INTRODUCTION
Neurolinguistic Programming or NLP has been described as a popular psychological approach to enable people to have “better, fuller, and richer lives”. Unfortunately, the world of NLP has become filled with jargon, technical expressions, and buzzwords, that just confuse people and actually prevent them from making use of simple methodologies that can have a profound effect.
NLP is such a wide-ranging discipline that it’s difficult to encompass all its branches and applications in a short definition. As a starting point, we could call it a set of techniques and guiding principles that allows us to identify, model, and replicate outstanding performance, in any given area – guaranteeing us outstanding results. Using NLP, we can eliminate or modify our existing behaviours, if we are not satisfied with them; or internalise new, more beneficial ones. Ordinary people have been using NLP methods for nearly 40 years to achieve extraordinary results.
NLP is based on sound psychological principles. It is not a spiritual or esoteric approach, nor is it one that is based on new-age mantras or where you are required to hug trees to get in touch with your inner self. It is an effective and rapid form of psychological therapy and is capable of addressing the full range of challenges that we’re likely to encounter in our lives, such as phobias, depression, and negative habits. NLP is an excellent tool for improving our effectiveness personally and professionally.
While traditional clinical psychology is about describing and analysing problems to find out their causes, NLP, in contrast, focuses on possibilities and how the mind works to produce results. Our specific thoughts, feelings, and actions have produced what we are today. By challenging these “inputs” you will get different results – a different you.
NLP is a set of concepts and techniques to understand and change human behaviour patterns.
It is important to add that, even though NLP is a fantastic tool, it’s simply one tool. Other areas such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Emotional Intelligence, and the Psychology of Success, can all be used in conjunction with NLP. In and of itself NLP is a useful and powerful intervention. When coupled with other tools and techniques it can form part of a formidable toolkit for personal success or wellbeing.
NLP is an attitude, a sense of adventure and curiosity, and a form of desire to learn what kinds of communication can influence ourselves and others.
NLP is a methodology based on the idea that all behaviour has a structure and a process. Those structures and processes can be replicated, learned, taught, and even changed.
NLP has evolved into an innovative technology, allowing us to organise thoughts, ideas, and information, in ways that allow us to achieve results that are otherwise out of reach.
NLP is the art and science of personal excellence. Art because everyone brings their own unique personality and style to what they do, and this can never be captured in words or techniques. Science because there’s a method and process for discovering the patterns used by outstanding individuals in any field to achieve outstanding results.
This process is called modelling, and patterns, skills, and techniques, discovered in this way, are increasingly being used in counselling, education, sport, and business, for more effective communication, personal development and learning.
Neurolinguistic Programming refers to the three most important facets in creating our human experience: neurology, language, and programming. The neurological system regulates how our bodies function, language determines how we interact and communicate with other people, and our programming determines the images and models of the world we create. NLP describes the relationship between the mind (neuro) and language (linguistic) and how they impact on our body and behaviour (programming).
Neuro – the nervous system through which a new experience is received through our five senses and processed.
Linguistic – the verbal and non-verbal communication systems through which neural representations are coded, ordered, and given meaning.
Programming – the ability to organise our communication and neurological systems to achieve specific desired goals and results.
Where did NLP come from?
NLP originated in the mid-1970s, when Richard Bandler, a maths student at the University of California with a strong interest in computer science and psychology, working together with one of his lecturers, linguist John Grinder, began leading weekly therapy meetings that involved copying the content and style of psychotherapist Fritz Perls, who had founded the Gestalt therapy movement. This attempt to replicate the results of another person by adopting their behaviours and methods (including the moustache, chain-smoking, and German accent – which eventually were deemed unnecessary!) ultimately led to the discipline of “modelling human excellence”.
They then went on to study Virginia Satir, who developed conjoined family therapy, and Milton Erickson, who is the father of clinical hypnotherapy.
One of Bandler and Grinder’s books was entitled The Structure of Magic, and as Arthur C. Clarke once said: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Many people have drawn similar conclusions regarding NLP. This mind science has swept across the world over the last 35 years and using its techniques people have freed themselves of long-standing fears and phobias in a matter of minutes, or rapidly reduced the impact of the memory of a horrible experience that may have hindered them for many years.
We are led to believe that meaningful change takes time. We have all been introduced to the philosophy of “no pain, no gain”, and when a new and contrary idea is introduced, we often find it hard to believe. NLP is the kind of practice that seems “too good to be true”, which means that it has attracted both attracters and doubters, many of the doubters being among traditional psychologists whose work derives from Sigmund Freud.
Where does NLP fit into traditional psychology?
NLP has been described and is perceived as part of the next generation of psychology. However, it has not yet been fully accepted by mainstream academia and is not yet incorporated into study as a branch of psychiatry or psychology.
Traditional Freudian psychology and psychotherapy requires a large commitment of time as the patient tries to uncover unconscious processes that determine conscious behaviour, sometimes having to go back to relive painful or traumatic experiences.
Counselling is a shorter process, usually undirected by the counsellor, who helps the patient to explore feelings and behaviour around a specific issue such as bereavement.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is task-centred work that identifies a problem behaviour and how the mind thinks about it and therefore behaves in regard to it. CBT literally refers to how thoughts/mental processes (cognition) affect behaviour. CBT then aims to alter those beliefs and thought processes, so influencing the behaviour towards a positive state for the patient.
NLP has its roots in the field of behavioural science, developed by Ivan Pavlov, B.F. Skinner, and Edward Thorndike. It uses physiology (physical and biological states) and the unconscious mind to change thought processes and therefore behaviour.
How NLP differs from psychotherapy
NLP is based on “modelling” rather than “theory”. A model is a description of how something works, without any commitment regarding why it might be that way. NLP and psychotherapy have different underlying assumptions about the human mind and its connections with the body as a whole. NLP and traditional psychology have different methodologies, different measures, and different concepts in practice.
. NLP is not a model of psychopathology (study of mental illness). NLP makes no diagnoses about a person’s mental health or illness. Its focus is purely on results. It proposes that people are not broken and that they work perfectly to produce the results they are getting even if the results are not desirable. If a person doesn’t like the results they are getting, NLP provides tools to help them get the results they desire.
. Traditional psychology and psychotherapy patients complain that their sessions lack structure: they go in, let their thoughts wander for 50 minutes, and leave without any sense of progress; then they repeat this ritual for an indeterminate amount of time, sometimes for many years.
While problems may have been explored and brought to conscious awareness, and even treated to reduce their effects, a person is often still left with ongoing patterns that resulted from a particular situation or experience – despite years of psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, or psycho-pharmaceutical treatment. Resolution is frequently left unfinished. This is not to say that traditional psychological models are useless or unhelpful. Many people have been greatly helped by them, and these traditional routes should be encouraged for anyone to explore if that is in their interest. But there’s so much more that can be accomplished in far less time. NLP can be an important finishing or resolution process where psychotherapy has concluded or reached a point of diminishing returns.
. NLP is non-exclusive. In NLP people are encouraged to make the most of any resource they wish to use. NLP works well either as a primary or complementary means of self-exploration and change. It doesn’t take an adversarial position to psychotherapy, traditional medicine, or other alternative approaches, and patients are free to pursue any and all avenues while exploring NLP. Some psychotherapists are equally non-exclusive and do work well in cooperation with NLP professionals.
NLP and the parts model
Traditional psychology divides the mind into three essential parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. While not all branches of psychology “buy” this tripartite model, it remains the central and most widely used model in psychological literature and practice.
NLP also has a “parts model”, but it’s metaphorical, positive, and extensible. NLP proposes that internal “parts” should be understood and used metaphorically rather than as literal fact.
The NLP parts model
In the NLP model, each of us has a non-predefined multitude of identity “parts”, some prominent at one time, others prominent at other times, all interacting with each other in some way – even if that interaction is characterised by silence or opposition.
Most of us have heard the expression, “Part of me wants to do this, and part of me wants to do that.” In NLP, this is called parts incongruity.
No part of us is considered dark or evil in NLP. Every part has a positive intention and a useful purpose, even if it’s presently trying to fulfil its intention in a problematic way. Additionally, new parts can be created as needed and old parts can be changed or merged with ease.
Parts can form teams, and teams of parts can move through any number of processes for a given goal or purpose such as emotional support, creativity, healing, reality-checking, planning, critiquing, approving, and action.
Other features of NLP
. NLP is non-Aristotelian. This means that NLP is process-and structure-oriented, not classification-oriented. NLP proposes that putting people into categories of personality type or psychopathology promotes their getting or staying stuck, rather than assisting them to grow, change, and heal.
. NLP is post-Newtonian. This means that NLP is firmly based on late 20th-century advances in physics, which observe that the universe is made up not of a collection of objects or things, but of patterns and processes.
. NLP is not reductionist. NLP considers reductionism – such as the belief that our thoughts, feelings, and experiences, are “just” the result of genetics or chemical processes in the brain – to be the result of linguistic confusion.
. NLP is not objectivist. NLP doesn’t recognise 19th-century objectivism (a belief in absolute objective reality or the belief that “subjective” equates to being “invalid”).
. NLP is not linear. NLP doesn’t limit itself to linear cause-effect thinking. It prefers whole systems thinking. Whole systems tend to be self-organising and too complex for useful linear, cause-effect analysis.
. NLP is efficient. NLP doesn’t pursue unresolvable cause-effect, question-answer sequences such as, “Why? … Because … Why? … Because …” ad infinitum, since for every answer to “Why?”, the question “Why?” can be applied again. There is literally no end to such cause-effect sequences, and thus no satisfying resolution. With a few very specific exceptions, NLP prefers to answer to ask more useful questions such as, “How? What? When? Where? Who?”. NLP considers that taking long personal histories from patients for causal analysis is essentially an expensive waste of time. NLP does work with personal history when appropriate – directly, as it’s presently coded in a person’s mind. NLP has powerful tools that a person can use to make positive changes in their ongoing experience of personal history and its meaning, patterns developed as a result of life experiences, and other factors connected with their past – without drugs, hypnosis, or years of analysis.
. NLP is not statistics-based. NLP observes that statistics cannot measure or predict a particular person’s subjective experience, since subjective experience is understood by internal, not external sensory experience. NLP is the first science based on internal sensory experience.
. NLP does not share the same definition of “behaviour” with psychology. As Bandler and Grinder pointed out in 1980, “NLP includes within its descriptive vocabulary terms which are not directly observable.” In other words, just because they can’t see it, that doesn’t mean you’re not doing it or experiencing it. And: Just because they can’t reproduce it, that doesn’t mean it didn’t work for you. In NLP, behaviours include thought structures like beliefs and values, patterns and sequences of cognition, memory, sensory representations, and linguistic structures in thinking, none of which can be directly observed externally. Nor can their effects be directly, causally connected with measurable external observations. Yet no reasonable person would deny the importance and meaning of such internal experiences.
The principles and assumptions of NLP
There are several basic principles that underpin NLP:
[1] There is structure to experience – We all have patterns or structures to the way we think. The ability to change the process by which we experience reality can be more valuable than changing the content of our experience of reality.
For example, if you like strawberry cheesecake, understand the process that you go through to get to the outcome of pleasure. Use that process on a food that you don’t enjoy much, such as spinach, and you may find that quite suddenly you enjoy spinach more than you usually do. By changing the structures, patterns, and processes, of the way we think, we literally change our experience. This will also have an impact on how we think about past events.
[2] The meaning of your communication is the response you get. People constantly receive information that is then filtered through their internal mental map of the world. How you communicate must be constantly adjusted so the message you give is the one that is received.
[3] All distinctions that we are able to make regarding our environment, experiences, and behaviour, are represented through our five senses (seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, and tasting).
[4] We have everything we need on board already – all that we need to create change is already within us. From our vast database of thoughts, feelings, memories, and sensations, we can construct new mental patterns to allow us to achieve our goals and dreams.
[5] The map is not the territory. As human beings, we can never know reality. We will only ever know our perceptions of reality.
Let’s think about it. We don’t respond to the world as it is, we act in accordance with our own mental map of the world. We experience and respond to the world around us primarily through the perceptions created by our five senses. It’s our “neurolinguistic” maps of reality that determine how we behave and that give those behaviours meaning, not reality itself. It’s generally not reality that limits us or empowers us, but rather our map of reality that does so.
We have a much better chance of getting what we want if our map is continually updated to consider the changing territory. This is a much better approach than attempting to change the world to fit your map!
[6] Behind every action and behaviour there is a positive intention. Depression could result from a need for attention. Self-harm could be using physical harm to mask the mental or emotional distress a person is experiencing. Violent behaviour could hide a lack of acceptance, or fear. Look behind how people act and what they do to find their positive intent.
[7] Our mind and body are different parts of the same system. Thoughts, ideas, feelings, and processes, that take place within us and between us, others, and our environment, are completely interconnected. What affects one aspect of us will have an impact on another.
Our health affects our mindset. Our mindset affects our wealth. Human negligence has led to environmental issues and climate change. Our thoughts constantly affect our breathing, muscles, immune system, heart, and other bodily organs, which return the favour by impacting on our thinking.
Our bodies, our communities, even our universe form a complex interdependent system, all parts of which interact with and mutually influence each other. It’s not possible to completely isolate any part of the system from the rest. All systems in nature naturally seek balance or homeostasis.
Control your thoughts, then you can control your mind, which in turn allows you to control your body.
[8] Successful communicators accept and make use of all communication/behaviour that is available to them. We cannot not communicate. Everything about you – eye movements, body language, the tone, volume and pitch of your voice, your habits, and behaviours – are all forms of communication. This is why sometimes we get a gut feeling when someone is lying to us.
A friend once told me how much he cared about his mother, yet he was unaware, oblivious even, that as he was telling me this, he was shaking his head from side to side. His words were telling me one thing, and his body another. This is why it’s easy to get a sense of when a person is telling you something that doesn’t match with who they are.
[9] All results and behaviours are achievements, whether they are desired outcomes or not. If what you’re doing isn’t working for you, do something different. Albert Einstein described insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. If you’re not getting the results you want, do anything else other than what you’re currently doing. If you do what you have always done, you will get what you always got. Do something different, anything at all, and you will get a different result.
[10] If someone can do something, anyone else can also learn to do it. When Roger Bannister ran a mile in under four minutes in 1954, he was the first person to break this milestone in recorded history. Since then, thousands of people have achieved this feat – in fact, his record stood for only a few weeks. If we model the thinking, behaviour, and actions of people, who have already succeeded in a given area, we can achieve similar results.
[11] We always make the best choices available to us. These choices are based on our experiences. More and better experiences allow for more choices. If you have had only one relationship and it ended painfully, when you meet someone new you may subconsciously associate a relationship with pain. You may sabotage that potential relationship to avoid pain. As you have more relationships and begin to associate them with fun, love, and joy, then you are more likely to make different, more positive choices.
All of the models and techniques of NLP are based on the above principles. According to NLP, it’s not possible for human beings to know objective reality. Wisdom, ethics, and a balanced ecology do not come from having the one “right” or “correct” map of the world, because it’s not possible for us to make one. Rather, the goal is to create the richest map possible that respects the interconnected nature of ourselves, and the world we live in. The people who are most effective are the ones who have a map of the world that allows them to perceive the greatest number of available choices and perspectives. NLP is a way of enriching the choices that you have and perceive as available in the world around you. Excellence comes from having many choices. Wisdom comes from having multiple perspectives.
Putting NLP into practice
We have a natural tendency to move away from pain and towards pleasure. If you put your finger in a flame and it hurts, you pull it away. Equally, if you wish to get fit and lose weight and you happen to associate exercise with pain, you’re unlikely to be highly motivated to commit to a regular routine.
NLP requires you to think and act differently. If you focus on the pleasure of the outcome rather than the activities that you associate with pain, you’re much more likely to commit to regular action to achieve that goal. So, for example, don’t think about “giving up smoking” (pain), focus on “gaining health and wellbeing, energy, and vitality” (pleasure). The gain will outweigh the loss.
The brain doesn’t have the capacity to think in the negative. If you continually tell yourself, “I want to lose weight”, your brain will focus on the word “weight” much more than the word “lose”. The better strategy would be to have a “target weight” on which to focus. That way the objective is to shape the body to its potential rather than losing something. NLP teaches you to always use positive language, focusing on what you want, not what you fear.
Using NLP, change should be easy and natural and happen in an instant. No matter how many times you try, it’s not possible to run a PC program on a Mac if it doesn’t have the specific software to convert the files. And if it can do it, you may need some supporting instructions. NLP is the supporting instructions for our much more sophisticated and complex brains. It uses the brain’s own language to alter and create new connections to “convert the files” in our brains. Willpower alone is a flawed and difficult strategy. Using NLP ensures that you don’t need to rely on willpower. When you know how, change becomes easy.
Life is not black or white. NLP gets you away from thinking in an “either/or” way. In NLP there’s a saying: “If you only have one way of doing something, you’re a robot. If you have two ways of doing something, you have a dilemma. You need at least three ways of doing something before you have the beginnings of some real flexibility.”
One of the most basic foundations in NLP is that we change our minds not simply by having new thoughts, but by changing the way that we think, i.e. by choosing different ways to process the multitude of images, feelings, and memories that exist inside us. They should serve us, not sabotage us.
We can diminish a bad memory quite easily by giving it new associations. For example, hear a happy song in your mind every time you remember it, hear the sound of laughter, or turn the memory into an old silent black-and-white film, and you see yourself happy and smiling in the image. Once you begin to associate new feelings with the old memory, how you feel about that experience changes instantly and forever. Every time you come back to that memory, you will find the new association still firmly in place.
We all have a little voice
Our little voice can be very powerful and sometimes very loud! It links with our unconscious mind and can provide important messages and answers to problems. Acknowledge what your little voice is saying and then ask yourself:
. Is this a helpful thought?
. What would be a more positive thought?
. Does my little voice have a warning/message I need to be aware of?
. Is there a positive reason/intention behind the message from my inner voice?
Every thought in your mind is passed via neurotransmitters around the body, linking mind and body together. How you feel physically and emotionally affects your performance. Being aware of your inner voice and thoughts can provide the answers to issues or challenges, and help you respond more resourcefully and positively.
For many of us, our inner voice spends a lot of time sabotaging us and holding us back. This is a protection mechanism. It doesn’t want you to get hurt, fail, or experience pain, so it talks you out of things that could lead to a negative result. But we turn our little voices into our best allies, our partners in success. Whenever your little voice isn’t serving you, you can turn down the volume, or change the pitch and the tone. Imagine the little voice telling you that you’re not good enough, that you’re going to fail. Now give it a comical Donald Duck quack or some kind of Barry White rumble. It won’t hold the same power over you when you’ve done this. Also, remember it’s your voice and you control it. You can change what it’s saying. Such methods put you in control of your reactions and thoughts.
It is also worth remembering that you can learn the ability to be confident in an instant, to be more loving, or to “make real” your ambitions before they are acted out in the world. Many successful people use NLP strategies and techniques without even knowing it, in the way they see, hear, feel, touch, and taste success in their minds long before it actually happens. The feeling of winning draws the win to it. Visualising a compelling future draws you towards the action needed to realise it. In NLP, practitioners believe that “not all dreamers are achievers, but all achievers are dreamers”.
A method of psychology that sees mind and body as a machine and open to manipulation is appropriate and relevant for the technology-driven culture that we live in, yet the overall effect of NLP is to increase the intensity and quality of life. Despite having its origins in computing and linguistics, NLP is really about graceful human change.
