FAQ About
Neuro-Linguistic Programming
What is NLP?
NLP is a structured method for helping
people change their thinking and emotional patterns
for self-improvement. It combines specific communication
patterns, visualization, imagination, memory, and movement,
to help people overcome self-imposed limitations and
achieve solutions to personal problems.
Neuro refers to the neurology (thinking
and feeling processes)
Linguistic refers to communication
Programming refers to learning and behavioral change
NLP uses communication to help you
alter your neurology for learning and behavioral change.
NLP actually helps you understand the underlying structures
of learning and change in ways you can use again and
again.
How did NLP come about?
In the early 1970's, two researchers
at the University of Santa Cruz studied the linguistic
methods of hypnosis and other popular therapeutic methods.
Richard Bandler and Dr. John Grinder distilled a methodology
of how people can effectively organize their thought
patterns to get results. They found that by combining
hypnotic language patterns with specific conversational
methods, visualization, movement, touch, and timing,
they could duplicate the kinds of results obtained by
world-renowned psychotherapists. They called this methodology
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). They held seminars
and certified practitioners across the U.S. and throughout
Europe. Today there are thousands of therapists, teachers,
counselors, medical personnel, and motivational speakers
using and studying NLP. Thousands of NLP books and tapes
have been published. NLP institutes have been established
across the country and NLP conferences and seminars
are taking place all over the world.
What is the main purpose of NLP?
The purpose of NLP is to help you manage
your mind-body STATE, so that you have choices as to
your thoughts, emotions, and actions, and you make those
choices congruently. Your state, at any given moment
in time includes your thoughts, feelings, the things
you say to yourself, the images in your mind, your sensations,
and your actions. NLP helps you understand the “language
of the mind” (hence the word Neuro-Linguistic)
to achieve the state that is most effective for you
in any situation, and especially those situations and
environments that present challenges for you. The criterion
for success in NLP is having CHOICE.
If you behave and think in ways you
do not like and do not want, then you are not accessing
the state that will solve the problem. Sometimes you
may describe this dilemma as “feeling stuck.”
How do you get unstuck? How do you get to the state
that will solve the problem? How to get to the response
you want? When you get the state you want, then you
have a choice has to how you want to respond and how
you apply your personal power.
My Personal Power? What is that?
Your Personal Power consists of two
Private Powers: What you think, and how you feel. Your
Personal Power also consists of two Public Powers: What
you say and how you behave. Together, these four powers
make up your STATE. NLP is designed to help you achieve
your optimum state of personal power, where you want
it and when you want it. To exercise your Personal Power
is to be “at choice” as to how you think
and feel, and in what you say and do.
What does it mean, “NLP helps
you understand the language of the mind”?
Human experience is sensory-based.
In other words, when you experience anything, it is
through your senses of touch, sight, hearing, tasting,
and smell. The mind is also sensory-based. Our minds
form an ongoing, multi-layered “representation”
of the world around us, based in inner “playbacks”
based on the visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory,
and gustatory elements of experience. These playbacks
can be remembered, or imagined. While we are accumulating
these primary representations, we are translating them
into language and meaning. Then we maintain an ongoing
inner narrative about whatever we internally represent
and what it means.
What NLP teaches you is that all your
beliefs, meanings, values, and inner truths are “made
up” in your mind—they are not real, except
as you make them so. If you want to change them, you
can. By altering and modifying your primary mind-body
representations, your inner language, and the meanings
you attach to events and experiences, you can make significant
changes in your life. NLP shows you how!
But, what if I had a traumatic or
difficult past? Can NLP help there?
YES! NLP can help you work with traumatic
memories to erase their negative influence that has
continued to linger on into your present. With NLP,
you can desensitize yourself to toxic events of the
past, so that you are free to get on with living today
with more fulfillment and personal satisfaction.
Is NLP just for therapy and counseling?
NO! NLP has applications for business,
sales, teaching, and coaching. NLP has been called the
Technology of Achievement, because it teaches people
how to communicate and think in purposeful ways to achieve
positive, powerful results for themselves and others.
What are some of the guiding principles
behind NLP?
People have the internal resources
they need to make the changes they desire. When people
learn to access their own resources, they make significant
changes in their lives.
All behaviors are based on thoughts
and feelings---when we change thoughts and feelings,
behavior changes as well
People don't act on objective reality; they act on their
subjective experiences of reality. When people acquire
new perceptions, associations, and ways of thinking,
they grow and learn.
All behaviors are originally acquired
on the basis of positive intentions. We can honor the
intentions, while changing the behavior.
People structure their thoughts on
sensory-based information---visual, auditory, sensation,
taste and smell. When people develop internal strategies
to manage their thought processes, they can achieve
new outcomes.
How Do I know NLP is Right for Me?
NLP is safe and effective and has changed the lives
of thousands of people. NLP works for almost anyone
because:
- The methods are flexible and can be tailored to
each individual.
- It involves both logic and intuition, fact and imagination.
- It engages the individual through the three major
senses: Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic.
- It helps people deal effectively with the past,
present, and future.
- The processes are structured and make sense, because
they are modeled on the basis of what people do successfully
when they solve problems in their lives.
- NLP draws on the “best practices” from
diverse fields of counseling and therapy.
- NLP focuses in your strengths, not your weaknesses.
To increase your changes of success
with NLP, click
here.
How can I contact you for an appointment
or for more information?
My phone number is 703-764-0753, or
email me at judy@engagethepower.com.
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