NLP: Neuro Linguistic Programming

Intro to NLP

According to Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), 10% of the mind is conscious, leaving 90% of the mind to the unconscious. Now what does this mean?

The conscious mind is simply what we are focused on at any given moment. On the other hand, the unconscious is the massive store of every experience, belief, habit, method and thought we have ever had. Think of the conscious being the area of a dark hole that is illuminated by a torch (our mind). The rest of the hole, where the light cannot reach, is the unconscious. Or minds can only focus on that 10% at a time, which leaves the 90% to be sorted through with our unconscious mind.

NLP states that there are programs in our unconscious that dictate how we think and act. They are the summation of all of our experiences. NLP is focused on being able to read, control and change these programs so that we can better understand and manipulate ourselves and others.

A Brief History

During the 1970′s, Richard Bandler and John Grinder studied therapy sessions transcripts from Fritz Perls, Milton Erickson and Virginia Satir — three of the most renowned psychologists of the time. They believe that all masters of human communication had similar patterns and methods that could be learned by others through observation. Their goal was to codify the “know-how” of these psychologists to find out what set their methods apart from others with lesser success. As they expected, Bandler and Gringer began to see patterns in the tone and diction of the psychologists and what subsequent reactions they received from their patients.

After years of studying these transcripts and modeling them in sessions with their own patients, Bandler and Grinder came up with 3 rules for successful communication in therapy, business and sales:

1. To know what outcome you want, to be flexible in your behaviour
2. To generate different kinds of behaviour to find out what response you get
3. To have enough sensory experience to notice when you get the responses that you want

Key Principles of NLP

Matching – In order to build rapport with other people, one should match or “pace” the verbal and non-verbal language of others. By matching the posture, breathing pattern, gestures, voice tone, diction, etc. of some you are talking to, you will make them more comfortable with you which will make them like you more.

Related idea: Many NLP practitioners say that you will appear to be much more convincing if you speak only when your subject is exhaling. Even if you have to stop talking mid-sentence, you should aim to speak only when they breath out. Exhalation is a state of relaxation so the mind is more at ease, making your statements more powerful.

Anchoring – The process of associating a past state or response with a particular stimulus. The stimulus, or “anchor,” could be anything from a touch to specific smell. NLP claims that re-calling past states and anchoring them to the a stimulus can make them useful once again in the present. This idea is similar to when you hear a song that immediately brings you back to a moment when it was playing. You can feel the emotions, the vibe, and maybe even the weather conditions of that moment just from hearing the song. The same rules apply for anchoring.

For example, in Niel Strauss’s “The Game,” a book describing the world of pick-up artists (PUA’s), the author describes the anchoring technique of one PUA specializing in NLP. The man would ask women to describe the feeling of having butterflies in their stomach when they see a man they are attracted to. While the women would continue to describe (and thus FEEL this emotion), the PUA would touch their arm or hand repeatedly to anchor that emotion to his touch. When the imagination game was over, the woman in question would be hopelessly attracted to the PUA. Hopefully now you are beginning to see why NLP is so fascinating…

The Milton Model – Based on the hypnotic techniques of Milton Erickson, the founder of clinical hypnotherapy, the Milton Model aims to overload the conscious mind so as to reach the unconscious mind. A series of skillfully vague questions are asked that leave gaps for the subject to fill in with their unconscious mind.