This is an excerpt from CNN news on the AirAsia QZ8501 crash.
In the AirAsia disaster, the system that regulates the plane's rudder movement kept malfunctioning because of a cracked solder joint. Aircraft maintenance records found it had malfunctioned 23 times in the year before the crash, and the interval between those incidents became shorter in the three months prior to the crash, Indonesia's National Transport Safety Committee said in a report.
"Subsequent flight crew action resulted in inability to control the aircraft ... causing the aircraft to depart from the normal flight envelope and enter a prolonged stall condition that was beyond the capability of the flight crew to recover," the report said. In other words, "it's a series of technical failures, but it's the pilot response that leads to the plane crashing," CNN's aviation correspondent Richard Quest said.
"Our recommendation to AirAsia is to train their pilots flying the Airbus plane on how to make an upset recovery," investigator Nurcahyo Utomo said. "A huge amount of training is done on takeoff and landing and traditionally, of course, is 70-80% (of when accidents take place); only 10% takes (place) in the cruise phase of flight. But if something does happen in the cruise phase of flight, it does typically end up fatal."
Life is mostly in-flight. Would you consider have more training that will enable you to accurately read the non-verbal messages of a love one, friend or acquaintance to prevent crash and burn relationships?
Why is this Important?
You will learn how to activate your senses by increasing its threshold of observing. In other words, you will see more, hear more and feel more about the things around you … like Superman!
How do you think you can benefit if you can see, hear and feel more in real life?
1. Helping family or friends and acquaintances
My wife knows me inside out. There are times where I would hide a disappointing day in the office or perhaps a problem that I am contemplating about but she will always spot this. Think about this. What if you had the ability to spot problems of even casual friends? That will be great.
JC one day told me that “his crush” looked troubled as he was observing her. He did not know her but that day he approached her and asked if everything was alright. The girl was surprised but admitted that there was a problem. She was trying to hide it from everyone by smiling and so was surprised with JC. She confided that her aunt told her she was ugly and that bothered her constantly. JC then offered to use the NLP cinema technique that you will learn later. It worked and she became his girlfriend!
While you are helping someone from a personal problem, reading the non-verbal is very important. In fact you will find that the non-verbal communicates first and then the person will verbally confirm it. You will see the inclination of the body straighten up, the cheeks become firmer and the breathing pattern smoother then the person will tell you, “I’m better now.”
2. At Work
It’s very useful to observe the moods of the boss especially when you need to get something approved. I know the subtle facial expressions and angle of the inclination of the body when it time to keep a distance. I know also when she constantly flicks her hair, then she is in a flow and it’s the best time to discuss and connect.
Meetings are a revelation too. Observing the facial expressions and body language of the team when I give a proposal will give me a sense as to when to close and gain consensus or when to keep on adding more points to convince them to agree
Each morning I greet the receptionist in our office. One day, I notice a different “aura” and asked if she did not have a good sleep? With widened eyes, she asked, how did you know? I later found out that the fighting of a couple down below reminded her of her past and that prevented her from sleeping all night. I used a simple collapsing anchor technique to help her.
3. Modelling Excellence
Olympic athletes observe the best in their sport for every subtle movement, body position, and activities that are done in order to replicate or modify them to become better. NLP was born because John and Richard observed Milton Erikson over nine months. And so what took Milton a whole lifetime to know how to change people quickly was learned by John and Richard in nine months and now can be learned in a few weeks. Now, after learning these, I myself can do what Milton, John and Richard does and teach others how to do it too!
4. Self-Awareness
Do you notice what internal sensations you have when you are stressed? Do you hold your breath, have a heaviness feeling in your chest or head? Is there an inner voice talking to you constantly that is not useful? Simply being aware of your internal sensations and physiological messages can change your life and you can stop self-sabotage right on its tracks as we learned in
The ability to see more, hear more and feel more is one part you would like to “milk you brain” more because it will help you in both “change works” or helping others and modelling excellence.
There are three (3) areas to milk your brain as you activate your senses
1. Activate Your Sensory Acuity: Ability to Read Non-Verbal Language
2. Activate Your Intentions and Outcome
3. Activate Self-Assessment
In this article, I will focus on how to increase your ability to read non-verbal language
Activate Your Sensory Acuity: Ability to Read Non-Verbal Language
A boy asks his father to explain the differences between irritation, aggravation, and frustration.
Dad picks up the phone and dials a number at random. When the phone is answered he asks, "Can I speak to Alf, please?"
"There's no one named Alf here." The person hangs up.
"That's irritation," says Dad.
He picks up the phone again, dials the same number and asks for Alf a second time.
"No -- there's no one here named Alf.
You have the wrong number. If you call again I shall telephone the police." End of conversation.
"That's aggravation."
"Then what's frustration?" asks his son.
The father picks up the phone and dials a third time: "Hello, this is Alf. Have I received any phone calls?"
This is too obvious and you do not need to learn how to enhance your sensory acuity to know what comes next. What I want you to learn is to desire to increase the threshold of your senses and how to do it so that you can understand the subtle non-verbal messages hidden within the person. There are three steps to do this.
