Neuro Linguistic Programming

Context: Created from Slides of a NLP course.

Disclaimer: NLP has been described as Pseudoscience by many reports.

The study of the structure of subjective experience...

• Neuro: Nervous system through which experience is received and processed through the five senses
• Linguistic: Language and non-verbal communication systems through which neural representations are coded, ordered and given meaning.
• Programming: The ability to organize our communication and neurological systems to achieve specific desired goals and results.

NLP is ...

• Attitude: A sense of curiosity and adventure - desire to learn the skills to be able to find out what kinds of communication influences somebody and the kind of things worth knowing. To look at life as a rare and unprecedented opportunity to learn.
• Technology: Enabling the practitioner to organize information and perceptions in ways that allow them to achieve results that were one inconceivable.
• Methodology: All behavior has a structure - and that structure can be modeled, learned taught and changed(re-programmed). The way to know what will be useful and effective are the perceptual skills.

Human Communication Model

Each event goes thru a filter of...

• Distort
• Delete
• Generalize Before it reaches our memory storage.

Then it is further affected by

• Language
• Memories
• Decisions
• Personality traits
• Values and Beliefs
• Attitudes

These can dive change in any direction - forward or backward...

Logical Levels of NLP

1. Environment: Where? When? With Whom?
2. Behavior: What you say and do
3. Capabilities: How?
4. Beliefs and values: Why?
5. Identity: Who am I?
6. Purpose: What for?

Four Pillars of NLP

• Outcome
• Sensory Acuity(Skin color, breathing, eyes, etc.)
• Rapport
• Flexibility

Rapport

• The process that allows you to communicate with a client's unconscious mind
• When people are like each other, they like each other.
• The state whereby a client(or anyone) will uncritically accept suggestions or advice that you give them.
• A naturally occurring state

Some methods to build rapport

• Ask and use their name
• Actively listen
• Ask questions
• Show empathy
• Find common ground
• Follow the lead
• Be genuine

3 Components of Rapport...

1. Mirror and Matching

• Position gestures
• Facial Expressions
• Breathing
• Voice : Tone, tempo, volume, Timbre
• Internal thought words
• Key words

But when doing this, be subtle - avoid mimicry.

2. Pacing

3. Leading

NLP Presuppositions

• Everyone has a unique model of the world
• Behind every behavior is a positive intention
• People always make the best choices available to them
• All behavior has positive intention
• Respect your client's model of the world
• People are not their behaviors
• The meaning of the behavior is dependent on the context it is exhibited in
• The most important thing about a person is that person's behavior.
• Everyone is doing the best they can with the resources they have available.
• The person with the most Flexibility in their behavior will have greater influence over others
• Resistance in a client is a lack or rapport
• There are no un-resourceful people - only un-resourceful states.
• Everyone is in change of their mind and therefore their results.
• The meaning of the communication is the response you get.
• Every behavior is useful in some context
• People work perfectly to produce the results they are getting.
• Positive changes always comes from adding resources
• There is no substitute for clean open sensory channels
• The positive worth of an individual is held constant, while the value and appropriateness of internal and/or external behavior is questioned.
• The quality of our lives is determined by the quality of our communications.
• If one person can do something, anyone can learn to do it.
• Map is not the territory
• If you change your map you'll change your emotional state
• People maps are made of pictures, sounds,feelings, smells and tastes.
• People respond to their maps of reality, not to reality
• Choice is better than no choice.
• Experience has a structure

Vakog

• Visual
• Auditory
• Kinaesthetic
• Olfactory(Smell)
• Gustator(Taste)

Cycle of Success or failure

1 Belief > 2 Potential > 3 Actions > 4 Results > 1 Belief...

Hierarchy of Ideas

Chucking Up/Zoom Out

• What is this an example of?
• For what purpose?
• What is your higher intention?
• What will having that give you?

Chucking Down/Zoom in

• What are examples of this?
• What specifically?
• What are the steps or details?
• What are the pieces that make up this thing?

Meta Model

Think of an Iceberg...

Surface Structure

• Behaviors we exhibit
• Words we use
• Facial expressions
• Things that can be seen by a camera

Deep Structure

• Beliefs
• Attitude
• Values
• Feelings
• Deep meaning of what we say - contains information that is unexpressed or not consciously known

Meta Modal Distortion

1. Mind Read(Claiming to know someone's internal state) - "I know you don't like me"
2. Lost Performative(Person/source doing the judgment is left out) - "Its good to study in the morning"
3. Cause and Effect(where the cause is WRONGLY put outside the self) - "You make me mad"
4. Complex Equivalence(Where two experiences are interpreted as being synonymous) - "She is always yelling at me - so she doesn't like me."
5. Presuppositions(The speaker has assumed that something is true) - "Had he known this, he wouldn't have done that."
6. Universal Quantifiers(Universal generalizations - all, every, everyone etc.) - "She never listens to me"
7. Modal Operators
   1. Modal Operator of Necessity(have to, must, should, should not, etc.) "I must earn a lot of money"
   2. Modal Operator of Possibility(can/can't, will/wont, possible/impossible, etc.) "I can't earn a lot of money"
8. Unspecified verbs - "He rejected me"
9. Simple Deletions...
   1. Lack of referential index(fails to specify a person or a thing). "They don't listen to me"
   2. Comparative Deletions(better, worse, most, etc) "She is a much better person"

Power of Metaphors

Purpose of a metaphor is to pace and lead a client's behavior through a story. Major points...

1. Displacing the referential index from the client to a character in a story.
2. Pacing the client's problems by establishing behaviors and events between the characters in the story that are similar to those in the client's situation
3. Accessing resources for the client with the context of the story
4. Finishing the story such that a sequence of events occurs in which the characters in the story resolve the conflict and achieve the desired outcome.

Anchoring

It refers to a natural process by which any element of an experience(sensory and modality component) can recreate(re-evoke) the entire experience.

Re-framing

Considering an negative issue from many different aspects to find a positive

• Context Re-framing: Take the undesired attribute and find a different situation where it would be valuable
• Content Re-framing: Take the undesired attribute and find a description where the attribute takes on a positive value.