This diagram represents the NLP communication model. What we’ve got is an external event that comes in from the outside, goes into your head and you filter that information in some way. The filters do the process of deleting, distorting and generalizing that event.
The filters are:
- our experience of time, space, matter, and energy
- the language that we speak
- our memories
- our decisions
- our metaprograms
- our values
- our beliefs
- our attitudes
Those all filter our experience as it comes inside and we make an internal representation of it. That internal representation is intimately coupled with a state (how does that make me feel), that state is intimately coupled with a physiology (how does my body function when I feel this way) which ultimately leads to behaviour.
Internal representation is the most important part for NLP and for any communication. To understand what an internal representation is like, start to notice the kinds of words that you use and the kinds of words that people around you use.
What is the internal representation that you make inside your head? What is the order and sequence of those internal representations?
Twenty years ago they did a study of the major industrial accidents in the United States and they found that there was a poster on the wall in the majority of those cases that told the person what not to do. You’ve seen them — a picture of a guy with a banana peel he’s slipped on and falling over backwards, and the slogan says “Don’t slip”.
I think it makes a lot of sense to tell people what to do but I’m not sure if it makes a lot of sense to tell people what not to do. The reason is because your mind cannot process a negative directly. For example, if I were to say to you “don’t think of a blue tree”, what do you think of? Probably a blue tree. It’s impossible to not think about something you’re not supposed to be thinking about.
Notice that it is impossible to hold a negative in consciousness directly. If I were to say to you “don’t think of a blue tree” you might think of a blue tree and then think “oh I’m not supposed to think of a blue tree” and then you’d think of a tree with green leaves. At very best it might be a two-step process where you think about what you don’t want to think about then you think about what you do want to think about.
The human nervous system is an exquisite device. You have been given a device that is so efficient at producing behaviour. But the behaviour that it produces depends upon the internal representation that you make. If you are making an internal representation that is about what you don’t want then you are likely to produce behaviour that is also what you don’t want.
Think about your kids — you say to them “don’t go play in the street” and they go “oh, the street, thanks mum, we never thought of that” and off they go. Or it’s Christmas time and you have a bowl of nuts on the table and you say “keep your hands off those nuts” and your child says “OK” as he grabs a handful because you’ve put something in his mind that perhaps wasn’t even there.
What is it that I have to do to change this internal representation? How can I think about what I do want rather than what I don’t want? NLP techniques and processes can change how you think about things, which changes how you feel emotionally and physically which changes how you behave.
Until the next instalment, notice how often you say “don’t leave your clothes on the floor”, “I’m not allowed to eat sweets”, “don’t get angry with me”…
How often during the day do you make an internal representation of what you don’t want?