What is NLP ?

People who have had some sort of training in NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) frequently ask me: “What is NLP”? They have a general sense of what it is, but experience it as a challenge to explain it to the uninitiated. It is a challenge that I have frequently faced myself although not always successfully. If you find this article helps you to explain NLP more successfully to others, I will know that I have done my job! NLP as a subject is bottomless because the more we learn about it, the more there is to learn. When learning about NLP it is a good idea to keep your desired outcomes in mind and let it guide you as to how much you learn about NLP and how much to ignore. You don’t have to learn everything in NLP. Most people just have to make sensible choices from the wealth of trainers and providers from whom we learn. Remember to always use your desired outcomes as criteria and then get different opinions on how best to fulfil those criteria. You will find that people are biased and therefore you will have to get lots of opinions. At its core, NLP is a method for duplicating excellence. Excellence in methodology, results and human cognition. It is needless to say that if NLP is what many supporters (me included) say is a better way of learning other/different things faster than any other methods out there – it becomes easy to say that “everything is NLP” This both true and false. Example — if you were a world-class billiards player, I could use NLP to model what you do, how you do it, and replicate your results significantly more quickly than how long it took you to achieve your level of greatness. That is, IF I had the time available to devote to this, and IF I had unfettered access to watching you perform, interviewing you in unique ways, and then, you also helped with my refinement process (feedback loop)… then I could conceivably take a year or maybe even less to reach what took you a decade to reach. (Yes, seriously). And afterwards, I might even be better skilled than you would be, at teaching your level of excellence, once I’d replicated your results. I could potentially then package observations about your skills (& optimizations to your logic) that you neither could nor would have ever concluded on your own, and then my version of your skill, would arguably then have become, an NLP-based skill. Lets take the example of a world-class billiards player. When I make use of NLP to model his actions, I can duplicate his results significantly quicker than the time it took him to achieve that level of greatness – provided that I had the time to devote myself to this and that I have unrestricted access to your performances, interview you in exclusive ways and that you also provide me with quality feedback in my refinement process. From the above example you can see that this modelling process has produced results and although it is the “results” of NLP it is also included in the skill set of NLP, which in turn are often mistaken as NLP, when they have originally only been the results of implementing NLP. I thank that most would agree that these various NLP skills include: Improved persuasiveness. • The ability to put people at ease rapidly and to make them think that they know you and vice versa • The ability to induce a trance and to evoke their imagination and hit the emotional buttons more easily. • The ability to gain a deeper understanding about how people tick and why. • The ability to using people’s own values and decision strategies to influence them. … and lots more … I have left out vast areas of what NLP comprises of and this is just a few points as to why many have undertaken at least some NLP training at some time, somewhere. I intentionally show it as an partial list of skills. The letters NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming and is about using language in a more effective way to influence/redirect/program our own or other people’s minds. The programming part doesn’t mean “mind control” but rather influencing of the mind for self-improvement and other purposes like social and business influence. To encompass NLP in a nutshell is hard and I hope this contribute to a better understanding. For more information about life coaching courses in Pretoria & Johannesburg - click here.