Each one of us is a bundle of emotions, behaviours, and potential, all of which we must accept and even love, so as to achieve what in NLP is known as congruence, the perfect alignment of our desires and values with our capabilities.
NLP and the art of influence
Communication
Communication involves a minimum of two people interacting with each other. People interact through a variety of channels and in many different ways – face-to-face, on the telephone, through dancing, emails, letters, touch, and so on.
To become a more effective influencer, i.e. a person who can win over people much more of the time, you must develop the skill of paying very close, conscious attention to the person or people you’re trying to connect with. There may be many things you aren’t currently noticing. NLP helps you to be aware that there are a whole range of things to notice in others, including:
. Language
. Eye movements
. Physiology.
As this page expands further, readers will be shown in greater detail how NLP can actually help us communicate more effectively. To begin with, however, let’s look at the nature of communication more generally.
For many of us, our primary methods of communication are technology-based: email, text messaging, Facebook, and through other social media platforms. These require the words that we type to convey our messages for us. But is this the most effective approach?
How much of communication is words? Tone? Body language?
Most decisions are made on the basis of rapport rather than technical merit. You are more likely to buy from, agree with, and support someone you can relate to than someone you can’t – people like people who are like themselves.
When people are trusting and comfortable with each other, barriers come down and interesting things happen. They begin to stand, sit, move, or sound like each other. They take on each other’s posture, movements or voice expressions, and breathing patterns. If one moves, the other may soon follow.
How many times have you been amazed at how communication can go badly wrong, how easy it is for the slightest gesture or tone of voice to be taken the wrong way?
What is the difference that makes the difference in feeling comfortable and acknowledged by someone, even if they’re disagreeing with what you say? How is it that some people you meet you instantly like – while others you can’t get away from fast enough? Why can you talk to some people for hours and it seems like only minutes?
The answer to all these questions is rapport – the most important process in any communication. Rapport is the ability to enter someone else’s world, to make them feel that you understand them, that you have a strong common bond. Rapport is the ability to see each other’s point of view (not necessarily to agree with it), to be on the same wavelength and to appreciate each other’s feelings.
When people are communicating in rapport, they find it easy to be understood and believe their concerns are highly regarded by the other person. At an unconscious level, there’s a comfortable feeling of: ‘This person thinks like I do, I can relax.’ But it’s important to realise that only a small amount of what we communicate is through what we say. Research has shown that in the understanding of a received communication:
. 7% is contained in the words used
. 38% is contained in the tone and style of voice
. 55% is contained in the physiology (or body language) of the deliverer.
Yet how many people actually study the factors that control over half of their communication? This is the difference between those who excel and those who just get by in the way they communicate, motivate, influence, negotiate, lead, and empower.
In particular you need to focus on the desired outcome or purpose of the communication and the extent to which this is achieved:
. What exactly do you want to achieve?
. How will you know that your communication has been successful?
. What will be the sensory evidence – what will you see, hear, and feel?
We must look at what actually works. In any interpersonal communication, this means knowing where the other person is coming from – somehow bridging your different perspectives of the world.
When you’re with people and talking to them, even your most positive and encouraging words will only be believed if your body language (physiology) and voice tone support your words.
Frames
Any communication can be described as a set of frames, each dependent on the previous frames or responses.
When you make a statement, the recipient will respond in a certain way. The choice of words for your next statement will then be decided by considering this response. For example, if you present an idea while trying to persuade someone, the recipient can either accept the idea or disagree with it to varying degrees. You will need to construct your next statement by analysing this response and choosing words so as to completely persuade the recipient. NLP concerns itself in the careful and meaningful use of language.
Over the course of the conversation, your aim is to express the intention and benefits of the idea to the recipient, however preposterous it may sound to them at first, and no matter how antagonistic they are in the beginning.
It’s important you always maintain a level of respect and dignity in your choice of words, so as not to offend the other person.
To efficiently use the persuasive patterns of language described in NLP, the speaker must understand the finer aspects of communication, and the function of the patterns in the whole process. A persuasion pattern essentially comprises three parts: a frame, a response, and a reframe. Once a frame is delivered by the speaker, using words to carefully describe his thoughts, the recipient will return a related response. This response will be key to reformulating the reframe statement. It’s important to lead the conversation for some of the time, and let the recipient lead for the rest of it. Only then can a mutually beneficial, engrossing, and persuasive conversation be held.
The method of NLP persuasion and influence isn’t a one-way process: it happens in both directions. While you’re trying to influence a recipient, the recipient is also trying to influence you. Therefore, it’s essential to observe these patterns in an intuitive manner so that you can deliver a better response.
A single statement used in different situations can have different meanings. The meaning of the statement also depends on other aspects such as body language, tone, facial expressions, and speech delivery.
The patterns used during persuasion can be based on different NLP models.
Creating rapport
Harmony, accord and affinity
When you create rapport, you develop a sympathetic understanding with another person. You show them that you can identify with them, and even share their experience. Rapport makes a relationship of harmony, accord or affinity.
This is the most important process in any interaction. Without rapport you will not get a productive result. The need for rapport increases in importance when you don’t have it. When you do have it, many opportunities appear.
The almost magical value of rapport is something that many people take for granted. But if you deal with people – and everybody does, unless they’re a hermit living in the mountains – the ability to create rapport between your associates and yourself is invaluable.
Most of the time we create rapport with others easily and naturally, but there are occasions when our intuitive ways of creating and establishing rapport don’t work. When these occasions occur, we need to call upon certain skills to create it consciously. This is where NLP comes in. It demands focus and concentration, so that you are present in the situation rather than wishing you were somewhere else!
Rapport involves showing a genuine interest, observing how a person reacts to what you say, and identifying key words or phrases used. As previously explained, rapport occurs not only in what you say but also in your actions and body language, which usually happens subconsciously.
Establishing rapport by mirroring
The process of establishing rapport needs to start with the first handshake. Creating rapport has nothing to do with liking or being liked. It’s a way of saying to a person: “We share common ground; you will be heard and appreciated.”
The key to building rapport is an ability to enter someone else’s world by assuming a similar state of mind. The first thing to realise about states of mind is that they are closely linked to body language.
Let’s think about it. If someone is sitting with their arms and legs crossed and wearing a frown on their face, you can safely assume that they’re not going to be very receptive to what you have to say. If, on the other hand, they have an open posture (i.e. arms and legs in fairly relaxed open positions), then they’re going to be more open to what you have to say.
Have you ever noticed that when you feel depressed you tend to mope around with your head hanging, and that you will drag your feet? Try feeling depressed while skipping and smiling – you’ll find it’s not possible. It’s important to remember that your emotional state is closely tied to your physical state.
If you want to create rapport with someone, it’s as simple as this: you have to enter their world. Once you enter their world you can see things from their perspective, feel the way they do, and from there enhance the whole relationship.
The process by which you enter somebody else’s world is called mirroring. The mirroring technique was created by Milton Erickson in the early 1970s in his work with clinical hypnotherapy. Mirroring is basically copying the other person’s body language, breathing, and voice patterns, to become like them. It’s literally becoming a mirror image of the other person. When you do this, you will both feel like you’ve known each other forever. It seems a little hard to believe at first, but once you try it, you’ll see for yourself how true it is.
Some people find the idea of mirroring uncomfortable and feel that they’re trying to fool or take advantage of the other person. Mirroring occurs naturally as part of rapport-building, so don’t feel you’re doing anything false. All you’re doing is being aware of that process and trying to enhance it. And anyway, if you feel bad about doing it, then you’re probably not the type of person to take advantage of anyone anyway – so no need to worry.
Start by aligning your body language. Try not to make this obvious, or it will appear that you’re mocking the other person, and that will of course have the opposite effect to creating rapport. Look at things like the angle of their head, how their feet are pointing if they’re standing, how their legs are crossed if they’re sitting, and their facial expression. Subtly copy their posture and you will feel the whole interaction change.
You can actually try half-mirroring someone if you feel uncomfortable with full mirroring at first. To half-mirror, simply do a half version of what the other person is doing. So, for example, if they’ve crossed their arms, you can hold one of your elbows with the other hand. If they have their hands in their pockets, you can put one hand in your pocket. If they’re rocking back and forward on their feet, you can rock now and then. Just copy their body language to the point you feel comfortable with. The best communicators mirror without thinking.
Listen to the pace and tone of the other person’s voice. If they’re speaking fast, then you should speak fast too. If the person uses pauses in their sentences, then you should try to match that speech pattern. Be observant and you’ll be able to pick up a lot more mannerisms than you’re used to noticing – then simply copy them all. The same applies here as to the last. If you can’t make it seem natural, then perhaps ease off a little. You’re trying to build and sustain rapport, not by making fun of them.
Making an effort to identify people who are in rapport is a worthwhile exercise. Once you can see two people who are, what do you notice about them? Is rapport something that happens actively or passively? Do we get on with people because we have rapport, or do we have rapport because we get on with people? Is it a circular process, reinforcing itself?
Rapport can be tested and also reinforced by matching another person’s:
. Body posture
. Voice rhythm and intonation
. Facial expression
. Common experience
. Values
. Beliefs.
Keep an eye out for people who are in rapport and notice more things that they have in common. Try it yourself. When you’re talking to people, try matching different aspects from the list above. Try mismatching them too and notice what happens. Notice how you feel about what they’re saying, and how it changes if you match or mismatch.
Mirroring or matching?
The terms “matching” and “mirroring” are used interchangeably by some NLP practitioners, while others draw the following distinctions:
. Mirroring is as if you were looking into a mirror. To mirror a person who has raised his right hand, you would raise your left hand (i.e. a mirror image).
. To match this same person, you would raise your right hand (i.e. doing exactly the same as the other person).
. Some practitioners also see a time difference between mirroring and matching. For example, if someone makes hand gestures while they’re speaking, you would wait until it was your turn to speak before making similar (matching) hand gestures.
When should you match and when should you mirror? The only way to learn this is to practise it for real.
Matching tends to be less obvious and more outside of our conscious awareness than mirroring. Mirroring, however, tends to lead to deeper levels of unconscious rapport than matching.
Matching tonality
Tonality is something that we match rather than mirror, but it’s very important we avoid a copycat approach to vocal matching, as this will probably ruin our chances of gaining unconscious rapport. For example, a man trying to match the pitch of a woman’s voice could seem ridiculous, but he could contribute towards the goal of rapport by raising his pitch within his own octave. Here are a few examples of elements of vocal tone that we can match:
. Pitch: is it high or is it low?
. Rate: is it fast or slow, steady or choppy?
. Timbre: is the voice clear, soft, croaky, raspy?
. Volume: is it loud and booming, or quiet and withdrawn?
For example, if a person is speaking quickly and loudly, then you would speak quickly and loudly to match them and establish rapport. On the other hand, if the other person is speaking v-e-r-y-s-l-o-w-l-y and you’re talking at high speed, you’re going to break the rapport.
Matching key words
Another useful technique is to match the last three or four words they say, using the same pitch, rate, timbre, and volume as them.
For example, watching the football with a friend’s father, you notice that he shouts, “Go on!”, every time his team gets near the goal mouth. You, on the other hand, aren’t really that interested in football, so you don’t have the common frames of reference that would lead to a naturally occurring rapport state. You could, however, increase the chances of a good rapport by matching “Go on!” at the appropriate times. Add in matching pitch, volume, and tempo, and you’ll be well on your way to improving your likeability score with your friend’s father.
Other useful rapport techniques from NLP
Cross-matching and mismatching
If the prospect of consciously mirroring is embarrassing or daunting, you can use the concept of cross-mirroring or cross-matching. This is choosing to match one of your behaviours to a corresponding but different movement of another person. For example, if someone folds their arms, cross your legs; or pace the rhythm of someone’s speaking with slight nods of your head or your breathing.
Mismatching is also a useful skill to master. Have you ever had someone go on and on and on when you were having a conversation with them? You can break eye contact, turn your body at an angle to them, breathe faster or slower . . . in short, do anything to break rapport by mismatching. You’ll be surprised how quickly and easily the conversation will draw to a close.
Pacing and leading
The ongoing process of mirroring or matching is known as pacing. You match someone else’s behaviour exactly, following their physiology when it changes, matching their sequence of events.
Having established rapport by pacing, you can gradually lead the person in the way you want to – subtly lead them into a certain voice mode, facial expression, or posture, with a view to changing their state of mind while maintaining rapport, and then anything is possible.
Pacing is frequently useful, for example when you’re coaching or if you’re with someone who is distressed. You are pacing to match the other person’s speech, discussing the next topic only when he or she is ready to move on.
If someone is extremely aggressive and talking loudly, communicating to them in a whisper isn’t going to get their attention. You may need to match their tone and volume first, before slowly starting to speak more softly and calmly and thus leading them to communicating in that way. Such an approach is often described as PACE, PACE, PACE, and then LEAD the conversation.
Imagine that something has upset you. Before you’re able to rationally think about it, you often need to “get it off your chest” by talking it through with a friend or colleague. Pacing works in a similar way. You need to allow someone to say what’s important to them first, before you start discussing your agenda.
Similarly, when speaking to someone, pace their speed of conversation before discussing your agenda. This may mean allowing them to discuss something that you consider irrelevant but that’s very important to them. Then they can pay attention and listen to what you need to say. If you interrupt people to encourage them to speak faster, you often achieve exactly the opposite effect.
Sensory acuity and calibration
As well as actively matching to increase rapport, by observing the other person for evidence of matching, you can determine the extent to which you have rapport – whether you’re connecting, whether they’re paying attention. This paying attention to the results of your actions is called sensory acuity.
At the simplest level we can deduce from a smile or a frown (or a yawn) what the other person is feeling. The most foolproof way is to first pace the other person and then attempt to lead. If they follow, they’re in rapport. If not, you aren’t.
Calibration is like a series of mini snapshots. The first “shot” is your baseline against which the changes you sense will be monitored. Calibrate to verify that you’re on track to your outcome and that you have willingness and agreement. Calibration keeps you out of yourself and in contact with those you are talking to, seeing the world as they see it.
The language of the senses
In the same way that you can pace and therefore lead a person’s body language or voice, so you can pace and lead a person’s thinking preferences and language patterns. People tell how they are processing information with the kind of words they use, the way they breathe, their tone of voice, and the way they move their eyes.
Each of us has a thinking preference – for instance, to “think” in images, sounds, or feelings. What’s more, your speech is an expression of the way you think. For example, if you think visually, you’re more likely to say, “I get the picture” or “I see what you mean”, because you do. If you think in an auditory way, you would be more likely to say, “I hear you loud and clear” or “We’re on the same wavelength”.
The analysis below (thinking preferences) gives clues to which sensory language to use in order to pace or lead other people:
| SEEING | HEARING | FEELING |
| EYES: looking up or straight ahead and defocused | EYES: looking to the side or down and left (for right- handed people) | EYES: looking down right (for right-handed people) |
| VOICE: high rapid | VOICE: moderate pitch, volume and rate | VOICE: low, slow, pauses |
| BREATHING: rapid, high, shallow | BREATHING: moderate rate, middle of the chest | BREATHING: slow, low, deep |
| WORDS: imagine, focus, look at, point out, seeing it, notice, show it, blind to, in a flash, review, an eyeful, picture, transparent, graphically, illustrate, brilliant, viewpoint, drawing a blank | WORDS: talk through, tune in, listen to, rings a bell, explain it, crashing down, deaf to, harmony, harsh tone, discord, an earful, outspoken, squeaky clean, calling me, hear me out, sounding off, music to my ears, keep telling myself | WORDS: hold on, put a finger on, strikes me, touched me, get a grip of, walk away, dragging me down, in touch with, out of touch with, caught in the act, underhand, touchy subject, sticking with, firm stance, no stomach for it, chilling thought |
Sensory awareness
The subtle non-verbal changes that we sense in others are a form of communication. Sensory awareness develops the skills to perceive these very minute differences. The tiny changes detected on the outside are indicators of what’s going on inside the person. Our aim is to increase the awareness we have through our senses so that we can be in touch with the events on the inside of ourselves and others, responding accordingly. We can do this through our eyes and ears.
Using our sight
There are numerous non-verbal behaviours that can be seen when we know what to look for. These include:
. Speed and pace of breathing
. Lip size
. Skin colour
. Muscle change
. Body posture.
Using our hearing
Listening to voices is often made harder because we get sidetracked by the content of what’s being said. Learn to pay attention to various aspects of voice quality and appreciate that any change in quality can represent a change on the inside of thinking and feeling:
. Pitch
. Tone
. Tempo
. Rhythm
. Language.
Let’s think about it. Mirroring is a natural process to help things come into a state of harmony. Even two similar pendulums suspended with a taut wire will tend to synchronise their swinging motion. But do you always want to be in rapport with someone? Is it a good idea to choose not to be in rapport? Consider, for example, constantly consoling someone who’s depressed – do you want to get depressed too? Is that helpful to them? Would you be more or less of help to them if you stayed positive?
A summary of strategies
The following list offers the key behavioural strategies that allow us to create very powerful states of rapport, both consciously and unconsciously. Mastering the art of matching and mirroring will develop your ability (and give you choices) to establish rapport with anybody you choose.
. Whole body matching Adjust your body to approximate the other person’s postural shifts.
. Body part matching Pace any consistent or stylistic use of body movements; for example, blinking eyes.
. Half-body matching Match either the top or bottom of the other person’s body; for example, leg movement, upper body gestures.
. Head/shoulders angle patterns Match the angles and poses at which the other person holds their head and shoulders.
. Vocal qualities Match shifts in volume, tone, pitch, pace, and timbre.
. Verbal Match language patterns, styles, words, and phrases, used by the other person.
. Facial expressions See the ways in which the other person uses their face; for example, wrinkles their nose, puckers their lips, raises their eyebrows.
. Gestures Match the other person’s gestures in ways that are elegant and respectful.
. Repetitive phrasing Hear and use the repeated phrases of the other person.
. Breathing Adjust your breathing pattern to match the other person’s breathing pattern.
. Indirect matching (cross-mirroring) Use one aspect of your behaviour to match a different aspect of the other person’s behaviour. For example, adjust the tempo of your voice to match the other person’s rate of breathing, pace the other person’s eye blinks with your finger or head nods.
Four of the major NLP assumptions mentioned previously on this page are particularly relevant to effective rapport:
[1] The map is not the territory – We each perceive the world uniquely, as though in possession of an individual map of the world, one we have charted ourselves. These maps are made of our collection of past experiences, attitudes, and beliefs. We tend to filter experiences to fit our perceptions and beliefs. True communication, therefore, must attempt to understand other people’s perceptual maps. By sharing other maps and adjusting our own from time to time, rapport increases, and communication is made more effective.
[2] The meaning of your communication is the response you get – The purpose of communication, like any behaviour, is to bring about a desired outcome, such as to pass on information, to delegate, lead, encourage, influence, or whatever. Unless it fulfils the desired outcome, it is ineffective. If the other person doesn’t understand your communication, it’s probably because you haven’t put it in terms of their map of the world.
[3] You cannot not communicate – We are all communicating all the time, mostly non-verbally. Even our inner thoughts – in effect our internal communications – are often passed on to others through our posture, body movements, facial expressions, breathing, gestures, voice tone, or eye movements.
[4] The mind and body are part of the same system – Our thoughts instantly affect our physiology, and this in turn affects our behaviour. When something happens outside of us (external event), we take in information through our five senses. We reduce that information by filtering it through our life’s experiences. We delete, distort, and generalise, and pass the information through our filters: language, memories, decisions, perceptions, values, beliefs, and attitudes. That creates an internal representation of the event – the pictures in your head and the way you might talk to yourself. This in turn affects your emotional state – how you feel about it. If you have a good picture you feel great, if you have a bad picture you feel lousy. Those two affect your physiology – thinking, feeling, stance, breathing. Your internal representation, state, and physiology, become the driving force for your behaviour. Your behaviour becomes the input into the other person.
