What Is NLP?

It’s NLP Practitioner time of year
The back-to-school season seems to stimulate our drive for learning and advancing our careers, relationships and personal lives.  At Innergize, interest always peaks for the fall certification, spread easily over one long weekend in September, October and November.

What is NLP?
So I had a call the other day … and the caller wanted to know “what is NLP really?” Seems his friends and perhaps even my web site (oops!) had left him interested but also a little confused. Humm. 

A better question?
One of the least easy things for NLP practitioners to do is explain what it is in 25 words or less.  The elevator speech doesn’t come easy. After 14 years of working on it, ten as a certified trainer of NLP, I humbly offer the explanation that follows. For me, a better questions might be ‘what are the real real reasons NLP will work’ in your life.  

It all boils down to one word–Practice!
NLP is the practice of experiencing the world from multiple perspectives, to expand, enrich and provoke more choice, control and success.  
It includes tools for:

• Achieving efficient, effective communications,
• Creating more resourceful habits, beliefs and behaviours and …
• Modeling (think reverse engineering) experts, so others can replicate their mental and physical strategies to achieve similar results.

With these kinds of tools, the applications are almost unbelievably broad. And that’s where I think we fall down as practitioners. We simply overwhelm people with choices and possibilities. Read on and you’ll see what I mean.

NLP has applications for business, education, parenting, sports and health. It can be used to improve performance virtually anywhere people are involved.

NLP at work
For business, NLP can improve job-fit, teach soft skills and develop emotional intelligence.  There are applications for coaching, managing and leading, marketing research and sales.  Modeling can accelerate the transfer of skill mastery and excellence from one person to another.

More rewards
Most people take the Practitioner class because they are attracted to specific tools.  Those who enjoy the most success with NLP persistently practice experiencing the world from different perspectives.  And then you’ll discover NLP offers so much more–a way of building resiliency and thriving in our changing world!

Advertisement