New York Training Institute For Neuro Linguistic Programming

MINDWORKS: Unlock the Promise Within, NLP Tools for Building a Better Life has been republished by Crown House Publishing  and is titled, MINDWORKS: Introduction to NLP, the Secrets of Your Mind Revealed!
 

A popular and best selling introduction to and overview of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Mindworks has been translated into Danish, Spanish, Greek, German and Turkish. Reissued in paperback and still used as a basic reference. 

Mindworks shows you how you think, how you talk to yourself, how you make yourself "see" things in the mind's eye and "hear" through the mind's ear. How do you motivate yourself? (Or conversely, how do you make yourself fail?) What is it that you habitually do but are unaware of that controls the outcomes of your life?

Being aware means gaining the power to choose between what you do (or think) "automatically" and what you want to do. Becoming conscious of how your hidden (unconscious) mind actually works, and applying the very simple techniques demonstrated in Mindworks, will allow you to make changes that lead to new thinking and new behavior.

Instead of telling yourself "I'm not good enough" (whether or not you realize you're doing it), in an instant you can switch to "I can do it!" Instead of imagining a fuzzy picture of your goal, you can create a clear, sharp colourful image that really motivates you. Mindworks teaches you how to "change" your mind, reprogram your thoughts, gain control of your fears, and fulfil your desires and potential.

Using the amazingly effective tools of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), Mindworks demonstrates how to unlock the resources, abilities and creativity that you already have to accomplish whatever you want to do and take control of your life.

Anything is possible - when you know your own mind!

• Say what you mean to get others to respond the way you want

• Use principles of the new linguistics to communicate more precisely with yourself and others

• Identify and access your resources to make full use of your talents, skills, and abilities

• Create a 'blueprint" for the road ahead by asking yourself a few simple questions

• Recycle mistakes, setbacks and failures into resourceful experiences

• Replace your destructive behaviours with constructive ones that still fulfil your original purpose

• See things from new perspectives; go from "stuck" to choice in an instant

Mindworks shows you all the astonishing and wonderful ways to take full advantage of everything you have and are, to accomplish whatever you set out to do!

This book will be published by Crown House Publishing in United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in spring 2008. It will be available in bookstores and from Amazon and Barnsandnobles.

Reviews

NEWSDAY

In "Mindworks", Anné Linden, director of the New York Training Institute for Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), demystifies this popular self-help system, one that draws on several fields - including linguistics, psychology and anthropology. NLP, she says, offers practical techniques for changing behavior by means of clear communication, both with ourselves and others.

"NLP is concerned with HOW our minds work - the patterns we use to organize information, the ways we motivate (or inhibit) ourselves," Linden writes, "and HOW we can modify automatic patterns of response to allow new choices, new behaviors, new ways of thinking and feeling." Rather than delving into the past to resolve present-day problems, the focus in NLP is on quick resolution of "trouble spots" here and now.

Each chapter outlines one of the seven basic principles of NLP work and each ends with a short exercise to reinforce the preceding information. You learn, for example, how to determine how you take in information about the world: are you a visual type, someone who relies taking in information through the ears, or a touch-oriented, hands-on kind of communicator?

This book is an excellent introduction to a fascinating branch of psychology that seems to be an easily accessible way for people to take control of their lives.

SuzAnné Curley

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The Columbus Dispatch

DELVE into the subconscious to put mind over matter

 
Positive thinking goes only so far. Anné Linden helps people use the subconscious mind to improve relationships, eliminate self-destructive behaviour and achieve goals.

Linden, a New York educator, distills her basic techniques and exercises in Mindworks: Unlock the Promise Within/NLP Tools for Building a Better Life (Andrews McMeel, $22.95).

"NLP" stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming - becoming conscious of automatic patterns and behaviors and learning how they can be modified or replaced.

