Shlomo Vaknin's Blog, page 8

Congruency: Getting NLP

Congruence is a major concept and concern in NLP. It is a gateway into the spirit of NLP. People are congruent when their body language says the same things as their words. They are congruent when they are practicing what they preach.  This means that a person who benefits from NLP develops a personality and […]

NLP Today

“If you steal from one author it”s plagiarism; if you steal from many it”s research.”- Wilson Mizner Much of NLP training and writing today resembles the early formulation of NLP. Over time, patterns and ideas have been added, but this is mostly window dressing when compared to the core of NLP that first developed. Some […]

Research on NLP

“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”- Albert Einstein The anarchic nature of NLP does not lend it to research, and there is no substantial body of research that tests the effectiveness of NLP. However, there are studies that look at aspects of NLP. They […]

The Heart of NLP?

“Do not repeat anything you will not sign your name to.”- Author Unknown By 1976, they added the concepts of non-verbal information (communication that takes place subconsciously) and representational systems (the ways our thoughts are made up of our senses). These concepts were used to model people, as well as in developing patterns for intervention. […]

Drawing from Great Minds

“Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.”- Albert Einstein Linguistics NLP drew a great deal from linguistics. Because NLP got its start with a very psychological perspective, an important aspect of linguistics in NLP has to do with how […]

A Brief History of NLP

“Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.”- Edward R. Murrow Lack of Proper Definition NLP is difficult to define, because it takes on different forms, depending upon how you are exposed to it. This lesson will help you understand NLP by providing a brief history that puts the main ideas into context. Although NLP has […]

Free Audiobook: NLP for Beginners

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter […]

What people should be aware of

As you make progress in expanding your ability to change your internal experience, and therefor your automatic thoughts, habits, actions and their results in reality, you need to remember to always consider the Ecology of these changes. What does the word Ecology mean to you?

Here’s an example of Ecology in the world of NLP. Submitted for your approval is Ben, a husband with a loving wife and three children, who repairs automobiles for a living.  Ben lives adequately, but he would like more of a disposable income.  One day, his supervisor announces in a group meeting that there would be a plethora of overtime opportunities over the summer.  Of course, he signs up for as many as possible, and, when he receives his first paycheck with that overtime, he is delighted.  However, he also notices other things as well.  Namely, two of his youngest children have become more distant from him.  Those two long for the days they could have spent lazy afternoons with their father.  By the end of summer, Ben wonders whether the change in his work schedule has been worth it in the end.  What Ben has come to ponder is the ecology of the situation.

A human system does not necessarily optimally adjust to a change in it, just like the human body may suffer side-effects from a change in prescription.  A human system includes professional relationships, but it also includes familial relationships as well.  It felt to two of Ben’s children that he was neglecting the latter.  This is an example of external ecology, which is concerned with human systems that consist of other people. What examples of external ecology can you give, from your own life?

However. you could also have examples of internal ecology, which is concerned with whether a person’s action feels right to himself or herself.  For example, before signing up for those opportunities, Ben might have felt conflicted over whether he would have been able to survive the increased workload or not.  He also might have felt as though these opportunities just were not for him. What examples of internal ecology can you give, from your own life?

NLP makes no overtones as to whether someone should make a change or not.  What it does assert, on the other hand, is that people should be aware of ecological considerations.  It is up to the individual to do a risk-benefit analysis over whether an action is worth it, but he or she should do so before committing to the change, not after it, like Ben. How do you think Ben could have ‘checked the ecology’ of his choices ahead of time?

Mental states are kind of like a smart cupboard

You’ve heard the expression “state of mind.” A state is the sum total of everything about you at a given time. You can sum up a state as being distraught, joyful, excited, or any other emotion.

While a state is your overall condition, a mind state is your mental condition; the emotions and thoughts you are experiencing; the clarity of your mind; the mental resources that you can access with the greatest ease.

A state contains more than emotion. States tend to make certain abilities more accessible. Think creatively about a problem, and you cultivate a creative state; your creative resources come into play. Psychology uses the word “kindling” to describe how a resource sort of catches fire from this kind of activation encouraging it to come fully into action.

