Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is about communication and perception.
It enables us to better understand how people (ourselves and others) perceive things, and encompasses how we think and act in our everyday lives.
People behave according to their personal programming, which has been learned through our life experiences. Sometimes this learning and behaviour is useful, other times it’s not.
Think for a moment of all the different things you’ve learned from the day you were born: how to smile, crawl, walk, talk, eat with cutlery, say please and thank you, learn a language, arithmetic, drive, social behaviours like gestures and body language, phobias (yes, they’re learned too! You weren’t born with them), plus many more.
Often, we learn behaviours and we repeat them so much they become habits, which then impact on our belief systems and our identity. Not always for the better.
NLP is a science, a methodology and a way of being based on the study of our language patterns and the way our brain works. It encourages us to understand our behaviours and beliefs and “re-frame” the ones which aren’t very useful into more positive ones, so that our overall quality of life (and that of those we interact with) is improved.
So often, we see the problem as being ‘out there’ and we behave as victims, rather than having a positive approach that allows us to see the problem as perhaps a challenge that we can tackle and learn from the outcomes (whether successful or not).
We interact with other people best when we are in tune with their personal language patterns. Do you ‘see things clearly now’, ‘like the sound of that’ or even ‘get the sweet smell of success’? We all tend to have a dominant sense which ‘colours’ our language and even behaviour.
NLP helps us understand these patterns, so that we can be more effective in our lives and relationships.
Coaching and Hypnotherapy use the ‘Presuppositions’ of NLP to understand the Client’s needs and challenges and then helps the Client shape a more useful way of being (‘a resourceful state’).