Ve➔Aic➔Vic➔Ki➔Then I decided to model my husband’s strategy and started
by watching him. I noticed that he didn’t look up at all, he
looked down at the pedals or the ground all the time (Visual
external, although a different visual external to the one I had
been using). He maintained a regular rhythm with his pedaling
(Kinaesthetic external). That was all I could get by watching
him. I tried these bits of the strategy and it made a difference.
I got up the hill at a consistent speed, but it hurt! I was aware
of the pain in my thighs all the way up.
So I then asked my husband about his strategy (I didn’t use
those words). I told him what I thought I had discovered about
his strategy and he confirmed that was what he did. However, he
added some new pieces that I could only get by questioning or
by watching his eye movements. When he looked down he said
he did indeed watch the pedals but only fleetingly—he listened
to the regular rhythm of the pedals as they turned (Auditory
external), he said something to himself like “That’s good”
(Auditory internal dialog), and he felt satisfied (Kinaesthetic
internal). So I asked him about the pain and he said that yes, he
felt pain (Kinaesthetic external), but he told himself that the
more pain he felt the fitter he was getting (Auditory internal
dialog) and he felt good about the pain (Kinaesthetic internal).
This was quite a different strategy from the one that I had
been using and there were some key pieces I had not picked
up the first time round. His strategy coded was:Ve➔Ae➔Aid➔Kiand anywhere in there if he became aware
of pain he would insert a loop (Ke➔Aid➔Ki)I have just returned from a cycling circuit with my husband that
included several hills and we made it to the top at the same
time for most of them—I even got to the top first on a few!If your work depends in any way on your ability to influence
others, to do this with excellence you need to know how to178 NLP AT WORK