Mental states are kind of like a smart cupboard. What if, when it was time for breakfast, you could open your cupboard and all the breakfast items were in the front. Then, for dinner, you open the cupboard and all the dinner items are up front. That is how states affect our minds. In one state, romantic ideas and strategies are most accessible. In another, there is the potential to strike out and plot revenge. In yet another, there are all the strategies for office politics, making nice, and making sure your boss knows how productive and valuable you are. Preparing the mind to be in the right state, or even the wrong state, is called priming in psychology.

Since people can be stuck in a dysfunctional state, NLP has techniques to stop these states so that the person can move into a more appropriate state. NLP calls this “breaking state”. It resembles what people try to do when they say, “Snap out of it.” NLP processes use breaking state, as you will experience first-hand during this training.

To create a personal change, you have to produce the right state, so obviously you have to know what state you are in to begin with. You can size up your own state much like you would when you size up someone else. What does your body language show? Does your voice show stress? What kind of excitement or boredom does your voice give off? How tense or relaxed are you? Of course, you can go into your mind and emotions as well. What are your impulses? What is the overall tone and theme of your thoughts? What emotions are running through you? 

Here is a little experiment for recognizing your current state. Take a few moments to think of all these things, and to scan your body with your mind for all the feelings that you are having right now… Then, ask your mind to come up with a word or phrase that sums it all up. Let a few ideas come through, and then pick the one that you feel best captures the state that you are in right now…

The mechanism of mental states—the mental machinery by means of which we feel, think, and will—consists of the brain, nervous system, and the organs of sense. We have already reviewed these parts in the beginning of the course. 

Let’s take another look at perceptual positions, another major topic in NLP which you ought to master. One of our first lessons about the world is that not everyone shares our perspective. Anyone with siblings would understand that acutely.  It is so basic, and yet people have so much difficulty looking at a subject from another person’s point of view.  Nevertheless, that skill is crucial in many facets of life, especially conflict resolution.

NLP recognizes this and distinguishes three perspectives or positions.  We shall also present two new positions that have been proposed in NLP literature.  Let us assume you are having a debate with another person.

The first position is that of self-reference.  It is simply your point of view of the world.

The second position is that of other-reference.  It is your attempt at seeing the world from your opponent’s point of view.  In that sense, you also see how he or she sees you.  In a debate, you additionally consider what beliefs he or she holds underlie the disagreement between the two of you.

The third position is that of dissociation.  Imagine a scientist, adorned in a lab coat, observing the two of you battle it out.  What would the scientist think after considering your perspective and your opponent’s perspective?  This is where ecology would come into play, as the objective observer, which in this case is the scientist, considers not only your desired outcome but your opponent’s as well.

That being said, NLP issues a note of caution.  You want to form a balance between these three positions.  If you lean too far into first position, you become egotistical.  If you lean too far into second position, you become too submissive to the wills of other people.  Finally, if you lean too far into third position, you become too cold and distant.  Balance all three, however, and you open your world to more choices as to how you want to approach the situation.

There are also two new perspectives that have been proposed more recently. The fourth position is systematic.  It steps even further away from third position and looks at you, your opponent, and the objective observer as a human system that itself has ecological considerations.  For example, let us say the objective observer is a judge this time.  Regardless of the person who wins from the perspective of the judge, in fourth position, you may not want one person to win too strongly, or else the loser may never want to debate the winner in the future,  Fourth position tries to see what the optimization parameters are for the human system at hand.

In culmination, the fifth position is universal.  It attempts to view the world from the most abstract perspective, which is every possible point of view.

Regardless of whether you find the fourth or fifth positions necessary or convincing, the first three perspectives are invaluable in finding not just the value of the people around you, but the value of yourself.

See it, hear it, taste it, feel it, smell it.

Rep (Representational) systems and sub-modalities are at the core of NLP, so let’s review and expand this topic: A rep system is how we perceive what comes in through our senses. We may see it, hear it, taste it, feel it, or even smell it. Whatever it is, we call it INFORMATION. The reason we call it information is that your brain interprets and uses it. If breakfast is burning, your first warning is the smell. The smell is information.

