Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) was developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in the 1970’s (Bandler & Grinder, 1975). They studied the structure of language and how the most effective therapists used it with clients to facilitate positive change (O’Connor & Seymour, 1990). It has been described as “the art and science of excellence” (O’Connor & Seymour, 1990, p. xii) and “the study of the structure of subjective experience” (Dilts, 1980).
Performance Improvement with NLP
A contact on LinkedIn requested:
Q: “Could you pls write some thing on improving performance through NLP for my blog, if you have time?”
If I had to specify exactly where I am with using NLP right now, and where I can improve my own performance – it would be in the area of my expectations. I will revisit that at the end of this article.
We need to become fully conscious of the power of our beliefs, thoughts and expectations over our feelings and attitude, i.e. our emotional life. When I originally wrote this post in 2011, I was into the power of positive thinking in a big way, although I now believe there are serious limitations to that approach if we confine ourselves to that. We can become deluded about our power to change ourselves and others and become quickly disillusioned and crushed if we should fail. In November 2018, After a year of study at University, I believe there are two missing components to this approach that are also required: Self-compassion (Gilbert, 2009; Harris, 2015) and mindfulness (Harris, 2015; Kabat-Zinn, 2011). There are some similarities with the NLP approach outlined here, originated by Grinder and Bandler (1975) and carried on by Anthony Robbins (1996), and that of challenging thoughts outlined by Aaron Beck (2012) with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) (Taibbi, 2019).
We need to be able to reduce the power of that negative thinking has over us and the feelings we habitually end up with as a result, e.g. not wanting to take action. That is what keeps us stuck.
I will discuss two ways to improve performance using NLP:
1) How to remove or substantially reduce the power of negative beliefs or negative programs running in the unconscious mind.
2) How to realistically raise our expectations of our future performance and how things will turn out in the future (i.e. to think and act more positively on a more regular basis, and have some rational basis for doing so). In doing this, we must be very clear on what we can control (i.e. ourselves, at least to some extent) and what we cannot control (i.e. other people and external events).
But first, some Basic NLP Theory:
Basic NLP theory says that we filter all incoming information through our five senses and also language. Our senses form representational systems which help us make sense of our subjective experience. Thus you have five systems (VAKOG) representing the five senses: Visual (Sight); Auditory (Hearing); Kinesthetic (Touch); Olfactory (Smell) and Gustatory (Taste), as well as the structure of language itself.
Q: So how do we begin to code our experience in words and pictures, based on what comes in from outside?
A: We use “deletions, distortions and generalisations” in order to better understand the world we live in:
Deletions mean we ignore or filter out incoming stimuli. Information is lost on receipt.
e.g. “They don’t like me” begs the question: “Who doesn’t like you, specifically?”
Distortions mean we lose a bit of accuracy along the way…perhaps we make up the bit we missed, misheard or misunderstood, and so the story takes on a whole new meaning. We are tempted to join the dots and make assumptions, without asking questions of the other party to clarify the intended meaning.
e.g. “He said this, and she said that, and what they meant was xyz”
begs the question: “How do we know that they really meant xyz?”
Generalisations are where we might say:
“Everything is always going wrong!”
Whereas it would be more accurate to say:
“Sometimes, some things go wrong.”
These are ways of creating a simplified “map” of the “territory” we live in, so we can filter the vast amount of incoming data we are constantly bombarded with and simplify it into something we can perceive as our reality. That is how we make sense of and give meaning to our subjective experience. It is how humans have survived to this day.
NLP informs us that “the map is not the territory” (Dallos & Draper, 2005 p. 20; Korzybski, 1994), i.e. that our perception of reality is merely a map or a model of our subjective experience and not an accurate reflection of reality itself. If you look at an A to Z street map, an Atlas, a globe or even Google Earth, you know it is a representation or a model and not the real Earth. This is less obvious with our own perceptions, which we tend to accept as being accurate. The way we see the World, and the meaning we give to events appears, to all intents and purposes, to be the way it actually is. NLP cautions us that “It ain’t necessarily so.”
Two people’s experience of the same thing can lead them to react in radically different ways, because their respective maps of the world are different, and so are their perceptions, the meaning they give their subjective experience and their resulting decisions, actions or inactions. The best example I can think of in this regard is where two men had an alcoholic father. One man ended up as an alcoholic but his brother didn’t. When they were both asked why they turned out the way they had, they both said the same thing: “I am like this because of my father. He was an alcoholic.” One son had copied his father’s behaviour and used him as a role model, whereas the other used his father as a warning, a “counter-example”. He had done everything in his power not to end up like him and successfully avoided descending into alcoholism. Thus the same lived experience can produce two completely different life outcomes.
Reducing Negativity with NLP
How can we remove or substantially reduce the power of negative beliefs or negative programs running in the unconscious mind? Limiting beliefs, emotional triggers and other types of negative ‘programming’ can affect our emotional state (affecting our performance and reinforcing our perception of ourselves) as we go through life acquiring experience. NLP gives us the opportunity to study our “Programs” (i.e. our filters, beliefs, values, rules, scripts and maps) and identify, isolate and challenge any limiting or negative programs in order to free us from their power over us. NLP can also give us the tools to “reconstruct” our experience by removing the deletions, distortions and generalisations, to gain a more informed and more accurate perception and map of the territory we live in.
