Talk yourself into excellence
There is undeniable power in the word. In South Africa we are all too aware of the connotations of words. In many spheres we giving our nation a new vocabulary - one which is respectfully positive and devoid of negative, hurtful and inciteful images of the past. And it is working - for example, ubuntu is a word being embraced by all, while native (although meaning ‘one born of a particular place’) is used rarely because of its association with colonial condescension and apartheid laws.
So, if we can acknowledge how words shape behaviour on a macro scale, imagine how empowered we can become as individuals using the same approach on ourselves? Imagine a sales team so empowered, an entire company of workers? Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a system developed by John Grinder, a professor of linguistics, and Richard Bandler, a mathematician and computer programmer with a keen interest in behavioural sciences (gestalt therapy). From their meeting at the University of California in the seventies, they collaborated on discovering and recreating models of human excellence. Through the years NLP has developed some 350 powerful tools and skills for communication and change in many professional areas. And all of it has a common-sense practical application, the results of which are not only tangible but instantly recognisable. Training is offered and books are available to help salespeople to soar and CEOs become dynamic leaders, but after all is said and done, these simple techniques are essentially about getting individuals to change their minds and to talk themselves out of their own limitations and into excellence.
So what is NLP? Each practitioner has a particular way of introducing the concept but in essence, according to NLP trainer and author, Robert Dilts, it considers the three profound components which make up the human experience: neurology, language and programming. Neurology regulates how our bodies function, language determines how we relate and communicate, and programming is about the models we create of our world. Cape Town based trainer and Success Coach, Min McLoughlin, says:
“NLP teaches you how you do what you do; how you take in information from the world around you; what you do with that information inside your head, and how what you do inside your head results in specific physiological reactions, states such as happiness or depression and corresponding behaviours.”
For Armand Kruger, head of Peak Performance Strategies, international NLP trainer, author and consultant who has developed change programmes for a number of industries and disciplines in South Africa, NLP is an
“owner’s manual for the brain. Until the emergence of NLP, we had virtually no understanding of how the software of the brain operated and how it could be programmed or debugged to produce effective behaviours. The brain has a life of its own, especially when it comes to emotions. In other words, psychologists have generally created the impression that if our internal computer works well, then it is purely by fluke. Like the computer, however, the brain produces behaviours directly related to the way it processes information it receives. NLP has consequently developed an “owner’s manual” for the brain which describes in detail, how neuro-logical software works.”
Consider this exercise: Take “apple”, for instance. For each person reading “apple” there will be a million immediate mental pictures formed, from Biblical imagery to a personal experience involving or relating to an apple. With each mental image, there will be an emotional response - if the image was all about Eve, guilt can surface, if it was recalling a healthy, juicy snack, the emotion could be uplifting, if you associate apples with being caught stealing from a farmerís orchard as a child, fear could arise. Some emotional responses are obvious but many more are locked deep in the unconscious mind. And given the number of images the brain is battered by each hour of the day, thatís a lot of emotion to process. Little wonder then that one is often, for no apparent reason, left immobilised by overload and ultimately unable to achieve any level of excellence be it in business, in a relationship, or in regard to personal aspirations. Min McLoughlin explains further:
“Do not think of a green giraffe! Now what did you just think of? So, do you usually think about what you want in life (health, fitness, successful career, loving relationships, financial security), or do you think about your life in terms of what you DON’T want? Remember the giraffe? You see, we get what we think about - and we think faster than we realise. And there are more cells in the human body than there are stars in five galaxies and every cell is affected by what we think.
As humans we live in a five sensory world and take in all information through these five senses. If we absorbed everything that comes to us at 3-million bits of information a second, we’d fry our circuits. To deal with this we filter the information. Some of our filters are our perceptions of time and space energy and matter, the language we use and our understanding of words and meanings, our memories, the way we go about making decisions, the patterns we look for when selecting information, our values and beliefs and our overall attitude. And we delete, distort and generalise according to our filters. We then take what has gone through and make a picture of it with sounds and feelings, tastes and smells. The next thing that happens instantaneously is that we react to that image with corresponding state emotional behaviour.
So now that we have an understanding of how we store information and possibly an inkling of knowledge as to why we react to things the way we do, why go further? Says Kruger:
“The challenge occurs when things are not going so well - stress, anger, being sabotaged by fellow workers, workload. These are the times when you need some additional or different thought patterns that will support your spirit and enable you to win in these situations. When things go bad you can either see it as a catastrophe, subject yourself to a painful experience and be left feeling helpless; or you can see the situation as serious but not deadly. You can recognise that things are not as you expected but see the situation too as lessons that need to be learned. The pessimist will see failure; the optimist will see that although lessons can be painful, there is no failure, only feedback. Of my study of peak performers, all peak performers are optimists and rigorously protect themselves from negative thought.
Kruger speaks of “thought viruses” which act as frames of reference in how we react to information. How we choose to store information, what colour and emotion we give it, affects our reality and determines how flexible we are to alternative ways of perceiving information - and all this determines what kind of choices we make, how we can limit ourselves, or how we can remove the blockages and free ourselves to grow.
According to Dilts, as human beings, we can never know reality, just perceptions of reality. We create neuro-linguistic maps of reality that determine our behaviour- and it is not the reality that limits us but rather our map.
“The people who are most effective are the ones who have a map of the world that allows them to perceive the greatest number of choices and perspectives. NLP is a way of enriching the choices that you have. Excellence comes from having many choices and wisdom comes from having multiple perspectives.”
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