The beauty of rep systems is that they go way beyond how things get into your brain. You can recall and think about your experiences, and create new ones, with the power of your mind. Another phrase for rep system is sense modality.

Rep systems are valuable because they are the way our experiences are coded. They are the DNA of our thoughts and behavior. They are where it all comes from. We encode or absorb our experiences and ideas with rep systems. We call up this information through our rep systems. This is called accessing or retrieving the information. It isn’t always obvious.

Ask someone how they know something or why they did something, and they will give you a pretty limited answer. Most people will tell you that they just “know” something, or “felt” like it. But advertisers don’t spend millions of dollars figuring out exactly which sounds and images to put into a television commercial just for the fun of it. And manufacturers don’t spend millions on designing just the right shape, color, and smells of products and logos for their egos. It’s all about representational systems, and how they are loaded with meaning and motivation.

By decoding the rep systems of successful people, you can get access to secrets that have taken many years or generations to acquire. By decoding the rep systems of someone who is failing, you can become much more valuable as a success resource.

You can use rep systems to really change how you and other people react to situations. With an understanding of rep systems you can even create new techniques, because rep systems help you analyze the strategies of excellent people. You can look at each of their rep systems and see what is going on. Sometimes this is all it takes to create a system for excellence that you can use or teach.

The rep systems include our five senses. Here are the three main ones. They are what we see (called the visual rep system), what we hear (called the auditory rep system), what we feel (called the kinesthetic rep system). The other two senses may be needed at times. They are what we taste (the gustatory rep system), and what we smell (the olfactory rep system).

There are two factors that give rep systems great value in understanding and achieving excellence. The first is how we talk to ourselves, or hear what others have said. We call this the auditory digital rep system. The other valuable factor is to know which rep system a person favors. That is, which rep system do they rely upon most of the time. This is called the Preferred Rep System. Once you know what their preferred rep system is, you can make a better connection by using that rep system more.

The way a person sequences and selects rep systems is a strategy. There is a rep system strategy for everything we do. By becoming aware of this, we gain extraordinary flexibility and latitude for creating better strategies. One reason for this is that rep systems are so basic, that they afford us great leverage to influence the resulting behaviors AND the results in our lives.

The place to start is to learn what rep system the person is relying on the most at any point in time. You can use this rep system to have more influence and connection with the person. People will tell you what rep system they are using without even knowing it. The secret is in their words. If they talk about how things look, what they saw, colors, and other visual words, they are thinking in pictures quite a bit. They are mostly using their visual rep system. So that is their preferred rep system. If they talk about what they hear, how things sound, how loud they are, and other auditory words, they are emphasizing their auditory system. It is the same thing for feelings. If they sense that someone is dishonest, and have a gut feeling about what stock to buy, they are mostly accessing feelings. That is, they are in their kinesthetic rep system.

Years ago in the U.S., a conservative politician named Barry Goldwater used a kinesthetic phrase in his advertising: “In your heart, you know he’s right.” That’s pretty funny, because by the time he was campaigning, everybody knew that your heart pumps blood, and your brain knows things. But when people have strong feelings about something, they think they know it. This fact has been used by politicians throughout history. But Goldwater lost his 1964 bid for the presidency of the U.S., because the liberals used even more powerful feelings and images involving fear of nuclear weapons and grief over the Kennedy assassination. When Hitler was creating his speeches, he spent a good deal of time learning what got the crowds really excited. Of course, we’d like you to use rep systems to do good things, not to invade sovereign nations and sport a bad haircut.

Here’s another example: Let’s say you want to sell me a vacation package. Listen to this, and ask yourself what rep system I’m using. “I just don’t SEE how I can afford to take a vacation.” You heard the word see, as in visual. I can’t SEE how I’ll afford it.

Most people use the visual rep system more than the other two main ones, hearing and feeling.

This tells you that you must create pictures in my head of your wonderful vacation package. You know that pictures will especially help to influence me. But consider the internal aspect of seeing. I can’t see it because my concern about finances won’t let me see it. So when you talk financing, that is the most important point for the visual rep system. Show me how I’m locking in value while the cost will increase for everyone else. Show me a graph. Show me big, simple numbers. Make me see other people missing out and being jealous of me. Before long, I could be seeing a whole new opportunity.

