What are the presuppositions of NLP?

Otherwise known as convenient assumptions, things that it is generally good to assume. Assumptions that can be very useful if adopted. 

Why would you want to learn about the presuppositions of NLP?

Adopting the ideas in the pre-suppositions helps to be able to look at the world in a different way.

They are useful and empowering ideas that can give perspective and understanding when it comes to analysing and evaluation, both our own behaviour and the behaviour of others.

Why do people do some of the things they do? The presuppositions will give an insight

Perhaps all of them will instantly click for you, or perhaps you may find some a little odd or perhaps even a bit challenging, but I’d recommend thinking about each one for a bit, and ‘trying them on’  to see how they can work for you.

This is not a list that you have to adopt or to ‘believe’ in order to learn more about and practice NLP, they are simply there as ideas which you can adopt if you agree with them and think they will be useful. 

The presuppositions of NLP

Click each one to expand and see more information

Summary

So how do you think about the presuppositions? Did they all just seem to make sense, or were there some where you though to yourself that they sounded a bit odd or challenging?

If there are any you’re a little unsure of that’s OK. Think them over for a bit and ‘try them on’ to see how they fit for you. 

For me at least they certainly gave me a new insight into people’s behaviour and why people do the things they do, myself included

After I’d had the chance to properly think about them and understood them they started to have a profound effect. I wonder if the same will happen to you?

We explore the presuppositions further by applying the thinking behind them to the skills and techniques we learn on the courses. 

What is goal setting about?

Set yourself a goal in life and score a life goal!

Goal setting is about getting what you want

Why would you want to learn about goal setting?

Imagine being able to set a goal and know that it is really going to happen.

With a simple process can get what you want.

How about being consistent in your results instead of starting things just to see them fizzle out?

Learning a few simple tricks and tips will make you see your results dramatically improve by making sure you are on track to success.

Effective goal setting is about getting what you want in life.

Let’s take an example

Have you ever had the best intentions and set yourself a target only to find that nothing much happens?

Here’s an example.

Perhaps you didn’t want to be unfit anymore and decided to spend your time in the gym working out. You’re soon going to be fit and healthy right?

You bought a membership and in the beginning you were quite good at going, perhaps making it three or four times.  

But then for some reason you stopped going, perhaps you were too busy? Perhaps there were other things to do so you couldn’t make the time?

You look back over the year and realise that you spent all that money on gym membership, only managed to go a few times, and still don’t feel fit like you wanted to.

Sound familiar?

So what went wrong?

What makes things happen?

Dreams without action are just that, just dreams.

While it’s great to have dreams we also need results. We need to do something about our dreams in order to make things happen in our lives.

 So how do we go about doing that?

How to set a reall effective goal setting

Here are a few great tips for making sure that the goal you set for yourself is going to get you the results you want.

1. Stated in the positive

      (What specifically do you want?)

This is a big reason for why our gym example ended up with little resuts

 If we talk about what we don’t want then that’s what we are focusing on, and it holds true that we get what we focus on. So instead, if we focus on what we do want then that is the result we’ll achieve.

 Remember, our unconscious mind does not process negatives.

 So for our gym example. Instead of saying “I don’t want to be unfit anymore” instead say that you do.

 Quite simple but very effective.

 2. Specify present situation

     (Where are you now?)

Measuring your goal is a really important part of the overall process. If you don’t know where you started from then how do you know how far you have to go to get to your destination?

Let’s break down our gym example a little further.

You don’t want to be unfit anymore. We’ve got it in a positive frame now which is great, in other words you want to get fit. But you’re still starting from a point where you feel you are unfit. What does unfit actually mean to you?

Let’s say it means you can currently only run 50 meters without having to stop, and when you do you are out of breath and feel dizzy and nauseous. That’s our starting point, our present situation.

3, Specify outcome.

     (What will you see, hear, feel, etc., when you have it?)

Lets say in our case you want to be able to run 100 meters and feel great at the end of it.

