Welcome to Episode #187 of NLP Around You.

🧠 Thoughtful Thought

“Belief draws the boundary. Evidence redraws it.”

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

💬 NLP Quote Corner

“The great tragedy of science: the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.” – Thomas Henry Huxley

⏳ One Minute NLP – The Power of One Counterexample

Think of a belief that begins with “I can’t”, “People like me don’t” or “That’s just not possible”. Notice how solid it feels, almost like a law of physics.

In NLP, we see a belief as a generalisation: a conclusion drawn from a handful of experiences and then treated as true everywhere, for everyone, forever.

Generalisations are useful. They save us from relearning, every morning, that fire burns. But they come with a quiet bodyguard. Once the mind believes something, it notices whatever fits and deletes whatever does not.

This is why arguing with a belief rarely works. Evidence does. And you do not need a mountain of it. In Sleight of Mouth, we call it the counterexample: one well-chosen exception that puts a crack in the wall.

Do this today: write down one belief that is holding you back. Then find one exception. One time you did it anyway. Or one person, with no better circumstances than yours, who has already done it. Write their name next to your belief, and read the two together.

Beliefs are built on examples. They are loosened by counterexamples.

🔮 Meta Magic

A Few Runs Short

For thirty-five years, one-day cricket had a number nobody could reach. Since the very first match in 1971, no team had ever scored 400 runs in an innings. Nothing in the rules stopped them, and at eight runs an over, the arithmetic said it was perfectly possible. Yet season after season, team after team, the number stayed out of reach, until everyone quietly agreed it was simply the limit.

Then, on 12 March 2006 in Johannesburg, Australia scored 434 against South Africa. The wall had fallen, and surely the match with it.

The South African dressing room went silent. Nobody spoke, not even the captain. Then one of their senior players, Jacques Kallis, walked in, looked around and said:

“The bowlers have done their job, boys. I reckon they’re 10 or 15 short.”

For a moment, nobody knew what to do with that. Then the room started laughing.

Not a pep talk.
A frame.

A few hours later, South Africa chased the target down and scored 438. A record that had stood for thirty-five years was broken twice, in the same match, on the same day. And once broken, it never held again. Teams have crossed 400 around thirty times since.

So what changed? Not the grounds, not the bats, not the length of the game. What changed was the evidence.

The antidote to belief is evidence.

For thirty-five years, 400 was a belief dressed up as a fact. In NLP, we understand a belief as a generalisation, built from past experience and then defended by everything we choose to notice. Australia handed the world a counterexample. And Kallis did something even more useful with it: where his team saw a mountain, he saw a total that had fallen short. Same scoreboard. A completely different meaning.

Most of us carry a 400 of our own. A number on the P&L we have never crossed, a role that “people like me” don’t get, a fee we don’t dare to quote. Because we have never crossed it, we assume it cannot be crossed. Very often, someone already has. We just haven’t let their evidence in.

So let me ask you…
Which 400 in your life are you still treating as a wall, when the evidence says it is only a number?

📖 Hook from the Book

“Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they’re yours.” – Richard Bach, Illusions

🎬 Movie Motivation

“If he’s a good hitter, why doesn’t he hit good?” This dialogue from the movie Moneyball reminds us that a belief, however popular, must sooner or later answer to the evidence.

🏆 Popular Post of the Week

KYC: Keep Your Calm | Discover Your Calmness Quotient

📢 Announcement of the Week

100 Days | Season 2: RECODE Your Life

One tiny experiment a day, every day until 31 December 2026. Each one is a small piece of evidence that you can do the thing you have been telling yourself you can’t.

You do not need to start from day one. Pick it up today and run the experiment.

👉 Watch and subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@mehernoshw3?sub_confirmation=1

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

Thoughtfully Yours,

Mehernosh Randeria
Your W3 Coach

---

Continue Your W3 Journey

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

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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

🌱 100 Days | Season 2: RECODE Your Life

100 Days. 100 Tiny Experiments.

One short video a day, from 23 September to 31 December 2026. Not a course to finish. A small experiment to do, every single day.

Six phases: Recognise, Engage, Challenge, Open, Design, Embody. Because knowing changes nothing until you do something with it.

