In our March newsletter we mentioned a blogger who claimed 'Clean Language is easy enough to learn in five minutes', and asked what you thought.
Here are some of your responses.
Please note: these comments do not neccessarily represent the views of Clean Change Company.
A little optimistic
5 mins sounds a little optimistic, I worked with Caitlin Walker for 2 days during an NLP practitioner course, and found the "clean" way really powerful.
I run short courses for parents in deprived areas raising self esteem through a programme we call Encouraging Self Belief, one of our Radical Encouragement programmes (www.rais.org.uk). I know its power, and I am keen to get on a course with you to get a deeper insight into the intricacies of Clean.
Keep up the brilliant work. Take care and stay well. Paul Dearlove (RAIS)
And that's like what?
Learn Clean in 5 min? That's like... what?..... these symbols come to mind for me...
1) Simple in design, a hammer is a truly brilliant tool. A nail is well suited to its purpose. Almost anyone can, in five minutes, learn how to bang the nail into a piece of wood, and if never having come across any of that before, will find it helluva exciting. It is easy in that moment, to assume that now you can make a diningroom suite.
2) I spent several years as a professional singer. I soon learned that every other teenager who could strum three chords thought they should be on the stage with the 'other' top guitarists.
3) Now I am an aspiring writer. I have trashed my first three books as unpublishable, and agree with, was it George Bernard Shaw or Oscar Wilde, who said that you have to write a lot of bad books before you write a good one. After more than ten years of chipping away at it, I believe I will finally be able to publish within the next five. (I say that having won the English prize for my matriculation year at school and subsequently having won two short story competitions and a number of live poetry slams i.e. it's not that I lack talent!) Do you know as many people as I know who 'know' that they can write a best-seller straight up just as soon as they have two months and a laptop on hand?
In summary - it takes substantially more than 5 minutes of learning ANY skill to get profficient enough to be able to identify and appreciate the difference between gleeful enthusiasm and actual mastery.
And in closing - people make the 5 minute assumption more often with wood than with marble, with guitars than with violins, more often with fiction writing than with computer programming.
Clean Language is a 'natural', accessible tool that is enjoyable, encouraging and satisfying for beginners. You don't need a Ph.D. in psychology to 'get it'. That's part of its power. But Chippendale is still Chippendale, Hendrix is still Hendrix, Kingsolver still Kingsolver, and ...*Grin*... Wendy still Wendy.
Je'anna Clements
|
|
|
It depends...
Interesting idea. Depends on whether the person using the qustions has ever used some kind of well formed questions before. In my mind using Clean questions for the first time will yield a lot of info, it does for my clients, but there are skills needed to map the system/model with the client, learning what to attend to and listening out for all the other cues that go on, as well as the depth that occurs with good use of skills and questions.
Also people can be anxious about needing to know where they are going with somthing, having to understand what is going on for the client , which can get in the way of the process naturally occuring. So I believe that you can get good results from using the questions for the first time.
I have used this more with the teenagers at the school I work at especially when they found it hard to talk/express how they are experiencing something, especially "depression" which when in that state itself can make it hard to articulate, this process works well at these times.
Also with a 15 year old boy I worked with he's, you could say, in his own world a lot of the time, and through usual questioning I didnt feel we were connecting or engaging. But then his language became rich with metaphors and using Clean Language with him really proved fruitful in the session. This boy has already been labelled as having mental health issues.
I find that the questions and process itself opens up avenues for me, at times I integrate this into other approaches I use and sometimes it's totally Clean. It can depend upon how wierd im coming across, as for some its a wierd way of speaking.
Every time I do a Clean Language training my understanding and confidence with this approach grows deeper, which for me is a very new experience as it took a while for me to even recognise a metaphor! Mel Gabbi
Large generalization
Theres no possible way to learn Clean Language in five minutes . To recall that information would take allot of time. And using it to get results can take months to years depending on the generalized behavior that is unwanted.
The point here is Clean Language uses many different questions and ideas. It's called a large generalization of knowledge. Large generalizations of knowledge take time to learn and recall to be used effectively.
And really why would you want to learn anything in five minutes? I've found learning many things in NLP is false as to how quickly something works and is kept in the brain for the long term without reverting to old behavior. Sure you can amaze someone with short term changes, although dealing with large generalizations you have to do a lot of work with Clean Language. David Elliott
I don't think so
I am still reading and learning though not in a proper course as I live in Israel and so far there are no Clean Language courses here.
I dont think one can learn anything in 5 minutes.
I am thinking of getting the video and learning from it some more. Somehow I have a feeling that one needs to attend a proper course to use Clean Language.
I was exposed to NLP for 5 years before I came to the exact same conclusion. Now I am a master practitioner. Judy Elias
|
