I’m often asked, “How can NLP help me?”

In old cowboy films, there was nearly always a silver-tongued salesman standing on the back of a cart, selling Dr Feelgood’s Miracle Cure.

Sweaty feet? Dr Feelgood.

Indigestion? Dr Feelgood.

Coughs, baldness, bad breath and a mysterious pain in your left knee?

Apparently, Dr Feelgood could fix everything.

Unfortunately, NLP is sometimes described in much the same way

Need more confidence? NLP.

Want a better relationship? NLP.

Struggling at work? NLP.

Can’t remember where you left your glasses? NLP.

The problem isn’t that NLP has no practical uses. It has many.

The problem is that when people try to explain all of them at once, NLP begins to sound vague, grandiose and suspiciously capable of making your teeth whiter.

And the listener’s eyes glaze over.

So let’s bring it back down to earth.

What is NLP?

NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

That name doesn’t exactly make things clearer, does it?

At its simplest, NLP explores how we construct our experience through what we notice, the language we use, the pictures and sounds we create in our minds, the meanings we give events, and the patterns we learn over time.

Two people can experience the same situation and respond very differently.

One sees an opportunity. The other sees a threat.

One hears helpful feedback. The other hears criticism.

One copes well with an unexpected change. The other feels as though the entire week has been totally sabotaged.

The external event may be similar, but their internal experience of it is not.

NLP gives us practical ways to notice how that internal experience is being created.

Once you can notice what you are doing, you have more choice about how you respond.

That still sounds fairly theoretical, so let’s look at what it can mean in ordinary life.

NLP can help you manage your state

Your state is the combination of your thoughts, emotions, physical responses and focus at any particular moment.

You already move through many states during the day.

Calm.

Curious.

Irritated.

Confident.

Overwhelmed.

Focused.

Mildly murderous because someone replied to an email without answering the question you asked.

Your state affects what you notice, how you communicate and what you believe you can do.

When people feel anxious, for example, they often picture what might go wrong, say alarming things to themselves and physically tighten their bodies.

Each part reinforces the others.

NLP helps you notice those components and experiment with changing them.

The awkward part is that much of this happens automatically and outside our conscious awareness.

Most people don’t deliberately decide to picture everything going wrong, tighten their body and give themselves a running commentary on their likely failure. Those responses have usually become so familiar and so quick that, by the time they consciously notice how anxious they feel, the process is already well under way.

NLP helps bring some of that previously unnoticed activity into awareness. Once you can recognise the pictures, words, physical responses and shifts of attention involved, you have something specific to work with.

Jeremy and the presentation that ended in song

Jeremy experienced intense anxiety whenever he had to give a presentation.

This wasn’t ordinary nervousness. He shook so badly that people would ask whether he was all right. During one presentation, the shaking made it difficult for him to demonstrate putting sheets of paper through a shredder.

He assumed that giving more presentations would eventually make the fear disappear.

It didn’t.

Instead, he began avoiding presentations whenever possible.

Jeremy learned how the thoughts, images and physical responses he had been producing automatically were contributing to his anxiety. He then practised ways to create a very different state before and during a presentation.

At a later talk, he decided one section would work rather well if he sang it.

So he did.

“I did the presentation without shaking, without nerves, and sang the piece in the middle. I was blown away by how good I felt. The nervousness had gone, and the power and control Stephanie promised were completely evident.”

Jeremy’s company went on to employ more than 50 people and work internationally. He has since given acceptance speeches to audiences of more than 400 people and regularly receives compliments about his relaxed and engaging speaking style.

Read Jeremy’s full story

That does not mean everyone who learns NLP will burst into song at the next board meeting.

It does show how much can change when a person stops automatically generating the state that previously held them back.

NLP can help you communicate with people who are not you

Many communication problems begin with a reasonable but flawed assumption:

Surely everyone else processes information much as I do.

They don’t.

People differ in what they notice, how much information they want, what motivates them and what helps them make sense of something.

