Flirting with NLP: what I learned in a year-long programme

In the past year, I’ve been a part of sth really great. It’s called NLP, neuro-linguistic programming. I attended 6-modules (6x Friday-Sunday, 144 hours) long course organized by Glotta Nova and delivered by Bernarda Potočnik, Tatjana Dragovič and Mihaela Hočevar.  After passing a practical and theoretical exam, I received international certificate by INLPTA as a NLP Practitioner. Read more about the course program here.

In a way, it was a funny experience. If you’d ask me about it 2 months ago, after we finished 6 modules, I’d say that I don’t really recommend it. That I found some small pieces of content useful, but overall it did not really touch me. We started in November 2014 and finished in November 2015. We had practical exam in the end of January and that’s why I started checking back on all the notes I made and techniques we learned. I got more and more inspired every week we met to practice the techniques and I became aware, that I’m actually using so many things I learned on NLP in everyday life. Suddenly, after being a part of it for more then a year, I had my “aha” moment. Everything we did finally made sense. I even really got the meaning of the word - neuro-linguistic programming on another level.

You probably still have no idea what I’m talking about. Let me share with you some of the most useful things I learned during my NLP course. If I sum it up, it improved my communication skills and it brought my self-awareness to another level. I’ve attended a lot of workshops in past years about strengths, weaknesses etc. But this brought my awareness to another level. It gave me the answers to where does a certain weakness come from, it gave me an insight, how much impact does your environment, family and things that happen, when you’re a child have on your daily way of dealing with people and tasks.

Some examples and content, that boosted my self-awareness the most:

Drivers. We are all driven by different things that affect the way we work, the way we behave. Some of us are in “hurry” phase - I need to do as many things as possible in as short time as possible, to not miss out on anything. Some of us are in “be perfect” phase. Everything I do, has to be perfect and I prefer not to pursue sth, if I know that I can’t be perfect at it. Some of us are in the “please others” phase. Everything I do, has to serve the needs of others first, I am less important and I have to make other people happy, even if my own goals suffer.

The point is, that it’s best to stay flexible, to be whatever is the most appropriate for the situation, which isn’t easy. In some situations in our life, it’s best to hurry, we have to make quick decision, follow deadlines. In others, it’s best to keep on with the perfectionist and make the most effort before we finish a project, to make it perfect. In others, it’s best to please others and serve their needs.

Now imagine “hurry” kind of person working with a “be perfect” person. First one can’t ever miss a deadline and prefers structure and organized way of working and communicating. Second one can’t ever give away sth that isn’t perfect and takes care of every little detail. In the end, they both get frustrated, due to their natural state of being, that they already developed as children. Maybe a “hurry” person always had to hurry, when she/he was a child and his/her family was never late. Maybe “be perfect” person was never good enough for his/her partners and seeking for approval, he/she developed a “be perfect” state of mind and behaviour. Who knows what’s behind, but it’s great that you become aware of this. Being aware of drives makes it easier for me to understand people I work with and to respond to their needs. I can also work on my own flexibility to be able to switch from different states of mind all the time.

Second piece of content I was the most excited about and that also boosted my self awareness a lot, is working on limiting beliefs. We all have a huge range of beliefs, that we follow in our life. For example; I have to work hard to be successful, point of life is to have a family, I’m not a morning person, I can’t move away from my parents since I will hurt them, I can’t say no to a friend since we might lose touch, I have to be honest, I have to take care of my self-development etc. Some of the beliefs have positive effect on our life and some of them can be quite limiting.

With NLP, you learn how to recognize your beliefs and identify the ones that  limit you to reach your goals or in impact your everyday behaviour in a negative way. NLP also gives you techniques to work on the beliefs and restructure them in a more positive direction.

For example, I had a belief, that I’m not a morning person. I’m sure many of you can relate to this one. After using NLP technique, I came to a much healthier belief. If I go to sleep earlier, it’s easier to wake up in the morning. It sounds so simple, but it affected my life a lot. For the first time in my life, I do sports 3 times a week at 8 in the morning. And if feels great. All because I changed my belief. 

Some examples and content, that boosted my communication skills the most:

Communication strategy - PRLL (pacing, rapport, nonverbal leading, verbal leading) is about 4 steps that represent grounds for good communication.

Step 1 - observe, pace. When you try to talk to someone, observe them for a second. How do they seem to be feeling? Is it really a good moment to talk to your boss about a salary raise, if he/she seems irritated already?

Step 2 - make a good connection. You can do it by the way you stand and adapt your posture, by the way another person talks - adapt your tone and speed, when you talk.

