Neuro Linguistic Programming aka NLP – REAL or Fantasy?
Is NLP real?
That’s a good question and a lot of people when they read about NLP think that it’s impossible that making some small changes in how you use your mind and body can have such a profound impact. And then there are other people who are complete believers and believe everything in NLP is real. They focus on the power of NLP techniques and believe everything can be solved with a step 1, 2, 3 approach. Both have valid experiences that support their perspective.
From my own point of view NLP isn’t a thing. When people ask “is NLP real?”, they speak about it as if it were a thing. Yet NLP doesn’t exist per se as an object. NLP is an acronym, it stands for Neuro-linguistic Programming. It was made up by Dr. Richard Bandler and John Grinder. And from that it spawned an entire field… a personal change or transformation technology.
So when people ask is NLP real? It’s really the processes to which it refers to and the community of practitioners within NLP that really influence what people do with NLP.
For many that will be a focus on using the techniques of NLP, on themselves, to create a better qualify of life.
For me, I treat NLP as a tool-set, an operating system that you use on yourself on goingly and with clients to create lasting changes.
Can it create amazing results? Absolutely. In the hands of a skilled NLP practitioner, NLP can be used to create profound results for yourself or others.
In the 70s and 80s when NLP first became more popularized, it’s biggest claim to fame, at the time, was the fact that up until that point, the ability of psychotherapists and others to remove phobias typically involved many years… between three, five, seven years or more of one-to-one client therapy work. And when NLP came along familiarized again by Dr. Bander, John Grinder, Tony Robbins, and various other people early proponents, it became known as being able to remove a phobia in less than 1 hour. And for professionals and clients that kind of results was seen as magic (although many at first were highly skeptical – as is the nature with all progress).
So if you are wondering is NLP real? To quote Morphis from the hit moie the matrix:
“How do you define real? If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”
Perhaps a better question to ask is does the technology work for most people? Can it get to results?
The answer to that is yes, in my experience.
Of course not everybody will get the same results, not everybody is of the same skill and has had similar experiences, and not all problems can be magiced away instantly by using NLP techniques. That kind of fantasy thinking is for the most part an illusion. However it can get great results very quickly – in comparison to conventional approaches.
NLP can do phenomenal things and if you’re around people who are exceptional in using the tool-set, then you can see some amazing results happen.
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