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.