Coaching Tools

This is the toolkit. Everything here is a practical technique I picked up across years of NLP practitioner and master-practitioner training, coaching and reading — the tools I actually use, on myself and with family, friends and clients, to break through mental blocks, change state, set goals and read people.

Think of this page as the map. Each tool links to its own full how-to. Be like a sponge: take what works for you and squeeze out what doesn’t.

A note on the deeper work. Clearing old emotions, limiting decisions and trauma along your timeline is some of the most powerful change work there is — but it’s best done with a coach, not read off a screen. If that’s what you’re after, reach out.

Breaking blocks, changing behaviour & reframing

• Break Mental Barriers — a simple set of questions to dissolve a barrier that’s holding you back.
• Breaking Habits — the momentum pattern for breaking a habit you’re sick of.
• Changing a Decision — reframe a limiting decision just by asking the right questions.
• Changing Behaviours — shift a negative behaviour by finding the intention underneath it.
• Reframe a Problem — pattern-breaking questions that often fix the problem on their own.
• Reframing — take the frame you’ve been handed and put it in the context you want.
• Assuming Solutions — solve a problem by assuming it’s already solved.
• Three Questions to Shift a Problem — interrupt a stuck pattern and step into the future past it.

Cartesian Logic

Would you like to look at a problem from every angle at once?

What — Cartesian logic views a question from four directions. It’s a fast way to reframe a decision, surface what you’ve been avoiding and find new options.

How — Hold the decision or problem in mind, then work through each of these four questions in turn:

• What would happen if you did?
• What wouldn’t happen if you did?
• What would happen if you didn’t?
• What wouldn’t happen if you didn’t?

Embedded Ideas

Would you like to embed an idea in what you say, so a new perspective is more likely to land?

What — Embedding ideas is a key element of NLP that comes from the discipline of hypnosis. It’s about layering suggestions inside the sentences you speak.

How

• Choose the message that offers the most resourceful alternative behaviour, state or course of action, based on the current problem.
• Create a statement or question that will cause the person to consider this positive suggestion.
• Associate them back into what they said — “A moment ago you said….”
• Deliver the suggested resolution.
• Use two steps to tell them how to do it.
• The last sentence tells them what you want them to do.
• Deliver the last step lower, slower and louder — as a direct command.
• Calibrate their response and action.

Solution Model

Ever had a problem you know you can solve, but haven’t quite cracked yet?

What — This model moves you from problem-mode into solution-mode with ease. You work the problem first, then flip it.

How — Write out or say aloud your answers to each question.

Problem

• What’s the problem?
• What’s the root cause of the issue?
• How have you failed to resolve this?
• How could you overcome it?
• FLIP →

Solution

• What would you like to transform?
• When will you stop it being a limitation?
• How many ways do you know you’ve solved this?
• How are you changing and seeing things differently now?
• How do you know?

Deeper change & emotions

The most powerful shifts happen at the level of emotion and identity. The self-guided versions are below; the deeper release work is coaching.

• The Allergy Technique — the NLP visualisation for putting distance between you and an allergic response.
• The Fast Phobia Rewind — the classic double-dissociation method for taking the charge out of a fear.
• Swap a Craving into a Turn-Off — use submodalities to turn something you crave into something you don’t.
• Ask Your Unconscious — the Pendulum — a bio-feedback method for getting a straight answer from your unconscious.
• Expanding ‘I Am’ — open up a limiting “I am” statement into something bigger.

Goals, values & direction

• Timeline Goals — set a goal into your future timeline to create positive tension towards it.
• Values — the elicitation I use to find what’s genuinely most important to you.
• Love Strategies — everyone has a love strategy; here’s how to find and use it.
• Beliefs & Submodalities — change a belief by changing how your mind codes it.

State, learning & memory

• Creating a Learning State — the core skill: getting into the expanded “learning state”.
• Learning Strategies — how to set yourself up to learn anything (it starts with: have fun).
• Shift an Issue with the Learning State — use that state to shift how you feel about a problem.
• Anchoring — call up a past state on demand: resource anchors, collapse anchors and the ring of power.
• Time Perception — how you conceive of time, and why it matters for goals and memory.
• Spelling Strategy — install the visual strategy great spellers use (brilliant for kids).

Communication & reading people

• Eliciting Someone’s Strategy — the formal script for eliciting how anyone does anything (T.O.T.E).
• Metaphors — use stories to slip past someone’s filters and deliver a lesson that lands.
• Sensory Acuity — read the subtle physical changes that tell you what’s going on inside someone.
• Reading Eye Movement — what a person’s eye patterns tell you about how they’re thinking.
• Matching & Mirroring — the simple mechanics of building rapport.
• Indicators of Rapport — how to tell when you’ve actually got rapport.

Tonality Control

Would you like to change the outcome of your message just by changing your tone?

What — Tonality has a huge influence on the meaning of your communication and how people respond to your words. It’s one of the most effective ways to change your meaning, build rapport and defuse a tense moment.

How — Shift the tone of your voice to achieve your outcome — asking a question, making a statement, or issuing a command.

Working with your parts

• Parts Integration — when part of you wants one thing and part wants another, integrate them into one whole.

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Take one tool. Use it this week. That’s how the toolkit becomes yours.