"I thought of the many tools and techniques we have available," Linden said in an interview, "and especially how we do and don't use our minds. I thought if I could give people two or three particular ways to think about motivating themselves or solving problems, it could make a huge difference in their lives."

Linden said her primary audience is people 30-50 years old who are "professionals or people in transition" who "need a little motivation" along with the training that she can provide.

"Three or four of these techniques can mean a difference." Linden said the techniques themselves won't solve problems, but serve as tools to help people define choices. Linden, who conducts classes throughout the United States and Europe, has taught the program since 1979.

She offers seven basic techniques. "It depends on where you are getting stuck," she said. "If your problem is with relationships, either in love or in business, your communication is important."

Linden cites an instance of a husband expressing affection to his wife while she is distracted. Communication can succeed if they focus on what is said, pay attention to nonverbal communication, try to understand what the other is saying and demonstrate flexibility in leading the conversation and following when the other leads. Sections of Mindworks are designed to help people define successful outcomes, learn from failure, tap mental and physical resources and understand differences between specific and general phrases.

"The question is, `Where do you feel the lack of choices?" Linden said. "Those who need to motivate themselves and organize in the future should focus on the fact that success is the ability to achieve intended results. If you're really stuck in terms of self-esteem, you need to learn to turn failure into feedback."

Throughout the book, Linden provides vignettes of individuals with problems to solve. She offers suggestions and exercises to achieve goals. "This doesn't mean that you follow the techniques one or two times....and get what you want," she said, "but you shift your perception regarding the possibilities."

Ultimately, the recommended techniques are practiced automatically. "That's when they become useful, especially in interpersonal relationships. Intrapersonal relationships -relationships with yourself - will take longer."

Linden said her book is "not for people who are desperate." It shouldn't be seen as a substitute for therapy. Nor does successful learning of any of the techniques assure perfection. "This isn't about never reacting, or never feeling bad or discouraged," she said. "Even with these skills, it's OK to be human, to get overwhelmed and to forget."Then you remember you now have the skills to do things differently, and use them."

By Julia Osborne

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Blue Stone Press

Writer Wants Us to Reach Our Dreams

For more than 20 years, Anné Linden has been teaching people to know their minds. Not what they think, but how: The way the brain puts together pictures, words, sounds, and sensations to represent experiences, memories and ideas. Linden, a therapist, teacher, and author who lives in Accord, wants us to understand that we all have the power to reach our dreams, simply by exploring the inner workings of our minds.

Listening to Linden talk about her life and work, it's clear that she has always been an independent thinker with the determination and vision to pursue her own dreams. She is the author of two self-help books, director and founder of the New York Training Institute for Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and a world-renowned trainer who regularly teaches workshops throughout the United States and Europe.

"I've always done it my way," she says. Her voice is soft but there is no hesitation in her words. The striking gray-blonde curls that frame her face seem to symbolize a reluctance to be tamed by expectations or rules. "I always took it for granted that being a woman would not stop me from doing whatever I wanted."

Linden grew up in Long Island and moved to Manhattan at 18, determined to succeed as an actress. She spent nearly 20 years in theatre, waiting tables to fill income gaps. She glows as she ticks off the names of the poets and dancers with whom she worked in the "incredibly creative, incredibly exciting" off-Broadway scene of the 1960's. But in the `70's, Linden decided to quit acting - "the creative side was not worth putting up with the business side" -and after her last child was born she began her training as a therapist.

While in training, Linden discovered Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), a new psychological model that was then being taught in small workshops around the country. NLP is based on the premise that once we identify our perceptual and cognitive patterns, we can positively affect our emotions, thoughts, behaviour, and sense of self to improve our lives. That theory may sound complex but the basic tools and techniques used by NLP are almost startlingly simple. From the start, Linden was "hooked" by the notion of practical communication tools that brought immediate results and helped people to solve their own problems. "Ideas are great, I love ideas," she says enthusiastically. "But you need the tools and skills to translate ideas into action. NLP gives people a way to learn about themselves, to become fuller, more interesting people."