Step 3 -  start leading. Only after you observe, learn from it and make a good connection, you can start the actual verbal communication. At this point the person on the other side is probably ready to talk to you.

Step 4 -  mirroring. Again, it can help to make even better connection during conversation, if you adapt your body position, tone of voice etc to another person. You can’t really have a good connection, if another person is sitting all chilled and you stand and walk around fast and explain what you want him/her to do.

Excellent example of PRLL used in practice, that I remember, was explained by our trainer, Bernarda. She talked about a situation, when she gets home after a whole day of training during the weekend. Of course she’d want immediate attention and her family. But, she first has to observe and make a good connection. That means that if everyone is on a computer in their own world, she can’t expect everyone’s immediate attention. But she can sit on a couch and wait, that others join her and then they’ll start talking. 

Learning how to express what you really want

I’ve been always complaining over massages. And the problem were mostly not the massuses, it was me not being able to express what I want. Now I can calmly tell how I want to have my massage done - in some part easy, in some parts medium and in some parts hard. My wishes a bit more complicated than a usual client, but now I really love getting a massage, which comes quite useful, if you travel to Philippines, where massages are good and prices are low. :)

My NLP journey was really interesing, since my life has been changing quite a lot during the course. If you have any questions regarding the course, i'll be happy to answer them. :)

Development of TEDx community in Slovenia

TEDx community in Slovenia is one of the most active TEDx communities around the world, if we take a look at number of events organized per capita. First TEDx event in Slovenia happened on 25th of May 2009 in Ljubljana, soon after TEDx concept was born and offered as an option from TED.

Next big move was TEDxLjubljana event in Kino Šiška for 400 attendees, which was also my first TEDx event ever. We were growing, and going to bigger and bigger venues. First really big event we did was in Opera for 550 people.

But that was still to small, so we moved to the biggest event hall in Ljubljana - Cankarjev dom for 1500 people. Tickets demand stays the same - every time they are gone in less then 1 minute. We usually open the free tickets on Eventbrite platform and almost 1500 people are waiting to press "get the ticket" button quick enough. Pretty awesome and it's similar with other TEDx events in Slovenia.

Since 2009, TEDxLjubljana organized 22 events with 131 speakers and 7486 attendees. That also boosted birth of other TEDx communities around Slovenia. If you visit http://www.ted.com/tedx/events and search Slovenia and click past events, you will find an amazing list of events - 61 events happened in Slovenia so far. From livestreams, standard events, University events, salon events, youth events, women events. I managed to attend 41/61 events in Slovenia. Yes, I’m a bit weird, I keep the list. :)

Some extraordinary things have happened on TEDxLjubljana stage so far that I’ll never forget and I wish to share some of those moments with you.

 

I'll never forget Juan and his dedication to make his speech perfect. We had to spent him measures of our red carpet, so he could practice at home. He rehearsed like 60 times. Watch his speech (in english) here.

We organized an event just under the highest slovenian mountain. Speakers had to walk around 6 hours and afterwards, they gave a talk at Kredarica in a mountain hut, 1 hour walk below Triglav. Next morning, we conquered Triglav together and we even took a TEDxLjubljana sign with us. Since the hut was really small, most of the event organizers decided to step out of the room to give space to others. 

 

Kredarica hut for event underneath Triglav, where speakers were standing 0,5 meter away from the audience due to lack of space. We first wanted to do the event outside, but it was too tricky due to the wind. Watch my favourite talk from Triglav event here (in slovenian).

Our team member Dan even took TEDxLjubljana sign on the top of the Triglav.

1500 people thumbwrestling in Cankarjev dom

We even had a stage proposal in front of 1500 people

In September 2015, we organized first TEDx event on a plane, ever and 4 brave speakers managed to handle their public speaking stress and flight combined. I truly admired them and it was also funny, that we were flying from Ljubljana to Maribor and since a flight would be too short to handle 4 speakers, we went to Split, Croatia, turned around and went back to Maribor.

The video of first TEDx event on a plane

 

 Crazy physicists / chemists experiments on my first event as an active volounteer

Twitter momentum after TEDxChange. Whole team was sitting at the bar, reading Twitter posts, that were mostly saying "best event ever" etc. We were so motivated and proud of our speakers and of the event. :)

 
 

TEDx community in Slovenia isn't special only due to the high volume of events. While attending some international TEDx gatherings, I noticed some things about TEDx community, that are specific to TEDx community in Slovenia.

1. Everyone knows each other and different organizing teams developed from friends and family. Someone did events in Ljubljana, her brother started with events in another city and a friend brought TEDx to his own community. We’re very connected, since we only have 2 million people in the whole country.
   
