Introducing NLP: Psychological Skills for Understanding and Influencing People (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) - Softcover

O'Connor, Joseph; Seymour, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1573244988 ISBN 13: 9781573244985

Verlag: RED WHEEL/WEISER, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

Some people appear more gifted than others. NLP, one of the fastest growing developments in applied psychology, describes in simple terms what they do differently, and enables you to learn these patterns of excellence.

This book offers the practical skills used by outstanding communicators. Excellent communication is the basis of creating excellent results. NLP skills are proving invaluable for personal development and professional excellence in counseling, education and business.

Introducing NLP includes:

• How to create rapport with others
• Influencing skills
• Understanding and using body language
• How to think about and achieve the results you want
• The art of asking key questions
• Effective meetings, negotiations, and selling
• Accelerated learning strategies.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Joseph O'Connor is a leading international NLP trainer, writer and consultant. He is the author of seventeen books including the bestselling Introducing NLP and Leading with NLP. His books have been translated into thirty languages and have sold over half a million copies worldwide. O'Connor is the director and cofounder of Lambent, an International Training and Consulting company based in Sao Paulo and London.

John Seymour is a psychologist and NLP trainer, founder of John Seymour Associates, the longest established NLP training center in Britain. He is also an Associate Tutor at the Further Education Staff College.

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Introducing NLP

Psychological Skills for Understanding and Influencing People

By Joseph O'Connor, John Seymour

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

Copyright © 1990 Joseph O'Connor and John Seymour
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-57324-498-5

Contents

Foreword by Robert Dilts, 
Preface by John Grinder, 
Introduction, 
Introduction to the Second Edition, 
CHAPTER 1, 
CHAPTER 2, 
CHAPTER 3, 
CHAPTER 4, 
CHAPTER 5, 
CHAPTER 6, 
CHAPTER 7, 
CHAPTER 8, 
CHAPTER 9, 
EPILOGUE, 
REFERENCE SECTION, 
Investing in Yourself, 
Choosing NLP Training, 
NLP Organizations Worldwide, 
A Guide to NLP Books, 
NLP Resources Guide, 
NLP Glossary, 
Index, 
About the Authors and Business Consultancy Services, 

CHAPTER 1

WHAT IS NEURO-LINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING?

As I sat wondering how to begin this book, I remembered meeting a friend a fewdays before. We had not seen each other for some time, and after the usualgreetings, he asked me what I was doing. I said I was writing a book.

"Great!" he said. "What is it about?"

Without thinking, I replied, "Neuro-Linguistic Programming".

There was a short but meaningful silence. "Same to you", he said. "How's thefamily?"

In a sense my answer was both right and wrong. If I had wanted a conversationstopper, it worked perfectly. This book does deal with a way of thinking aboutideas and people that goes by the label of Neuro-Linguistic Programming.However, my friend wanted to know what I was doing in a way he could understandand share with me. And he could not relate my reply to anything he knew about. Iknew what I meant, but I did not put it in a way he could understand. My replydid not answer his real question.

What then is NLP? What are the ideas behind the label? The next time someoneasked me what the book was about, I said it was about a way of studying howpeople excel in any field and teaching these patterns to others.

NLP is the art and science of personal excellence. Art because everyone bringstheir unique personality and style to what they do, and this can never becaptured in words or techniques. Science because there is a method and processfor discovering the patterns used by outstanding individuals in any field toachieve outstanding results. This process is called modeling, and the patterns,skills, and techniques so discovered are being used increasingly in counseling,education and business for more effective communication, personal development,and accelerated learning.

Have you ever done something so elegantly and effectively that it took yourbreath away? Have you had times when you were really delighted at what you didand wondered how you did it? NLP shows you how to understand and model your ownsuccesses, so that you can have many more of those moments. It is a way ofdiscovering and unfolding your personal genius, a way of bringing out the bestin yourself and others.

NLP is a practical skill that creates the results we truly want in the worldwhile creating value for others in the process. It is the study of what makesthe difference between the excellent and the average. It also leaves behind atrail of extremely effective techniques for education, counseling, business, andtherapy.

SANTA CRUZ, CALIFORNIA 1972

NLP started in the early seventies from the collaboration of John Grinder, whowas then an Assistant Professor of linguistics at the University of California,Santa Cruz, and Richard Bandler, who was a student of psychology at theuniversity. Richard Bandler was also very interested in psychotherapy. Togetherthey studied three top therapists: Fritz Perls, the innovative psychotherapistand originator of the school of therapy known as Gestalt, Virginia Satir, theextraordinary family therapist, who consistently was able to resolve difficultfamily relationships that many other therapists found intractable, and MiltonErickson, the world-famous hypnotherapist.

Bandler and Grinder did not intend to start a new school of therapy, but toidentify patterns used by outstanding therapists, and pass them on to others.They did not concern themselves with theories; they produced models ofsuccessful therapy that worked in practice and could be taught. The threetherapists they modelled were very different personalities, yet they usedsurprisingly similar underlying patterns. Bandler and Grinder took thesepatterns, refined them, and built an elegant model which can be used foreffective communication, personal change, accelerated learning, and, of course,greater enjoyment of life. They set down their initial discoveries in fourbooks, published between 1975 and 1977: The Structure of Magic 1 and 2 andPatterns 1 and 2, two books on Erickson's hypnotherapy work. NLP literature hasbeen growing at an increasing rate ever since.