Baggage Handling 101
I think of negative programming simply as “baggage” and imagine a person running through a busy airport (being late for a flight) carrying loads and loads of excess baggage. Some of it might not even be theirs! If we can identify this excess “baggage” and “let it go”, it frees us to be happier and more productive, thus boosting our performance, i.e. we can catch our flight easier and thus travel further because we can run faster!
Exercise: Challenging your negative beliefs and expectations
One of the first NLP type exercises I undertook was to examine my own negative beliefs. This was after listening to an audio program by Anthony Robbins called Personal Power 2 (Robbins, 1996). Robbins talks about a triad: Focus, meaning and action. He says that what you focus on and the meaning you give it creates your reality. That may be a reality where you feel helpless, or too depressed to take any meaningful action. So you stay stuck.
How to get unstuck
A good way to start this process is to work out what your negative beliefs and expectations actually are.
Write down your negative beliefs and expectations
Caution: It is important that you keep yourself safe, so if it becomes in anyway distressing you should stop. You may also want to have a friend around when you do this exercise. However, I recommend you stay with this exercise and work through the opposites without interruption if you can, otherwise staring at a list of your deepest and darkest fears without writing down their opposites may be counterproductive.
1) Grab a pen and paper and split a page into two columns. In the first column list as many of your negative beliefs and expectations as you can. Write them down in a long list. A gentle way to start with this is to just list 2 or 3 and then pause.
You might start by stating negative affirmations such as:
Beliefs about your own skills:
“I am useless at spelling.” Or…
“I am a rubbish parent.” Or…
Expectations about the future:
“Things always turn out poorly.”
Now pause.
2) Write out their exact opposites in the second column. It can be helpful to have them on the same sheet, opposite each other. Alternatively, put the opposites on a separate sheet.
“I am not useless at spelling.”
“I am not a rubbish parent”.
“Things don’t always turn out poorly.”
3) See if you can re-write them in a positive way
Beliefs about your own skills: “I am not useless at spelling.” can be rewritten as “I am not always useless at spelling.” and then “my spelling could use some improvement” (A prompt for a call to action – identifying a learning opportunity, rather than beating yourself up) or “I would like my spelling to be better”.
“I am not a rubbish parent” can be re-written to become: “Sometimes I am quite a good parent” (give an example when you were) or “I want to be a great parent” (and give say, 3 reasons why).
Expectations about the future: “Things don’t always turn out poorly.” You may also be able to write down an example that supports this assertion, that you got to work on time today or your partner remembered your anniversary, or the man on the bus said “have a nice day”.
If you find yourself getting caught up in emotional turmoil, try to do this mindfully, as if you are an impartial observer, or like a scientist studying somebody else’s beliefs rather than your own, and try not to get too emotionally caught up in what you write as if it were absolutely true. They are just words on a page, after all.
What’s holding you back?
This is not meant to be torture. All you are trying to establish is which limiting or negative programming [or simply put, self talk] runs in your head which makes you feel annoyed, angry, inadequate or generally makes you feel bad and saps your strength and enthusiasm for life. Look particularly at any emotionally charged words (e.g. “useless”) and get a sense of how saying this over and over to yourself is likely to make you feel. Get them out on paper, and they start to lose their power, because once they are actually written down you can start to see how ridiculous some of them are! Better still, get a trusted friend, partner or your therapist to evaluate or discuss them with you.
Swap appraisals
You can also swap pages with your friend and appraise each others. It is easier to be objective with someone else’s beliefs. For example, if you catch yourself writing something like: “I am a rubbish parent.” (which is, of course, a huge generalisation – “When exactly, all the time, always?”) then ask your spouse or partner if this belief is accurate in its current written form. Hopefully they will say this is untrue, at least most of the time, and will come up with some examples to prove this particular belief to be inaccurate. You will probably be able to think of some positive examples (e.g. of when you were a good parent) as well.
Write down the positives (The opposites)
Thus if you initially wrote “I am a rubbish parent” you may then write afterwards (after consideration of the actual facts): “I am an excellent parent.” Or even: “I am an adequate parent who is committed to improve with experience.” It will be helpful to have evidence to support and reinforce this new positive statement, which will at the same time devalue the original negative statement. Thus we can begin to “rewrite our scripts”, “reprogram ourselves”, or “recondition ourselves for success”.
The CBT Approach
A process I saw recently on a video with Arthur Freeman (2009) shows the CBT approach with a piece of paper headed up with three columns, Situation, Feelings, and Thoughts. Thus a fictitious example might be:
Situation: I shouted at my son today because he was talking when I was trying to watch TV.
Feelings: I feel terrible about it now because he was upset and went to his room.
Thoughts: He’ll must hate me and I must be a terrible parent. He will never forgive me. There’s nothing I can say or do to put things right, etc. etc.
