Customer Reviews

Mind-lines: Lines For Changing Minds

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4 star:		(4)
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2 star:		(1)
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i am surprised there aren't heaps of other reviews for this book as it truly is excellent.

The book is packed with information so you may want to take your time and read it in bits. This conversational reframing is much more effective, for me at least, than the normal NLP exercises I have tried in the past. Things like the swish pattern, autobiography, ideal self were good visualisation exercises but I found that even with daily repetition I wasn't really achieving what I wanted with them. They helped to a small degree but ultimately, were not successful. Which was disappointing considering I had heard such rave reviews about those techniques which would almost lead one to believe that the swish pattern is a silver bullet cure all, with authors claiming to have stopped a smoker from touching a cigarette ever again with one swish pattern.

Conversational reframing, which the book is entirely about, was MUCH more effective for me because it really seems like you are reprogramming your brain and the way you think. Whereas, normal NLP is more about visualising and adjusting submodalities, etc conversational reframing is like holding a political debate in your head to beat limiting beliefs.

I think the authors assume that the reader will do the mind lines (ie exercises) with another person but I have found it to be quite effective doing it on my own. There are 26 types of mind lines and i write out a variety of questions for each then go through the lot (usually 5-6 A4 pages worth) and reframe myself.

It is really helping me change some limiting beliefs i have, but this something you must do repeatedly to get the full effects. I went through a set of mind lines to stop myself pigging out on chocolate where, internal state -> external behaviour , boredom -> eat chocolate.

I did the mind lines once a night for 2 nights and found myself eating healthy, but after about 10 days the effects began to wear off and i went back to my old habits, so this goes to show that the mind lines are effective but repetition of them is necessary to ensure long term success.

This is an excellent book, and I encourage anyone who wishes to reframe any limiting beliefs they have to buy it, read it and do the exercises within.

I have already experienced short term success with the mind lines in the few weeks i have owned the book, and am certain that will become long term success with adequate repetition of the mind lines scripts I have created using the guide lines in the book.

Be aware though that this is not easy work but the authors have done an excellent job of structuring example pattern so you can make your own. These exercises require a lot of thought but are certainly worth that.

VERDICT: Buy this book, do the exercises , go through the mind lines regularly , reframe your limiting beliefs , your life will be great!

The quality of your life is a reflection of the beliefs you have running around in your brain.

Mind Lines is the best book I have read that describes the magic of NLP and the profound impact reframing limiting beliefs can have on one's life.

Limiting beliefs are toxic ideas that hold us back from being who we truly are. They distort a person's map of reality one uses to navigate through life. Brains make meanings and associations very quickly at an unconscious level. Once the belief has been formed it drops into your unconscious and runs your life. Some beliefs are good, others can derail your life.

Because of the powerfully pervasive nature of beliefs, we need to step in and 'undo' beliefs that don't serve us well.

I read this book at a stressful time in my life. I had just had a relationship fail on me that was important to me, my life wasn't going anywhere except where it was programmed to go - nowhere.

Mind Lines helped me pull apart the limiting beliefs quickly and easily. No visulisation exercises, no repeating of affirmations for weeks (although there's nothing wrong with those exercises). Some of the reframe shifts are so freeing that I began to reassess my entire life in light of the new way of looking at things I had gained.

I'm not fantasticlally rich or married to a supermodel (yet!) but I sure do feel like I have more control over my life.

The short synopsis: get this book!

I have come away from this book with a profoundly different perspective on life. We are all meaning making machines. Most of us are not aware of all the meanings that we are creating and this book gets into the nitty-gritty of it with great detail. I found the author's formula of a Meaning; "External Behavior = Internal State" or "External Behavior causes Internal State" to be utterly mind blowing. For those reading who have no idea what this is, here is an example. We see or hear something (this is the External Behavior) and we make that external behavior equal or lead to some idea or feeling (the Internal State). "Your being late makes me sick" is a meaning where "Your being late" is External Behavior and " makes me sick" is Internal State. The premise of this book is that when we create meanings for ourselves, they create the frame of reference for how we see the world. Those who experience a lot of pain growing up create meanings (or frames) that have them see the world as a scary place even if there is no danger in the moment, while those who experience mostly joy growing up create meanings (or frames) that have them see the world as a safe place. How we frame the external events creates our experience of those events. This book is about examining the meanings you have created (your frames) and re-working the ones that do not serve you. This can be a lot of work as I found myself often having to re-read pages over and over to see where it applies in my life and how I can use this. But doing the work provides a BIG payoff of feeling lighter and more in control of your experience and the experience of others.

