User talk:FT2/NLP draft (archive)

Main outline at User:FT2/NLP_new, discussion and snips here

Note that several sections contain "chunks" of material dropped in from other sources, or material not in its final place. Only those sections marked as DONE FOR NOW are in any form of reviewed condition. The rest is subject to large change and reworking. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 12:05, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Snips on aphorisms, to consider using

Taken from principles of NLP, and not included in current aphorisms list:

Behind every behavior is a positive intention

This is a model taken from Virginia Satir's belief system. It assumes that the current behaviour exhibited by a person represents the best choice available to them at the time. Generating alternatives from this point of view is thought by NLP proponents to be a useful way of helping people to change unwanted or undesirable behaviours.

The map is not the territory

It is considered crucially important when working with people to focus on the understanding that their beliefs about reality and their awareness of things (the "map") are not reality itself or everything they could be aware of ("the territory"). Put another way, NLP does not claim that one is working with reality, ie the "territory", but only ever with peoples subjective perceptions and beliefs about reality, ie some or other "map". (Main article: Map-territory relation)

Life and 'Mind' are Systemic Processes

Such systems tend to produce more complex behavior than simple linear processes, and looking from different vantage points may result in quite different – and yet equally valid – descriptions and emphasis of what is important in the system. (Example: the description of a business problem and what is seen as relevant will be quite different depending if you ask the CEO, a worker on strike, or a client). So it is considered important to gather a lot of information from multiple viewpoints to gain a full appreciation of the complexities involved, before intervening, and the same principle is believed true even when working with one individual person. (Main article: Complex systems)

Good NLP is 90% information gathering and testing, and 10% changework

Since NLP is the study of personal subjective reality, which is idiosyncratic, and human situations are systemic and complex, and the subject is not fully understood, NLP employs a heuristic and (in some ways) iterative approach, whereby a situation is explored without preconception rather than analyzed or categorized.

It is claimed by practitioners that a sufficient understanding and appropriate experience will often make clear how a situation can be better helped, even if this takes considerable time, and so a practitioner is continually trying an approach, observing feedback, forming hypotheses, and testing their understanding with the client. In the end, formal changework (ie, change techniques as opposed to exploratory techniques) is often a minor component compared to the benefit to the client through good exploration.

Note that the divide between exploration and formal change is an artificial one: good exploration will encourage spontaneous re-evaluation and change, and changework is valued and not considered a 'failure', even if it does not progress the situation, because it is still a valuable source of information.

Common aphorisms (snipped for use)

The following are some of the major principles and presuppositional aphorisms which are often considered foundational within NLP's approach to human interaction:

Perspectives

• The map is not the territory
  Whether or not there is an objective absolute "reality", individual people in fact do not in general have access to absolute knowledge of reality, but in fact only have access to a set of beliefs they have built up over time about reality. This in turn is limited (and may be misrepresented or misperceived) by their neural system and limited communication. As a result, human experience has a subjective rather than objective character. In NLP it is axiomatic that one can only ever work with peoples' subjective perceptions and beliefs about reality, ie some or other "map", with the aim of creating a better map. See: map-territory relation. Source: general semantics.
• People already have all the resources they need to succeed [or change]
  All people have a neurology, experience of life, and (subject to physiological pathology) the innate ability to change their perspective on any aspect of their life. In principle, if one person could find a way to feel happier in a situation, or perform a skill better, so could another, so the task is exploring ways to accomplish that.

Systemic view: -

People are not considered as linear processes, or in a simplistic cause-effect manner. They have a richness to them which no simple system can fully predict or capture. Heuristic and experiential approaches are considered more respectful than older (or psychoanalytical) "feature-interpretation" approaches.

• Life and 'Mind' are systemic processes
  Humans are complex systems and processes. Our bodies, our societies, and our planet form an ecology of complex systems and sub-systems all of which interact with and mutually influence each other. "Intuitively obvious" results are not always to be expected. Positive and negative feedback, leverage points, interpretational context, and other features of complex systems will come into play.
• NLP incorporates the body and the outside context, as well as the mind
  The body impacts on the mind, and the mind impacts on the body. Thought, emotional state, somatic awareness, perception, and body usage, as well as neurochemistry and other hormonal interactions, and external circumstances, are all profoundly interdependent and deeply connected, and any can influence or be influenced by another.
• Underlying structure (form) matters more than specific content
  The cognitive structure of a problem (how it is maintained, what type of beliefs are reinforcing it, how the client experiences and thinks about it) is more significant than the details of the specific situation in which it is embedded. Source: Psychology/cognitive linguistics.