   
2. We all give a lot of emphasis on speakers preparations. I can say, that credit goes to TEDxLjubljana, where speakers preparations are biggest part of the event preparations (giving feedback, working on a story, filming the speaker etc.). We managed to bring our good practices to other TEDx communities in Slovenia (mostly by meeting with them as soon as their event appeared on TEDx website).
   
   
3. Our events are free. The only TEDx community that ever charged for an event in Slovenia, was the one in Maribor, with a fee of 20 eur and Celje charged 8 eur once, as far as I know. I think that is pretty awesome, that we're keeping our events free and involving companies to sponsor the event. We’re also making events with super low budgets. While talking to some foreign TEDx organizers, I couldn’t believe the budgets I heard they're operating with. We keep it simple and sustainable.
   
   
4. We keep TEDx local, which means, that most of our speakers are slovenians and are from local community to local community. I think that foreign speakers represent around 5 % of all our past speakers and I think that makes sense. It's also environmentally friendly.
   
   
5. We are not very international and we're not involved in international TEDx community. Since TEDxActive and similar events are quite expensive, our team doesn’t attend international gatherings, such as summit will be in Canada this year. We were a part of TEDx weekend in Vienna and we hope to go to more events like this one in Europe.
   
   
   You must think that I'm some kind of TEDx fanatic. I love the idea, the concept of ideas worth sharing, I love working with speakers, meeting interesting people and organizing TEDx events in Ljubljana. I even did my bachelor thesis on an example of TEDx organizers under the topic of organizational identification (my thesis in slovenian, here).
   However, TEDx community is far from perfect and here are some strange things I'd love to see change:
   
   
   TED is awesome, but at the same time quite elitistic. Event are really expensive and prices of attendance fees don’t change, if you’re from US or from Moldavia. TED Active events mostly happen in US or Canada and cost around $2000 for TEDx organizers + you have to pay your plane ticket. That's so not going to work out from someone from Slovenia, with an average salary of 1000 eur. Not mentioning someone from Moldavia with average salary of 150 eur? I think TED could adapt the prices and take care of equality, with so many speakers on stage exposing it an an important issue in 21st century.
   
   
   TED is also quite american. Which means, that sometimes they are a bit unflexible. For example, they allow only one event per University. That might make sense for US, but how can you limit a number of student TEDx events per university in a country, such as Slovenia? In the whole country, we have 3 universities. After I started TEDxFDV and Urska started TEDxUniversityofLjubljana, they’ve been complaining about 2 events under the same university for last 3 years. Now, TEDxFDV will officialy never happen again. Luckily, we know how to continute with good things and since we all know each other anyway, now there will be TEDxUniversityofLjubljana event on FDV, Faculty of social sciences.
   
   
   TED is quite stuck on the concept of license and the person behind it. That is the person, that holds the license for a local event. Don’t get me wrong, I totally support the system and agree, that they have to "control" TEDx events as much as they can, so that random local TEDx events don't damage the TED brand.
   
   
    Again, in our example, concept of license holder is very limiting. Let’s see, what happens, if a person decides to not have an active role in a TEDx community anymore. For example, Matej Golob was main license holder of TEDxLjubljana for past few years. After an event in 2014, he decided he won't be active anymore. But since he was a person from our team, that attended TED conference in Edinburgh and his attendance actually allowed us to organize events bigger then 100 attendees, we came to a problem. If he isn’t applying as a licensee, we can start from 0 - with events for less then 100 attendees. And when we somehow manage to get one of our members to attend TED, so we should spend around $3000, we can organize events for more then 100 people. 
   With experienced team, 20 events organized and tickets for our event, that are gone in 1 second, we of course could not take this step back. So, to make TEDx license people happy, Matej Golob is still the one applying for license, which is both annoying for him and our team. But, it is easier for TED to trust our team, if a known name applies the event, i guess. Anyway, please TEDx, there are other people in TEDxLjubljana team, that have organized +20 events in past 5 years, so relax. And rethink your system.
   
   
   I highly recommend you to visit ted.com and watch some of the amazing content, that is avaliable online, for free. Also, if you haven't attended any local TEDx events in your region, I highly encourage you to do it. For me, TEDx events are kind of like a brain orgasm. :)
   
   
    
   
   

Eating healthy for dummies: how and why I changed my daily eating habits

I can’t remember when was the last time I felt so good as I do in last two months. What happened? I changed my eating habits a lot. To sum up, I eat a lot of vegetables in combination with some smaller amount of carbs - whole grain couscous, rice or pasta. I basically don’t eat meat anymore and I cancelled all the unhealthy stuff, like sour cream, cream, not-whole grain carbs, fruit yoghurts, biscuits and other sweet stuff, white bread etc.

