The Importance of the Clean 3rd Position

One of the most important things I learnt at John Grinder and Carmen Bostic's 6-day workshop is the power of the clean 3rd position.

This is really about the feedback system in the process of NLP. If I can maintain my high performance during my trade, of course it is the best. But as John used to emphasize the importance of "practice, practice, practice," one of the supplementary ways to accompany with high performance is to put yourself into the "clean third position." Basically, this state is an objective state in which you can observe your own behavior and state in terms of VAK (visual, auditory, and kienethetic). So you ask yourself what you see and hear by looking at yourself in the first position. Here, the first position is where you are experiencing everything in terms of VAK as if you were really there. This process of putting yourself into the first postion is called "association". The process to be in the third position, on the other hand, is called "dissociation."

Sometimes when I trade in a very disturbed state, I purpose stand up from the chair and stand a couple of feet away from it to see myself from the clean third position. Interesting enough, I almost always cross my arms when I observe myself. This change in my physiology is already a sign of my being in a different position. I can notice many things just by looking at myself by imagining the way I trade. So I can come with many new ideas and advice to make my state better.

If this process becomes more automatic in my unconscious level without really stepping away from my first position, I can reach high performance much, much faster...