Stellar read. (if you can get past the horrific number of typos) The concepts in this book can change your paradigm quite drastically and much for the better. Like to understand what makes people who they are? Enjoy the idea of having the kind of knowledge that makes your life far easier where interpersonal relationships are concerned? Wanna know what makes folks tick? Get this book. Are you in sales? Human relations? Manage an office? Manage people at all? If you interact with humans ..ever.. Get this book.

This book is great. I highly recommend it if you have limiting beliefs you want to overcome. You know the idea of "glass half empty half full." You can put a spin on things to make something resourceful/positive rather than negative. Well, this book explains 26 different patterns to do just that. Do the exercises, which require a lot of deep thinking, and you'll see negative beliefs transform to something resourceful and thus empowering. As I did the exercises, I felt a shift on how I viewed some limiting beliefs; it was as if weight was lifted from my shoulders.
I've heard others describe Mindlines as a tough read. There were parts where I had to read a second time around to get a full understanding. But other than that, I don't consider it tough at all. The book assumes readers are familiar with NLP. If you are unfamiliar with NLP, there will be parts in the book where you'll be like, "What the hell's he talking about?!" But you will still reap the benefits if you do the exercises. Great book! (As mentioned in another review, there are a ton of typos! Out of all the books I've read, this tops the list for the most)

UPDATE, two years later January 2009 *** stars rather than *****: I do not recommend this book for deep-rooted issues. Reframing a deep-rooted issue may alleviate pain and suffering initially. But the pain/suffering will come back just like a splinter that's bound to come to the surface. I do feel, however, that reframes work well for minor issues. Another cool thing about reframes is that it shows you the numerous viewpoints and angles to look at things from. It'll train you to see things from an overall picture as opposed to a narrow view. But the thing you have to realize is that no viewpoint is right or wrong, ultimately.

Reframes consists of A LOT of thought and analysis. I spent numerous hours reframing limiting beliefs. It worked for the minor issues, but never for the deep-rooted issues in my life. The thing I failed to see initially was the fact that it was thought that caused the pain and suffering in the first place. Eckhart Tolle wrote a book entitled "The Power of Now." In the book he gives the following analogy: It's like trying to catch an arsonist on the loose and the arsonist is the Chief of the fire department (paraphrased). Thought can never solve an issue fully because it is thought that is the root of the problem in the first place. Here's another quote from Krishnamurti's The First and Last Freedom: "Can thought resolve our problems? By thinking over the problem, have you resolved it? Any kind of problem-economic,social, religious-has it ever been really solved by thinking? In your daily life, the more you think about a problem, the more complex, the more irresolute, the more uncertain it becomes."

If you want to overcome deep-rooted issues, you have to "see" thought for what it truly is. The "seeing" is not conceptual. It's not something you understand mentally; that's just another thought looping around and around in the head. Check out the following books if you're interested: Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now, A New Earth, Michael Singer's The Untethered Soul, I Am That by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

I first heard of this book from an audio cd. Seminar leader David DeAngelo, demonstrated how to use Mind Lines to shatter limiting beliefs, and strengthen inner game, and how it worked for him.

Later an nlp student asked me to install the idea from this book, EXTERNAL BEHAVIOR = INTERNAL STATE. He waxed so lyrically about Michael Hall and Mindlines, I determined to read it.

Ostensibly it's about the art of reframing conversations using the 26 techniques in this book.

