powerful gifts you have. if you want to give somebody a gift, ask them a great question. instead of saying, "Hey, let me tell you about my life." but say, "Listen, what are you really happy about in your life?" why? many people say to them, "One of my most common questions will say, 'What's really great? What are you excited about in your life?'" and then something, "Oh, nothing." I'll keep digging, and I'll find something. all of a sudden, you gave them a gift. you got them reassociated to something wonderful. questions are the tools. they help you understand what's going on, and they help you rewire the person's brain. and with questions, you can break somebody's pattern. remember some of the questions I asked him yesterday? got us to know what he wanted and what was preventing him to get it. but then I asked some questions like, "Well, how could you possibly have somebody not give you what you want, still be happy?" remember what happened in his eyes? he was like, right? his brain was like, "I don't know. How do I find that?" he, his brain is looking around, trying to make connections. so they help you discover, but they also help you break patterns and rewire. all right, I want you to get the questions are not something simple. there's something powerful. now, the best thing I can tell you about pattern interrupts is this: the more outrageous the pattern up, the more unexpected, the more effective it is. see, the best humor is something that you are not expecting. when a guy cracks you up, because you're going one way, and bam, they go zigzag the other way. all of a sudden, don't they? and stuff that will make people laugh is stuff that most people won't do. things will shock you. things will tease you. so something that is gross or bizarre or sexual, anything that isn't part of the normal rules makes people respond. and one of the things that's made me effective in my ability to interrupt people's patterns is because I don't just do what the standard person does. a therapist will sit down with a person. that's why therapy takes years. person will come in, and they'll sit down, and first of all, a lot of therapy is about diagnosing a person and giving them a label, rather than diagnosing a pattern that exists in this moment and knowing what you have to do to change it. now, so people spend years getting labels, which basically gives them an identity for their problem. now it's not a pattern, it's them. it's something they have. it's pretty hard to change who you are or something you've had for years. it's easy to change a pattern. at the moment, your patterns are changing. you go from being angry to being happy in a second. when you start thinking it's a thing, and you give it a title, and it's your identity, now you have to hang on to it. so traditional therapists are going to spend all this time diagnosing, labeling, and then they look for the cause, as if it matters, right? the cause doesn't matter. the source matters. the cause may be some story somebody said to you, this thing happened, but the source of it is the way you're using your nervous system right now. it's what you're doing with your physiology. it's what you're doing with your language. it's what you're doing with your focus and your belief. where it came from, frankly, rarely matters. it might be interesting. you might want to go there and scramble it up just for that purpose, but it doesn't give you any good to have more reasons why you're screwed up. spending all this time to figure out, by the way, as you're searching for why, it is you make most of it up anyway. and once you do that, you think of more and more things. just like when you get angry, you remember all the reasons you could be angry with a person. when you're looking for the problem, you might even find the problem. if you find all kinds of other things to link to it, now you've actually created a chain of events that really didn't make you feel this way, but now they do, because you've actually wired yourself to do it. so if people come to see me, I break their pattern right away. and I used to do a lot of private therapy. and I lived in a place called Del Mar, California. and I bought a home that was literally was called the Del Mar Castle, built from castles in Europe. and I loved it. and my office was literally in the turret on the third story. and the turret had an outdoor area. you could look out and see the ocean on one side, the mountaintops on the other. my favorite place. so someone come to see me, and I know when they were. I go up to my office. I go up the stairs, up to the top of the turret, and I'd watch them as they come in. and you'd see, and they'd walk in like this, and be like, "Oh, wow. You look at the place. It's really beautiful. It's a neat place. Look at the ocean, smelling the trees." they're in a great place. you can see them knocking the door. they don't know I can see them, cause