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Here’s an analogy for you to think about. An onion isn’t a very complex thing, but it has more than 12 times as much DNA as a university professor according to Dmitri Petrov of Harvard University. After all, DNA is the stuff of which genes are made, and genes contain recipes for making proteins that make humans and onions what they are. It would seem logical that more complex organisms would need more DNA.
Not all DNA, however, is useful; that is, not all of it is involved in gene activity. Scientists don‘t really know why it‘s there, and they refer to it as “junk DNA.” Humans, onions, and other organisms lose DNA when mistakes are made during reproduction. Components of genes may be deleted, or changed to make a plant or animal more or less fit for the daily struggles of life. This process might explain the genetic differences among species like humans, onions, and fruit flies. “Organisms like fruit flies may be careless about copying junk DNA giving them compact, junk-free genomes,” Petrov points out. “Others, like onions, may faithfully reproduce everything, resulting in a cluttered and junky genome.” Humans would be somewhere in between.
In NLP, our beliefs and values could be said to represent our cluttered junky genome, some content is essential and some is not. Our core values and beliefs are mostly unconscious and are usually formed in order to support, define and protect our identity.
Values
Values are concepts for which people will make extraordinary efforts. They provide the motives for behaviours explained by phrases like ‘It seemed the decent thing to do’, or ‘I did it because I want to live with myself in peace’. The more deeply held a value, the less consciously is it’s holder aware of it. Values include deeply held beliefs about what is right and wrong, good and bad, acceptable or unacceptable conduct, and about what is worth wanting, working for and making an effort to keep in life.
Values are an evaluation filter and are used by us to perform two functions: (1) provide motivation before we take action, and (2) after-the-fact evaluation, judgement, about our actions. It is the way we judge good and bad, right and wrong and have an emotion of how we did. Values are the things we move toward or away from.
Meta Programmes
Our meta-programmes are the deepest unconscious filters and represent our preference for how we take in and process information. NLP has identified over 60 different meta-programmes. One example of a Meta-programme is Motivation Direction - this is about what will trigger a person into action – are they motivated towards those things that give them pleasure or away from those things that cause them pain.
You can discover a person’s motivation direction by asking “why is having that (value) important to you?” and carefully listening to their reply. To create motivation you can use either their preferred motivation direction or both away from and towards in your communication. “Learning NLP means you will no longer be able to not communicate but will have the skills to build relationships and create motivation easily”.
Beliefs
Beliefs are those convictions we trust as being true. They are statements about our internal representations or how we believe the world is. They are generalisations about our actions and about what we are doing and about what we want to do. Beliefs are attached or related to a certain values in clusters and may form a Belief System.
Beliefs are not a statement of truth or fact, though we sometimes act is if they are. They are all learned and can be added to or changed. Core beliefs are those which are usually deeply held and are supported by other beliefs to maintain them.
When we believe something, we act as if it is true. In coaching it is essential to hold the empowering belief that change is possible for your client and to help your client hold empowering beliefs about the change themselves. Doing so can often mean letting go of outdated or limiting beliefs.
Creating Empowering Beliefs
When considering outcomes it is essential to hold empowering beliefs about achieving them and avoid feelings of hopelessness, helplessness and worthlessness. You need to believe it is possible to achieve your goals, you are able to and you are worthy of that achievement. What beliefs do you have about your goals in life? Here are some good thoughts.
You cannot know what your limits are until you reach them. It’s not that you can’t do something, you just haven’t done it yet. It’s possible to achieve
Have you put a mental block on your achievements? Keep an open mind. You are able to achieve.
You are entitled to success if you have the right desire to succeed. You deserve to be happy.
Ben
Tags: beliefs, values
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Here’s another fantastic concept for you to allow you to:
- Improve your understanding of other people.
- Be able to stand back and consider issues dispassionately.
- Appreciate the influence of your verbal and non-verbal behaviour on others, and the influence of their behaviour on you
It has been said that one of the best ways to understand another person‘s point of view is to walk a mile in his or her shoes. Using perceptual positions you mentally review (or preview) a situation from a number of different standpoints in order to enrich your appreciation of what is involved. The idea of multiple perceptual positions in NLP was originally inspired by Gregory Bateson who purported that double (or triple) descriptions are better than one. Bateson said that,
“Wisdom comes from multiple perspectives.”
By deliberately training oneself in moving between perceptual positions one can develop new choice of responses. The founders of NLP also modelled this from Virginia Satir, the renowned family therapist, who at times would guide a client to stand - literally - in everyone’s shoes, until they understood better others position and feelings in the matter and Milton Erickson’s hypnotherapeutic concept of disassociation (3rd position). Triple Descriptions (perceptual positions) were proposed by John Grinder and Judith DeLozier in 1987.
