The Wizardry In Words

Neuro Linguistic Programming, or NLP, is first and foremost a linguistic model, designed to facilitate a mindset shift for more resourceful thinking and behaviour. It’s the study of your language and how you use it to construct your realities and to govern your life.

The words and patterns you unconsciously select from your own internal linguistic database, inside and out, actually create your map of the world, that’s how you believe the world to be. Now imagine having the innate capability to create the world that you want to live in. You do! It is essentially down to your language.  Language has a tremendous influence on how you perceive and respond to your projected reality and in turn, your internal coding of how the world looks, sounds and feels to you essentially produces your behaviour. There is real wizardry in language once you have full command of it and that magic rests at the very heart of NLP.

‍

NLP emerged from the University of Santa Cruz in California in the 1970’s when its creators published the first volume of their ground-breaking work, ‘The Structure of Magic’ (1975).  This work, now celebrating its 50th birthday, brought together the process of modelling excellence and the mastery of language and provided the platform to launch NLP into the incredible, life changing science that we have the pleasure of learning today.  Language reveals incredible insights into the structure of human nature and used effectively and with ecology, can transform thinking and create change in a most extraordinary way.

‍

The story that follows has been gratefully borrowed from Robert Dilts in his book Sleight of Mouth.  The tale illustrates how the right words used at the right time can dictate what happens next.

‍

‘A police officer receives an urgent summons to a local residence to handle a reported incident of domestic violence.  The police officer is on alert, because she knows that it is in these types of situations that she is actually in most physical danger.  People, especially violent, angry people, don’t want the police interfering in their family affairs.  As she approaches the apartment, the police officer hears shouting and screaming coming from inside.  A man is yelling loudly and the officer hears the sound of various objects being broken along with the terrified screams of a woman.   Suddenly, a television set comes crashing through the front window, smashing into pieces on the ground in front of her.  The police officer rushes to the door and begins to pound on it as hard as she can.  She hears an enraged male voice from inside the apartment shouting, “Who in the hell is that!”  Eyeing the pieces of mangled television set spread over the ground, the police officer blurts out, “Television repairman.”  There is a moment of dead silence inside the apartment.  Finally, the man breaks out in laughter.  He opens the door and the police officer is able to make her intervention, avoiding any further violence or physical confrontation.  She later reports that those two words were as useful as months of training in hand-to-hand combat.’

‍

In this story, just a few words changed the course of someone’s life for the better by shifting limiting beliefs to a different and richer perspective that offers a greater landscape of choice.  The right words at the right time can have a very positive and powerful effect.  Of course, the converse is also true.  The wrong words at the wrong time can be very harmful and damaging.  NLP is therefore about learning how to easily and effortlessly select the right words at the right time and to do that with unconscious competence.

‍

One of the key principles of NLP is that ‘The map is not the territory.’  This concept was first conceived of by the founder of General Semantics, Alfred Korzybski and is detailed in his seminal work, ‘Science and Sanity’ (1933).  The concept of ‘The map is not the territory’ postulates that any map is simply a representation of the ground that it represents.  It is a picture which seeks to demonstrate the nature of the geography of the land.  The map can never fully and accurately represent the actual geography on the ground because the topography is dynamic and organic in a constant state of change.  Each line on a map is merely a representation which approximates what was there at a single point in time, filtered through the eyes of the person that created it.  

‍

The same is true when you conceptualise your reality.  The reality you perceive inside your head has passed through a complex series of psychological filters which delete, distort and generalise information, so that your representation of the world becomes unique to you as an individual. You then label your representation with language and it becomes your model of the world.  Your model is not the reality that exists outside, it is your perception of it. Now this is both interesting and exciting because it means that you have ultimate control of your model of the world through your conscious use of language.

‍

Using the thought processes of NLP, it becomes possible to positively affect both your own reality and the reality of others.  Imagine having the capability to enhance the lives of others every time you speak. Consider how you could affect your relationships by mastering the use of language. Your business presence will be elevated to new heights and your success will be accelerated beyond your current comprehension. Your future will become your own, when you embrace the wizardry in words.

‍