🎙️ Last Call: Outwardly Successful. Inwardly Stuck?

If you have been meaning to register, this is your nudge.

A free, live 90-minute session with me on the gap between knowing and doing. Why the plan in your head so rarely becomes the action in your day, and the quiet patterns that keep it that way.

Tuesday, 6 October 2026 | 8:00 to 9:30 PM IST | Live on Zoom | Free | No recording

👉 Reserve your seat: https://nlp.w3successacademy.com/outwardly-successful-inwardly-stuck

 

Welcome to Episode #185 of NLP Around You.

🧠 Thoughtful Thought

“Big journeys are made of small arrivals.”

For your daily dose of Thoughtful Thoughts, get your Thoughtful Calendar here.

💬 NLP Quote Corner

“Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.” – Henry Ford

⏳ One Minute NLP – Shrinking the Mountain

Ever stared at a to-do list for so long that you ended up doing nothing on it? Not because you are lazy. Because the list was simply too big to begin.

In NLP, we call the remedy chunking down: breaking a large, vague outcome into smaller, specific pieces until one of them is small enough to start right now.

The mind does not act on “grow the business”, “get fit” or “sort out the finances”. Those chunks are too big to hold. It acts on “call two clients before lunch”, “walk after dinner”, “open the bank statement”.

Every big outcome becomes doable at some level of detail. The work is to keep asking one question until you reach it: what, specifically, is the first step?

Do this today: take the goal that has been sitting heaviest on you this week. Chunk it down three times. Then do only the smallest piece, before the day ends.

The goal can stay big.

The step must stay small.

🔮 Meta Magic

The Dabbawala Who Never Carried the Whole City

Churchgate. A little before noon.

Rohan had stepped out of a meeting he did not want to be in, to make a call he did not want to make. Quarter-end was close. Three projects behind. One key client wobbling. A board review he had not even begun to think about.

He was not thinking about any one of them.

He was thinking about all of them. At once. All morning.

Which is why he did not notice the man until he almost walked into him.

A dabbawala (lunch-box carrier). White cap. A long wooden crate balanced on his head, packed with tiffins. He moved through the crowd like water. No hurry. No hesitation.

Rohan watched him set the crate down beside a handcart, where another man was already sorting the boxes by the marks painted on their lids. A letter. A number. A dab of colour.

Curiosity got the better of him.

“Itne saare dabbe, kaise yaad rakhte ho?” (How do you keep track of so many boxes?)

The dabbawala looked up, amused, as if the question itself was a little silly.

“Saare nahi, sahab. Bas agla stop.” (Not all of them, sir. Just the next stop.)

Not all of them.

Just the next one.

And that, it turns out, is the whole system. Every working day, a couple of hundred thousand home-cooked lunches travel across Mumbai, from kitchens in the suburbs to desks in the city, and back again. No single man carries a box from start to finish. One collects. One sorts at the station. One rides the train. One delivers to the desk. Each knows his leg, his marks, his next handover.

Nobody carries the whole city.

And yet the whole city gets fed.

Rohan looked down at his phone. He had been carrying the whole city. Every project, every deadline, every what-if, stacked on his head from the moment he woke up. No wonder he was tired before he had moved a single box.

In NLP, we call this chunking. Chunk up, and you find meaning: why this matters. Chunk down, and you find movement: what happens next. Overwhelm is what happens when we stay chunked up all day, staring at the size of the whole, and never come down to the next small, doable piece.

It is also one of the quieter reasons for the gap between knowing and doing. We know exactly what needs to be done. All of it. And the sheer weight of all of it keeps us from doing any of it.

Not less ambition.

Smaller handovers.

Rohan put the phone in his pocket and picked one thing. The client call. Just that.

The rest could wait at the next station.

So let me ask you…

What would change if you only carried the next station?

📖 Hook from the Book

“You must never think of the whole street at once, understand?” – Michael Ende, Momo

🎬 Movie Motivation

“Sattar minute. Sattar minute hai tumhare paas.” (Seventy minutes. You have seventy minutes.)

This dialogue from the movie Chak De! India reminds us that no one wins a whole season at once. We win the stretch of time in front of us, and then the next one.

🏆 Popular Post of the Week

What If the Person You Need to Forgive Is You? – Michhami Dukkadam?

 

📢 Announcement of the Week

Already an NLP Practitioner? The next step begins on Sunday.

