NLP Presuppositions

These are the founding principles supporting the structure of NLP. Each reflects an aspect of the body of teachings in a powerful way. The simple act of readjusting your perceptual filters to perceive your ongoing experience in harmony with these beliefs will obviate most, if not all, of what you learn in NLP. If everyone viewed the world through these filters, how do you think the world will be different? What will be the same?

The Map is Not the Territory.

Each of us maps out our experience of the world differently, because we all have different sets of experience. Not one of us has "The" map, none of them is completely accurate, every one of them is equally valid, based on our past experience. You might not understand or agree with someone's behavior, but if you had their experience, you might.

The Meaning of Your Communication is
the Response it Elicits.

If you compliment someone and they slap you, it is more intelligent to remember that's the way to insult them, and try something else if you want to make them feel good.

Resistance is a Comment about the Communicator

It's up to the communicator to be flexible enough to get the message across that they want, and be sensitive enough in their observation to notice if their communication is having the desired response. Otherwise...

If what you're doing isn't working, Do Something Else.

If you try one key in a lock and it doesn't fit, you wouldn't just try it harder, now would you. You'd get another key. People often to just try the same thing over and over, harder, louder, meaner. It's easier to just calmly get another key, and another.. until you find the one that fits the lock, smoothly unlocking what you're seeking.

Every behavior has a Positive Intent.

No matter how seemingly odd, or mean, or outright wrong, to the person engaging in that behavior, it makes sense, and they perceive it as a way of getting some outcome they want.

People make the best choices they can with the information they have in consciousness.

People would obviously not choose to do something self-defeating or foolish if they knew the consequences in advance, or had a better choice.

The element with the most flexibility in any system will be the controlling element of that system.

It is the hinge that controls the movement of the door...

Mind and Body are part of the same cybernetic system.

And they affect eachother. You can't mess with one without having an effect on the other.

There is no failure, only feedback.

If something doesn't work, use that as feedback to generate another plan of action, and try again.

Every behavior is useful in some context.

It's just that sometimes, people confuse contexts.

People work perfectly, no one is broken.

What we may think of as mental illness is a logical, sensible response to illogical, conflicting experiences. See every behavior has a positive intent, above.

If one person can learn to do something, anyone can.

Barring organic limitations (like missing parts), if you're willing to go through the same learning experiences, and take the same time, as someone who does something you want to do, you can do it too.

Choice is better than no choice.

Do you want Vanilla, Vanilla, or Vanilla?

People have within them all the resources they need.

More often than we realize, learning to do something new is only a process of applying skills we already have in one area of our life, and applying them to another area we might not have thought to before.

Anything can be accomplished if the task is taken in small enough chunks.

Next time you're out on a moonlit night, take a look at that silvery beauty and realize that there are people on this Earth who have actually walked on that, way up there. Seems almost impossible, doesn't it. Yet we've been there and back. With the help of millions of people, all doing their individual little parts, all brought together for one impossible task. If we can do that, we can do just about anything.