So what is NLP?

  Written by Alix Martin on May 8, 2009 5:23 pm

Read More: Personal Development

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Well I guess having started this group I had better explain what NLP is.

NLP was started in the late 60's by a couple of guys from Santa Cruiz University - Richard Bandler and John Grinder.

They started it by asking the then revolutionary question: "How do people do things well?" Instead of the usual question: "How can this be fixed?"

In asking this question they opened up a whole new field of human discovery about how we think and how that thinking has an effect on everything we are and do.

So you might ask, "How do people do things well? and how can this be measured?"

What these guys decided to do was "copy" their experts. The NLP term is "model" They copied their experts to an absurd detail. And once they had got the data they then paired the data down to what seemed to be the essential things that would create the same result as the expert.

Can you imagine how they must have felt? No longer was "talent" and expertise in the realms of just the talented few, it was now possible to "model" an expert and create the same result.

(And in a further post I would love to have the conversation with others about modelling Mike Dillard!  Indeed on a system level the whole Magnetic Sponsoring is about copying a system - I could go on.... but another post.....?)

Anyway, these guys had created a model that they themselves could reproduce. So the next question became..... "Ok can we now teach this "expert" to others? The answer was of course yes. And there began the study of NLP.

Ok, I can hear you saying, ok I get it copy expert systems, but what has that got to do with me or my business? Well in the process of modelling experts, NLP Practitioners discovered that we think in particular ways and that there are successful strategies that expert use to "think" in a useful way. For instance: How "close" is your millionaire business? Near or far? Big or small? Now obviously, I don't mean are you in the office and do you have a million dollar bank account (necessarily!!) I mean when you think about your business? How close is it in your mind's eye? How big is it? What would happen if you brought it up closer and made it bigger? How would you feel?

Anyway..... you get the idea....!!

So a huge amount of tools, techniques and strategies came out of all of this. This is NLP. And it's fantastic stuff.

For anyone who wants a more acedemic version of NLP or just for further reading.......

Whoever were the people who compliled Wikipedia did a good job at explaining it. So here is the link en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming

I look forward to your posts and comments!

Much success

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