What actually is NLP?
You may have heard the acronym NLP being bandied around, but what does it actually mean?
NLP stands for Neuro Linguistic Programming.
Neuro refers to the neurological processes of our brains that occur through the use of our sensory systems, such as sight, hearing, touch, feeling (emotions), taste and smell. Our senses capture information from our external environments.
Linguistic refers to the language we give the sensory information that we’ve captured. Language organises our thoughts and then allows us to voice them.
Programming (or internal mapping) refers to the mental and emotional patterns and sequences of those patterns that form the ways we behave. Our behaviours become an automatic program run from our unconscious mind through our nervous system, by combining all our stored sensory memories together with our language skills.
Much of this mapping or programming of beliefs and behaviours is embedded into our unconscious minds in our earliest years, particularly up until the age of seven, when our brains are in Theta brainwave state, that is a programmable or hypnosis state.
The Life Coach uses a process known as Modelling to identify the lens in which their client sees and acts in the world by studying the way they behave, the way they think and why they do what they do (their beliefs and values). Once the Life Coach can better understand the internal programming of the client, they are then able to support the client to create an alternative program that will be more likely to achieve the goals the client wants to achieve. Life coaches encourage the helpful programming their modelled by their clients, whilst identifying the unhelpful patterns of behaviour keeping them from their goals with the aim of minimising or completely eliminating them.
The Four Central Pillars of NLP that practitioners use to get the best results with their clients are:
Outcomes: clearly understanding what the client wants to achieve/goals.
Self-Awareness/Acuity: supporting the client to become more aware of their external environments and perspectives. Our sensory systems tell us what is in alignment with what we truly want and what isn’t. Helping a client become more mindful of their body and its perceptions is key to the person beginning to understand themselves well. This understanding then helps them to clarify meaningful and obtainable goals.
Behavioural Flexibility: supporting clients to make behavioural adjustments using their newly attuned self-awareness skills to reach their desired goals.
Rapport: NLP Life Coaches understand how important it is to build relationships with their clients built on trust and understanding of their mapping systems.
NLP Life Coaches work on the assumption that any person has the capacity to learn, change and grow, particularly when they are given the gift of more deeply understanding their emotional and behavioural patterns that may have been keeping them stuck in a place they no longer wish to be.
I hope this blog helps you to understand that NLP aims to empower the client by helping them to increase their knowledge in the area of the mind/body connection, and how this new found knowledge can be used to reprogram and reexperience their world in new and exciting ways.
There are many simple but powerful NLP techniques we can use together to help you to understand your internal programming and how it can be altered to help you to achieve the goals you’ve always dreamed of achieving.
