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About NLP
So NLP has grown out of the study of the mental processes of those who can do something exceptionally well, or who have completely recovered from some difficulty. Most of us were taught to think of exceptional skills as the result of inborn abilities or talents. NLP shows us that by thinking about our abilities as learned skills, we can understand them more easily and teach them to others.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming is a difficult phrase but it contains three ideas...
Neuro:
All our behaviour originates from the working of the nervous system and the neurological processes of the five senses. Neurology covers the working of our thought processes, nervous systems and physiological reactions to ideas and events.
Linguistic:
We use language to structure our ideas, thoughts and behaviours and to communicate with others.
Programming:
The ways in which we choose to organise ours ideas and actions to produce results. A program is a set of instructions or steps to achieve something whether that is taking exercise to get fitter or working out your finances on a calculator or computer.
The field of NLP is based on the realisation that we create much of our experience by the specific ways that we see, hear and feel things in the whole system that is our mind/body. This is usually called thinking. Different people literally think in different ways. One example would be how it is possible for one person to be intimidated by a simple task like public speaking or asking for a date, while someone else will feel energised and excited by it.
Another example would be how one person, lets say living in the United Kingdom, is terrified of spiders while another is unaffected by them. Spiders are harmless in the UK and the terror serves no useful purpose. If the terrified person can learn to think about spiders like the unaffected person then the terrified person won't be terrified any more and the problem is solved.
NLP allows us to explore a person's thinking process in a precise way that actually allows us to take on that person's skills and abilities. When we really learn to think about things the way someone else does, we automatically have similar feelings and responses. In problem areas of our lives, this ability to explore our thinking and feelings offers the key to finding solutions.
So how do we learn to change the way in which we think about some things. This is where the 'Programming' element of NLP comes in. We tend to think that the way we are, the way we think, the way we act is some sort of fixed or built-in set of actions or responses that cannot be changed. In this sense our ways of thinking and acting are fixed programs in our brains. These programs may work usefully for us or not. In computing a program is a fixed sequence of instructions that the computer follows. Although the human brain is much more complex than a computer there is something in the idea of a program working in the human brain in a similar way to how it does in a computer - the brain, at an unconscious level, just carries out the instructions in the program whether these are appropriate or not.
Our initial programming started from birth onwards or possibly even in mother's womb. A lot of our thinking and behaviour follows fixed patterns that we have unconsciously picked up along the way. There is the influence of our family, education system and culture. Then there are those individual experiences, or sets of experiences, good or bad, that make each of us different from each other. This initial programming might or might not turn out to be useful in later life.
Re-programming is altering a set of instructions or patterns installed in a computer. Neuro-Linguistic Programming is altering a set of instructions or patterns installed in a person. NLP offers the choice to switch to a more useful set of programming that enhances an individual's life.
In this sense NLP is the opposite of brainwashing or cultism. Brainwashing or involvement in a cult reduces individual choice to a single-track outlook. NLP works to increase choice and offer alternative tracks and outlooks.
The ethics of NLP are to always work in the best interests of the individual. NLP processes build in more choice for the person and are very concerned with the 'ecology' of the whole system that is a person. NLP is about respectfully and ecologically enhancing human development and performance.