I'm up at the top of the turret looking. so sure enough, they come in, and my assistant would bring him in and say, "He's up the stairs. Just wind up the whiny stairs." you can hear them walking up the stairs. they come up and say, "Oh, hi Mr. Robinson. So great to meet you. Thank you so much for seeing me." yadda yadda. "I flew in from wherever, some part of the world, some other country. Thank you." I said, "No problem. Please have a seat." and I'd say, "So, what are we here for?" and the person would say something like, "Well, I have this..." "Michael, stop that. Sell that right now." they go, "What?" "Do I do?" I said, "We haven't started yet." they go, "Oh, I'm sorry." and they'd be totally fine, totally fine. because they just knew, "You're now it's time to get fixed." so they go into that triad that they do, because there's nothing you experience, you only experience what you do. so they do that physiology, that language, that focus in their head, that belief system. at the moment when I say, "When I started, first of all, it shocked them." because I screamed at them. I've been this nice, warm person. why'd the scream work? if I'd been intense when they walked up, they would have been prepared. but I was so warm and gentle, which is my real nature. and then all of a sudden, boom, explosion. just the volume alone was shocking. so now the whole nervous system is like this. now, by the way, what did that do? as they started to play that triad, play that record, I took and made a giant scratch in it. how many follow that? say I. I just took one big hit. now, is one hit enough? no. but I'll tell you what, it gives you a good start. because now they're not quite sure what's going to happen next. so now they can't go on that pattern with the same certainty. so now when you start feeling uncertain as you go in the pattern, it doesn't feel so good. in fact, it kind of screws it up a little bit. so then I would start out and I would say, "Okay, now, before you tell me a challenge, tell me about three of the most powerful experiences of your life. maybe like..." and why was I doing that? what did I tell you? change is all about finding resources that exist in your life and bring them to a place where you're unresourceful and anchoring it. that's all it is. so first idea is break the pattern. if they start to go to it, but I start out by finding resources. does every human have a place where they're resourceful? yes or no? if they have no place within themselves consciously, there's a place unconsciously because they've seen, heard other people who are resourceful, who they can mimic, or who they can believe have taken over their mind and body. so I can say, "I know you're not, but I know who do you know John Smith is? Okay, John's going to do this now. Have John take over." there is always a way to get somebody resourceful. so I get these three resource states and I would anchor it. so they'd say, "Well, uh..." and they wouldn't insurance. you know, "Come on, tell me. Stand up here and show me what was like." and I go, "Well, you know, when I was in high school, I was one of the ten leaping lords of lizards." and they all excited. and I go, "Click." and I anchor them. I anchor, anchor in a happy state. anchor, anchor. what did it feel like? anchor, anchor. and this, I'm showing you visually, but I'd often anchor somebody with a look. they're a millionaire. or I'd say, "Really, really." so later on, if they're starting to go in this lousy stadium, really, their whole state would change, right? so it gave me a way. if they started getting too unresourceful, I could break the pattern and make them feel good. now, if all you do is pattern reps, you can change anything, truthfully. because all these things are things either I created or came from NLP or Ericson's hypnosis or Gestalt. they come from the four. and some of them are modifications that other people modified of each other. a lot of NLP came from Gestalt, for example. I'll give you some examples of Bandler and Grinder, because they were the guys that were some of my original teachers. they had what they called an impossible practice, where they would take on anybody who had a challenge and they'd say, "Give us your patients, we'll turn them around." and they were unbelievably effective. one example is a guy that had been in a catatonic state for a period of 10 years. and the people at this particular facility said, "Okay, you guys think you're so hot." because Grinder and Bandler were pretty intense in the way they communicated. "You're so hot, great. I'll give you the challenge. Take this guy out of the catatonic state." so you have to picture this. here's a man sitting in the chair. and Bandler and Grinder walk in the room with the guy. and they bring all the people because they want to watch. what are Bandler and Grinder going to do to get this guy out of this? they know it can't happen, but