Laying the Foundation of Mentality pt2

In Part1 of this post, I examined the roots of my mentality and they are actually three of the NLP ( Neuro Linguistic Programming ) presuppositions. This doesn’t mean that the rest of the NLP presuppositions are insignificant, it means that those three most resonate with my box. ( in NLP we use the box metaphor for ourselves, so think out the box makes more sense ).

And this is why I make a Part2 to present another three of the NLP presuppositions, the ones that are most fundamental and important to me. Moreover, the remaining unmentioned presups are variations of the above, so I think the presentation is complete.

Ecology

This presup states that behavior and change have to be evaluated according to circumstances and context, which as a whole we call it ecology of the person. It is basically the environment outside and inside the human being.

An example would be diet. If one person’s all friends are overweight how much of a chance does he have to stick on a diet? If one wants to get a job abroad he has to check with his family to make sure that everybody understands the reason why he goes abroad.

I think you get the point. Many decisions or plans fail because people fail to realize that there is something in their environment or inside them that prevents them or sabotages them from succeeding. It’s all about costs and benefits. What will I gain if do it or don’t do it? What will I lose if I do or don’t do it?

Sometimes we lose more than we realize and there lie the cause of anxiety or bad relations or as I mentioned, failure.

Map and Territory

This is possibly the most difficult notion to understand and explain. The idea that the map is not the territory comes from the Alfred Korzybski who says that humans are limited in what they know by the structure of their nervous systems and the structure of their languages. NLP founders Grinder and Bandler said that human beings operate on a map of the world, and not the world itself. Our map of the world is our interpretation of the world according to our filtering mechanisms, our experiences, our (meta)programs and our environment.

Here’s an example. Some people hear a loud sound outside and you ask them what it was. Someone might say it was an explosion, someone else might say it was a gunshot or a tire or a car. The sensory based information is just a loud noise from a certain direction. Everything else are our interpretations, our maps. And everybody is happy his own map. But we have to be aware that our maps are not the shame and we should respect the other person’s model (map) of the world.

Territory is internal structures like stored sensory based ( Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic ) information. Exactly what the eye saw and the ear heard. Territory is also our thoughts, feelings, our experiences. Map is external structures, the words we use and our behaviors.

So many times, the words that we use or our behaviors don’t reflect what our senses, sensed or what we keep inside of us.

Not the easiest idea to explain and I hope I shed some light to it.

Positive Intention

Every behavior has a positive intention. Most people stop here. Sorry, but it has more. Every behavior has a positive intention for the person that is behaving that way. Not for you, not for me, not for anybody else but for the person that has the certain behavior.

I have a friend that once she had her bag stolen. The thief knocked her door, she turned to see who knocked, then he punched her in the face and got her bag. When she went to police she asked “Why the thief let me see his face? Didn’t he know that I would go to the police to report him?” and the policeman answered that these people draw satisfaction from knowing that you know you did it. They don’t care about being reported.

This is a big mental shift. We should get into the other person’s shoes and ask ourselves “What does he or she have to gain from this behavior?”. We don’t have to accept or agree just try to think what could be the positive intention or in other words the gain of the other person in behaving in a certain way. And this could be the first step in creating win/win situations.

That was a brief explanation of another three of the NLP presuppositions. The NLP presuppositions are the thirteen building blocks of the NLP way of thinking. These are not exclusive to the NLP nor some kind of a gospel. It’s a good-to-have mentality if you are really practicing this field of knowledge.

I am a certified NLP Master Practitioner by the NLP University of Santa Cruz, California, passionate about NLP and I want to present it in a positive, serious and neutral manner, away from exuberant claims and promises. NLP is not the greatest thing ever, not the cure-for-all, it is a set of techniques, a way of thinking and an attitude that can help you understand things and have the results that you want.

Simple as that!

And until we have the results that we want …
Be Healthy, Smile and Steem.

PS : All images are from free elentents from canva.com