Welcome to Episode #190 of NLP Around You.

🧠 Thoughtful Thought

“Every question is a ticket. Check where it takes you.”

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

💬 NLP Quote Corner

“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” – Maya Angelou

⏳ One Minute NLP – The Assumption Inside the Question

Have you ever caught yourself asking, “Why am I so bad at this?” It sounds like an honest enquiry. Look closer, and you will find it has already reached a verdict.

In NLP, we call this a presupposition: something a sentence quietly assumes to be true before it even begins.

“Why am I so bad at this?” presupposes that you are bad at it. “Why does nobody listen to me?” presupposes that nobody does. Your mind rarely stops to challenge the presupposition. It simply accepts the brief and starts searching for evidence, and it is very good at finding what it has been sent to find.

The reverse works just as well. “What would make this easier?” presupposes it can be easier. “Who has handled this well?” presupposes that somebody has, and that there is something to learn from them.

Do this today: the next time you hear yourself asking a question in your own head, stop and name what it presupposes. If you wouldn’t sign your name under that presupposition, rewrite the question.

The mind always answers.

It seldom checks the question.

🔮 Meta Magic

Two Questions at the Enquiry Window

Picture a railway station in Mumbai at the end of a long, humid day. The speakers crackle, and the news arrives in that flat voice stations keep for bad news: the train to Pune is cancelled.

A groan travels down the platform, and before it has died away a queue has formed at the enquiry window. Behind the glass sits a tired clerk, a cup of tea going cold at his elbow, already bracing himself.

First in line is a man in a pressed shirt, laptop bag on his shoulder, phone gripped in his hand. He leans in until his voice fills the little gap under the glass.

“Why does this always happen? Who is responsible for this? How can you people allow it?”

They are fair questions. He has paid for his ticket, he has somewhere to be in the morning, and he has every right to be angry. The people behind him nod along. For a few minutes he is the hero of the queue.

The clerk says what clerks say. He has no further information. There is a complaint book, if the gentleman wishes. The man asks again, louder, and receives the same answer, a little more slowly. Eventually he walks to a bench, sits down heavily and begins typing a long, well-argued message about the state of the railways.

He has a grievance. He does not have a way to Pune.

Next is a woman with a small suitcase. Her evening has been ruined just as thoroughly as his. She sets the suitcase down, waits for the clerk to look up, and asks one thing.

“What is the quickest way to reach Pune tonight?”

Something shifts in the clerk’s shoulders. For the first time all evening, somebody has handed him a problem he can actually do something about. He thinks for a moment, mentions another train from another station, tells her where to find a taxi, and writes the details on a slip of paper. A few minutes later she is gone.

Same train. Same clerk. Same ruined evening. One walked away with a grievance. The other walked away with a route.

In NLP, we call this the difference between a problem frame and an outcome frame. A problem frame looks backwards: what went wrong, why, and whose fault it is. An outcome frame looks forwards: what do I want now, and what is the next step towards it?

Notice that she is not more positive than he is, and she doesn’t pretend the train is running. She has simply pointed her question somewhere else.

The old CFO in me thinks of a variance report: you need one to learn where the numbers went, but no business ever reached next year’s target by reading last year’s variances louder.

We have all stood at that window. A project slips, a client goes quiet, a plan falls apart, and we lean in. Why does this keep happening? Who let this happen? There is a time for those questions. The trouble begins when they are the only ones we know how to ask.

Awareness widens choices. The moment you hear the question you are asking, another one becomes available.

So let me ask you…

Are your questions looking for someone to blame, or for somewhere to go?

📖 Hook from the Book

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. – Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

🎬 Movie Motivation

“Main udna chahta hoon, daudna chahta hoon, girna bhi chahta hoon… bas rukna nahi chahta.” (I want to fly, I want to run, I even want to fall… I just don’t want to stop.)

This dialogue from the movie Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani reminds us that when your attention stays on where you are going, even a fall is only part of the movement.

🏆 Popular Post of the Week

Halloween masks come off at midnight. But what about the ones we wear every day? Sometimes, the roles that once protected us become the identities that quietly confine us. Discover the person beneath the mask.

The Scariest Mask Is the One We Forget We’re Wearing

📢 Announcements of the Week

Free Live Webinar: Outwardly Successful. Inwardly Stuck?