NLP and language
The Language of Success
The language that we use has an impact on the way we think, the way we act, and the way we feel. And, in turn, the way we think, act, and feel, has an impact on the language that we use. Our words also have an effect on others, as theirs do on us.
Our language defines us from all other inhabitants of planet Earth. We can’t even think without language, at least not in a conscious way. When you experience something enjoyable, you say to yourself, “That was amazing”. Or you think of a problem, or a challenge and you wonder, “Why did this happen to me?”, or “How did I get through this?” Those thoughts clearly occur using language.
Language is therefore an integral part of the process of thought, as well as the way that we interact and communicate with others.
Language is much more than a means of communication – it’s also the raw material of thought.
How we communicate through language is a key area and domain of NLP. What you say and how you say it affects other people and can influence or persuade them in different ways. You need to listen very carefully to what is being said, to notice the style of phrases and words used by other people.
Style of language often occurs unconsciously, and communication can be enhanced when people use similar styles. Language patterns, known in NLP as meta programs, develop throughout your life. Different life experiences will often change how you use these patterns.
Through the words used, language patterns indicate how people perceive and interpret situations. For example, some people just like to hear the “big picture”, whereas others prefer to know all the minute details – these are known as “big chunk” and “small chunk” styles.
We all have set patterns of thought – pre-programmed ways of processing and reacting to events and experiences going on around us. These allow us to quickly come to conclusions regarding our experiences in life without having to consciously process that experience using rational thought.
You may have been to a party and seen someone who you found extremely attractive. The reason you felt attracted to that individual had nothing to do with them and everything to do with your program. They may have had traits or qualities that you associate with attraction. It could be they reminded you of someone you were deeply in love with, or someone who is a positive role model. This is the reason why many females are attracted to males that remind them of their father.
The negative aspect is that we may find ourselves constantly being attracted to partners who cheat on us or are unwilling to commit, as every new partner is selected using the same program as for the previous unsuitable partner.
Meta programs
Meta programs are filters through which we perceive the world. When we know which meta programs a person works to in a given situation, we can frame our communication accordingly.
An example of differing meta programs would be how two people might approach an argument. A person with what we call a “moving away from” strategy would be likely to find any way to get away from the conflict. Someone using a “moving towards” strategy would be more likely to head towards a specific goal, perhaps of finding an amicable solution to the conflict. The primary difference between the two is that when you’re moving away from something, you never know what you may back into.
Meta programs are essentially unconscious filters that people develop to allow themselves to handle and respond to the high level of information and stimuli that they receive every moment of every day. After all, human beings aren’t computers, thankfully. You can’t process every piece of information that comes at you.
When you change these filters, it can dramatically change how you approach situations and how you perceive the world.
Meta programs are patterns of motivation and working. They drive where you put your attention, what you respond to, and what motivates you. They shape how you interact with the people and environment around you. They are your preferred way of thinking and operating. These patterns run behind the scenes, just like computer software – so automatic that you most likely don’t realise they are there.
In order to appreciate the role of meta programs it is essential to understand the relationship between perceptions, thoughts, and emotions. For example, if our perceptions shape our emotions, what shapes our perceptions? The latest research suggests that they are filtered and re-evaluated according to our previous experiences, beliefs, values, and knowledge.
A history of meta programs
Meta programs were identified by early NLP developers as some of the habitual patterns of thinking that control how you like to work and what motivates you.
In 1957, the renowned linguist, political activist, and philosopher, Noam Chomsky, proposed that people create their own model of the world by filtering their experiences in three different ways:
[1] Deletion – Selectively paying attention to certain information experienced through the senses, yet excluding other information.
[2] Distortion – Altering information that you receive to fit in with your beliefs or preconceived ideas.
[3] Generalisation – Placing an experience in a category or group. For example, saying, “I never win anything in the National Lottery” after buying tickets for a few weeks.
Leslie Cameron-Bandler further developed Chomsky’s work in the 1970s to define particular types of deletions, distortions, and generalisations, which appear in how a person behaves. She identified a number of additional patterns. These became known as meta programs.
Subsequently, Rodger Bailey, a student of Cameron-Bandler’s, further categorised these meta programs into:
. Motivation traits, which are the patterns that drive people to act.
. Working traits, which are the preferences in internal mental processing that people use in particular situations.
The ability to understand our own preferences and other people’s can help in building rapport and in communicating more effectively. People with similar language patterns often show similar levels of behaviour. For meta programs to be effective, you have to use words and phrases appropriate for the other person – saying the right thing, in the right way, at the right time.
It’s useful to pinpoint which meta program another person usually adopts. It allows you then to phrase your communication using the same one. This can help the person hear and understand what you’re saying faster and more effectively. For example, someone who uses a “moving away from” meta program will respond to a request to get on with their work if you say, “Because you won’t have to stay late”, than if you say, “Because you can go home early”.
Here are some examples of the numerous meta programs:
. General/specific (also known as big chunk/small chunk or detail/global)
. Proactive/reactive
. Moving towards/away from
. Options/procedures
. Internal frame of reference/external frame of reference
. Time orientation: In time/through time.
Each of these meta programs will now be analysed in detail, including ways to identify specific patterns and recommended language to communicate more effectively with each pattern.
General/specific pattern
The general/specific meta program pattern determines how people operate at their best, based on what is, for them, the right amount of information. It defines what scope of information they work with more effectively in terms of understanding and communicating – general or specific.
Some people feel at home when dealing with details and others prefer the big picture. Tom is well known among his friends for not reading instructions and avoiding detail like the plague. When he’s asked to proofread a document, he often misses small errors. Tom loves abstract conversations about differing concepts and he generally tends to think holistically.
By contrast, he’s lucky that his business partner Michelle gets great satisfaction from obtaining every piece of information that she can lay her hands on. Being an accountant, Michelle enjoys “number-crunching” and checking in a fastidious manner that written work is entirely accurate.
Understanding general and specific patterns
Someone running the general program is likely to work well with an overview of a situation. Someone with the specific pattern requires much more information and detail. Most people start from one and move to the other. So, if they start with the big picture, they “chunk down” to the detail.
In NLP, the idea of chunking up or down is used extensively. Questions are asked to elicit the next level of information and bring about a new way of perceiving a situation. For instance, to “chunk up”, a useful question to ask might be: “What is that an example of?” To “chunk down”, ask: “What would be an example of this?”
One of the best ways to identify someone with a general pattern is to bombard them with lots of detail. They’ll soon let you know because it usually drives them crazy. They love abstract concepts and have difficulty following a sequence step by step because they tend to process things all in one go. They don’t tend to offer much small chunk information and can sometimes miss out important details.
People with a specific pattern love detail. They feel satisfied when they have successfully dotted al the “i’s and crossed the ‘t’s”. As the saying goes, they sometimes don’t see the wood for the trees. Like the procedures pattern, they deal with things step by step. The difference is that with a procedure there are points where another route can be taken. If you interrupt someone with a specific pattern when they’re telling you something, they usually need to start from the beginning again. This is because they follow a sequence, which, unlike the procedures pattern, they don’t deviate from. There will be more on this page about the procedures pattern later.
Communicating with people who have a general or specific pattern
People with a general pattern prefer it when you keep the detail to a minimum. They like an overview of want you want to convey. They move conversations onto different topics in preference to discussing details.
When you’re communicating with someone with a specific pattern, it helps if you use words such as “precisely” or “exactly”. Present information in a linear, straight-line, step-by-step way. These conversations are likely to be long and drawn-out to cover all the minute details.
To influence people more effectively, use approaches that have meaning for their general/specific pattern:
. For ‘general’ people
Words: in summary, the overview, essentially, the main concept, the important thing is, the big picture, in brief.
Style: overview, big picture, random order, generalities.
Advantages: can make a good strategist or concept creator; can generate big ideas.
Disadvantages: may appear to have their head in the clouds; may feel uncomfortable holding a detailed conversation; frustration with details can result in too many ideas and little execution.
. For ‘specific’ people
Words: exactly, in detail, specifically, precisely, step-by-step, on plan, firstly . . . secondly.
Style: details, sequences, exactness, precision, specifics.
Advantages: very comfortable working with details and excellent at spotting small mistakes; cope very well with large documents and small print.
Disadvantages: can get bogged down in detail and happily work away, even though the purpose may have changed; may be perceived as pedantic or fastidious.
Adopting your own preference for amount and scope of information to another’s has strong impact. Give less or more detail than you usually would if that’s what someone else needs. In that way you experience more success in persuading, training, or by instructing someone to do something.
Identifying the general/specific pattern in the context of an email is usually easy and invaluable. To influence someone effectively by email, notice how much detail goes into their own emails. You’re sure to find extremes, from three words to three pages. So match the other person’s style. If you want someone to approve something and their emails are very short, keep yours short too, and detail-free – just offer a concept or outline. If someone sends a detailed email to you requesting information, respond with lots of specifics.
Proactive/reactive pattern
People who operate in proactive mode are the ultimate self-motivators, the people who are regularly one step ahead. On the downside they will often ignore the analysis and planning that are needed when making important decisions. These are the leaders and drivers – the ones who are most likely to take initiative and get things started.
At the other end of the spectrum you will find people who feel more comfortable in reactive mode. They are often noted for their love of collecting information and careful planning before doing anything at all. In proactive mode, collecting information is done as part of an overall planning process; in reactive mode it’s more likely to be used as a delaying tactic because they would really rather do nothing at all. That is to say, to avoid commitment and responsibility, not because they are lazy or indolent. These are the analysts and researchers – they may let others take the lead while they wait and evaluate the best course of action.
In proactive mode, people need very little motivation, though they can be turned off if they perceive that their initiatives are being rejected or unduly criticised. Reactive mode is better suited to group situations, where people have very little individual responsibility, and where they have a clear idea of what they are required to do and why.
It’s important to note that the proactive mode really isn’t the best choice in every situation. Although the business world is awash with entrepreneur types demanding that everyone be proactive, a whole team of people in proactive mode is no team at all – just a collection of individuals doing their own thing with minimum consultation, if any.
To pick up whether someone leans to a proactive or reactive meta program, listen to the structure and style of their communication. You will find that some are very proactive or reactive, and the rest a mix of the two.
Here is a good exercise to do. When watching the news, try to identify individuals who are proactive and reactive using the following characteristics:
Proactive language – Short sharp sentences; direct; active verbs; engaging; passionate; fast speaking.
Proactive body language – Very animated; lots of hand gestures and gesticulation; fidgeting; focused; eye contact.
Reactive language – Long, drawn-out sentences; failure to get to the point; passive verbs; incomplete sentences; words such as ‘but’, ‘should’, ‘would’, ‘could’, ‘might’; monotone.
Reactive body language – Little or no eye contact; ability to sit still; little animation and limited use of hand gestures and gesticulation; calm.
Using the proactive/reactive program
Use specific strategies to influence people based on whether they identify with the proactive or reactive meta program:
. For proactive people:
Words: go for it, let’s do it, get the job done, now, don’t wait, take control, make things happen (words or phrases about action and doing).
Style: get things done, take control, take charge, act; enjoy taking charge, finding solutions, and moving at a fast pace.
Advantages: willing to act; assume leadership roles.
Disadvantages: can ignore analysis and planning.
. For reactive people
Words: why not think about it, consider, could, might, analyse, think about, take your time (words and phrases with choices).
Style: wait for others to take the lead, analyse choices and goals, wait for instructions, slower pace, take time to think about things carefully.
Advantages: good analysts and researchers; evaluate the best course of action; weigh up all the data before acting.
Disadvantages: tendency to avoid commitment and responsibility; likely to procrastinate.
Moving towards/away from meta pattern
The moving towards/away from meta program pattern focuses on what motivates people to do something.
Generally, we act because:
. We have a desire to move towards something: perhaps a goal, dream, or target.
. We want to move away from something: for example, a challenge, a problem, or a difficult situation.
When asked, “What’s important to you about a car?”, a “towards” person will answer with what it can give them: speed, status, the opportunity to impress other people, etc.
An “away from” person will respond by what a car will keep from them: “It won’t break down, it’s not expensive, I don’t want to spend huge amounts of money on petrol and maintenance”, etc.
You’ll note the same when asking, “What’s important in relationships?”
Towards: Fun, connection, love, affinity, etc.
Away from: Not an alcoholic, doesn’t scream, doesn’t “play games”, no drama, etc.
The following examples will give you some insight into whether your natural tendency is to run a “towards” program or an “away from” program.
[1] Your football team winning the league, or preventing them from being relegated?
[2] Winning the race, or concern about not being able to finish?
[3] Having financial security, or fear of being destitute or bankrupt?
[4] Focus on success and achievement, or fear of failure?
[5] Would you work harder to achieve pleasure or by avoiding pain?
The “towards” meta program
If you are motivated by a “towards” pattern you will be more focused on what you want. You are likely to work towards objectives such as:
. Achieving a particular goal or target
. Gaining promotion at work
. Fulfilling a sporting aim or goal
. Activities that bring you pleasure.
You will find it easier to focus on the benefits of the activity. You will find that you’re energised by targets and outcomes. As you focus on what you want to accomplish, you tend to set priorities well. When operating at the extreme of this pattern, you may struggle to identify potential problems or recognise possible barriers to success. When also running a strongly proactive pattern, you may develop an almost kamikaze approach.
A person in towards mode thinks in positive terms, identifying what they want to achieve. They have an image in their mind of what they want, and they move more or less directly towards the realisation of their goals. If the towards attitude is too strong, it can seem aggressive and insensitive rather than assertive.
The “away from” meta pattern
If you run a strong “away from” pattern, you’re more likely to focus on what could go wrong in a particular situation. You’re likely to work hard to avoid:
. Challenges
. Difficult situations
. Crises
. Disasters.
You’re likely to be motivated by:
. Problem-solving
. Identifying actual and perceived challenges and threats
. Being aware of everything that could go wrong.
If your motivations are truly away from, you’re likely to be easily distracted from objectives because you feel compelled to deal with any problems that arise. Any deadlines or priorities that you have agreed are likely to be forgotten as you troubleshoot the latest issue that has emerged.
You will find that you’re much clearer about what you’re trying to avoid than about what you want to achieve, and this inability to express a positive desire can make it very hard for you to formulate any kind of outcome.
How do we know which pattern is running?
To recognise which pattern another person is running, you just have to listen carefully to how they determine their goals.
When someone says, “I’m going to do XYZ because…”, listen very carefully to what comes next – it will tell you whether (in that particular context) their motivation is to work towards or away from the stated result.
Do they discuss their dreams and what they want to achieve? (Towards)
Or do they tell you what they want to avoid, and all the challenges that could prevent them from fulfilling their objectives? (Away from)
Examples:
[1] My dream is to live in a large house in the country and be financially secure. (Towards)
[2] My dream is to get out of this neighbourhood and not be unemployed. (Away from)
[3] This new contract will allow us to expand our business, raise salaries, and buy new equipment. (Towards)
[4] This new contract will mean we don’t have to make redundancies, we can avoid a crisis, and don’t have to worry about old equipment failing. (Away from)
Which of these two motivation directions is better?
It is impossible to state this unequivocally because there are no “better” and “worse” programs. It can be assumed that a towards pattern will be more useful in many situations where we’re focused on positive matters, on goals, and not on obstacles. On the other hand, the ability to perceive the potential obstacles and difficulties is also a valuable one.
For motivation purposes, a person in towards mode needs to be pointed in the right direction and be clear about the reward for achieving their goal (with occasional discreet checking to ensure that they stay on track). A person in away from mode can be motivated by threats – however, be careful: if the threats become too intense, they may become afraid to do anything at all.
In NLP, there’s a mantra: “Energy flows where attention goes.” When considering this particular meta program, it’s important to bear this in mind. We tend to get what we focus on. If we focus on our problems, we get more problems and we tend to attract more challenges. When we focus on what we’re grateful for and what’s working well for us, we will find reasons for success and gratitude. This has been labelled the “Law of Attraction”.
Attributing success to “energy flows where attention goes”, especially when it’s paired with action such as taking responsibility, through hard work, or through the setting of well-formed outcomes, is important to realise.
Using the towards/away from meta program
Use specific strategies to motivate people based on whether the towards or away from meta program is identified:
. For “towards” people:
Words: fulfil, gain, get, attain, accomplish, achieve, the advantages, have, obtain what you want, benefit, bonus, target, include (words or phrases that take the person towards a target).
Style: towards the positive, goal oriented.
Advantages: forward-thinking; goal oriented, positive energy and drive.
Disadvantages: may get entangled by too many new initiatives at once; may be perceived as “gung-ho”; tend to leave things unfinished.
. For “away from” people:
Words: avoid, exclude, recognise problems, not have, prevent, fix it, avoid, steer clear of, find out what’s wrong, there will be no…, solution, remove (words or phrases that take the person away from a situation).
Style: away from the negative, avoiding problems.
Advantages: very good at assessing risks and recognising what to avoid.
Disadvantages: overly cautious with a tendency to focus on the downside; may appear negative and unwilling to try new experiences; makes choices based on avoidance rather than a desire for something new.
Options/procedures
Are you always looking for better or alternative ways to do things, or are you more likely to follow a tried-and-tested method? The options/procedures meta program is extremely useful to understand how you approach tasks and tackle challenges.
. You’re probably motivated by the options pattern if you’re motivated by choices, variety, and the chance to do something differently, or better, than previously. You may be very good at drawing up procedures for getting the job done, but you have no interest in following the procedure itself. You initiate a new project with bravado but may not ever complete it. You look at all the possibilities and when you have plenty of choices you take action “just because you can”.
. You’re probably motivated by procedures if you believe a “right” way to do things exists. You like your work to have a start point and an end point – basically you get things done. You can find having too many choices about how to handle things difficult. You take action when you have the comfort of clear instructions or recommendations. You’re likely to act because you feel you “have to”.
Identifying options/procedures patterns
Someone’s options or procedures preference is usually expressed in how they speak.
. Someone with the options preference uses a lot of “I can” and “I could”. They’re more likely to recognise an opportunity and take action.
. Someone motivated by the procedures preference uses a lot more of “I must”, “I had to”, “I had no choice”, and “I should”.
Options people enjoy breaking or bending the rules. Exploring new ideas and possibilities is of great interest to them. To motivate or influence these people, use words such as: opportunity, alternatives, break the rules, flexibility, variety, unlimited possibilities, expand your choices, options.
Procedures people like to follow set rules and processes. Once they understand a procedure, they will repeat it over and over again. They have great difficulty developing new processes, and without a clearly defined procedure they feel lost or stuck. They’re more concerned about how to do something than why they should do it. For these people, bending or breaking the rules is tantamount to heresy! They’re motivated by words such as: correct way, tried and true, first … then … lastly, proven path, follow this procedure to the letter.
When they’re in options mode, many people have a strong streak of creativity, which they may find difficult to control. They prefer to find their own route – usually with many diversions along the way.
When someone is in procedures mode, they find choices distracting, and given half a chance will follow a set policy to the letter, often with no regard for the consequences.
A person in options mode really doesn’t need motivating, as self-motivation is one of their main strengths; rather they need to be kept firmly (but not too obviously) on track. A person in procedures mode is best motivated if they’re given detailed instructions, the need to make choices is minimised, and they can earn praise when they adhere to the standard procedures.
