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Click on categories
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• NLP Defined
• NLP—the Study of Human Excellence
• The Origin of NLP
• What's in a Name
• Maps of Reality
• Become Your Own Mapmaker
• The Structure of Experience
• Presuppositions of NLP
• The Evolution of NLP
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a wonderfully rich mix of perspectives and perceptual  and behavioral skills and tools for personal development and enhanced interactions with others.
NLP is about the ability to discover, understand, and change our
own and others' processes of decision-making, communication, motivation,
and learning—simply, elegantly, effectively.
NLP is a model for understanding and working with human behavior. NLP has the ability to get direct access to our internal maps of reality (how we have our life experience represented in our minds) and to shift them, to re-assemble the connections, to update them, and to correct mistaken representations, so that our life experience reflects more of what we want—personally, in our relationships, and on the job. NLP's ultimate objective is to contribute to increased choice leading to more fulfilling lives. Put another way, NLP's ultimate objective is to assist you to change your mind about what is possible for you. [Back to top]
Neuro-Linguistic Programming has its origin in speculative wondering: "How is it that people with amazingly similar backgrounds can be so different in their ability to generate meaningful and fulfilling life experience for themselves and for others?"
That wondering led to two questions: "Is it possible to identify the differences that make the difference between excellence and the lack of it?" and "If so, can we make these differences teachable and learnable to enhance life experience for everyone?"
Three decades ago, the originators of NLP answered both questions with a resounding "Yes!"
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Neuro-Linguistic Programming was developed in the early-to-middle 1970's at the University of Santa Cruz by John Grinder and Richard Bandler. Like many others, they had observed that people with similar education, training, background, and years of experience were achieving widely varying results ranging from wonderful to mediocre.
Bandler and Grinder were intrigued by these differences. They wanted to know how effective people perform and accomplish things. They were especially interested in the possibility of being able to duplicate the behavior, and therefore the competence, of these highly effective individuals. In short, they set out to "model" human excellence in such fields as education, business, and therapy. What emerged from their work came to be called Neuro-Linguistic Programming.
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While the name is awkward—and some object to the word “programming"—it
is nonetheless descriptive.
Neuro refers to the brain and neural pathways of the human
organism through which our experience is processed via our five
senses (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, and gustatory).
Linguistic is about the content that moves across and along
these pathways. It is about the language and nonverbal communication
systems through which our neural representations are coded, ordered,
and given meaning. These include: pictures, sounds, feelings, tastes,
smells, and words.
Programming is the way the content is directed, sequenced,
and connected by each of us to produce the thinking patterns and
behaviors that are our experience of life. Training in NLP provides
the ability to discover, utilize, and change these programs to assist
us to have new experiences in life that are more satisfying, fulfilling,
and enjoyable.
Think of it as being like a railroad system. The Neuro part of
NLP is like the tracks. Linguistic is the engines and cars. Programming
is how the switches are set. How the switches are set determines
where the engines and cars go. With the switches set a particular
way, the train can only follow a particular path that is determined
by how those switches are set. In this analogy, then, the objective
of NLP is to assist you to change how your switches are set.
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Through our neuro-linguistic programming process, we each create
our own unique internal map of reality.
We each go through life operating from a self-created, internal
map that represents our understanding of what is real. Actually,
this map is much like a "Thomas Bros." book of maps with
individual maps for the different areas of our lives, the pages
of which are all interconnected and interrelated. It has often been
observed that, "the map is not the territory." The map
merely describes the territory, yet we operate in life as if the
map were reality itself.
As human beings, we cannot NOT operate from an internal map of
reality. Our ability to generate and operate from internal maps
of reality is part of what makes humans so wonderfully complex and
fascinating. Maps are different from person to person, even when
life experiences and circumstances appear, to the casual observer,
to be nearly identical. Like physical maps, our internal maps are
only as accurate as we can make them at the time and, unfortunately,
they are often not updated. Therein lies the problem. Inaccurate
and outdated though our maps may be, we live our lives as though
our maps were our reality!
Our inner maps of reality comprise nearly all of what we deal with
as human beings. The structure and content of these maps determine
what is real and unreal, achievable and unachievable, believable
and unbelievable—uniquely for each of us. In this way, our
maps determine the choices and responses each of us is able to make
in life.
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Through the pioneering work in NLP, we began to understand that
maps are infinitely changeable. Change your map, change your reality.
Change your map, change your experience of life. Change your map,
and how you understand and relate to yourself, to others, and to
your involvements in life can all change. Where there was limitation,
there can be new choice and new opportunity. Anywhere! Whatever
you are doing! Whomever you are with! Whatever the context!