Rehearsing what it will feel like (see, hear, feel, etc) is a really effective way of placing a tangible end goal in your mind.

4. Specify evidence procedure

     (How will you know when you have it?)

If we don’t do this step then how would we know we have achieved our goal?

We need to tell ourselves that we have succeeded, and to do that we need to choose something that will let us know.

In our example we want to be able to run 100 meters and not be out of breath. So, what does out of breath mean?

In this case working out what a good breathing rate after exercise for your age and weight would be could be the target to go for, and achieving it would be our evidence that we have met our goal.

Here are a couple more things to keep in mind when working on your goals..

Think about time. Do you want to achieve your goal in a week, a month, a year, a lifetime? Having a timeframe will keep your focus.

Last tip I’d say is break down your goals into manageable chunks, or into smaller more manageable goals. Build your success in gradual steps rather than trying to achieve everything at once. You can certainly have a big dream in mind and working in smaller, more achievable steps, will make it happen for you.

What next?

So now you have some great pointers about how to make sure you achieve what you set out to.

Why not take a look  at your current goals and see if you could improve on them?

Summary

If you’d like to really turbo charge your results then come along to one of our diploma or practitioner courses. We spend more time talking about and working on effective goal setting and how you can get what you want and deserve out of life.

Or drop us a message if you have any questions using the contact form below, we’d love to hear from you.

What are submodalities?

The definition is they are subsets of the Modalities (Visual , Auditory , Kinaesthetic, Olfactory, and Gustatory) that are part of each representational system.

Why would you want to learn about submodalities?

With submodalities, we can make really fast changes to people’s behaviour. So changing habits or changing how people feel about situations in their lives are all really simple and positive changes which are possible.

So for example, working with people’s limiting beliefs, beliefs that disempower them some way, such as “I’m not good enough” or ”I don’t believe in myself.”

Submodalities offer a technique that can remove limiting beliefs and install new positive and empowering beliefs in about 12 minutes.

Submodalities are windows into the mind and how it operates and understanding them, and knowing how to work with them makes amazing changes possible.

What are submodalities?

As I mentioned above submodalities are subsets of our representational systems (To find out more more about representational systems you can read our article primary representational systems.)

Submodalities are the way we encode and give meaning to our internal representations.

So what are internal representations? Well, they are the way we store information after it has come into our awareness.

To re-cap the NLP communication model. An external event comes into our neurology (your mind) and is filtered by a bunch of filters that distort/delete and generalise that event and out of the filtration process comes an internal representation. According to the meaning of this internal representation that drove the emotional state and dependent on the emotional state that drove the physiology and out of the internal representation, the state and the physiology comes the behaviour.

Submodalities.

So what are they?

They are the fine details of each modality.

So let’s take the visual modality as an example.

If we were to describe the visual aspects of something we could talk about if it was in black and white or in colour. We could say if it was super bright or so dim we can hardly see it. Is it in focus or not, etc…

Try this as an experiment. Choose your favourite photo or picture and put it in front of you. Now describe all the things about what you can see regarding the visual aspects. Remember, we’re not talking about the content of the picture (if there are people or clouds for example) but rather about the visual aspects of that image.

These are the submodalities.

Here’s a list for each modality…

Now you might have noticed a couple of things about this list.

Firstly it’s only got visual, auditory and kinaesthetic on it.

And secondly the submodilities themselves.Why are just these listed when there are more?

This leads us on to how we can use submodalities to make changes. 

How can we use submodalities?

Remember I said that submodalities are how our internal representations are encoded?

For each memory we have it will have a unique set of submodalites, the combination of which gets used internally to represent that memory. The submodalities are the part we can access of that very highly complex internal representation. 

So if we change the submodalities, we change the internal representation, which in turn changes the meaning, which will in turn change the behaviour. 

So back to out list, why only visual, auditory and kinaesthetic?

Well, because they are the primary drivers, or main submodality sets. There will be sets for gustatory (taste) and olfactory (smell) but they don’t play such an influential role. By working with the ones listed above we can make the changes we are looking to make,

And again wih the list, why are just these submodalities listed?

