What Is Neuro Linguistic Programming?
NLP is a very vast field and hence the use of a metaphorical analogy helps in explaining this field in simple terms.
Electronic gadgets come with User Manuals so that you can learn how to operate the gadget and extract the maximum benefit from it. The manual provides “How To”’s so that you know how to get a certain result with the help of the gadget.
Simply put, NLP is the user manual for our mind.
NLP is the practice of understanding how people organize their thinking, feeling, language and behavior to produce the results they do. NLP provides people with a methodology to model outstanding performances achieved by geniuses and leaders in their field.
Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a technology of human behavioral science. NLP as a term refers to a very wide array of tools, techniques and patterns that are used to identify and govern how humans organize and manage experiences.
NLP evolved in the 1970’s when Dr Richard Bandler along with John Grinder embarked on a journey to search for and model human excellence.
NLP focuses on what actually works in human behaviors irrespective of any theories or guesses as to why things work or don’t work.
The roots of NLP are founded from the field of traditional psychology based on the works of Pavlov, Alfred Korzybski, Dr Milton Erickson, Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir etc., As NLP evolved, it branched off from traditional psychology models and evolved into a technology which can be described as the “Users Manual” for the brain.
While much of human behavior is comprised of conscious activities, an even larger amount of behaviors are automatic – i.e., not in conscious awareness. For example – we are never consciously aware of how we understand a language that we know. We JUST know. Needless to say, most of peoples’ lives are in the influence of own and others’ automatic behaviors, usually without conscious awareness of the same.
Few people have the understanding of how these automatic behaviors are formed. Even fewer know how to make the most of the existing useful automatic behaviors and even fewer know how to consciously construct more useful automatic behaviors so that their lives and of those around them become that much more fruitful and more enriching.
NLP is a technology that allows you to determine how the human thought processes are organized, experienced and manifested into automatic behaviors and thereby leading to mechanisms which allow the thought processes, experience and behaviors to be consciously designed and changed.
Over the course of history, NLP has found applications not only in psychotherapy & counseling, but also includes (to name a few) Sales, Business, Inter-personal relations, Parenting, Performance Coaching for Sportsmen, Corporate Executives as well as Military personnel.
Click here to read an article on What NLP Is Not.