The NLP Master Practitioner Certification starts on Sunday, 4 October 2026. 20 Sundays, 7:00 to 10:00 PM IST, live on Zoom. Internationally certified by ANLP and ABNLP.

This is where you move from using the tools to understanding how change actually works underneath them. Enrol now and you get immediate access to previous cohort recordings, so you begin before the first live session.

20 Sundays. One at a time.

Open to certified NLP Practitioners | ₹75,000

👉 Enrol here: https://www.w3successacademy.com/courses/nlp-master-practitioner

Missed the past issues of NLP Around You? Find them all here: https://w3coach.com/nlparoundyou/

 

Thoughtfully Yours,

Your W3 Coach

---

Continue Your W3 Journey

The conversation doesn’t have to end here. Explore, reflect and continue your journey across Wealth, Wisdom and Wellness.

What’s Your W3 Quotient?

How balanced is your success across Wealth, Wisdom and Wellness?

Take a few minutes to discover your W3 Quotient. You may find that the results reveal something worth thinking about.

→ Discover Your W3 Quotient

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Never Miss a New Thought

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Discover the Magic in the Mundane

NLP is all around us, in our conversations, choices, behaviours and everyday experiences.

NLP Around You is my weekly exploration of these fascinating, often unnoticed patterns. Subscribe and receive each new edition directly in your inbox.

→ Subscribe to NLP Around You

---

Outwardly Successful. Inwardly Stuck?

Sometimes, knowing what to do isn’t enough.

If you find yourself overthinking, procrastinating, reacting in ways you later regret, or repeating patterns you already know aren’t helping, join me for a free 90-minute live webinar:

OUTWARDLY SUCCESSFUL. INWARDLY STUCK?
The NLP Approach to Real Change

Discover what may really be happening beneath the patterns you want to change.

→ Reserve Your Free Seat

Welcome to Episode #183 of NLP Around You.

🧠 Thoughtful Thought

“The loop you argue with gets louder. The loop you interrupt goes quiet.”

For your daily dose of Thoughtful Thoughts, get your Thoughtful Calendar here.

💬 NLP Quote Corner

“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” – William James

⏳ One Minute NLP – The Pattern Interrupt

Two people are halfway through a heated argument when the doorbell rings. A parcel, a signature, a polite goodbye. And somehow, when the door closes, neither of them can quite find their way back into the fight.

In NLP, we call this a pattern interrupt: an unexpected input that breaks a sequence before it can run to its end.

Most unhelpful states are not single moments. They are sequences. The thought sparks the feeling, the feeling tightens the body, and the tight body goes looking for another thought to justify itself. Round and round. Arguing with it rarely helps, because the argument is just one more step inside the loop.

An interrupt steps outside it. A change of posture. A question from nowhere. A walk to the window. A deliberately silly voice for your inner critic. The loop loses its next cue, and for a moment, you get to choose what comes next.

Do this today: the next time you catch a familiar spiral starting, don’t debate it. Stand up, look around the room and name five things that are blue. Then notice how much of the spiral is still there.

You cannot reason with a stuck record.

You lift the needle.

🔮 Meta Magic

The Tantrum That Stopped at Dadar

Dadar station. 7:20 P.M.

The platform was doing what Dadar platforms do at that hour: a thousand people standing as if the next train were the last one out of the city.

And somewhere in the middle of it all, a little boy was having the kind of meltdown every parent dreads in a public place.

Three, maybe four years old. Red-faced. Feet planted. One sandal half off. The kind of crying that doesn’t stop to breathe.

His father went first. He crouched, reasoned, promised. “Two more minutes. The train is coming. Ice cream when we get home.”

The crying got louder.

The grandmother went next. Firmer voice. One finger raised. “Enough now. Everyone is looking.”

Louder still.

A vendor with a basket of chikki (peanut brittle) held one out. Kind, and completely useless. The boy swatted it away.

Three adults. Three strategies. Logic, authority, a bribe.

And every one of them was doing the same thing: meeting the tantrum on the tantrum’s own terms. Each move gave it something to push against. Each move was simply the next line in a script the boy knew by heart.

Then his mother put her bag down.

She didn’t crouch to reason. She crouched to look. Down the track, past the edge of the platform, into the dusk.

And she said, quietly, almost to herself:

“Ishaan… can you see the train’s light yet?”

