NLP

What is NLP?

Understanding The Basics of Neuro Linguistic Programing

The term NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming and was coined in the early seventies by John Grinder, and assistant professor of linguistics at the university of California, Santa Cruz, and Richard Bandler, a student of psychology at the university. They began their work by studying Fritz Perls, a psychotherapist and originator of the Gestalt school of therapy, Virginia Satir, a well-known family therapist and Milton Erickson, a world-famous hypnotherapist. Their intention was to model outstanding therapist and identify patterns in order that other practitioners could use these patterns to generate similar results. One aspect of NLP is to identify excellence by observing experts, and then devise means for others to use these discoveries to achieve similar results for themselves or with their clients.

NLP also draws on early science discoveries from as early as the 1900 and much earlier. One of the best known parts of behavioral learning theory is classical conditioning (stimulus response), which was discovered by a Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1904).

Classical conditioning is a learning process that occurs through associations between an environmental stimulus and a naturally occurring response. NLP takes theoretical results such as these, notices the practical application and makes them available to you and me to help us improve our lives and well-being. In NLP, we refer to classical conditioning as anchoring.

NLP is more than just techniques. It is the art and science of creating positive change. It’s a curiosity and methodology of how people who are high achievers accomplish what they actually set out to do. It’s also about methodology that assists you in discovering the thinking and communication patterns. These patterns are the catalysts that prevent you from being successful. They also show you how to achieve the results that successful people reach.

This means that NLP is a process for discovering expert’s patterns of excellence, creating effective ways of thinking and communicating for the benefit of assisting others to do the same.

NLP is the art and science of positive change in the mind body.

Millions of people have benefited from the power of NLP and incorporated the tools of NLP into their everyday lives.

Neuro Linguistic Programing

Neuro refers to neurology – This being your sense and how you utilise them – your sense organs are your visual, (what you see), auditory (what you hear) kinaesthetic (tactile touch), gustatory (taste) and olfactory (smell). Every day you will experience or perceive events/information via these means.

Linguistic refers to how you use the language of the mind – pictures, sounds feelings tastes and smells and words even the self-talk this is referred to as internal representations – to make sense, remember or represent a particular experience or the forecast a future experience. For example, can you recall the last time you had an adventure and you achieved something great? When you remember that time a specific time when you had that adventure and did something great. When you recall that time can you see a picture? what are the sounds? And how were you feeling – happy, exhaustaed, ecstatic, powerful, excited, motivated, at peace? Add any specific words that represent some form of positive code word (that you felt), and this is how you remember or put language to an event or experience, that you can tap into as a resource at any time.

Infact we do it often to create a state in families and we say “do you remember when we did…..and everyone laughs” we use it naturally to create a state which is fun and uplifting as you all recall different versions of what happened and how it happened. This is totally natural because we all delete distort and generalise information individually, however we go deeper into this behaviour as we go into the coaching process.

Now lets go back and think about a major event in the future, what kinds of pictures sounds, feelings tastes and smells come to mind relevant to that particular event. Can you envision yourself being successful? or failing? Or is the image nondescript? The pictures, sounds, feelings, tastes, smells and words that you use to describe your future experiences have a bearing on what actually happens.

Yes, that’s right… you do create your own reality!

Programming refers to your habits, patterns, programs and strategies -those things you do without really thinking about them. If it’s a work day, do you follow a particular routine as you help get your children ready for school? Perhaps you like to lie in for an extra 5 minutes after which the alarm goes off and makes your heart pump and you slap the snooze button for the 2 or 3^rd time. If you take the time to look at what you do, you’ll see a pattern that you follow in getting your self and your family to greet the day ahead. If for some reason you don’t follow that pattern, do you find yourself feeling that something is missing or you forgot something?

Having a ritual for getting up in the morning or any other regularly performed activity is useful we even unconsciously use it in relationships to gather information of how they might respond to sex or doing something in the evening and so on. Right? So you do have to take the time each day to rediscover the rituals to see if they have a positive or negative influence on your life. And as I mentioned earlier, for the most part it is all performed on an unconscious level. Giving you conscious mind time and the resources to handle other things, so we are constantly drawing from our past experiences to make things easier.

Unconsciously, following a habit or program can have unwanted consequences as well. Mindlessly going through the same old habits and get the same results. So if nothing changes nothing changes right? So if you want different results you have to change the dance, the ritual or the habit that you created.

We are all creatures of habit, patterns, great strategists and we create programs for everything we do. Some of these patterns serve you and some do not, that may result in unwanted behavior and outcomes. You may or may not be fully aware of your patterns or someone may bring them to your awareness or attention. You may choose to ignore or avoid addressing that side of your life, however, the people around you will always bring it to your attention.