It is worth realising that we all use different perceptual positions in life already and that great flexibility with them can bring us many benefits.
Example: A day when it starts to snow heavily, and doesn’t stop, looks very different from the viewpoint of a pupil, parent, teacher and a visitor at a school. But knowing what to do is almost inevitably harder to solve if the Head teacher only appreciates their own viewpoint, and not those of others involved.
What are the perceptual positions?
1st Position
Seeing the situation through your own eyes. You are primarily aware of your own thoughts and feelings. It enables you to consider your own needs.
2nd Position
Imagine what it is like to be the significant other in the situation. Put yourself in their shoes - as if you are looking back at yourself, seeing, hearing, and feeling as the other person would given their own map of the world. The ability to 2nd position is an essential in order to show empathy and compassion.
3rd Position
Taking a detached viewpoint and looking at the system as a whole with kinaesthetic disassociation. Imagine you are looking at yourself and the other person ‘over there’ – seeing the two of them speaking, gesturing etc. Pay particular attention to non-verbal behaviour such as the body language and the sound of their voices. Then consider, as a result of taking this view, what advice you wish to give ‘yourself’ about how you are handling the situation.
Learning this should really boost your abilities to communication with other people. Try it now with a relationship situation you would like to improve and step through each position (it does work better if you move around when you do it).
Let me know how you get on,
Ben
Tags: NLP, Perceptual Positions
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If you really want to bring change in your life, whether enhancing your self-confidence, improving relationships, communicating more effectively, improving heath, fitness or anything else, you need to know yourself. If you want to know yourself, you must understand your mind. Studying NLP can give you great insights to bring about real personal development. Here’s what you need to know about the conscious and the unconscious mind.
In NLP we use the metaphor of the conscious mind to represent those things we are aware of in any one moment (studies reveal the conscious mind can only process about 7± 2 chunks of information at once) and the unconscious mind to represent everything else. All our experiences and memories are held in our unconscious mind and these may come to consciousness at different times.
Whatever you think you are always (and in all ways) more than that
Metaphorically, Jonathan Haidt (The Happiness Hypothesis) has suggested you could liken the relationship between conscious and unconscious minds to an elephant and its rider. The rider represents the ‘controlled’ processes of the mind, the planning and reasoning that takes place one step at a time in conscious awareness, while the elephant represents the hundreds of automatic operations we carry out every second outside of conscious awareness.
The elephant has been around a lot longer than the rider. It includes emotions, gut feelings and responds to stimulus control. The rider, by contrast, has very little influence on behaviour. Although he can look into the future, imagine scenarios and make plans, he is essentially an adviser and a passenger.
Usually, though, we don’t realise this: we think either that we are in charge of the elephant, or (perhaps more often) don’t realise there is an elephant, and then are baffled or give ourselves a hard time when we don’t stick to our resolutions and don’t carry out the actions that we know we “should” be doing. Problems occur when rider and elephant are not operating in harmony.
All change takes place first at the unconscious level
Typically, as we learn and develop new behaviours we have an awareness of them consciously and it is our unconscious mind that remembers everything. Everything, once learned, resides in the unconscious mind. Change with NLP is generally a case of creating new habits, patterns or resources at an unconscious level for a person to choose to use in the future. This can be done with a conscious process, such as anchoring or applying the meta model, or at an unconscious level such as using six step reframing or metaphor for instance.
Your conscious mind excels at:-
· Processing sequentially
· Logic
· Verbal language
· Analysis
Your unconscious mind is better at:-
· Working holistically
· Intuition
· Creativity
· Running your body
· Taking care of emotions
· Storing memories
Now that we know these differences we can harness our brains correctly. How exactly we do that I’ll explain when I’ve got a moment later.
‘Til then,
Ben
Tags: unconscious mind
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Hi,
I hope you enjoyed my last piece of the presuppositions of NLP. What I want to do now is introduce you to one of the most fundamental concepts of all of NLP: State.
But what is state I hear you ask? State refers to the overall emotional physiological and psychological condition of an individual. It involves the beliefs, values, capabilities and behaviour within a context at a particular time. Your state filters and selects perception, activates specific patterns of thinking and believing, influences decisions, frames communication, triggers emotions, affects health, affects performance, affects conscious awareness, and drives behaviours. NLP involves putting your mind and body into the right place to achieve a goal – in other words, getting into the right state.
• Your ability to influence and choose your state has a powerful effect on your resourcefulness and comfort in any situation.
