by Gemma Bailey
NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) was developed in the early 1970’s by Richard Bandler and John Grinder who studied excellence within the field of therapy. Their main studies were of Milton Erickson (responsible for bringing hypnosis to the clinical world) Virginia Satir (a family therapist) and Fritz Perls (founder of Gestalt therapy). Bandler and Grinder also drew upon the work of linguistics, anthropologists and psychoanalysts
NLP is an art and a science. It is largely based on the idea that the sensory information around us is translated into thoughts and ideas which affect our state, physiology and behaviour and therefore our results. The language we use also affects our experience and the experience of others.
NLP tells us that we code or represent information to ourselves in certain ways and that we can represent this information differently to produce better results. NLP empowers and help us to understand how others might be experiencing their world. In short, it is an attitude of wanton curiosity, that uses strategies and techniques to consistently produce a specific and desired outcome.
NLP teaches us….
* how to use communication more effectively
* strategies for staying in a confident and motivated state
* the art of body language and maintaining rapport
* conflict resolution and negotiation
* methods for setting outcomes so that they can be easily achieved
* ways to create positive emotional states in others
* techniques for modelling excellence
* the best approach to managing teams
* guiding principles when choosing personalities to work together within a team
* hypnotic language patterns and how to fire off a person’s “buying strategy”
* tactics to dissolve fears and phobias
* personal empowerment and resolution of emotional problems
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10 steps to understanding yourself
1. Every second, it is estimated that your nervous system receives around 2 million bits of important sensory data about the events that are happening around you. You interpret this information via your 5 senses, Visually (sight), Auditory (hearing), Kinaesthetic (feeling & touch), Olfactory (smelling) and Gustatory (tasting).
2. Of course, we are not aware of 2 million things happening every second (because we’d go crazy!) so our mind filters the information into about 7 bits. In order to filter 2 million bits into 7 bits it deletes some things, distorts and generalises.
3. Deletions are important because they stop us from being bombarded by information that isn’t relevant in the moment. For example as you read this, you were probably not aware of your breathing until it was brought into your awareness. If a person is depressed, they may be deleting happiness from their awareness, NLP uses a linguistic tool called the meta model which can highlight the deletions a person is making.
4. Distortions, this is when we make things better or worse than they really are! People do not do this because they are deluded, but because distortions allow us to create or transform information so it is compatible with our perceptions. This is the filter that a fisherman uses when he claims that the 2½ ft fish he caught was about 4 ft long. When a person has a phobia they distort the pictures they make in their mind, so that a spider becomes a man eating spider sitting on your face! The NLP Fast Phobia cure can rapidly remove lifetime phobias.
5. Generalisations help us to relate things we are learning to what we already know. It also prevents us from having to relearn something every time we do it, such as riding a bike. Generalisations can be limiting. If a bad experience leaves us with negative beliefs, it limits our world. For example, if someone had a bad experience at the dentist, they may have the belief that all dentists are terrifying. The NLP belief change intervention will replace the disempowering belief with a more positive one.
6. Using the 7 bits of information that have filtered we recreate the outside event inside our mind. This is called an internal representation. This mean that what we represent to ourselves inside our minds is never true to what is actually happening in the event (because we have deleted bits, distorted bits and generalised bits). We all Delete, Distort and Generalise differently, so we all have different experiences of life.
7. The things we create in our Internal Representation affect the way we feel. In NLP, we call this State.
8. Our State affects our Physiology (what we do with our bodies), this is why happy people have a much more upright posture, and depressed people slouch downwards.
9. State, Physiology and Internal Representations are interlinked and affect each other. This is why lucky people seem to attract more luck and unhappy people seem to attract more problems. We are designed to attract more of what we focus on.
10. Our State, Physiology and Internal Representations account for the behaviour we then exhibit which affects the results we get. Good results or bad results, either way we get results, NLP just ensures you are getting excellent ones!
Now that you know a lot more about NLP, tomorrow I will talk about how it can be used specifically to reduce stress and, if vitiligo is brought on by stressors, perhaps repigmentation can be achieved through practicing it.
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