Welcome to Episode #156 of NLP Around You
🧠 Thoughtful Thought
“Your trauma is not your fault, but healing is your responsibility.” — Thoughtfully Yours
For your daily dose of Thoughtful Thoughts, get your Thoughtful Calendar here.
💬 NLP Quote Corner
“To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.” — Fyodor Dostoevsky
⏳ One Minute NLP – The Power of One Word
A participant once shared something interesting during a session.
“I keep telling myself I have to finish this project.”
“Have to?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “If I don’t, everything will collapse.”
I asked him to pause for a moment and repeat the sentence.
“I have to finish this project.”
Now I asked him to change just one word.
Instead of have to, say choose to.
He tried it.
“I choose to finish this project.”
Something subtle shifted in his expression.
The same project.
The same deadline.
But a different internal experience.
You see, the phrase “have to” creates pressure.
It feels like force, obligation, even resistance.
But “choose to” creates ownership.
And ownership activates motivation.
In NLP, we often say:
The words you use are not just communication.
They are instructions to your nervous system.
So the next time you catch yourself saying:
“I have to do this.”
Pause.
Replace it with:
“I choose to do this.”
The task may remain the same.
But your relationship with it changes instantly.
Sometimes transformation begins with just one word.
🔮 Meta Magic – Are You Solving Problems… Or Quietly Creating Them?
He entered the session with the confidence of someone who had built a reputation for being dependable.
A senior team leader.
Efficient. Trusted. Always the one people turned to when things got complicated.
But that morning, his frustration was visible.
“My team isn’t stepping up,” he said bluntly.
“They come to me for everything.”
Everything.
Small decisions.
Routine approvals.
Problems they should easily handle themselves.
“I’ve tried empowering them,” he continued.
“I keep telling them to take ownership. But somehow the responsibility still lands back on my table.”
Most conversations around this topic go in familiar directions.
Team capability.
Delegation frameworks.
Accountability structures.
But something about the way he described his role in the team felt different.
So instead of analysing the team, I asked about him.
“What do you usually do when someone comes to you with a problem?”
He didn’t hesitate.
“I solve it. Or I guide them immediately. That’s my job as a leader, right?”
“Immediately?” I asked.
“Yes. I don’t like leaving things hanging. It slows down progress.”
I nodded.
“Let me ask you something,” I said.
“When someone comes to you with a problem… do they usually leave with the answer?”
“Of course,” he said. “That’s why they come to me.”
“And when they face a similar problem next time?”
He paused.
“They come again.”
The room went quiet.
Not uncomfortable quiet.
Reflective quiet.
I continued gently.
“If every time they come to you, they receive the answer… what are they being trained to become?”
He leaned back slowly.
Not defensive.
Just thinking.
“Dependent,” he said after a moment.
Exactly.
His intention was to help.
But his speed of solving had quietly trained the team to outsource thinking.
He wasn’t managing a team that lacked capability.
He had unintentionally created a system where answers lived with him.
The shift wasn’t about pushing the team harder.
It was about asking better questions before giving better answers.
Sometimes leadership isn’t about being the fastest problem solver in the room.
Sometimes it’s about being the last one to solve the problem.
Because the moment you stop answering immediately…
someone else starts thinking.
And that’s where real ownership begins.
So here’s a question worth sitting with:
Are you solving problems for your team…
or are you unknowingly training them to stop solving them themselves?
📖 Hook from the Book
“If you have an idea you’re excited about and you don’t bring it to life, it’s not uncommon for the idea to find its voice through another maker. This isn’t because the other artist stole your idea, but because the idea’s time has come.” — Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being
🎬 Movie Motivation
“I’ve delivered a million passengers safely over 40 years in the air, but in the end I’m going to be judged on 208 seconds.” This dialogue from the movie Sully reminds us that human perception compresses identity into single moments.
🏆 Popular Post of the Week
The Common Misconceptions About Persuasion
PS: Missed the past issues of NLP Around You? Find them all here: https://w3coach.com/nlparoundyou/
Thoughtfully Yours,
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