The idea is that the therapist will then help the client challenge the negative thoughts and help him find a solution, like apologising to his son, and helping him to figure out a strategy to prevent it happening again.
Daily conditioning
Anthony Robbins (1996) emphasises that we need to condition ourselves for success through daily repetition, rather than just reprogramming ourselves once and expecting everything to be perfect from then on. So this is an exercise worth revisiting from time to time because it gives you a chance to do a kind of “life laundry” and sweep away any accidental negative beliefs you have unwittingly accumulated along the way.
Raising our expectations
2) How to raise our expectations of our future performance and how things will turn out in the future.
Pessimists and Optimists
Let’s start with a pretty big generalisation, which appears to be true in my experience: It would appear that successful people have predominantly positive (i.e. optimistic) expectations about the future and their abilities and they tend to focus on solutions instead of problems…
Whereas less successful people have predominantly negative (i.e. pessimistic) expectations about the future and their abilities and they tend to focus on problems and obsess about how bad everything is instead of focusing on solutions and how some things at the moment are actually quite good (Robbins, 1996; Seligman, 1998).
Therefore, the best way to improve your performance, we are told, is to change your mindset/thinking/self dialogue (i.e. what you say to yourself) from predominantly negative to predominantly positive, (i.e. change what you focus on) AND change the quality of your expectations accordingly (Clement Stone & Hill, 1990).
For example, if you focus on (and obsess about) earning just enough money to pay your bills then that’s what your subconscious appears to get to work with – you will end up with just enough and no more… (Hill, 1937).
Setting big goals – A word of warning
Based on the philosophies espoused in The Power of Positive Thinking (Peale, 2012) and The Magic of Thinking Big (Schwartz, 2015) we might be tempted to consider: Why not up the stakes, and expect to double or triple your income instead of merely maintaining it? And then write these down as our goals for next year. Back in 2011, I had read about this and believed this was a viable strategy to try out. But it didn’t work for me. I didn’t bank on big changes in outer circumstances, or how my actions and changes I made had a ripple effect on everything else. Basically, I couldn’t make some of those big goals happen. And that was disappointing. I found that thinking big can sometimes backfire and leave you in a deep hole with a wounded ego. I found out the hard way that it would have been better to have had realistic goals, rather than too many, idealised, over the top goals that you cannot reach.
Problem focus versus solution focus
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein
If you can incrementally raise the quality of your expectations [whilst still making them believable – this is vital for success], then you can become more conscious in your thinking and actions and thus you can proactively choose “success consciousness” in the moment, rather than allow “failure consciousness” to predominate by default (Robbins, 1996; Hill, 1937). By doing this you are literally choosing and crafting new positive programs to run in your head on a regular basis instead of allowing the old negative ones to run on auto pilot (McKenna, 2011). Success consciousness often involves delaying short term gratification, so it is a lot more difficult than it might first appear. It is easier said than done. An awareness of our most important values can help us keep going when we want to give up or give into distraction or temptation (Harris, 2007).
Minding the expectation gap (Gap analysis)
I believe there is merit in identifying gaps. Gaps in your expectations and levels of achievement, both personally and professionally. But the skill comes in identifying them in a non judgmental way, otherwise you run the risk of beating yourself into the ground when things don’t turn out the way you wanted them too. When you feel you have let yourself and your family down, or your colleagues, or you have disappointed your partner or parents. That is where self-compassion, acceptance and forgiveness (Gilbert, 2009; Neff & Vonk, 2009) can help you recover from setbacks where self-criticism would fail and keep you in an unresourceful state (Overdurf & Silverthorn, 1995).
Towards a more positive focus, outlook and mindset
A dotty idea
In “I Can Make You Happy” Paul McKenna (2011) wrote that by putting coloured dots around your house you can train yourself to think positively more often. Simply see the dot, and think a positive thought each time you see it. That’s all there is to it.
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” Lao Tzu (n.d.).
I said I would revisit my expectations at the end of the article. Expectations of ourselves, others and of the future are tricky beasts. They can be unrealistically high (i.e. perfectionistic) or unrealistically low (i.e. “No one loves me or cares about me, so what’s the bloody point in even trying?”). This is a kind of ‘all or nothing’ or ‘black and white’ thinking that can really screw us up and leave us feeling decimated.
We need to figure out what is realistic, what we are actually responsible for and what we can realistically control: Ourselves. We need to notice what we are thinking and catch ourselves thinking unresourceful thoughts before they lead to unresourceful states of mind, and that takes practice.
On the other hand, with some planning, realistic goals, aspirations and our most important values in mind, we can all take simple daily actions or ‘baby steps’ towards a brighter, better, healthier and more positive attitude, by focusing on what we want most, keeping our ‘signature strengths’ (Peterson & Seligman, 2004) within our awareness and refusing, as far as possible, to be distracted from what is most important to us in the long run. NLP can help us achieve that.
Neil Paddock.
[Originally written: Saturday, 5 March 2011, revised Wednesday 28th/29th November 2018. Reference list added 30th June 2020].
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