For a similar reason to only visual, auditory and kinaesthetic being there. The submodalities listed are the ones that, if we work with them, will make the changes we want to see. 

What submodality techniques can we use?

There are a number of techniques that we can use to make positive changes with people we are working with.

Here are a few….

– Contrastive analysis. (Not a technique in itself, it is part of another one)

        We are comparing 2 sets of Submodalities and noticing the differences.

        The second part is mapping across

– Mapping across

        In order to do mapping across contrastive analysis must have been performed first so we know the differences.

        Mapping across is then changing the Submodalities of the target internal representations from the source internal representations where they are different. This changes the meaning and therefore the behaviour.

– Swish patterns

        Allow you to change a minor state or behaviour that happens in a specific context.

– Perceptual positions

        Allows you to look at a situation / event from different viewpoints or perspectives.

– Dissociative technique (Fast phobia model)

        Allows you to remove the negative kinesthetics (feelings) on a negative event / trauma or behavior

Summary

Submodalities allow us to make very fast changes to our own behavior or even help others to do the same thing

They can be used in a multitude of different situations.

For example Someone who doesn’t like using the telephone. You could change the behavior towards the phone (or rather help them change it) so they could then LOVE it!

How about someone who doesn’t like interviews… You could help them change the meaning of their internal representation so that they could love interviews.

What about in fitness? You could be, or someone could be, starting a new fitness program, but you, or someone, doesn’t like exercising. You could use submodalities to change the way they behave towards exercise and fitness and change it to liking them.

What about things we procrastinate about, such as doing paperwork like a tax return? If you don’t like them much you could change that dislike to a like.

 We can use submodality work for other activities such as presentations, selling, performing in front of people or even simple tasks in your day to day life.

If there is anything you don’t like you could change it to liking that activity or task

There are a multitude of ways of working with SMDs to make positive changes, the only limit is your imagination!

What are primary representational systems?

The Preferred Rep System (or primary rep system) in NLP is the representational system that someone most often uses to display their experiences and show them to the world

Why would you want to learn about primary representational systems?

Understanding which representational systems a person most favours (their primary representational system) is really useful in building rapport with them. You can find out more about rapport in our article building rapport

You can also enhance your own communication skills along with gaining a better understanding of other people’s model of the world.

What are the primary representational systems?

Before we get into primary representational systems, we should first talk about our senses, which are aAlso known as modalities)

We take in information about the world around us in five different ways, or to put it another way through our five senses.

These are visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory and gustatory.

So, in plain language.

Visual – what we see.
Auditory – what we hear
Kinesthetic – what we feel
Olfactory – what we smell
Gustatory – what we taste

Our primary representational systems are to do with how we process information, or to put it another way what happens AFTER we have taken in the world around us.

So primary representational systems are about what happens on the inside. They are about how we represent the world around us, how we form a ‘picture’ internally, and then about how we represent our inner world when we communicate. 

On a related note, each primary system can be broken down further in things called submodalities. Using submodalities is a really powerful way of affecting really positve change.

The primary representational systems.

The primary representational systems are as follows.

• Visual
• Auditory
• Kinaesthetic
• Auditory Digital

We can see our list looks a little different. People don’t really represent things in their minds in terms of taste or smell (although they are very important senses), so they are not part of the primary representational systems.

You’ll also notice we also have an addition, Auditory Digital, and this is to do with essentially how we think.

So let’s have a look at each one…

Summary

Having an understanding of primary representational systems will give your communication skills a real boost and really help you in being able to get your message across in any conversation you may have.

A great way of meeting someone in their model of the world, building rapport and getting your message over clearly and effectively.

What is the NLP Meta Model?

A linguistic chunking down tool that allows us to recover lost information. This is done via specific questioning.

Why would you want to learn about the Meta Model?

How would it be if we could recover information that has been distorted, deleted and genalised so that we could change the internal representations of those experiences or situations?

How useful would it be if through a series of questions we could assist clients in feeling better about a situation by changing their IR?

