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What is NLP?

Neuro-Linguistic Programming - NLP - was developed in the 1970s by John Grinder, a Professor at UC Santa Cruz and Richard Bandler, a graduate student. I read once, somewhere, that Richard Bandler, co-developer of what has become known as Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), has described NLP as "an attitude which is an insatiable curiosity about human beings, with a methodology which leaves behind it a trail of techniques."

NLP has its roots in general semantics and the work of
Alfred Korzybski (pronounced "Kahshibski", 1879:1950).

Korzybski first published using the terms 'Neuro-Linguistic' and 'Neuro-Semantic' in 1936, and then again in his 1941 preface to 'Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics'. In the 1930s and 1940s, Korzybski travelled the USA holding 'Neuro-Linguistic Trainings'.

Bandler and Grinder's first published work describing the original framework for NLP, 'The Structure of Magic: a book about language and therapy' was published in 1975.

NLP is known as many things... the study of the structure of subjective experience (an early description)...the study of human excellence...a great way to model people who get fantastic results ... and lots of other ideas, too...

NLP focuses on results.
The early development of NLP
was based on the work of Virginia Satir, a family therapist, Fritz Perls, known from gestalt therapy and Milton Erickson, hypnotist.

The beginnings of what has become known as NLP were rooted in the study of language, behaviour, and change.

Virginia Satir

Fritz Pearls

Milton Erickson

These people were powerful communicators, creating change in ways that seemed almost magical. And what was the structure of that magic?

For the creators and early developers of NLP, applying NLP was finding out how these communicators were consistently achieving exemplary results. NLP was learning to achieve similarly exemplary results, and teaching other people to achieve those results, too.

Doing the things the exemplars did, getting the results they got, and refining the model of what they did to identify the difference that makes the difference...the essence of the skill, the things that have to be true to consistently get similar results.

The models that arose
from the modelling have become techniques, and new NLP techniques are derived through similar processes.

The early NLP modelling produced two NLP models
which reflect the way we distort, delete and generalise information. The two models have come to be known as the meta model, and the Milton model. Meta modelling reconnects language with experience. Milton model languaging paces people's experience. Asking meta model questions elicits highly specified answers. Milton model languaging is artfully vague.

"And are these models NLP?"
Not as such... it's more accurate to describe the application of NLP as having produced the models, and NLP is more than technique.

Today NLP continues to be known for the range of techniques that have arisen from applying NLP to learning more about how people achieve excellence - although the techniques are really the trail left behind by the methodology, the exploration. NLP has found homes in education, business, coaching, sport, therapy... and in many other contexts. The techniques that are taught, learned and utilised in these contexts are not always explicitly described as derived from NLP... and sometimes the people that are using some of the powerful learnings that NLP has produced don't know how what they know was discovered.

Whilst NLP has no formal written 'theory', everyone who learns about NLP finds out about the NLP 'presuppositions' sooner or later. If you hadn't heard about the NLP presuppositions before now, it is going to be an experience that you experience sooner, rather than later.

NLP Presuppositions

We are all unique
and experience the world
in different ways

People respond to their
map of reality, not to reality

Mind and body
form a linked system

If what you are doing isn't working, do something else

Choice is better than no choice

We are always communicating

The meaning of your communication
is the response you get

There is no failure,
only feedback

Behind every behaviour
is a positive intention

Anything you can do I can do - if the task is broken down into small enough steps
And there are many, many ways to language these ideas.

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.
Leonardo da Vinci

Listen or thy tongue will keep thee deaf.
American Indian Proverb

Prophecy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks.
Mark Twain

The biggest obstacle we have to tackle each day of our lives is ourselves. All we have to do is to change our thinking and get out of our own way, and then enjoy the results.
Michael Carroll

The worlds we manage to get inside our heads are mostly worlds of words.
Wendell Johnson

The brighter you are,
the more
you have to learn.
Don Herold