they're curious to see how they're even going to attempt it. because they know no one's going to get somebody out after they've been in a state like that for 10 years. catatonic, no movement, no response, no voice, no nothing, just staring into space. catatonic. so Bandler and Grinder walk in the room, and they say, "Excuse us. No one else can be in the room." they said, "The techniques are secret." they said, "You could call it that. It's just what we do with the patient is our business. Our business alone." now, bear in mind, a person in a catatonic state never speaks or moves, but they do hear. and everybody's like, "Well, we don't know if we can legally leave you here." they said, "If you can't legally leave us here, then we can't help." I said, "All right." they closed the door. they go over there. John Grinder walks up. this guy looks him over with this really sinister look in his face. like he looks at Richard. Richard looks back at him. they go by. and they just touch his head like this. and Richard says, "John, lock the door." and John said, "What?" he said, "Lock the door." he said, "Richard, I don't want to do that again." "Drop the door, I'll kill you." you start screaming at John. he locks the door. imagine what's going on in his head right now. Richard pulls out a knife, takes the guy's shirt and cuts it off him right then. he comes by. he takes his two fingers like this. he reaches down a guy's chest hair like this. and he goes, jerks out a chest hair. guy's like, nothing. a little lower. [Music] nothing. then he starts speeding up. nothing. nothing. he gets right in the inside of the leg. um, as he's about to reach for the hair on a particular part of the body, the guy jumps off. so you touch it, I'll kill you. true story. true story. absolutely true story. no exaggeration. 10 years of catatonic. he was ready for drugs. he was ready for therapy. he was ready for just about anything except having those particular hairs individually pulled out, right? I'll tell you another example of the two. John and Richard. Richard is the most bizarre, brilliant, brilliant man who has no rules. I mean, no rules. you think I'm outrageous? he's beyond outrageous. and so one day, he gets another one of these kinds of calls. and they say, "Okay, great. Here's your challenge. We got this guy. He won't work. He won't do anything. He claims he's Jesus, right? And he's been here for the last 12 years. Nothing will happen, right?" so Richard walks up to him, looks at the guy, and says, "Excuse me." he said, "I understand you used to be a carpenter." the man says, "What?" he said, "And he goes, 'Oh, oh, yes. All right.'" he said, "You are Jesus, aren't you?" the guy said, looks at him and he goes into state and goes, "Yes, my son." "Thanks. I'll be right back." he doesn't introduce himself. he doesn't say, "Hi, I'm Dr. Bandler. I'm here today because I know you think you're Jesus, but it's not really Jesus. You're John Smith. We're going to talk." he doesn't do that. he just goes, "I'll be back." leaves. now, what does that do? it's a very slight pattern interrupt. because the man's going like, "What's he going to do? Where is he going?" he's not so certain now, right? he comes back. when he comes back, he's got a measuring tape. he goes, "Hey, Jesus, come here. Stand up. Stand up. Just put your arms out like this." he takes the measuring tape, goes, and he goes right to the palms. and he's stuck. [Applause] "I'll be back a little bit." now the guy's really going, right? spinning like crazy inside his head. so now Richard has six guys. he's hired big construction guys. they come in with these giant posts laid on the ground, the other one across in the former cross, big spike nails. they start hammering in the form of the cross, right? in this guy's little bedroom thing, right? and the guy's eyes get about this big. and he goes, "What are you doing? What are you doing?" and Richard says, "Well, you're Jesus, aren't you?" the guy goes, "Uh, well, yes, my son." he goes, "Then you know why we're here." "Oh, no, no. My joy's not Smith. I'm John. My name's John." "My name is John." three minutes. he became John again. it was an amazing thing. he wasn't ready for electroshock therapy. they've done electroshock therapy on the guy. he could take shock therapy. he could take drugs. he could take therapy. he was not ready to be crucified. however, there is always a level of leverage that will move people over if you break their pattern enough. okay? now, remember, the more intense it is, the more effective it is. if it's what they expect, it's not going to break their pattern. so that's the secret. whether you're dealing in a negotiation, by the way, I remember one time when I was negotiating for one of my books, and I went in to do this deal, and I wanted 3.3 million dollars for this book, and they want to give me 500,000. actually, they started out about 400,000. so we were just a smidge apart. 