Using the options/procedures meta program
Use specific approaches to influence people based on their preferences for options or procedures:
For an options-motivated person:
Words: possibilities, choice, play it by ear, alternatives, options, new, break the rules, variety (words or phrases that offer options).
Style: love variety and different possibilities, start projects but doesn’t always finish them, willing to try new ways and offer choices.
Advantages: explore many options and provide people with choices; happy to test and break the rules.
Disadvantages: may procrastinate and avoid making decisions until forced to do so by circumstances; very good at reinventing the wheel.
For a procedures-motivated person:
Words: the right way, tried-and-tested, first … second … and then … (words or phrases with clear structure and procedure).
Style: follow set rules, methods and procedures; likes precise instructions.
Advantages: very efficient; good with rule-based administration; will stick to agreed notes.
Disadvantages: the procedure may become more important than the job to be done; at worst bureaucratic and blocking.
Internal/external frame of reference
The phrase “frame of reference” refers to where you put your attention.
When you reference externally, you get your sense of self from things, events, and circumstances, outside of yourself. If you’re externally referenced, you will define yourself by your title, status, car, home, where you go on holiday, past, future, parents, children, needs, or condition. You’re on a constant journey of reaffirming who you are – to yourself.
When you reference internally, life is much simpler. You know who you are. You know why you’re here. You know what gives you your greatest sense of satisfaction. You know what you want to contribute. You know what you want to leave behind after you’re gone and you’re doing something about it now.
An external frame is about getting your needs met. An internal frame is about living your life fully present, and fully expressing your core values.
Also known as the frame of reference filter, the internal/external meta program is concerned with how people make judgements about their own actions. If you ask someone, “How do you know when you’ve done well at a given task?”, they may answer that they go by other people’s reactions (external), or that they base success on how they feel (internal) – or they may use a combination of the two.
People with a significant element of external reference are relatively easy to motivate since your approval, or disapproval, will directly affect their perception of whether they’re performing well. Indeed, they can sometimes seem over-responsive, because someone in external mode will often hear other people’s input, even mild suggestions, or queries, as commands.
People with an internal frame of reference are really only interested in their own opinions. Where someone in external mode hears inputs as commands, a person in internal mode hears external input, even direct commands, as mere information. These people may be hard to motivate unless your frame your approach in the appropriate terms.
People who are chiefly internal will assess something as being “good” through internal standards, beliefs, and gut feelings.
Individuals who are chiefly external will have a list of criteria as a reference for what is “good”, saying, “It has this and this quality”, or perhaps mentioning that other people value it.
Internal people have difficulty accepting other people’s opinions and outside direction, even if they are good ideas. If they receive negative feedback on something they believe they have done well, they will question the judgement of the person giving the feedback. They may gather information from outside sources; however, they will assess it based on their own internal standards. You can motivate this type of person by the following words: you know what’s best … only you can decide … it’s up to you … I need your opinion.
External people need outside direction and feedback to stay motivated and to know how well they’re doing. Without external validation, they may feel lost or have difficulty starting or continuing an activity. They may interpret a simple discussion as an order and then feel swamped with all you’ve directed them to do. They’re motivated by words such as: according to the experts … others will think highly of you … you will be recognised by your efforts.
Using the internal/external frame of reference program
To motivate based on an individual’s feedback pattern, use specific strategies.
For people with a strong internal program:
Words: you know, you may wish to consider, you may want to think about it, only you can decide, a suggestion for you, up to you, what do you think? (words or phrases about personal feelings).
Style: know within self, use own feelings, happy to make own decisions.
Advantages: can stay motivated when there’s little feedback or praise.
Disadvantages: internal standards may override, and sometimes cancel out, external evidence; will disregard evidence, facts, and sound advice, from other people.
For people with a strong external program:
Words: the feedback is, results show that, the person with authority says, what I’ve noticed, the word on the street is, opinions are, statistics show (words or phrases about other people).
Style: depend on others, facts and figures, need feedback.
Advantages: will make decisions based on concrete facts and evidence, or maybe just the “feel good” factor, so long as it comes from an external source; able to give excellent customer service and help to others.
Disadvantages: will get stressed when there’s a lack of external feedback; needs frequent feedback on performance to make good progress; will be indecisive if there’s a lack of feedback.
Time orientation: In time/through time
This meta program describes how people arrange their perception of events past, present, and future. This pattern is also called inside time/outside time.
In time describes someone who becomes caught up in the stream of events in their lives. They can only “see” events in the immediate future and the immediate past, which tend to be straight in front of them and right behind them, respectively. This makes it difficult for someone “in time” to look objectively over past events, plan ahead, estimate the time required to complete a task – or turn up on time. But they do value each moment.
Someone in through time mode, however, “sees” events as something like a stream flowing past in front of them. They’re better able to view the past and plan ahead, and thus see how events are developing. They spend their time planning and making sure they’re not late for meetings. However, their preoccupation with planning their next moment or analysing the last may prevent them from concentrating on the matter in hand.
Using the time orientation meta program
To motivate based on an individual’s time orientation pattern, use these specific strategies:
In time people:
Words: now, here, enjoy the moment, be present, be aware of, feel, (words or phrases that are focused on the present).
Style: live in the moment, spontaneous, impulsive, don’t look back or to the future much.
Advantages: can concentrate on tasks; emotionally and mentally engaged in each activity and every experience.
Disadvantages: frequently late and can give the impression of not being concerned about timekeeping; may get involved in too many things through attachment.
Through time people:
Words: In the past, next time, previously, last time, in future, historically (words or phrases about the past or future).
Style: preoccupied by thoughts of the past and future, often neglecting the present moment.
Advantages: good planner and timekeeper.
Disadvantages: may give the impression of not being engaged in the current activity; being on time and scheduling activities can become more important than the activities themselves.
The meta model
One of the chief benefits of NLP is to increase flexibility of response. But being able to respond to a situation using only a meta program can limit your choices and ability to enjoy life. The aim of this section is to give you greater choice in how to perceive and respond to everyday situations.
As a general rule of persuasion, you must use a person’s existing meta program to persuade them of your outcome. But this process is less persuasion than an exercise in personal development and flexibility. As a further benefit, if you wish to have meaningful conversations or relationships with others who have different meta programs, you need to respect their models of the world, be flexible, and speak to them in their language. Thus, by applying this technique, you will better understand other people’s perspectives on the world.
Filtering language
As we saw in the section above, we unconsciously use three filters or processes during conversation: deletion, distortion, and generalisation. These filters transform what we experience with our senses into our internal thoughts. They clarify our experiences and help us to interpret the true meaning behind what people say.
They can work positively and negatively. You can identify the filter a person is using by listening to signs in their language. When you recognise the pattern being used, you can ask specific questions to ascertain the true meaning of their communication. These specific questions were originally developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in 1975 and are referred to in NLP as the meta model.
If we recognise which filters people are using, we can anticipate how they’re likely to react to what we do and say – this is where meta models are useful. With a language filter identified, questions can be phrased more specifically to gain greater understanding. Questioning helps to:
. Gather more information to find what may have been left out or deleted
. Clarify meaning when evidence has been distorted from the true meaning
. Identify a limitation, to offer more choices when information has been generalised.
We communicate in words by deleting, distorting, and generalising the deep structure of our experience into a spoken surface structure. The meta model is a set of language patterns and questions that reconnect the deletions, distortions, and generalisations, with the experience that generated them. The meta model questions “reverse engineer”, working on the surface structure to gain insight into the deep structure behind it.
As Richard Bandler and John Grinder noted in 1975:
“With the artful use of Meta Models, the practitioner can involve the client in recovering the deep structure – the full linguistic representation. The next step is to challenge that deep structure in such a way as to enrich it. […] The basic principle here is that people end up in pain, not because the world is not rich enough to allow them to satisfy their needs, but because their representation of the world is impoverished. Correspondingly then, the strategy we, as practitioners, adopt is to connect the client with the world in some way that gives him a richer set of choices. In other words, since the client experiences pain by having created an impoverished representation of the world and forgetting that the representation is not the world, the practitioner will assist the client in changing just in case he comes to behave in some way inconsistent with his model and thereby enriches his model.”
The Structure of Magic, Volume 1
The name “meta model” came about because “meta” means above or beyond, so the meta model is a model of language on language, clarifying language by using language itself.
What does a meta model do?
A meta model seeks to understand the underlying perspective of the individual. When an individual is asked to describe their problems, they will usually constrain their choice of words, modify, generalise, or remove certain information that was part of the actual experience. The person will usually portray the situation in close relation to their understanding of the experience and will not usually give out all the details that caused, or occurred during, that event.
The meta model comprises a set of explicit questions and language patterns that are intended to question and enlarge the boundaries of the map of perception of that individual as regards the surrounding world. Typically, questions may be in the form of:
. “What X, specifically?”
. “How, specifically?”
. “According to whom?”
. “How do you know that?”
A way of making sense of the meta model is to be aware that not everything that is being thought of is actually put into words, resulting in deletion of certain facts or observations. Several assumptions could be made by the individual and there could be structural incorrectness compared to the facts, leading to a distortion in the event portrayed. There could also be an inclination to use wide-ranging statements leading to generalisation of the core idea or problem at hand. In addition to this, the listener might not fully comprehend or correctly interpret what is being said, and the image generated after being filtered through their own set of beliefs and assumptions might drastically deviate from the actual truth.
We will look now at the three categories of the meta model, and how to recognise them in everyday speech.
[1] Generalisations
Definition: “One example is taken to be representative in a way that narrows possibilities. The process of creating a general rule or assumption on the basis of a very limited amount of evidence.”
Think about words that raise emotions in otherwise rational people: “You always say that.” When you spot a permanent, all-embracing word like “always”, “never”, “every”, “all”, or “none”, you’re probably on to a type of generalisation known in NLP as a universal quantifier. These words are deadly, in that they eliminate nearly all of the choices and alternatives that better thinking provides. They can end conversations and relationships and induce ulcers. The effective response is to pose the universal word as a question: “Never?”, “Always?”, etc. This usually exposes either an absurdity or at least an exaggeration. Having raised doubt about the universality or permanence of the statement, you can explore further: “In what circumstances might you…?”, or “Have there been occasions when [for example] he wasn’t late?”
Watch out for cases where the offending words are missing but implied. “Take away food is unhealthy” implies that all takeaway food is unhealthy and is another example of a generalisation.
Spotting the common words first will help you spot the hidden patterns.
Another common pattern includes words like “cannot”, “possible”, or “impossible”. How often have you heard expressions like “You can’t do it like that” or “That’s impossible”? These are just as restricting, if unchallenged, as “never” or “always”. They are clarified by asking the question: “What would happen if you did?”, or “What exactly is stopping you?” In doing this you’ll be able to distinguish between what is really impossible, and what is a type of generalisation called a modal operator of possibility. Getting what you want involves habitually attempting to achieve the impossible.
Its sister pattern, the modal operator of necessity, is signalled by words like “should” and “should not”, “must” and “must not”, “ought” and “ought not”. Again, you can respond: “What would happen if you did?” A lot of these patterns date back to childhood and social conditioning. They’re based on rules that may be long past their sell-by date, yet are still part of our language and thoughts. “You shouldn’t mix with those people” invites the response: “What would happen if I did?” Challenging these codes of necessity doesn’t imply rebellion or anarchy, just healthy questioning to see if choices are being unknowingly missed.
Note that this and other meta model responses don’t ask “Why?”, but “What?” or “How?” The technique explores alternatives without setting any moral agenda, aiming to create alternative points of view, and more possible outcomes.
The final generalisation, known as a complex equivalence, is when two statements are put together as though they mean the same thing. Example: “She must be tired . . . she’s been running around all day”, or “He’s not smiling . . . he’s not enjoying himself”. In these cases, “running around all day” is taken to be equivalent to “being tired” and “not smiling” equivalent to “not enjoying himself”. These are more insidious than “never” and “can’t”, as there are no obvious words to watch for. The meta model response is: “How does this mean that?”
Usually, it’s obvious that the statements aren’t equivalent, so the skill is in spotting the pattern rather than coming up with a clever expose of the misuse of language.
Generalisations, then, are the taking of specific experiences by creating a general principle. “Everything is going wrong.” “This always happens”. “Everyone gets in the way.”
The aim is to expand the conversation away from the limits the person is setting. “Everything or just one aspect?” “Always or just occasionally?” “Everyone or just someone?”
[2] Deletions
Definition: “Important information is left out and limits thoughts and action. The process of ignoring certain items of information about some event or person (for any reason).”
Deletions are the language that’s missed out before it becomes a spoken or written communication. Think of the common expression: “It’s a matter of opinion.” What is? The noun “it” is unspecified. Or: “They’re out to get me.” Who are they? “Things are getting out of hand.” What things? Unspecified nouns are clarified by asking: “Who or what specifically?”
Not only do we omit specific nouns, but we also do the same with verbs to equal effect. “He lost his watch” – how did he lose it? “She hurt her leg” – how did she hurt it? Many verbs, although they are “doing” words, leave out lots. Words like “travelled”, “helped”, or “worked” don’t tell us how, so we’re left guessing what exactly happened, or what was done.
Sometimes verbs describing an ongoing process are turned into nouns. For example, the verb “educate” becomes “education”, and “fulfil” becomes “fulfilment”. Such nouns seem intangible – you can’t wrap education in a box or lock fulfilment in your garage. So, a lot of specific meaning is lost when we use nominalisations, as they’re called. Words like “respect” can have very different meanings, depending, for instance, on who is respecting whom, and how that respect is demonstrated.
Business and government communications are often full of nominalisations, which is why it seems that a lot of words are used when little meaning is communicated. To get at the missing information you have to turn the nominalisation back into verb form, and ask who is doing what, and how are they doing it? Who is educating whom and how? “She has a bad memory” (a nominalisation) raises the question: “What does she not remember [the verb], and how does it affect her?”
Examples of language used where deletion is easy to identify include, “That was good”, “He made me angry”, or “Customers can make it very difficult”.
The aim is then to gather additional information to obtain a clear outcome or for a clarification of the message. This is achieved by probing and asking questions to obtain more information. “What aspect is good, specifically?”, “In what way?”, “Which customers?” “How will it be difficult?” “What other information do you have?”, “Where, when, how, what, who?” Use: “Exactly”, “specifically”, “precisely”.
[3] Distortions
Definition: “Information is twisted in a way that limits choice and leads to unnecessary problems and pain. The process of reshaping information so that it misrepresents external reality (for any reason).”
The distortions category of language patterns includes everyday language that you will be familiar with. Have you ever had someone make a statement like: “You’re not sure, are you?” Or: “You won’t like him.” This is quite simply mind-reading! And this sort of statement only makes sense if we can read each other’s thoughts. These patterns are used when someone thinks they know, without evidence, what another person is thinking or feeling. For example: “He was delighted, but just didn’t show it.” We make these assumptions all the time, often based on non-verbal cues that we think we understand.
As with all these common language patterns, we’re likely to see distortion used by others long before we recognise it in ourselves.
There’s a fascinating variation on this mind-reading theme. Sometimes we wrongly assume that people can read minds, and language supports this: “You knew it would upset me.” Or: “You must have known I wouldn’t like that.” “Mind reading” and “projected mind reading” are classic recipes for disagreements and conflict.
How do you respond to mind reading? By asking a question:
“Susie doesn’t care about me.”
“How do you know Susie doesn’t care about you?”
“Because she never calls or asks about my work anymore.”
The question has elicited another statement, which forms a complex equivalence (not asking about work is equivalent to not caring) and also includes the universal quantifier word “never”. By asking the question “Never?”, you can put the work discussion in context. Then you can go on to ask: “How does this mean that?”, which will soon show up any false link between the two statements.
Another distortion that’s closely related to the complex equivalence is the familiar pattern of cause-and-effect. “He’s been happier since she returned” assumes that “her returning” is the cause of him “being happy”. It’s easy to miss these and fall into the trap of assuming a link when no cause-and-effect relationship exists. You clarify this language pattern by asking: “How, specifically, does this cause that?”
A close relationship to the cause-and-effect pattern is a presupposition. “Shall we meet at your place or mine?” presupposes that you’re willing to meet, and if so at one of the venues mentioned. “Would you like red or white wine, sir?” presupposes that sir would like wine. Presuppositions can be challenged by asking: “What makes you believe that…?”
The aim when dealing with distortions is to ascertain the underlying message. You deal with this by asking questions that are related to how you know and what the evidence is. Use: “Who says?” “How do you know?”.
Here’s some more examples of language used and the questions to ask:
“Wearing that outfit means you don’t take this job seriously.” Q: “What specifically about this outfit makes you think that?”
“Sitting next to Alexia at the party means she’ll like you and want to date you.” Q: “How does sitting next to her guarantee that she’ll want to date you?”
“Your comment made me upset.” Q: “How exactly did what I said make you feel upset?”
People respond to events based on their internal pictures, sounds, and feelings. They also collect these experiences into groups or categories that are labelled with words. The meta model is a method for helping someone go from information-poor word maps to the specific sensory experiences that they’re based on.
It’s here in the information-rich specific experiences that useful changes can be made that will result in changes in behaviour. This can be used to change your own behaviour as well as that of others.
Employing the language of success
How can an understanding of the meta model patterns help you to get what you want?
Most of what we do involves other people, and so-called “successful” people seem to be good communicators. The meta model puts interpersonal communication onto another plane and makes language work for you rather than against you. You will have seen that there’s a standard type of response to every pattern. This doesn’t mean that you will always have to use the response in conversation. Merely recognising a pattern and being able to question it mentally will change the way you perceive a situation, how you feel, and how you behave.
Making it work for you
Knowing that a language pattern exposes an absurdity means that you won’t let it affect you in a serious way – your feelings will be influenced by your interpretation of the statement, and your interpretation will take account of any defect in the language. So, you should no longer be fooled by statements that try to limit what you can or should do.
Where you spot a deletion, and you want to gather more information, you’re free to make a response and get better understanding, for your own purposes.
You need not build your own outcomes on untruths, be they presupposition, mind reading, or wrong cause-and-effect relationships. Nor need you be tricked into making meaningless comparisons. When you formulate your goals and plans you will instinctively avoid nominalisations and start using words that have specific, motivating meaning for you.
The inner voice
As was noted in the section above under “Communication”, much of language is not physically spoken. It’s that self-talk, or inner voice, the way you think things out, or express what you feel to yourself. Much of this dialogue, which is very close to the surface and so suffers from the same deficiencies as spoken language, takes on the form of meta model patterns. So, you’re as likely to be deluded by your own inner voice as by other people’s.
“You can’t do that” might be something you say to yourself far more than it’s said to you by others – and you’re far more likely to believe yourself. All the meta model responses, therefore, also apply to your inner voice. Where you need to be very careful in your tone of voice when making a response to someone else who might be antagonised, you need not be so considerate with yourself.
Meta model skills help you to clarify your own thinking and control your own feelings, as well as helping you to express yourself and negotiate persuasively.
Here’s a very relevant and useful exercise. Find a feature or editorial piece in a popular newspaper or magazine and see how many meta model patterns you can spot. Go over the text a few times – each time you will probably find new examples. Then scribble down the responses you would use, imagining you were addressing the writer of the article, or the people being quoted.
Next, make a point of listing meta model language patterns when at work, at home, and in a social setting. See which ones are the most common. Don’t try to pick up every word, just listen, identify patterns (even if you can’t put them into a category), and mentally form a response.
These exercises will help you to see things in a very different way, will give you greater objectivity, and will mean that you take more control of your feelings, giving you more control of your life and what you do with it.