What happens though, as you read, and apply the Mind-lines to yourself, you come up with new ones and you may notice your own mind starts to open up, you look at things in new ways, and you can find inspiring answers, and shifts in perception.

Here is an example with reframes:

"Your being late means you don't care." External behavior (lateness)= Internal State (don't care).

Reflect back: Have you ever been late for something, and did it mean you didn't care?

Counter example: If I was on time would that mean that I did care?

Contrast: Just because someone is on time doesn't mean they care. Just because someone's late doesn't mean they don't care, does it?

Meta Model, Chunking down: How specifically, does my being late mean I don't care?

Mind Reading: How do you know I don't care? Are you able to read my mind?

Authority frame: According to who? Where is it written that lateness means not caring?

Value: What's more important, my being here, or my being late?

Allness: What would it be like if everyone was always late? Would it mean that no one cares, ever? What kind of world would that be?

You do need to have good rapport with some reframes. And there are 18 more than this. The patterns I have used most to change my own thoughts have been negation, future pacing and metaphor patterns. More recently, I am using chunking up questions.

If you're like me, you'll discover yourself coming up with your own reframes for common situations, whether it be in career, personal relationships, dealing with children, or dealing with difficult or uncooperative people, and as you do you will realise the rewards of reexamining these situations. The more you open up to the opportunities these reframes present, the more opportunities open up.

Hope this was useful.

I agree with many of the other reviewers that the information in this book is some of the best on the topic. General overviews of material as well as specific details and examples allow for enhanced understanding and easy application to your own life. My biggest concern about the book is the dozens of misspellings and grammatical errors. These make the book very distracting to read and are simple problems that someone in high school should be able to easily identify and fix. For as much thought and effort went into the book to make it easy to understand and interesting to read, it is partially ruined by juvenile copy mistakes. Sadly, this is not even the first edition of the book.

Opaque and unnecessarily overcomplex. There are much better books out there on Sleight of Mouth - by David Gordon or Robert Dilts for example.
NLP is a complex enough field without authors trying to intellectualise it. Some NLP coaches, such as Jamie Smart and Michael Breen, can explain NLP in a way that clarifies and stimulates. These authors makes things turgid,opaque and hard work.

Consider these sentences from Overdurf/Silverthorn's excellent book on Eriksonian hypnosis Training Trances:'A reframe is a different point of view which, in its best therapeutic application, expands possibilies. The central feature in the construction of reframe is the seperation of behaviour from intention. All meaning is context dependent. Therefore the only way to evaluate anything, be it an idea or concept, a word or series of words, a sensation or feeling, is to consider the context in which it occurs. What may work in one context may not work in another'. Well written short and sweet, then they introduce exercises that put reframing into practice. QED. Hall and Bodheimer take 40 pages to say the same thing, and its not anywhere near as clear. Everyone else calls this book's subjectmatter 'Sleight of Mouth', after Robert Dilts analysis of early Bandler seminars. But not B&H - they have to call it something else.

I notice the previous owner of this book (I bought it second hand) only made it to 85 pages. The underlines and page notes stop abruptly. I'm enormously tempted to do the same. I love NLP, but this book is enough to turn off all but the most determined. There IS some quality information here, but its buried under verbiage.

Caveat Emptor.

This book is a piece of art. I was recommended this book by a known changeworker, who's name will remain unknown. This book teaches you how flexible reality really is and shows you a practical way of actually changing your reality and others for the better. You can learn to Break toxic things you say to yourself and transform it to something good or simply stay relaxed when someone else seems to talk down to you, because you'll know that you can turn it around on him..but with this technology, you won't have to! It opens up a possibility to feel good and have control over the 'frame' which governs all communication and this and much more is covered in this book. A must have if you want to be a better person and feel better overall!

Powerful methods of using frames to make more
sense of what we are 'really'meaning by setting
guidlines for clarification and paraphrasing.
From chapter one the book challenged my method
of communication but provided guidelines on how
to become more articulate and encourage meaningful
interaction with others.
The methodologies given present more opportunity
to understand consciousness and as a consqeunce
know where we are at. A book to read and re-read.