• Research suggest that a state naturally lasts for about 90 seconds, after which, for the state to continue, the stimulus needs to re-applied either externally or internally. Typically, many people keep a state going by the things they think about or the way they think about them.
As we move through time, we naturally change and access different states frequently, but for many people it is done reflexively, with little choice. When unpleasant states are present, we may feel more the victim of them than their master. And when enjoyable states are present, we may not know how to sustain them. For some people states come and go like weather patterns and they experience them as beyond their control. Most people have their mood contolled by external events. Practitioners of NLP learn ways of controlling and being able to change their own mood.
Pattern Interrupts / Break State
Sometimes when a person is throwing a tantrum, shutting down, panicking or running any other un-resourceful automatic behaviour, the only way to get them to stop now is to suddenly do something totally unexpected or drastic. Use the art of distraction to stop a person in their tracks and break the pattern they are entrenched in. Some pattern interrupts / break states you could try are:
• Coughing, sneezing, dropping something
• Waving your arms or suddenly moving
• Exclaiming in a loud voice
• Doing something unexpected.
• Drawing attention to something else – “can you smell chicken?”, “do you hear geese?”
Having broken the state they were in, you can now assist them to get into a new state that is more resourceful for them. Usually the sooner you do this the more effective your break state will be.
Getting someone into a new state
There are many ways of helping a person or a group get into a new state. You could use one or several of these.
Pacing and Leading
• Establish rapport and then get into the desired state yourself and lead the other person or group into the new state using language to assist you.
• How are you feeling now?
• That’s right, and as you are feeling_____, what else are you noticing?
Stories & Metaphor
• Tell a story or recount an experience and your audience may automatically associate into the state along with you.
• A great storyteller weaves in and out of states throughout the story.
Change Physiology
• Since mind and body for one system, anytime you adopt a new physiology your state changes to match it. Get the person to change to a different physiology.
• This is why laughter really is the best medicine –it changes your state instantly, go on, try it now!
Remember a Time
• If you remember a time in rich sensory detail and associate into the memory as if you are seeing it again through your own eyes, hearing what you heard and feeling what you felt you will access that state as well.
• People who want to relive a positive event (or feel depressed) are naturally good at this.
Tags: State
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Hi, it’s Ben here. In this article I want to lay out the core beliefs of NLP which can make a real difference to your world just by acting as if they are true.
Remember, before I start, that you don’t even need to belief that these are true. They are a guiding philosophy and I simply ask you follow them now and observe the changes they will have brought you later.
The map is not the territory
We do not know what reality is. Our senses, beliefs, and past experience give us a map of the world from which to operate, which we describe using our language. A map can never be exactly accurate; otherwise it would be the same as the ground it covers. We do not know the territory, so for us, the map is the territory. NLP is the art of changing these maps, so we have greater freedom of action.
Life and mind are systemic processes
It is not possible to make a change in one without the other being affected. When we think differently, our bodies change. When we act differently we change our thoughts and feelings
The meaning of your communication is the response you get.
When you say or do something a person receiving this communication will have some experience which will have meaning for them. This may or may not be what you intended in your communication. However, we could say that the meaning for that person is whatever their experience is, i.e. whatever their response is. If you want to get a different response you can just change your communication.
Having a choice is better than not having a choice
Act always to increase choice. The more choices you have, the freer you are and the more influence you can have
People make the best choice they can at the time
A person always makes the best choice they can, given their map of the world. The choice may be self-defeating, bizarre or evil, but for them, it seems the best way forward. Give them a better choice in their map of the world and they can take it.
We already have all the resources we need, or we can create them
There are no un-resourceful people, only un-resourceful states of mind.
All actions have a purpose; all behaviour has a positive intention
Our actions are not random; we are always trying to achieve something. NLP separates the intention or purpose behind an action from the action itself, a person is not their behaviour
There is no failure, only feedback.
Results are guaranteed Our specific thoughts, actions, and feelings consistently produce specific results. We may be happy or unhappy with these results, but if we repeat the same thoughts, actions, and feelings, we’ll get the same results. The process works perfectly. If we want to change our results, then we need to change the thoughts, actions, and feelings that go into producing them. If you want to understand, act – the learning is in the doing.
Everything and everyone is interconnected
The material universe is a dynamic web of inter-related events. None of the properties of the web are fundamental. They all follow from properties of the other parts and the overall consistency of their inter-relationships determines the structure of the entire web. At the quantum level we are one, there are no local causes. Things exist by virtue of their mutually consistent relationships.
There you have it folks – the presuppositions of NLP
Ben
Tags: NLP Presuppositions
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