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Neuro Linguistic Programming - what's behind that fancy name?

This information was written and kindly contributed by
life coach and master NLP practitioner: Piers Thurston.

NLP has grown in popularity and notoriety over the last ten years, and pops up in a diverse range of areas, from conflict resolution to flirting. But what is it? And how does it function in the area of personal therapy?

What is it?

NLP is a science and methodology for understanding and changing human behaviour. It is the study of someone's subjective reality. NLP allows us to understand 'how' we do something, not 'why'. It is based on the assumption that when we are born, we are a clean sheet with regards to fears and emotional baggage. Babies only have two inherent fears -loud noises and falling - everything else is programmed as we go through life, picking up responses and coping strategies from those around us. NLP identifies our pattern for how we do something and this awareness allows you to change it.

How did it all start:

Given the fact that we are more or less all born with the same resources, how come some people end up being hugely successful and happy, and others don't? The founders of NLP, Richard Bandler and John Grinder, were interested in the answer to this question so they studied or 'modelled' the behaviour and thinking styles of highly effective and successful people in business, education, sales, therapy, sport, and personal development. From this model they discovered that we need to develop our own effective strategies for how to achieve something. NLP believes that we all have the resources we need to be happy and successful, we just haven't worked to how to use them�.yet!

And that name...

NLP has succeed despites its uninviting scientific name!

* Neuro refers to the brain, and how the mind and body interact.

* Linguistic refers to language and because we have to structure our reality around our language, insights into a person's thinking can be obtained by careful attention to their use of language.

* Programming refers to the fact that as our brains are designed to look for patterns our behaviour gets reinforced and forms a program. A bit like a computer and whenever we experience the stimulus we fire off the same response.

How does it work?

The ability to change the process by which we experience reality is often more valuable than changing the content of our experience of reality. What does that mean? Our brains can't tell the difference between what is real and what we imagine! Which why we have fear - when we imagine what could happen we start to feel scared even though in reality nothing is actually happening to us.

All our experiences and distinctions concerning our environment and our behavior are represented through our sensory systems (visual, auditory, kinesthetic) - so our brain stores experiences represented by a series of pictures, sounds, and feelings. It is the characteristics of these pictures, sounds and feelings that determine how we feel about a certain experience.

Once you understand how someone is making themselves feel a certain way, you can change it. For example someone who has a fear of public speaking will usually, at the mere mention of public speaking, begin to see pictures of themselves 'failing' at the event, have internal chatter giving themselves negative suggestions, and sensations of anxiety. These symptoms can happen when just thinking about the event because our brains can't tell the different between what it imagines and reality. However you can use this to a client's advantage, because in the same way that negative feelings can be manufactured, so can positive ones, i.e. if you vividly imagine yourself feeling super confident and relaxed you will become so.

So,

* Your brain doesn't know the difference between what is real and what happens in your head
* Your imagination is always more powerful than your will power

What can you use it for?

Simply to change the way you feel and therefore behave.

NLP provides us with choice; choice in what we feel, think, do, and therefore ultimately in what we achieve. It has transformed what is possible in the ways in which we can manage our states and reprogram out brains to think and behave differently.

NLP can help if you want to:

* Feel more motivated, more positive, more focused.

* Manage your emotions - so that you can be influential, more resourceful, proactive, and in control.

* Increase self esteem, confidence and energy.

* Do whatever you already do reasonably well, even better

* Feel more positive and spend more of your life happy

* NLP can cure phobias in as little as one hour - phobias that traditional psycho therapy would take weeks or months to solve.

Language and Your Reality:

NLP stands for neuro linguistic programming, the 'linguistic' means language.

So here is a little bit about it�.the language a person uses is a reflection of their maps and models of reality, and reveals aspects of those maps and models which the person themselves is not aware of. When their models change, their experience of reality changes. Language is a lever for changing those models, and thus changing a person's reality.

You can use language to change your (or someone else's) reality.

But there is a deeper pattern at work too. We create our perception of reality based on a combination of sensory input, our maps and models of reality, and all our past experiences. Most people see the 'version' of reality they create as "the way things really are". This semantic mistake happens to be at the root of most arguments.

It's not the way things really are; it's just one version of reality. One version out of billions. Literally, billions. There are approximately six billion people on the planet. Each experiences their own version of reality. Not one of them is the 'real', objective reality. "So what?", you may ask. Well, the version of reality you create doesn't stop there. We are not passive observers of reality, but active participants in it. As a result, the version of reality you are holding in mind at this moment has an effect on the world around you. How? Through your actions.

The way to increase what you don't want in your life is to focus on it with a strong negative feeling. This is often referred to as worry.

The way to increase what you want in your life is to focus on it with a strong positive feeling. Strangely, there is not an English word for this (as far as I know). Maybe you can create one�

Your Map of the World

When I first visited London on my own when I was 16 years old. On my first day in the city, I got completely lost, and ended up exploring some of the less salubrious parts of the city by bus, underground, and ultimately by taxi. Why did I get lost? Because I was using the wrong map.

The famous London Underground map is an excellent map for navigating London 's enormous underground train system. However, it's next to useless for navigating above ground. By the same token, the London A to Z is great for finding your way round above ground, but is not much help once you get below the surface. Of course, there are places above ground where even the A to Z is of no use: specifically, developments and estates that were created after the most recent edition of the A to Z was published. This was for me an excellent demonstration of one of the presuppositions of NLP: The map is not the territory.

The map is not the territory

People don't respond directly to reality, but rather to the 'maps' or 'models' of reality they have created (based on information received via the senses and combined with stored information previously received), and that exist in their nervous systems.

When someone has a problem, challenge or issue, the problem typically does not actually 'exist' in the world, but rather in the person's map of the world.

The idea that the map is not the territory, that a problem, challenge or issue does not actually 'exist' in the world, is not actually true. It's what we call a presupposition of NLP: this means that when you act as though it's true, you can get good results in helping yourself and others to find solutions to problems and enhance existing results.

Nevertheless, if you ever break your arm, I strongly suggest that you get someone to drive you to hospital and get it set.

Get a better map

So when someone has a problem or challenge in their personal life, or some aspect of their work-life, it can be useful to consider it as a limitation in their map of the world, rather than in the world itself. By helping someone update their map of the world, their problems, issues or limitations can be resolved and sometimes just disappear.

In summary:

NLP is a methodology for understanding human behaviour and a variety of tools and techniques have been developed from it that can be beneficial in the area of personal change and therapy. Used in conjunction with coaching techniques or hypnosis (NLP has been described as eye open hypnosis) NLP can be extremely effective in facilitating change.

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