NLP Certification: At Last!

Submitted by Craig on Wed, 08/12/2009 - 12:46

Is NLP Certification Worth It?

A toast to briefly celebrate the new piece of paper on my wall!

I’ve circled around NLP since I bought my first set of Tony Robbins cassette tapes about 20 years ago, and for the last 4 years, I’ve really gotten serious about NLP, reading every book and listening to every audio book from every author I could find on the subject. As a self-proclaimed seeker, I love all the information I can find on business, psychology, history, spirituality, healing, philosophy, politics and science. I find NLP to be useful in in everyday life, particularly as a model of communication.

I have been both enlightened and entertained by the similarities and differences between the many NLP schools, as well as by the pockets of ongoing innovation amidst a canonized body lf knowledge. My friends in the NLP world seem more and more like family over time, and yet the larger NLP community is just as dynamic and dysfunctional as any family I’ve ever met. And at the end of the day, it is a business for so many.

You might know by now that I’ve invested in NLP coaching, and know the benefits of aligning my many levels or aspects of my experience that had drifted through the years. I’ve also since used NLP in my work, at home with my kids, in my marriage, in my NLP study group, and with the occasional NLP coaching client. Yet the main beneficiary of my NLP experience of course has been me. I love the topic, and want to keep going for the foreseeable future. It’s been a wild and wooly ride (subjectively speaking), and it’s time to raise my glass and say thanks to the many contributors (and now every person to stumble into my field of awareness) who have enriched my map of the world thus far.

For me NLP certification is not an end, but a milestone in the ongoing personal journey. The piece of paper certifies that I completed the course, and now am fully equipped to speak NLP jargon with other NLPers, but I also realize that it means little in real terms. One can certainly be a confident athlete or business person, father and husband, or have a thriving coaching business without an NLP certification. How effective and persuasive I am as a communicator at home, at work and with clients is really up to how I apply what I continue to learn, and try something new when what I am doing is not working well.

With this milestone comes a moratorium on spending (for a while). The price tag so far for all the coaching, books, training, travel is around $15,000 over 4 years. A great investment by my measure, which I equate to restoring an important degree of of lost vision, but now it’s time to plow money in to other growth areas for the family.

I would like to personally thank the trainers, owners, coaches and participants that I’ve met in Colorado over the last couple of weeks, who have taught me more about doing NLP from the heart, rather than from the head. Thanks to: Alain, Gary, Myke, Michael, Jenny, Babs, Michael, Maya, Charles, Hassan, Karen, Sydney, Courtney, Nancy, Brian, Tyler, Simon, Art, Ron, Steve, Tom, Darryl, Sharon, Larry, Ray, Thomas and Jan.

I hope to meet each of you again somewhere sometime, and learn where your journeys have taken you!