At that time John and Richard were living very close to Gregory Bateson, theBritish anthropologist and writer on communication and systems theory. Batesonhimself had written on many different topics—biology, cybernetics, anthropology,and psychotherapy. He is best known for developing the double bind theory ofschizophrenia. His contribution to NLP was profound. Perhaps only now is itbecoming clear exactly how influential he was.

From these initial models, NLP developed in two complementary directions.Firstly, as a process to discover the patterns of excellence in any field.Secondly, as the effective ways of thinking and communicating used byoutstanding people. These patterns and skills can be used in their own right,and also feed back into the modeling process to make it even more powerful. In1977 John and Richard were giving very successful public seminars all overAmerica. NLP grew quickly; in America to date, more than 100,000 people havedone some form of NLP training.

SANTA CRUZ, 1976

In the spring of 1976 John and Richard were in a log cabin, high in the hillsabove Santa Cruz, pulling together the insights and discoveries that they hadmade. Towards the end of a marathon 36 hour session, they sat down with a bottleof Californian red wine, and asked themselves, "What on earth shall we callthis?"

The result was Neuro-Linguistic Programming, a cumbersome phrase that coversthree simple ideas. The "Neuro" part of NLP acknowledges the fundamental ideathat all behavior stems from our neurological processes of sight, hearing,smell, taste, touch, and feeling. We experience the world through our fivesenses; we make "sense" of the information and then act on it. Our neurologycovers not only our invisible thought processes, but also our visiblephysiological reactions to ideas and events. One simply reflects the other atthe physical level. Body and mind form an inseparable unity, a human being.

The "Linguistic" part of the title indicates that we use language to order ourthoughts and behavior and to communicate with others. The "Programming" refersto ways we can choose to organize our ideas and actions to produce results.

NLP deals with the structure of human subjective experience; how we organizewhat we see hear and feel, and how we edit and filter the outside world throughour senses. It also explores how we describe it in language and how we act, bothintentionally and unintentionally, to produce results.

MAPS AND FILTERS

Whatever the outside world is really like, we use our senses to explore and mapit. The world is an infinity of possible sense impressions and we are able toperceive only a very small part of it. That part we can perceive is furtherfiltered by our unique experiences, culture, language, beliefs, values,interests and assumptions. Everyone lives in their unique reality built fromtheir sense impressions and individual experiences of life, and we act on thebasis of what we perceive our model of the world.

The world is so vast and rich that we have to simplify to give it meaning. Mapmaking is a good analogy for what we do; it is how we make meaning of the world.Maps are selective, they leave out as well as give information, and they areinvaluable for exploring the territory. The sort of map you make depends on whatyou notice, and where you want to go.

The map is not the territory it describes. We attend to those aspects of theworld that interest us and ignore others. The world is always richer than theideas we have about it. The filters we put on our perceptions determine whatsort of world we live in. There is a story of Picasso being accosted by astranger who asked him why he did not paint things as they really are.

Picasso looked puzzled. "I do not really understand what you mean", he replied.

The man produced a photograph of his wife. "Look", he said, "like that. That'swhat my wife really looks like".

Picasso looked doubtful. "She is very small, is she not? And a little bit flat?"

An artist, a lumberjack and a botanist taking a stroll through a wood will havevery different experiences and notice very different things. If you go throughthe world looking for excellence, you will find excellence. If you go throughthe world looking for problems you will find problems. Or as the Arabic sayingputs it, "What a piece of bread looks like depends on whether you are hungry ornot".

Very narrow beliefs, interests and perceptions will make the world impoverished,predictable and dull. The very same world can be rich and exciting. Thedifference lies not in the world, but in the filters through which we perceiveit.

We have many natural, useful, and necessary filters. Language is a filter. It isa map of our thoughts and experiences, removed a further level from the realworld. Think for a moment what the word "beauty" means to you. No doubt you havememories and experiences, internal pictures, sounds, and feelings that let youmake sense of that word. Equally, someone else will have different memories andexperiences and will think about that word in a different way. Who is right?Both of you, each within your own reality. The word is not the experience itdescribes, yet people will fight and sometimes even die believing the map is theterritory.

Our beliefs also act as filters, causing us to act in certain ways and to noticesome things at the expense of others. NLP offers one way of thinking aboutourselves and the world; it is itself a filter. To use NLP you do not have tochange any of your beliefs or values, but simply be curious and prepared toexperiment. All generalizations about people are lies to somebody, becauseeveryone is unique. So NLP does not claim to be objectively true. It is a model,and models are meant to be useful. There are some basic ideas in NLP that arevery useful. We invite you to behave as if they are true and notice thedifference that makes. By changing your filters, you can change your world.

