A couple of years ago, my family and I visited the Boston Science museum and spent some time in their wonderful butterfly garden. While there is much to see and do inside, the highlight of the visit is the chance to have a butterfly land on your hand, head, or shoulder.
It was B.F. Skinner, the father of modern behaviorism, who famously said “If we want to understand the basis of superstition in humans, the best place to start is by looking at the behavior of pigeons.”
For much of the past decade, I have had the privilege of studying with and working alongside the co-creator of NLP, Dr. Richard Bandler. As well as being a brilliant psychologist and fearless therapist, he is also a hypnotic storyteller.
Perhaps my favorite of Richard’s stories is about his work with a schizophrenic who everyone in the medical profession had deemed incurable. This man hallucinated snakes everywhere he went – and as he was terrified of snakes, he lived in a constant state of fear.
A few months ago, the amazing Mandy Evans was our guest lecturer at Supercoach Academy in New York. Of the various topics she covered in our time together, perhaps my favorite was what she called “self-authorization” – that is, our right as human beings to claim the role of author in our own lives.
Over the past few days, I’ve had the pleasure of spending time with Dr. Robert Holden, the UK’s preeminent happiness psychologist and a regular guest on the Oprah Winfrey show.