Neurolinguistic Programming… wow, that sounds incredibly boring and useless to the average reader. Or is it? Have you ever read Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus? How about The Secret? Maybe you’ve waffled over the idea of reading How to Win Friends and Influence People. After all, the great Dale Carnegie wrote it, so it must be genius, right? Totally gonna read that… totally.
Here’s the thing; each of these titles has one thing in common—they’re all designed to help you communicate in a way which results in your benefit, through programmed reactions. Neurolinguistic programming is a fancy way of saying, “This is how you are programmed to communicate.”
Now I can hear you saying, “Pfft, I’m not a machine that’s been programmed.” Well… no, not exactly, but you kind of are—to a point. Think about it this way; you were raised with certain thought processes which were provided to you by those who raised you, by the culture you were raised in, and by the general information that has been voiced to you through the media within your culture. Someone who was raised in another country has entirely different “programming” than you do. Take a Columbian adult male, for example. He would stick out like a sore thumb in North Korea, and vice versa.
No, you’re not a computer, but your brain has been making the sort of connections that a computer does for your entire life. Whether you want to be programmed or not, the information you have been exposed to throughout your childhood and into adulthood has effectively “programmed” your current thought processes.
So… why should we be excited about the phrase neurolinguistic programming? Because it means that our programming can change. This is how we are able to change our points of view, how we can go from cheering for Nazi’s to sheltering Anne Frank and her diary. It is also how we can go from Joe Average who pays his taxes to Revolutionary Joe with a fancy new swastika tattoo. We are who we allow our environment to shape us to be… or who we decide to shape ourselves to be.
The books I mentioned earlier give detailed insight into how one can use neurolinguistic programming for benefit, how to speak and interact in ways which allow your conversational partner’s programming to lean in your favor. Here’s the tricky part: this same process is being used right back at you, constantly. Every single ad you see on TV, every commercial, every magazine article, every bus-stop poster, and every single salesman you will ever meet is utilizing neurolinguistic programming to sway you to buy, use, consume, and buy some more. We are surrounded by it at all times.
Sounds scary, right? Only if you let it be. Remember, you are not a computer, and you do have a choice about whether or not to absorb the information being fed to you. You also have a choice to fight fire with fire, to educate yourself on ways to work that same system of programming to your benefit.
It may sound technical and boring, but we experience neurolinguistic programming every day. You likely even employ it yourself without realizing it. (We all use guilt trips occasionally, folks.) Take a minute to realize it, do some research, and find out just how amazing this phrase can really be.
Melvin S. Marsh is a certified hypnotherapist serving Atlanta GA, Aiken SC, Augusta GA, Blairsville GA, and Cary NC. He performs hypnotherapy appointments both in person and worldwide virtually. He can be reached at www.afterhourshypnotherapy.com .