How would it be if by listening to what our clients say to us and by asking specific Qs we could get them to hear alternative choices?

How would it be if you could get your client to see opposites and different representations of events, just by recovering the lost data and infomation, again through specific questions?

What is the Meta Model?

The meta model is a linguistic chunking down tool that allows us to recognize what’s been distorted, deleted and generalised when someone is speaking, and it’s used to recover lost data and information through specific questions.

It is recovering information from the deep structure, rather than surface structure communication. 

The meta model revolves around the work of Virginia Satir in the ‘60s who achieved amazing results with her clients in family therapy, and she did this by being specific.

In 1972 her book ‘People making’ was published, in which she discussed her therapy work and approaches.

Richard Bandler and John Grinder used their process of NLP modelling to work out why it was she was so successful

John Grinder was also very interested in transformational grammar and researched, amongst other people, Noam Chomsky, who in 1957 had written ‘Syntactic structure’ and from which many ideas became included in the founding ideas of the meta model.

From all of this work the meta model as we know it today was created.

Some definitions;

What are distortions, deletions and generalisations?

• Distortion: Occurs when something is mistaken for what it is not.
• Deletion: Some of the experience is left out.
• Generalisation: Make general statements about what we believe and ignore exceptions. One specific experience is taken to represent a class of experiences. 

What is surface structure?

• This is a linguistic term meaning the structure of our communication, which generally leaves out the completeness of the Deep Structure through deletion, distortion, generalisation. It’s essentially what we say. 

What is deep structure?

• The unconscious basis for the surface structure of a statement. Much of the deep structure is out of awareness.

So, in summary, the meta model is about listening, spotting when information has been left out and then challenging it so that lost information is recovered.

Meta model patterns

So let’s take a look at how distortions, deletions and generalisations sound in what a person says, and the approach we can take to recover the information that was intended rather than communicated,

Meta Model Distortions

1. Mind Reading:

Claiming to know the thoughts, feelings, intentions, meanings, motivations, or other internal processes of another person – with no basis in reasonable, logical grounds for interpretation or direct, sensory observation.

Examples

‘I know you don’t like me’
‘I know you are curious’
‘I know you are sad’

There is an obvious distortion in the sentences above as the speaker has no evidence for the statement. The challenge is to ask the speaker to specify their evidence for the hallucination

Challenge: ‘How do you know I am …”

2. Lost Performative

Value judgement where the performer of the judgement is not stated. The speaker expresses the statement as a generalisation true for the world. (Good/bad etc)

Examples

‘It’s good to be timely’

 “It’s bad to be inconsistent’
‘It’s rude to be loud’

The distortion, has no evidence, and is frequently based on family or cultural filters. To break the distortion the NLP Practitioner asks the speaker to specify evidence for their statement

Challenge: “According to whom?”, “Who says so?“, “How do you know?”

3. Cause Effect Pattern:

The implication or direct claim that one thing causes, or is caused by, another when there is no well-formed logical support or demonstrable, sensory-based evidence to support a causal connection.

Examples

‘You make me sad?’
‘People talking at once causes me anxiety’

There is no cause effect in biological system. There is nothing anyone or anything can do to affect your internal state, it is our internal reaction that is causing the state to change. The distortion here is it’s our response to the external stimuli, not the stimuli itself.

The meta Model challenge is designed for the speaker to access resources and have a different response, and therefore choice.

Challenge: “How specifically does people talking at once ‘cause’ you to choose anxiety ?”
Or offer a counter example

4. Complex Equivalence Pattern

Statements where complex situations, ideas, objects or their meanings are equated as synonymous.

Examples

“You always yell at me means you don’t like me”
“He’s a man, he is lucky”

The statements above are highly distorted the speaker is creating meaning by linking two unrelated components. The meta model question is designed to break the equivalence and recover choice. 

Challenge:

“How specifically does my yelling mean I don’t like you?” 
“Has someone ever yelled at someone you liked?