3.3 million versus 500,000, right? and so what happened was, we negotiated the course of a year. in that year, there was almost no progress. and they came up to 550 at one point, but I want 3.3 million. so the president of this company, who never negotiates, calls up my office. says, "I'd like to talk to Tony." he said, "Look, there's Simon and Schuster." so I just want to tell you something. he said, "We really want you. We really want you a part of our family. Want to make this deal." he said, "We're making a deal for your genre book that's bigger than anybody had at that stage." it was true. we did our homework. 550 grand would have been higher than anybody had ever received. he said, "But there's 3.3 million." he said, "I'm gonna say you're out of your mind. But I mean, it's just, you don't understand. That's not even the realm of possibility." I said, "Listen, I totally understand what you believe. But uh, I said, I know I'm going to get this for the book, and I know the value is there. It's not me just trying to hold somebody hostage. I said, if you'd like, I'd love to share with you how I perceive that and see if you agree or disagree." he said, "Well, let's talk it over in person." I said, "Okay." he said, "Do you come into New York?" and I said, "Yeah." we figure out when. he said, "Sit down." he said, "The last thing he said, though, don't come expecting three million dollars." I said, "That's no problem. Just don't expect me to join you for lunch." all right. so I have to pump. I get to this meeting. long story short, I've gotten this discussion. and in the discussion, we've gone round and round and round. at one point, I got him to begin to see that it was worth more than that. because instead of just pushing, "This is what I wanted," I said, "You know, I think this is what you want." I walked through all of his needs because I knew what they were. and I said, "And I know I can feel those needs." and I said, "But I got to tell you something. I said, I think you look at me as like a motivational speaker, instead of seeing me as a brand that's larger than that, that's the largest in this industry." and I said, "Let me give you my Q ratings from television." I said, "I have no ego about this. I know there's stupid little infomercials, but I have a higher Q rating." and I listed all these major television personalities. and so the people I listed get three or four or five million bucks. so all of a sudden, he started to see, "Oh my god, my reach is much greater than he ever dreamed." so now he's starting to get the idea. this is possible. so he got up to a million and a half dollars. to go from 500,000 to a million dollars. my agent was salivating. she was just like, "Let's close this deal." and I said, "During your break, I said, 'No, I'm not doing less than 3.3 million.'" she goes, "You're insane. You're getting three times more." I said, "It's not about getting it. It's about getting what it's really worth. And it is worth it. It's a win-win deal." by the way, since the deal's done, they've made about 15 million. so they're pretty thrilled. the bottom line, though, is I said, "Look, let's just go in and let's hang in there." so we go in there, and this guy's a very proud man. and at one point in the conversation, he said, "All right, we'll do 1.6 million." he about to tell me, "That's beyond imagination. That's just because it's you that he went on and on and on and on and on and on." and I said, "Well, I said, I really, really appreciate the offer. I know it's coming from a good place. and I know this is a huge stretch for you. But uh, the answer is no." and the look on his face was like he was gonna kill me. and he looked at me, he got stone cold. and he said, "You know what?" he said, "I gotta tell you something. You're making the biggest mistake of your life. Absolutely the biggest mistake in your life." I'm gonna tell you something. I'm not one of these people, emotional negotiators. he said, "I, I don't have any emotion about this at all." and he was getting so angry. so I reached over. he was across me. and I kicked him. I swear to god. my agent will take his.

True, I went boom like that. But when I did it, I said no emotion except anger, and I kicked him like that. And his two guys in the room started laughing hysterically. And my agent's eyes got about this big, right? And he had nowhere to go because if he got more angry, he was in the same trap. And that moment, he started laughing.

20 minutes later, I had 3.3 million dollars. 20 minutes because once his pattern was broken, he knew there's no place to go. He couldn't be in that state. He was stuck. He was in a stuck state. You follow me? And so, in the end, by the way, it's been a great deal for them. But you had to take those moments when somebody's like, there's no way. He had to do something. And that's what I did. It was a risk.

