The Presuppositions of NLP
These are the priciples upon which NLP was founded. There is no empirical list, just a list of useful assumptions that are extremely useful to operate from.
The list will vary from authority to authority, depending on the relevence and importance of that particular authorities background. For example, one person may specialise in personal development, another in the workplace, or another in sports and so on. Others will have their own to add to the list, the results of their own realisations ane experience etc.
- The map is not the territory
- Every Person lives in his or her unique model of the world
- Rapport is meeting another person at their model of the world
- People always make the best choices available to them, given their unique model of the world and of their situation
- Every behaviour is regarded as having a positive intention.
- There is a distinction between the person and the behaviour
- You cannot not communicate
- There is no failure only feedback
- Memory and Imagination use the same neurological pathways.
- People work perfectly
- People already have all the resources they need
- In any interaction, the person with the greatest behavioural flexibility has the most influence on the outcome, (the law of Requisite variety).
- The meaning of your communication is the response you get!
- If what you are doing isn't working, do something else, do anything else
- If one person can do something, anyone else can learn to do it
- Mind and body are part of the same system.
- Experience has structure
- If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always have what you’ve always had!
- Meaning is context dependent
Another couple of useful presuppositions from AAPD.
The brain was not designed to think, it was deisgned to respond to control the body automatically to the information received through the senses
- The function of memory is not recall, it is about the way the brain produces physical and physiological responses automatically.