What can the meta model do for you?
. Gather information: By challenging deletions, the meta model recovers important information that has been left out of the surface structure.
. Clarify the meaning: It gives a systematic framework asking: “What exactly do you mean?” When you don’t understand what another person means, that is your cue to ask meta model questions.
. Identify limits: By challenging the rules and generalisations that you’re applying to your own thinking the meta model questions show where you’re limiting yourself and how you could be freer and more creative.
. Give choices: By showing the limits of language and thought, especially where distortions are limiting clear thought and action, the meta model expands your map of the world. It doesn’t necessarily give you the right answer, or the right map, but it enriches the one you have.
Embedded commands
In the previous section, we looked at the meta model pattern of presupposition, which can be used to manipulate people in situations such as politics and advertising. But what would happen if we used such techniques to influence people? Would that make us bad people? Many practitioners believe that if we’re using the techniques such as the ones I’m about to introduce to you with positive intent, to influence someone to a “win-win” outcome, or to help your colleague finish his or her project, say, then it can’t be regarded as manipulation – and definitely will not reflect negatively on you.
Embedded commands are patterns of language that bypass conscious reasoning and speak directly to the subconscious mind. Embedded commands influence people at the subconscious level. This allows you to direct people to take specific actions.
Your brain is always analysing what’s going on around you. It’s trying to find similar things from your past and trying to line them up with each other. The subconscious mind has stored millions of conversations with other human beings. These conversations have become so routine that the mind has virtually fallen asleep.
The subconscious mind runs on autopilot. It’s accustomed to remembering or responding to things day after day. The older you get, the more you think, “autopilot has heard this before”.
When using embedded commands correctly, you create usual patterns of language that force the subconscious mind to wake up and pay attention.
The result? The subconscious has received a direct and specific command that it feels compelled to act on.
Viruses of the mind
Embedded commands are techniques for “planting” a thought (state, process, or experience) within the mind of another person beneath the person’s conscious awareness. This is done through presuppositions, which are assumptions implied within verbal structures. If you think of an embedded command as a “virus of the mind”, then the phrase used to deliver that command is the invisible hypodermic needle used to inject that “mental virus” into the mind of your target. This phrase is known as a weasel phrase.
Weasel words or phrases are aimed at creating an impression that something specific and meaningful has been said, when in fact only a vague or ambiguous claim has been communicated. For example, an advertisement may use a weasel phrase such as: “Up to 50% off on all products.” This is misleading because the audience is invited to imagine many items reduced by the proclaimed 50%, but the words taken literally mean only that no discount will exceed 50%, and in practice the vendor is free not to reduce any prices and still remain faithful to the wording of the advertisement.
Weasel words can imply meaning far beyond the claim actually being made. Some weasel words may also have the effect of softening the force of a potentially loaded or otherwise controversial statement through some form of understatement, for example using words such as “somewhat” or “in most respects”.
In the English language, commands end with a down-turn in tonality. Embedded commands require the use of a commanding tonality to be effective. These commands usually possess the word formation of a question, but the tonality of a command. For example: “What’s it like when you become incredibly loving!”
The purpose of using embedded commands is to move the mind of the recipient in the direction you want it to go without seeming to be intruding or ordering in any way.
Combine the weasel phrase with a command verb, like “get”, “become”, “experience”, “remember”, etc. Bolt on the state, process, or experience, you want the other person to have, and you’ve got your embedded command. The formula is:
Weasel phrases
+ command verbs
+ states, processes, or experiences
+ commanding tonality
= embedded commands
Here are the most important and useful weasel phrases. We will use each one to embed the command, “feel incredibly loving”.
[1] When you . . . “When you” presupposes that the person is going to do the thing or experience the state you describe, so it’s no longer open to debate or doubt. “When you feel incredibly loving, do you find yourself compelled to act on it?”
[2] What would it be like if…? This weasel phrase is, in effect, a command for the person to imagine the condition or occurrence named or described after it. “What would it be like if you were to feel incredibly loving?”
[3] A person can . . . Talking about “a person” deflects any resistance on the part of the recipient, since you aren’t really talking about him or her. “A person can feel incredibly loving, talking with someone they really, really like!”
[4] If you were to . . . By saying “if,” it deflects resistance while directing the person to imagine the experience, condition, feeling, or situation you’re describing. “If you were to feel incredibly loving, do you think you might feel compelled to act on it?”
[5] As you . . . This phrase assumes that the person will do the behaviour or undergo the condition you describe. “As you feel incredibly loving, can you feel how excited you’re getting?”
[6] It’s not necessary to . . . By saying it isn’t necessary, it eliminates any resistance, since you’re saying they don’t really have to do it (even though they will!). “It’s not necessary to feel incredibly loving, as you listen carefully to what I say!”
[7] You really shouldn’t . . . Since you’re saying they “shouldn’t”, it’s not like you’re trying to get them to do anything, are you? “You really shouldn’t… feel incredibly loving!”
[8] You might find . . . Useful as the start of an intensifying chain of phrases. It implies that they’re going to experience what you describe as something that just happens, so it’s not like you’re commanding them to do it. “You might find as you feel incredibly loving, that it could lead to your acting on it!”
[9] To the point where . . . This phrase connects one thing the recipient is experiencing with the next thing you want them to experience, so it’s useful both as a connector and an amplifier. “You might find those pictures start to get bigger and brighter to the point where you feel incredibly loving!”
[10] Invite you to notice . . . This has the same effect as “you might find” because it implies that what you describe is going to happen. Plus, “invite” has pleasant connotations of it being voluntary and polite. “And I invite you to notice how the warmth of my voice can allow you to feel incredibly loving!”
[11] How surprised would you be to . . . This implies that the event you describe is certainly going to happen, and the only question is how surprised they’ll be by it. An example is: “How surprised would you be to find that you can feel incredibly loving?”
By using these basic building blocks, you’ll be able to create virtually any and all states you want to create, very rapidly, in the people you really want to persuade.
How to use embedded commands
When you’re in normal, everyday conversations you can influence people to watch the film you want to watch, accept your suggestion, do the dishes, get them to sell their house, sign the contract, or whatever else you want them to do with absolutely no resistance.
How is there no resistance? Because embedded commands bypass conscious reasoning and speak directly to you at a subconscious level. People simply begin to get it in their minds that they should do whatever it is you want them to do. Embedded commands are one-to-four-word groups that order you to do something, and they make sense on their own.
Powerful embedded commands
Case study – Michael
Michael runs seminars. He usually begins by using some embedded commands to prepare the delegates for action.
For example, Michael is noted as saying: “Usually my delegates do as I say. Shall we begin?”
He would usually have asked a number of questions that they would all have responded to positively; everyone always answers affirmatively. Internally, the delegates may be thinking: “Did he just say I had to do what he said?”
And here’s an example Michael’s trainer used on him during marathon training: “If you don’t train every day, you’ll struggle when it comes to the day of the race. Don’t you agree?”
The inflection is on “train every day”. Even though it’s structured in the form of a question, the answer includes: “Yes, you do agree.” Train every day is the embedded command.
Further examples include:
. “You should let me coach you, so I can help you get what you want.” Let me coach you is the command.
. “You must take notes while I’m speaking. You’ll learn so much more. Shall we do that now?” Take notes is the embedded command.
. “You can begin to relax now that you’re here.” Begin to relax is the embedded command.
. “You need to think deeply about what you’re saying.” Think deeply is the embedded command.
. “I don’t know when you’ll feel motivated.” Feel motivated is the embedded command.
Follow these four rules to incorporate embedded commands into your phrases:
- Pause before the embedded command.
- Go louder on the embedded command.
- Down-turn in tonality on the embedded command.
- Pause after the embedded command.
Uses, abuses, and benefits of embedded commands
Embedded commands will not automatically make anyone do what you want them to do. However, by the nature of how they work, the recipient will have to think about the focus of the command, however briefly. What they do from there is up to them, but you will have embedded the thought into their heads.
These are the key uses and benefits of embedded commands:
Control how the masses think
Politicians use embedded commands in their speech continually. In a speech by Tony Blair a few years ago, he continually used the phrase: “We, like America, need to…” Needless to say, at the time, support in the UK for American foreign policy was low and Blair wanted to change that. If you can embed commands directly into your speeches, presentations, and conversations, just how much more can you move people the way you want them to go? How much would you want to learn about how to do this?
Accidentally embedded headaches
Consider a situation where recently you were listening to two women talking while on a plane to New York. One woman complained about a headache and then (unintentionally) spent the next ten minutes using embedded commands to install the same headache in her friend. You may have been overhearing the conversation, but even you began to develop a headache. If she could do this by accident, imagine what people might wilfully be doing to us.
Booking business meetings
When Gutan joined the sales team, he was tasked with re-engaging lapsed clients through telesales. After a couple of days of non-committal responses, lots of frustration, and many hours on the phone, he asked for help. The supervisor changed two words in his script and got him to use command tonality with his voice. In short, Gutan’s supervisor changed two sentences from weak questions to strong embedded commands. The next day in the call centre he got four appointments from eight calls.
Making sales
Think about embedded commands and see how many there are in the following sentence:
“Before you consider buying, let’s talk about the benefits so you can make the right decision – that way you can buy with confidence.”
I’ve deliberately not marked out the voice intonation, so you have to get this for yourself. Once you’ve got at least three, just imagine how powerful a simple sentence like this can be – and what will happen when you begin constructing and delivering these kinds of commands yourself.
Other people are using them on you
Advertisers, sales professionals, and politicians all know about these ideas and aren’t shy of using them. A quick trawl around the internet will give you hundreds of examples from Tony Blair to Joe Biden, from internet marketers to TV advertising. Even if you don’t want to use them on other people, you need to learn about embedded commands to understand how they’re being used on you.
Creating a Toolkit
Goal-setting
Goal-setting is a prerequisite to success in most areas of life. Yet 95% of people still don’t set goals.
The NLP model enables us to go beyond mere goal-setting into the actual programming of our minds to drive us towards our desired goal.
The brain works primarily from our sensory system (pictures, sounds, feelings). The NLP goal-setting model addresses this by getting our goal to be sensory-specific. But it doesn’t stop there. For the brain not only uses the sensory system, but it also uses our word meanings that drive the sensory system. For this reason, the NLP goal-setting model makes absolutely sure that we use our language ourselves in such a way as to drive our very neurology and physiology towards obtaining our desired goal.
The NLP goal-setting model helps you to concentrate on what you internally see, hear, and feel. Your attention will direct itself towards external and internal resources necessary for achieving the goal.
The NLP model provides the following key components that enable you to effectively identify your desired outcome – and it begins by eliciting that outcome immediately:
- State the goal in positive terms.
- Specify the goal in sensory-based terms.
- Specify the goal in a way that you find compelling.
- Run a quality control (ecology) check on the goal to ensure balance in all areas of your home/work life.
- Ensure that the goal can be self-initiated and maintained.
- State the context of the goal.
- State the resources needed to achieve the goal.
- How will you evidence success?
The goal setting process
Defining our goals
Firstly, we must recognise and define our goals. The six-step process below is a method for formulating a goal and then checking to ascertain if the goal will work.
- Where do you want to be, or what do you want to achieve? Answer this question against each goal.
- How will you know when you have succeeded?
- What will the effects be on you and those around you?
- What resources do you need to succeed? Do you have the resources or access to the resources?
- What has prevented you from doing anything about this before? How can you stop it happening this time?
- Final check – is this all you can achieve, want, or desire?
Clarifying our goals
A useful tool for clarifying our goals is the “SMARTO” framework:
S – Specific: “To be happier” is non-specific, indefinable, and impossible to quantify. “To get up at 6.30am instead of 7.30am, so that I can be in the office an hour earlier” is specific.
M – Measurable: It’s impossible to tell if the goal has been achieved if it can’t be measured. It’s also encouraging, especially as the goal may take some time to achieve fully, if the progress towards the goal can be measured.
A – Achievable: The goal has to be realistic. Attempting a goal that isn’t clearly achievable will only result in disappointment. It’s pointless for someone with a numeracy problem to enrol on a degree course in mathematics. By adjusting the goal to enrolling in numeracy classes, you’re attempting something with a realistic chance of success, which may or may not lead to a desire for further achievement.
R – Realistic/Relevant: The goal must be relevant to you and your situation. Going for long walks in the countryside may be enjoyable, but it’s hardly relevant for someone who is trying to meet new people.
T – Time: There must be a specific period over which either all, or a specific part of the goal, will be achieved. If goals are likely to take too long, they should be broken down into stages, so that you can see quite clearly how far you have progressed.
O – Own: The goal MUST be your own, otherwise it’s unlikely to succeed or sustain
The SOFI goal analysis tool
SOFI stands for Strengths, Options, Fears, and Impediments.
Let’s take, for example, the goal of running the London Marathon in April next year, and put it through the SOFI process:
What are your strengths?
What can you do, or what do you already do, that will help you to achieve this goal? You might…
. Enjoy being outdoors
. Be in relatively good shape
. Have friends or family that run
. Be enthusiastic and motivated.
And then, you would need to look at the options available to you to achieve this goal. These might include:
. A local running club that you could join
. An opportunity to subscribe to a web forum for advice
. Purchasing a running magazine or book
. Joining a gym
. Roping a friend into running or training with you
. Sign up with a personal trainer.
Consider what might impede you from achieving this goal. These may include:
. The time available to train
. The demands of your family
. A terribly busy workload
. Being generally too tired to train
. Not being in a position to afford the proper equipment (shoes, clothing, etc.).
Once a goal has been through the SOFI process, all the hidden reasons for not achieving the goal tend to come to the surface. This enables you to challenge, support, or encourage yourself towards goal accomplishment.
It is very useful to run this process over all the SMARTO goals that you set for yourself. Using the SOFI process can often provide you with extra insights and frequently tips the balance enough to precipitate goal success.
Four step to success
There are four essential steps to getting what you want. They are simple, yet profound. They are the basis of all human success, and the foundations of NLP.
If you are committed to achieving your desires, these steps are sufficient, even without further support or explanation, to make significant changes in your life. When reinforced with the specific NLP principles and techniques described on this page, they provide all the technology needed to get what you want.
[1] Know your outcome
NLP focuses on knowing your outcome – the result that you want to achieve. Any successful person knows what he or she wants. This is what marks out achievers. If you’re not particularly ambitious or goal-orientated, it might not seem natural to state your goals in a specific way. But you can start somewhere. We all have wishes and dreams, including those that will ultimately benefit family and friends or the wider community. There may be habits you want to change, or skills and abilities you admire in others that you would like to have yourself. All these can be expressed in what NLP refers to as outcomes, which will enable you to become a goal-achieving person. Having clearly expressed outcomes will give you the maximum chance of fulfilling them.
[2] Take action
Do what you think will bring about the achievement of your desire. This sounds very obvious, but the main characteristic of high achievers is that they actually start to do the things that others just talk and dream about. What you do might not always work, so there’s an element of personal risk. However, you will never know what you’re capable of until you act.
[3] Pay attention to the results of your action
This requires what’s called “sensory acuity”, as was saw in the section above in Creating rapport. You need to be able to observe accurately the things that happen as a result of your behaviour – whether your actions are bringing you nearer to achieving your outcome. You also need to spot the signals, or negative feedback, that show when you’re off course. Much of NLP is concerned with understanding how we sense things, interpret them, and feed the information back into further actions.
[4] Keep adjusting your course until you arrive at your destination
Be prepared to change your approach and behaviour until you get the results you desire. Based on sensory feedback, you must always be ready to do something else. If at first you don’t succeed, try something different! Sometimes this requires creative thinking on your part.
Because these four steps are so simple, there’s a danger of overlooking them and seeking something far more demanding and complex. Another common mistake is to miss out one stage – such as being willing to do something even when you’re not sure exactly what result it will bring, or being willing to change your behaviour when you’d prefer to stay with a more predictable, risk-free way of behaving. But if you spend time observing people who have done worthwhile things with their lives, including people you know well, you’ll begin to see this pattern of important steps in every success they achieve.
These simple steps outlined are sometimes demanding, at least initially, but there’s always a price to pay for getting anything worthwhile. Be assured that your investment will be repaid many times over – and as with other demanding activities, there can be almost as much pleasure in the journey as in reaching the destination.
Goal-setting summary
. Successful people set goals
. Goals take you from where you are to where you want to be
. A goal is anything you want or need
. You need to consider other goals, other people, and other aspects of your life when setting your goals
. When you do this, you set smart goals.
Answer the following questions in the form of a checklist that are related to your goal.
[1] What do you want? – Check that your goal is: a) stated positively; b) measurable; c) time-limited.
[2] Where, when, and with whom? – Define the context in which you want your goal.
[3] How will you know your success? – When you’re clear about your evidence, you’ll know when you’ve achieved your goal.
[4] What resources can you use? – Which of your experiences, friends, personal qualities, and role models will you use to help you achieve your goal?
[5] What is the cost of achieving your goal? – Consider your time, money, and effort.
[6] How will others be affected? – Who else is involved? What will change?
[7] What are the consequences? – What else could happen as a result of achieving your goal?
[8] Keep which present benefits? – How can you keep the benefits you currently get from not having your goal and not working towards it?
[9] What actions will you take? – Determine the actions needed; refine them; secure the help of others; act.
[10] Does the goal feel right? – Go back and review your goal.
The secrets of success
. Know what you really want
. Set your goal
. Take action
. Notice the results you’re actually achieving
. Be flexible enough to change what you are doing to achieve your goal
. This goal is unlikely to be isolated from the rest of your life.
Consider
. Which larger goal does this one support?
. Which smaller goals are helpful in achieving this one?
Platinum goal setting with the seven-step achievement plan
Only 5% of people who set resolutions at the start of each new year are successful in maintaining them. That’s a whopping 95% failure rate. This is because most people don’t understand the steps you must follow to achieve sustainable long-term results – and, as a result, never get off the starting block.
This plan will guide you through the process, giving you the perfect way to create the momentum that will compel you to continue on the path to success, achievement, and fulfilment.
First step: Be clear
First, you must clarify where you really are now…
[1] What did you love about the last twelve months?
a) What were your magic moments? When were you larger than life? When did you surprise yourself? What did you achieve that was truly outstanding and extraordinary?
b) What were your accomplishments in the last twelve months?
c) What are some of the things from the last twelve months that you wish to replicate in the next twelve months?
[2] What did you hate about the last twelve months?
a) What did you find challenging?
b) What things that happened in the last twelve months (or before) do you wish to avoid happening in the next twelve months, or ever again?
c) What learning did you gain by going through these experiences?
d) Why was this learning valuable to you?
[3] What decisions did you make in the last twelve months that empowered you?
a) What were the most important decisions that you made in the last twelve months?
b) What decisions will you take in the next twelve months as a result?
Second step: Be certain
Now you know where you are, it’s time to create the certainty that you have the ability to turn your dreams into reality.
[1] Make a list of anything in your life that was once merely a dream, goal, wish, or desire. Think of some of the massive things and even some of the smaller ambitions that at one time seemed difficult or even completely impossible, yet you somehow managed to achieve, attain, or acquire.
[2] Mark three items from the above list that were the most difficult for you to achieve.
[3] For the three items you marked, write down what process you went through to turn each one of them into reality. It was probably not a conscious act, but there’s a good possibility that something made you desire it so much it became a fantastic obsession for you. At this point did you find that you were continuously focused on it? Did you put a lot of emotional energy into it? Then what? Did you actually create a plan? What were the steps you followed?