For instance, the first NLP principles deal with communication, how to say precisely what you mean and get the desired response. NLP teaches us to calibrate, to pay attention to auditory and visual cues that reveal what another is thinking. Posture, eye movement, gestures, as well as pitch, volume, or tempo of voice are all signals that we can use to improve communication.

"Communication isn't throwing the ball at somebody then turning your back," Linden explains. "It's getting a response, and trying something else until you get a response that indicates you're getting your message across."

When it works, two people establish a rapport, two-way communication that flows in an atmosphere of trust. I knew I felt comfortable interviewing Linden, but when I transcribed my audio tapes I realized our voices sounded strikingly similar. Well, I thought, we are both from New York, but neither of us really has much of an accent. A closer listen revealed it was the speed, the pitch of the words, not the accent, that was the same. Anné Linden is simply a master at subtly establishing rapport.

In 1979, Linden founded the New York Training Institute for NLP. At the time, her administrative office was her kitchen table and she fielded calls with her kids chattering in the background. Over the years the Institute outgrew several buildings, but Linden is now in the process of gearing things down and redefining her life. She teaches only on weekends and spends more time at her country home in Accord, devoting more energy to her family, her Irish Wolfhounds, and her writing.

Linden's most recent book, Mindworks: Unlock the Promise Within, NLP Tools for Building A Better Life, summarizes the concepts of NLP in a precise, practical "owner's manual for the mind." Readers who work through the book's seven parts and try the exercises will begin to understand how they think, and what behaviours, conscious or unconscious, are holding them back from their goals.

Long considered one of the foremost NLP trainers, Linden continually refines the original NLP concepts by incorporating her own vision and values. She integrated NLP and the Enneagram, an ancient model of personality types, in her first book, The Enneagram and NLP. Her next book will focus on boundaries, a topic she has been exploring and teaching for several years.

"Boundaries are very paradoxical," she explains, her hands punctuating the words. "That tension of two things that can't seem to exist in the same space, yet do. Boundaries require us to be separate yet connected. A lot of people have trouble with that, but boundaries give us perspective."

She explains how often our most troublesome memories are imprinted in our minds using a sort of "tunnel vision." We zoom in on the negative image and merge completely into it. But if we back off and restore a normal relationship between foreground and background, changing the boundaries around the memory, we see the big picture and regain our perspective. Once the power of the memory is reduced we can move beyond it.

Helping people to move beyond their blocks and tap their inner resources has been Anné Linden's life for two decades. "I've really loved my life," she concludes, "because I've been able to make a difference. Awakening people to the things they already have, exposing them to certain tools and skills that give them a sense of their empowerment, of possibilities. It's really thrilling to teach somebody how to do something with their own mind that impacts their heart, their soul, and their behavior."

Liz Hill

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MINDWORKS

The Secrets of Your Mind Revealed

by By Anné Linden, with Kathrin Perutz

This book, previously published as Mindworks: Unlock the Promise Within, is designed to give the non-specialist an overview of what Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) is all about. As the authors say, ironically they are not giving readers any new information but, instead, they are helping readers to use more effectively what they already know.

NLP is all the rage at the moment. The authors are honest enough to argue that NLP is simply becoming more aware of how our minds work and then using that information to modify the ways in which we respond to people and situations. In other words, it is a self-administered form of cognitive counseling combined with an injection of a large dose of intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence! That is not to denigrate NLP -- it is a highly useful way of raising people's self-awareness and alerting them to the discrepancies between how they think they are communicating with other people and how in fact other people may be perceiving their attempts at communication.

