Created from images by Leonardini and theswedish at sxc.huIn NLP, the Discovery Frame is an attitude in which you suspend your expectations, judgements and attachment to a particular outcome in approaching a task. You just do it, to the best of your ability, and notice what happens and what you learn from it.
The benefits are that you do not prejudge the outcome, and you are not disappointed with any outcome.
Instead, you are able to notice whatever happens more clearly, and you are open to learning something new – which is the most valuable thing you can get from anything that you do.
It’s useful to apply the Discovery Frame when you’re learning a new skill, whether that’s tennis, yoga, ballroom dancing, computer skills – or NLP. Very often when people are doing learning exercises designed to give them new skills, they get caught up in how well they are doing the exercise, especially if they are comparing themselves with other people.
The most important benefit of the Discovery Frame that it helps you to remember this:
The exercise is not a competition.
Remember this when you come on your live training, where you’ll be participating in a lot of learning exercises. It is not important how ‘well’ or ‘badly’ you do a learning exercise, as long as you are fully present when you are doing it.
What is important is what you notice – about your own responses, about the responses of others, about your thoughts, feelings and behaviour in each exercise.
Both during the exercise and reflecting on it afterwards, you are learning. You will learn most effectively if you apply the Discovery Frame, and maintain yourself in a good learning state (alert and positive) throughout.
And if you also apply the Discovery Frame to the learning experiences that life sends you, so much the better.
© 2011, Andy Smith. All rights reserved.
