Why NLP?

NLP has become a global phenomenon over the last 20 years or so. It has been applied to many different areas of people's lives, from work and relationships with others through to our relationship with ourselves.

So what is NLP?

NLP stands for Neuro Linguistic Programming. 'Neuro' relating to the mind and neurology. 'Linguistic' referring to language and communication and 'Programming' (note the Americanised spelling) which has become more widely understood with the advent of computers as relating to the formulation of sets of instructions to perform given tasks.

So, to sum that up...

By looking at these elements together we can (very broadly) define NLP as a framework for programming your mind through the use of language. Internally, we label the things we see, hear, touch, taste and so on. These labels help us to identify the world around us and the way in which we use these labels is a very personal thing to each of us. They represent just one way in which we use language to try and define and categorise the world we live in.

So how does NLP use this?

It's no mistake that NLP has often been referred to as 'software for the brain'. The theory is that we run 'programmes', often without being consciously aware of our behaviour, and utilise language in order to help use run these'programmes'. By tapping into the way in which we use language we can alter our own programming and make very rapid, beneficial changes to our behaviour.