Modelling Doesn't Need Three Perfect Exemplars

There's a persistent piece of NLP folklore that says proper modelling requires finding three people who are brilliant at something, interviewing them formally, and extracting a repeatable technique. It's not wrong exactly — it's just one option among several, and treating it as the only valid version puts modelling out of reach for most people who'd actually benefit from it.

You can model yourself. If you're already good at something — staying calm under pressure, say — you can be your own exemplar, examining what you actually do rather than what you assume you do, and testing whether it transfers to a context where you're currently struggling.

You can model the structure of an unwanted pattern instead of chasing excellence. The person who freezes before every presentation isn't lacking a skill they need to import from someone else — the structure holding that freeze can often be understood and shifted directly, without ever looking outside themselves.

Living This Out

And you don't need to end up with a formal, teachable model at all. Sometimes the value is simply in seeing the structure clearly enough that it changes on its own, without you ever writing it down or building a technique out of it. Insight, quietly absorbed, does its own work.

The myth that modelling is difficult, requires formal training, and only counts if it produces a shareable model keeps a genuinely useful everyday skill locked up as something only practitioners do. It isn't. You're already doing a version of it. The only question is whether you're doing it on purpose.

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