👉 Watch and subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@mehernoshw3?sub_confirmation=1

Welcome to Episode #186 of NLP Around You.

 

🧠 Thoughtful Thought

“Knowledge fills the mind. Practice fills the gap.”

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

 

💬 NLP Quote Corner

“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 

⏳ One Minute NLP – The Four Stages of Learning

Remember learning to drive? First, you had no idea how hard it was. Then you sat behind the wheel in traffic and discovered exactly how much you could not do. Then you could drive, but only with every ounce of attention. And one day you reached office with no memory of the journey.

In NLP, we call this the competence ladder: unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, unconscious competence.

Here is the catch. Reading, listening and watching take you up only the first rung. They move you from not knowing what you lack to knowing what you lack. Every rung after that is climbed one way: practice.

This is why so much of what we know never becomes what we do. We mistake the awareness for the ability.

Do this today: pick one idea from a book, a course or a talk that you have nodded along to. Practise it once before the day ends, even clumsily. Then once more tomorrow.

Awareness widens choices.

Practice makes them yours.

 

🔮 Meta Magic

The Scholar in the Boat

A learned scholar once needed to cross a wide, slow river. He hired a boatman and settled into the small wooden boat with a bundle of books on his lap. He had the quiet confidence of a man who had read more than most people ever would.

The boatman was a simple man. He had pushed that oar across that river since he was a boy, and he rowed the way most of us breathe, without thinking about it.

For a while, neither of them spoke. Then the scholar, perhaps a little bored, decided to make conversation.

“Tell me, boatman, have you ever studied grammar?”

“No, sir,” said the boatman.

“Philosophy, then? Astronomy? The movement of the stars?”

The boatman smiled and shook his head. “No, sir. I only know the river.”

The scholar sighed, the way learned men sometimes sigh at the unlearned. “Then I am sorry to tell you, half your life has been wasted.”

The boatman did not argue. He simply kept rowing.

Midway across, the weather turned. The wind picked up and the sky darkened. The gentle river began throwing up waves that a small boat was never built to handle. Water started spilling over the sides, and it was clear the boat would not last.

The boatman looked across at his passenger and asked, quite calmly, “Tell me, sir, can you swim?”

The scholar had gone pale. “No,” he said.

“Then I am sorry to tell you,” said the boatman, “all of your life is about to be wasted.”

It is an old story, told in more than one tradition. In most tellings the boatman pulls the scholar safely to the bank. The books, sadly, do not make it.

We smile at the scholar. And then, if we are honest, we look at our own bookshelves.

There are the courses we have completed, the podcasts we play at double speed and the certificates framed on the wall. Most of us know a great deal about health, about money, about difficult conversations, about managing our time. And yet the morning walk gets skipped, the conversation gets postponed, and the plan stays a plan.

Our problem is rarely knowledge. It is practice.

This is the gap between knowing and doing. In NLP terms, the scholar had become aware of a hundred subjects and then stopped at awareness. He knew a great deal about the river. He had just never been in it.

Knowledge sits comfortably on the bank. Skill only happens in the water.

The boatman had never read a single page about swimming, and he did not need to. His body had done it so often that it no longer needed instructions. When the storm came, it was not what he knew that kept them both alive. It was what he had practised.

So let me ask you…

What do you know so well that you have never actually done?

 

📖 Hook from the Book

“There is only one way to learn. It’s through action.” – Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

 

🎬 Movie Motivation

“There’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.”

This dialogue from the movie The Matrix reminds us that a skill does not live in what we can describe. It lives in what we can do when it counts.

 

🏆 Popular Post of the Week

Sach Lagna Zaroori Hai: 10 NLP Lessons from Drishyam: The Conclusion

 

📢 Announcement of the Week

Outwardly Successful. Inwardly Stuck?

You know what to do. So why does it not happen?

A free, live 90-minute session with me on the gap between knowing and doing. Why knowing what to do does not automatically change what you do. The hidden patterns behind delaying, overthinking and second-guessing. And how NLP helps you recognise them and choose differently.

You do not have a discipline problem. You may have a pattern problem.