He stopped.

Not calm.

Just caught.

One sob. A sniff. Then a small finger pointing into the dark.

“There!”

“Is it ours? Or is it the fast one?”

By the time the train pulled in, he was explaining to his grandmother, with great authority, the difference between a fast and a slow.

Nobody had won the argument.

There had never been an argument to win.

NLP calls this a pattern interrupt. A pattern runs like a sequence, each step cueing the next. Plead, and the crying has its next beat. Scold, and it has another. But ask a question the pattern has no script for, and the sequence cannot complete. The state has nowhere to go, so it goes somewhere new.

The mother didn’t fight the storm. She gave it somewhere else to look.

Here is the part that stayed with me all the way home.

We do exactly what the father and the grandmother did. Only we do it to ourselves.

The worry loop at 2 am: we argue with it.

The irritation that rises in the same Monday meeting: we scold it.

The pull towards the phone: we bribe it with “just five more minutes”.

And the pattern, fed its familiar lines, runs all the way to the end. Every single time.

So let me ask you…

Which of your patterns have you been arguing with, when all it ever needed was an interruption?

📖 Hook from the Book

“Look for what you notice but no one else sees.” – Rick Rubin, The Creative Act

🎬 Movie Motivation

“Dil bahut darpok hota hai. Usse bewakoof banake rakho.” (The heart is a real coward. Keep fooling it.)

This dialogue from the movie 3 Idiots reminds us that “Aal izz well” was never a lie told to the heart. It was a pattern interrupt, a fresh line handed to a loop that only knew how to panic.

🏆 Popular Post of the Week

What Lord Ganesha Can Teach Us About the Mind

https://w3coach.com/what-lord-ganesha-can-teach-us-about-the-mind/

📢 Announcement of the Week

You already know your patterns. You can probably name them in your sleep. So why do they keep running anyway?

Join Dr Mehernosh J Randeria for Outwardly Successful. Inwardly Stuck?, a free, live 90-minute webinar on the gap between knowing and doing, and the patterns that quietly keep it open.

Tuesday, 6 October 2026 | 8:00 to 9:30 PM IST | Live on Zoom | Free | No recording

👉 Reserve your seat: https://nlp.w3successacademy.com/outwardly-successful-inwardly-stuck

Missed the past issues of NLP Around You? Find them all here: https://w3coach.com/nlparoundyou/

Thoughtfully Yours,

Mehernosh Randeria

Your W3 Coach

---

Continue Your W3 Journey

The conversation doesn’t have to end here. Explore, reflect and continue your journey across Wealth, Wisdom and Wellness.

What’s Your W3 Quotient?

How balanced is your success across Wealth, Wisdom and Wellness?

Take a few minutes to discover your W3 Quotient. You may find that the results reveal something worth thinking about.

→ Discover Your W3 Quotient

---

Never Miss a New Thought

Enjoyed this article?

Subscribe to W3 Coach and receive new articles, reflections and ideas directly in your inbox whenever they are published.

→ Subscribe to W3 Coach

---

Discover the Magic in the Mundane

NLP is all around us, in our conversations, choices, behaviours and everyday experiences.

NLP Around You is my weekly exploration of these fascinating, often unnoticed patterns. Subscribe and receive each new edition directly in your inbox.

→ Subscribe to NLP Around You

---

Outwardly Successful. Inwardly Stuck?

Sometimes, knowing what to do isn’t enough.

If you find yourself overthinking, procrastinating, reacting in ways you later regret, or repeating patterns you already know aren’t helping, join me for a free 90-minute live webinar:

OUTWARDLY SUCCESSFUL. INWARDLY STUCK?
The NLP Approach to Real Change

Discover what may really be happening beneath the patterns you want to change.

→ Reserve Your Free Seat

Welcome to Episode #182 of NLP Around You.

 

🧠 Thoughtful Thought

“Readiness is not found by waiting. It is built by beginning.”

For your daily dose of Thoughtful Thoughts, get your Thoughtful Calendar here.

 

💬 NLP Quote Corner

“While we wait for life, life passes.” — Seneca

 

⏳ One Minute NLP – The As-If Frame

Notice how you tie your shoelaces differently on the morning of an important interview than on a lazy Sunday. Same hands. Same laces. A completely different intention running underneath.

