Let’s end with a SWISH

Top NLP tip for teachers

Judy Bartkowiak NLP Master Practitioner

Let’s end with a SWISH

Wouldn’t it be great if we could teach students how to change their own behaviour or negative responses? We can do this using the SWISH technique from our NLP toolbox.

First we need to find out what the trigger factor is. What prompts the negative response? Is it something we say such as ‘today we’re going to have a test’ or when we ask them a question in class? Is it something they see such as double maths on their time-table or finding that they have to work with someone they don’t much like or don’t know? Identify the unwanted behaviour or response and the trigger.

It is important to know what pay off they get for the unwanted behaviour. What is the positive intention? In NLP we know that there is always a positive intention and it is our challenge to find it in their map of the world when it isn’t obvious in ours. Perhaps their unwanted behaviour makes their friends laugh or gets a reaction from you?

Now ask them how they’d prefer to respond. What would be the desired behaviour? Will they still be able to meet their positive intention or another different positive intention using the new response? Suggest they get an image in their mind of themselves doing the desired behaviour. What will they look like, sound like and feel like?
Check for the ecology. Are there any pitfalls or disadvantages of the desired behaviour? Are they worried they might not be ‘cool’ amongst their friends? Can they still achieve this ‘cool’ with their new behaviour in some way?
Now ask your student to imagine himself doing the usual unwanted behaviour and picture it like a film with Hollywood effects, the colour, actors, music and great sound. He should not be in the picture, he can have whatever actor he chooses to play him.
Tell him to put the image of him doing the new behaviour in the bottom right hand corner of the screen as you might if you’re checking what’s on another TV channel. This time he is in the picture as himself.
Explain that when you tell him to Swish he is to make a movement like swatting a fly from his face and when he does that he will switch the images so the new behaviour is the big frame with the unwanted behaviour very small in the corner.
Repeat the steps a few times until he can do this himself and can use it whenever he needs to replace unwanted behaviours or responses.

Use this yourself for your own unwanted responses as well! Once you get practised at this, you will have a great anchor for your desired state.

Judy Bartkowiak is the author of NLP for Teachers, part of the Engaging NLP series available from www.mxpublishing.co.uk and her book ‘Teach Yourself: Be a happier parent with NLP’ is available on pre-order through Amazon.

You can book teacher or children’s NLP workshops via www.nlp4kids.org where you can find your local NLP Practitioner.

This article is the last in a series we will be running, to read the other articles click on the link below:

No Failure Only Feedback

If you try, you won’t succeed

You already have the resources to do whatever you want to do

If you always do what you’ve always done then you will always get what you’ve always got

If someone else can do it then you can too

The map is not the Territory

Using Hypnotic Language (or soft language)

Do you know your VAK?

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