NLP Origins


NLP is about learning to use your brain in more functional ways, or put more simply, it's taking control of ones own mind.

NLP is 40 years old.  It was developed in the 1970’s by Dr. Richard Bandler, a mathematician and Gestalt therapist; and by linguist Dr. John Grinder during a study on communication.  They were inspired by and began to study the work of the most successful therapists and thinkers of their time such as as Virginia Satir, an internationally renowned pioneer of family therapy; Dr. Fritz Perls,  a psychiatrist and psychotherapist and the creator of Gestalt therapy;  Dr. Milton Erickson, founder of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis and one of the most widely acknowledged and clinically successful psychiatrists of our times; and Gregory Bateson, a famous anthropologist, social scientist, cyberneticist and linguist. 


Bandler and Grinder sought to formulate a new practical model of therapy and counseling founded upon patterns of these individuals, as well as synthesize a number of different kinds of scientific theories and models such as the principles of psychology, computer programming and systems theory.  They set out to learn how the brain codes learning and experience.  This coding affects all communication and behavior and is key to changing programs in your brain through a set of techniques that focus on identifying, using and changing patterns in the thought processes that influence your behavior and action in an effort to give you more choices in life and improve the quality and effectiveness of your life.

NLP has been defined as "The study of Subjective Experience" or "Modeling Excellence, " meaning that any resourceful behavior or  skill of a particular person can be modeled, or learned, by another to get the same outcome.  You can also model your own successful strategies and then transfer them into other parts of your life that may not be as effective.  In other words, NLP helps to break down particular strategies into precise code that can then be copied by another to get the same effect. 

NLP is not about "programming other people's minds" in an effort to control them.  In fact, the only way a person can change any behavior is by first being congruent with the change they say they want to make.  Additionally, it's incongruence that keeps a person from changing things about themselves that they say they want to change.  For example, a person who constantly overeats when they are feeling bad about something may find losing weight impossible, because most likely their "eating" is serving a valuable purpose even if it is negative, and by taking that away from them it would leave them incongruent with their desire to feel good so they can sabotage their own efforts.  In NLP, when one behavior is "taken away" from a person, it's replaced with something else, otherwise the original behavior can return.

NLP is Evolutionary

Interview with Dr. Richard
Bandler, co-creator of NLP

NLP is about getting the best procedure from the people who have succeeded their best at any task and teaching other people to do it.   It's about having lessons that tell you how to design the inside of your head  like you would design the inside of a room. I teach the art and science of  excellence.

The tools I created are evolutionary because we've never had  a way to think about how we think. Being trained primarily as a physicists, it  taught me to think in terms of how things work in systems. I used to design compiler systems and that technology of teaching machines to do what humans did  got me the idea that we can teach humans to do what other humans did by looking  at the process, not the content.

I teach people to think differently--when you think differently, you feel differently, therefore what you can do expands.

If you can take any successful mental strategy and  apply it in the future to whatever you want to do or if you can be successful at one thing than you can be successful at anything. If you take your own internal  processes that work and you bring them into consciousness, this is your chance to take control of your mind to become successful at whatever you  do.

If you want to start a business at home and you’re  going to be self initiated, you have to look into the future and you have to  make what you’re seeing in the future compelling, which means you have to be able to adjust your fantasy to where you want to be so it is so strong that you feel it in every fiber of your soul.  To me, this is what NLP offers to the world.  Freedom to be successful and taking the best of your mind and making it work for you.

You can shift your brain about anything.   I don’t cure anybody, because I don’t think they’re sick.  I’m a teacher.  This is about using your neurology to consciously and unconsciously do what you want to do.  As a result people become happier and more functional and more successful.
“Richard Bandler’s ideas  revolutionized modern psychology, business and the  field of coaching,  self-help and self-improvement.” His insights into  the human mind have  had a huge impact upon the world.” --Conversations  with Richard  Bandler.