NLP calls this the as-if frame: acting as though a state or resource is already yours, so your posture, voice and choices lead the feeling, rather than waiting for the feeling to arrive first and grant you permission.

Most of us have it backwards. We wait to feel confident before we speak up. We wait to feel disciplined before we start the routine. We wait to feel ready before we begin. But the body doesn’t read it that way. Straighten the spine, steady the breath, choose the words a ready person would choose, and the nervous system tends to catch up rather than lead.

Pick one thing you have been waiting to feel ready for. For the next hour, carry yourself exactly as the version of you who is already ready would carry themselves. Notice what shifts, and what doesn’t need to shift at all.

Confidence is not the price of entry.

It is the receipt you get afterwards.

 

🔮 Meta Magic – Coaching Chronicles

The Man Who Waited to Feel Ready

Rohan sat down, laptop bag placed neatly by his chair, phone turned face down without being asked.

“I have had the business plan finished for eight months,” he said. “Costings done. Vendor calls made. I just haven’t launched.”

“What’s stopping you?”

“I don’t feel ready yet. I keep thinking once I feel more confident, more sure of myself, I’ll press go.”

I let that sit for a moment.

“Tell me what ‘ready’ looks like. Not what it feels like. What does the ready version of you do differently on a Tuesday morning that you aren’t doing right now?”

He paused. Thought about it properly, the way people do when a question doesn’t hand them an easy exit.

“He’d answer client emails within the hour instead of sitting on them. He’d put the pricing on the website instead of hiding it behind a ‘contact us for a quote’. He’d tell people what he does instead of calling it ‘a little side project’.”

“So none of that requires confidence.”

He looked up.

“It requires action,” I said. “Confidence was never the missing ingredient. You’ve been waiting for a feeling to hand you permission that only your own behaviour can generate.”

We spent the rest of the session listing exactly what the ready version of Rohan does on an ordinary day, and which of those things he could simply start doing this week, feeling or no feeling.

Three weeks later he wrote to me. Pricing was live on the site. He had stopped calling it a side project out loud, and somewhere in the process of behaving like a person who had already launched, he noticed he had, in fact, launched.

The feeling of readiness hadn’t arrived first and cleared him for takeoff. It had shown up somewhere around the third week of him acting like a person who was already airborne.

So let me ask you: what would you be doing differently this week if you already felt ready, and what is stopping you from doing exactly that, starting today?

 

📖 Hook from the Book

“Someday is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.” — Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

 

🎬 Movie Motivation

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.”

This line from Kung Fu Panda reminds us that the ready version of you is available today, not on some someday that keeps moving further away every time you check on it.

 

📢 Announcement of the Week

You don’t have a discipline problem. You have a pattern problem. Join me for a free, live 90-minute webinar, Outwardly Successful. Inwardly Stuck? – on why knowing what to do so rarely changes what you actually do.

Tuesday, 6 October 2026 | 8:00 – 9:30 PM IST | Live on Zoom | Free, with no recording available afterwards.

👉 Reserve your seat: https://nlp.w3successacademy.com/outwardly-successful-inwardly-stuck

Missed the past issues of NLP Around You? Find them all here: https://w3coach.com/nlparoundyou/

 

Thoughtfully Yours,

Mehernosh Randeria

Your W3 Coach

The wait is over. The cover comes off.

I’m delighted to introduce my fifth book:

NOW LET’S PLAY

A Practitioner’s Playbook for Neuro-Linguistic Programming

Built for those who want to move beyond simply knowing NLP, and start practising, applying and embodying it.

After months of writing, refining and bringing this Playbook to life, it feels wonderful to finally share it with you.

And now… let’s play.

🎬 Watch the reveal → https://www.instagram.com/p/Dcsfbopu4ki/

📘 Now available on Amazon → https://link.amazon/B0gKyLnvg

 

Welcome to Episode #181 of NLP Around You.

 

🧠 Thoughtful Thought

“Flexibility is not indecision. It is intelligence in motion.”

For your daily dose of Thoughtful Thoughts, get your Thoughtful Calendar here.

 

💬 NLP Quote Corner

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow.” — Lao Tzu

 

⏳ One Minute NLP – The Law of Requisite Variety

Notice how the same joke lands with one friend and falls completely flat with another. If you can reach for a second version, a different setup, a different pace, you get the laugh either way. If you only ever have the one telling, you are gambling on the room matching your script.

