Guest author: A beginners Intro to NLP

Guest author for this blog:

The basic idea behind NLP is that by embedding certain commands (in a very subtle way) within the words that you either say or write, you can influence someone’s behaviour. Notice we said you could influence their behaviour, and we did not say you could completely control it. That’s because the technique does have certain limitations (similar to those of hypnosis) even though it is much more effective than you at first think it could be, especially after you have mastered the techniques. It takes time to master the techniques, but we can assure you based on our personal experience that it is well worth the effort.

Before you can become and NLP practitioner, you’re going to need to learn the basics of NLP, also known as neuro linguistic programming. Of course, our space here does not allow us anything close to a comprehensive examination. Therefore, you’re going to have a lot more learning to do before you become anything close to an expert, that’s for sure. However, we will give you enough information here that you will be able to honestly say that you know more about this subject than most people do simply as a result of reading these next few paragraphs. Are you ready? Good. Let’s get started.

As you might imagine, the subject of NLP does raise certain ethical concerns. After all, the ability to influence people’s behaviour certainly brings with it some necessary responsibility to do so only for good purposes. We will discuss what some of those good purposes are in a moment, but for now, it is important that we point out one very important thing. Remember, we said that the technique has some limitations, and that some of those limitations are similar to those of hypnosis. One of those limitations is that you cannot influence someone to do something that they aren’t (at least to some extent) already willing to do anyway. Therefore, many of your understandable ethical concerns should be minimized.

Some of the uses of NLP are similar to some of the uses of hypnosis, even though there is a significant amount of difference between those two disciplines. For example, both techniques can make some inroads when it comes to helping people overcome their unhealthy addictions. The main difference between the two techniques in this case would be that in the former case, the subject is unaware that you are attempting to alter their behaviour.