5. Presuppositions:

Presuppositions are the linguistic equivalent of assumptions.To make sense of a sentence the listener and / or speaker accept the presuppositions / assumptions as being true.

Presuppositions are the distorted assumptions inherent in natural language.

Examples

“If My husband knew how much I suffered he wouldn’t act that way”

The Presuppositions in this sentence are

She suffers
Her husband acts in some way
Her husband does not know she suffers

You can use any Meta Model pattern to challenge the distortions that are present assumptions in language.

Challenge:

How do you choose to suffer? – Recovers choice.
How specifically is he acting? – Specifies the verb.
How do you know he doesn’t know? – Challenges the mind read

Meta Model Deletions

1. Nominalisations

nouns that have been deleted from a process. Process words that have been frozen in time

Examples

“There is no communication here”

Challenge: Denominalise

2. Unspecified verbs

This is where a verb is not specified

Examples

“He rejected me”

Challenge: “Who or what specifically?”

3. Lack of referential index

Failure to specify a person or thing

Examples

“They don’t listen to me”

Challenge: “Who or what specifically?”

4. Simple deletion

Examples

“I am uncomfortable”

Challenge: “Who or what specifically?”

5. Comparative deletion

Examples

“She’s the better person”

Challenge: “Who or what specifically?”

Meta Model generalisations

1. Universal quantifiers

Universal generalisations with no specific referential index

Examples

Everyone, no one, every, something, never, all, someone

“She never listens to me”

“Nobody like me”

Challenge: “What would happen if?”

2. Modal operators of necessity

Words / phrases that imply necessity.

Examples

Should, shouldn’t, must, mustn’t, I need to, I have to

“I have to take care of her”

Challenge: “What would happen if?”

3. Modal operators of possibility / impossibility

Words / phrases that imply possibility / impossibility.

Examples

Can / can’t, may / may not, possible / impossible

“I can’t tell him the truth”

Challenge: “What would happen if?”

For examples of the meta model in action have a read of our posts “Increase your willpower with these 3 NLP Tips” and “four words that will kill a relationship “

Summary

The meta model is a great tool for uncovering what has been left out of what someone has said which gives clarity back to a communication. It opens up choices for people who may be feeling stuck or overwhelmed as well as giving people the tools to change their internal representations. 

NLP anchoring is such a simple and useful tool.

Basic anchoring is associating an emotional feeling (or state) with a physical sensation. Basic NLP anchoring is done by pairing physical touch with a feeling or behaviour you want to have at your disposal. Your life has been affected by anchors, even though you may not have set them up intentionally.

Did you ever see the film Jaws and notice that the shark was hardly in it? Still, you felt scared and that’s because the filmmakers set an anchor. The first time you see the shark you hear the ‘du-dum, du-dum’ music and later on just hearing that music brings back the feelings you had when you first saw the shark. How about the Darth Vader music? Both anchors. In this case, audio anchors and there are many other types but as mentioned above they can also be physical, in other words using touch.

Using NLP Anchoring to Instil Positive Feelings

How about wanting to feel resourceful in a particular situation? This is the most common use of NLP anchoring. For example, you may want to feel more confident when doing a presentation. An NLP anchor can give you access to the confidence you have in other situations that is not currently available to you when making that presentation.

Want to try it for yourself? Have a go at the experiment below with NLP anchoring. Or an alternative anchoring technique would be a thing called the circle of excellence, which is great for pre-presentation nerves for example.

There are many many techniques, have a go at this one…

Go through the following steps once and then again and the second time actually do them.

NLP Anchoring in 5 Quick Steps

1. Pick a positive state you’d like to feel, for example, more confident.

2. Think back to a time when you felt really confident. It can be any recollection of a time when your confidence was strong.

3. Decide on how you want to anchor that feeling, such as touching your thumb and forefinger together or making a fist.

4. Remember what you saw, heard and felt in your confident memory. You must put yourself inside the memory as if reliving it. Don’t view the memory from a distance; the feelings won’t come back. You’ve got to ‘be there’ again.

