Neuro is all about what we think – or our thoughts.
Neuro means ‘what goes on inside our heads! We have over 60,000 thoughts a day. These form our internal world of pictures, sounds and feelings. It is these conversations, dialogues or arguments we have with ourselves in our thinking process that drives how we feel, our mood and ultimately how we respond to events. In NLP terms, these are called our internal representations.
The critical point to realise is that we can control our thoughts. This is very important because how we feel, how we behave and ultimately, the results we get are driven by combinations of these internal representations which form our repeating patterns or habits. We run these patterns or habits over and over again unless they are interrupted or redirected. Sometimes, these patterns serve us well but often they sabotage our potential success.
Linguistic is all about what we say, both verbally and non-verbally.
Language determines how we communicate with other people and ourselves. It is how we label our experiences and much more. Empowering language generates empowered behaviour. Likewise, negative language, such as excuses is the result of disempowering thoughts and often happens without us realising it. It’s negative language that limits our choices.
Programming is all about what we do.
We are all running programs in our minds, all of the time. These programs, patterns of behaviour and strategies drive the way we behave our performance and ultimately our results. A phobia is a good example of how the brain works. A particular situation or trigger, such as flying, produces a strong physical response (Sweaty palms, fast breathing, panic etc). The brain learns quickly and thereafter, every time the person is presented with the same stimulus, their body knows to have the same response. The amazing thing is, people with phobias never forget to have this response. This is the perfect one-time learning strategy! Often, as with phobias, you run strategies that do not serve you – they even sabotage you. NLP teaches us how to change these ineffective strategies or programmes forever.
To bring it all together, Neuro Linguistic Programming symbolises the relationship between the brain, language and the body.
