This article was originally published in CanFitPro magazine. NLP allows you to be more effective in your work with clients. Using NLP with your clients enables them to address the negative thought patterns that have stopped them from succeeding in the past and facilitates behavioural change. Put very simply, what NLP allows you to do, is to work with your client’s mind, not just their body. Once clients believe in themselves and have only positive thoughts that support them, they will reach their goals.
You can gain a considerable amount of knowledge by reading articles and text books. This article for example outlines 6 key areas where you can safely introduce some of the concepts as you work through an induction. However there is no substitute for taking an experiential training in NLP if you want to learn how, when and with whom to use specific techniques.
1) Exercise History
When gathering information about your client’s exercise history, the focus needs to turn to what has worked in the past, and what is working for them now, rather than allowing them to focus on what isn’t working. They need to delete thoughts of their past ‘failures’. Make sure that what you have to offer them is different (get some training in NLP !), and assure them that they are no longer caught in the pattern of repeating something that hasn’t worked before. Remind them – if what you are doing isn’t working, do something different.
2) Outcomes
In order to help clients shift their thinking you will need to persuade them and demonstrate to them that they can literally change their minds and do things differently. Change doesn’t have to be difficult, it can be quick and lasting. You will need to encourage them to get very clear about and focus on what it is they want, because you get what you concentrate on. Their task is to focus on how they will be when have achieved their outcome because this gives the unconscious mind a description of where it needs to take them. The nervous system is unable to differentiate between a real and an imaginary experience - consequently when a client stops giving themselves a hard time and shifts their focus from what is wrong or missing, or what they don’t want, to what they do want, they will begin to feel better. The unconscious mind will let go of out of date negative patterns and adopt the behaviour which matches their new ‘image’ - the more clearly thought out and distinctive your clients’ goals are, the more actively they will pursue them.
3) Assess how your client rates their chances of success
Your challenge as a Fitness Professional will never be greater than when a client has a limiting belief around change; some clients just don’t believe they can reach their goals and have plenty of evidence to support their belief. They have been here before but unfortunately never got the T Shirt; as far as they are concerned they have 'failed’. Remember and explain to your clients there is no failure, only feedback.
They need to be reassured that they have everything they need within them to reach their goals. When a change in behaviour is backed by a change in their beliefs they will outgrow habits effortlessly.
4) Readiness
People are both put off by change, and put off change. They tend to associate it with discomfort, particularly when it involves exercise and/or dietary changes. They can also feel threatened by change, and it can pose a threat to their significant others.
So how do we persuade them to overcome resistance to change, take action and do what they want to do, which translates as, how do we motivate our clients? Asking them WHY they want to change is a key question and a great place to start. Different individuals are motivated in different ways; they may be disgusted at their own behaviour eg smoking, and want to move away from their current state. If their experience is one of discomfort, the unconscious mind, as it seeks to avoid pain, will try to steer them away from that discomfort. However because their focus is on the unwanted behaviour the tendency is to slip back into the old pattern.
Other clients are motivated by the desire to move towards something better, for example wanting to look or feel different. Their attempts to adopt a new healthier behaviour will be more successful as their natural way of doing things is to focus on where they are going. Your task is to identify what motivates your client, are they an ‘away from’ or ‘towards’ person. If they are an ‘away from’, capitalise on their natural tendency in the first instance to get them started and then encourage them to shift their thinking to the latter.
5 Co-Design Programme
This may well require a real shift in your own thinking as standard practice in the Fitness Industry enforces the idea that we ‘must’ exercise - rather than being prescriptive about exercise, demonstrate some behavioural flexibility, put the ball in your client’s court. Give them options, increase choice, and let them call the shots – let them choose their goals and how to get there. Essentially, this is the difference between instructing and coaching.
Suggest to your client that they choose their own action phrase - for example, I could, I am going to, I might exercise. The latter is particularly useful as it simply allows for the possibility of change, and is therefore less threatening. Increasing the choice for your client in this way, by giving them the option of exercising or not, puts them in a stronger position, gives them more control and increases the likelihood of action. Choice is better than no choice.
6 ) Contract
Finally get your client to sign on the dotted line. Ultimately what turns the dream into reality is a decision and nothing focuses the mind on an outcome like putting it in writing.
Perhaps you would like to put your commitment to your client in writing too – this is standard practice in Life Coaching.
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Contributor's Note
Please credit the author and use the URL. Thank you
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