What is Neuro-Linguistic Programming?

by Tad and Adriana James

You can use a computer, but....

Perhaps you've managed, over the last ten years, to learn how use a personal computer, and now you are computer literate. But how much do you know about what's going on inside yourself and others? Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is about just that.
Knowing about what is going on inside yourself and what's going on inside others! Perhaps you've wondered, "How do I communicate better," or, "How do I get in control of my own personal computer ¾ my brain!" Now, a new technology makes it easy to understand how we think, how we communicate, and how we process emotions!
NLP techniques and processes help us to understand ourselves and others, and to produce new, and more effective ways to:

-Attract the right person for you
-Create ideal relationships
-Advance your career & make more money
-Increase motivation and energy
-Create your desired self-image
-Communicate to produce the kind of results you want
-Creating an Ideal Relationship:

FEELING DEEPLY LOVED: It took me a long time to figure out how relationships worked. My first marriage wasn't a marriage "made in heaven." I would go up to my first wife, and give her a hug, and she would say to me, "Get your hands off me, you make me feel like a piece of meat," and later, "How come you never take me places and buy me things?" And I would think to myself, "What does that have to do with love?" After I took the NLP Practitioner Training, I realized that people just have different ways of knowing when they're loved in a long term relationship. For me that was an eye-opener. I was showing my first wife I loved her by giving her a hug -- she thought I wanted to have sex with her. She knew she was deeply loved when I took her places and bought her things -- also a common strategy for knowing when you're loved. Have you ever wondered why people act the way they do? While I didn’t get all the answers in my first NLP Practitioner Training, I got so many that it absolutely changed how I relate to people of both sexes.

REALIZING YOU'RE ATTRACTIVE: I remember working with a client who didn't know if a woman was attracted to him. For him a woman was attracted to him if she looked at him from across the room, approached him at a certain angle, and walked up behind him, touching the back of his upper arm. Now, that is not a process that's easy to match. How many people do you think could walk across the room at just the right angle and produce the exact behavior that was necessary so he would know? Two or three was all he could remember, and even though he was quite attractive, he never knew that he was attractive. Poor guy! When he discovered that, he was able to create the relationship he wanted. But many people can’t.

BEING FREE OF YOUR PAST: One of the reasons is that past negative emotions are triggered by present events or behaviors. A woman client once shared with me something as simple as, "Every time my husband approaches me in a certain way, he reminds me of my father, and I just get turned off. I can't tell my husband how I feel, 'cause I don't want to offend him, but I just feel like I'm being punished." The interesting thing is that repressed memories can surface at any time. You may not know where they came from, but there they are. Especially in relationships!

What most people don't know is that, the triggers (called anchors in the FasTrak NLP Practitioner Certification Training) can be defused ¾ collapsed so they no longer bring up the undesired emotion. Another possibility is to release the negative emotions from the past, using Time Line Therapy™ techniques.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a behavioral technology, which simply means that it is a set of guiding principles, attitudes, and techniques about real-life behavior, and not a removed, scientific theorem. It allows you to change, adopt or eliminate behaviors, as you desire, and gives you the ability to choose your mental, emotional, and physical states of well-being.

Using NLP In Business:

PEOPLE: In all my days in business, first as a business person, then as a business owner, and finally as a business consultant, I could never understand people. One of my favorite comments which voiced my frustration was to say, "Times are changing, and people won't do what you tell them to do like they used to!" I really believed that. You see when I started managing people in 1968, as sales manager of a radio station in Syracuse, New York, people could be trusted to do what you said. Ten years later, if I asked someone to do something, they would ask me , Why?" This frustrated me to no end, and I felt as if I would never understand it!

Of course , I know now, that how I communicated to them was the problem, and the answer to my frustration too! More often than not, I would tell them what not to do, or what not to believe. As simple as that sounds, it was a revelation to me when I discovered NLP trainings. I began to tell people what to do, but in a way that the information would make the information acceptable regardless of the content of what I was telling them. What a change!

MOTIVATION: I used to think that whether or not I was motivated depended on my motivation wasn't in my control, so if my wife said something to me in the morning, it could ruin my day. My first wife was quite negative, and on the way to work on many days, she would get me so upset that I finally had to ask her to "talk positively or be quiet." Then, if something happened during the day, it could also ruin my day. When I took my first NLP Practitioner Training, I realized that my motivation is totally under my control, and that I could change what I was feeling about a situation simply by remembering a time that I was totally motivated! What a thought!

