Welcome to Episode #166 of NLP Around You.

 

🧠 Thoughtful Thought

“Most signals arrive before the sentence does.” — Dr Mehernosh J Randeria

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

 

💬 NLP Quote Corner

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” — Marcel Proust

 

⏳ One Minute NLP – Sensory Acuity

Pay attention to how often you hear the phrase, “But you never told me.”

In families. In teams. In marriages. Someone is upset. Someone else is defending. The defence usually sounds like, “How was I supposed to know? You never said anything.”

Maybe. But the body said something. The pause said something. The shorter reply on Wednesday morning said something. The phone, placed face down a little too firmly, said something.

In NLP, this is called sensory acuity. The trained ability to read state from observable cues, without waiting for the words to arrive.

Most of us calibrate only after a mistake. The trained eye calibrates before.

Practice this today. Pick one person you will meet, in person or on a call. Before they speak, give yourself five seconds to read three things. Their posture. The pace of their first breath. The quality of their first smile. Then notice how often the next ten minutes confirm what those three things were telling you.

Words are slow. The body is honest.

Most people listen to find their turn to speak. The skilled listener reads, long before listening is even required.

 

🔮 Meta Magic – Can You Catch The SIgnal Before The Words?

Bashir bhai has been pouring tea at Platform Six of Andheri station for 27 years.

Rs. 3 a cup when he started. Rs. 12 now. The stove is the same. The kettle has been replaced twice. The smile has not changed.

I noticed something on my third visit.

He does not ask you what size you want.

He does not point to a menu.

He does not say, “Bada ya chhota?” (Big cup or small cup?)

He just looks at you. Decides. And pours.

Big cup for the harried commuter clutching a laptop bag and checking the platform display every six seconds. Small cup for the elderly gentleman who has placed his walking stick against the stall and is in no hurry. Half cup for the office boy collecting a takeaway order in a hurry, balancing five other things in a plastic carrier.

No questions. No menu. No “what would you like, sir”.

I asked him once. “Bashir bhai, kaise pata chalta hai kis ko kitni chai chahiye?” (How do you know who needs how much tea?)

He smiled the smile of a man who has been asked the same question many times.

“Bees saal pehle main poochhta tha,” he said. (Twenty years ago, I used to ask.) “Phir maine dekhna shuru kiya.” (Then I started watching.)

Watching, not asking.

That is the whole sentence – beyond the words.

Most of us call ourselves good listeners. What we mean is, we wait for the other person to finish their sentence before we begin ours. Bashir bhai does something different. He reads the customer before the customer has decided what they want.

This is what NLP calls calibration. Reading state from observable cues. Posture, breath, voice quality, micro-expression, the angle at which someone is standing.

Most professionals only calibrate when something has gone wrong. A meeting blows up. A spouse goes quiet for two days. A team member resigns out of nowhere. Then comes the audit. “What did I miss?”

Bashir bhai audits before. Not after.

And here is the quiet thing about his stall. 27 years of pouring different cups for different people has built him a kind of regulars list that no CRM software in the world could match. The elderly gentleman comes back not because the tea is the best on the platform. He comes back because someone, in the middle of a city of 20 million strangers, gave him a small cup without making him explain why.

Being seen, before being heard, is one of the rarest gifts one human can offer another.

So let me ask you.

In the room you will walk into next…

Are you waiting for the words…

or are you already reading the signal?

 

📖 Hook from the Book

“Look for what you notice but no one else sees.” — Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

 

🎬 Movie Motivation

“Jo dikhta hai humko lagta hai, hai… aur jo nahi dikhta humko lagta hai, nahi hai… lekin kabhi kabhi jo dikhta hai, woh nahi hota… aur jo nahi dikhta, woh hota hai.” (What we see, we believe is there. What we do not see, we believe is not there. But sometimes what we see is not really there. And what we do not see is what is actually there.)

This dialogue from the film Taare Zameen Par reminds us that calibration is not about looking harder. It is about looking past the obvious, to the signal that was always sitting quietly underneath.

 

🏆 Popular Post of the Week

The Most Expensive Lie Smart People Are Telling Themselves

 

📢 Announcement of the Week

If you are someone the world calls successful, but something inside you is whispering that the picture is not complete, this one is for you.

Join me for the live webinar:

Outwardly Successful, Inwardly Stuck

A 90-minute conversation about why high performers plateau, what your inner signals have been trying to tell you, and the First Shift that changes everything.

👉 Register here: https://www.w3successacademy.com/f/outwardly-successful-inwardly-stuck

 

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

https://w3coach.com/nlparoundyou/

Thoughtfully Yours,

---

Welcome to Episode #164 of NLP Around You

 

📢 FREE LIVE WEBINAR

Outwardly Successful. Inwardly Stuck.

For the high performer who has the title, the income, and the résumé… and still feels something is missing.

👉 Save your seat here

 

Welcome to Episode #165 of NLP Around You.

 

🧠 Thoughtful Thought

“You are not lacking a resource. You are probably using it on the wrong field.” — Dr Mehernosh J Randeria

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

 

💬 NLP Quote Corner

“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” — Carl Jung

 

⏳ One Minute NLP – The Presupposition of Resources

Most of us have been quietly trained to believe that the missing piece lives outside us.

