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About NLP
NLP is a set of psychological tools for more effective communication and personal development. It is a way of thinking about ideas and people.
NLP is the art and science of personal excellence. It studies the differences between the average and the excellent. It is a way of studying how people excel in any field and teaching those patterns of excellence to others. The process of discovering these patterns is called modelling. The patterns, skills and techniques discovered through modelling are being used increasingly in counselling, education and business for better communication, personal development and accelerated learning.
NLP started in the early seventies and was founded by John Grinder (then assistant professor of Linguistics at the University of California in Santa Cruz) and Richard Bandler (a student of psychology at the university with a background in mathematics and computers). This begins to explain where the phrase Neuro-Linguistic Programming comes from.
Bandler and Grinder studied the work of three top therapists: Fritz Perls (Gestalt), Virginia Satir (family therapy) and Milton Erickson (Hypnotherapy). Initially they studied the techniques and patterns of therapy used by these outstanding people only with a view to teaching them to others.
During their researches they realised that there were some similarities in the underlying patterns used by these three different personalities. With the influence of Gregory Bateson (a British writer on communication and systems theory) they realised that what they were learning could be refined into an elegant psychological model for personal change. What actually then happened was that they founded a new school of therapy and called it NLP. By 1977 they were giving successful workshops and seminars all over America.
Other significant figures in the early, and present, days of NLP include Wyatt Woodsmall, Leslie Cameron Bandler, Judith DeLozier, Robert Dilts, David Gordon, Tad James and many more