I’m interested to hear from you about what NLP does for/means to you.
I don’t mean your definition of NLP, I mean on a personal level, what has NLP done for you?
For me, I came to know about NLP after seeing someone using it on TV. It seemed so fast and effective that I began to do some research about it to learn more. I realised that NLP might have something to offer me in my own life at a point where I was feeling stuck in a career that I wanted to change.
The very first thing NLP gave me was hope.
From there I began learning about it. I learned more about how my thinking worked than I head learned about my thinking in all my years on the planet up to that point in time. I realised that my thoughts and emotions were not stuck as I had thought they were. I began to realise I could find ways to control my emotions and to think more helpfully.
The second thing I gained from NLP was a curiosity to learn. It was a feeling I hadn’t had without force in a long time. It felt good to be excited about the idea of learning once again and to have the feeling of wanting to know more.
When I embarked on my NLP Practitioner training, I began to learn ways to manage old problems from the past that I had dragged around with me for years. I finally said out loud thoughts that I’d only thought to myself quietly and had not before had the confidence to say.
This meant that the third thing that NLP helped me to achieve was freedom.
As my learning and understanding of NLP developed, my enthusiasm to share the skills with others increased. I know so many people in my personal life that I felt could benefit from the skills I had learned. It was as if I’d been given the key to a secret garden and wanted everyone else to see it too. Of course, not all of them shared my excitement and perhaps I learned something here about being realistic, about how some people like to keep their problems, however bad they may be.
After completing my NLP Practitioner training, I came to realise that working with clients would now only partially fulfil my goals. I now had a new goal of training others.
The fourth thing that I both got (and gave) from NLP was contribution. The skills were too good to keep for myself and if I couldn’t explore other people that were close to me to learn these skills then I would be sure to teach them to those who had a desire to know more about them and learn.
Whilst I’m sure that there are a number of higher purposes I have gained from NLP, the final one I shall mention is autonomy. As a result of learning NLP, I become a full time practitioner with my own companies relating to the subject. I get to do the work I want to do and within reason, when I want to do it.
When I look at the higher intentions of NLP (for me) it includes: hope, curiosity, freedom, realism, contribution and autonomy. So now I ask the question of you: NLP, for what purpose?
By Gemma Bailey
www.peoplebuilding.co.uk