I mean, most of the things that control you are patterns that are primarily unconscious. Just making yourself conscious of them, not owning them, that this is my disease, this is my problem. Just being aware of them alone starts to break the pattern. Can't break the pattern by itself. So the first step we're going to have is awareness. We've got to become aware of all the pieces of the pattern because most of you are aware that, okay, when this happens, I get upset. But you're not aware of the process. If you were, you could stop it sooner. So you can't just change those things which are unaware.

Sometimes we develop emotional patterns that consistently denigrate the quality of our lives. Yet, we're often oblivious to the consequences of these indulgences. We're not looking for behavior here. You might say, "I overeat. Let's work on my overeating." Let me explain something to you. Any behavior you have, for example, you're getting a result. You're fat, you're unhappy, you have no relationship. That result is a result of some sort of action, true or false? That behavior, that action of overeating, or that action of saying things that make them angry, whatever it is. But what's behind all of this is an emotional pattern that makes you behave this way, an emotional state. So we can change your behavior. But if you still have the same emotion, you're going to create some other action. It'll put an equally bad result in it. So we're not here to stop smoking. If you like, like smoking, then say, "What emotional states do I go into to start smoking? Do I get fearful? Do I get sad? Do I get bored?" You want to change the sadness or the boredom, not change the smoking. Because otherwise, you'll stop smoking, you'll start eating, right? So we're here not to get to the cause of the problem, but to get to the one of the problem. Who knows the source? The source of the problem is always an emotional pattern, which is a fancy word for three patterns: physiology, language, right? Focus and belief. All right. How many follow that? Say "I." Outstanding.

So we're not looking for behaviors. We want immediately what underlying that? Key word: interrupt the elements essential for its existence. What are the elements essential for the existence of this negative emotional pattern? A specific pattern of using your body again and again. You have to do the same way to feel the same way. If we just change legs or arms or tone of voice, you can't go in the exact same state. So we want to destroy those elements that are essential for its existence, thereby once and for all giving you not only control of your emotional pattern but a new set of empowering emotional habits. Interrupt the old limiting patterns, create new, more empowering alternative languages, beliefs, physiology, and condition these new states until they become a part of your life.

Okay, we're going to end with a fun story today. The audio quality is a little shaky, but it's a really great story that Tony wanted you to have. Enjoy. About a month and a half ago, two months ago, I got a phone call from President George Bush. And he called me up and he invited me to come to a meeting with himself, Mr. Mitterrand, right before he died, President Mitterrand, and Mrs. Thatcher, and also Mr. Gorbachev. And the week before, I'd had the privilege of speaking at a thing that was on CNN called "The State of the World," and I was one of the speakers along with all these people. So I got a chance to meet some of them. And I met Mr. Garcia briefly many years ago. But he said, "This is a private meeting, 100 of us, to talk about where the world is going. And I want to invite you." Like, wow, what an amazing honor, right? And he said, "We're going to all sit down and say, 'What do we do now after the Cold War? Where's how do we shape the values of the world? What did we put in place?'" I thought, man, my life's changed a little bit. This is pretty neat. And then he says to me, he said, "Um, where are you going to be coming from?" I said, "I'll be coming from New York to go to the event." He said, "Well, I'll tell you what," he said, "Mr. Gorbachev's in New York. You think you can maybe pick him up in your plane and give him a ride so you know he can go on a private jet as opposed to public?" And I said, "Well, I could probably suffer through that." And I got so excited. I thought, man, what an amazing thing to now have the president, past president of the Soviet Union, the man who probably made the most significant change in our lifetimes, the ending of the Cold War. I mean, think of it. 70,000 thermonuclear weapons pointed at each other. We're also going to do is push a button, we could destroy the world. Right? There's only 12,000 cities in the world. It's 70,000 thermonuclear weapons. And no matter what we did between at least the U.S. and Russia or Soviet Union at the time, seemed to get worse. We could allay our fears, but the bombs didn't go away. Didn't matter who took over. And then all of a sudden, overnight, the world as we know it changed. And lots of factors played a role there. But one guy gave people the most important resource to change it all called what? Freedom. So I'm excited to go meet him, right? And I look at this and I said, "This is going to be amazing." And I make these arrangements and say yes, I'll be happy to do it.

