Robert after his publication of NLP Volume 1, became more and more popular throughout the NLP circuit and began teaching NLP training programs with an emphasis on health models. He kept an association with both Richard Bandler and John Grinder, being a proper Machiavellian as he was.

Judith continued her relationship with John Grinder and they now live in Bonny Doon, just outside of Santa Cruz in the mountains and are continuing to promote and develop John's business.

One thing about NLP is that it was developed under the auspices of practicality, and doing what works. Also preparing people's sensory experience to respond to what was happening at any moment in time. We worked with survival patterns quite often as they are powerful resource states. NLP has been under criticism over the years because of some of the colorful and unscientific procedures that the developers Richard Bandler and John Grinder went thru to design the model. The genius of these two individuals allowed them to step out of the mainstream of what was a scientifically accepted approach.

NLP teaches the individual to respond to their sensory environment. Anything, can happen to anybody at any time in nowhere. I believe that Richard and John prepared for any eventuality. Most of us are well fed, have an income, a car and a stereo. The idea of extreme conflict or violence unless you worked in the CIA or came from the back streets of east San Jose or served in the Vietnam war, is not a normal perception that we grow up with. In some areas of the world the idea of extreme conflict or violence is normal activity from day to day, and people grow up and are taught to cope with this from very early ages. The point is, be prepared.

NLP teaches us the niceties of rapport as well as teaching us how to cope with things that are not so pleasant. More than a few of the workshop exercises that we participated in had to do with eliciting responses in people that had to do with survival or coping patterns, periods of violence, being able to deal with dangerous situations, and applying those resources in problematic situations, as resource anchors.

Chapter Thirty Two. Operationalising NLP

In 1978 and 1979, the patterns of NLP began to be applied to areas outside of the therapeutic framework. The application of the patterns of NLP was called "Operationalising NLP". Putting NLP patterns into a variety of different contexts to test the validity and success. On one occasion John Grinder referred a client, who was a millionaire from the midwest, to Robert and I. John gave us a task to determine if NLP could be applied on the community level in order to assist a person to change. Our task was to operationalise the NLP patterns in the context of the town of Santa Cruz.

We were to work with this individual who we will give the name of Morty, for twelve hours a day, for five days and to be able to teach him public speaking, assertiveness and generally build his self esteem. We devised a strategic plan to go about changing Morty the millionaire from a waddling duck to a boardroom supervisor of a hotel chain.

We began our work at 7.30 in the morning, with vigorous exercise, and then took him out on the town for a variety of tasks which took in the next twelve hours. Later on these exercises were called "Tasks on the Town" and became common place in NLP workshops.

Some of the tasks that we designed, were conducted in the following manner. For example, on one occasion Morty said that he had a fear of someone calling him a homosexual. So we set about having him go out and buy twenty four red roses and stand on the street corner and sell them to individuals. Sure enough some yahoo came up and called him a "fairy". His task was then to go about eliciting friendship from this individual.

The next task was to have another individual come up and say he had actually known Morty from his midwest home city. The Santa Cruzen happened to be a derelict type and completely confused Morty. The purpose was to elicit temporary confusion and question the client's personal credibility.

Another technique which was designed to elicit an assertive response from the client, was to let the client know that anything could happen and at any time. Santa Cruz was then known as the murder capital of the world because of a recent mass slaying that took place in the mountains. So this statement was not altogether untrue.

At eight o'clock one morning, Robert took Morty for a jog on the beach. Waiting for the client to pass a certain area on the beach was another person who was a scruffy workman type. This person came up to Morty and accosted him to determine if he could elicit an assertive response which would then later be utilized as a survival pattern for the client.

These kinds of activities went on for five days. Either Robert or I would go down to the streets of Santa Cruz and find an appropriate individual to commission for a small fee to be an actor or actress in the drama using Santa Cruz as the stage to be able to elicit behaviour patterns from Morty.

The final task was to be able to determine that once the person had changed would the patterns continue even in an altered state of consciousness. Robert and I took the millionaire to Santa Cruz Bar and Grill, one of the finer restaurants in town and after a very fine dinner, having achieved an altered state of consciousness in Morty, we set about to discover if he had access to his survival skills in an altered state of consciousness.

One of the patterns that the millionaire wanted to change was at times he broke out into fits of anger and rage for very ordinary reasons. So it was at a time when everybody else had left the table except for Morty and I, that I took a hot cup of steaming coffee and looked at Morty meaningfully in the eyes and strategically spilled it in his lap. After he had changed about four different colors, he gracefully excused himself and went of to the mensroom, to brush off his blue pinstripped suit.

The results of these exercises were to be known the very next morning. I met Morty first thing in the morning and was delighted when he shook my hand and thanked me for everything that I had done.

The exercises were not completed however and the next thing that Robert did was to get on the same airplane that Morty the millionaire was on and fly back to the midwest. Robert then preceded to go to Morty's home and his place of business with him, to ensure that the patterns were not only useful and working in Santa Cruz, but were also available and installed in the context that he would be using them. A very sophisticated and expensive future pacing.