Part I
Setting Up Your NLP Journey
In this part . . .
We help you to figure out how you can apply Neuro-linguistic Programming to your everyday life, whether in the business or personal arena. You discover your starting point for your journey of discovery and get your destination in mind. The whole purpose of this part is to get you thinking more clearly about how youâre living. This part enables you to recognise what drives your thinking and behaviour so that you can increase the choices you have in future.
Chapter 1
Where Are You Right Now?
In This Chapter
Figuring out what you want from NLP
Discovering the power of your thoughts
Keeping track of the gems you uncover
Making a personal commitment to your learning
Having fun on the journey
Are you at a set of crossroads in your journey through life? Questioning where you are and what you want to do next? âShall I go this way or that?â, you may be asking yourself when faced with choices. Or, âIâm sure it doesnât have to be this hardâ, when youâre getting overwhelmed. Whether youâre facing choosing a job, tackling a project, or committing to a relationship, youâre not quite sure what you should do for the best when such opportunities present themselves. You may have picked up Neuro-linguistic Programming Workbook For Dummies because you want to do things differently or improve a situation in your life. Perhaps things are a bit flat at the moment and you want more ZING, or your life is manic and you want time to âsmell the flowersâ. Or, youâre simply curious about this NLP word, wanting to know what NLP can offer you and how it can help you to interact with other people â if so, thatâs just great.
In this first chapter, we take time to help you get firmly grounded in NLP. You begin by taking stock and getting yourself in the right state of mind to ask what it is you want from this workbook. A basic assumption of NLP is that âthe map is not the territoryâ â you find out more about basic assumptions (we actually call them âNLP presuppostionsâ) in Chapter 2. You may currently have a âmapâ â an idea of what you want, or of how life is, yet as you travel the road you find the âterritoryâ isnât as you expected. âStuff happensâ, as the saying goes. Your world view changes as you journey along.
As you get drawn into NLP, you find yourself taking your learning further â into more and more areas of your personal life and the world of work. You discover how to create your own âmapsâ of what you want, rather than navigating with an outdated map or using someone elseâs.
Curiosity is a great starting point. Clear out any loose thinking about NLP. Come with an open mind and make it your intent to start paying attention to what you want to attract into your life. We promise that youâll be exploring this in more detail very soon.
Explaining the Basics of NLP
Einstein said that there are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle or you can live as if everything is a miracle. Really itâs up to you. The thoughts you have determine the results that you get in your life. Have you ever stopped to consider the quality of your thinking? NLP can be the starting point to get you thinking in a new way and get you curious about the power of your own thought process. After you know how you think, you can translate that into chosen actions with the help of the NLP tools we share with you in this book.
At first, the concept of NLP can be hard to get a grip on â like grappling with jelly. NLP is defined as âthe study of your subjective experienceâ; itâs about how you communicate with others and with yourself. In NLP the more you pay attention to how you think as well as what you think about, the more you will achieve the results that you want.
NLP is based on the idea that you experience the world through your senses and translate sensory information into thought processes, both conscious and unconscious. Thought processes activate the neurological system (hence the neuro part of NLP) that affects physiology, emotions, and behaviour. The linguistic aspect of NLP refers to the way your language helps you to make sense of the world, capture and conceptualise your experience, and communicate that experience to others. Body language is important here as well as the spoken word. The programming part addresses how you code or mentally represent your experience. Your personal programming consists of your internal processes and strategies (thinking patterns) that you use to make decisions, solve problems, learn, evaluate, and get results.
Lining Up at the Starting Block
NLP offers tools and models to help you solve problems in different ways. For example, take the âlogical levels of changeâ model from Robert Dilts that we explore in Chapter 11, which breaks down your experience into manageable parts, from looking at the environment in which you operate through to your overall sense of purpose as you go about your daily business.
You also have the classic linguistic models that the co-creators of NLP came up with in the early days: the Milton model, derived from studying Milton Erickson at work, and the Meta model, which enables you to gain greater clarity by going beyond language and digging deeper into the meaning underlying words. We show you how to filter your thinking according to your deepest values and beliefs without even consciously knowing that you do it. NLP is like opening a huge window onto your thought processes, so you have a ...