Information and interpretation

• Behind every behavior is a positive intention
  This means that whatever a person does, they are in fact attempting to fulfill some positive intention (a technical term in NLP) of which they may not be aware. If they wish to make better choices, then it is helpful to understand and take into account ecologically, the subjective purrpose and function of the present behavior, even if it is considered dysfunctional. Source: Virginia Satir.
• There is no failure, only feedback
  NLP views communication in terms of competence and learning (or obstacles to these), rather than success and failure. It constantly utilizes skilled trial and error, and considers all actions as explorations rather than certainties, chosen to give the best chance of valuable learning and new focus. Experimentation focusses on the choice, rather than the outcome, and outcomes (of whatever kind) form the core of valuable lessons about how choices may impact on the world. Source: Cybernetics.
• The meaning of your communication is the response you get
  NLP's version of cultural relativism, whereby meaning is in the eye of the recipient. This is an "As-if" concept: it may not be literally true, it may be that the recipient is mistaken, but if a person works on the basis that the recipient's understanding matters important than enforcing their own preferred form of expression, if will lead them to communicate in a way that gets the actual message across and heard more often. Source: axiomatic in anthropology.
• Choice is better than no choice (and flexibility is the way one gets choice)
  In systems theory the part of the system that is most influential, and has best chance of achieving its goals, is often not the most forceful part, but the part that has least assumptions of "how it must be" and most flexibility in its responses. Source: systems theory.
• Multiple descriptions are better than one
  Because of the systemic nature of human life and society, often a person in a situation cannot see answers that a person standing outside can. So by exploring different ways of perceiving a situation, one can gather more useful understandings and develop more rounded views.
• There are no resistant clients; there are only incompetent (or less skilled) therapists
  So-called 'resistance' is a communication, providing information about a client's inner world and present model of reality. NLP does not believe in patient-blaming. In NLP's view, resistance to change is an unconscious communication saying "Not that way, this way!" Patients who do not change, are usually respecting some other need; the more competent the therapist, the more likely such needs can be identified and addressed in other more useful ways.

Working approaches

• NLP is generative
  It seeks to actively facilitate the generating of new ideas and perspectives, and to encourage ongoing exploration of previous beliefs about the self and one's innate capabilities.
• NLP is based upon distinctions in sensory observation
  Evidence of patterns and structures seen in others are always in principle both tangible and objectively visible. Thus "mind-reading" or supposition is not acceptable as a basis for 'belief', and tentative speculations and observations should be tested. Source: Grinder and Bandler.
• Good NLP is 90% information gathering and testing, and 10% changework
  People and their situations are highly variable, so information gathering, forming of hypotheses, testing, and backtracking, are the most important aspects of NLP. In the end, formal change techniques (as opposed to exploratory techniques) are often a minor component compared to the benefit of skillful guided exploration.
• Everyone is different, always check, never assume a pattern is universal
  No one model, solution or approach fits all people. The internal structuring, or organizing, of personal experience is exceptionally idiosyncratic and highly unique to each individual. All assumptions about internal strategies and applicability of common NLP models must be verified by testing and behavioral observation.
• Use whatever works
  A cybernetics principle of utilization and flexibility, and an admonition to the practitioner not to disparage simple and practical solutions or to insist on following a formal method when directness or some serendepitious shortcut would suffice. Source: Milton Erickson.
• If something can be done effectively and ecologically in ten minutes, don't spend an hour doing it
  NLP follows its founder models in seeking brief therapy and brief (or strategic) intervention. It consider it poor practice to require ongoing therapy when a shorter more direct approach would achieve the full desired long term benefit and respect major secondary gains as judged by the clients self-reporting.

Other

• If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got. Sometimes worded: "If what you are doing isn't working, try something [anything] else"
  NLP views goals as rich subjects to explore, and the principle of constantly back-tracking to find better solutions and approaches is inherent in the methodology. Applies both to 'client' (to cease trying proven failed approaches), and to the practitioner (to always explore new and possibly better ways of working).
• Conscious understanding is not always needed
  Effective change and/or learning are emphasised over and above 'understanding'. Change does not always require interpretation and analysis, it requires development of ones map of beliefs about the world and oneself, so that what was previously inaccessible becomes possible, and this can be effected in many ways. Source: Milton Erickson.

Other snips

• The NLP model of Milton Erickson covers linguistics, regression, observation, metaphor, non-verbal communication, utilization and many other techniques (of which the "Milton Model" is one component part). Milton Erickson wrote of NLP's modelling methodology and its results: "Although this book by Richard Bandler and John Grinder is far from being a complete description of my methodologies, as they so clearly state, it is a much better explanation of how I work than I, myself, can give. I know what I do, but to explain how I do it is much too difficult for me." (The Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H. Erickson M.D., preface). These models are the backbone and an integral underpinning within almost every aspect of modern clinical hypnotherapeutic practice.