Monday, 19 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

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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

🎙️ 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

---

Never Miss a New Thought

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Discover the Magic in the Mundane

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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

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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

▶️ 100 Days | Season 2: RECODE Your Life

100 Days. 100 Tiny Experiments.

Season 2 of the 100-day journey is now live. One short video a day, from 23 September to 31 December 2026.

No big resolutions. No overhaul. Just one tiny experiment each day to notice a default pattern, question it, and quietly rewrite it. Because awareness widens choices, and choices, repeated, become a new you.

👉 Watch and subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@mehernoshw3?sub_confirmation=1

Welcome to Episode #184 of NLP Around You.

 

🧠 Thoughtful Thought

“Your words travel further when your feet have walked them first.”

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

 

💬 NLP Quote Corner

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” – Leo Tolstoy

 

 

⏳ One Minute NLP – When Words and Actions Agree

A fitness trainer tells you to quit smoking, with a cigarette tucked behind his ear. A boss says “my door is always open”, without looking up from the laptop. The words are perfectly sensible. And somehow, you don’t believe a single one of them.

In NLP, we call this incongruence: the words say one thing, and everything else says another. Its opposite, congruence, is when your words, your voice, your body and your actions all tell the same story.

People rarely listen to words alone. Underneath the conversation, they are reading everything else: the tone, the pause, the eyes, and above all, what you actually do when nobody is asking. When the two match, the message lands with a weight no argument can add. When they don’t, people believe the behaviour and quietly file the words away.

The same is true on the inside. A “yes” said with a tight jaw is not really a yes. Some part of you has already voted the other way.

Do this today: pick one thing you have asked of someone this week. Your team, your child, your partner. Then ask yourself one honest question: am I already doing it?

People hear your words.

They believe your walk.

🔮 Meta Magic

The Mother Who Came Back in Two Weeks

This story has been told so many times that nobody is quite sure where it first began. But it goes something like this.

A mother travelled a long way to see Gandhi. Dust on the hem of her sari. A small boy beside her, holding her hand, a little bored of all the walking.

She waited her turn through a long line of visitors. People who had come with petitions, with politics, with grief.

When her turn came, her request was a small one.

“My son eats too much sugar. He does not listen to me. But he will listen to you. Please, tell him to stop.”

Gandhi looked at the boy. Then at the mother.

He was quiet for a long moment.

“Come back in two weeks.”

She was puzzled. All that way, for this? But she did not argue. She took her son’s hand and went home.

Two weeks later, the same road. The same dust. The same boy.

This time Gandhi leaned forward, looked the child in the eye, and said gently, “Stop eating sugar. It is not good for you.”

That was all.

The boy nodded.

The mother thanked him. And then, because she simply had to know, she asked, “Why could you not have said this two weeks ago?”

Gandhi smiled.

“Two weeks ago, I was eating sugar myself.”

Not a delay.

A preparation.

NLP calls this congruence. When the messenger’s life agrees with the message, the words carry a weight that no amount of explaining can add. When it doesn’t, people listen to the life and politely ignore the words. Children most of all. They are the finest readers of incongruence on the planet.

He could have said it on the first day. The words would have been exactly the same.

The message would not.

And notice what the boy actually needed. Not information. He already knew sugar was not good for him. Every child does. What he was missing was a reason to believe it, standing in front of him, living it.

That is the gap between knowing and doing. We rarely close it for others by telling them more. We close it by walking it first.

Most of us would have spoken on day one. We do it all the time.

The parent who says “no phones at the table” while their own screen lights up beside the plate. The manager who asks the team for punctuality and strolls into the review ten minutes late. The friend who says “just relax” in a voice that is anything but relaxed.

Nobody is lying. The words are true. They are just travelling alone.

So let me ask you…

What are you asking of others that you have not yet asked of yourself?

📖 Hook from the Book

“Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

 

 

🎬 Movie Motivation

“It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.”

This dialogue from the movie Batman Begins reminds us that congruence is not a claim we make about ourselves. It is the verdict our actions deliver, every single day.

 

 

 

🏆 Popular Post of the Week

What Could Change in 100 Days? Season 2 of the 100-Day Journey

📢 Announcement of the Week

You know what to do. You have probably known for years. So why does the doing keep slipping away?

Join me 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,

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 #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

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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