Circle of Excellence - technique two

The Circle of Excellence is one of the most popular NLP techniques taught on the NLP practitioner course. How would it feel to really master this fantastic NLP technique? Would it benefit you or your clients to be an expert at anchoring positive emotions? If you could instantly access confidence or any other positive emotion, how would this improve your life, career or even your delivery of presentations?

For the members who have been around since the beginning of the practice group, you will remember that we have practiced CEO previously, this month we will use a new version of the CEO to add extra tools to your NLP belt.



The C.O.E. can be used to summon up the confidence to perform a skill of task to the very best of your ability. You can use it if you have a fear of public speaking, before an interview or important meeting, to play your best shot in sport and in many other instances.



Practising the Circle of Excellence.



1. The Situation. First think of a situation when you would like to feel your most resourceful self, for example, when giving a group presentation, when attending an important interview or when being a guess speaker.



2. The Circle. Draw an imaginary circle on the ground in front of you.

Ask:

• How thick is your circle?

• What colour is your circle?



3. Relive Confidence. Stand up and let yourself go back in your memory to a time when you were feeling very confident (or any other positive state). Get back to it strongly; see what you saw and hear what you heard. Notice what you are feeling and how good it feels reliving that moment...



4. Project the feelings into the circle. Imagine that you could take all those positive feelings from inside you and project them into the circle. How will you be able to do that? How would it look if you could project your feelings into the circle? Take your positive state and project them into the CEO.



5. See your state. As you look at the CEO, visualise your state, what does it look like? How is your state symbolised? What colour is it? Does it move? In which direction does it travel? At what speed does it travel? How does your state sound? It you could smell the state, what does it smell like? Does it have a taste? Is their a temperature to your state? Be aware of everything you need to know about your state.



6. Build the state up. Build up the state, make the colours more intense, brighter and stronger, see the speed of your state increase, and notice how the smell and taste becomes stronger, hear the sound of the state clearly. Once your state is at its peak, step into the COE and feel the power of the emotions as they surround you, breath it in and let this strong emotion run through your body. Notice the feeling running through your body making you more confident- enjoy this feeling fully.



7. 2nd Anchor. Enjoy this feeling, if you could describe this feeling with a word, symbol or even a facial expression or gesture, what would it be? Before the strength of the state reduces, step out of the COE living the positive feeling in the CEO, remembering the Anchored word, symbol or expression/gesture.



8. Break State. Shake off and break state.



9. Adding new states. To make the CEO stronger, repeat the exercise steps 3-6 two more times each time notice how much stronger and more powerful the CEO becomes. You can also use and add new emotions and states. As you step into the CEO for the second and third time, you will see the colours, smell and speed, etc, of the positive emotions. Remember your anchors; the words, symbols or expression/gestures.



10. Future use. Think about a time in the future, when you could use the CEO, See and hear what will be happening just before you want to feel confident. How will the scene unfold? What is the cue to knowing that it is nearly time to step into the CEO?



See yourself from your own eyes, from the future you, see the COE on the floor, noticing all the elements of the CEO and step into it, as you feel the emotions running through your body, notice how well you are performing; feel good as you see everything going as well as it could possibly go - better then you believed it could be.



11. Break state repeat as many time as needed.