You know what you should do, and yet you delay, overthink, react or repeat the old behaviour. That is not a discipline problem. It is a pattern problem.

Join me live on Zoom on Friday 13 November 2026, 8:00 to 9:30 PM IST. It is free, and there is no recording, so the live session is the only way in.

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

100 Days | Season 2: RECODE Your Life

One tiny experiment a day, every day until 31 December 2026. Pick today’s short video, run the experiment, and take one small step towards somewhere you want to go.

👉 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

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 #189 of NLP Around You.

🧠 Thoughtful Thought

“Cherish your past. Nourish your present. Flourish into your future.”

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

💬 NLP Quote Corner

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” – Søren Kierkegaard

⏳ One Minute NLP – Borrowing From Your Best Moments

Have you noticed how easily the mind replays its worst moments? The meeting that went wrong, the words you wish you could take back. Rarely do we replay the moments when we were at our best.

In NLP, we call those moments resource states, and your past is full of them.

Your nervous system does not file confidence, calm or courage under a date. It files them as experiences, and experiences can be revisited. When you step fully back into a moment of strength, seeing what you saw, hearing what you heard, feeling what you felt, your body begins to produce that state again, here and now.

Do this today: before your next demanding moment, recall one time you handled something well. Step into it fully for thirty seconds. Notice where the feeling lives in your body. Then carry it with you into the room.

Your past is not only a record.

It is a resource.

🔮 Meta Magic – Coaching Chronicles

The Man Who Lived in Two Tenses

He arrived exactly on time and sat with his hands folded as though waiting to be called in for a review. A capable man by any measure: a business he had built from a single rented room, a family he adored, a calendar that never had a gap in it.

And yet, within ten minutes, I noticed something about the way he spoke.

“I should have expanded when the market was good. I should have taken that partnership. I should have spent more time with the children when they were small.” And then, almost in the same breath, “One day I’ll restructure the business properly. One day I’ll take a real holiday. One day I’ll get fit.”

Should have. One day. Should have. One day.

He was living in two tenses, and neither of them was today.

So I asked him to pause and point to his past. Not to describe it, just to point. He didn’t hesitate. His finger went straight out in front of him, a little to the left, at eye level. Then I asked him to point to his future. He paused, then waved vaguely over his shoulder, somewhere far behind.

“So your past sits right in front of you,” I said, “and your future is somewhere you can’t see.”

He laughed. Then he stopped laughing.

In NLP, we know that each of us stores time somewhere in space. We call it a timeline. Most people never notice theirs, yet it quietly shapes how they feel. His past was not in the rear-view mirror. It was stuck to the windscreen, and every decision he wanted to make had to be seen through it. The old CFO in me could only think of a balance sheet: he had been provisioning for old decisions like a bad debt, year after year, long after the lesson had been paid in full.

So we moved things around. I invited him to let his past drift gently behind him and a little to the side, close enough to draw from, far enough to stop blocking the view. Then we brought his future round to the front, nearer and brighter, where it could actually pull him forward. And the spot where he stood was the present.

Then I asked him three questions, one for each place.

Looking back: “What did those years teach you that you would never want to give back?”

For the first time, he spoke about his past with warmth. The rented room. The first client who believed in him. The mistakes that had made him careful.

Looking ahead: “When the future you want is up and running, what does an ordinary day look like?”

And standing right where he was: “What is one thing you can do this week that the future version of you will thank you for?” He chose something small. A conversation with his business partner that he had been postponing for months.

A fortnight later, what I noticed first was not what he said but how he said it. “I spoke to him. We agreed a plan. I’ve started.”

Spoke. Agreed. Started.

He had found the third tense, the only one in which anything actually happens.

The past is a place to draw strength from, not a place to live. The future is a place to aim at, not a place to wait. And the present is where the two meet, the one place where knowing finally turns into doing.

So let me ask you…

Which tense have you been living in most this year?

📖 Hook from the Book

“And let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.” – Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

🎬 Movie Motivation

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

This dialogue from the movie Kung Fu Panda reminds us that the past and the future only become useful when they serve what we choose to do today.

📢 Announcement of the Week

100 Days | Season 2: RECODE Your Life

One tiny experiment a day, every day until 31 December 2026. A simple way to nourish your present, one small step at a time. Join in from today.

👉 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: 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 #188 of NLP Around You.