Part One, "The Meaning Of Your Communication Is The Response You Get", is a series of short chapters on various aspects of communication. There is advice about being self-reflective and a great number of extremely sensible observations about how we fail to get over the message that we wish to convey. Being trapped in one's own bubble is the basic answer but that comes in all shapes and sizes -- failure to realize that the other person is in a totally different state of mind from one's own, failure to grasp the resonance of certain words and expressions, etc. The chapter on 'backtracking' is particularly wise -- picking up on something that the other person has said, clarifying it and using it as the clarification as the basis for continuing the conversation. Failure to 'backtrack' and clarify is indeed the cause of many a misunderstanding. Part One is a thoroughly commonsense set of guidelines for better communication.

Part Two, "You Have All The Resources You Need", has rather a different slant. This section tries to sensitize us to the skills we possess but perhaps do not use to their full extent. One chapter tries to get us to flex our visual and auditory skills. Another chapter alerts us to the fact that we in fact have all sorts of skills that, because we have not named them as skills, have never been recognized as such by us. Another alerts us to the possibility of linking a particular response to a certain stimulus so as to be able to feel positive and confident in situations that might otherwise make us feel differently. The final chapter in this section sets out to make us aware of how even our posture affects the way we perceive ourselves  - and, obviously, how others too perceive us.

Part Three, "Success Is The Ability To Achieve Intended Results", is a future-oriented section. Its chapters concentrate on desired outcomes. The very sensible advice centers on a cluster of issues -- the importance of asking oneself what exactly it is that one wants to achieve, formulating that outcome in positive terms of what one does want to happen rather than in negative terms of what one wants to avoid, making sure that the desired outcome is under one's control and is not something that is unachievable for one reason or another, marshalling one's resources, and, finally, strategically implementing the route map that will get one to the desired outcome. This is all thoroughly sensible stuff.

Part Four, "You Can Turn Failure Into Feedback", is mainly about how we can rethink what we may conceive of as failure. This is partly the 'glass half empty' versus 'the glass half full' idea i.e. very few so-called failures are unequivocal disasters but often have an upside to them If we concentrate on the negative we become dispirited but if we stop wallowing in the failure, stand back a little and we look at those aspects that were a success we can change the complexion of the whole event. Again, this is all very sensible. Part Four also has a chapter on chunking. This basically about how we can change our thinking by chunking up to superordinate categories or chunking down to subcategories and thus looking at the issue differently.

Part Five, "The Map Is Not The Territory", is all about understanding how language works -- or often does not work. The most useful chapter in this part is the one that alerts us to the dangers of unspecified (and often generalized) nouns and pronouns, fuzzy verbs, nominalizations (the making of processes into a thing), polarizing words such as 'always', 'never', etc. and, lastly, mind reading. This last harks back to earlier in the book when we were reminded that the words spoken by one person are often not interpreted by the receiver in the way intended by the speaker.

Part Six, "There Is A Positive Intention Behind Every Behavior", acknowledges that we all have aspects to our personality that can sometimes result in poor behavior. However, by finding new and better ways to achieve our goals, ways that are more positively intended and received, we can put ourselves into a winning situation. The chapter on reframing, looking at the same situation but from a different and potentially much more positive angle, can help us to see things in a much better light. The last chapter in this section is particularly helpful in trying to get us to connect with our own unconscious and thus ascertain what it is that we truly want to achieve.

The last part, Part Seven, "There Are Always More Choices", is a series of chapters about how we define our choices and how we can redefine them by avoiding polar thinking, changing the perspective from which we view them, and dissolving negative emotions so that we can view our choices positively.

Some may view the book as a whole as clichéd but many others will see it as full of sound advice. NLP is not a radically new approach -- it is a mixture of psychological insights and common sense but it is no less useful for that.

© 2009 Kevin M. Purday

Kevin M. Purday has just completed his fortieth year as a teacher and has recently returned to the U.K. after being principal of schools in the Middle East and Far East. His great interests are philosophy and psychology. This review appeared in Metapsychology Online Reviews

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MINDWORKS: Introduction to NLP, the Secrets of Your Mind Revealed
By Anné Linden, with Kathrin Perutz

I have followed Anné Linden's work with interest for more than twenty years now and know her as a skilled and experienced NLP trainer. I'm delighted that she has at last found a way to share her knowledge and thinking with a wider audience. If you are not yet familiar with NLP then Mindworks is a gentle yet thorough introduction covering everything that you would wish to know. Anné writes with clarity and her experience shows through.