Now let’s say my wife is there, and she has a great influence over my buying decisions, or maybe total influence. Listen for her rep system. “Honey, I’m UNCOMFORTABLE with us committing to something when your work is so FEAST or FAMINE.” This wife of mine is all about feelings. No wonder she lights up the room. Uncomfortable, feast, famine… When you’re coming up with things to influence her with, you’d better touch her feelings. She needs to think about how she’ll feel finally having some quality time with her feast or famine husband. On our vacation, she can look forward to sunshine, warm sand, and the plush beds and carpeting of the air-conditioned resort.

Did you notice which of those things were not from an external sense? Warm sand affects your senses through your feet. But where does the feeling of quality alone time come from? Inside! Hey, remember feast or famine. You’d better tell her about the amazing food. This is a huge lesson for influencing with rep systems. You should appeal to the internal sources as well as external. In fact, the internal sources may be many times more powerful than the external ones. This is because they are often about motivations and values.

NLP uses the term predicates for the clue words that tell you what rep system someone is using. Predicates, as you have seen, are words like see, hear, and feel. Predicates are not always so obvious, though. If I tell you I’m CERTAIN, I might be in the auditory digital mode. That’s the one where my internal talk is very dominant. But what if I not only tell you I’m so CERTAIN, but I also gesture forcefully with my fist. In that case, I’m telling you I FEEL strongly about it. Instead of knowing I’m right in my head, I know it in my heart; I FEEL it, and I want you to FEEL it, too. Are you with me, or against me? Feelings make choices very simple. So they can make your job simple. 

Body language can be very important. If someone cocks their head and looks kind of skeptical, that’s a sign that they aren’t hearing things that they can agree with. They may be taking apart what you said in their own heads, because you weren’t being analytical or logical enough for them. In that case, you need to build more trust so they can get into the feelings or images, or you need to offer up your most compelling evidence, that is, the facts that show that you are right. And keep working on building that trust. You don’t need to drop the other sense modalities, but you need to deliver the facts.

One of the Presuppositions of NLP is that we process all information through our senses.  In popular belief, our senses are seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting.  Contemporary research suggests that there are more senses than that, but here we only consider those five.  In NLP, another name for the senses is representational systems.

This nomenclature is not superfluous.  Information must be processed through at least one of the five senses.  If pictures are processed visually, then they should also be encoded and recalled as pictures or visuals in our internal representations.  That is why the senses are synonymous with representational systems: the format of the input should be the same as the format of the output.

If sounds are processed auditorily, they should be encoded and recalled as sounds or noises.  If somebody did not particularly focus on a sound, that sound might end up being more like white noise in the memory.  If feelings are proceeded kinesthetically, they should be encoded or recalled as sensations or feelings.  That being said, although these principles apply to smelling and tasting as well, their applications are not as prevalent as the other two senses, so we consider only the three aforementioned representational systems.  In addition, in a subsequent chapter, we shall be discussing synesthesia, which is the mixing of representational systems.  Those cases are the exception.  This roughly one-to-one correspondence is the general rule.

It turns out that sixty percent of Americans primarily process information visually, twenty percent of Americans primarily process information auditorily, and another twenty percent of Americans primarily process information kinesthetically.  These tendencies are not dormant.  They manifest themselves in our daily lives.  How so?  According to NLP, they manifest themselves in our words.  Matching someone’s visual, auditory, or kinesthetic way of thinking with your own words is a technique for establishing rapport.  On the other hand, mismatching them could create dissonance. For example, imagine a wife saying to her husband, “Honey, can you see us going to the club tomorrow?  I really like what I saw at the club.  The people appeared so friendly.  And I’d just like to describe the speaker as a picture of perfection.  Don’t you think so?”  Notice how many times she uses some form of the verb “to see”.