And the best part? I’ve never ate such a good food in my life, I never had so much energy and I’m losing weight. Besides, I’m taking care of my health and caring for the environment. And it’s so easy.
 Note: I'm far from nutrition expert and I didn't read much so far about healthy good. All this is based on my experiences and what helped me to change my daily eating habits.

Consequences of my changed eating habits:

1. I have unlimited amounts of energy. I used to feel really tired around 10PM after a busy day and I thought it was normal. Well, it's not. Now I don't get tired and i can still do sth productive after 10 PM, which gives me 1-2 extra hours of productive time a day.
   
   
2. I love everything I eat. I never eat anything I have trouble eating or I’m not excited about eating it. All of the dishes I make or eat are super-delicious and I always ask myself: what would I like to eat the most at the moment? I started to listen to my body.
   
   
3. I take care of the environment. Avoiding animal products, such as meat, brings a great deal of environmental care, since production of cow meat is no. 1 polluter on our planet. Don’t believe me? Watch cowspiracy. 
4. I decreased my chances of getting cancer or having a stroke. Watch this amazing documentary called forks over knives and form your own opinion about this topic. To sum up: you’ll live longer and healthier life, if you avoid animal products (meat, dairy, eggs). 
   
   
5. I learned how to cook so many new things. My imagination was quite limited, when it came to cooking. I considered cooking a huge waste of time; shopping for food, cooking, cleaning etc and we have to repeat this process 3 times a day … Now I also see advantages of cooking.  If you cook for yourself, you know exactly what you put in your body. You can make awesome dishes that suit your taste and you make people around you happy. You save a lot of money by not eating in restaurants all the time. 
   
   

   6. I’m sure my general health has improved. I didn’t do any test or sth like that, but I changed content of my fridge a lot. I’m sure it’s done good to me.

   7. I’ve lost some weight and I feel more confident. I didn’t lose much in kilos, but I lost some cm all around my body. It’s a combination of bootcamp workout and constant moving. Whenever I know I will not be able to go to a training I plan, when will I be able to move. At least I try to do is walk for 30 minutes - it can mean walking to a meeting or to a city centre instead of driving. Or going hiking during the weekend etc. After I’ve been doing it for a while, I actually get kind of nervous, if I don’t do any sports at all for a day.
   Regarding loosing weight, I had some failed attempts to do in last few years. The only method by which I lost some weight so far, was Paleo (basically you only eat meat and vegetables). It was horrible. I did it few times for two months and I hated it all along: I couldn't listen to my body, I had all this limitations and all my favourite food was off limits. When I thought of having lunch, I wasn't excited at all. What I'm trying to say is, listen to your body and observe what works and what does not. And above that, it's not about which diet will work for you. It's about the whole approach towards eating and sports - it's about your lifestyle and your daily habits.
    
My limited beliefs and excuses regarding food, cooking & health I had: 
1. Cooking is a waste of time.
You can cook some amazing things in 10 minutes and this is how you give yourself a healthy meal. As a time managment freak, I also optimize it as much as possible. I cook more food than needed at the moment - I can always eat the same dish later in the day or week or Jost can eat it. If I cook with Alenka, we talk during cooking. If I cook alone, I watch/listen to TED talks during cooking. I often do other housekeeping stuff during cooking, like doing my laundry, cleaning etc.


2. I can’t eat healthy, since I’m too busy.
I always had an excuse for not eating healthy and it was, that I’m just too busy. In my time-management perspective, eating was a waste of time, so I need to eliminate the time I spend on eating. That of course means, fast food. It’s not like I was eating pizza and burgers all the time. But I did compromise, I never took time for breakfast, so the easiest thing to do was take a fruit yoghurt and drink it on the way. I was eating out a lot, in different restaurants and I often ordered pasta. Sauce was often unhealthy too - creamy, with a lot of empty calories. I was also eating unhealthy snacks. For example, I was in a hurry and I thought  - well, the only thing I can do at the moment is to go to a bakery and buy sth there, I’ll eat it on the way. 
That’s bullshit. I can either buy a fruit, like banana or apple, or low fat yoghurt. I can bring the food with me, when I leave home in the morning and take sth healthy from my fridge. And regarding eating in restaurants, you can always try to order sth healthier. You can also try to bring home cooked food to your work place once a week and change your routine a bit.