Julian Russell, Senior Executive Coach, PPD Consulting, Ltd. 

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MINDWORKS: Introduction to NLP, the Secrets of Your Mind Revealed
By Anné Linden, with Kathrin Perutz

Often, when I try to explain the intricacies of NLP to others who are not psychologically-inclined, I get one of two responses. One response is the "eyes glazing over" expression of the person who finds my explanation far too complicated. The other response is the enthusiasm of a novice who sees in NLP a path toward personal growth. Both people need an easy-to-understand approach to NLP that shows them how to use NLP for superb communication, accessing resourceful states, getting results, turning failure into feedback, and having more choice and flexibility in everyday situations. Mindworks by Anné Linden (with Kathrin Perutz) is the answer.

Mindworks is an "owner's manual for the mind" that allows readers to "make maximum use of the strengths and resources you already have." The book is divided into seven sections, each presenting a basic NLP presupposition:

The meaning of your communication is the response you get. This section covers how to create quality communication in interpersonal relationships: rapport, observation skills, calibration, representational systems and how they are expressed (verbally and non-verbally), uptime and downtime, sameness and differences, and pacing and leading.

You have all the resources you need. This section tells readers how to access their resources and develop their strengths and talents. The NLP tools are submodalities, anchoring, future conditioning, and body language.

Success is the ability to achieve intended results. Here, the book delves into goal-setting, values, outcomes, motivation, ecological considerations, and strategies.

You can turn failure into feedback. This section is a philosophical guide to understanding how to reframe failure - to discover the learnings, to see the new opportunities presented by failure, and to recognize that good that exists, alongside, or in spite of, the bad.

The map is not the territory. In this exploration of language patterns, Linden teaches the Meta Model - a method of questioning that facilitates specificity and understanding of meaning.

 

There is a positive intention behind every behavior. At this point, the text addresses our unconscious behaviors and how to manage them with an understanding of "parts", positive intentions, and reframing.

There are always more choices. Flexibility is the topic. Linden presents tools for change: perceptual shifts and pattern interrupts.

The Authors

Anné Linden directs the New York Training Institute for NLP and is one of the most highly-respected trainers in NLP. Mindworks is an updated version of her well-received, Mindworks: Unlock the Promise Within (Andrews McMeel, 1997). She has also written The Enneagram and NLP (Metamorphous Press, 1994). I had the delight to interview her in 2004 for Anchor Point magazine and it is a distinct pleasure to review this book. Kathrin Perutz has written both fiction and non-fiction for many years and has published several books and reviews.

Conclusion

Mindworks makes NLP palatable for the non-practitioner - someone who simply wants to know how to use NLP in daily life. Linden weaves the instruction into an upbeat, conversational delivery, with sample dialog, examples, and metaphors. Mindworks is a first-rate beginner's guide to NLP.

Judith E. Pearson, Ph.D. is a Licensed Professional Counselor, certified hypnotherapist, and certified NLP trainer, with a private practice in Springfield, Virginia. She has recently published The Weight, Hypnotherapy and You Weight Reduction Program: An NLP and Hypnotherapy Practitioner's Manual. Her website is  www.engagethepower.com

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Anné is a master teacher, a model of excellence, and her writing is wonderfully simple and crystal clear, offering readers empowering principles of transformation. She makes NLP very accessible, and I am most happy and eager to highly recommend her book to all my students, colleagues, and friends. We certainly will carry her book in our Learning Alliance bookstore!

Rev. Joyce Liechenstein, Ph.D.

Associate Director, One Spirit Learning Alliance and One Spirit Interfaith Seminary,  New York City

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