NLP calls this behavioural flexibility, built on what is known as the law of requisite variety: in any system, the element with the widest range of responses ends up steering the outcome.

Most of us have a favourite move. A tone we default to in conflict. A single way we give feedback, regardless of who is sitting across the table. It worked once, so we filed it under “what works” and reached for it again. And again.

The trouble is not that the move was wrong. The trouble is that we stopped noticing when the room had changed.

Ask yourself, the next time something you say lands badly: what is a second way I could say this? Not a better way. A different way. One new response, kept in reserve, is worth more than ten repetitions of the one you already have.

One response is a habit.

Ten responses is a choice.

 

🔮 Meta Magic

The Locksmith Who Only Had One Key

He was nineteen when he forged it.

The town hall door had swollen shut every monsoon for as long as anyone could remember. Three older locksmiths had given up on it. He hadn’t.

Three nights. A dozen failed blanks. Then, on the fourth attempt, the door gave way.

Word travelled faster than he did. By the following week, that single key hung on a leather cord around his neck, and people began calling him The Locksmith, as if the town had never needed one before him.

For years, the key kept earning its place. The town was small then. Most doors shared the same bones – the same old ironmongers had fitted them, decades apart, using the same patterns. His one key, filed and refiled a hundred times, could coax open nearly anything.

He stopped noticing when that stopped being true.

Traders began arriving from beyond the hills, carrying locks built differently – tighter wards, foreign mechanisms, puzzle-boxes disguised as latches. He pressed the same key into all of them. Out of habit, not hope.

Sometimes it forced a lock open, badly, leaving scratches that never fully closed. Sometimes it didn’t move at all. He would stand there, jaw tight, working the same key harder, as though the problem were his grip and not his tool.

His apprentice, a quiet boy named Farid who noticed everything and said little, carried a ring of a dozen keys and a pouch of thin steel picks. He studied each lock before he touched it. He was slower. He was also, increasingly, the one people asked for.

One ordinary Tuesday, everything changed.

The merchant Devraj’s new vault would not open for anyone. The old locksmith walked up to it and reached for the key around his neck, the way he always did.

Farid stood beside him. He said nothing. He simply held up a small pouch of picks.

The old man’s hand stopped in mid-air.

He looked at the vault. Then at the picks. Then at the key in his hand.

He understood, finally, that his key had only ever given the same answer. It had never once asked the lock what it needed.

That evening, he set the key down. He picked up a blank steel bar instead, and began filing a new one.

So let me ask you this: where in your life are you still reaching for the one key that opened one door, years ago, and calling it skill?

 

📖 Hook from the Book

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing.” — Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

 

🎬 Movie Motivation

“There is no secret ingredient. It’s just you.”

This line from the movie Kung Fu Panda reminds us that the old locksmith’s mistake wasn’t the wrong key. There was never a secret key to begin with, only the willingness to look freshly at what’s in front of you.

 

📢 Announcement of the Week

Ready to take your practice further? The NLP Master Practitioner programme is now open for enrolment. 

👉 https://www.w3successacademy.com/courses/nlp-master-practitioner

Missed the past issues of NLP Around You? Find them all here: https://w3coach.com/nlparoundyou/

Thoughtfully Yours,

Mehernosh Randeria

Your W3 Coach

Welcome to Episode #180 of NLP Around You.

 

🧠 Thoughtful Thought

“When they do not understand you, change the channel, not the volume.”

For your daily dose of Thoughtful Thoughts, get your Thoughtful Calendar here.

 

💬 NLP Quote Corner

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein

 

⏳ One Minute NLP – The Three Languages in Every Room

You have explained it twice. The other person still looks blank. So you explain it a third time, a little slower, a little louder, using exactly the same words.

Nothing changes.

NLP calls this a mismatch of representational systems. We each take the world in through pictures, sounds and feelings, and most of us lean heavily on one of the three. That preference leaks out through our verbs.

Listen for them. The person who leads with pictures says I see what you mean, it is not clear, the whole thing looks off. The person who leads with sound says that rings true, it does not sound right, I hear you. The person who leads with feeling says I cannot get a grip on this, something is not sitting right, it feels heavy.

Three people. One message. Three completely different filing systems.

Here is the practice for today. In your next conversation, catch three verbs the other person uses. Then answer in the same family. Draw it for the picture person. Talk it through, out loud, for the sound person. Walk the feeling person through the steps.

