NLP – the new art and science of getting what you want

History of Neuro-linguistic Programming

Neuro-linguistic programming was developed in the 1970s at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Its primary founders are John Grinder, a linguist, and Richard Bandler, an information scientist and mathematician. Judith DeLozier and Leslie Cameron-Bandler also contributed significantly to the field, as did David Gordon and Robert Dilts.

Grinder and Bandler’s first book on NLP, Structure of Magic: A Book about Language of Therapy, was released in 1975. In this publication, they attempted to highlight certain patterns of communication that set communicators considered to be excellent apart from others. Much of the book was based on the work of Virginia Satir, Fritz Perls, and Milton Erickson.

What is NLP useful for?

• Re-framing negative emotions and limiting beliefs
• Stress and anxiety
• Phobia’s and sleep issues
• Anger, fear, sadness, guilt
• Personal or work-related goals, procrastination, focus, organisation and balance
• And so much more

NLP includes the use of many techniques such as Anchoring, Belief change, Reframing thoughts, Rewind and Swish techniques aimed to change the communication with the mind. When a client learns the methods of creating a thought process for the benefit of self, there is faster and visible progress in the coaching sessions.

What is an NLP Coach?

NLP coach replaces your limiting beliefs with new ways of thinking about yourself. An NLP coach uses a range of techniques to help you build new and beneficial patterns in your brain. Your coach then shifts your behaviour toward your desired goals. The method takes away old habits so you can create a better version of yourself and reach your desired success.

Neuro-linguistic programming gives coaches the opportunity to bring effective change and create results in their coaching practice. This also establishes rapport and trust in the client-coach relationship leading to greater success and outcome.

NLP is intended to help clients understand their own minds, how they came to think and behave the way they do, and to learn to manage their moods and emotions and reprogram the way they process information so that it leads to more acceptable and successful behaviour. At the same time, NLP is designed to help clients see ways they have been successful in the past and determine how they can most easily and efficiently repeat that success in other areas of their lives. NLP therapists believe that their clients have the answers to their problems within themselves; it is simply a matter of helping them draw out those answers.

What does an NLP Coach Do?

NLP techniques include the study of the art of persuasion. A coach learns to work with clients and remove their limiting beliefs along with conflicts within the self, and habits that do not serve them well. A coach may use the techniques of mindfulness to work with clients around self-acceptance. He may also make a client explore quick visualization techniques towards successful outcomes. With NLP techniques, coaches empower clients to find their way towards actions.

The NLP Coach focuses on the future you want to make. Negative emotions and thoughts that undermine you are taken away. Emotional baggage is unpacked and put away because you don’t need it or want it weighing you down. To make all this happen, the NLP coach teaches you new thought patterns. You will support the growth of a new mindset with specific communication and actions. This coaching process makes you very mindful of yourself so you can make better choices.

An NLP coach or therapist may use a variety of techniques such as visualisation, or forming a mental image of something the client wants, as well as visual-kinaesthetic dissociation, a process by which the therapist guides the client in reliving trauma from the distance of an imaginative, out-of-body experience (Rewind technique). The therapist may seek to help correct language that leads to negative thinking and faulty communication. NLP therapy can be short or long-term, depending on the individual and the extent of the problem.

I use hypnosis and NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) techniques that means I am able to help people with a variety of emotional and behavioural problems; reducing anxiety, increasing self-confidence and self-esteem as well as changing any unwanted habits. Hypnotherapy can be used to help all sorts of issues and so if you want to learn more or have a conversation about how I can help you, please get in touch.

Principles of NLP

1. The map is not the territory.
Our mental maps of the world are not the world. We respond to our maps, rather than directly to the world.

2. Experience has a structure.
Our thoughts and memories have patterns to them. When we change the pattern or structure, our experience will automatically change. We can neutralize unpleasant memories and enrich memories in ways that will serve us.

3. The mind and body are parts of the same system.
Our thoughts instantly affect our body, feelings, and more, and these in turn affect our thoughts.

4. People already have all the resources they need – or they can create them.
Mental images, inner voices, sensations, and feelings are the basic building blocks of all our mental and physical resources. We can use them to build up any thought, feeling, or skill that we want.

5. Having a choice is better than not having a choice
Choice empowers, always aim to increase choices (for some too much choice overwhelms!) This is not true in the case of a mother offering a child a choice of things for dinner, although I am sure that the child would think so!

6. People work perfectly
No one is wrong – we all have different strengths and abilities and can sometimes benefit from better designed strategies.

7. All action has a purpose
Our actions are not random: they are executed in order to achieve something – even if we are not always aware of it.

8. Every behaviour has a positive intention
All our actions have the purpose of achieving something that is of value to us. A person is not their behaviour: with better choices, we will make better choices.

9. If what you are doing isn’t working, do something else.
Do anything else. If you always do what you have done, you will always get what you have always gotten. If you want something new, do something new.

10. The meaning of your communication is the response you get
Communication is conscious and unconscious, verbal and non-verbal. The response may be different from the one you want, but if you are not getting what you want, you have to change what you are doing.

11. The unconscious mind balances the conscious – it is not malicious.

12. We process all information through our senses
If we develop our senses and take notice of them, we will improve our ability to
think and act more clearly.

13. Modelling successful performance leads to excellence
If one person can do something well, it can be modelled and taught to others.

14. If you want to understand, act.
We learn through experience. Know your outcomes. Know why it is a must. Take massive action.

Your brain is always asking three questions based on your model of the world:

1. What does this mean?
2. How do I feel?
3. What should I do?

The three key beliefs to lasting change:

1. It must change now.
2. I must change it now.
3. I can change it now.

It is worth noting that hypnotherapy and NLP are two separate distinct disciplines. NLP techniques can be useful in hypnotherapy and consequently, many therapists make use of them in their work with clients.

NLP is extremely well known as a powerful tool for personal change, therapeutic work, and is even used by corporations worldwide to build success. How do we think and learn? What negative patterns hold us back? How do outstanding people in any field achieve results? NLP helps us to transform our negative beliefs in all aspects of our life.