Many people claim that NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) can be truly life changing, but how does NLP works? When I was first introduced to NLP, I was pretty much blown away by how powerful and effective it is. Naturally, I was curious to find out what makes it works and how it actually does what it does.
To know how NLP works, we must first understand how our mind works. Our human mind consists of 2 parts; the conscious and subconscious mind. The conscious mind is the part that is aware and holding your attention now. It performs the thinking, the reasoning and analysis. The subconscious mind handles what is in the background of the consciousness. It functions as our memory bank, drives emotions, imagination, habits etc.
As the subconscious mind holds our beliefs, habits, fears and emotions, it practically controls what we think, how we act, and what we do. This will ultimately decide the quality of life that we have. This is exactly why sometimes even though we know what we need to do, how to do it, and when to do it, we don’t do it. This is because our subconscious mind is stopping us.
These beliefs, habits and emotions that we have were not consciously decided by us. Rather, it slowly came about from the past events and experience in our lives. Obviously, a man with phobia for flying did not ‘decide’ to have that phobia. Probably something had happened to trigger it, such as a traumatic flight experience.
Here’s the thing, before any thoughts, beliefs or habits get embedded into the subconscious, our conscious mind will first filter what goes through into the subconscious. All thoughts and ideas will be analyzed by the conscious mind based on references, past experiences and logic. This is so that we have a structure of reality and help us live our daily lives.
Though this conscious filter is a very valuable tool for our survival, it also brings with it many limitations which have denied many people their true potential. For example when someone tells himself “I can do it!”, but their conscious mind replies “No you can’t. You failed last time, what makes you think it’s gonna be different now”. Because it is analytical, logical and based on past experience, many people end up developing limiting beliefs because of the conscious mind’s filter.
So, though we want the conscious mind to be giving us a structure of reality to help us survive, we would also want to be able to control what goes through the filter or not. This is exactly where NLP comes in.
NLP works by giving us the ability to bypass the conscious mind (thus avoiding the filters) and implant a message or an idea into our subconscious. This is why NLP can bring immediate results. Normal therapy requires you to slowly chip away at the filter. With NLP techniques, you directly goes to the subconscious.
The feeling I get when using NLP is that I am now communicating to my brain in a language it can understand. It is like I am finally able to program it with a compatible programming language. If you want to make full use of your potential, discover more about this amazing technology called NLP.
Copyright (c) 2009 Ethan Beh
