According to a Sufi parable, one dark night, the neighbours saw Mullah Nasruddin on all fours, searching frantically for something under the street light outside his house.
When asked if he needed help, the Mullah said that he was looking for his key.
After searching in vain together under the light for several minutes, the neighbours asked the Mullah to retrace his steps.
The Mullah then revealed that he lost his key while he was in the house.
The flabbergasted neighbours then asked why didn't the Mullah looked inside his house?
The Mullah explained that it is dark inside the house but there's plenty of light under the street lamp.
Many of us can identify with Mullah Nasruddin, can we not?
The lighted area under the street lamp is a metaphor for our conscious mind. When we are trying to solve a problem, more often than not, we search for the solution in our conscious mind. Much like Mullah Nasruddin's futile search for his key under the street lamp, the search is in vain as the key is not there!
Mullah Nasruddin's unlit house is a metaphor for our unconscious mind. The key is in the house and all we need to do is to turn on the lights there. Yet we don't often search our unconscious mind because it is dark and unknown.
The Mullah's missing key is a metaphor for all the internal resources (e.g. confidence, courage, perseverance, etc) that we need to succeed. They are all already in our unconscious mind, just like the key has always been in Mullah Nasruddin's house.
It's just that sometimes we are unable to access our internal resources because we are in the wrong mental state (e.g. rage, sadness, lack of confidence, etc) and we are not looking inside.
The NLP practitioner can help others access their internal resources by putting them in the right mental state and by shining a light for them to help them look inside of themselves.
There are NLP tools such as anchoring, meta model, Milton model, SCORE model and many more that the NLP practitioner can use to help light up the unconscious mind.
The NLP practitioner's life is most rewarding because the greatest gift that we can give to anyone is to help them find the treasures within themselves, in their unconscious mind.
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