RAPPORT: For me, one of the most impactful learnings I got from taking the NLP Practitioner Training was the notion that I could meet with and establish rapport with anyone that I desired. When we were doing business consulting in the early 1980's, before I learned NLP, we found that we would "sign-up" or "close" about 30% of the people with whom we met. We thought we were doing well at that rate, and that we probably could not do better than that. When I learned NLP, and then taught some key points to the consultants, almost overnight our closing rate climbed to above 90%. By learning NLP, I had dramatically increased my ability to establish rapport with potential clients. Imagine being able to communicate with anyone, and establish rapport with them at will. It totally changed my perspective of what was possible!

HOW PEOPLE DECIDE: We also trained our consultants to discover how people make decisions. Imagine, if you will, that you had an inside track to someone's decision-making process. What if you could fit your presentation right inside the way they make decisions? Imagine how easy management could become! In NLP, the process by which we do this, is called strategies, and it allows us to understand how people create behaviors, reach decisions, and how they're reassured that what they've done is good.

With NLP, you learn how to grow from every single life experience, thus increasing your ability to create a better quality of life. NLP is a very pragmatic technology based on an ability to produce your desired results, thus allowing you to become proficient at creating the kind of future you want! In the end it is not a lot different from understanding how to program a computer -- your own bio-computer.

While many people study NLP and Time Line Therapy® techniques for their own personal growth and development, they are also of the utmost value to the professional. Some professions using NLP include Salespeople, Business Executives, Managers, Business Owners, Lawyers, Teachers, Trainers, Counselors, Educators, Doctors, Chiropractors, Massage Therapists, Consultants, Hypnotherapists, Psychologists, Athletes, Entertainers and Performers. Regardless of profession, the majority of NLP participants are searching, and finding, better and more effective ways to increase their performance and improve their effectiveness.

WHAT IS TIME LINE THERAPY™?
Throughout history, humankind has been aware of the passage of time. Aristotle was the first to mention the "stream of time" in his book Physics IV. William James spoke of linear memory storage as early as 1890. Finally, the concept, nearly forgotten, was revived in the late 1970's by the developers of NLP.

In 1985, we began to apply a therapeutic process to this concept of an internal memory storage system. The result was a collection of techniques which produces long-lasting transformation very quickly-faster than what is currently called Brief Therapy. These powerful Time Line Therapy™ techniques are becoming the method of choice to make fast, effective, long-term changes in behavior.
Your "Time Line" is how you unconsciously store your memories or how you unconsciously know the difference between a memory from the past and a projection of the future. Behavioral change in an individual takes place at an unconscious level. People don't change consciously. The Time Line Therapy™ process allows you to work at the unconscious level and release the effects of past negative experiences and change "inappropriate" programming in minutes rather than days, months or years.

After years of development, working with clients and publishing Time Line Therapy and The Basis Personality, the Time Line Therapy™ model has become known worldwide . It is a revolutionary new approach which has become so popular because of its ability to create quick, long lasting results.

How will studying NLP and Time Line Therapy® techniques benefit me? Through using these techniques, your personal happiness and professional success will be much more consistent, and much more predictable. Your effectiveness working with others will be dramatically increased, and your ability to empower yourself for optimum results will be increased. You will be able to generate empowering emotional states within yourself at will, eliminate any negative emotions or limiting decisions, identify and change limiting beliefs, inspire yourself with a compelling future that will have much better chances of coming true, and create patterns of excellence from any role model you choose.

Achieving Professional Excellence. Whether you're already succeeding in your profession, having some difficulties, or if you're transitioning into a new position, NLP and Time Line Therapy™ techniques can help you achieve, maintain and enhance excellence.

If you understand computers, you already understand how NLP works! Computers are about man-machine interface. NLP is about mind-body interface. The entire process is very similar! Maybe it's time to learn about your own personal computer -- your mind!

What others say about NLP:
"NLP cannot be dismissed as just another hustle. Its theoretical underpinnings represent an ambitious attempt to codify and synthesize the insights of linguistics, body language, and the study of communication systems." -- Psychology Today

"(NLP) does offer the potential for making changes without the usual agony that accompanies these phenomena. . . Thus it affords the opportunity to gain flexibility, creativity, and greater freedom of action than most of us now know. . ." -- Training and Development Journal

". . . real estate brokers and salespeople use Neuro-Linguistics to enhance their communication skills and provide them with more choices when working in a difficult situation. . . it shows how we make sense of the world around us and communicate." -- Real Estate Journal