What is NLP used for?

NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming, but what is NLP used for?
 
NLP is used for:
 

• improving your life;
• taking your life back;
• creating the future you want;
• curing phobias;
• changing your likes into dislike and vice versa;
• changing your emotion around experiences;
• helping you to put your goals in a tangible way into your future;
• looking in a new way at a past or present situation;
• improving your communication skills;
• changing your beliefs;
• clearing your blocks;
• empowering you;
• managing your thoughts, moods and behaviours more effectively; and
• bringing balance and integration into your life.

​NLP consists of various processes that helps you to achieve all of this and so much more. Some of the processes are geared to help you to change the filters that determines the way you experience the world.
 
For example as per the NLP communication model, your 5 senses receive up to 2 million bits of information per second. However, your conscious mind can only take in 134 bits of information per second. As a result, to be able to sort through 2 million bits of information and only allow 134 bits of information in, your mind deletes, distorts and generalises the information.
 
This brings us to one of the presuppositions of NLP: The map is not the territory. This means that what you perceive as reality is in actual fact simply a representation of the world seen through your filters. Therefore, your filters determines your reality and your experiences.
 
Through changing your filters, you can change your reality and experiences. You can change the way you interpret the world. A simple example of this would be if you or a friend were to buy a new car. Prior to buying this car, you haven’t noticed this specific car or colour much, but now that you or your friend has bought it, you see it everywhere. You therefore have added this car and its colour to your filters and it has now become part of the 134 bits of information that your conscious mind allows in. NLP fast tracks the changing of your filters. Using affirmations is also a way of changing your filters, although it takes longer, but in time it will still allow in what you want, rather than what you don’t want.
 
Other processes are geared to change the way your brain stores information. In NLP we believe that your brain stores different experiences in different ways. Your mind uses visual, auditory and kinesthetic representations to store memories. Pleasant experiences will be stored in a different way than unpleasant experiences and something that you like will be stored in a different way from something that you don’t.
 
Using an NLP process that change the way a “like” or dislike is stored for you, a “like” can be changed into a “dislike” (no longer want to eat chocolates) and vice versa. The way you feel about an experience, can also be altered to help you to move through it. The same process can be used to help you to change feelings around a place or person and give you resources for the “younger” you.
 
Using processes to examine your beliefs and to find and change limiting beliefs, or beliefs that no longer serves you, will open new opportunities for you. Make what you previously thought of as impossible, possible. This helps you to understand that you truly are your own limitation.
 
Dissolving a Gestalt (build up of issues) through finding the first significant emotional event and then clearing it and everything connected to it, is an amazing process to help you in letting go of trauma and/or negative emotion.
 
Another process can cure lifelong phobias in as little as one session. This includes, but is not limited to fear of spiders, heights, flying, cats, dogs, and the dark etc.
 
Another powerful process is for setting goals through first looking at it from different perspectives (Dreamer, Realist, Critic). Then ensuring that all 6 logical levels are looked at, addressed and in alignment with your goal:

1. Purpose/ Vision
2. Identity
3. Values/ Beliefs
4. Skills/ learnings/ Competencies
5. Behaviour
6. Environment

 
Next, you’ll put your goal into your future using a visual, auditory and kinesthetic representation of it, and you will see how everything on your time line falls into place and changes, to make this goal a reality.
 
All of this will assist you to become more effective in your personal and working life. It will help you to live an authentic life, true to yourself.
 
So, in short: What is NLP used for? It is used to give you the life that you want and deserve, through the utilisation of different processes that empowers you.
 
It is processes that will help you to become the best version of yourself.