Know Your Sensory Acuity Threshold
Learn to Calibrate
Practice – Practice – Practice to Increase Your Threshold
Know Your Sensory Acuity Threshold
We have five (5) senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. Do you know your present threshold of your senses? How good are you in seeing, hearing, touching, smelling and tasting? In order to improve something, you have to know your baseline.
This a fun exercise that you can do together with 5 or more friends. All you need is a blindfold. It is designed to help you discover
Exercise 1: Know Your Kinesthetic Threshold
1. Choose 1 – experiencer and four programmers. Assign one programmer to keep score.
2. Have the experiencer close eyes, blindfolded and access a highly charged kinesthetic state. Think about a time in your life when you were really in tune with your body.
3. One at a time the four programmers touch the experiencer on a spot (hand, wrist, etc.) as each programmer calls out his/her name. The programmers must touch the same spot (hand, wrist) of the experiencer.
4. As soon as the experiencer can distinguish between the touches, TEST the kinesthetic sense with each programmer one at a time touching the experiencer on the same spot without saying their name. The experiencer has to guess the name of the programmer.
5. Scorer tells the experiencer how many correct answers
6. Rotate until all have been the experiencer.
Exercise 2: Know Your Auditory Threshold
1. Choose 1 – experiencer and four programmers. Assign one programmer to keep score.
2. Have the experiencer close eyes, blindfolded and access a vivid auditory state. Think about a time in your life when you were enjoying music or other sounds.
3. One at a time, the four programmers make a sound (clap; finger snap; rub hands; etc.) as each programmer calls out his/her name. The programmers must make the sound at the same location of the experiencer.
4. As soon as the experiencer can distinguish between the sounds, TEST the auditory sense with each programmer one at a time making the sound near the experiencer without saying their name. The experiencer has to guess the name of the programmer.
5. Scorer tells the experiencer how many correct answers
6. Rotate until all have been the experiencer
Exercise 3: Know Your Auditory Threshold
1. Choose 1 – experiencer and four programmers. Assign one programmer to keep score.
2. Have the experiencer close eyes, blindfolded and access a vivid visual state. Think about a time in your life when you were enjoying lots of sights.
3. The four programmers will assume a certain standing position. The experiencer observes each programmer and will mentally take a photograph and then turns his/her back from programmers.
4. The Programmer will shift something. Make is as subtle as possible e.g. remove your watch, open one button, slightly change the expression in your face, etc. After all programmers are ready, the experiencer turns and will attempt to recognize the changes.
5. Scorer tells the experiencer how many correct answers
6. Rotate until all have been the experiencer
At the end of these exercises, you will know what areas to improve: kinesthetic, auditory or visual acuity. Learn from each other and ask the person who was able to “guess” all what was their secrets.
People with high kinesthetic senses will say that they observed the 1. Pressure of the touch 2. Temperature of the fingers, 3. Even Texture of the fingers. Some even used their other senses, such as the smell of the person who came near and sounds of the footsteps or jewelry dangling! Those who failed normally focused only on one aspect of the touch.
People with high auditory senses observed the 1. Volume of the sound 2. Pitch of the clap or snap 3. Tempo or speed of the sound. Some likewise observed the footsteps and smell of the person as they approached. Again those who failed only did single modality observed.
People with high visual senses made a mental picture of the before and after. They looked at the individual person and then zoomed out and looked at all the four people relative to each other. On each individual, they made a mental picture of each part of their body and so it was easy to spot any changes. Those who failed did not make a mental picture.
Learn more from Jojo Apolo in our upcoming Performance Leadership Workshop on 27 Feb to 01 March and 8-10 October in Singapore or 01-03 July in KL, Malaysia. While, we are running Leapfrog Your Business & Yourself Seminar on March 7-9 and June 7-9 in Manila, Philippines or November 1-3 in Jakarta, Indonesia. Both courses include NLP Basic Practitioners Certification Course.
About the Author
Jojo Apolo. Asia’s Revenue Breakthrough Leader. Author. Public Speaker. NLP Master Trainer. His passion is to help people and businesses get what they want by teaching Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). He managed major FMCG companies in Indonesia and start-ups in the brink to become profitable. He developed the New Breakthrough Selling Advantage for Sales Professionals using NLP that has resulted in doubling a business from USD 500 million to USD 1 billion in 3 years. He established a 500,000 direct outlet coverage via 300 distribution networks with real-time sales & stock systems. He pioneered the use of IPAD’s f
or salesmen, use creative “Quantum Sales” games and established same-day delivery service guarantees for pharma products. He has given numerous seminars on sales, personal & spiritual development in Southeast Asia. He is a certified Master Practitioner and Trainer of NLP from the National Federation of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, USA and the American Union of NLP, USA, Certified NLP Practitioner Trainer of NLP Academy, UK under John Grinder co-creator of NLP. He spearheads the REFORM program for Drug Rehabilitation across the Philippines in cooperation with the Department of Health and numerous religious organizations. He is the author of the book “Be Free from Painful Memories and Traumas in 30 minutes, 7-Step New Breakthrough Selling Advantage, i-Thrive: 7 Keys to a Fruitful Life and co-author with Dr. Romy Paredes of Awaken the Doctor in You.