What's NLP?
NEURO (neurology) - The Neurological system is responsible for how we process information and regulate our bodies.
LINGUISTIC (language) - Language or linguistics determines how we interface and communicate with ourselves and others.
PROGRAMMING (different models we create & act from in life) - How our mind organizes into patterns, beliefs, behaviors, emotions and thoughts.
The basis of NLP we know today - was originated in California in the early 1970s, primarily by John Grinder and Richard Bandler. Grinder was a Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Bandler was a student of Gestalt Therapy.
By exploring how people excelled in their profession, they found patterns of behavior, thinking, and specific unified models to copy. They found that if other people could do something successful and excel, it could be replicated.
NLP was modeled on the excellence of three professionals in the psychotherapy field.
The first was Fritz Perls (1893-1970). A psychotherapist and one of the founders of Gestalt therapy.
Second - Virginia Satir (1916 – 1988), a family therapist, is referred to as "The Mother of Family System Therapy.
Third - Dr. Milton H. Erickson M.D. (1901-1980) was both a psychiatrist and a medical doctor. He was the founding president of the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis.
The basis of John Grinder’s and Richard Bandler’s research and modeling was that people have three elements that make up how a person functions. 1. How people THINK 2. How people FEEL 3. What people DO
Everyone has ways of thinking, feeling and behaving that are individual and makes them either effective or ineffective in whatever they are involved in. Most people are completely unaware of these basic elements as they are automatic or unconscious patterns.
In a nut shell, NLP is like software for the brain - a “set of tools that will allow you to use your mind with optimum power to take control of your life”.