WOW! WHAT AN HONOR to write the foreword for one of my favorite books of all time.

      Back in 1985, I was working as a radio broadcaster and went to interview a local hypnotist for my programme. It had been a particularly bad week—I’d split up with my girlfriend, the people in the apartment next to where I was living seemed to be having a “who can make the most noise” contest, and to top things off, that morning I’d had a flaming row with my boss.

      When I sat down in his office, the hypnotist said, “Rather than try and explain how this works, I think you’d benefit from a demonstration.” Skeptically, I replied, “Let the healing begin.”

      To my delighted surprise, in only a few minutes I felt relaxed and quite euphoric. Even more impressive to me was that while I knew there were still issues I had to deal with in my life, they no longer carried any emotional charge. I just knew that I could handle them.

      How could it be that easy? Didn’t therapy take months, or even years? Wasn’t I supposed to tell him all about my childhood?

      When I asked him what he had done to me, he explained that he had used something called Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP. With NLP, he was able to notice patterns in my language and behavior that let him know exactly what I was doing in my brain to create my experience. He explained to me that hypnosis was just one of the many tools in this amazing new technology. I was hooked from that moment forward!

      He lent me a book by Dr Richard Bandler—the first edition of the book you are holding in your hands right now. Not only did I read it, but my life began to change for the better almost immediately.

      Several years later I met Richard at a seminar in London and we became friends. The more I learned from him, the more I wanted to know.

      Even though I was at the top of the TV ratings and filling theatres every night with my hypnotism show, I began spending my weekends sitting with small groups of people in hotels and teaching them the basics of NLP. This book was our bible—the most powerful and practical guide to NLP and hypnosis ever written.

      I flew to San Francisco and started to harass Richard. “I would