Repetition is louder.

Translation is clearer.

 

🔮 Meta Magic

Three People, One Briefing

Nandita had rehearsed the deck 4 times.

22 slides. Thursday morning. A new distribution plan that would move nine warehouses onto a single scheduling system, and three regional heads in the room who would have to run it.

She presented for 40 minutes. Nobody interrupted. She thought that was a good sign.

Then the questions came.

Anjali went first. “I cannot see where this is going,” she said. “Slide 14 and slide 19 do not line up for me. The whole picture is fuzzy.”

Faisal shook his head slowly. “It does not sound right. You keep saying phased. Nobody has told me when. Something is off in the way this is being pitched.”

Suresh had not spoken for the entire hour. He went last. “I cannot get a grip on it. On paper it is fine. But something is not sitting right.”

Nandita walked back to her desk with three problems.

She spent the weekend building a longer deck. 31 slides. More detail, more data, more of everything she had already said.

Her director looked at it on Monday morning and asked her one question.

“How many objections did you actually get on Thursday?”

“Three.”

“Read them to me again.”

She read them again.

Then she stopped reading and started listening.

Anjali could not see it. Faisal could not hear it. Suresh could not feel it.

Three complaints. Or one complaint, said in three languages.

And Nandita had delivered the entire 40 minutes in only one of them. Slides, diagrams, colour-coded charts. A beautiful visual argument, handed to two people who do not live in pictures.

She never opened the deck again.

She sent Anjali a single page. One flow, left to right, nine boxes, one arrow. Anjali replied in eleven minutes. Got it.

She rang Faisal and talked him through the sequence out loud. No attachment. Twenty-two minutes on the phone, during which he interrupted her four times, argued once, and then said, “Right. Now it sounds like a plan.”

She took Suresh to the Bhiwandi warehouse on Wednesday and walked the route with him. Receiving bay, staging, dispatch. Two hours on his feet. Somewhere near the loading dock he stopped and said, “Okay. Now I have got hold of it.”

Nothing about the plan had changed.

Not one number. Not one date. Not one warehouse.

The plan was never the problem. The plan was already fine on Thursday morning. What had failed was a quiet assumption she had never examined, that everyone in the room takes the world in the same way she does.

Most of us carry that assumption into every conversation we have. We explain the way we understand. And when it does not land, we explain the same way again, only harder.

So let me ask you.

The last time somebody told you they did not understand you, what did you do next?

Did you explain it again…

or did you explain it differently?

 

📖 Hook from the Book

“The eye does not see things but images of things that mean other things.” — Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

 

🎬 Movie Motivation

“Koi bure students nahi hote, sirf bure teachers hote hain.” (There are no bad students, only bad teachers.) This dialogue from the movie Hichki reminds us that when a message does not land, the first honest place to look is the delivery, not the listener.

 

📢 Announcement of the Week

MIND GAMES, a live wellness seminar.

Today, Saturday, 29 August 2026. 5.30 pm to 7.30 pm.

The Radio Room, Radio Club, Colaba, Mumbai.

An evening on the games the mind plays on all of us, and what changes the moment you can name them. Free for members and their guests. Prior registration is required and seating is limited.

👉 https://mindgames.w3successacademy.com

 

Missed the past issues of NLP Around You? Find them all here.

Thoughtfully Yours,

Mehernosh Randeria

Your W3 Coach

🧠 MIND GAMES – 7 Fascinating Ways Your Mind Plays Tricks on You

You are invited to join me for a fun, engaging and highly interactive LIVE Wellness Seminar at the Radio Club, Colaba, Mumbai.

Come and experience 7 fascinating Mind Games as we explore:

🔹 How your mind makes assumptions without you realising it

🔹 How words, emotions and triggers influence your responses

🔹 How differently people can experience the same situation

🔹 Practical tools for greater mental and emotional wellbeing

📅 Saturday, 29th August 2026

⏰ 5.30 pm to 7.30 pm

📍 The Radio Room, Radio Club, Colaba, Mumbai

🎟️ FREE for Members & Guests

☕ Followed by light refreshments

If you’re in Mumbai, do join us. Feel free to invite friends, family or colleagues who would enjoy discovering some fascinating ways in which the mind actually works.

👉 Prior registration is required: https://mindgames.w3successacademy.com

Know Your Mind. Change Your Game.