A better job. A bigger title. One more certification. The right mentor. The right city. The right partner. The right book.

NLP starts from a different premise.

One of its core presuppositions is this. Every person already has all the resources they need to make the change they want. The resources are not absent. They are sitting in a different room.

Calm is in there. Courage is in there. Patience is in there. Discipline is in there. You have been all of these things at some point in your life. Maybe at work, but not at home. Maybe with a parent, but not with your child. Maybe at thirty, but not at fifty.

The work of change is not installation. It is redirection.

Explore this. Pick one thing you say you do not have. “I do not have the patience for this.” Now ask yourself, where in my life do I already have this in abundance? Who do I treat with that patience? In what setting does it show up effortlessly? That is the room it is sitting in. Your job is not to manufacture it. Your job is to bring it across the corridor.

You are not empty. You are misallocated.

Installation is exhausting.

Redirection is elegant.

If you want to learn how to do this redirection at a structural level, the next cohort of NLP Practitioner is the place to begin.

 

🔮 Meta Magic – The Violet Lady of Milwaukee

The Violet That Was Waiting

Somewhere in the late 1950s, in Milwaukee, a young doctor received an unusual request. His name was Milton Erickson.

The request came from a worried nephew. “My aunt is deeply depressed,” he said.

She lived alone in a large house. Rarely stepped out. Rarely met people. Rarely attended church anymore, though she had been a deeply devout member of the congregation.

The house, in many ways, had become her world.

And perhaps, her world had become the house.

So the nephew asked Erickson if he would visit her.

Erickson agreed.

When he entered the house, he saw what most of us might have seen.

Dim rooms.
Heavy curtains.
A piano whose lid had not been opened in a long time.
A Bible on the side table, clearly used, but perhaps now more as memory than practice.

It was the kind of house where silence does not merely exist.

It sits with you.

It occupies the chair opposite you.

It becomes the third person in the room.

And then, while walking through the house, Erickson turned a corner.

And there it was.

Sunlight.

A glass conservatory at the back of the house.

Filled with African violets.

Rows and rows of them.

Purple. White. Lavender. Pink.

Each one carefully grown.
Each one lovingly tended.
Each one carrying the quiet fingerprints of a woman who still knew how to care.

Now, pause here for a moment.

Most people would have focused on the depression.

Erickson noticed the violets.

Most people would have asked, “What is wrong with you?”

Erickson silently seemed to ask, “What is still alive in you?”

He did not make her sit for a long therapeutic conversation.

He did not analyse her sadness.

He did not interpret the curtains.

He did not ask why the piano was closed.

He simply asked her one question.

“Do you have a list of every birth, illness, wedding, and funeral in your congregation?”

She did.

Of course she did.

She was connected to the church, even if she had disconnected from the people.

Then Erickson gave her one simple instruction.

From now on, whenever there is a birth, send an African violet.
Whenever someone is ill, send an African violet.
Whenever there is a wedding, send an African violet.
Whenever there is a funeral, send an African violet.

Not a lecture.
Not a long prayer.
Not a motivational quote.

A violet.

Grown by her.
Wrapped by her.
Sent in her name.

That was it.

That was the intervention.

No grand technique.
No complicated framework.
No dramatic breakthrough moment.

Just a gentle redirection of something she was already growing.

Years later, when she passed away at a ripe old age, the local newspaper carried a headline that stayed with people.

Milwaukee mourns the Violet Lady. Beloved by thousands.

Think about that.

She was not lacking love.
She was not lacking purpose.
She was not lacking community.

She was growing all three.

Quietly.

In pots.

In a sunlit glass room at the back of a silent house.

Waiting for someone to notice.

Waiting for someone to redirect it.

That, to me, is the beauty of Erickson’s work.

He did not give her a new life.

He helped her see the life that was still blooming inside her old one.

And perhaps that is where so many of us miss the point.

We keep looking for what needs to be fixed. What needs to be added. What needs to be installed. What new habit, new belief, new routine, new affirmation, new system, new identity must be brought in from outside.

As if we are empty rooms waiting to be furnished.

But often, transformation does not begin by adding something new.

Sometimes, it begins by noticing what is already alive.

NLP, at its best, does this.

It does not treat a person as broken.

It looks for the resource.

The pattern.
The strength.
The memory.
The value.
The forgotten ability.
The quiet violet growing somewhere in the background.

And then it asks a different question.

Not, “What is missing?”

But, “Where can this be used?”

Because sometimes your gift has not disappeared. It has only become inward-facing.

Sometimes your love has not died. It has only lost direction.

Sometimes your purpose is not absent. It is simply sitting in a glass room, waiting to be sent into the world.

So let me ask you this.

What is your violet?

What is that one thing you have been quietly growing, perhaps for years, without realising its value?

And who, somewhere in the world, is waiting to receive it?

 

📖 Hook from the Book

“Attention is the beginning of devotion.” — Mary Oliver, Upstream

 

🎬 Movie Motivation

“Tumhare paas talent hai, par tum usse waste kar rahe ho.”