Then I call up and I find out that the size of President Gorbachev's group is larger than my little Learjet can carry. But I promised that I will deliver him by private jet. So now I got around a Gulfstream. Suddenly, I'm associating pain to this trip. There's $30,000 to rent an airplane for a little trip. It's like, oh my God, you know? But I gave my word, so I committed, right? And I thought, "What if I do this?" And to do this, I had to cancel critical things I was working on. I had to leave a bunch of things that weren't working out. "What if I do this?" He goes, "Thanks for the ride." He goes and sits in the back seat. 30 grand a day of my life, you know? "What if this happens?" All of a sudden, I get this little story going on in my head. And I can just see him going, "Yeah, yeah, yeah," and sit in the back, right? So I said, "Okay, I got to make this so I can absolutely win this game, no matter what."

So when I sat down, I went to go, Mr. Gorbachev, and everything was arranged. And I also made arrangements so I could videotape my interview with him. I could do a brief, like, five-minute interview with him for the kids that I sponsor across the country. And I wanted him to say a few words to them and really inspire them. I thought, you know, having a past president of the Soviet Union address them. So we got there early. I flew in, right? We got the camera crew there. Everything is organized. We got it all set up. Guys have been there for an hour to get the perfect shot, perfect lighting, jet in the background, the whole thing. The limousine pulls up, right? Mr. Gorbachev gets out with his entourage. I go introduce myself to him. He remembers me and shakes my hand. He's very nice and polite. So I turn to his assistant. I said, "You know, he'd like to maybe use the facilities before we get on the plane." And he goes, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." I mean, it's like the picture I had. And he got this really ugly look on his face. He doesn't. Yeah. He says, "No, he wants to get on the plane right now." I said, "Well, we have this interview set." He says, "Not yet, yet. No interview yet." Yeah. And I said, "Well, we made these arrangements, advanced camera crews here, just for a few minutes with the kids." Because yet, right? And I said, "No, no, no. I really, I decided I'm going to get my outcome, right?" So I start working this guy. "So just take a little minute." Zafani. He says, "Okay." And he gets Gorbachev. And Gorbachev is irritated, right? So he walks over here. And he was nice and shook my hand. And he's like, converted that fast to a total mean guy, right? So he comes over there. And all of a sudden, he doesn't like the suns in his eyes. So he goes, "Yeah, yeah." And yeah, he won't sit on the spot they worked on 30 minutes, right? Now he wants to get out of the sun so his wife can stand, stand underneath the wing of the airplane. I can't fit underneath the wing of the airplane, right, right? He's down here. I'm right here, going in the garby, you know? And you know, all I can see is this big spot hanging out there, you know? You know, right? So I talked to the guy, pulling out here, get in the shade. The guys are scrambling all over the place with the camera trying to get him in the camera, right? Finally, we start trying to put the microphone on him. He just grabs the other hand, rips off his hand, just holds it to his mouth. So finally, I go to the kids' question. And he goes, "Yeah, I'm done." He slams the microphone down and jumps on the plane. I run up on the plane to catch up.

