When you tell people to "practice NLP" or anything, for that matter (and I tell people this often!), I wonder what internal representations they are making, or what they think I mean by "practice".

What do you think that word means?

What memories flash up, how does your body respond to the instruction, "Go away and practice your NLP!"

I think a lot of people have practice and DRILL totally and utterly confused in their mind.

A drill is when you make the same movements over and over and over again, be they movements of the mind, or of the body, or both; you keep doing that until you get totally sick of it, and then hopefully, some sort of threshold breach occurs somewhere along the line and all of a sudden, you can do it perfectly.

The drill, that is.

Practice is NOT drilling.

Ouch!

Practice is to take something theoretical and then to go out and DO SOMETHING PRACTICAL in order to learn something from it.

"Practicing NLP" for example might entail asking someone in a pub about their ideas about the perfect car, or the perfect girl, and paying attention to what they say, where they look, their emotions, movements and so forth.

There is NOTHING drill-like about that WHATSOEVER.

In fact, practice is an anti-drill, if it's done correctly - you are going out into the field, doing something practical, and getting feedback from your actions so you learn something.

Then you can think about it some more, and take that new thought and turn it once again into practice - and you learn something else, or even more in the process.

Does that sound like the TOTE model yet?

Yes it does ...

So when you people say they're "practicing piano" but they're actually DRILLING scales; or that they are "practicing tennis" but they're drilling back hand serves, you might want to correct them, or if you can't be asked, just make a mental note that practice makes perfect, and drilling ... well, I think we can leave that to the dentists for now ...