Neuro Linguistic Programming is essentially the science of communication via the spoken word. Since the original works of Bandler and Grinder in the 1970’s, more and more people are studying it. But why? What makes the study of language so appealing and valuable?
“I had no choice but to x”
Many people make the above statement when they’ve made a decision they perceive as negative. The reality is that we always have a choice. Some choices have more polar options than others, (take the elevator during a building fire, or not), but there are always options.
NLP helps practitioners to understand how their clients perceive the world around them and their interaction with it. It gives you the tools to really hear what your clients are actually saying. Not just in terms of the words they’re using, but also the emotions and intent behind them.
That’s important, because clients often present with conscious preferences or goals that are at odds with their internal motivators. Ultimately this can lead to cognitive dissonance, which is where the brain becomes conflicted as a result of opposing goals. Understanding whether your clients external representation of events matches their internal objective will allow you to help them in the manner that benefits them the most. Not only that, but it prevents conflict further down the road where clients aren’t satisfied, despite making progress. A situation that is typically the result of that inner conflict between what we think we want and what we actually want.
