What is NLP?
What Neuro-Linguistic Programming is depends on who/where you learn it from.
Richard Bandler who has arguably created most of NLP calls it 'a study into excellence and how anyone can replicate it.' I would define it similarly as: how to find out what works and get it working for you.
Most of NLP is about how our neurology affects our subjective experience and vice versa.
It is completely unregulated but there are some common beliefs adopted by NLPers called the Presuppositions of NLP. These beliefs are not meant to be true. They are meant to lead to useful results in most situations.
NLPers describe our subjective experience in terms of models similar to those you might find in Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy. In NLP, a model is a functional description of what we do and how we do it. NLPers find out how the different variables in these models link together to produce specific results, and how we can replicate someone else's model in order to get better results
It originally became popular through effective therapy. Before NLP, therapists were born and nobody ever knew how they did what they did. NLP allowed the results of the best therapists to be replicated by anyone, by simply:
1. Finding the best therapists.
2. Finding out what they commonly do that others don't do.
3. If you can't yet replicate their results, go back to #2 and find out
what you missed.
God knows why no-one else thought of this.
NLP potentially impacts everything we do. It's also very popular in business, politics, sports coaching, law, sales and marketing (ie anything involving acquiring money or power - that's human nature for you...)
Some early attempts to scientifically validate NLP failed, plus the creators
spent most of their time criticising those who most needed it ;)
So it remained a niche product (about 5 million practitioners) yet those
fields where there is a genuine desire to excel are gradually being transformed
by NLP without any mention of it.
There are three or so differences that distinguish NLP from other new-age
fields:
1. Hypnosis. We KNOW we use it & we love it.
2. Precision. We have systematic ways of measuring consciousness. We can
predict what will work best for each situation.
3. The only real dogma in NLP is "Do what's most useful". Everything
else is a potential way of achieving this. While some people merely parrot
the old books, and some force their own agenda, that which works best survives
the long-term.
In time, NLP may be recognised as the third area of human investigtion alongside science and spirituality.
Science - for things which can be measured objectively.
NLP - for things which can be measured subjectively.
Spirituality - for things which can't be measured at all.
Some marketers of NLP argue that what they're trying to sell isn't NLP. That's a bit like claiming a Dyson isn't just a vacuum cleaner. But one of the most useful aspects of NLP is giving you common sense ways to evaluate other methodologies as well as itself.
NLP is about continuing to be unreasonably curious about how we can make people's lives better.