Scion of NLP

Archive for August 19th, 2009

There are a number of old sayings that speak about helping your fellow man, and all that good karma stuff … however, one common element is that in every culture all the proverbs always seem to agree on one thing — before you can ever help others you must always help yourself first!

Now, on the surface this can almost seem like a statement of selfishness — kinda like a “put yourself #1″ idea — but, the real meaning is actually about your need to be in a healthy mental and physical space if you’re ever gonna be of any help to others. By putting importance on taking care of yourself it both, shows others that it’s okay for them to recognize when they need to put themselves first to get better (& that’s okay to do it), … plus, it shows yourself some respect too …

… which is a huge problem for someone with depression because, when it’s the job of a depressor to rescue the world, the last thing they want to do is put more problems on others … so that means a depressed person feels they must be solely responsible for all their own problems and fix them all by themselves … without help from ANYONE!  (*Yikes!*)

However, let’s go back to the original idea that “Before you can ever help others you must always help yourself first” … which can sometimes mean being able to recognize when you need to let others help you (seriously — the presupposition of the sentence is that anyone is able to help others when they’re in a healthy space — include one’s own friends and family … including helping you!).

This is pretty tough thing for a person with depression to accept, but it’s also the most important “first step” if they’re ever gonna be in a healthy enough space to help the people they care so much about! My NLP buddy Archie once summed it up best when he looked me in the eye and said, “Daniel. You could really accomplish a lot … if you’d only get out of your damn way!” … and when one is on the verge of suicide that’s exactly it — the only thing that stood between me and living was … well … me!

As many people over the years have realized, one of the greatest benefits of NLP is not merely helping improve your own life … but the ability to be more effective at influencing other people to improve their lives as well. Recently, I got the chance for an interview with one such person who makes a living from doing exactly that — she helps people actualize their dream of being an author … and she uses NLP to help her do it!

Her name is Julie Salisbury of Inspire-A-Book ( http://www.inspireabook.com/ ) and I’ve posted a new video of her telephone interview on the topic of NLP and what it’s done for her. If you’re curious, here it is: