The Magic of Neuro Linguistic Programming.pdf

The Magic of Neuro Linguistic Programming

NLP or Neuro linguistic programming, the brainchild of two Americans, Richard Bandler and John

Grinder in the early 70s, studies how we put our thoughts together, how we know what we know

and how we construct our experiences. It is a process oriented psychology that concentrates on

the “ how” of a problem and not the “ what” (content) and the “ why” (blames and excuses).

Subjective experience’ includes what goes on inside your mind, as well as in the outside world and

is a combination what we see, hear and feel and since this cannot be precise with statistical

formulae, it can only be in the form of models which is different for everyone. All our thoughts,

emotions, memories and imaginings are made from pictures, sounds and sensations. The

differences in our subjective experiences come from a myriad of sequences and placing we can

make with the sounds, pictures and sensations and in the choice of the subject matter that

attracts us and also in the preference of the sense we use to gather information from outside.

We each perceive the world in which we live, uniquely and subjectively (our map of the world or

internal representations). We see values, which together make up our `mindset’, which may not

make sense to other people, in the same way as how some people think and behave, often

doesn’t make sense to us. None of us, however, has a monopoly on what scientists might call

‘objective reality’.

Neuro refers to our neurology i.e. our five senses, through which we are in contact with the

outside world e.g., visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory and gustatory.

Linguistic refers to the language, both verbal and non-verbal, used to express our neural

representations like thoughts and emotions. The body language often reflects our thinking, which

determines how you influence and communicate with others and yourself. (Imagine the body

posture of a depressed person and happy person).

Programming reflects the highly mechanistic way that we behave in this world expressed as

habits, beliefs, and stereotypes. Everybody is programmed in some way or the other and these

patterns you use affect the balance of your life.

It shows that success is the result of specific pattern of thinking and pinpoints the mental

program, so that it can be learned by anyone. It is concerned with what happen when we think,

and the effect of our thinking on our behaviour and that of others. It facilitates ones

communication both within and with others in a way that makes a difference between mediocrity

and excellence.

The creators of NLP, Richard Bandler, a computer scientist & mathematician and John Grinder, a

linguist, in their attempt to study the structure of excellence, observed leading therapists such as

Virginia Satir (family therapy), Fritz Perls (gestalt), and Milton H. Erickson (medical hypnosis) in

addition to successes in other fields.

They discovered that their subjects repeated the same sequence of behavior for each desired

outcome (purpose) and this behaviour had a noticeable structure. They made describable models

for themselves of the behaviour of the people they were studying and noted that when they

adjusted their own behaviour in line with the models, they could get the same results as their

subjects time after time.

NLP is the study of human excellence. To understand this better, take the example of certain

specialized sporting activity like skiing which until recently was thought to be a matter of natural

talent. Researchers, who studied frame by frame, the films of important sportsmen and divided

the smooth motion into isolates or the smallest units of behaviour, found that although they had

very different styles, they were using the same isolates. When these isolates were taught to the

beginners, they improved immediately.

The key was to identify the essence of their skills (isolates), so that others could learn. In NLP this

is called modeling and the key movements (isolates) are found in your inner thoughts, like words,

pictures, feelings or even beliefs. Take the example of a recipe for making a cake, if you use all

the ingredients and follow the steps, the result will be a cake nearly as good as the recipe

intended. (An improvement for you in any case)

NLP exercises are like thought experiments, mental exercises or like a game .

Imagine watching yourself on a giant wheel or a fast carriage from far and then stepping into your

seat and experiencing the ride. These two different perspectives have different mental structures.

Being on the ride is engaging and exciting and is known in NLP terms as being ‘associated’ ;

while watching the ride is calming and detached and is known as being ‘disassociated’ .

Discovering these differences and putting them to use is fundamental to NLP. If you want to get

excited about something you need to get involved physically and mentally (associated) and on the

other hand, if you need some mental distance to have a calm and objective view you can step out

of the picture i.e., being disassociated.

Bandler and Grinder noted that people could learn any behaviour so well consciously that they

could now let their unconscious mind take over the instigation and running of it, thus freeing up

the limited resources of the conscious mind to do other things (programming). This is aptly

illustrated by the attempt to learn to drive, where the programming is taken through four steps.

