What Is NLP?

What Is NLP?

Date: 8/29/1999

 

What is NLP?

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) has been defined as "The Study of Human Excellence ". What are the thought processes, the beliefs, the physiologies, the communication patterns of people who do something exceptionally well, or have overcome some difficulty? By modeling these people and adapting their formulas to our personal situations we can begin to maximize our potential and help others to maximize their potentials in any given area. Similarly, if we excel in one particular area, we can apply our own formula to areas where we are less successful. NLP is used in virtually every field including business, public relations, therapy, education, sports, the arts, as well as in "everyday" situations.

NLP techniques work with thought process, changing the way we relate to life events so that we can feel and behave in a way which supports achieving the results we want.

 

Some of the basic techniques are:

 

 

Anchoring (gestures or words that produce stimulus-response patterns)

 

Submodalities (improve our audio and visual internal representations)

 

Strategies (thought sequencing)

 

Language Patterns (work with how we represent things to ourselves)

 

Metaprograms ,Values, Self-Beliefs (are ways we understand and relate to the world and form the basis of how we make decisions).

 

 

 

One Interesting Illustration

of NLP took place in the 1980s when the United States Army hired an NLP Practitioner to improve the soldiers' shooting skills. First he worked with the best marksmen to ascertain what thought processes they had: what they visualized and said to themselves internally. What self-beliefs did they have? What were their physiologies? Next, he had the less successful soldiers replicate these. The result was a significant growth in the number of soldiers who became expert marksmen--and a decrease in the time and money to train them.

 

Business Applications of NLP:

Metaprograms, Values and Beliefs help corporations understand the needs of employees and what motivates them to work well. They are also valuable in sales and in advertising. Language patterns are very useful in facilitating negotiations, in sales, and in wordings for advertisements and slogans.

One of the Metaprograms determines if a person is more self-oriented or more other-oriented. Flight attendants have to be other-oriented. One of the major U.S. airlines had it's flight attendants each give an informal talk while the other flight attendants sat in the audience and listened. They thought that they were being judged by their speeches. In reality, it was the audience who were being judged according to their body language to discover who was other-oriented and who self-oriented. Those employees who were other-oriented remained flight attendants while the rest of the employees were given different jobs in the company. The airline had received too many complaints about the service on some of it's flights and wanted to know who was unsuitable for this kind of job.

 

Education applications of NLP

With students who are having learning difficulties, we can improve the student's learning strategy (the thought sequence the student is using to learn--or to not learn). Also, it is important to know the student's learning style. Visual learners learn best when they see the material on a page or on a blackboard; they like demonstrations of the material. Auditory learners learn best when they discuss the material. Kinesthetic learners need to do projects and to be actively involved.

There are Metaprograms which determine how much routine and how much variety a particular student needs. Does the student tend to see how things are the same or how they are different? Is the student a global learner (who looks for the big picture, trends, patterns, cause/effect) or a specific learner (who likes details, facts, hard data, the bottom line)?

There are NLP techniques to help students develop balance in their learning styles and to aid teachers in working with different kinds of students. NLP also has methods to assist people with Attention Deficit Disorder to develop organizational skills, the ability to focus and not be distracted, and to reduce impulsivity.

 

For more information on how NLP works,  see the article "Getting Unstuck" which is near the top of the list of articles and "How Does NLP Help People Make Changes?"  which is a few articles below "Getting Unstuck".