We all have a different map of the world, meaning that we all have a different way we perceive things, determined by our experiences, knowledge, upbringing, etc.
Just like a map is a representation of the world but is not the true world, this is how we in NLP like to say the map is not the territory. There are so many things I like about Coaching and NLP but this is probably one of my favourites. It taught me to be less judgemental and be more curious about what goes on when we act in a certain way. To understand the perspective of the other person, in my mind and body balance retreat we will explore this much more.
So it was just Easter and as tradition dictates I went out for lunch on Easter Sunday. It wasn’t as the typical Easter lunch with my family back home in Denmark, but a mix of old and new friends and a couple of unknowns. Which, is often what happens when you live abroad, your friends become your family.
We began having a glass of Champagne at a lovely little tapas bar that has live music every Sunday. My partner, my close girlfriend and I arrived a bit later than the other three and I think they had already enjoyed a bit of Champagne. We were just in time to enjoy a glass before we had to head off to our reservation at a local fish restaurant further down the port. It was my new friend who had arranged it all and it was all very promising.
My close friend, my partner and yours truly, we all dedicate ourselves to promote healthy living one way or the other, and we are a tight-knit unit, so we sat at one end of the table and our new friend and a couple of unknowns at the other end. The table had been reserved at the terrace, which had been covered in a tent-like plastic so we could still see the sea. It was a grey day and there was an ice cold wind blowing from the sea and this restaurant did not have the cozy gas fires we could see they had next door. The three health apostles were freezing and the owner of the restaurant arrives to our table, welcomes us and plants an ashtray in the middle of the table! Then it becomes clear to us that we are sitting on the freezing terrace because two of the party would like to smoke. We protest and inform them of the irregularity according to the Spanish smoking law; the terrace is too covered to allow smoking. A bit of huffing and puffing is carried out (pardon the pun), what we in the NLP world would call non-verbal communications.
The food takes an unusually long time to arrive while the two smokers decide to light one cigarette after the other, so the health apostles are freezing and being smoked while waiting for their salmon. I guess the smokers read the non-verbal cues of the non-smokers and begin to present us with arguments to default the research that says smoking causes cancer and funnily enough that is a perfect example of what I have just learned at the course Coaching the Brain, neuroscience applied to coaching given by Joseph O’Connor, one of the most respected and well known NLP Trainers and Coaches in the world, the Co-founder of ICC (International Coaching Community) and author of 20 books translated into 25 languages. One of the units in the course is called tricks and traps of the mind: he shows us that there are systems of quick simple rules that we apply without any reflections or thoughts. Joseph O’Connor mentions 9 but we will identify four here. He has asked us to look out for these tricks and traps during the week in our environment and ourselves. So as I hear the first argument about why it is that smoking does not cause cancer I abstain from my habitual thinking in my own map of the word and choose to sit back and observe as I think to myself, “Oh, here is a treat”.
First trick and trap is to confuse Cause and Correlation, we can’t say that smoking causes cancer but what we can say is that there is a high statistical correlation between the two, that indicates that if you smoke your risk of getting cancer, and not only lung cancer, increases significantly and that also includes passive smoking.
The unknown smoker begins “smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer you know!” She looks me right in the eyes and moves a little bit forward on to the edge of the chair as if to challenge me, and as she does not receive a reply she continues, after taking a deep breath through her cigarette, “my grandmother turned 100 years and she had smoked all her life”. Her husband the ex-smoker joins her “that is true he says”, “a doctor in Hong Kong told me that it is better to smoke so you can prepare your lungs for the Hong Kong contamination”. I think about their arguments and decide not to argue against but to find out what was happening in their minds at the time.
One of the mind tricks from the system of thinking where we have no reflection is what Joseph O’Conner calls attention bias. It means that we look at familiar things and apply them to irrelevant situations and we look for what we expect. We then hold on to the information that backs up and confirm what we ourselves believe to be true. This is related to what he calls confirmation bias where we jump to conclusions based on information we agree with. Furthermore, there is availability bias were we give so much importance to what happens to us that we override, in this case, years of medical research.
An example of the same thing is my close friend and one of the health apostles, she argues that smoking does in fact cause lung cancer as someone close to her died of this very disease and not as a result of smoking herself but because she was a victim of passive smoking. Here again, all four are present, maybe you can identify them yourself?
And this is how knowledge and acceptance can give you the opportunity to observe behaviour and find examples of how our mind works even in the most challenging situations. I do have friends that I love who still smoke and as much as I love them and worry for them I would very much appreciate if I was not exposed to this health hazard.
Please take care of yourselves out there and if you would like to have a healthier mind and body don’t hesitate to have a look at my retreat here.
Best wishes to you all,
Ivalo