At first, watching others drive, it looks so easy, we are therefore unaware of our incompetence

(unconscious incompetence). We then realize how difficult it is to juggle the various controls,

watch the traffic, obey the signs and may find it overwhelming (conscious incompetence). We

then learn to perform the tasks but need complete attention (conscious competence). Later when

these common tasks become automatic that they slip out of the conscious mind into the

unconscious (subconscious), thereby freeing the conscious mind to listen to the radio, think, plan,

talk or simply look around.

There clearly still remains a link between the conscious and the unconscious mind which is

apparent when driving unconsciously especially when effect is required to deviate from the

average driving to make conscious decisions i.e. to stop at a traffic light etc.

Subjects that Bandler and Grinder studied were unable to describe how and why they behaved the

ways that they did (unconscious competence level). They noticed slight differences in the body

and verbal language of their subjects depending on the tasks undertaken, which varied with the

different ways the information was processed in each individual.

They noted that each individual, experienced differently not because the world is different, but

because each individual processed the experience in a different way. The example can be of two

people standing side by side with a dog running towards them, one person may run away while

the other stays to pat the dog. They both had different subjective experience (reality), their map

of the world, which guided their behaviour.

People make maps by gathering information externally through the five senses e.g., sight (visual),

sound (auditory), touch or feeling (kinesthetic), taste (gustatory) and smell (olfactory), and then

process them internally to re-present a representation (map) of the external experience. This

process is done by passing the information through their mental filters of beliefs and values,

memories, habits and so the eventual map (internal representation) is an edited version of what

really happens. In NLP the five senses are known as representational systems or modalities.

Moreover, each individual has his or her own method (preference) to gather, process and re-

present the information (predicates). For e.g., a person might describe a situation in visual terms

i.e., ‘Oh I see it now’, ‘things are looking bright’ (visual) etc. Another would use sound terms like

‘it is loud and clear’, ‘that rings a bell’ (auditory), and someone else would say, ‘smooth as silk’

(kinesthetic). These preferred channels are known as predicates. Most of the difficulties in

communication are usually due to the participants using different predicates in their conversation

and so if you keep using auditory words to a visual person, i.e. use a representational system

different to that of the receiver, they will unconsciously have to translate internally to their own

system, i.e. translate your auditory words to his visual format.

The five senses (modalities) can be further subdivided into the subdivisions of what they can do

(submodalities). This concept greatly increases the degree of accuracy of how each individual

represents information. For e.g., sight (visual) can be bright, dim, different size, shape, sharps,

fuzzy coloured or lack of it, far, near etc. Sound can be loud or quiet different pitch, tempo, tone,

etc. (E.g., fine tuning your TV).

Each individual is unique in the way he/she represents experience into subjectivity, both in

modalities and sub-modalities. It is therefore important to direct all your attention to the outside

while communicating, so that you can detect the predicates in others and modify your language to

suit those predicates to make the communication more effective.

Bandler and Grinder also discovered that individuals seem to communicate using consistent

structures of language, which over time can be recognized through repeating patterns. They also

realized that people who used similar language patterns quickly developed a deep rapport and

when not aligned, they got confused, or they argued, or found difficult to understand each other.

It has been noticed that it is possible to self manipulate and be manipulated by others into

changing the structure of internal patterns, in order to change what any experience means to an

individual or self E.g., by changing the way you see a thing, you can change the effect of the

subjective experience of the sight. E.g., making a picture coloured, or black and white-seeing it

from far, making it small or bog, changing the sound or the voice.

Eye accessing cues

External behaviors that indicate what kind of internal mental processing a person is doing are

called ‘accessing cues’. The most easily noticed accessing cues are eye movements. You have

seen people look up, down, away, and through you countless times when they were thinking i.e.

searching their brain for the information. These eye movements can be an important source of

information about the structure of a person’s inner world i.e. how they process and store

information as memories.

We all store the information that we have learnt from birth as pictures, sounds and feelings.

Pictures are stored in the top part of our brains. Sounds are stored in the middle and feelings are

stored in the bottom. When a person is looking up and to their right they are accessing

‘constructed images’. Looking up and to the left accesses ‘remembered images’. Accessing for a

new sound ‘auditory constructed’ the eyes move to the right. Eye level and over to the left is the

accessing cue for remembered sound. When you look down and to your right may be a way to

access certain sensations. Down left indicates internal auditory processing (self-talk).

UP RIGHT UP LEFT

LEVEL RIGHT

Constructed Images

Remembered Images Constructed Sound

LEVEL LEFT

DOWN RIGHT

DOWN LEFT

Remembered Sounds

Feelings

Self Talk

PRESUPPOSITIONS OF NLP

The methodology of NLP is based on some basic assumptions and beliefs known as

presuppositions.

