NLP: The Essential Guide to Neuro-Linguistic Programming

Book Preface

What Is NLP?

NLP is a revolutionary study of the PROCESS of human thought. In other words, it’s the study of what’s actually going on when we think. I don’t mean the physical or electrochemical reactions, but what we would notice if we looked at the step-by-step activity of thinking.

The interesting thing about the mind is that if you take a brain and cut it open, you can’t find the mind. You can’t find a poem or the taste of chocolate or the feeling of a first kiss or the music from the prom dance. All you find is a bunch of nerve tissue. The nerve tissue in your brain acts as a substrate. It’s almost like your computer. It acts like your hard drive or your motherboard, and basically it’s designed to store various bits of data and to assemble, reassemble, and rearrange them and call them up whenever you want.

NLP is an understanding—not of the brain—but of how the mind, using the brain, expresses itself in your life and creates what you call your experience.

Right now, for instance, you’re reading these words. But these words by themselves are not your experience. Your experience is these words blended with what else you’re seeing around you at the moment, where you’re sitting, and how your body is feeling. Part of your experience right now is composed of the things you’re saying to yourself, like, “Geez, I wish he’d say more about that point,” or “That’s interesting,” or “I don’t know if that’s true or not,” or “Am I really going to get my money’s worth out of all this time I’m spending?”

The comments you make as you go on, coupled with your visual and your physical sensations as you read, blended with my words—all of that combined becomes your experience. Now, how does your brain do all that? Before I answer that, let me give you a little background information about NLP.

NLP started at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the early 1970s and has grown rapidly since then. NLP differs from psychology because its philosophy and techniques are derived from a specialized form of studying people called “Modeling.” NLP researchers interviewed and observed people doing many activities—and then shared the huge body of knowledge they accumulated about how people think when they’re falling in love, grieving a personal loss, shooting a gun, flying a plane, learning a language, or falling asleep. Thousands of people have been studied over the years, and much has been learned about how we think, and how we can adjust our own internal thought processes.

NLP popularized the “Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic” learning styles in addition to many new technologies utilized in education, psychotherapy, and communication. It’s used in business for interviewing, hiring, training, management, and sales. Entertainment and business professionals, as well as athletes and coaches in amateur, professional, and Olympic sports, use NLP coaching to improve performance.

In the beginning, I studied NLP because I wanted help inventing products and being a better CEO of the high-tech company that I had founded, and I got it!

Every day I was managing people, making phone calls, negotiating with vendors and customers in the business world. NLP really influenced my view of my employees. Even though I could see that some of them could probably resolve some issues and be happier (not to mention, be better employees), I wasn’t licensed to be their therapist. I was their boss.

Even though I was getting very excited by the things I was learning about human nature, I couldn’t really talk much about my discoveries. I certainly couldn’t ask other people, “What pictures are you making in your head right now?” or “Are you hearing a voice?” It wasn’t safe to try that and it certainly wouldn’t have been very effective.

So I decided to use this growing knowledge for my own personal development, and allow it to change my language and my gestures to get results for me first. Then I discovered how this also allowed me to get results with other people. You see, the funny thing was that when I changed, the people around me changed, too.

It actually turned out remarkably well—and that’s what I want to share with you. My goal with this book is for you to learn about the operating principles of NLP, about how you think and how others think. You’ll be able to manage your life more easily, and to dramatically improve your communications with other people.

What I didn’t know back then was that there would be so many additional benefits from using NLP skills. NLP has helped me be a better husband, father, and grandfather. It’s helped me be happier, easier to get along with, a better family member, and more productive in my professional work.

Since retiring from manufacturing, I’ve worked with clients as a consultant and coach. NLP has helped me to share my skills and experience with thousands of people in many walks of life and in many situations.

I’m an NLP Master Practitioner and Training Coach. I have a lot of other certifications for NLP and related training because I found the field so fascinating. In my home library, there are hundreds of books on the subject. I’m also the founder of the international NLP alumni group, the NLP Café. In this book, I’ve distilled the best of everything I’ve learned from NLP—which is a lot! You don’t have to be as focused on NLP as I am to reap many benefits from this information. You’re sure to find a payoff within your first hour.