What is NLP?
“The technology of human excellence”
NLP began its life as a modelling technology, when John Grinder and Richard Bandler embarked on their now legendary work in capturing the patterns of genius in Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir and Milton Erickson. The result of modeling these geniuses are the excellent models and patterns which has pervaded globally from therapy room to family room and boardroom.
NLP is also about the study of how people organise their thinking, feeling, language and behaviour. This study leads to powerful change technology in helping people have new experiences in life through changing their own mental maps and developing new and more effective behaviors.
A key element of NLP is that we form our unique internal mental maps of the world as a product of the way we filter and perceive information absorbed through our five senses from the world around us.
NEURO: Each individual has established their own unique mental filtering system for processing the millions of bits of data being absorbed through the senses. Our first mental map of the world is constituted of internal images, sounds, tactile awareness, internal sensations, tastes and smells that form as result of the neurological filtering process. The first mental map is called ‘First Access’ in NLP.
LINGUISTIC: We then assign personal meaning to the information being received from the world outside. We form our second mental map by assigning language to the internal images, sounds and feelings, tastes and smells, thus forming everyday conscious awareness. The second mental map is called the Linguistic Map (sometimes known as Linguistic Representation)
PROGRAMMING: The behavioural response that occurs as a result of neurological filtering processes and the subsequent linguistic map.