Third step: Be excited
Now that you’ve identified and clarified where it is that you’ve been, and you’re certain about your ability to make your goals, dreams, and desires come true, it’s time to decide where you want to go…
[1] In an optimal state of awareness (jump around, dance, anything to get the blood flowing to your head), list every goal you’d like to accomplish in the next 20 years? Ensure that you include anything you want to do, be, share, create, have, and give. Consider physical goals, career goals, financial goals, personal development goals, relationship goals, contribution goals – anything you would like to learn, enjoy, experience, achieve, or do. No matter how ridiculous, unrealistic, or outrageous it may seem, this is your chance to dream without limits. Be sure to keep your pen moving as fast as possible!
[2] When you’re done, review your list, and next to each goal write down the number of years you would like it to take (or believe it will take) to achieve your goal: 1 year, 2–3 years, 5 years, 10 years, or 20 years.
Fourth step: Be focused
From your list of goals from the third step, mark your top four goals that you believe will take twelve months to achieve. Out of your entire list, what do you want most? What are the top four goals that, if you could achieve them in the next twelve months, would get you up at the crack of dawn and keep you burning the midnight oil with excitement?
Fifth step: Be committed
[1] Think of your top four one-year goals and devise a statement (a few sentences) about why they’re “Must Do”. For what reason will you achieve this no matter what? Remember, reasons come first, answers come second. What makes you want to do this?
[2] Think of some of the things you may be required to do that you don’t particularly want to do in order to achieve these goals. If you have enough passion, you can get yourself to do anything, but first you must be certain about what “anything” might entail. Face up to your fears and look the beast in the eye!
Sixth step: Be driven
Imperative. Never leave the goal-setting moment without acting towards its achievement. You must take massive immediate action. It’s the first step of your journey…
[1] Decide NOW: What are some small things that you will do immediately towards achieving one of your top goals (for example, making a phone call, booking a meeting, researching, signing up for a seminar, finding a coach, getting advice, support, or training)?
[2] What big things do you resolve to do immediately to achieve this goal (for example, making a decision, throwing out all the unhealthy food in your home right now, giving something away, etc.)?
Seventh step: Be smart
To ensure you follow through, you have to get smart and measure yourself consistently. The more you measure something, the better it gets. You must resolve now to measure your specific progress daily, or at least weekly.
How will you measure your progress? You could find a mentor or coach, keep a diary, announce your plans on your personal blog, website, or channel for maximum accountability, then write about your progress or record a progress video to upload.
Visualisation
“It is only through imagination that men become aware of what the world might be.” – Bertrand Russell
Much of how people experience and construct the world is based on what they experience visually. It follows, then, that if you want to change how your reality is constructed, a good start would be with a visualisation of a different reality.
Visualisation is the process of using your imagination to create mental images, and it’s used by NLP to program and change behaviour. Combined with positive thinking, visualisation can be a powerful tool in achieving your goals.
Our subconscious can’t differentiate between what’s real and what’s perceived, and if we can create something vividly enough subconsciously, it becomes very real for us – and even our bodies will react to accommodate the new reality.
Visualisation and imagination in NLP
NLP uses a number of techniques involving visualisation, from requiring subjects to visualise where they want to be in ten years (imagining themselves as they want to be) to using visualisation to reinforce confidence and self-assurance. Visualisation may be used to create dreams, imagine outcomes, and help people achieve desired results.
Using your imagination to create mental images stimulates focus and self-organisation, and points attention in a particular direction, allowing the unconscious mind to work towards the image created. Visualisation can be used in the creation of a desired life if one is able to practise it effectively.
A common slogan used by NLP practitioners is “be careful what you wish for”. The close link between visualisation and the unconscious mind makes it not only powerful, but dangerous.
If you were to visualise a negative outcome, this would enable the achievement of that outcome. The unconscious mind doesn’t distinguish between negative and positive visualisations. Hence, visualisation is to be used wisely.
Effective visualisation in NLP involves using a combination of memory and a degree of fantasy in the creation of positive mental images for the purpose of focusing your conscious and unconscious mind on a particular goal. As noted above, the mind cannot tell the difference between a real-life event and a vividly imagined one.
Let’s say you read an enthralling passage in a book about a man fighting for his life against a lion in the African savannah, and imagine the man’s fight vividly, you’ll find your heart rate rising, perhaps some perspiration forming on your brow, and your physiology responding in much the same way as the man in the story. This is testament to the mind’s inability to distinguish between the real and imagined.
In NLP, effective visualisation is achieved in the present: that is, you need to visualise achieving your dreams in the now. Visualise how you would feel, what emotions you would experience, how other people would respond to you, and how you would look, among other things. The key to effective visualisation is to create as detailed, clear, and vivid picture as possible to focus on. The more vivid the visualisation, the more likely, and quickly, you will begin to attract the things to help you achieve your desired outcomes through your subconscious mind.
Harnessing the imagination
By using our imagination and creating mental images, we stimulate and alert our neurology to a particular direction, triggering self-organising processes that begin to work towards achieving the outcomes automatically and unconsciously that we have imagined. As the old mantra says: “Energy flows where attention goes.” When we imagine a goal or dream in our mind’s eye, it allows us to recognise and mobilise the resources necessary to turn imagination into reality – what Walt Disney called “imagineering”.
Case study –
Visualisation is often used by sports psychologists to help improve athletic performance. Numerous examples exist of how visualising has promoted the increased development of physical skills.
In one study, gymnasts who were to learn a new move were divided into two groups. One group was instructed to visualise themselves being able to do this particular move, while the other group was given no instructions. A couple of weeks later, when the time came for them to do this particular move, without the benefit of any previous physical practice, the group who visualised had a 50% to 60% success rate, whereas the group that had not visualised had only about 10% initial success.
In another example, a soccer team was split into two groups in order to practise free kicks. One group physically practised taking the free kicks. The other group was instructed to sit on the benches and mentally practise by visualising that they were taking the free kicks. When the two groups competed with each other to see who performed better, those players who visualised were more successful at scoring from free kicks than the group who had actually practised.
Imagination and imagery
Imagination is also necessary to create and understand symbols and metaphors, and to provide motivation and meaning for our present actions. According to Albert Einstein: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Einstein claimed that knowledge of the past and present was essentially “dead” and required imagination to bring it to life and put knowledge into action. As novelist H.G. Wells maintained: “All youth lives much in reverie, thereby the stronger minds rehearse themselves for life in a thousand imaginations.”
Imagination is clearly based on our ability to create mental imagery. From the NLP perspective, images are considered one of the primary building blocks of a person’s model of the world. In particular, imagery is often used to define desired dreams, visions, and outcomes.
As Aristotle put it in On the Soul:
“When the mind is actively aware of anything, it is necessarily aware of it along with an image . . . To the thinking soul, images serve as if they were contents of perception . . . just as if it were seeing, it calculates and deliberates what is to come by reference to what is present; and when it makes a pronouncement, as in the case of sensation it pronounces the object to be pleasant or painful, in this case it avoids or pursues.”
According to Aristotle, we construct a mental map (“image) of the future from associations drawn from ongoing sensory experience. The mind then “calculates and deliberates” by “seeing” or constructing mental images of “what is to come by reference to what is present”, through memory and imagination. It’s this internal map that determines whether we will perceive an object or situation to be “pleasant or painful”.
Because it’s produced by the body’s nervous system, imagery can also influence the body in several ways. Often, images of goals and outcomes form a focal point or attractor around which behaviour becomes self-organised. In hypnotic work, imagery (often in the form of symbols and metaphors) is used as a means to understand and direct unconscious activity and create trance states, usually through the method of “guided fantasy”. Imagery can also influence the function of the automatic nervous system. Mental images, for instance, have been used to stimulate immune system functioning and other healing processes. There are therapists who have incorporated visualisation as one of the main components in the treatment of cancer.
Mental rehearsal – a case study
Some time ago, a study was made of people who had survived airline accidents. They were asked how they had managed to get free of the wreckage, with so much chaos going on, while many of their fellow passengers did not. Such a question, whilst emotive, is important to ask, because escaping an air crash isn’t something you get much chance to practise. How do you prepare yourself to do something you’ve never done before?
The most common answer to this question was that they had run a kind of mental “dress rehearsal” over and over in their minds. They would visualise the sequence of undoing their safety belt, moving out of their seat, going down the aisle to the nearest exit, jumping down the slide, etc. They would repeat this sequence over and over, feeling themselves doing what they saw in their visualisation, until it seemed that they had already done this activity many times before. Then, after the accident, when there was total havoc, they didn’t need to waste any time or conscious awareness thinking about what to do. The program was already in place. One of these people even mentioned that after the crash, he found himself going out of the exit and suddenly realised he could hear the person who had been sitting next to him screaming that he couldn’t get his seat belt off.
Behavioural performance
Mental rehearsal relates to our ability to practise a process or activity in our minds. In NLP, mental rehearsal is used to strengthen or improve behavioural performance, cognitive thinking patterns, and internal states. For example, when applied to behavioural performance, mental rehearsal involves creating internal representations, in the form of images, sounds and feelings, of some behaviour or performance we desire to enact or improve (as an actor might silently rehearse lines for a play).
At the level of behavioural performance, there are several different strategies for mental rehearsal. The mental rehearsal of a particular activity may be done from either an associated or dissociated perspective – for example, imagining a situation from one’s own perspective or watching oneself from the point of view of an observer, as if watching oneself in a movie or video.
Mental rehearsal done from an associated perspective is like entering a “virtual reality” and becoming an actor in a play or movie. From a dissociated perspective, mental rehearsal allows a person to be more like the editor or director of the play or movie. Thus, when done from an associated perspective, mental rehearsal can be used in order to internalise, or “install”, a particular behaviour. When done from a dissociated perceptual position, mental rehearsal can be used to anticipate possible consequences of a particular action in a situation (its ecological impact or appropriateness, for instance), as a type of mental simulation.
Internalising a behaviour
In order to actually internalise a behaviour, mental rehearsal is typically more effective when done from an associated perspective. The most direct form is to simply project oneself into a future situation and imagine delivering the desired performance. To mentally rehearse a speech, for instance, you would imagine being in the future situation, and create a multi-sensory representation of the way you would like to perform. As you mentally rehearse giving an effective and compelling speech, you would imagine what you would be seeing in that situation, feeling the movements and expressions of your body, and hearing what your voice would sound like as you gave the speech.
Other strategies include the New Behaviour Generator strategy, in which key elements of the desired performance are first described verbally. The linguistic description forms the basis for constructing a dissociated visual image of the desired actions. You then imagine enacting the performance you have fantasised from an associated position and check your feelings of confidence and congruence about doing the imagined behaviour. If there any doubts, you return to the verbal description and either add to it or refine it.
Future pacing
Mental rehearsal is a key element of many NLP techniques. In fact, a form of mental rehearsal called future pacing, in which a person imagines enacting changes in behaviour in specific contexts, is a final step in practically every NLP intervention.
Future pacing is a type of mental imagery, a powerful way to connect changes in behaviour to future situations or a particular event (such as a sporting performance). Usually, future pacing is done at the end of an NLP process to ensure that these changes are available outside in the everyday world. It’s easy to respond resourcefully when there’s no immediate threat or pressure!
By imagining and virtually experiencing situations where you would appropriately use the change in behaviour, you can find out if it’s triggered automatically. For instance, imagine walking in the front door and seeing chaos – does your “calm and patient” resource kick in? What are you saying to yourself? How are you breathing and feeling?
When doing this for someone else, you need to consider:
. Do they look calm and patient?
. What is their body language and breathing like?
. What is their voice tone and volume like?
. Do they sound or look tense, like they did when they described their previous, unwanted, response?
Future pacing test
[1] Think of four possible situations in the future that would have previously triggered the old behaviour that you are seeking to modify. For example, seeing a mess in the living room, getting a phone call from the teacher, a colleague or friend letting you down, etc.
[2] Imagine stepping into the first situation. See, hear, feel (as in touch, not emotion), smell and/or taste what you would experience in this first situation, that is associated to the context.
[3] Does the change hold? Do you respond in the way you would like?
[4] Consider if you need to make further changes to fine-tune the desired response.
[5] Repeat steps 2 to 4 for the other three situations.
[6] Come back to now and imagine and see yourself (dissociated) in the future with the changes you have made.
Everyday uses for visualisation
For lots of things in life a good visual skill is essential, and we all have the ability to visualise.
. Imagine being a hairdresser who didn’t know what a haircut was going to look like before they started.
. Imagine being a taxi driver who couldn’t picture where he was going.
. Imagine being an architect, builder, or carpenter, who didn’t know what the finished item would look like.
. Imagine being an artist who had no idea what they were painting or sculpting.
. Imagine being a surveyor who had no idea whether the building matched the plans.
Ten steps for goal-setting
[1] Have goals for all areas of your life – business, professional, career, family, health, finances, etc.
[2] Include both short- and long-term goals.
[3] Write down your goals so they become more than just a wish. There’s growing evidence to show that writing down your goals makes you 50% more likely to achieve them.
[4] State your goals in the positive:
. What do you want?
. What will that do for you?
[5] Visualise achieving your goals. Visual your success by vividly imagining and seeing yourself accomplishing your goals.
[6] Define specifically what the outcome will be, involving all the senses:
. How will you know that you have achieved it?
. What will you be seeing when you have achieved it?
. What will you be hearing when you have achieved it?
. What will you be feeling when you have achieved it?
. What will someone else see you doing when you’ve achieved it?
. What will you hear yourself saying when you’ve achieved it?
[7] Ensure you have the resources you need.
[8] When do you want to achieve your goals? Have a clearly defined timeframe.
[9] Establish the first step you need to take, and then decide on the next steps.
[10] When are you going to start? Confirm a date or time when you will start?
Realising and visualising your goals?
Using your senses and imagination can have a powerful effect on making your goals realistic and compelling. The more details you can add, as if it’s happening now, the more powerful and effective the technique is in turning your goals into reality. Be clear what you want and what obstacles you may need to overcome. “See” and “experience” your outcome as if it exists already – then you will have created a compelling goal.
Anchoring
The ability to create and anchor powerful states is one of the most useful and effective of all NLP techniques. How would it impact on your life if you knew you could give your very best performance in everything you did, and every time you did it? Every interview, every presentation, every exam, every sporting performance a complete success. Imagine what your life would be like if you knew that every outcome would be a positive one.
The concept of anchoring in NLP is the ability to access the most powerful and the most appropriate state for a particular activity, event, or task, and then being able to get into that state at will.
An anchor is a stimulus that reminds you of events and can change your state positively or negatively. The stimulus can involve all the senses (for example, something you hear, see, feel, taste, or smell) and it can be internal or external.
An internal anchor is generated in your mind, for example as you remember a visual image that evokes certain feelings. An external anchor can be triggered when, for example, you hear a piece of music that reminds you of a lovely holiday or experience.
If we experience an external state or create an internal state that is real and vivid, we can trick ourselves into thinking we’re actually experiencing it. Smells and tastes are particularly powerful anchors: the smell of freshly baked apple pie may remind you of your grandmother, or a perfume may remind you of a particular person. You may associate the taste of pina colada with being relaxed on holiday. Regardless of your age, you’re likely to have smells or tastes that evoke the feeling and memory of something from your childhood.
NLP defines anchoring as an internal or external representation that will trigger another representation. It’s the natural process by which one element or sensory component of an event recreates the whole experience. It relies on what’s known as the stimulus-response concept, where a particular stimulus will elicit a memory, behaviour, or feeling. Some of these responses are beyond our awareness.
For example, when we approach a traffic signal and see the amber light turn on, we slow down. When we see the red light turn on, we immediately put our foot on the brake. Over time, this becomes an unconscious process and is triggered whenever we see the traffic signal.
By being aware of how we set anchors in others and in ourselves, we can take control of the process. We can then set positive anchors in ourselves and in others, so that we can achieve an outcome or create an environment of excellence.
We create an anchor representation every time we communicate with another person: we use sounds and visual symbols to represent an experience, or to trigger past memories, feelings, ideas, thoughts, and representations. Good communicators always use anchoring techniques to attach states, representations, and experiences.
When to utilise NLP anchoring techniques
When you feel unhappy or in a negative frame of mind, you can create a more resourceful state by triggering positive anchors in your mind and body. You can also create positive anchors for a future situation that is causing you concern.
The majority of people use one specific sense, usually touch, for most of their NLP anchors, simply because it’s the easiest way to re-access them.
One of the most important aspects of setting up an anchor is to start by creating the strongest state possible. This will determine the strength of the anchor. A weak state results in a weak anchor.
Developing the art of effective anchoring
Anchoring happens all the time in our lives, and it’s not a new concept. It’s just that we don’t realise that anchoring is taking place. Therefore, anchoring usually occurs outside our conscious awareness. When we come across a trigger, all our representational systems are activated.
Creating a confidence anchor?
One of the easiest and most useful anchors we can create is for confidence.
You might like to begin thinking of a time when you were supremely confident, a time when you performed at your very best and may even have amazed yourself. If for any reason you can’t think of a time when you were confident, then imagine what it would be like if you were supremely confident.
Once you’ve remembered that experience, think of it in the present tense as if you were back there again experiencing it for the first time.
Think about:
- Where you are
- What you’re doing
- Who you’re with
- What images and colours do you see?
- What do you hear?
- How do you feel (other than supremely confident)?
- Are you aware of any smells or tastes that you associate with this experience?
The key is to make this state as powerful as you possibly can.
Begin by finding the visual submodalities that made a feeling or sensation stronger for you, and apply them to the experience of you being confident.
Be sure to incorporate the auditory submodalities too. If you find that volume has a positive effect, be sure to turn it up, as this can make the feeling stronger.
Once you’ve achieved a strong feeling, then be aware of how the feeling moves through your body, and let the feeling build and grow stronger and stronger as it moves.
As you focus and concentrate the feeling, as you continue to change the submodalities, take one of your hands and squeeze your thumb and forefinger together, and continue squeezing firmly while you continue to revivify that feeling of supreme confidence. As you squeeze more firmly, be aware of the feeling becoming ever stronger.
Keep squeezing until you feel that you’re in the strongest, most confident state you can create.
Now go and refocus yourself, make a cup of tea, go for a walk, or just focus on something else for at least five minutes.
We now have a strong anchor, so it’s important for us to test that it works.
Take the same hand and squeeze the thumb and forefinger together again. Be aware of the changes that occur. If you find that you haven’t re-accessed the confident state, then start the process again. Keep going through the process until you test an anchor that connects you to the confident state.
You’ll be clearly aware when you have created an effective anchor, as the changes will be easy to notice.
This is one of the simplest forms of anchoring, and we can use the same process to create any state.
Modalities and submodalities
We have five basic senses: visual, auditory, kinaesthetic (touch), olfactory (smell), and gustatory (taste). In NLP, these are referred to as representational systems or modalities. For each of these modalities, we can have finer distinctions. We could describe a picture as being black and white or colour, or it could also be bright or dim. Sounds could be loud or soft, or coming from a particular direction. Feelings could be in different parts of the body or have different temperatures. Smells could be pleasant or offensive, strong or light. Taste could be sweet or bitter, strong or mild. These finer distinctions are called submodalities, and they define the qualities of our internal representations. Generally, NLP works with only three modalities: visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic.
Types of anchors
Anchors can be visual, auditory, or kinaesthetic.
Visual anchors
You can use visual anchors to anchor a state. You can use external or internal anchors. For example, a crystal on a necklace might be used for anchoring success and achievement. In order for this to be effective, the external anchor must always be available for you to use. You might find it relaxing and calming to view a certain landscape, but unless you can carry it around with you, it’s of limited value. You can, however, use an internal image of the landscape to anchor your resourceful feeling.
