NLP - Understanding the Basics
What NLP can do for you:
What NLP can do for you:
- NLP helps you identify self-defeating thought patterns and beliefs that obstruct personal progress.
- It helps you examine your words and actions and what these reveal about your perceptions.
- You'll learn how to let go of faulty perceptions and how to make your words and actions work for you instead of against you.
Let's say you have a goal. You want to finish your project at least a week before the deadline; in order to avoid last minute stress.
To achieve this goal, you, your conscious mind and your unconscious mind have to work as a team. Here, you are the project leader and your conscious and unconscious minds are your team members.
Your conscious mind is your shadow and usually follows your lead but it also succumbs to the whims of your unconscious mind. The unconscious mind for its part, has its own agenda that often works against your goals.
Now, imagine a carriage drawn by two horses. What happens when one of the horses pulls the carriage in one direction and the other horse in another direction? Chaos reigns.
The same thing happens when the conscious mind and the unconscious mind that are supposed to work together, have different goals. They end up pulling you in different directions.
Therefore, in order to achieve the goal you've set for yourself, you need to convince these two team members to align the way they think and to work harmoniously with each other. But, how do you go about it?
That's where NLP comes in. This has three aspects: Neuro, linguistics and programming.
Neuro - is the neurological aspect of sensory inputs, thoughts, reactions, and responses.
Linguistics - is all about the way you use language - both verbal and non-verbal to conceptualize your experiences and to relate it to others.
Programming - is about how you encode your experiences. What is your thinking pattern? What are the filters (beliefs, past experiences, etc.) you use with the internal processing of your experiences?
NLP is a strategy that uses the combination of these three aspects, to help you recognize self defeating thought patterns, beliefs, and behaviours, debug maladaptive encoding of experiences, re-examine, and consciously rearrange unproductive thought processes with the objective of achieving your goal.
What do you do when you are a part of a team?
You analyse the strengths and weaknesses of each team member. You exploit the strengths; and if your team members are also close friends, you try to help each other overcome or deal with weaknesses. You, your conscious mind and your unconscious mind are without a doubt intimate friends. NLP trains you to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of each part and help each of them to communicate better with the other.
In other words, NLP helps you align your unconscious mind with the conscious mind so that they work in unison to support each other and you in the journey towards your goal.
Resources: NLP for Dummies