Now, imagine the husband responding, “Honey, I hear you loud and clear.  We are totally on the same wavelength here.  There was a crescendo of magnificence from beginning to end.”  Although the husband is clearly adept at using metaphors, his response may not have been optimal at establishing rapport with his wife.  His verbs, adjectives, and metaphors all relate to sound.  It may very well be that the wife primarily processes information visually, whereas the husband primarily processes information auditorily, but, if the husband is aware of the effect of representational systems on rapport, he may want to tweak his response to match his wife’s way of thinking more.

He could instead say, “Yes, I can absolutely see us at the club tomorrow.  The people not only appeared friendly.  They actually showed us their good will throughout the night.  I also found speaker’s presentation attractive.”

In this case, the husband communicates the same content to his wife, but in a different manner.  If you want to establish rapport, giving people back their words make them think you are one of them, and people tend to like people who act and think like them.  Representational systems illustrates something fundamental not only in people’s words but in their minds.Keep in mind that people may change their primary rep system depending on the subject or context, or even the exact point of the conversation they are in. So don’t think people have only one rep system. Be flexible and follow them into different rep systems. Also, it’s good to appeal to all rep systems, at times, during your discussion. 

In psychology, there is a thing called Neurological recruitment. This big phrase means that the more brain cells you can get to think about something, the more powerful it is. If you’re in an airplane, you want ALL the engines firing. Using more rep systems means you are influencing with more power. Emphasize them one at a time, but use all of the three primary ones: seeing, feeling, and hearing.

Another word for a rep system is a modality. You could say that sub-modalities are the building blocks of each sense modality / representational system. For example, imagine looking at a tree. Now how clear or fuzzy was the image? How bright or dark? How colorful was it? Since I asked you to look at the tree, we were using the visual rep system. The sub-modalities were clarity, brightness and color saturation.

Let’s try it with the auditory rep system. Imagine listening to the birds in the tree. How loud did the birds sound to you? How clear was the sound? Were they high pitched? Was the sound soothing?

In a way, you can use the same sub-modality to analyze more than one representational system. When someone says colors are loud, they don’t mean that the colors make a sound, they mean they are more dominating and bright, maybe too much so. When someone says a sound is sharp, they don’t mean you can cut with it, they mean it’s edgy, maybe even irritating. When someone says they feel blue, they don’t mean their skin is turning blue. They mean they are sad or maybe depressed.

Let’s do some kinesthetic sub-modalities. How do you feel about looking at the tree and listening to the birds? It is relaxing? Are you uncomfortable, because the exercise feels like work? Is it uplifting? Notice that we have made a really big change here. I could have asked you to imagine a breeze touching your skin, but instead, I asked for your internal reaction to the tree and birds. Both are kinesthetic, but this time we went for something that springs from you rather than touches you directly. When you tune into your emotions and your body, you notice things like a nerve center firing off feelings, or tension, or relaxation, or blushing. Together, these and many other sensations blend into an emotion, like attraction, feeling like dancing, romance, sexual arousal, or stress; but hopefully without the stress.

When a sub-modality is digital, what we really mean is that it contains information expressed using known symbols. You can take words that you have heard, and write them. Now they are visual. Put them in Braille. Now they are kinesthetic, if you know Braille, anyway. Put them on a giant billboard in Times Square, and you have added the size sub-modality. Light them up and you have added the brightness sub-modality. All those other sub-modalities were analogue. In other words, you can scale them up or down or in some other way, and they are still the same basic sound, sight or feeling. But if you take that billboard and add a bunch of letters to it, the digital message will not be the same. Make a red light brighter, it’s still a red light. Add fifty letters at random to your marketing slogan, and it doesn’t mean anything anymore. 

It’s easy to break a digital modality. But you can scale analog modalities a lot before you can no longer perceive them effectively. For example, you’d have to make a color so bright that it is blinding, or so dark that it is invisible. It is important to choose the right digital sub-modality. For example, we don’t recommend tasting Morse code. It would be very slow to get a message from caramel, strawberry… strawberry, caramel, strawberry, strawberry… Strawberry, caramel, caramel, strawberry. That was NLP in Morse code, and it was slow just saying the flavors, much less tasting them. I suppose it could be fun, though, even if you don’t know Morse code.