Why Practice Doesn’t Always Make Perfect
How to Practice Hypnotic Language Patterns
If you have heard the phrase, “practice makes perfect” you might want to let it go and replace it with “Only Perfect Practice Makes Perfect”. This article is about the lessons I have taken from learning music and how you can use them to rapidly develop your NLP Persuasion Skills.
Accelerated Learning, Music and Persuasion
Way back in 2006 I went on Duncan Lorien’s Understanding of Music Seminar. As a guitarist for 20 years and having studied Accelerated Learning for even longer I went on the seminar arrogantly thinking that I might get a little inspiration to play more but didn’t really expect to learn anything.
In two and a half days I learnt more about music than I had in twenty years, but even better I suddenly realised there were a whole lot of things I could transpose into dramatically developing your persuasion skills. This article specifically is about some of the core elements of practice for persuasion skills but they could apply to any area of your life. For example Tom condensed a week long training programme down into a day using these exact principles. Read the article here.
Using, Playing and Practicing - What is the Difference?
One thing Duncan is very clear about is separating practice from playing and performing. Musicians often confuse these three and so do people developing their persuasion skills. In front of 10 000 people in the Albert Hall would not be the right place to start learning a new piece of music. In the same way the middle of a job interview would not be the time to start using a new language pattern you have never tried before.
Many musicians play their favourite pieces and then confuse this with practicing. If you are playing things you already know then you are not developing your skills. Even worse, for musicians they often have a piece of music they can almost play well but they stumble in the same place all the time. By continually playing the piece in this way they are reinforcing the stumble.
The only purpose of practice is to practice and this should be geared to developing the skill, understanding or use of whatever it is you are practicing. In the Persuasion Skills Black Book we discuss letting go of outcomes and having fun as a way of concentrating on the practice. Ten minutes of this is far more valuable to you than buckets of sweat in hour long meetings where the outcome is more important than the practice.
Overlearning
Part of Duncan’s teaching on the Understanding of Music Seminar is practicing technical skills until you can do them without conscious thought. So for example you might be practicing scales or a performance piece whilst simultaneously reciting the alphabet backwards. This means when you get to perform you have the ability to focus on adding expression and communicating with your audience instead of tying all your energy into getting your fingers in the right place at the right time.
As a persuasion artist imagine learning a pattern. You think about using it in many different contexts, practice saying it out loud by yourself or with a study buddy and you go out to play with it in normal conversations you are doing a thing called over learning. Another way people think of this is engraining the skill into the muscle memory. The purpose of doing this is so when you need the pattern or the skill you use it unconsciously so all you have to do is focus on the conversation.
The Sum of the Parts is Greater than the Whole
Lots of simple ten minute exercises that are focused on a key skill area are far better at developing the skills than long unfocused practice sessions. For example as a guitarist I find particular chord changes more difficult than others. There is no point practicing the changes I find easy - I can do those already. I need to isolate the changes I find hard, develop them into an exercise and then practice that. Develop a good exercise and I will have the problem solved in a few ten minute sessions.
A persuasion skills example would be this. I know that one thing people have difficulty developing the confidence to use these patterns in live situations. So what if I developed an exercise that is quick and easy to do that focuses on developing that confidence. In the book I outline an exercise where you develop patterns to say to yourself to leverage that confidence and ask you to link it to something that you do every day. For example how about developing ten patterns about getting confidence whilst brushing your teeth and then saying them out loud (after you have washed your mouth out to minimise the spray)? How many days do you think it would be before you were confident and fluent with a bunch of new patterns to use?
Mastery is only about Pace
One of the keys you will learn about practicing music on the Understanding of Music Seminar is about playing in slow time to get everything perfect. Duncan is very firm about playing the right notes in the right order and keeping the pace slow enough for you to be able to do that. The only difference between practicing a piece of music and playing it is the speed at which you go.
The idea is that if you play slow enough you can get your fingers in the right place every time. This teaches your muscles the right movements, you are learning more control and you are practicing perfection. As you develop fluency you speed increases until you are at the performance pace - all this without engraining the stumbles and pitfalls that most musicians seem to develop.
In terms of developing your persuasion techniques The Persuasion Skills Black Book reviews a specific sequence, building blocks if you like to develop your skills. For example the book lays out examples of all the patterns covertly before we discuss them. When discussing the pattern we look at examples in different contexts. You then write a few out for yourself and then practice them aloud on your own. Finally you go out and play with them with real people, firstly with a study buddy or someone that knows what you are doing and then with people that don’t but where it doesn’t matter. All of this is building up to “performance speed” where you are using these patterns as if you have always used them.
Understanding Accelerated Learning for Music and Persuasion
If you are:
- a musician looking for a quantum leap in your playing ability
- thinking of learning any musical instrument and want to be at a performance standard within three months
- someone fascinated by accelerated learning and want real practical tools you can transfer from music to any other context
then Duncan Lorien’s Understanding of Music seminar is a must attend course. I am hosting his one course date in the UK this year because of the effect this course has had on me. You can find out more here. If you can’t attend this one Duncan is delivering this course all over the world and you can find other dates and places on his website here: www.dlorien.com