Chances are if you work in communications of any sort that you’re familiar with Neuro Linguistic Programming, even if you don’t know it.
Although it’s largely come to be considered a pseudoscience/new age path to enlightenment, NLP has also dug itself into many business-related fields. Marketing, management and sales seem to be the most consistent applications of NLP, having been largely abandoned by psychiatric professionals. However, certain practices in NLP are also still applied by some hypnotherapists.
So what is Neuro Linguistic Programming?
Essentially, NLP means what its name would suggest. You’re using words to reprogram a person’s brain. This is theoretically done by asking leading questions that will lead the subject to create and orient themselves to a subjective model of experienced sensory perception.
This is essentially a complicated way of saying we experience everything through our five senses. And if one can manipulate the way a person feels about those sensory experiences then one will also manipulate the subject’s perception of reality. If this sounds horribly manipulative to you, that’s because it is. But this is also what makes it an applicable idea by way of sales or marketing, in spite of the fact that the results are rarely as grandiose as the idea itself.
To further help you conceptualize NLP and what that may actually look like, imagine a man who is trying to quit smoking is asking you to program him to quit. In a more therapeutic setting, where the subject is a willing participant, you could simply ask him to pretend that he has already quit smoking. You would then reinforce his orientation to that headspace by asking leading questions. Practitioners of NLP call this “modeling.”
Examples of modeling in this particular scenario would be questions like: “How long ago did you quit smoking?” “What was your least favorite thing about when you used to smoke?” “Why did you decide to quit smoking?” These questions help the subject to visualize, understand and become oriented to a world where they no longer smoke.
There is one story of a man who was successfully programmed not only to quit smoking, but also to forget that he had ever been a smoker at all. However, the creators of NLP, John Grinder and Carmen Bostic St Clair claimed that NLP was capable of doing a litany of absolutely ridiculous things such as curing the common cold or near-sightedness.
In theory it does make sense and it’s tempting to not just brush NLP off given everything that it promises. Still, there is no denying that it does regularly fall wildly short. Its actual utility value and application have manifested in quite a few ways due to the lack of any sort of central authority or official certifying organizations governing practitioners of NLP.
In essence, anyone can deem themselves a master of NLP. Subsequently, several varying interpretations and applications have been formed. This is how NLP eventually came to be regarded by some as a path to enlightenment, the idea being that we can program ourselves and each other to unlock our true potential.
Whether you find this to be hilarious, or just plain confusing, you’re probably more involved with NLP than you think you are. Several business and government positions have NLP worked into their training curriculum, often times being applied rather than taught (or both) to the trainee.
While the jury is still out on the merits of NLP, I don’t think anyone is holding their breath. The truth is that NLP as a practice has become so varied that whatever efficacy it may have is directly relative to the skill and insight of the practitioner.
As far as your favorite bloggers personal thoughts on NLP go, we’ve always known that the human mind can be fickle. If certain practices within the spectrum of NLP actually are effective it would not come as a great surprise. It would also not be surprising, however, if these practices are few and far between.
In spite of all this, a slew of even the most unfounded practices rooted in NLP continue to influence people and this, again, is not surprising. We’ve all known since 1977 that Jedi mind tricks can have a strong influence over the weak-minded.