The wait is over. The cover comes off.
I’m delighted to introduce my fifth book:
NOW LET’S PLAY
A Practitioner’s Playbook for Neuro-Linguistic Programming
Built for those who want to move beyond simply knowing NLP, and start practising, applying and embodying it.
After months of writing, refining and bringing this Playbook to life, it feels wonderful to finally share it with you.
And now… let’s play.
🎬 Watch the reveal → https://www.instagram.com/p/Dcsfbopu4ki/
📘 Now available on Amazon → https://link.amazon/B0gKyLnvg
Welcome to Episode #181 of NLP Around You.
🧠 Thoughtful Thought
“Flexibility is not indecision. It is intelligence in motion.”
For your daily dose of Thoughtful Thoughts, get your Thoughtful Calendar here.
💬 NLP Quote Corner
“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow.” — Lao Tzu
⏳ One Minute NLP – The Law of Requisite Variety
Notice how the same joke lands with one friend and falls completely flat with another. If you can reach for a second version, a different setup, a different pace, you get the laugh either way. If you only ever have the one telling, you are gambling on the room matching your script.
NLP calls this behavioural flexibility, built on what is known as the law of requisite variety: in any system, the element with the widest range of responses ends up steering the outcome.
Most of us have a favourite move. A tone we default to in conflict. A single way we give feedback, regardless of who is sitting across the table. It worked once, so we filed it under “what works” and reached for it again. And again.
The trouble is not that the move was wrong. The trouble is that we stopped noticing when the room had changed.
Ask yourself, the next time something you say lands badly: what is a second way I could say this? Not a better way. A different way. One new response, kept in reserve, is worth more than ten repetitions of the one you already have.
One response is a habit.
Ten responses is a choice.
🔮 Meta Magic
The Locksmith Who Only Had One Key
He was nineteen when he forged it.
The town hall door had swollen shut every monsoon for as long as anyone could remember. Three older locksmiths had given up on it. He hadn’t.
Three nights. A dozen failed blanks. Then, on the fourth attempt, the door gave way.
Word travelled faster than he did. By the following week, that single key hung on a leather cord around his neck, and people began calling him The Locksmith, as if the town had never needed one before him.
For years, the key kept earning its place. The town was small then. Most doors shared the same bones – the same old ironmongers had fitted them, decades apart, using the same patterns. His one key, filed and refiled a hundred times, could coax open nearly anything.
He stopped noticing when that stopped being true.
Traders began arriving from beyond the hills, carrying locks built differently – tighter wards, foreign mechanisms, puzzle-boxes disguised as latches. He pressed the same key into all of them. Out of habit, not hope.
Sometimes it forced a lock open, badly, leaving scratches that never fully closed. Sometimes it didn’t move at all. He would stand there, jaw tight, working the same key harder, as though the problem were his grip and not his tool.
His apprentice, a quiet boy named Farid who noticed everything and said little, carried a ring of a dozen keys and a pouch of thin steel picks. He studied each lock before he touched it. He was slower. He was also, increasingly, the one people asked for.
One ordinary Tuesday, everything changed.
The merchant Devraj’s new vault would not open for anyone. The old locksmith walked up to it and reached for the key around his neck, the way he always did.
Farid stood beside him. He said nothing. He simply held up a small pouch of picks.
The old man’s hand stopped in mid-air.
He looked at the vault. Then at the picks. Then at the key in his hand.
He understood, finally, that his key had only ever given the same answer. It had never once asked the lock what it needed.
That evening, he set the key down. He picked up a blank steel bar instead, and began filing a new one.
So let me ask you this: where in your life are you still reaching for the one key that opened one door, years ago, and calling it skill?
📖 Hook from the Book
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing.” — Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
🎬 Movie Motivation
“There is no secret ingredient. It’s just you.”
This line from the movie Kung Fu Panda reminds us that the old locksmith’s mistake wasn’t the wrong key. There was never a secret key to begin with, only the willingness to look freshly at what’s in front of you.
📢 Announcement of the Week
Ready to take your practice further? The NLP Master Practitioner programme is now open for enrolment.
👉 https://www.w3successacademy.com/courses/nlp-master-practitioner
Missed the past issues of NLP Around You? Find them all here: https://w3coach.com/nlparoundyou/
Thoughtfully Yours,
Mehernosh Randeria
Your W3 Coach
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