🧠 Thoughtful Thought

“Habits do not follow decisions. They follow pictures.”

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

💬 NLP Quote Corner

“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.” – Marcus Aurelius

⏳ One Minute NLP – Meet the Moment Before It Arrives

Have you noticed how easily you keep a promise in the morning, and how quickly it dissolves by evening? The intention was real. The moment simply caught you unprepared.

In NLP, we call the remedy future pacing: rehearsing a new response inside the exact situation where the old one usually fires.

The mind learns from rehearsal much as it learns from experience. When you only decide what you will do, the plan lives in your head. When you rehearse where and when you will do it, the plan lives in the moment itself. So when that moment arrives, the new response is already waiting for it.

Do this today: pick one moment where you usually slip. Close your eyes and step into it fully. See what you would see, hear what you would hear. Then watch yourself respond the way you want to, calmly and easily. Run it three times, then let it go.

Intentions live in the head.

Rehearsals live in the moment.

🔮 Meta Magic – Coaching Chronicles

The Hand That Reached First

She came straight from the office, lanyard still tucked hastily into her bag. A finance head, sharp with numbers, the kind of person who runs a tight month-end close. She sat down, placed her phone face down on the table between us, and looked at it as though it had betrayed her.

“I have no willpower,” she said. “None at all.”

Every night was the same, she explained. Somewhere after ten, she would send her last email and close the laptop. And before she knew it, the phone was in her hand. A reel, the news, a group chat, another reel. By the time she looked up, it was well past midnight and the alarm was already waiting for her. Every morning she promised herself tonight would be different. Every night, it wasn’t.

I asked her one question. “When the laptop closes, which comes first: the decision to pick up the phone, or the hand?”

She opened her mouth to answer, then stopped, and looked at the phone for a long moment.

“The hand,” she said quietly. “I don’t decide anything. It’s already there.”

That was the turn. For months she had been fighting this battle with willpower, and willpower kept arriving late, after the hand had already moved. She wasn’t weak. She was losing a race she didn’t know she was running.

In NLP, we understand that a habit like this runs on a cue and a picture. The click of the laptop lid is the cue. Before any conscious thought arrives, the mind flashes a picture: the glowing screen, the little hit of relief, the sense that the day is finally over. The hand simply follows the picture. So instead of arguing with the hand, we worked with the picture.

First, I asked her to see herself as she wanted to be. Not someone heroically resisting her phone, but a woman who wakes up rested and walks into the morning review clear-headed and unhurried. As the image formed, a smile crept onto her face.

Then we ran the Swish Pattern. She held the old picture, big and bright: the laptop closing, the phone lighting up. Tucked in one corner sat a tiny, dim image of her rested self. On a quick swish, the old picture shrank and faded into the distance while the new one rushed forward, large and bright, filling the whole frame. Blank screen. Again. And again, each round a little faster, until the new picture began to arrive on its own.

Then I asked her to close the laptop in her mind. She did, and laughed, a little surprised. “It goes somewhere else now.”

When she returned for our next session, she claimed no miracle. Some nights the hand still reached. But now there was a gap between the cue and the hand, and in that gap she had a choice. More often than not, the phone stayed face down.

Awareness widens choices.

Most of us are not short of willpower. We are short of noticing. The cue fires, the picture flashes, and the hand moves long before the decision turns up, whether it reaches for the phone, the biscuit tin, the sharp reply or the comfortable “I’ll do it tomorrow”.

So let me ask you…

What does your hand reach for before you have decided anything at all?

📖 Hook from the Book

“So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important.” – Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie

🎬 Movie Motivation

“Picture abhi baaki hai mere dost.” (The picture isn’t over yet, my friend.)

This dialogue from the movie Om Shanti Om reminds us that the pictures we run in our minds are never final, and a better picture can always take the place of an old one.

🏆 Popular Post of the Week

The Ten Heads of Ravana: What If Every Vice Is Trying to Tell Us Something?
https://w3coach.com/ten-heads-ravana-positive-intentions-nlp/

📢 Announcement of the Week

Outwardly Successful. Inwardly Stuck?

A free, live 90-minute NLP webinar on the patterns that keep successful people stuck.

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

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

100 Days | Season 2: RECODE Your Life

One tiny experiment a day, every day until 31 December 2026. Join in from today.

👉 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: 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 #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

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

🌱 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

---

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

🎙️ 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

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