3. It’s so expensive to eat healthy food.
It could be a bit more expensive, depends on what you eat. You can save money by eating healthy too. Meat is expensive, right? Vegetables are mostly quite cheap, right? Carrots, tomatoes, courgettes, chickpeas, salad, lentils …? As it goes for whole grain pasta, it is 10-20 % more expensive than the regular one. I think it’s definitely worth investing.


4. You’re so limited if you eat only vegetables all the time.
I always thought that eating only vegetables in boring that that there are like 3 different dishes you can make. Of course, that’s so not true. Besides the classics potatoes, rice or pasta you have such a wide range of other (healthier) carbs: lentils, chickpeas, beans, all different kinds of cereal (buckwheat, quinoa, couscous …).


5. I need to go to another grocery store to buy healthy stuff.
Of course I didn’t know where to buy healthy stuff - I never took two minutes to google it. When I changed my diet, I still kept on old habit of going to the same grocery store. I just buy different things there now. More vegetables and fruit, whole grain carbs like pasta or rice, oat cereals and chia seeds for breakfast, natural low-fat yoghurt, oat, rice or coconut milk instead of cow milk, lots of lentils, chickpeas etc. I also did some research on superfoods and I bought some things on malinca.si and in DM now, but it’s not necessary.


To sum up, here are basic concrete actions, that can improve your health and eating habits. If you're missing an explanation on why is X better than Y, google it. :)


1. Stop with sour cream or cream for sauce. Start using coconut milk, you can also add soy sauce if you don’t like a coconuty taste. I buy coconut milk in Asia shop.


2. Start eating oat cereals with different seeds (sesame, chia, flax seed) for breakfast. It is so much healthier than pre-prepared musli mix, even if it says fitness on the box. It’s also incredibly cheap and it takes 2 minutes to prepare breakfast.


3. Start buying whole grain pasta, couscous, rice or other carbs. It tastes great or almost the same to me. The point is in the sauce anyway. Since we're talking about carbs, be careful about the quantity - switch your regular plate for a smaller bowl.


4. Use coconut fat/oil for cooking. Throw away your sunflower oil, if you have it. Besides coconut oil, I have olive and pumpking oil at home - for making a salad.


5. Get rid of the sugar. Do you actually need it? I don’t use sugar anywhere and I don’t miss it at all. You can be forgiven, if you are baking christmas cookies or making a cake, but even in this case you can make a non-cooked version of it, where you don’t need to use sugar. You can find some great recipes here (in slovene).


6. Use as little animal products as possible. Why? Watch documentary Forks over knives and you’ll get the answer. Meat, cow milk and eggs are very harmful to our health and by limiting or cancelling them from your fridge, you increase your chances of never getting cancer or other diseases.


7. Use as little animal products as possible, since it's really violent towards animals. Watch a video with Melanie Joy, that talks about reasons for eating meat. I never felt bad for eating chicken, cow or pig meat. At least not bad enough to stop it. After watching this video, combined with arguments from Cowspiracy and Forks over knives, I think I'm finally ready to give up the meat. So, now you have 3 reasons to limit your meat consumption: increase your health, help decrease environmental damage and stop supporting the industry of violence towards animals.


I’m not suggesting that you can change your eating habits in a day. But we can all try with small steps and change one thing at the time. Maybe you can buy coconut oil tomorrow. And then start with oat cereal breakfast next week. And try cooking new vegeterian or vegan dish next week. And so on. Another strategy would be bo go shopping, try this for 2 weeks with all the suggested changes and observe the changes in your level of energy, your body etc.


Some examples of the what I ate in the last two months, to give you some more concrete ideas:


a) sugar corner (when you get an urge to eat sugar, there's a way to skip chocholate or cookies)



 blueberries with cacao, coconut & seeds on top

 yoghurt with blueberries and honey

 banana, blueberries and cacao, kiwi, tapioca, flex seeds


b) main dishes corner

whole grain pasta with mangold and roasted onion & coconut milk sauce



 whole grain pasta with young peas & tomato in soy sauce, green salad with feta cheese, chickpeas and pumpkin seeds



 white cheese with young green beands, spinach and onions & home made hummus (chickpeas & tahini mixed with added curry and lemon juice)



 great snack choice: avocado with a piece of home-made wallnut bread

green salad with feta cheese & lentils with onion, carrots, courgetts & coconut milk sauce


I hope this blogs makes you reflect on your daily eating habits. That is makes you want to watch 3 videos/documentaries mentioned. And that you might adopt at least one new thing in your daily diet. I'm sure that for many of you, there was nothing new in my blog. Congrats, you're already breathing a healthy lifestyle. Help others to adopt it too and share this post, if you find it helpful.