Most visual anchors are internal. Some example of visual anchors include:
. Symbols – for example, you could use a circle as a symbol for being calm and relaxed and anchor this to your state
. People, such as a trusted friend or mentor – or even a person from history or current affairs
. Various objects and landscapes can be used as anchors for being calm and relaxed – for example, you could imagine a beautiful beach, a summer garden, or your childhood teddy bear or doll.
Auditory anchors
You can use a sound as an anchor. Like visual anchors, sounds can be internal or external. Many people use whistling or humming as an anchor. You can use an internal voice as an anchor. For example, you could anchor the affirmation: “I am calm and relaxed.”
Kinaesthetic anchors
Examples of kinaesthetic anchors are:
. Imagining a comforting hand on your shoulder
. Squeezing the thumb and forefinger as was described earlier
. Touching yourself on the hand or other unobtrusive place – you can choose a point and treat it like an acupuncture point, pressing on it to fire the required state.
You can use a combination of visual, kinaesthetic, and auditory anchors, such as seeing a certain symbol in your mind’s eye, hearing something said (for example, “Calm and relaxed”), and pressing your hand in an unobtrusive place.
Accessible and specific
Anchors can be created anywhere on your body. You don’t need to squeeze finger and thumb together – pressing a knuckle or earlobe works equally well. The only things to bear in mind when choosing a location for your anchor are that it’s accessible (and appropriate!) when you’re planning to fire it, that the location is specific (pressing your upper thigh isn’t specific), and that the more nerves there are in the area you use for the anchor, the more successful it’s likely to be. In sexual health, a fascinating use for anchoring has been to create an anchor during sexual intercourse. Ask to be referred to sexual health and wellbeing through your GP if this is something you’re interested in learning more about.
The four keys to anchoring
The anchoring technique isn’t complex, but you need to follow a few systematic and precise steps. There are four keys for performing anchoring:
[1] Uniqueness
In order to set a permanent anchor in another person, a unique stimulus must be used. A stimulus such as shaking hands can’t be used as an anchor, as it’s a general behaviour. When a stimulus or location is so unique that it can’t be found in our daily lives, it’s the best type of trigger possible for setting an anchor that lasts for a long time.
In the case of using kinaesthetic anchors, identify all aspects of the stimulus such as the pressure, location, size, and length of touch used. Choose a location that can be accessed later on with the same precision. Avoid using clothing as a reference, as it may change.
In the case of self-anchoring, choose a stimulus that’s comfortable for you but unique enough. An example for self-anchoring is squeezing the earlobe or joining the thumb and little finger.
[2] Intensity
The anchor should be set during the highest intensity of a state. Anchors are dependent on the state. Hence, when a person is experiencing an intense state, the anchoring function is enhanced as well, and it becomes easy to re-fire a similar intensity of the state when the anchored stimulus is triggered.
The intensity of a state identifies how vivid, strong, big, clear, or emotional the person feels during that state. As an example, patients are often asked to remember a resourceful state. When the patient accesses this state and becomes completely associated with it, an anchor is dropped.
NLP suggests that the person should be in an associated state of the experience rather than the dissociative state when placing an anchor, since we don’t want to remove all emotions from the experience.
[3] Purity
Purity for an anchor means that the anchor shouldn’t have any competing experiences. That means that when a person is trying to access a resourceful state, it shouldn’t be mixed with any other states, with contradictory thoughts or contaminating emotions. Purity of state is its distinctness.
The person recalling a state shouldn’t be having an internal dialogue conflicting with the state being accessed. You will need to amplify, focus, and purify the state being accessed. When a state is at its full intensity, there are no other states present to weaken its intensity.
[4] Precision
Precision refers to the exact time when the anchor is set. You need to identify and capture the exact timing for placing an anchor. For example, when a person reaches the maximum intensity of a state, the anchor should be applied. You should release the anchor just before the state starts reducing in intensity, otherwise a lower-intensity state or some other state will be associated with the anchor. Holding an anchor for an excessive amount of time might result in contaminating the state, as the person might enter some other, undesirable state. You must use your sensory acuity skills to determine the exact time and duration for applying the anchor.
The process of anchoring can be used to create a certain state within a person. Anchors should also be reinforced to enhance their effectiveness. This can be done by stacking anchors, by putting extra resourceful states over an anchored resourceful state. The anchor becomes stronger and generates a more positive state. Anchors can also be refreshed periodically to reinforce the resourceful state.
Foresight
Future pacing (as covered above under the section Visualisation) takes the anchors you have developed into future situations. You’re able to see yourself successfully managing a situation with more confidence or completing a task positively. Mental rehearsals allow your mind and body to practise the skills, and to support your success before the event actually occurs.
Using kinaesthetic anchors, or writing information down, also brings the messages into the body’s muscles, making the technique more powerful.
Integrating Your Learning
Modelling
Modelling is the process of observing and replicating the successful actions and behaviours of others. It’s the process of discerning the sequence of internal representations (meaningful patterns of information we create and store in our minds; combinations of sights, sounds, sensations, smells, and tastes) and behaviours that enable someone to accomplish a task.
It’s a basic NLP skill. Modelling is the process of capturing the thoughts and actions that distinguish an expert in some field from someone who’s merely competent. The information must be described in such a way that it’s possible for other people to replicate the relevant elements in order to enhance their own skill level.
If someone can do it, you can learn it.
An accelerated learning technique
NLP modelling is a powerful process that can accelerate learning of skills and competencies. One of the core activities in NLP is the study of people who are recognised (by their peers) as being excellent in some field of activity. The purpose of this studying is to identify what such people do differently from their colleagues that gives them such outstanding results. This is often referred to as “the difference that makes the difference”.
When the differences have been identified, they can then be communicated to other people who can learn to perform the same activity with a similar level of skill and excellence. In this regard, we might recall that context makes meaning, and the best results are likely to come from modelling as closely as possible to the context in which the results of the modelling will be used.
Having said that, the person learning the skill must have the necessary aptitude and be willing to carry out the necessary self-development. In other words, while it’s easy enough to study, or model, the activity of a world-class marathon runner, for example, a person who is severely disabled or overweight, or who refuses to take any physical exercise, is unlikely to be able to translate the modelled information into a personal skill.
Modelling is the ability to fully replicate a desirable skill or behaviour of another person into two parts:
[1] The full unconscious set of behaviours that perform the skill.
[2] The coding of such behaviours into a teachable/learnable format.
Modelling is at the heart of NLP. Without it, NLP wouldn’t exist. It has been said that NLP modelling is NLP. All the techniques and methodology that most people think of as NLP are actually just tools designed to facilitate the modelling process. Not surprisingly, then, modelling is the most complex aspect of NLP, and the one that’s most obviously still evolving.
As was mentioned earlier, NLP modelling procedures involve finding out about how the brain (“neuro”) is operating by analysing language patterns (“linguistic”) and non-verbal communication. The results of this analysis are then put into step-by-step strategies or programs (“programming”) that may be used to transfer the skill to other people and content areas.
For years, psychologists, anthropologists, and others from the human sciences, have tried to adequately describe the interactions between individuals and the way we think. NLP used a different tactic: rather than describe through theory and allegory, John Grinder and Richard Bandler systematically created workable models of their exemplars through application and demonstrable results.
Case study –
Modelling can be extremely useful in many contexts, especially in a work setting. It’s a failsafe strategy for disseminating proven skills. For example, if one manager consistently brings in projects on time and within budget, then rather than sending other managers off on some generic course, it may be more effective to model that manager and pass the results on to other members of the management team. Assuming that experts are brought in to do the modelling and course design, this may initially appear to be the more expensive option. But as the relevant skills and knowledge are passed on, and practical results are generated – fewer budget and deadline overruns, leading to more satisfied customers and thus to more repeat business – the cost should be far outweighed by improvements to the bottom line of the balance sheet, and within a reasonably short period of time.
Truth or theory?
Modelling is not concerned with the truth or with theory. Modelling is concerned with the pragmatic outcome of achievable behaviour, which is the ability to replicate in full the behavioural output of the person modelled into a set of teachable procedures, so that others may learn them. By taking a complex event or series of events and breaking it into small enough chunks, the success can be recreated in some way.
Natural modellers
Children are natural modellers: they exhibit the quality of exuberant curiosity without thought of the consequences or expectations of their learning. They have a talent to learn at phenomenal rates, given the appropriate support.
Given this, a young child has the potential to learn anything.
It has been shown to learn a language, for instance, the early developmental environment must include people. People serve as a model from which to learn. Given that a child has no way of knowing how to construct a verbal language without people, they will be unable to develop their language skills.
The school system exposes a child to learning by way of instruction. This approach is not natural to how a child learns, and inevitably some are successful and others who are equally intelligent are not so successful. It’s not that these less successful cannot learn – rather, the strategies that are used to teach them are flawed. Many children (and adults) find it easier to learn using a trial and error and experience strategy, which is a much more natural approach to learning than being instructed and repeating information.
When adulthood arrives, the person has been trained into using learning methods that may not have been appropriate for their own particular learning style, hence the reason why some people say, “I’m a bit slow at picking up things”, “I don’t remember much”, or “I have a bad memory”.
NLP modelling is a method that re-teaches the person how to learn effectively, essentially going back to how they were learning in their earlier stages of development.
How does it work?
So NLP modelling uses the same process of learning that you used as a child: the learning of a set of skills and techniques without any rationalisation or conscious intervention. This allows you, the modeller, to develop the skills, behaviours, motor skills, and unconscious processes that the other person has, without trying to interpret what they do.
Children do not learn by rationalisation. Similarly, if you were to rationalise and unravel the complex and unconscious processes and strategies that another person has spent years developing, you would spend much longer attempting to understand them.
So the rationalisation of NLP modelling is to NOT understand what you are wishing to learn at the level of consciousness, but to engage your unconscious resources by mirroring and matching the other person or shadowing what they do.
As an example, suppose you enjoy squash as a sport and wish to increase your level of play (specifically your backhand). You know someone whose game is much better than yours and have noticed that they return the ball with their backhand exceptionally well.
By using NLP modelling, you can learn how they do what they do and so be able to have the same performance as that person, minus the differences in your own physiological make-up.
NLP modelling is extremely useful for learning another person’s ability that may have taken many years to develop, and to learn it with the same efficacy and performance that the person you are modelling has achieved.
NLP has developed techniques and distinctions with which to identify and describe patterns of people’s verbal and non-verbal behaviour. While most NLP analysis is done by actually watching and listening to the role model in action, much valuable information can be gleaned from written records as well.
The objective of the NLP modelling process is not to end up with the one “right” or “true” description of a particular person’s thinking process, but rather to make an instrumental map that allows us to apply the strategies that we have modelled in some useful way. An instrumental map is one that allows us to act more effectively. The “accuracy” or “reality” of the map is less important than its usefulness. Thus, the instrumental application of the behaviours or cognitive strategies modelled from a particular individual or group of individuals involves putting them into structures that allows us to use them for some practical purpose. This purpose may be similar to or different from that for which the model initially used them.
Some common applications of modelling include:
[1] Understanding something better by developing more “meta-cognition” about the processes that underlie it – in order to be able to teach it, for example, or use it as a type of “benchmarking”. Meta-cognition is knowing about knowing: having a skill, and the knowledge about it to explain how to do it.
[2] Repeating or refining a performance (such as in sport or a managerial situation) by specifying the steps followed by expert performers or during optimal examples of the activity. This is the essence of the “business process re-engineering” movement in organisations.
[3] Achieving a specific result (such as effective spelling or the treatment of phobias or allergies). Rather than modelling a single individual, this is often accomplished by developing techniques based on modelling a number of different successful examples or cases.
[4] Extracting and/or formalising a process in order to apply it to a different content or context. For example, an effective strategy for managing a sports team may be applied to managing a business, and vice versa. In a way, the development of the scientific method has come from this type of process, where strategies of observation and analysis that were developed for one area of study (such as physics) have been applied to other areas (such as biology).
[5] Deriving an inspiration for something that’s loosely based on the actual process of the model. A good example of this is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, which was based on the diagnostic methods of his medical school professor, Joseph Bell.
Types of modelling
There are two types of modelling used in NLP: observational modelling and adoptive modelling. Actually, the first type of modelling is more accurately described as a category since there are two types of observational modelling.
Observational modelling
What I mean by “observational modelling” is creating a model of another person by copying them in some way. The two types of observational modelling are:
[1] Additive modelling – This is probably what most people in NLP think of in connection with modelling. It basically involves:
. Deciding on a skill you would like to have;
. Finding a model – someone who already has the skill you want;
. Identifying the factors that appear to support that skill in your model;
. (optional) Capturing, or codifying, those factors in such a form that they can be passed on to other people who wish to share that skill.
[2] Subtractive modelling – When Richard Bandler first started to replicate the work of Gestalt therapist Fritz Perls, he did so in a very complete way. Not only did he use Perls’ particular approach to therapy, he also reproduced Perls’ heavily Germanic accent, his smoking habits, and everything else that he’d heard and seen on the tapes he was transcribing. It was as though Bandler was matching Perls’ skill as a therapist – and achieving comparable results – by becoming Perls.
But was this kind of total immersion actually necessary? Do we need to become a virtual clone of the person we’re modelling in order to take on a particular skill? In a nutshell, no we don’t, as Bandler and Grinder discovered when they formalised their process of subtractive modelling.
In this approach, the modeller will:
[1] Initially take on aspects of the subject’s behaviour – actions, attitudes, etc. – which they can observe and/or elicit, making no judgements or evaluations as to the relevance or usefulness of any particular feature.
[2] Test whether they can now achieve results similar to those obtained by the subject. If they can, then they move on to Step 3; otherwise, they return to Step 1.
[3] Identify all of the individual features of the subject that the modeller thinks they have adopted. A list of those features will be drawn up – still without making any judgements about the comparative value of each feature.
[4] Start to carry out whatever relevant activities the subject performs (selling a car, running a marathon, being successful in a job interview, etc.). On each occasion, however, the modeller will discard one of their listed features and note what difference this makes to their results. If there doesn’t seem to be any significant difference, or if there’s a change because results improve, that feature stays discarded. If the results are noticeably poorer, then the feature is reinstated.
[5] Repeat Step 4 until all definable features have been tested (giving due consideration to the fact that some features may be “interactive”, such as voice tone and a particular form of wording, so that neither has much effect on its own, but they become very powerful when used in combination).
[6] Whatever is left after completing Step 5 should be the minimum set of features needed to gain the required results.
– The techniques that became the applications of NLP were mainly developed by Bandler and Grinder using this subtractive style of modelling. It should be clear, from what has been described, that this is a fairly complex technique and not one that’s suitable for use where a “quick fix” or “cheap and dirty” solution is required. By the same token, however, when the process is used efficiently it should produce far more useful, and cost-effective, results than a less rigorous approach would deliver.
Adoptive modelling
Once a skill or ability has been modelled in the observational sense, it must then be described in such a way that it can be taught to other people who don’t have that skill, or who do have it, but to a lesser extent. In other words, it must be presented in such a way that people can integrate the model into their own behaviour patterns. This obviously calls for quite a lot of information, but it must be a sufficient amount of the right information. On this basis, it often helps if the people who will be adopting the model understand some of the subtleties of producing a viable model.
For example:
. One of the identifying characteristics of a true “expert” is that they exercise their expertise unconsciously – without having to think about it. As a consequence…
. Asking an expert to identify their key skills and techniques is usually a waste of time, because…
. Most experts worth modelling either don’t know what they do that makes them “expert” or they identify the wrong elements of their behaviour as being the basis of their success.
. So, an inflexible, legalistic use of a model – simply consciously mimicking an expert’s behaviour – may not produce much in the way of results. The model must be integrated at the unconscious level so that the behaviour becomes as natural as the model user’s own behaviour.
. Effective modelling must take account of three aspects of the subject being modelled:
- behaviour: what the expert does;
- beliefs: the “mental maps” that are the foundation for this behaviour;
- values: the criteria by which the expert decides on any particular course of action.
. In addition to whatever specific behaviour you wish to model, it’s often useful to model an expert’s posture, breathing, and vocal characteristics when they’re in “expert mode”. Do they sit or stand? Do they breathe from their chest or from their diaphragm (stomach)? Do they speak quickly or slowly? And so on.
Remember: The three phases of modelling
[1] Observing the model – This involves fully imagining yourself in someone else’s reality by using what NLP calls a second position shift. The focus is on “what” the person does (behaviour and physiology), “how” they do it (internal thinking strategies) and “why” they do it (supporting beliefs and assumptions). We obtain the “what” from direct observation. The “how” and “why” is gained by asking quality questions.
[2] Finding the difference that makes the difference – Traditional learning adds pieces of a skill one bit at a time until we have them all. The drawback to this method is that we don’t know what’s essential. By contrast, modelling, which is the basis of accelerated learning, gets all the elements and then subtracts them systematically to find what is absolutely necessary.
The important questions are:
. What are the behavioural patterns of the successful person?
. How do they achieve their results?
. What did they do that is different from a person who’s not successful?
. What is the difference that makes the difference?
When you have all the pieces, you can refine and sequence the model.
[3] Designing a method to teach the skill – Until you have all the relevant pieces of a skill and the necessary sequence, you can’t teach it effectively. We currently teach many skills with extra background information muddying the waters. Rehearsal of the natural sequence of the skill is important. If you tried to make a cake by putting it in the oven before mixing the ingredients together, it would be yucky. Yet we think we can teach separate elements of skills out of sequence and out of context and succeed.
Try this. Find someone who has a skill or a competency that you would like to model, and follow these steps:
Remember, NLP is about modelling the best – so set your sets high: you’ll be surprised who’ll see you if you come over as genuinely interested. And there are lots to see if they don’t.
Begin by asking them how they do the thing you would like to do. Identify each step by asking either, “What happens before that?” or “What happens after that?”
Remember, too, many people will not be aware of their strategies, so use your observation to notice changes in posture and breathing to help identify internal processing.
If possible, use a recording device and preferably arrange to see people in a quiet place – this is important to blank out any background noise from the content. And listen – sometimes questions that don’t seem very important to you get the best answers.
Bear in mind that you’ve chosen someone because they’re good – so let them know and keep any confidences that are important to them.
Mix and match the following question sets:
Introduction
. You have a reputation for being good at . . . networking [adapt this to your topic]. Are you happy that I ask you some questions about it?
Environment
. Where and when do you do it?
Behaviours
. What specifically do you do?
. If you were going to teach me to do it, what would you ask me to do?
Capabilities
. What skills do you have that enable you to do this?
. How did you learn how to do this?
Beliefs
. What do you believe about yourself when you do this?
. What do you believe about the person you’re doing this to?
Identity
. Do you have a personal mission or vision when you’re doing this?
Other questions
. How do you know that you’re good at this?
. What emotional and physical state are you in when you do this?
. What happened for you to be good at this?
. What are you trying to achieve when you do this?
. Who else do you recommend I talk to about this?
In short, effective modelling is a very precise and accurate way of carrying out the advice in the old Native American proverb: “To really know someone you must first walk a mile in their moccasins.” Simply putting the moccasins on is not enough. You must also do the walking.
Having said that, it’s also important to remember that the purpose of modelling is to enable people to duplicate successful behaviour. This process is intended to assist in the transfer of skills, not to create clones of the expert.
NLP modelling involves transferring what an expert thinks they know and what they unconsciously know. It involves being able to produce the outcome and transferring the behaviour to others.