To further illustrate these unconscious programs many of us are capable, fully functioning, responsible adults until we cross the threshold of our parent’s home. Then we revert to those old patterns or habits that we exhibit as a child. And all the old triggers return, these are the linguistics of our past flood our body’s the smells the tastes.  They bring old behaviors the memories to the front of the mind and even, touch will trigger old behaviors.

Ultimately you are the one who chooses the programs that run at a conscious or unconscious level.  You are the only one who can change your mind about how you experience your world. The first step is to become aware of these programs and the second step is to replace them with those habits that enhance your life and how you experience it. To gather the self-awareness and skills you require achieve and live what you desire. For

The first step is to become aware of these programs and the second step is to replace them with those habits that enhance your life and how you experience it. To gather the self-awareness and skills you require achieve and live what you desire. For me, this is one of the biggest benefits of the tools we teach with NLP.

This is not somewhere you come to get better this is what you do to partake in learning new skills that you can take away with you, because firstly you need to be responsible for the way your life is today and then take the responsibility to change it the way you want to experience it, that is where the magic is in NLP. Remember you are the magic trick; it just depends on how much you practice the skills as to how effective you are at using it in your everyday life.

The new code

Originally, NLP Neuro Linguistic Programing was focused mainly on continuously manipulating internal representations – adjusting in your mind the pictures ( e.g like a TV or light “brighter or dimmer”) sounds, feelings tastes and smells to change your perceptions and hence your behavior. The results obtained through these methods were great and often the unconscious mind was not directly engaged. The reason for this is that the

The reason for this is that the unconscious mind runs your whole body (digesting food, growing hair, healing wounds). It is continuously scanning the environment for danger or rewards, maintains all of your memories, strategies, beliefs and so on.  And the conscious mind; given that it processes seven plus or minus two bits of information at a time as we delete distort and generalise all the information that is bombarding the body at 2millian bits per second, crunching it down to eventually processing only the seven plus or minus bits of information mentioned earlier.  Which means that most people can only remember seven plus or minus 2 bits of information of that information that is coming to you at any time.

A number other the scientists and professors who discovered the NLP processes discovered that a major part of the change process was missing and that is where the new code was discovered (Turtles All the Way Down. (Grinder and Associates, 1987) which also takes the systematic approach, emphasizing relationships between and within systems. So in this NLP moved from a collection of techniques that can simply be applied like a recipe to involving the unconscious mind and often your body’s responses in effecting long-lasting change.

I have integrated discoveries from both of the NLP models, and if you think about it, as each has their advantages and uses.

Conscious awareness

At any given moment, we are bombarded with exposure information from all of your senses, consciously and unconsciously. For example, at the moment are you aware of how your small finger on your left hand feels? Which means that you are not aware consciously of all of the information that your body takes in every second unless of course you have and injury or a problem with your left little finger then it will be at the forefront of your conscious mind so that you are aware of not using it or bumping it to avoid any pain.

Only now that I have brought the left little finger to your attention is was not the information was not of awareness was available to you. So most of your information is being processed unconsciously through all of your sensory acuity’s is our innate way of deleting distorting and generalising information.

The Three minds

You will learn more about how to communicate with your conscious, unconscious and higher self and how to use it to your advantage in your everyday life. How to recognise how certain behavior is created ad programmed and how you can have more control of your minds to help you heal yourself.

How our Filters help us by deleting, distorting and generalizing information

What happens to all this other information that we receive with the 2 million bits of information per second? You brain filters it from your conscious awareness through:

Deleting – The process of paying attention to the information you perceive to be important however we will delete information that is not important that we don’t want to know or that we cannot conceive since we don’t have anything to compare it to. By eliminating extraneous information, you can attend to what you perceive to be important. You may overly focus on one thing and not pay sufficient attention to others.

 Distorting – We will distort information that to filter to what we can compare it to from our past experience otherwise known as an assumption. It is the process of changing the relationship between experiences. Distorting can provide you with a different view on reality, which can lead you to see and experiencing the world differently from others. This may open up different possibilities for you, and it may lead to disagreements when your interpretation of reality conflicts with that of others. Simplifying, exaggerating and daydreaming are examples of distorting.

Generalising– we will generalise information we receive to break it down even further so that we can put it into the familiar box that we can relate to. It is the process of taking one or a limited number of experiences and projecting it to other similar experiences. As a child, if you burned yourself when you touched the coals of a cooling fire, you generalize or formed a rule not to touch the coals even if they look like they are cool.

These are the filters we use to break down all the millions of bits of information per second that we receive into chunks of about 143 bits of information then we chunk it down to seven plus or minus two bits of information. This assists us with overload and is down all unconsciously.

My mission….

Is to create a space for your to heal yourself and give you back the power you have inside of you to create your future the way you truly want it. To feel happy healthier and more connected to this life you have, and build on your soul deep adventure driven dreams into reality.

To find out more about the programs are available and which one will suit you the best, take advantage of having a FREE 20min chat with Linda (link to signup page) and free info sheet.