So I started on the plane. I thought, "Remember your rule. Your rule's real simple. You've already won. You're here in a Gulfstream jet you rented during the past president of the Soviet Union to a meeting. They're going to meet with Bush, Maggie Thatcher, right? And Mitterrand. It's cool. Enjoy it. He doesn't talk. Great. Don't worry about it." So I sit down. And his assistant sits next to me as interpreter. And he says, "Listen," he said, "I really apologize for the behavior." He says, "He has a massive headache." I said, "Oh, okay. I understand." I said, "Well, I said, I want to talk about a few things. But I'm respectful that people always want to get something out of people in his position. I said, I experienced that sometimes. So I said, I'll leave him alone." He said, "No, I'm sure he'll talk to you. Don't just let him rest for a little bit." That's great. So I started talking to his wife, who's the real power. She really is. She is an amazing woman. Amazing woman. She has shaped a lot of who he is. It's very obvious. And he admits it in the conversations we had. We have four hours privately, just together, nobody interrupt. And so I started talking to her about a whole series of things. And out of it, what happens? He keeps opening his eyes because he has to give the answer. So I now discover his pattern. And I ask for things I want him to answer. And turn up, he opens his eyes and tells me, right, right? So finally, I get to ask him the question I've been wanting to ask. And I asked on tape to give me a lousy answer. And I said, "Mr. Gorbachev, I said, I appreciate the answer you gave me about what changed the world. I said, but I want to know the truth." You looked at me. And I smiled. I said, "I want to know what really changed the world because I said, I have this belief that what everybody looks for is the big thing that changes all. But what changes everything in life is little tiny things. Little things make the big things possible." So I said, "The big thing is obvious. The world has changed. Fall communism. The changes that have happened in our cultures around the world." I said, "But I don't know what really made that possible. And I said, I got you for four hours. I said, I'm gonna get the answer." And I finally got him laughing. Changed his what? Interrupted his what? And when that happened, I got this golden nugget from him. He finally, I kept saying, "Tell me, give me this generalization. Tell me." Funny. Said, "Okay, I'll tell you what ended the Cold War." "The end of demonization." And so what does that mean? He said, "Well, we knew that you Americans had to be kept in check, or you would destroy the world." I said, "Really?" He said, "And we know what you thought about us. The evil empire." He said, "But the bottom line is, we knew you were the enemy. We knew you were evil. We knew what you were pushing out, how was hurting people, how destructive you were as a force." He said, "What changed the world when we stopped seeing you that way? When I stopped seeing you that way? When I got my associates to stop seeing that way, and vice versa." So the next restriction was, "Okay," I said, "What made that possible?" I said, "How did you go from hating each other to being in a position where you really could have a shift in identity?" He said, "I don't know." "You know what happened through time?" I said, "When was the moment?" I just totally got him teased and pushed him. And finally, this light went on. You can see when somebody, all said, they get it, right? And he said, "I started smiling." "I can tell you the moment." He said, "I didn't know until this moment." He said, "You have a good question technique." He said, "I said, actually, I have something like that that I teach." But I said, "So what was it?" He put this huge grinner's face in his whole face. And he went, "Being from this kind of mean, kind of tough to just like this little boy." And he said, "The world changed the first time I had my first meeting with Ronald Reagan in Geneva." I said, "When he said, 'I will tell you the moment.'" He said, "We've been sitting for four hours arguing back and forth." And his wife jumped in. And she was saying, and they were all questioning my clothing. I said, "What?" She goes, "They were the Americans kept saying, 'Where did you get those clothes?'" And I said, "In Moscow." And they said, "No, you didn't," because they didn't believe we had anything. That's how that's how ugly those Americans were. She was like back in state about it. Clothing. Everybody has their rules, right? You know, somebody like a threshold. The clothing was a threshold. So he said, he's like trying to stop reason now. He said, "What happened is, we're in this mad argument, so it's getting worse and worse, going nowhere." And he said, "All of a sudden, this President Reagan, he stands up. He says, 'This is not working,' with this weird look on his face. And he looks at me and he says, 'How about we start fresh? My name is Ron. May I call you Mikhail?'" I got chilled. He had started laughing. He said, "At that moment," he said, "the world changed." He was no evil. He was no horrible. He was he was such a nice man. He said, "I could do business with him." The world as you know it has changed because one man could stand up and break a pattern and start fresh in the moment, in spite of 50 years of history.

