Chapter 2
Some Basic Assumptions of NLP
In This Chapter
▶ Understanding the presuppositions of NLP
▶ Testing the NLP presuppositions
▶ Walking in someone else’s shoes
▶ Developing flexibility to take full responsibility in any interaction
Brenda has a much loved, only daughter, Mary. By the age of ten, Mary was a little spoiled because she arrived after Brenda and her husband had given up hope of ever having a child. Mary was prone to throwing tantrums the likes of which you’re extremely fortunate not to experience. Mary thrashed about on the floor, screaming and flailing her arms and legs. Brenda made no progress with Mary’s tantrums until one day, when Mary was on the floor exercising her lungs with total abandonment, the longsuffering Brenda took some metal pans out of a cupboard and joined Mary on the floor. Brenda banged the pots on the wooden floor and kicked and screamed even better and louder than Mary. Guess what? Mary lay still in stunned astonishment, staring at her mother. She decided there and then that her mother was the more expert ‘tantrummer’ and that she would lose the tantrum contest every time. She realised that pursuing this particular course of action was futile and the tantrums stopped from that moment. Brenda took control of her interaction with Mary by displaying the greater flexibility of behaviour. This little anecdote illustrates that ‘the person with the most flexibility in a system influences the system’. This statement isn’t the result of some experiment conducted in a laboratory. Instead, it’s an NLP presupposition (or assumption), which, if practised and adopted, can help to ease your journey through life. Brenda’s story illustrates just one of several presuppositions – also called convenient beliefs – which form the basis of NLP.
Introducing NLP Presuppositions NLP presuppositions are no more than generalisations about the world that can prove useful to you when you act as if they’re true. In the following sections, we describe some of the presuppositions that we consider to be most influential out of several that the founders of NLP developed. The map is not the territory One of the first presuppositions is that ‘the map is not the territory’. This statement was published in Science and Sanity in 1933 by Korzybski, a Polish count and mathematician. Korzybski was referring to the fact that you experience the world through your senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste) – the territory. You then take this external phenomenon and make an internal representation (IR) of it within your brain – the map. This internal map that you create of the external world, shaped by your experiences, is never an exact replica of the map made by someone else perceiving the same surroundings as you. In other words, what’s outside can never be the same as what’s inside your brain. Take the following analogy. If you ask a botanist what Belladonna means, they may give you the Latin name for the plant and describe the flowers and slight scent while making a picture of the plant in their head. Whereas a homoeopath may explain its uses in treating certain symptoms and see a picture of a patient they treated. If you ask a murder-mystery writer about Belladonna, they may say that it’s a poison. Or try another analogy: if you’re driving in London, with your London street map, the ‘roads’ shown on the map are completely different from the roads you’re actually driving along. For a start the tube stations you drive past are in three dimensions and in colour, whereas they are shown as a blue circle with a red line through it on the map. The point is that depending on the context and someone’s background, different people make different IRs of the same thing. Putting perceptions through your own personal filter Your senses bombard you with millions of different bits of information every second, and yet your conscious mind can deal with only a handful of individual pieces at any given moment: as a result, an awful lot of information is filtered out. This filtration process is influenced by your values and beliefs,
memories, decisions, experiences, and your cultural and social background, to allow in only what your filters are tuned to receive. When you’re with another person or other people, choose something in your surroundings and have each of you write a short description of what you observe: for example, the view from a window. Notice that people’s descriptions are individually tailored by their own life experiences. Some Europeans and North Americans experience a major culture shock when visiting countries such as India or Mexico. Because of their cultural background, they may be shocked by the level of poverty in some areas whereas local people accept the poverty as part of life. People accept the familiarity of their own landscape. Travelling down another person’s map: Unfamiliar territory The result of this personal filter is that everyone has a very individual map of the world. To make communication easier, a really useful exercise is to at least attempt to understand the IR or map of the person with whom you’re communicating. Romilla was buying some fish and chips for supper and was asked to complete a short form about the quality, service, and value-for-money of the food. The women serving behind the counter were very upset because the man who had just left had declined, quite rudely, to fill in the form. Romilla asked the ladies whether they had considered how the poor man may have felt if he was illiterate, and that perhaps he was rude because he was embarrassed. The change in the two ladies was phenomenal: ‘I never even thought about that,’ said one. Their demeanour changed immediately from one of anger and resentment to one of sympathy. They also felt much better in themselves and were able to let go of all the negative feelings. The following short exercise helps you to find tolerance, or at least gain some understanding, when you find yourself in a situation where another person’s response or behaviour surprises you, irritates you, or just leaves you puzzled:
Count all the blessings in your life.
With examples of your own good fortune rattling around in your brain, put on your most generous hat. 3. Ask yourself what may be going on in this other person’s world that would warrant the behaviour.
When you begin to master this process, you may find that not only are you happier with your lot, but also you accept people and their idiosyncrasies with greater ease.