What is NLP? The Short Definition

Neuro - Brain

Linguistic - Language

Programming – Behavior

Referred to as the "Software for the Brain", NLP is a model for being able to duplicate human excellence and learn new behaviors at an accelerated pace.

What is NLP? The Long Definition

NLP is a completely unique synthesis of cybernetics, neurology, and linguistics that offers you practical methods for rapid personal improvement. When you learn NLP, you will discover easy to follow road maps that lead you to enriched personal achievement and interpersonal and professional influence. Literally millions of people from all walks of life have used NLP principles and techniques to change their own behavior patterns and influence others more effectively.

NLP is not about quick fixes.

In fact, one of the assumptions in the field is that "people are not broken so they do not need to be fixed”. Instead, we believe that people have all the resources needed to make any change they choose to. NLP is about uncovering untapped resources within people. You may notice how different this is from today's pop psychology messages that tell people that they are ‘damaged' somehow and that they need to recover for a long, long time.

In our culture, there isn't much emphasis placed on purposefully using your brain to direct your life in the way you want it to go. What if you were to deliberately design the inside of your mind and fill it up with wonderful things? This is the premise of NLP: instead of filling up your mind re-living old painful times, why not fill your mind with powerful, supportive thoughts! NLP is about focusing on who you are, where you are and what you want out of life, where you are going and not so much on how you have arrived where you currently are.

Modeling Excellence - The History of NLP

The field of NLP grew from what its two founders learned from the mental processes of "exceptional" people: therapists who created profound changes in their patients such as renown family therapist Virginia Satir, Milton Erickson MID, (the grandfather of Hypnotherapy and the man accredited by many with the creation of clinical Hypnotherapy) and Fritz Pearls (the father of Gestalt therapy), as well as from people who had recovered from phobias, terminal illness and life's tragedies, entrepreneurs and top business and salespeople. NLP grew from thousands of people who were able to transform their lives in dramatic and positive ways. In the early 1970s co- founders Richard Bandler and John Grinder, at the University of Santa Cruz, California, engaged in the study of people who were able to achieve powerful results. They asked "can we determine what processes occur inside the brain that allow these people great successes and can we teach those processes to others so that they too can get the same kind of consistent results?" The answer is decidedly "yes". They asked a question which leads to excellence. "What is it that these people do inside their head that gets them excellent outcomes?”

Instead of asking what is wrong or at what time in a person’s life did something go wrong, they asked "what is right?” They created NLP based on modeling what works - people who got over phobias - not by studying the people who had them. In NLP, we use formulas for success - models and not theories. A theory is an explanation a person gives as to “why” something is the case. A model, like a model car or steam engine, either works or it doesn't. A model is evaluated by its usefulness whereas a theory is evaluated by its reasonableness. This difference in research orientation and practitioner orientation still exists today.

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