 

Welcome to Episode #179 of NLP Around You.

 

🧠 Thoughtful Thought

“Obligation is a choice that has forgotten it was ever made.”

For your daily dose of Thoughtful Thoughts, get your Thoughtful Calendar here

 

💬 NLP Quote Corner

“We are our choices.” — Jean-Paul Sartre

 

⏳ One Minute NLP – The Word That Hides a Choice

Count how many times you said “I have to” yesterday. The 8:00 call. The reply that could not wait. The function you did not want to attend.

In NLP, these are called modal operators of necessity. They are the small words that describe what is compulsory and what is possible: have to, must, should, need to, cannot.

Here is what makes them worth noticing. Most of them are not true.

A modal operator of necessity always points at a consequence, and most of the time that consequence has never been said out loud. “I have to answer immediately” carries an unspoken “or else”. The moment you finish the sentence, you can look at it properly. Sometimes it is real. Very often it dissolves on contact.

Do this today. Pick three sentences where you said “I have to”. Ask each one: what would actually happen if I did not? Then rewrite the ones that survive as “I choose to”, and notice what changes in your shoulders.

Same diary. Different owner.

 

🔮 Meta Magic – Coaching Chronicles

Who Signed You Up for All of This?

He arrived with his diary already open, before he had even sat down.

Parag runs a mid-sized packaging business. 44, carefully spoken. The kind of man who apologises for taking up your time while handing you a list of everything he is carrying.

“I have no time,” he said. “None.”

I asked him to read me the week.

He read it out like a charge sheet. I have to be on the 8:00 call with the plant. I have to reply to every mail the same day. I have to sit on the building committee. I have to go to my cousin’s engagement in Pune. I have to be at the Rotary meeting on Thursday. I have to. I have to. I have to.

Eleven sentences. Every one of them opened with the same two words.

When he finished, I asked him only one thing.

“What happens if you don’t?”

He looked up.

“Sorry?”

“Take the mail one. You said you have to reply the same day. What happens if you reply the next morning?”

He opened his mouth. Then he closed it again.

Not defensive.

Just thinking.

“Nothing,” he said eventually. “Nothing happens.”

Then he said something far more interesting. “I started that in 2011. I was small then. Nobody knew my name. Same-day replies were how I built it.”

Fifteen years later, he was still keeping a promise he had made to a company that no longer exists.

We went down the rest of the list.

The building committee: “I have to, because nobody else will.” I invited him to say it differently. “I choose to, because I don’t like how the building runs when I’m not in the room.” He laughed at his own sentence. Same Tuesday evening. Entirely different owner.

The engagement in Pune: he wanted to go. He is fond of that cousin. But he had filed it under obligation along with everything else, and the filing had quietly taken the pleasure out of it.

The 8:00 call turned out to be a genuine necessity. So did one other.

Two out of eleven.

The remaining nine were decisions he had made once, some of them years ago, and never opened again. They had hardened into necessity the way a rule hardens into a habit. After long enough, nobody remembers who wrote the rule.

He did not leave with a lighter week. He left with exactly the same week, and one sentence.

“I have to” is a claim. Claims can be checked.

So let me ask you.

Open your own diary for the coming week. Read it out to yourself the way Parag read his.

How many of those are genuine necessities?

And how many are old decisions that you have simply stopped reviewing?

 

📖 Hook from the Book

“Work is love made visible.” — Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

 

🎬 Movie Motivation

“Zindagi badi honi chahiye, lambi nahi, Babumoshai.” (Life should be big, not long, dear friend.)

This dialogue from the movie Anand reminds us that a full calendar and a full life are not the same thing, and only one of the two is actually chosen.

 

📢 Announcement of the Week

If you are in Mumbai on Saturday 29th August, come and spend two hours finding out how your own mind actually works.

MIND GAMES is a live, interactive wellness seminar at the Radio Room, Radio Club, Colaba, from 5.30 pm to 7.30 pm. Seven mind games, a few surprises about your own thinking, and light refreshments afterwards. Free for members and guests.

Seats are limited and prior registration is required.

👉 https://mindgames.w3successacademy.com

 

Missed the past issues of NLP Around You? Find them all here: https://w3coach.com/nlparoundyou/

 

Thoughtfully Yours,

Mehernosh Randeria

Your W3 Coach