Why NLP?
Everyone of us wants something different for ourselves. We have some goals to achieve or dreams to pursue. Yet, often in the pursuit of our goals and dreams, we find ourselves stuck. Right before we are about to make the biggest breakthrough, we get into endless cycles of procrastination. We end up with behaviors of self-doubt, complacence or in-difference.
In such situations, we need to change our behaviors; break our old habits; create new beliefs for ourselves so that we can keep moving forward. NLP or Neuro Linguistic Programming is a highly effective way of personal development or personal change work that helps us to keep moving ahead.
What is NLP?
As explained by Kate Burton in his book “Coaching with NLP for Dummies”, Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is the study of the structure of subjective experience.
- Neuro is related to thoughts
- Linguistic is the structure of language
- Programming is about the actions
NLP is an approach for personal change work created by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in early 1970s, that involves the study of thoughts, words and actions. There are three key components to NLP:
- Subjectivity: everything around us is experienced by us subjectively through the various senses. This subjective representation of our experiences have a specific pattern. By understanding these subjective representations one can modify the behaviors in self and others.
- Consciousness: We tend to receive and process information around us with and without our awareness. The subjective representations that we take in with awareness become part of the conscious mind while the representations that occur outside of our awareness are referred to as “unconscious mind”.
- Learning: NLP utilizes learning through practice. For us to remember any concept, the more subjective experience of it we would have, the better we would remember it. A simple example of this is, we remember more from a movie than from a college lecture. A movie engages and caters more to our multiple senses to create a great subjective experience while the lecture remains dull and boring.
Conclusion:
Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a great approach to communication where the thoughts, words and actions are put together to understand the subjective experience and work towards personal development as well as personal change.