Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)

Just imagine what you would do if your kit car arrived without instructions? That of course, pales in comparison to the immense complexity of our brains. Each of us posses in our head, the most sophisticated computer ever imaginable and no one thought to provide us with the instruction manual. No wonder changing how we do the simplest tasks, often meets with failure.

If you attempted to put your kit car together without the manual, nuts and bolts would surely be in the wrong holes and the car would mis-function or fall apart. You wouldn't get very far without a wheel falling off, the breaks failing or the engine refusing to start up or fail to put the fuel in the correct place, or indeed the correct fuel!

NLP studies the structure of how humans think and experience the world. The structure of something so subjective does not lend itself to precise, statistical formulae but instead leads to models of how these things work. From these models, techniques for quickly and effectively changing thoughts, behaviours and beliefs that limit you have been developed.

Many of the models in NLP, were created by studying people who did things well. These models provide a diverse set of tools for creating change in yourself and in others.

Using the 'sub-modalities' model as an example of how it works. By understanding how we perceive the world through our five senses, we can then understand how some people can respond very resourcefully in a situation and others do not. Once you learn how those who remain resourceful set up their representations, then it's a simple matter to teach others to do the same thing. Imagine seeing an enormous spider dangling directly in front of your face. Now clear your mind. A common way for people to have a phobic reaction to spiders or anything related to them, is to picture a spider completely oversized and far too close in their minds. Spiders are tiny, cute, hairy little creatures that are far more frightened of you than you should be of them but try telling that to someone with that particular phobia. So, why don't these people with a phobia notice the images they're creating? The popular belief is that we don't pay much attention to what's going on in our unconscious. If you considered the enormous amount of information your brain has to process each day it might make more sense. If a non-phobic person can have fun playing with their pet spider, what can we learn about them that we could teach the phobic person so they can play with spiders, too? The spider-lover would most likely have an image representing spiders that was proportionally correct and at a reasonable distance. Knowing the difference, using NLP we can use one of many techniques to help the phobic person relearn their reaction to spiders so that it is similar in nature to the spider-lover's.

NLP is based on many useful presuppositions that support the attitude that change is imminent. One of the most important is, NLP is about what works, not what should work. If what you're doing isn't working, try something else, regardless of whether what you had been doing should have worked. Flexibility is the key element in a given system, the one who is most likely to do well responds to changing (or unchanging) circumstances.