What is neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)?
Neuro refers to the brain and the nervous system. The brain and the nervous
system connect everything up in your body; immune system, organs,
skeleton and so on.
Linguistic refers to the study of understanding
the natural language of the brain and nervous system i.e. how it
takes in information from the world through the 5 senses and how it
internally codes and stores this information. These are called your
internal representations. No two people ever represent the world in
exactly the same way, it is completely unique to the individual.
Programming refers to the way your brain and mind
and nervous system are all connected, and set up to “do” or “not do”
certain things as a result of these unique internal representations.
It can be seen like “computer programming” - i.e. the “software” of
the brain. If you think about a computer, you have the screen, the
hard drive and the keyboard -the “hardware”. In order to do anything
with it, it needs to have software too i.e. Word, Excel. What we can
do with it depends on what software we have. It is the same for our
brain. We need to “program the software” to be able to function -
i.e. to have a personality, to have thoughts, feelings, emotions,
beliefs, skills and responses and behaviours. Most of these are
generated unconsciously (without you even being aware).
The good news for computers and brains is if we do not
like the way it is running, we can effectively “re-program” the
software to change what it does now, and get it to do more of what
we want it to do instead.
It is the same with NLP for your brain. It is a methodology for
understanding this specific language of the brain, the structure of
someone’s internal experience, and the tools to change it directly. It
is therefore a whole model of working with people to enable real human
development and change in a faster and easier way.
