NLP: The New Technology of Achievement

NLP: The New Technology of Achievement

NLP: the beginning

A new technology of achievement

• Getting motivated.
• Discovering your mission.
• Achieving your goals.
• Creating rapport and strong relationships.
• Persuasion strategies.
• Eliminating fears and phobias.
• Building self-confidence.
• Creating self-appreciation and self-esteem.
• Securing a positive mental attitude.
• Achieving peak performance.

NLP principles

1. The map is not the territory. We do not respond to the world as it is, we act in accordance with our own mental map of it. We have a much better chance of getting what we want if our map is continually revised to take account of the territory. Doing this is much better than trying to bend the world to fit your map.
2. Experience has a structure. We all have patterns or structures in the way we think. By changing these, we literally change our experience, including how we think about past events.
3. If one person can do something, anyone can learn to do it. We can model the thinking and behavior of people who are already successful in order to achieve similar results.
4. The mind and body are parts of the same system. Our thoughts constantly affect our breathing, muscles, etc., which in turn affect our thinking. Control your thoughts and you control your body.
5. People already have all the resources they need. From our storehouse of memories, thoughts, and sensations we can construct new mental patterning designed to provide the outcomes we want.
6. You cannot not communicate. Everything about you—eye and body movements, vocal tones, habits—is a form of communication. It is not difficult to sense when what a person is saying does not match with who they are.
7. The meaning of your communication is the response you get. People receive information filtered through their mental map of the world. How you communicate must be constantly adjusted so that the message you want to be received is the one that is received.
8. Underlying every behavior is a positive intention. Violence masks a lack of acceptance or fear, and yelling or criticism can express a need to be acknowledged. Look behind what people do to find their positive intent.
9. People are always making the best choices available to them. We make choices based on experience. More and better experiences allow for more choices.
10. If what you’re doing isn’t working, do something else. Do anything else. You’ll only get the same results if you do what you’ve always done.

• Everyone has a “motivation direction,” either toward pleasure and goals or away from pain. The NLP team found that most people are motivated by the latter, but with a change to toward motivation you can focus on possibilities rather than on what you fear. This doesn’t mean living through rose-tinted spectacles, simply changing the way you communicate with yourself. For example, after making your usual negative comments, restate your goal. This order—negative first and positive last—is a simple but effective motivator.
• Know the difference between a job and a mission. A job is usually too small for a person; a mission needs a whole life to make it real. Acknowledging the NLP principle that “If one person can do some- thing, anyone can learn to do it,” you can take the successful attitudes, decisions, and behaviors of people you admire and use them to fulfill your unique mission. Film director Steven Spielberg, artist Michelangelo, champion dog-sled racer Susan Butcher, and media mogul Ted Turner are given as examples of people who are crystal clear about what their life is about. NLP exercises can reveal your life’s passion and deepest values, from which your mission will emerge.
• Change happens in an instant and should be natural and easy. No matter how many times you try to get a computer to do something, it will not do it if it does not have the appropriate software, or if it can do it, you need to have a manual in order to give it the right instructions. The human brain is much more sophisticated, but NLP is designed to be its software manual, using the brain’s own language to alter and create new neural pathways. With NLP you do not have to rely on willpower; with knowledge of the technical means, change becomes easy.
• NLP’s basic premise is that we can change our minds not simply by having new thoughts, but by changing the way we think, i.e., by choosing a different way to process the multitude of images, feelings, and memories that exist inside us, so that they serve us rather than sabotage us. We can diminish a bad memory quite easily by giving it new associations (just some examples: hearing a happy song in our minds each time we remember it, turning the memory into a “paint- ing” with our choice of color and frame, making it into an old black- and-white movie, seeing ourselves smiling in the image instead of sad). Once these new associations are made, how you feel about a memory changes not only instantly but forever. Revisit it any time and the new association will still be in place. Try it before you dismiss it.
• NLP gets you away from “either/or” thinking. In NLP there is a saying: “If you only have one way to do something, you’re a robot. If you only have two ways to do something, you’re in a dilemma. You need at least three ways to do something before you have the beginning of some real flexibility.” Above all, NLP gives you choice in how you want to change; there are few rules, only successful experiments.
• Everyone has internal voices. Turn them into great encouragers instead of saboteurs. You can play powerful and uplifting music in your mind whenever you need instant confidence, for instance. You can learn automatically to hear laughter any time you encounter a difficulty or challenge. Such methods put you in control of your reactions and thoughts at any moment, and enable you to take criticism and use it constructively.
• The brain does not know how to think negatively. If you continually tell yourself “I want to lose weight,” your brain will be impressed with the word “weight” much more than the word “lose.” Professionals advise slimmers to have a “goal weight” that they focus on; it is to this that they will make their body conform, not the losing of something. NLP teaches you always to use positive language, focusing on what you want, not what you fear.
• You can learn the ability to be confident in an instant, to be more loving, or to “make real” your ambitions before they are acted out in the world. Many winners use NLP without knowing it, in the way they can see, hear, feel, touch, and taste victory in their minds long before it actually happens. The feeling of winning draws the win to it; designing a compelling future draws you toward the actions needed to realize it. Those who become adept at creative visualization appreciate the NLP maxim “not all dreamers are achievers, but all achievers are dreamers.”

Final comments