With so many different therapies and ways of doing things out there, the first question you might ask is: why NLP? To answer that, I need to explain what NLP is and how it works — and I think it's best described with a short story.
A simple story
Three generations of the same family are living in one house: the grandparent, aged 80, the parent, aged 40, and the child, aged 20. The parent is an NLP practitioner who runs a practice helping people, and the young adult wants to know what NLP actually is. The parent says: "I'll teach you, tell you, and even show you what NLP is, so you get it straight away — but first I need you to do me a favour."
"Okay, no problem."
"See your grandparent over there? Go and ask them how they're feeling today, and what they think about the weather."
So the young adult goes over and asks, "How are you feeling today, and what about this awful weather?"
"Oh, not good," the grandparent replies, in a low voice, looking down at trembling hands. "This weather makes my bones really cold, and it affects me terribly — I shake from head to toe."
The young adult reports back: "Did you hear that?" "Yes," says the parent. "Now go back and ask them about the happiest day of their entire life — what was it, and do they still remember it?"
Off goes the young adult again: "Out of interest, what was the happiest day of your life, and can you remember it?" Immediately, the grandparent sits bolt upright with a huge smile, and starts talking about the birth of their first child (how they remember it, what they felt, how much love they felt), using their hands to express joy, without a shake in sight.
"Did you just hear that?" says the young adult. "Yes, I did," the parent replies, "and that is NLP in its purest form. We changed the emotional state and thinking pattern with words, leading to new thoughts, new emotions, and then new actions. That's Neuro Linguistic Programming."
- Neuro — how the mind operates and how we think.
- Linguistics — the language we use, and how it affects us.
- Programming — how we sequence actions to get what we want.
Where the name comes from
One of the best explanations I've read comes from Robert Dilts, who put it simply: "NLP is whatever works." That statement says: don't be afraid to try something new, different or unfamiliar — tweak it, twist it, adapt it to suit your own needs, and use everything you have to get to the outcome you want. Life doesn't need to run on a fixed set of rules. It's a sequence of words, thoughts and emotions leading to an end state — and here, that end state is to be anxiety-free.
NLP was formed in the 1970s by two people: a professor and his student, who researched why some people excelled at certain things in life while others didn't. That research became the foundation for early NLP. The professor was John Grinder, and the student was Richard Bandler, and together they created one of the most widely used therapeutic approaches around today. NLP has grown a great deal since the 1970s, developing over the decades into what we have now.
The pillars and presuppositions of NLP
Like any method, NLP works within a set of principles and presuppositions — the basic guiding ideas that shape how it's used. The pillars of NLP are:
- You — your emotional state and level of skill.
- The presuppositions — the principles of NLP.
- Rapport — the quality of your relationships.
- Outcome — knowing what you want.
- Feedback — how you'll know you're getting what you want.
- Flexibility — if what you're doing isn't getting results, change the method.
Some of the presuppositions that matter most for our purposes are:
- People respond to their own experience, not to reality itself.
- People make the best choice they can, at the time.
- All actions have a purpose.
- Every behaviour has a positive intention behind it.
- We already have all the resources we need, or we can create them.
- We process all information through our senses.
- If you want to understand something, act.
These may seem unusual at first, but they tend to make more sense the more you sit with them.
Where NLP sits today
Some of the leading therapists in the world are NLP practitioners and use these methods heavily within their own practices — among them the mainstream hypnotist Paul McKenna, life coach Ali Campbell, and Derren Brown. NLP is changing the way therapy is conducted, and the more people learn about it, the more popular it becomes. Among the well-known names reported to have had NLP therapy are Cheryl Cole, Katie Price and Kelly Rowland, to name a few, and the late Eric Bristow from the world of darts — and many sports teams now have an NLP practitioner on board to help with confidence, drive and determination.
All told, it's an easy case for using predominantly NLP-based methods and techniques: everyone whose life it touches experiences some change, and it can work quickly while still holding over time.