Take a moment now to think of an aspect of your life that is presently
not how you would like it to be. What stops you from having the
experience you want is what is or isn't on your map. As your own
mapmaker, you can move or remove what is outdated or inaccurate
and that no longer serves you. You can add and rearrange in new
ways to provide the opening for exciting new choices and fulfilling
new experiences.
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NLP provides us with the ability to gain access to human experience
at the structural or process level—the level of our inner reality
maps. At the structural level, our experience is made up of endless
combinations of internal pictures, sounds, feelings, tastes, and
smells—many, if not most, of them outside of our conscious
awareness. It is through its ability to rearrange these combinations
that NLP has the ability to so profoundly change experience—personally
and interpersonally.
Study of the structure of experience led Bandler and Grinder to
notice external signals and cues that were the keys to understanding
the "how" of certain kinds of thought processes and behavior.
They were able to assemble this understanding into a system that
allowed its user to know how another human being creates his or
her experience—how they organize and maintain their unique
internal maps of reality that correspond to and organize their experience
of the external world.
Understanding our own maps of reality empowers us to make changes
that lead to the life experiences we want.
Understanding and having access to another's map of reality makes
it much easier to step off our own map and respectfully step onto
the other's. When this happens, the other person most often experiences
it as a precious gift. They often comment, "Finally, someone
understands me!" As a result, connection, interaction, cooperation,
and accomplishment of desired results are all enhanced.
To experience what is meant by "structure of experience",
see [Exercises].
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The NLP model includes a set of very positive assumptions about
human beings and human behavior. Some of the most important of these
"presuppositions" are:
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All behavior has a positive intention.
For the part of the person that is responsible for a particular behavior, that behavior has a positive intention.
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People make the best choices they can, depending on their maps.
Human beings work perfectly to produce the results they are getting. No one is broken.
Given the choices we are aware of, we each do the best we know how to do at every moment in time. We make the best choice available given our resources, environment, conditioning, and other functions of what is and is not part of our model of the world—our inner map of reality. When people have better choices available, they use them.
Healing, growth, and success are not a question of getting rid of behaviors, but rather of acquiring more behavioral choices that provide more options for useful responses in all areas of our lives.
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| 3. |
Everyone has within them all the resources they need to be, do, and have what they want. The problem, if there is one, is ACCESS!
People have access to rich internal representations and strategies and, therefore, can access all the resources necessary for them to make whatever changes they want. It is only a matter of effectively accessing those resources in appropriate times and places. The problem, when there is one, is getting access to those resources.
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It is useful to make a distinction between behavior and self.
This is what it’s all about—the freedom to find expression for yourself. Your behavior at any moment is not you. If you think of any behavior as being you, you are cheating yourself. Making distinctions between behavior and self allows flexibility of behavior on the outside and leads to flexibility of behavior and experience on the inside.
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| 5. |
The Map is not the Territory.
People are mapmakers constructing representations of their experience.
We, as human beings, do not respond directly to the outside world. Rather, we make a map or model based on our conditioning and experience. This map is made up of pictures, sounds, feelings, smells, and tastes.
The model that we create determines what our experience of, and responses to, the world will be. Even though much of our map is outside of our conscious awareness, it still determines how we perceive the world and what choices we have available—or not—as we interact with that world.
To change our experience we must change our maps.
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There is no such thing as failure,
only feedback.
There is no such thing as failure, only experience that helps
us stay on the path to success. All information that comes to
us can be utilized. Behavior always gets results of some kind.
Experience provides the opportunity for gaining wisdom. It is
only when we label and judge personal experience—rather
than understand and use it—that we short-circuit the opportunity
to learn. Feedback is what enables us to adjust our behavior
in the direction of success. We only fail when we quit trying.
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Over the years, a variety of creative and brilliant people have
been attracted to Bandler's and Grinder's unique work and discoveries.
They helped to expand the NLP model and organize it into a vast
set of tools, skills, and information. As a result, there are NLP
training centers throughout the United States and in many countries
around the world. In the process Neuro-Linguistic Programming, in
a form that might be called conventional or classical NLP, has made
an astonishing contribution to personal and professional communication,
growth, and change.
Even if you have only recently heard of NLP, chances are you have
already encountered it, in one form or another, without its being
identified and without your realizing it. NLP is so useful for the
whole experience of being human that many of its original tools
and distinctions have already integrated into education, training,
business, and therapy, becoming part of the commonsense wisdom of
our society.
While including and contributing to the evolution of conventional
NLP, NLP Marin has taken a distinctly original, unconventional approach
to teaching Neuro-Linguistic Programming. It is an approach that
has evolved and unfolded over more than twenty years.
See ABOUT NLP MARIN for more. We are always happy to answer your individual questions. For further
information or to discuss how NLP might assist you in your unique
circumstances, please call:
(415) 499-0639 or email.
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