Margot and her boss drove each other nuts

Margot needed detailed information to do her job well.

Her boss preferred the big picture. He gave her a broad overview and expected her to work out the rest.

Margot became frustrated because she didn’t have enough information.

Her boss became frustrated because she kept asking questions.

To make matters worse, whenever Margot updated him, she gave a detailed, chronological account of everything she had done.

She thought she was being thorough.

He thought he was being held hostage.

They were each communicating according to their own preferences rather than considering what the other person needed.

Margot learned to ask more precise questions so she could get the detail required to do her work.

She also learned to give her boss a brief executive summary rather than the director’s cut with deleted scenes and commentary.

Neither had to change who they were.

They needed more flexibility in how they exchanged information.

Martin stopped defending and started listening

Martin managed a team whose professional backgrounds were different from his own.

He was technically skilled, but when team members questioned his decisions, he became defensive and stubborn. They responded by resisting him further.

He learned to listen more carefully, ask questions before jumping to conclusions and pay attention to the concerns behind what people were saying.

He also learned how to manage his own state before difficult conversations.

Those apparently small changes improved the working relationship and made it easier for the team to solve problems together.

Communication is not simply about expressing yourself clearly.

It also involves discovering what the other person means, rather than assuming you already know.

NLP can help you notice the patterns you keep repeating

Most patterns begin for a reason.

They may once have helped you feel safe, accepted, prepared or in control.

The difficulty comes when a pattern continues long after it has stopped being helpful.

You may repeatedly:

• avoid a conversation until the situation becomes worse
• become defensive when questioned
• agree to things and resent them later
• procrastinate when something matters
• try to control other people when you feel anxious
• withdraw when you most need to communicate
• assume you know what somebody else is thinking

NLP encourages curiosity about the structure of the pattern

What triggers it?

What do you notice first?

What do you picture or say to yourself?

What meaning do you give the situation?

What response follows?

And what happens next that keeps the whole thing going?

This is more useful than simply deciding you are bad at relationships, hopelessly unmotivated or cursed with difficult colleagues.

A pattern is something you do.

It is not the whole of who you are.

Mary, Rob and their teenage sons

Mary and Rob had a strained relationship with each other and very little communication with their 16-year-old twins.

Like many worried parents, they focused on trying to make their sons change.

When they examined the way they themselves were communicating, they began to notice how their own reactions contributed to the tension.

They changed how they approached the boys and how they responded to each other.

The atmosphere at home became calmer, and the twins began volunteering more information about where they were going and what they were doing.

The parents could not directly control their sons.

They could change their own part of the interaction.

That change gave everyone else something different to respond to.

NLP can help you understand what matters to you

Sometimes the difficulty is not an emotional reaction or communication problem.

You simply don’t know what to do next.

You may be considering a new job, relationship, business direction or change in lifestyle.

On paper, several options look sensible.

Yet none feels quite right.

Values are the qualities and experiences that matter deeply to us. They affect our motivation, satisfaction and choices, often without us consciously recognising them.

Words such as freedom, security, learning, connection or creativity mean different things to different people.

Understanding your values can help explain why a situation that looks perfectly good from the outside feels wrong on the inside.

Rodney and the three jobs

Rodney had worked in three jobs in 14 months and was beginning to wonder whether he was the problem.

We explored what genuinely mattered to him in his work.

When he compared those values with his previous roles, he discovered that none had met more than three of his eight most important criteria.

He wasn’t incapable of settling into a job.

He had repeatedly chosen positions that did not suit what he needed from his working life.

Rodney used this new understanding when considering his next role.

The job he accepted matched all eight values, and he was still there three years later.

Values do not make decisions for you.

They give you better information with which to make them.

NLP can help you listen more carefully

Listening sounds simple.

Remain quiet while another person speaks. Avoid staring out of the window. Try not to interrupt.

Done.

