When is a Starbucks not a Starbucks

Things are not always as they seem or when is a Starbucks not a Starbucks.  I recently went into Starbucks and tried to use my Starbucks card; and it was refused – no Wi-Fi either.  The Starbucks card gives you free Wi-Fi access at their stores amongst other things.

Probably loads of you (in the UK) when you heard earlier this year, that certain companies were using our tax legislation to pay lower taxes, responded in a particular way.   Much of this fueled by the media who told us that these companies were dodging paying UK taxes.  So many expressed anger at this, and then it was discovered that overseas companies were using tax legislation to lower their tax bill, much like many individuals do – I mean who wants to pay tax if they don’t have to?

At first it seemed they were breaking the law, then when we got the full story you find its not necessarily the companies who are at fault but maybe the tax legislation needs to be reviewed.

Then again, these very same tax loop holes may be attracting overseas companies to invest in the UK creating more employment and in turn boosting the economy.  So maybe these loop holes are a way to encourage overseas investment.

I wonder what you did in your mind, how you responded to the suggestion that they were tax dodgers?

How many times does your mind, take you off on an emotional journey that you’d rather not take?

Maybe you overhear something or maybe you misunderstand a look a gesture from someone.

The feelings in your autonomic nervous system are probably not something you’ve been told are within your control and yet by using the techniques you learn on an NLP Practitioner course you can easily control how you think and feel; it teaches us how we process information.

Our previous experiences have taught us how to perceive the world and these also help us make sense of what is happening around us.  Its estimated that we receive around 2,000,000 pieces of information every moment of the day.  If we were consciously aware of all that information we’d probably go crazy, overwhelmed with that amount of input.  Our mind filters the information in three ways it deletes, distorts and generalizes to help us make sense of what’s happening.

For example, you probably weren’t aware of the feeling of your shoe on your foot until I mentioned it.  Before I mentioned this you mind probably went through a process where it asked “do you need to be conscious of your foot in your shoe?”  And as you didn’t it deleted the information from your awareness.  The same thing happens when you can’t find your keys, then you realize they are right in front of you, for some reason your mind literally deletes the visual information. 

This process continues whilst we communicate, can you remember a time when you said something to someone and they acted as if you never said it?  They probably deleted what you said.

Our distortion filter literally changes the information making us believe its something it isn’t.  Whilst decorating the house I slept in another room; a noise woke me in the night and I was convinced someone was trying to break in.  On looking around the house I suddenly realize that the noise is the central heating system cooling down.  Just as it has every night for years yet for some reason my mind had distorted the sound so well that I was convinced someone was trying the door. 

I’m sure you can remember a time that someone reacted in an unexpected way to something said; that’s probably because they literally created their own meaning, which isn’t necessarily what you meant.

When generalizing we crease the isms in our lives.  We generalize behaviour and act as if its something that we all do, using words like always, everybody, never, everyone, no-one and every time.  People tell us things like "everybody knows ..... ".

We create our filters through our values and beliefs, from decisions we made in the past; they have been created without conscious thought.  This means that we filter the information in different ways.  You could say that we are all living in our own world, the one we experience through our very own tinted lenses.

Have you ever wondered why the people around us, our parents, loved ones, children, business associates and colleagues can be difficult to communicate with?

NLP teaches us how to recognize our own and others filters enabling us to identify what’s needed to create the results we want.

When I attended my practitioner training I arrived on the first day expecting to learn skills, techniques that would help in my business life; I expected it to be like all the other courses I had attended.  There would be lectures and reading; I found from that very first moment that this was something unlike any other course I had attended. 

NLP is experiential and that’s how we learnt by experience.  We were given information and then we experimented with this.  Learning how to use the information myself and with the other participants.  It fell into place so easily.  Instead of being lectured at, and then take that information away and figure out how I could use it at work.  I learnt how to use it from day one.

That first day of experiencing NLP of actually using the techniques to find out how you could change your thought processes was a revelation.

When is a Starbucks not a Starbucks?  It looked like a Starbucks, served the same kind of menu and yet no free Wi-Fi and it did not accept Starbucks cards.  I was confused, and when I asked so when is Starbucks not Starbucks - apparently when it’s a franchise.  

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