– Joy changed her life with NLP.  Now she is changing the lives of her family, loved ones, and community.

When we first met Joy Zahlen, she was a successful businesswoman.  But her family life was a mess.  Her abusive husband was having an affair.  Her teenage kids were yelling all the time and being violent.  Joy was not living up to her name – she was anything but joyful. 

In fact she was confused and what NLPers call incongruent.  On the outside she was clearly trying to hold it together and present a professional image.  But the turmoil on the inside was leaking out in her behaviors and in the way she spoke. 

Have you ever seen somebody desperately trying to keep their mask in place?

Joy first showed up in the middle of an NLP Practitioner training on the day that we were doing Parts Negotiation and Six-Step Reframing, two powerful tools for helping a person resolve their internal struggles. 

You know that feeling you get when you’ve been trying to take on a new habit but you find yourself angry at yourself because you can’t seem to make yourself to do the right thing?  Or worse, you try to stop doing a particular bad habit, but no matter how much you try, as soon as you let your guard down you fall off the wagon?   In NLP we call that major incongruence.

When you are incongruent, you are no longer running the show.  Your conscious will-power is never enough because another internal and subconscious part of you seems to take over and make you do things that you really don’t want to do. 

Joy was like this, and it had her stomach tied into knots. 

Like many people, her family of origin was deeply dysfunctional so Joy wanted to learn to model healthier relationships from other people.  She calls them her “family of choice.” 

She was so out of control that when an NLP Master Practitioner worked with her, Joy’s unconscious mind refused to let Joy, herself, know what was going on.  The NLPer had to work with her "parts" outside of Joy’s conscious awareness.  (Now that is an artful skill for a coach or manager or parent to learn.) 

Joy‘s work with an experienced and masterful NLP coach, helped her begin to find herself and bring herself back together again.  Joy’s unconscious psychological "parts" were invited, and came, to the table.  They began to help her change.

Over the next years, Joy cleaned up her relationships with her kids, divorced her abusive husband, and drew powerful boundaries with her family of origin.  Joy finished her practitioner training in 2008 and her Master Practitioner in 2009 and has restored and rebalanced her life in many, many ways.

Flash forward a few years:  Her son-in-law, Chet, had recently completed a military tour in Iraq and so there was a special reception for him. 

After the party, Chet and Joy were talking about the importance of enthusiasm, setting goals, and ambition in life.  Joy’s rapport skills must have been right on because Chet opened up to her and he found himself telling her about his anxiety about going back to college.  He was struggling with believing in himself.  He wanted to find a new direction for his passion now that he is back to living as a civilian, but anxiety was getting in his way.

After listening carefully for a while, Joy asked Chet, “When you were in Iraq did you ever feel real fear?” 

“Sure, of course,” Chet answered. “We saw terrible things there and had to drive through  places where IEDs were going off.”

Then Joy asked, “When you feel anxious about going to college and doing what you have to do there, is that the same type of fear that you felt in Iraq?”

Shocked at first, Chet laughed.  “Well no.  I guess I hadn’t thought if it that way before.”  He paused to think it over for a moment.  “It’s not the same feeling at all.  I guess there’s nothing to be really scared of, is there?  I don’t know why I was thinking there was.” 

With a few choice words, Joy had reframed Chet’s experience in a way that offered him more choice and a real feeling of empowerment.  Reframing is just one of the tools that Joy learned in her NLP trainings. 

Chet, like all the young men and women who serve our country in the armed forces is a hero to me.  But people like Joy, who are willing to face their internal demons, think and feel in new ways, take new actions, and change their lives so thoroughly that they can help others around them also change for the better, are also my heroes. 

Chet and Joy, I salute you and thank you for the important work that you’ve done and continue to do in service to others.  May you’re path be enlightened, full of love, and joy filled.
~ Keith



This story is told with Joy’s permission.

Keith Fail is an NLP Trainer, Coach, and Master Modeler in Austin, Texas, and Director of NLP Resources Austin.  He writes and speaks about tools and techniques that help people to communicate better and live their dreams.  He works with teams and individuals to create contexts and communities that support a better world.  He can be reached at +1-512-507-5464.