When I first started learning NLP I heard Richard (Bandler) say over and over again... state is the key. It's from the right state that you make the best decisions. Now that never made enough sense to me because although I reasoned that if I was in a bad state my decisions would not be always that clever, I figured that if I was delirious then I would be more likely to make mistakes as much.

It's only in the last year I have realised certain things about my experiences with making decisions and communicting with people. I began to understand that so often I would get myself in a bad state by communicting with others while in that state. My decisions to talk and about what to say were based on what I felt and NOT on what the most useful thing to do was. Now it took me a bit of time to be really aware of how I was doing this and I soon learned something remarkable.

When you find yourself in an unresourceful state... from anger to jealousy, stress to frustration, sadness to hurt etc.., the key is to be aware that you are feeling that and seperate your decision on what to do and what to say from the feeling. It's not about basing it in fact. It's about asking the true question: WHAT IS THE MOST USEFUL THING TO DO/SAY NOW? That question really opens up what we call Behavioural Flexibility.

Now I'm not saying I have this down... yet and I will still make the occasional small and big mistake but it's worth practising because it really can make a huge difference to the quality of results you get in your life. One thing I've learned is that when you feel a certain way... every thought seems 100% true and accurate and it seems 'impossible' to refute. With using things like the Meta Model or Sleight of Mouth Patterns, often it is possible to awaken the reason centre of the brain to the fact that there may be some inaccuracies in your conclusions. At the same time, it is down to the state and that state makes everything seem true.

Now, once you know this at a higher level... you know this as universally and absolutely true, you can observe these 'truths' and accept them as simply evidence coming from an innaccurate source (your negative state). When you are in a situation, you think certain things and are sure of them... you are sure that is what this person thinks, you are sure that such and such will happen to you in the future, you are certain that you're a no good loser. When you think these thoughts you must realise that this is simply indicative of a state... it could be a state in which you've been in for a good while or a state that is kicked off by something being mean to you. Regardless, it is a state and therefore although you feel the 'facts' are true, they are not.

So, the most useful thing that you can do or say must always be the first thing that pops into your mind. You must categorically decide to always ask that question and to avoid being led by your feelings. Many people in Ireland get drunk as a solution to their problems. It seems to help us avoid the problem, but often it has distarous consequences as it weakens our resolve and we end up doing things that we feel like doing despite our efforts to maintain a useful way of dealing with it. The key is that you focus as effectively as possible on what you want, specifically and that it is good for others too and then to go about asking the question 'How do I get that? How do I do that? How do I achieve that?'. To discover the most useful FIRST STEP, SECOND STEP etc... to give yourself as clean a start as possible.

Communicating more usefully comes down to that simple concept: USEFULNESS. When you grasp that, you'll find yourself having the discipline to guide your behaviours and communication by effective decisions and you'll prevent yourself getting trapped in a whole of your own making, in a cycle of feeling bad... making bad decisions.... which produce bad consequences and making you feel even worse. This time it stops after stage one and you get to learn to make good decision and say the right things.