Some of the NLP basic filters are often referred to as Behavioral Frames. Theseare ways of thinking about how you act. The first is an orientation towardoutcomes rather than problem. This means finding out what you and others want,finding what resources you have, and using these resources to move toward yourgoal. The problem orientation is often referred to as the "Blame Frame". Thismeans analysing what is wrong in great detail. It means asking questions like:"Why do I have this problem? How does it limit me? Whose fault is it?" Thesesorts of questions do not usually lead anywhere useful. Asking them will leaveyou feeling worse than when you started, and does nothing toward solving theproblem.

The second frame is to ask How rather than Why questions. How questions will getyou an understanding of the structure of a problem. Why questions are likely toget you justifications and reasons without changing anything.

The third frame is Feedback versus Failure. There is no such thing as failure,only results. These can be used as feedback, helpful corrections, a splendidopportunity to learn something you had not noticed. Failure is just a way ofdescribing a result you did not want. You can use the results you get toredirect your efforts. Feedback keeps the goal in view. Failure is a dead end.Two very similar words, yet they represent two totally different ways ofthinking.

The fourth frame is to consider Possibilities rather than Necessities. Againthis is a shift in focus. Look at what you can do, what choices are available,rather than the constraints of a situation. Often the barriers are lessformidable than they appear.

Finally, NLP adopts an attitude of Curiosity and Fascination rather than makingAssumptions. This is a very simple idea and has profound consequences. Youngchildren learn tremendously quickly, and they do it by being curious abouteverything. They do not know and they know they do not know, so they are notworried about looking stupid if they ask. After all, once upon a time, everybody"knew" the earth went around the sun, that something heavier than air could notfly, and of course to run a mile in less than four minutes was physiologicallyimpossible. Change is the only constant.

Another useful idea is that we all have, or can create, the inner resources weneed to achieve our goals. You are more likely to succeed if you act as if thiswere true than if you act the opposite.

LEARNING, UNLEARNING, AND RELEARNING

Although we can consciously take in only a very small amount of the informationthe world offers us, we notice and respond to much more without being aware. Ourconscious mind is very limited and seems able to keep track of a maximum ofseven variables or pieces of information at one time.

This idea was outlined in 1956 by the American psychologist George Miller in aclassic paper called The Magic Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two. These pieces ofinformation do not have a fixed size, they can be anything from driving a car tolooking in the rear-view mirror. One way we learn is by consciously masteringsmall pieces of behavior, and combining them into larger and larger chunks, sothey become habitual and unconscious. We form habits so we are free to noticeother things.

So our consciousness is limited to seven plus or minus two pieces ofinformation, either from the internal world of our thoughts, or from theexternal world. Our unconscious, by contrast, is all the lifegiving processes ofour body, all that we have learned, our past experiences, and all that we mightnotice, but do not, in the present moment. The unconscious is much wiser thanthe conscious mind. The idea of being able to understand an infinitely complexworld with a conscious mind that can only hold about seven pieces of informationat once, is obviously ludicrous.

The notion of conscious and unconscious is central to this model of how welearn. In NLP, something is conscious when it is in present moment awareness, asthis sentence is right now. Something is unconscious when it is not in presentmoment awareness. The background noises that you can hear were probablyunconscious until you read this sentence. The memory of your first sight of snowis almost certainly out of conscious awareness. If you have ever helped a youngchild learn to ride a bicycle, you will be aware of just how unconscious thatskill has become in yourself. And the process of turning your last meal intohair and toenails is likely to remain forever unconscious. We live in a culturewhich believes that we do most of what we do consciously. Yet most of what wedo, and what we do best, we do unconsciously.

The traditional view is that learning a skill divides into four stages. Firstthere is unconscious incompetence. Not only do you not know how to do something,but you don't know you don't know. Never having driven a car for example, youhave no idea what it is like.

So you start to learn. You very soon discover your limitations. You have somelessons and consciously attend to all the instruments, steer, coordinate theclutch, and watch the road. It demands all your attention, you are not yetcompetent, and you keep to the back streets. This is the stage of consciousincompetence when you grind the gears, oversteer, and give cyclists heartattacks. Although this stage is uncomfortable (especially for cyclists), it isthe stage when you learn the most.

This leads you to the stage of conscious competence. You can drive the car, butit takes all your concentration. You have learned the skill, but have not yetmastered it.

Lastly, and the goal of the endeavour, is unconscious competence. All thoselittle patterns that you learned so painstakingly blend together into one smoothunit of behavior. Then you can listen to the radio, enjoy the scenery and hold aconversation at the same time as driving. Your conscious mind sets the outcomeand leaves it to your unconscious mind to carry it out, freeing your attentionfor other things.

If you practice something for long enough you will reach this fourth stage andform habits. At this point the skill has become unconscious. However, the habitsmay not be the most effective ones for the task. Our filters may have caused usto miss some important information en route to unconscious competence.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Introducing NLP by Joseph O'Connor, John Seymour. Copyright © 1990 Joseph O'Connor and John Seymour. Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: RED WHEEL/WEISER
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1573244988
• ISBN 13: 9781573244985
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Sprache: Englisch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 245
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar