Bogart's guide to NLP

Let me clear that the Bogart we are talking about here is not the screen star of Casablanca, The African Queen etc. No, Bogart is a cat. And right now he’s reminding me of a lot of the core NLP principles that can be so helpful.

Until recently, Bogart had 9 lives, 4 legs and a very fine tail. Now, most probably as a result of a car accident, he has (by the vet’s estimation) 2 lives and (by my own observation) 3 legs and about 2 inches of tail.

Bogart as he still sees himself

A friend asked how he would manage without his tail – given that it’s used so much for both balance (and his balance is, of course, already potentially dodgy as he’s one leg down on the usual feline quota) and communication. I said that I’d been telling him to act ‘as if’ – ‘as if’ he had a perfectly fine tail (he does, it’s just shorter than most) or ‘as if’ he were a Manx cat.

Of course, I have been doing no such thing – Bogart manages perfectly well without me clucking round him like an over anxious mother hen. He, however, has been acting ‘as if’ his tail is complete and well able to do its job.  He doesn’t have to have a  full length tail, he doesn’t have to believe he’s got one – but by acting as though he has he is managing to communicate and balance pretty well.

For humans, the same principle of acting ‘as if’ can be enormously helpful and, for some, liberating. Often clients say to me they ‘can’t’ do something – something which they’d very much like to.  Often, the desired behaviours is related to confidence or being at ease in social situations. Making presentations comes up pretty often, too.  By working with them to help them to identify and adopt

• ·         The physiology (body language, posture etc.)
• ·         The vocabulary
• ·         The ‘look’ (clothes, haircut etc.)
• ·         The mannerisms and behaviours

they find that they are able to ‘do’ confidence/enjoy parties/make small talk/give powerful and impactful presentations etc. etc. and that, over time, the line between acting ‘as if’ they are confident, successful, sociable and engaging – or whatever it is we’re working on – and ‘being’ those things becomes blurred, indistinct and unimportant. Indeed, by acting ‘as if’ they often find it no longer exists at all.