Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP)

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a rather jargon bound name that belies its brilliance. I like to think of it as a ‘users manual for the brain’. After all we have the most complex software system between our ears imaginable and it doesn’t confine itself to the space in our cranium, it interfaces with every aspect of our body. BUT were we ever told how to use this spectacular instrument? I know I certainly wasn’t.

What?

What? re-write the brain’s software and therefore have an effect on my behaviour. You mean I could learn more easily? I could stop myself worrying? I could experience happiness more often? Be less bad-tempered? It was an amazing notion to me and it has worked. Although I will say right up front I AM NOT PERFECT!! A very dear colleague and friend of mine often says ‘this stuff doesn’t give you licence to walk on water’. I continue to work on re-programming my ’software’ but I can tell you that I am calmer, more at peace, happier in the world now than I ever anticipated being. And I attribute it all to learning NLP.

So let’s think about the name then: it covers the three most influential aspects of our human experience: neurology, language and programming. Our neurological (let’s call it nervous) system regulates how our bodies function, our language (let’s say the words we use) determines how we communicate with other people and ourselves (this is important – I’ll come back to this) and our ‘programming’ determines the kinds of models of the world we create. This takes a bit more explaining: what do we mean by ‘programming’? Every single one of us puts all the information that is coming in through our senses through a variety of ‘filters’. The reason for this is one of sanity. We process HUGE amounts of sensory information- I’ve read numbers anywhere upwards of 2 billion pieces of information every second – and we can’t possibly pay conscious attention to it all, therefore we learn to Delete, Distort and Generalise.

NLP – Deletion

Deletion occurs when we omit or only pay attention to certain aspects or information that is coming into our senses – how many times have we bought something – say a new car – a Volvo estate perhaps and suddenly we start to notice all the other Volvo estates that are on the road. They were there before, we had just deleted the awareness from our consciousness. This is a very gross example of a deletion, the deletions that occur throughout our everyday lives can be and are extremely subtle.

NLP – Distortion

Distortions are a way of filtering our sensory information so that it fits with what we expect or believe. Remember looking for your keys or something else we’ve misplaced and NOT SEEN THEM because they weren’t where we expected them to be. Someone else helps you to look for them and finds them instantly – ‘but I looked there already’ we wail, little knowing that we have experienced a distortion in our sensory information!

NLP – Generalisation

Generalisations are a way of drawing conclusions based on 2 or 3 experiences. At a simplistic level, we don’t need to have seen every chair in the world in order to be able to know what a chair is when we see it. In the same way we make generalisations about people and events: we say of people ‘oh she’s always late’ or similar, which may or may not be true in reality, but because it has happened two or three times we start saying ‘always’.

Summary

What I’ve given you here is a very diluted version of what is meant by these three categories, but I hope you are already beginning to understand how this information could impact the way you are in the world. We are all products of our life experiences and filters – do we want to spend the rest of our lives believing that we have little or no control over our responses or would it be more empowering to know that we can begin to re-write our software and therefore our behaviours?

To read more about NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) visit wikipedia.org/Neuro-linguistic_programming.