Translated: “You have the talent, you are just wasting it.”

This line from Wake Up Sid reminds us that the problem is rarely absence. The problem is usually the angle at which we are aiming what we already have.

 

🏆 Popular Post of the Week

The Psychology of Persuasion – in numbers

 

📢 Announcement of the Week

If something in this episode sat down inside you and refused to leave, that is the signal.

Join me live for the free webinar Outwardly Successful, Inwardly Stuck. It is built for the high performer who has built the outer life beautifully and is now ready to name the inner thing nobody at work asks about.

👉 Save your seat here

 

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 #164 of NLP Around You

🧠 Thoughtful Thought

“Strip away your doing, and meet whoever is left. That person is the one running your life.”

— Dr Mehernosh J Randeria

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

 

💬 NLP Quote Corner

“Your behaviour does not define you. Your identity does. Change one, and the other follows.”

— Robert Dilts

 

⏳ One Minute NLP – Identity vs Behaviour

Most people try to change their lives at the level of behaviour.

Wake up earlier. Eat cleaner. Reply faster. Speak less in meetings. Spend more time with family. Read more books.

And almost all of it slips back within weeks.

Not because the behaviour was wrong. Because the identity underneath the behaviour did not change.

In NLP, we work with what Robert Dilts called the Logical Levels. Behaviour is a surface. Identity is the bedrock. If you try to install a new behaviour into an old identity, the old identity quietly dismantles it overnight, like a body rejecting a transplant.

A man who believes “I am a hustler” cannot rest, no matter how many wellness apps he downloads. A woman who believes “I am the strong one” cannot ask for help, no matter how exhausted she is. The behaviour they want is not the problem. The story they hold about themselves is.

Explore this today. Take one behaviour you keep failing to change. Then ask, gently, what kind of person would I have to become for this new behaviour to feel natural? That answer is the work.

Behaviour is what you do.

Identity is who you are when no one is watching.

 

🔮 Meta Magic – Coaching Chronicles

The CFO Who Couldn’t Sit Still

He walked into the session in a charcoal grey suit, sleeves crisp, watch heavy on his wrist.

Senior finance leader. Mid-fifties. Two grown children. A career résumé that takes a full minute to read out loud.

“I want more meaning in my role,” he said, settling into the chair. “The numbers are good. The team is good. But something is off.”

We talked for twenty minutes. He was articulate. Self-aware. Already half-coached, the way senior people often arrive these days.

Then I asked him to do something simple.

“Sit with me in silence for sixty seconds. No phone. Eyes open or closed, your choice. Just sit.”

He smiled. The kind of smile a senior leader gives when he assumes this is a warm-up to something more interesting.

Ten seconds in, his right hand started tapping his knee.

Twenty seconds in, his thumb went looking for his phone.

Thirty seconds in, he opened his eyes and laughed.

“Let’s just keep talking, doctor. I think better when I’m talking.”

I let the moment land. Not as an accusation. Just as information.

“You came in saying something is off,” I said. “I think we just met it.”

He frowned.

“For thirty years,” I said, “your nervous system has learned that stillness equals falling behind. Pausing means losing. Silence means something is wrong. Your body cannot tell the difference between rest and risk anymore.”

He went quiet.

A different kind of quiet this time.

Not performance. Recognition.

“So what do I do?”

“Nothing yet. First, notice. The man who walked in here wants more meaning. But the man who lives inside that suit cannot tolerate sixty seconds of meaninglessness. Those are two different men. Until they meet, no strategy will work.”

He nodded slowly. Then said something I will not forget.

“If I am not producing, I do not know who I am.”

That sentence, said out loud, is the entire problem and the entire doorway, both at once.

In NLP, we say identity drives behaviour. Strategy without identity-level work is decoration. You can teach a CFO mindfulness, journaling, breath work, every tool in the wellness catalogue. None of it sticks if his core identity is “I am what I produce”. Because the moment he stops producing, even for a minute, his body reads it as danger.

The work, then, is not to add a new habit.

It is to widen the definition of who he is.

Until “I am at rest” becomes a sentence he can say without flinching, every productivity hack will quietly fail him. And so will every promise of meaning.

So let me ask you…

When the doing stops, who do you become?

 

📖 Hook from the Book

“It is not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.”

— Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts

 

🎬 Movie Motivation

“Kabhi kabhi lagta hai apun hi bhagwan hai.”

Translated: “Sometimes I feel I am God myself.”

This iconic line from Sacred Games captures the trap of identity built on doing. When everything you have ever achieved feels like you, you cannot afford to stop. Because the moment you do, the version of you on the throne starts to disappear.

 

🏆 Popular Post of the Week

Last week, the Dhurandhar Arc concluded on Lights! Camera! NLP!. Ten days, ten chapters, one spy thriller read through an NLP lens. The complete arc is now compiled as a free e-book, ten chapters in one PDF.

→Download the free e-book here.

 

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

 

Thoughtfully Yours,

Mehernosh Randeria

Your W3 Coach