1. NLP is a model of generation: It generates new behaviour and not repairs old ones. If

what you are doing is not working, do something else. IF WE ALWAYS DO WHAT WE ALWAYS

DID, WE WILL ALWAYS GET WHAT WE ALWAYS GOT.

2. The map is not the territory: Our internal experience is our map of the world and is

reflected by our external behaviour. Every communication a person makes has validity in his or

her map of the world. Reality is what you make of it. We do not see the world as it really is,

but construct a model of it. Our perceptions are filtered through our senses and we interpret

our experiences in the light of our beliefs, interests, upbringing, preoccupation and state of

mind.

3. Respect the other person’s map of the world: Accept that we are all different with

different maps of reality (experiences). This makes rapport easy and thereby making change

possible. We all travel through the same territory but with different maps. Throughout history,

people have fought and died in arguments over whose map was right.

4. There are no failures but feedback: Failure is an unprecedented opportunity to learn, no

matter what happens. If you look at your mistakes in relation to your goal (outcome) and

other successes, then they are feedback. But if you see them as failures, then it is a dead

end. All results and behaviors are achievements (have positive intentions). They are the

desired outcome for a given task/context and if not they provide valuable information for

change.

5. The part of the system with the most flexibility controls the system: Flexibility means

having more choices in the communication interaction. (If you have only one choice you are a

robot; if you have two choices, then you have a dilemma; if you have more than two choices

then you have flexibility). The entire point of being flexible in behaviour is that you can

change your behaviour till you get the response you want.

6. A person cannot communicate: One always gets an answer if one has the capacity to

direct his attention to the outside. Nonverbal responses usually are more significant than the

words in the communication process. The meaning of the communication is the response it

gets and not what is said and so it is not what you say but how you say it that matters.

7. Behaviour is geared to adaptation and present behaviour is the best choice

available at that time, (which may not be the best choice). Underlying every behaviour is a

positive intention. E.g., if you are engaged to clean a tiger cage and suddenly the faulty door

lets the tiger in – the last thing in your mind is that you were engaged to clean the place –

you run for your life! Alcoholism, smoking, fears, all have some positive intention. The idea

is to incorporate these intentions in the behavior that replaces these habits I.E. Can you get

what you want without these unwanted behaviors.

8. People have an infinite amount of resources: they might need help to access the

resources at the appropriate time and place. If it is possible for one then it is possible for

anyone; it is just a matter of time.

9. Behaviour and change should be evaluated in terms of context and ecology. There

may be times and places when they may not be appropriate.

SIX LEGS OF NLP

These are the basic principles, which help to guide us through the workings of NLP.

1. Get into a resourceful frame of mind. If you are not in the proper mood, nothing you do

is going to be effective. Anchoring a past success helps you to get into a resourceful state.

2. Know your outcome. Make clear positive mental pictures of the things you wish to achieve

before you undertake any task and anchor it. If we don’t know what we want then we

won’t know when we get it.

3. Rapport is one of the most important. It is a way of creating an oneness with the other

person by matching their body language, breathing or tone of voice. Rapport is a state one

enters by continuing to match and mirror. It means that the other person has a sense of ease

and comfort and familiarity when communicating with you and also that the other person is

being responsive, and is receptive to your ideas.

4. Sensory Acuity is having your senses tuned to what is happening around you. I.e., watching

the response to know if what you are doing is working and if not to change what you are

doing to get the effect required by your deed or communication. This would mean opening all

or most of your receptive doors (senses) to the outside.

5. Have behavioural flexibility. The part of the system with the most flexibility ends up

controlling the system.

6. Take action. Vision without action is just a dream; action without vision passes time; action

and vision can change the world.

Unfortunately, unlike external phenomena, we cannot examine our unique, subjective experience

in a laboratory. NLP is only a model – a model of the way minds work that is straight forward and

practical – the start of a user manual. It is not `right’ or `wrong’, it’s only as useful as it is useful.

Minds are very complex, each of them is different and as a result we all have different ways or

relating to the world. Coming back to the cake, when you bake a cake you require several things-

a list of ingredients, a recipe, and some physical skills. Most of these are available to everyone yet

some people consistently make better cakes than others. NLP is the study of what make the

difference between world-class cake bakers and us, who are just competent. Most of the time the

difference depends on what happens in our heads.

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