NLP – It’s Not Magic, it’s Science!

 While there seems to be a magical nature to the way people who are trained in NLP utilize language to create amazing results in themselves and other people, neurolinguistic programming is not magic, it's based in neuroscience.

NLP (which stands for neurolingustic programming) is the study of how language impacts our brain… what we think, feel and do… and how that influences our behaviors. NLP takes scientific research in linguistics, cognitive and behavioral science, neuro-psychology, neuroscience and the psychology of language and it teaches practical effective techniques and tools that allow us to turn the science into daily application that improve outcomes in all areas of life.

A few examples of this include the use of anchoring, strategies, and using the sub modalities of our 5 senses to create change.

Let's first take anchoring:

Back in the 1890's a Russian scientist named Ivan Pavlov did an experiment with dogs. Each day at the same time, he'd ring a bell and when the dogs came he would feed them meat. Now eventually, when he'd ring the bell, the dogs would come already salivating in anticipation of getting the meat. One day Pavlov wondered what would happen if he removed the meat from the equation, so he rang the bell, and the dogs came running but there was no meat. The dogs still salivated. This is because they had associated the bell (dinner bell) with the meat and it created an automatic link in their brain which caused the physiological reaction of salivation.

This experiment became one of the basis of stimulus reponse, but what many people don't know is that a doctor Edwin Twitmyer had discovered something similar with the knee jerk reflex. You know when the doctor hits your knee with the hammer and it jumps? Well, Dr. Twitmyer discovered that he could also associate the knee reflex with the sound of a bell. These are called anchors. And there are all types of anchors we already respond to…. Like Red Light, Green Light. Like if I sang "Like a good neighbor….." (I bet you could finish that sentence)

In NLP we utilize anchors to create positive response in people or to help get rid of negative responses in certain situations.

One other technique is the use of strategies. In NLP, strategies refers to the mental sequencing that we go through to make decisions in our lives day to day. When we look at strategies from an NLP perspective we look at what specific things happen inside of our mind as we are going through a decision making process. We may see something, then feel something, then say something to ourselves as we move through the decision making process. In NLP, we say that if you are repeatedly making decisions that are negatively affecting your life, you may have an ineffective internal strategy. In this way we can work with the internal sequence happening to create a more effective way of dealing with a situation. For example, I had a client who would frequently overcommit to things which led him to be constantly overwhelmed. When we tweaked his decision making process (of saying yes) by tweaking his internal strategy sequence it became easy for him to be more discerning about what he said yes to and what he'd say no to. That made his life much more workable. Elements of re-imagining the sequence of our thought process can be seen in cognitive processing models of behavioral psychology. Again, it's not magic, it's science.

These are just a few of dozens of techniques (and language patterns) we use to help reframe, remap, and re-contexualize our (and others') thinking patterns to increase behavioral choice and flexibility because we know that when we have more flexibility in our behavior, we have a greater problem-solving ability and a greater chance of producing the results we want in our lives and relationships. That is how we create our life by design.

Want to learn more? Interested in becoming NLP certified? Learn more about our NLP Coaching, Hypnosis, Time Line Therapy®, and NLP training and certification programs by visiting www.mindremappingacademy.com