Thursday February 7th 2008

The theme for 2008 “How to have even more fun, Now Let’s Play!” really came about in conversations at Marian’s ‘Clean practice group’, which I go along to. It seemed like a catchy title and sufficiently broad to allow this year’s speakers to flex their own material into the theme. I was delighted when Marian offered to run the first session of the year. She has already run two others for us, last April we had a ‘Clean Cafe’ which was very powerful. In March 2005 Marian embraced the theme for that year “Innovation” and challenged the group to be creative and offer exercises for her upcoming course on assertiveness. So with this background and her recent explorations of ‘Clowning’ I knew this would be a really good start to the year.
Feeling very pleased with myself about the Feb session I was then surprised when Marian wanted to interview me to discover more about my idea of FUN. Using ‘clean language’ Marian helped me to understand the deeper levels involved in my choice of this year’s theme. You can hear the some of this interview here. Marian shared her findings at the end of the evening so my sense of fun and her sense of fun didn’t influence the group.

Having already spent time self- modelling her sense of fun, and adding mine to this caused her to rework her plans for the evening! (She tells me she now has another whole evening of games to use another time!)

Marian started the evening with a potted history of clean language and a brief explanation about David Grove, Penny Tomkins & James Lawley. There is more about this background in the Home Practice Pack for February, which is sent out to Full Members. Including some fascinating information on Carl Rogers and how his approach mirrors NLP.

Marian is always looking for new ways to use ‘clean’, particularly with groups and drawing inspiration from the book ‘Think like a consumer’ by ???? She asked us all to become the Marketing dept for FUN.

Bringing us back to our paradigm as the Marketing Department for Fun, Marian asked us to get back to our foursome around each table, to share what we had experienced, especially looking for common words or themes that seemed to sum up what fun is about.

As always with an event like this, the time passed really quickly - another aspect of ‘fun’. Marian pulled together the key words from all the groups on a flip chart and we could see the potential to do even more work to bring this into a shared metaphor for the Marketing Department for Fun.

What were our key words?

Laughter, mischief, naughty, facing fears, comfort, Italian men in tights,

Journey, simple, sill, mouth-wateringly different, tension, challenge, serious (light), happy smile, connections, choosing, inner child, inner peace, movement, freedom, dance, flow

At this point Marian asked me about my ‘sense of fun’. Under the influence of ‘clean’ questions it had turned out to be something much bigger than I had anticipated - to do with finding fun in all aspects of life.

Marian’s metaphor for fun was to be at a fun fair in a pink spinning teacup ride with her friends. She realised the connection (to other people) was a key part of her sense of fun.
Together we discussed what could be done next to extend the process of discovering ‘universal’ metaphors for our role as the Marketing dept for FUN, plus Marian’s own learning's from the evening and how she plans to add these skills to her growing repertoire of tools. And this is all available on the speaker interview CD.

Having ‘pre-framed’ us we were then let loose on a pile of magazines, pens, paper, scissors and glue to cut out and compose images that represented fun to us. An exercise that was fun in itself as we returned to our tables, and possibly our childhood, to rip and tear pictures from the magazines.

For me there was a momentary memory of sitting in a Doctor’s waiting room reading a particularly interesting article and wondering how to tear it out of the magazine and take it home without getting into trouble! Bliss to be allowed to cut out anything that spoke to me of fun!

Once the Blue Peter moment was over, we worked in pairs, using the handily ‘prepared earlier’ set of clean questions to elicit more information about the pictures and what they meant to the person who had gathered them.

(Marian demonstrated first with Robin to make sure we really got the idea.)  As she asked ‘clean’ questions about Robin’s images it became clear Robin was making connections between his chosen images, and finding some deeper insights through the process. Then it was our turn to experience the magic of ‘Clean’.
My effort appears below and as I look at it again I’m slightly confused about where the fun element is in my particular choices of words and pictures! I was surprised at finding ‘Neuro Linguistic Programming’ in the magazines as they were mostly women’s mags, house & garden mags and health mags. Some of my other clippings have to be kept under wraps in case any minors get access to this page! I’m enjoying them quietly at home by myself. Invariably the clippings were to do with my ability to find humour in the juxtaposition of ideas. I also discovered most of my clippings were words or phrases not pictures and discussed this with Marian in our post session recording.

We took the break as part of this exercise and continued the questions on our return.

Links to all the resources of ‘Clean Language’ can be found on the Headline Report.

To find out more about Marian’s courses and the ‘Clean’ group follow this link Apricot Island

Our brief was to work out what patterns emerge across a group of this size (23 people) that could be said to be universally recognised aspects of fun.

If you missed this session and would like to re-create it at home the NLP-South Practice Pack ‘Good Clean Fun’ is available now, right here.   Part of this is an interview with Marian listen to a soundbite