Eliminate Problems with the Legendary Unsticker

I was working on the navigation for a website last week, but I kept getting stuck. While it didn’t seem like an overly complex task, there were lots of options & details to be catered for, & I kept running up against a brick wall.

After trying my default approach (“Think harder!”) for a while, I decided to take a different angle, & use an approach that always helps get things moving when they’ve been feeling stuck: The Legendary Unsticker.

The first step for using the Unsticker is this: Think about your problem and define it in a single sentence. The sentence I came up with was this:

“I have been having difficulty coming up with a rational & solid structure for the website that will appeal to people, be useful to them & be logically organised.”

Then I started using the Unsticker. The Unsticker is the creation of NLP Trainer & published NLP author, Peter Freeth. As well as being a superb NLP trainer, one of the things I love about Peter is the creative & innovative way he applies NLP (that’s part of why I asked him to be my co-trainer in Salad).

Here’s an example: Peter doesn’t focus on solving problems – he focuses on “breaking” problems so the problem doesn’t work anymore!

Huh!?!

Here’s how it works. When a person says they have “a problem” or that they’re “stuck”, what they’re really saying is “When I think about this situation in this way, I can’t see/hear/feel a workable solution.”

From an NLP perspective, problems don’t tend to exist in “the world” but in a person’s map of the world. When they enrich their map, the “problem” disappears (see my article NLP Presuppositions Part One – Maps & Models for more details).

The Unsticker uses carefully designed questions to influence the way a person represents their problem. As the internal representations of what used to be called a problem begin to change, the person no longer experiences it as “a problem”, & solutions begin to emerge. Cool huh!

You can take it for a trial run at http://www.ciauk.com/changemagic/unstick.php

Before you begin: Think about your problem and define it in a single sentence. You might even like to write it down – it can be kind of fun to look back at something you used to perceive as a problem & realise just how easily you have made changes.

I used The Unsticker for about 15 minutes, making a few notes as I went along. Then I started creating the navigation design with renewed vigour, & a sense of fluidity. I was no longer stuck!

Next time you notice that you’ve been perceiving something as a problem, have a go on The Unsticker & enjoy discovering just how quickly you begin to notice new solutions & possibilities emerging.