So What Is NLP? – An Introduction

NLP is a psychological science that has been progressively developing over the past thirty years or so. NLP is the study of human experience and the ways/tools we can use to manipulate our senses and internal states to create any result we desire. NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) is a way of making sense of how we make sense of things. It is a model of how we interpret and relate to the world. It is not, however, an abstract body of theoretical knowledge. It is of value only if the understanding of the model gives us some control over how we make sense of experience, and ways in which we can change that.

So what constitutes NLP, and why, if it is effective as its practitioners claim, does there appear to be a dearth of research based evidence to support it? And just how can this be of benefit to the sports person or athlete? Well imagine being able to take all of your negative thoughts of failure and turn that wasted energy in to positive thoughts of total confidence, belief in yourself, power, concentration, alertness, esteem. All of this is what NLP can do for you – and not only that – it’s unbelievably FAST. With NLP technology you can, quite literally turn a whimpering phobic into a head strong confident self assured go-getter – if that was desired. You may have heard of NLP being used in the work place and business, especially in sales specific developments. Its quite literally a key to creating wealth and has long been recognised in this field for many years. And now it is cottoning on in the athletics world.

The answer to the first part of the question initially, what constitutes NLP, is not straightforward. NLP is a body of understanding that has been developed over many years. It was originally the creation of Richard Bandler and John Grinder (a gestalt therapist and a linguistics professor respectively) back in the 1970's, when they collaborated to study how two internationally renowned therapists (Milton Erikson, a hypnotherapist, and Virginia Satir, a family therapist) did what they did so effectively. Bandler and Grinder wanted a methodology that would allow them to effectively model those behaviours that contributed to the outcome and to ignore those that didn't. This, they believed, would then enable them to quickly teach those behaviours to others. Strangely enough, the methodology that allowed them to do this appears to have evolved from this original modelling process itself.

Models of Communication

From this original modelling came two detailed models of language and communication. The "Meta Model" describes a process of developing and refining precision in language and meaning. The "Milton Model" relies on imprecision and an artful vagueness, with a deliberate lack of supplied meaning (thus allowing the listener to supply their own meaning).

Presuppositions

Also derived from this process were what came to be known as the presuppositions of NLP. These are a set of beliefs modelled on the working belief sets of the therapists referred to earlier. THEY ARE NOT TRUTHS. There are no truths offered in NLP, only models, but they can be seen to be USEFUL in specific contexts. The presuppositions can be summarised as follows;

The ability to change the process by which we experience reality is often more valuable than changing the content of our experience of reality. The meaning of the communication is the response you get. All distinctions human beings are able to make concerning our environment and our behavior can be usefully represented through the visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, and gustatory senses, that’s sight, sound, feeling/touch, taste and smell. The resources an individual needs in order to effect a change are already within them. The map is not the territory. The positive worth of the individual is held constant, while the value and appropriateness of internal and/or external behavior is questioned. There is a positive intention motivating every behavior, and a context in which every behavior has value. Feedback vs. Failure - All results and behaviors are achievements, whether they are desired outcomes for a given task/context, or not. NLP relies heavily on this exquisite precise use of language to trigger responses in people brains and construction of internal and external states in order to assist people to change. What this means is that as an athlete or sports person, you can be guided quickly and effectively into a pattern of mental thought processes, that instead of causing you to doubt or criticise yourself, you praise and believe in yourself –w ell and truly. And that makes so much more possible when we talk about results.

Submodalities

The next part of the jigsaw is a model of how we present and represent our experience to our conscious and unconscious awareness through our senses. We make sense of our world through our senses, but how we make sense is through what Bandler and Grinder identifies as submodalities. Submodalities are the building blocks of sensory experience. Imagine a house. Now, how many ways can you change that mental representation that do not change the content? For example, you can make it lighter or darker. You can make it bigger or smaller. You locate the image somewhere in space. How you do all this alters the meaning that the representation has for you. A house is a fairly neutral subject for most of us, but the clues to attachment of meaning to the sensory submodalities lie in the common use of language and an understanding of metaphor. If we were to think of someone we deeply respect and admire, we might refer to that person as someone we "look up to". A key submodality distinction for a representation of someone we love, trust and respect is often to place the representation of that person above the middle of our visual field. These seemingly simple distortions of representations are what make people like Bandler and Paul McKenna able to cause profound changes in peoples mental perceptions of the world around them. This is expecially evident in the phobic response to something. With NLP it is possible to eliminate a life long phobia in less than three minutes. With the sports person you can equally eradicate those feelings of failure, dissapointment, disinterest, lack of motivation or whatever and transform them into positive aspiring excitement and desire of challenge.

Uniqueness

Everybody's coding system for meaning and submodalities is unique and constantly evolving so one cannot safely generalise, but with careful elicitation (using the Meta Model) we can establish just how someone constructs their model of reality. Imagine just how useful that could be! If you know just how someone makes sense of their world, it becomes so much easier to become part of that world and to communicate on a meaningful level. This is what is taught in the world of sales to really assist people into buying and spending with your company. Some people have seen this as manipulative and underhand. That is when you don’t understand the process or workings of NLP and actually truly helping somebody in their world achieve or acquire something of deep meaning and importance to them in their life. And that is what you are doing with the sports person and NLP. You are helping them achieve and acquire something that holds extreme value and importance to them. You are selling them success and achievement. If you know how someone makes themselves panic when they see a spider, you can show them how to do something more useful instead. If you teach someone how to get excited when they see the stage or a heavy barbell instead of quaking in absolute terror and fear you’re going to be getting a long way toward succeeding where many other fail. Especially when the key number one reason people give up their training or never start in the first place is a simple fear of failure – and so by quiting, you opt out, instead of feeling that fear and feeling failure. This is backwards science we all take part in. NLP can seriously assist you in re-wiring your mental thought processes and hard wiring the mental thought patterns and models of success.

From these basic building blocks, and from repeated and further modelling of excellence in many fields, NLP evolved into the broad field it is today as a very important tool and weapon in your arsenal for success.