Welcome to Episode #180 of NLP Around You.
🧠 Thoughtful Thought
“When they do not understand you, change the channel, not the volume.”
For your daily dose of Thoughtful Thoughts, get your Thoughtful Calendar here.
💬 NLP Quote Corner
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein
⏳ One Minute NLP – The Three Languages in Every Room
You have explained it twice. The other person still looks blank. So you explain it a third time, a little slower, a little louder, using exactly the same words.
Nothing changes.
NLP calls this a mismatch of representational systems. We each take the world in through pictures, sounds and feelings, and most of us lean heavily on one of the three. That preference leaks out through our verbs.
Listen for them. The person who leads with pictures says I see what you mean, it is not clear, the whole thing looks off. The person who leads with sound says that rings true, it does not sound right, I hear you. The person who leads with feeling says I cannot get a grip on this, something is not sitting right, it feels heavy.
Three people. One message. Three completely different filing systems.
Here is the practice for today. In your next conversation, catch three verbs the other person uses. Then answer in the same family. Draw it for the picture person. Talk it through, out loud, for the sound person. Walk the feeling person through the steps.
Repetition is louder.
Translation is clearer.
🔮 Meta Magic
Three People, One Briefing
Nandita had rehearsed the deck 4 times.
22 slides. Thursday morning. A new distribution plan that would move nine warehouses onto a single scheduling system, and three regional heads in the room who would have to run it.
She presented for 40 minutes. Nobody interrupted. She thought that was a good sign.
Then the questions came.
Anjali went first. “I cannot see where this is going,” she said. “Slide 14 and slide 19 do not line up for me. The whole picture is fuzzy.”
Faisal shook his head slowly. “It does not sound right. You keep saying phased. Nobody has told me when. Something is off in the way this is being pitched.”
Suresh had not spoken for the entire hour. He went last. “I cannot get a grip on it. On paper it is fine. But something is not sitting right.”
Nandita walked back to her desk with three problems.
She spent the weekend building a longer deck. 31 slides. More detail, more data, more of everything she had already said.
Her director looked at it on Monday morning and asked her one question.
“How many objections did you actually get on Thursday?”
“Three.”
“Read them to me again.”
She read them again.
Then she stopped reading and started listening.
Anjali could not see it. Faisal could not hear it. Suresh could not feel it.
Three complaints. Or one complaint, said in three languages.
And Nandita had delivered the entire 40 minutes in only one of them. Slides, diagrams, colour-coded charts. A beautiful visual argument, handed to two people who do not live in pictures.
She never opened the deck again.
She sent Anjali a single page. One flow, left to right, nine boxes, one arrow. Anjali replied in eleven minutes. Got it.
She rang Faisal and talked him through the sequence out loud. No attachment. Twenty-two minutes on the phone, during which he interrupted her four times, argued once, and then said, “Right. Now it sounds like a plan.”
She took Suresh to the Bhiwandi warehouse on Wednesday and walked the route with him. Receiving bay, staging, dispatch. Two hours on his feet. Somewhere near the loading dock he stopped and said, “Okay. Now I have got hold of it.”
Nothing about the plan had changed.
Not one number. Not one date. Not one warehouse.
The plan was never the problem. The plan was already fine on Thursday morning. What had failed was a quiet assumption she had never examined, that everyone in the room takes the world in the same way she does.
Most of us carry that assumption into every conversation we have. We explain the way we understand. And when it does not land, we explain the same way again, only harder.
So let me ask you.
The last time somebody told you they did not understand you, what did you do next?
Did you explain it again…
or did you explain it differently?
📖 Hook from the Book
“The eye does not see things but images of things that mean other things.” — Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
🎬 Movie Motivation
“Koi bure students nahi hote, sirf bure teachers hote hain.” (There are no bad students, only bad teachers.) This dialogue from the movie Hichki reminds us that when a message does not land, the first honest place to look is the delivery, not the listener.
📢 Announcement of the Week
MIND GAMES, a live wellness seminar.
Today, Saturday, 29 August 2026. 5.30 pm to 7.30 pm.
The Radio Room, Radio Club, Colaba, Mumbai.
An evening on the games the mind plays on all of us, and what changes the moment you can name them. Free for members and their guests. Prior registration is required and seating is limited.
👉 https://mindgames.w3successacademy.com
Missed the past issues of NLP Around You? Find them all here.
Thoughtfully Yours,
Mehernosh Randeria
Your W3 Coach
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