Hi, this is Andy again. Before we begin the exercise, I want to go over what we learned today. You've seen that there are many ways to interrupt a pattern, from something as outrageous as planning the crucifixion of a man, or as elegant as taking someone on a walk. The most important thing to remember when you do a pattern interrupt is that you've got to be in rapport with a person. And if you lose rapport during a pattern interrupt, you need to get it back immediately. There is a delicate balance between breaking someone's pattern while still maintaining rapport. Here are some of the most common mistakes people make when doing pattern interrupts. The first one: people assume rapport and do something too offensive. For example, they may say something insulting or touching inappropriately. The phrase I normally use is, "The right conversation or the right challenge in the wrong context is the wrong challenge." If, for some reason, you do break rapport during a pattern interrupt, you need to get it back immediately before you move on. Number two: people are not flexible enough in their approach or may only use a few types of pattern interrupts all the time. You need to be willing to do unexpected things to break the pattern and have a wide variety of types and styles of pattern interrupts. And that's easier than you might think. Haven't you ever experienced that you're trying to support someone that you really love, and in the spur of the moment, you just said something that sounded just right? And when you look back, you say, "Oh my God, what a great impact this brought to the person I love." Or I just said something and the energy completely shifted, and that led to a very beautiful pattern interrupt. Well, that's what you can experience if you trust yourself a little more. Number three: people do not scramble the pattern enough. They may interrupt the person, but not the pattern. Your goal is to interrupt the pattern so much that someone totally forgets what they're talking about or even what they're upset about. Well, you want to remain in rapport. You also don't want to do something too subtle or expected.

Let me share a couple of personal stories. We were in this beautiful building in the penthouse of this tower with the executive vice president of our division and his direct reports. And we were presenting, basically, the findings of a set of interviews that we had conducted with the top leadership team. One of the key findings was that this executive vice president tended to manage by fear. He tended to be very aggressive, especially when he felt challenged or when he felt that someone was disagreeing with his point of view. So the findings said, basically, that a lot of people found him to be very defensive and very aggressive when he was getting defensive. So we basically were there in the meeting room and we said, "Well, one of the findings is that people tend to find you very aggressive, especially when people disagree with you, and you tend to become defensive and then aggressive, and then people start feeling afraid of you." His response, guess what he said? "This is crap. This doesn't make any sense. I've wasted money in hiring you guys to come tell me this. This is completely untrue. Where did you get this from?" And our response was, "You know what? What you just did is a perfect illustration of what we're talking about." And he looked at us and said, "You know what? That's a great point. I never thought of it that way." So that was a good example of a pattern interrupt using language.

Now, you don't need to use language. You know, as Tony was saying, you can just do very simple things. You don't need to come up with this very fantastic, creative move that will make a difference. You can just go to a friend that you feel that is feeling down and just tell him, "You know, I need some help. Would you mind coming with me to go and look for a book? I really don't know which book to pick that can make the whole difference." Let me give you another personal example. A close friend of mine's dad died. As time went on, he continued to be very sad. And every time we were reaching out to him, inviting him to go out for dinner or practice sports, he kept on saying that he wasn't feeling in the mood to do anything. And I just remember this beautiful poem that is over 2,000 years old. So I told him, "You know what? Let me share a poem with you. Grandpa dies, daddy dies, son dies. Would you like it to be in any different order? I just realized maybe it's part of nature." And I remember he looked at me and started smiling in such a beautiful way. And he just said, "You know what? Maybe this is just nature, and this is the way you need to turn out." So again, simple things make a huge difference. Maybe it's asking a bizarre question to change their focus. Maybe you tell them a joke. Maybe it's getting a person to breathe deep and take a walk, or doing something completely unexpected like jumping up and down in the middle of a conversation. It's not so much about the type of pattern interrupt as it's about actually breaking someone's pattern. You may even have to do it a few more times before it really happens.

So before we finish this session, let's go to the assignment. This is a very simple one and very powerful one. Think of an emotional state you go into when you're upset. Try to really connect with that real sense of anger or negative emotion. Imagine going into that state and then think of a way to interrupt your pattern. Now get into that state and consciously break your own pattern. Have fun and play around with ways you can interrupt your own negative emotions, and you'll enjoy it. And then after you do it, you realize that you can do this with anyone else. Once you can do it with yourself, you will be very skillful doing it with other people too. So explore different types of pattern interrupts and practice them. See you tomorrow with session 6. You.