Relive the memory until you begin to feel the confidence coming over you in the same way you felt it at the time. As you feel that confidence coming on, activate your anchoring device from step #3.

For example, touch your thumb and forefinger together as the confident feeling increases. Release your thumb and forefinger when the feeling begins to subside. If you’ve done this well and there’s no underlying reason you shouldn’t feel more confident, this anchor set!

5. Test the anchor by touching your thumb and forefinger together in exactly the same way again and find out if you naturally access that confident state. Of course, don’t be sceptical and resist the anchor. Allow it to happen.

If it worked, you now have an NLP anchor! From here on out, you get to feel confident whenever you touch your thumb and forefinger together. Cool, huh?

Or Maybe Not

NLP anchoring may not work all the time. For example, if you are experiencing a stronger feeling such as intense fear or dread these feelings may well overwhelm the anchor you’ve set. Does this mean NLP anchoring is bogus? Nope.

What it does mean is that anchoring may not be a cure-all for your worst stuck states. Being effective in using a tool like anchoring is by understanding its limitations, and knowing what approach to take in its place if it is not the best solution to be using.

Take your average garden hoe. It works great in soft soil with shallow rooting weeds.

A popular tool as it is so useful, most gardens having lots of shallow-rooted weeds in them.

However, a common hoe is not going to work when it comes to rock hard soil with tall, deeply rooted weeds.

NLP anchoring is no different. It will work under the right circumstances. In other circumstance, you may need to add additional tools or do other work to ‘soften the soil’.

There are many times during daily life that it is useful to be able to see things from a different perspective. Understanding things from a different viewpoint and finding commonality leads to greater understanding and to easier resolution with things, to better results.

In relation to your significant other, or while making important decisions at work, knowing how the other person is thinking and perceiving the world around them. These are the keys to broadening your own understanding. Knowing this when you communicate gives you a good idea of where the other person is coming from. This means you can work with them to find solutions that work for everyone…

But how do you actually do that? What’s the mental mechanism for changing your perspective?

NLP Perceptual Positions

According to the NLP Perceptual Positions model, there are actually three different ways of perceiving a specific experience.

This technique allows you to adopt each perceptual perception as needed. If you’re not understanding how or why a specific situation unfolded in the manner that it did, it might be useful to change up your perception of it and view it from a different mental space.

Why should you learn Perceptual Positions?

Having the ability to change our perspectives in order to adapt to certain situations can be useful in a multitude of different situations.

Whether you are a parent, boss, student, teacher, in fact, any role in life including just being you, having the ability to see things from a different perspective will benefit you.

What are the positions?

There are three positions to consider.

Looking at the situation

1. through your own eyes, your own perspective
2. from the point of view of the other person
3. from an impartial external perspective.

How do I use them?

Go consciously through the process of shifting your perspective and thinking about things from each position.

Being structured in your approach can be very helpful. If for example you are dealing with an issue of conflict resolution perhaps ask yourself the same question in each position. Something like “how is this specific aspect of this situation affecting the situation when I look at it from this perspective?” Compare notes between the three positions and look for where there is commonality and agreement. After all – it’s much better to start any negotiation from a position of agreement rather than a position of conflict.

How about where there is no conflict? Think about a situation when you’re working with someone on an important decision for example. Using perceptual positions in this scenario is also very useful. You’re both looking to have a good outcome from your decision of course. It may be that when you look at it from the different perspectives you realise that the outcome of the decision you had in mind may not really be working for the other person at all! What a great thing to realise! Now you can adjust your position slightly so that you can still get what you want and importantly now the other person does too. It’s a win / Win!

How about if the person you are working with is feeling stuck, or you are yourself? Have a look at our post ‘using perceptual position for people who feel stuck‘ for some great insights into how to get moving again.  

The NLP Perceptual Positions model does not advocate one position over another. It merely clarifies each position and gives you more understanding of a situation, and with more understanding comes greater choice. The more information you have to base a decision on the better the decision is going to be.

Have a go, it’s a simple, really useful technique and it really works!