However, the use of modelling in NLP doesn’t just involve extraordinary skills. For example, you could model how someone keeps her desk clean. We can use the same key questions to find out how someone keeps himself depressed, or becomes frustrated.
Change
There are four stages to learning a new skill such as NLP:
[1] Unconscious incompetence – Learning a new skill for the first time, not knowing what you don’t know.
[2] Conscious incompetence – Realising what you don’t know and what you still need to learn.
[3] Conscious competence – Building the new skill and capabilities and feeling more familiar with them.
[4] Unconscious competence – Expertly using the tools as if they were second nature, like driving a car.
Now that you’ve got all these wonderful insights and methods from NLP for changing people, wouldn’t it be great to start to sort out some of your friends, colleagues, or family members? Sorry, but it doesn’t work like that.
The person to work on is yourself. Only you can change you. The incredible thing is that once you begin to do things differently, others will adapt and change their responses to you. So, once you build rapport with that grumpy colleague and talk to him using his language patterns, not your own, hey presto! He’s compelled to respond to you differently, and funnily enough, that was what you wanted.
Some people may be reading this page with the intention of better supporting others and using NLP as a tool to coach and train others. That’s a wonderful thing to do, and really beneficial to those you do it with, and to yourself. But remember, you’re not changing them. You give feedback, you coach, and you support, but all the change comes from within.
Learn to change content with NLP
We’re going to begin with something so obvious that once you get it, you’ll be shocked at how many people don’t seem to be in control of it.
Case study – Gillian
Gillian is a friend who used to have a phobia of worms – not a very common phobia, and one that doesn’t really make much sense.
I can’t remember anyone being attacked by a worm; I can’t remember reading stories in the newspapers about deaths caused by worms, and I’ve personally never had an unfortunate experience with a worm – but well – she was afraid of worms.
Tickled, I had to ask her what it was that made her scared of worms.
“Whenever I’m gardening, if I put a trowel in the ground and begin to pull it back, I visualise in my mind, a worm coming up with the trowel. It’s a really big fat worm, much larger than a usual worm, more like a fair-sized snake. I can see the slime all over it. Then as I lift the trowel up, the worm is flicked upwards, really quickly, and comes flying up towards my face, covering me in slime. Sometimes it even ends up in my mouth.”
Yuck. Now I understand why she doesn’t like worms!
So, even though this event never happened to her, and was “all in the mind”, the idea of it was so horrible that unconsciously she believed this was going to happen if she dug the garden.
One of the keys here is that your brain isn’t quite as clever as you think it is. In fact, your brain can’t really tell the difference between what happens on the outside and what happens on the inside.
My friend’s brain reacted to the idea of a worm flying into her face in exactly the same way it would have reacted if it was a common event and was really likely to happen when she dug the garden.
But don’t worry, because there’s one important difference between the inside and outside. You can change the things on the inside.
What if instead of visualising a worm flying into her mouth every time she picked up a trowel, my friend saw a worm emerge from the earth, smile at her, thank her for helping him to the surface, and then crawl off on his way?
Would she still be scared? And would that image be any less valid than the image of the worm flying through the air?
Definitely not – on both counts, though if she makes the image too cute she may start gardening just for the sake of digging up worms!
NLP elements
Now, before we turn this into a technique, we need to cover a couple of simple NLP elements.
Firstly, whenever you remember a memory, you remember the event using representations of your senses (what else is there?).
You remember what you saw, what you heard, what you felt (internally and externally), what you smelt, and what you tasted. As we saw earlier, these are referred to in NLP-speak as modalities, and the three we’re interested in are the visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic (feeling/body sensations) modalities.
Also, whenever you remember a memory, you’re only remembering a representation of the memory. You’re not remembering what actually happened. You’re remembering what you remember happening, but through the filters of your beliefs.
In a sense you’re remembering what happened in a manner that allows you not to have to question what you think about yourself.
An exercise. Imagine someone who makes you feel uncomfortable, or someone who makes you feel small and insignificant, or someone you have trouble dealing with, or someone you find difficult to communicate with, or someone who always seems to hold the upper hand and restricts the ways in which you can respond.
Now think about dealing with them at some point in the future.
Right, now in your mind you’re probably making a picture of that person.
So what kind of image do you make?
Think for a moment. If this image was real, what element of it would make you feel uncomfortable?
If the person in the image is much larger than you, then that would be scary, for instance.
If they’re very loud, that would be scary.
If they have a nasty facial expression, then that would be scary too.
What if a boxer, before a fight, imagined himself fighting his opponent, but imagined the opponent being twelve feet tall? I guess his confidence wouldn’t be very strong and his chance of winning the fight quite slim.
Usually there’s something unrealistic in the image you make – something that in real life would be scary.
There are a number of ways to change the way this representation makes us feel, and for now we’re going to concentrate on the content of the memory.
So, as a first step, think about some time when you’re going to be dealing with that person who bothers you. Notice what’s unrealistic about the picture, and make it realistic. For example, if you imagine them as being unreasonably tall, shrink them down.
One by one, change all the unrealistic elements in the image to make the picture more normal.
And for step two, we’re going to take it a little further, and make some things unrealistic.
Concentrate on their face for a moment, and give them a big red clown’s nose. How does that make the person seem? How about adding a clown’s suit and hat? How about giving them really big flat shoes? Do they seem quite so difficult now?
So what’s happening?
It’s simple really.
If you see someone with a clown’s nose, you tend not to take them very seriously, and this is exactly what you did in your head. This is a perfect example of a generalisation. We generalise that a clown’s nose always implies someone not to be taken seriously.
If you do not wish to use the image of a clown you can find another character not to take seriously. Cartoon characters, minor celebrities, and WWE wrestlers are good examples.
Changing the content visually like this, especially in humorous ways, can make a massive difference to the state of mind a memory creates.
This technique also works in all other modalities: auditory (hearing), kinaesthetic (feeling), gustatory (tasting), and olfactory (smelling).
Phobias
Many of us have developed irrational fears or phobias that have varying levels of impact on our lives. Whether it’s like the worms in the case study above, heights, or snakes, some people can feel tense just talking about them.
Fears and phobias limit our ability to get the most from life. In some cases, they can prevent us living even a relatively normal life.
In all cases we can overcome them – not necessarily with “treatment”, but through learning how to manage our own thoughts and feelings.
Fear or phobia?
We feel fearful when we believe we don’t have the ability to cope with something. This fear may be grounded in reality, as when we fear being knocked down by a car when trying to cross a busy road. Or the fear may be irrational, as when we fear a tiny harmless spider.
A point to remember. Many of our fears are a mix of reality and misinterpretation of our ability to cope. When there’s a large degree of misinterpretation, it’s likely that this is a phobia rather than a fear.
The essential ingredient of a phobia is that it has a significant degree of irrationality. The person experiencing the phobic feelings is usually well aware that their fear is irrational, but they’re unable to overcome the fear.
What to do about a phobia?
A phobia is an irrational fear driven by our emotions, which is why willpower, facts, and reassurance tend to have little impact. Of course, this doesn’t stop us trying to intellectually “understand it”, so we examine the past and try to remember or figure out how the phobia developed in the belief that a rational understanding will reduce its impact (it rarely does, it has to be said). The search for an explanation is quite natural – especially when we don’t know any other way of tackling it.
So, first a few statements of opinion. They have to be called that rather than “facts” because they are, of course, not universally accepted facts. They are accepted by most people in the world of NLP and they are supported by professionals working in the field. However, many, including those therapists who believe that “curing” a phobia should be a long and very expensive process, are more than likely to disagree with them.
[1] A phobia is an emotional, fearful response that is rarely based on objective facts or reality.
[2] A phobia can happen to anyone – it’s not a reflection on one’s strength of character, intelligence, willpower, etc.
[3] A phobia can develop at any age.
[4] A phobia can normally be eradicated in a few hours, at most.
NLP uses visualisation to help a person replay an event associated with their particular phobia in such a way as to change how the mind remembers the event.
It’s also known as the visual/kinaesthetic dissociation technique, and it does help the person dissociate, or, as many understand it, step away from the event/fear/phobia and view it in a less frightening way.
Case study – Janice
To help you understand how we can go about addressing our fears and phobias using NLP we will look at the case of Janice who has had a crippling fear for many years that’s preventing her from living a fulfilling life.
Janice has an intense fear of knives. She has no really sharp knives in her kitchen and she doesn’t like to look even at a penknife. She tenses up and looks rapidly away any time there’s even a possibility that someone on TV or in a movie may attack with a knife. She hates knives and feels tense even talking about them.
Janice was asked to visualise a scene involving herself and knives that made her extremely anxious and frightened. She had been threatened twice with knives in her life: once by a drug-addict friend she was trying to help, and once during a robbery. She chose the robbery as her visualisation. She was asked where on the anxiety scale the scene put her emotions, on a scale from 1 to 10 (10 being the most anxious). She chose 9, but it was noticed that she was digging her nails into her hands and her posture was rigid, and it was suspected it was more likely a 10.
Janice was asked to picture a small, black-and-white television screen with no sound, and place the scene she was visualising on the screen. Then, she was asked to move it to a movie screen and imagine she was in the audience watching herself, and then move back to the projection booth and watch herself watching herself in the audience and on the screen. This allowed her to put distance between herself and the event and diminished it in size and importance in her memory. She felt calmer viewing the scene from each diminishing perspective.
Janice was then asked to see herself leaving the projection booth, returning to the audience, and then re-entering the robbery scene at the end. She was told to quickly replay everything backwards, in about two seconds, as though she was watching a recording in reverse. This was done a couple of times, forward and back. Janice was then asked to revisualise the scene and see where her anxiety level lay. By this stage it had already dropped to a 6.
Next, Janice was asked to visualise a party scene, with children running around with colourful balloons, but some of the twisty balloons still looked like knives. The scene made Janice laugh a little. Asked again how anxious she was while viewing the robbery scene, it had now dropped to a 3. All of this had taken only a few minutes, and yet Janice felt so much calmer about the whole knife scenario.
Try it. Fast phobia cure
[1] Think of the greatest fear in your life.
[2] Rate your fear or phobia from 1 to 10, 10 meaning you’re terrified, 1 meaning you’re not all bothered (these are known as subjective units of distress or SUDs).
[3] Walk into any imaginary cinema and have a seat in the centre of the front row (don’t forget the popcorn).
[4] Float up out of your body and gently settle in a comfortable seat in the balcony so you can watch yourself down below.
[5] Put the very beginning of your greatest fear on the screen in the form of a coloured side. Then run the movie of your greatest fear all the way to the end, as you remain in the balcony watching yourself sitting in the front row seat, watching yourself on the screen.
[6] At the end of the movie, freeze the frame into a slide again. Change the picture to black and white and then re-associate fully into the picture on the screen (i.e. walk into the movie). Run the associated movie backwards at quadruple speed with circus or cartoon music playing, and then freeze-frame the image when you get back to the beginning of the movie.
[7] Walk out of the still picture and sit back down in the front row seat of the cinema. Now blank out the entire screen.
[8] Focus on the fear or phobia you have been working on and rate your SUDs again. If it’s still causing discomfort or fear, repeat steps 3 to 6 as necessary until the issue is no longer bothering you.
Modality check
Each individual has one primary mode that he or she prefers for learning and communication – either visual, auditory, or kinaesthetic. However, we also have the ability to move from one mode to another, depending on the situation. For example, if you’re right-handed, you would probably rather write with the right hand than the left. You have the ability to write with the left hand, but comfort lies with the right.
Think about it. Your mind performs six primary representational functions (excluding maintaining internal physical functions such as breathing) in order to “make sense” of the world.
It creates representations of:
. pictures
. sounds
. words.
And it generates:
. feelings
. smells
. tastes.
Through the five senses you gather information and store it in a manner that’s appropriate to each sense. Your mind then retrieves this information in the same code or format that you stored the experience. If you store information visually, you will retrieve it as a picture. If you hear and store a noise, you will retrieve the information as a sound.
We call this coding or storing of information an internal representation. In experimenting with a pleasant experience, you retrieved the visual part of the internal representation of a pleasant experience. Quite possibly your pleasant experience also had sounds. By changing the coding of an experience, you can change your feelings and your internal state. When the internal state changes, behaviour changes.
I will now set out an NLP exercise for you to determine which sensory system you are inclined to use.
In this assessment of 15 questions, put a check mark next to any statement that describes you; leave it blank if it doesn’t fit. There are no correct or incorrect answers – you’re simply indicating your preferences.
[1]
A. _____ I love to listen to music.
B. _____ I enjoy art galleries and window shopping.
C. _____ I feel compelled to dance to good music.
[2]
A. _____ I would rather take an oral test than a written test.
B. _____ I was good at spelling at school.
C. _____ I tend to answer test questions using my ‘gut’ feelings.
[3]
A. _____ I’ve been told I have a great voice.
B. _____ My confidence increases when I look good.
C. _____ I enjoy being touched.
[4]
A. _____ I can resolve problems more quickly when I talk out loud.
B. _____ I would rather be shown an illustration than have something explained to me.
C. _____ I find myself holding or touching things as they are being explained.
[5]
A. _____ I can usually determine someone’s sincerity by the sound of their voice.
B. _____ I find myself evaluating others based on their appearance.
C. _____ The way others shake hands with me means a lot to me.
[6]
A. _____ I would rather listen to audio books than read books.
B. _____ I like to watch television and go to the movies.
C. _____ I like hiking and other outdoor activities.
[7]
A. _____ I can hear even the slightest noise that my car makes.
B. _____ It’s important that my car is kept clean, inside, and out.
C. _____ I like a car that feels good when I drive it.
[8]
A. _____ Others tell me that I’m easy to talk to.
B. _____ I enjoy “people watching”.
C. _____ I tend to touch people when talking.
[9]
A. _____ I’m aware of what voices sound like on the phone as well as face-to-face.
B. _____ I often remember what someone looked like, but not their name.
C. _____ I can’t remember what people look like.
[10]
A. _____ I often find myself humming or singing to the radio.
B. _____ I enjoy photography.
C. _____ I like to make things with my hands.
[11]
A. _____ I would rather have an idea explained to me than read it.
B. _____ I enjoy speakers more if they use visual aids.
C. _____ I like to participate in activities rather than watch.
[12]
A. _____ I’m a good listener.
B. _____ It’s important that I always look my best.
C. _____ I feel positive or negative towards others, sometimes without knowing why.
[13]
A. _____ I can resolve problems more quickly when I talk out loud.
B. _____ I’m good at finding my way with a map.
C. _____ I exercise because of the way I feel afterwards.
[14]
A. _____ I like a house with rooms that allow for quiet areas.
B. _____ It’s important that my house is clean and tidy.
C. _____ I like a house that feels comfortable.
[15]
A. _____ I like to try to imitate the way people talk.
B. _____ I make a list of things I need to do each day.
C. _____ I’ve been told that I’m well-coordinated.
Assessment result
Total A _____
Total B _____
Total C _____
The mode A, B, or C that you scored the highest in indicates your preferred NLP system. If A is higher, you’re more auditory. If B is higher, you’re more visual. If your highest score is in the C category, you’re more kinaesthetic.
Knowing your preferred modality for learning and communicating allows you to recognise the way you interact with others, and may also allow you to adjust to a different modality to aid better communication with other individuals (who may have a different style).
Applications of NLP
Imagine what it would be like if you could crawl into the hearts and minds of the most successful people in the world today, whether it’s the Dalai Lama, Oprah Winfrey, Elon Musk, or David Beckham.
Imagine you had the tools to tinker around with their psychologies and take out the programs inside their minds that are responsible for their success: what they believe about life, how they solve problems, and how they relate to people.
Now, imagine taking these magnificent programs and installing them into your own psyche, turbocharging and kick-starting your own psychology.
With those new powerful programs running your heart and mind, would you do, think, and feel differently? And would you create brand-new results because of that?
And if you had to put a price on being able to do that – being able to install the beliefs, attitudes, and strategies of the famous, internally and externally – what would be the price of being able to do something like that?
You know the answer. Priceless.
This page has been an introduction to the vast subject of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). It has been designed to allow the reader to sample some of the better-known strategies and in applying some of its techniques into their own life. There’s much more that you can learn and benefit from, by continuing to explore NLP and its applications. Do take up some further reading by exploring how NLP can help you.
NLP has applications in many different areas:
NLP in business
Basic NLP skills that improve and enhance communication, rapport-building, and goal setting are all immediately applicable to the business world. Specific skills for dealing with people who perceive the world differently than we do will help improve relations with peers, bosses, customers, and new prospects. In addition, many leaders and consultants in business have turned to the creative and innovative aspects of NLP for inspiration in organisational development, total quality management, team building, and strategic planning. NLP principles and skills underlie much of what is taught in negotiation seminars. Presentation skills and public speaking are an integral part of corporate life today. NLP self-management techniques, language patterns, and goal setting are vital to effective speaking. Many of the attendees at NLP training sessions tell of how they have come to learn skills that will help them in their professions.
NLP in the caring professions
Much of the initial modelling in NLP focused on how innovative and effective therapists helped their patients change. Much of their behaviour and language was beyond their conscious awareness; thus, the analysis and modelling of the therapists’ techniques produced information of a highly practical nature.
The personal change work processes in NLP are unique in their scope and power. They are guided by precise language patterns and a careful, systematic approach for checking the “ecology” or respectfulness of the change upon other areas in a person’s life. Many highly trained therapists are finding NLP to be a richly generative and comprehensive framework for personal change. In addition, the dynamic world of NLP is continually refining existing patterns and adding new developments that help people make the changes they want. If you’re in a caring profession NLP can help you with the following:
. Finding tools for building rapport with a variety of different people
. Understanding the structure of beliefs and identity
. Adding zest to your work and increasing your job satisfaction
. Finding new and effective ways to assist your patients to achieve rapid and lasting change.
NLP and creativity
Artists, writers, and performers have found NLP training valuable because it offers unique insights into what inhibits and what enhances the creative spirit. Applications of NLP strategies provide powerful ways to free and stimulate individual creativity.
NLP in education
NLP’s practical applications include understanding how we learn and is an important tool for developing strategies for both students and teachers. Through NLP, teachers and parents gain concrete methods for helping children do well in school. Classroom teachers are incorporating key pieces of the NLP approach into their teaching methods and classroom management.
NLP for personal change
Many people come to NLP for relief from limitations. NLP provides freedom from old habits, fears, and limiting beliefs, and gives a structure for new and empowering ways of being in the world. One of the benefits of NLP is more choice: in how you respond, the way you communicate, and how you feel. When you have more options, you can make better decisions. If you haven’t been living the life that you want, NLP offers you a path to new and satisfying alternatives.
NLP in health
The applications of NLP are important both to those in the medical field and to individuals interested in good health.
In today’s rapidly changing field of healthcare, medical professionals need more than technical abilities. They are increasingly called upon to demonstrate strong interpersonal skills and flexibility, as well as abilities in the areas of negotiation, business management, and conflict resolution. NLP provides these necessary skills for relating effectively and communicating clearly with patients and fellow co-workers.
Medical professionals have reported that what they learn and acquire in NLP training is immediately applicable and valuable in their work.
In addition, leading-edge research in NLP today is focusing on ways of building and maintaining personal health, engaging the body’s ability to heal, and defining the relationship between health and beliefs.
If you remember one thing. If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. So, if what you’re doing isn’t working, do something different. NLP has shown you that anything can be done differently.
This concludes the narrative for the page ‘Neurolinguistic Programming’. Amendments to the above entries may be made in the future.
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