Improving Our “Signals” and “Beings”

This is a book review of Richard Bandler and John Grinder’s Frogs Into Princes: Neuro Linguistic Programming. It has been referred by many as the book to read for somebody starting out in neuro-linguistic programming and rightfully so.

Richard Bandler and John Grinder are the founders of neuro-linguistic programming so you can expect a fair in depth discussion on the topics within the book. Frogs Into Princes is a transcript from a live seminar conducted by the two presenters. It is divided into three main sections which were presented on three separate days in the seminar:

1. Sensory Experience: Representational Systems and Accessing Cues
2. Changing Personal History and Organization: Anchoring
3. Finding New Ways: Reframing

The first section has quite possibly the first ever discussion on accessing cues. It involves amazing body language reading techniques and appropriately adjusting your own body language to create rapport with people. If you’ve seen a movie where an investigator knows the suspect is lying because of the suspects eye movement, then you’ve likely seen the very basics of accessing cues. It is more complex than simply which directions the eye moves because the way we access information is dependent on the questions asked.

Representational systems involves the language used in communication and matching the person’s representational system to build rapport. (I touch on this in the second chapter of my communication secrets of making people like you program.) Matching a person’s representational system is also an effective and extremely underused technique to prevent conflict. The authors are extremely confident in their techniques’ reliability to create rapport and with the sheer popularity of their methods having spread throughout the world, it is an indicator that their communication modeling works very well.

The anchoring section deals with classical conditioning and learning to associate certain actions, mostly kinesthetic, to evoke specific emotions and thoughts. The extreme basics of the technique involves touching someone while getting them to elicit specific emotions. When you touch them in the same manner at a later time, they will experience the same emotions. (That is a very brief description of anchoring and if you try it based on what I told you, it’ll likely be ineffective.) The section mostly discusses anchoring in the context of overcoming fear and therapy, but it can be easily used in relationships, healing painful memories, negotiations, sales, leadership, and seduction. The list of applications for every technique in the three sections are endless.

The last section of Frogs Into Princes gives an exact formula for reframing. The neuro-linguistic technique of reframing involves changing the way you see an event to change its meaning. I have found it to be one of the greatest techniques for overcoming fears and having unstoppable confidence for myself and other people I’ve helped. I feel reframing is a must have technique for any person who is interested in getting past problems and obtaining the most out of life.

You would think that because the book is a transcript, the language used would be easy to understand like the simple language used in face-to-face communication, but it isn’t. This is the greatest downfall of the book. Most parts of the book are difficult to understand because of the terminology used so a lot of “newbie” communicators will have extreme difficulty in getting the most out of the book. Even I found myself rereading some sections up to five times to just understand what was being said. However, I found the sections to loop into each other where the understanding of certain parts were clearly understood in later sections. When reading this book, don’t get caught up in understanding everything that goes on as you’ll likely later figure it out while reading the rest of the book.

The seminar was for therapists so most of the techniques’ applications are discussed in a therapist-patient scenario. Therapists and psychologists would find the applications of the techniques extremely useful for improving therapeutic communication with patients.

If you don’t mind more “complex” reads that includes terminology or you think your communication skills are pretty advanced, then you’re sure to get a lot out of this book and I recommend it for you. The last time I checked, the book was out of print, but fortunately it is still made available to you in a quality second-hand condition through Amazon. Once you get your copy, hold on to it as you’ll find it a very valuable addition to your personal development and communication library. You can grab your copy of Frogs Into Princes from Amazon by clicking here today.

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I'm creator of a highly praised program called "Communication Secrets of Making People Like You". You can read about it here and order it here.