Except genuine listening asks more of us

We frequently listen through our own assumptions and translate what someone says into what we think they mean.

We paraphrase their words using our language, respond to our interpretation and then wonder why they don’t feel understood.

Reflective listening helps us stay closer to the other person’s actual words and experience.

This matters in coaching, management, teaching, parenting, health care and everyday relationships.

It can also reveal how quickly we rush to offer advice, reassurance or solutions before we have properly understood the problem.

You do not need to become a therapist or professional coach to benefit from learning how to listen.

Sometimes the most useful thing you can offer another person is evidence that you have actually heard them.

NLP can help you ask better questions

The questions we ask influence what people think about.

Compare:

“Why do you always get this wrong?”

with:

“What information would help you do this differently next time?”

The first question directs attention towards failure and blame.

The second invites learning and possibility.

This does not mean disguising criticism in chirpy language or pretending problems do not exist.

It means becoming aware that questions are not neutral. They guide attention.

NLP includes ways of questioning vague language, assumptions and missing information.

For example:

“I can’t do it.”

What, specifically, can’t you do?

“I have no choice.”

What choices have you already ruled out?

“They don’t respect me.”

What are they doing that leads you to that conclusion?

Questions like these do not magically solve a problem.

They help uncover information hidden inside broad statements that previously felt like facts.

So, can NLP fix everything?

No.

It is not a miracle cure.

It does not replace medical treatment, and it cannot guarantee that another person will change simply because you communicate more skilfully.

You will not become permanently calm, endlessly motivated or immune to difficult days.

You won’t become superhuman.

You may still lose your keys.

What NLP can offer is greater awareness of how you think, feel, communicate and respond

It can give you practical ways to:

• manage your state
• interrupt overwhelm
• recognise automatic patterns
• communicate with more flexibility
• listen more accurately
• question assumptions
• clarify your values
• understand how you construct your experience

Those skills can be applied in many different situations, which is why NLP can appear to help with such a wide range of problems.

The common factor is not that it cures everything.

The common factor is you.

Learning about NLP and learning to use it

You can learn a great deal about NLP through books, articles and videos.

That is often where curiosity begins.

But practical skills develop through practice.

It is one thing to read about listening carefully. It is another to notice yourself mentally composing a reply while somebody is still speaking.

It is one thing to understand that your internal pictures affect how you feel. It is another to experiment with changing one and experience what happens.

The Power of Personal Change is a six-day immersive NLP-based training focused on practical skills for state, communication, values, patterns, overwhelm and personal change.

It is designed as a complete course in its own right.

You do not need to want to become an NLP Practitioner.

There may be an option to continue into full NLP Practitioner Training if enough people are interested, but that is a separate decision.

The first question is simply:

What would become possible if you understood more about how you currently create your experience?

That is a far more useful place to begin than asking whether Dr Feelgood has anything left in the cart.

A personal note

When I first came across NLP, I wasn’t looking for a grand reinvention.

I wanted to understand why people behaved the way they did, why communication went so spectacularly wrong at times, and why knowing better didn’t always mean doing better.

What surprised me was how practical it was.

The more I learned, the more I noticed how much of our experience is shaped by things happening quietly in the background: assumptions, internal pictures, habitual language, old emotional responses and patterns we rarely stop to question.

NLP didn’t give me a magic wand.

It gave me better questions, more awareness and far more choice about what I did next.

If you’re curious about why people choose to learn these skills in the first place, you might also enjoy:

Five Reasons People Choose NLP Training When Something Needs to Change

And if this sort of thing gets your brain rummaging around in interesting places, you can also sign up for Thinky Things. It’s my short, weekly-ish email — fresh reflections, questions, and small noticing-points — written for the inbox rather than the website.
No noise. No pressure. Unsubscribe anytime.

Get Thinky Things

You can also find out more about The Power of Personal Change, the six-day immersive NLP-based training.

Tags: Language, Self-awareness, Speaking and presentation, work and career