When speaking to one of the players on my friends soccer team, my first step was to establish rapport and use basic NLP mirroring techniques ( mirror and matching posture, VAK, breathing, rate of speech, tone, as well as leverage the fact that I grew up playing soccer all my life) The fact that I had similar experiences as a younger player helped establish trust and rapport that much quicker.

From here, in order to determine some basic information that I would need in order to understand how to communicate to the young player, I began asking questions that would help determine how to do this most effectively

What do you want?- ( “ I want to step on the field and feel complete confidence and be at ease, I want everything to just flow without thinking about it, I want to feel as though no one can touch me and I want to play well because I am truly enjoying myself”)

What will that do for you? Direction- ( I can avoid feeling nervous and I won’t mess up. I won’t feel like I didn’t play well. I won’t have any regrets)

How will you know when you have it? ( “my coach and the other players and even referees will come up to me after the game and say how well I played” )

Where, when, and with whom do you want it? ( “ I want to have the confidence when I am playing in college against the best players”)

How will this affect other parts or people in your life? ( “I will just feel more confident in a lot of different situations, even when it’s not related to soccer. Because I will be happy, that will make me easier to get along with”)

What stops you from having this already? ( “ I am my worst enemy when it comes to this because I get nervous and feel scared that I will mess up during critical moments” )

What resources do you already have that will help you obtain your outcome? ( “ I love the sport and I know that with the right training I can get over this. During matches that didn’t mean anything, I’ve always had people come up and compliment me and even ask if I have considered going pro. I’ve even played in exhibition games and played well only to find out afterwards that some of the players were current and ex pro players from Germany”)

What additional resources do you need to obtain it? ( “ I need coaching to help me put things in perspective and something to help me have the confidence I’m looking for in those moments where I need it most. I need the belief or knowing inside that I can compete and then I need to take action without worrying what anyone thinks”)

How are you going to get there? ( “ I am going to train harder and look for ways to help myself feel more confident. I am going to start to remind myself of all the times that I have done well”)


The excercises/ the process –


After talking to the young player, I picked up on the fact that his words had a lot of K and seemed to be externally motivated, and is moving away from what he does not want to experience. The following are the excercises that I did with him all the while stressing feeling type words, and speaking to his predisposition of his internal frame of reference to be others along with his motivation to move away from the experience he goes thru today.

1. 1. First, I did the Zone Exercise with him with an emphasis on how he would feel when he entered into the zone. I did however stress and target all ( V,A,K, O, G)
   
   
2. 2. Did the Dave Elman Induction
   
   
3. 3. From here I performed the changing belief systems. Had the individual think of something that they believed to be undeniable truth and then located the submodalities, location 1st, then the others…color, sound, movement. Had them do this for themselves along and had them think of what talents and abilities they’d need to reach their goal and had them put it in the location of the truth about themselves. Wrapped up by having them put this in the same area of the ultimate truth we solicited in the beginning.
   
   
4. 4. I then asked the client who their favorite soccer players were. They mentioned that their favorite player was Ronaldinho who is the superstar from the Brazilian National Team. I asked if they had seen lots of footage of this player playing soccer. They said yes, especially during the world cup. What I did next was set up the next exercise for our follow up meeting. Being that I am an avid soccer fan as well, I actually have several hours of footage of this particular player ( highlights, him doing all the things he is famous for, I also have interviews with this player and he talks a bit about how he focuses while on the field. Some overlap with “feeling” the way my client wished he could feel). That being the case, I gave the player about an hours worth of footage of Ronaldinho and asked him to watch it over and over again, as much as possible, told him to watch it so often that he could memorize the video. When he came back, I did the new behavior generator technique and had him use Ronaldinho as his model. The visualization portion of the exercise was a little easier because he now could easily tap into this. Again, given his predisposition to feeling (K) type words, I made sure to focus on how Ronaldinho was feeling and how he felt once he stepped into the movie himself.
   
   
5. 5. Did the sermon script
   
   
6. 6. Did the Fear into Power Exercise- this was helpful because it allowed me to focus on the feelings of nervousness and fear that the individual felt during critical moments in important matches. Had him step into the circle of power several times between breaking state
   
   
7. 7. Did visual squash with regression to remove blocks. Used anchors for both polarities and then integrated them
   
   
8. 8. Did swish exercise and personalized it a little in that I had discovered that one of the areas of his game that he wanted to improve was when the game stopped and he was about to take a free kick from outside the box. Again, he could perform this in practice but in games he would often send the ball way over the goal and not even put the shot on goal. We did the swish pattern the standard way but the modification I told him to do was as he took his 3 steps back before shooting the free kick, to quickly in his minds eye replace the current nervous behavior with the bright, big picture in the way he wanted to be before taking a kick and also in the second the image of how he wanted to be came into focus, it was a picture of him with the ball curving perfectly around the wall and into the corner of his choosing depending on the angle he was taking the kick from. I focused on having him also feel the feelings he would feel once the ball struck the back of the net. No one would know he was doing this was my point and that as soon as he held the image and feeling, I told him to strike the ball.
   
   
9. 9. Did Sermon script again
   
   
10. 10. I wrapped up by talking to him about the games he had on his upcoming schedule and how everything we went thru would help him master the skills he wanted quickly and easily. I then, with his help, came up with some affirmations that he could use just in general throughout his day.