Convenient Assumptions For Navigating Your World

In the vast field of study that is implicit within Neuro Linguistic Programming, you are encouraged to think more broadly and in greater depth than the confines of your neurology will currently allow. Generally speaking, you view the world through a highly limited lens to which you apply your judgement filters. To step out of your neurological, cognitive filters is clearly impossible, as deleting, generalising and distorting data according to your personal experiences is how you, as a human being, make sense of the vast world of information that bombards your senses on a moment by moment basis. What you can work towards is widening your neurology and re-drawing your mental maps so that you notice more about your reality and apply a more resourceful mindset to what you notice.

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In the primary stages of learning NLP, you will begin that very journey, expanding your neurology and creating useful mind mapping that will serve you well as you seek to influence those around you as you share your thoughts and ideas through the medium of verbal communication. Effective and precise communication is ultimately the master key to unlocking your true potential and creating your success.

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Even in the highly technological world that you find yourself operating within right now, and allowing for the rapid emergence of AI, the way that you connect with your fellow human beings remains the foundation of creating the future that you want and is how you will reach your most desired goals. People still need people. How you think about others and map your relationships in your mind, provides the bedrock for excellence in communication.

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In the field of NLP, we assist you to become an excellent communicator by asking you to consider and adopt a simple set of convenient assumptions, all of which will assist you in your ability to connect with and communicate successfully to those people whose paths you cross each and every day.

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I would love to share a few of them with you here:

1. Respect for another person’s model of the world. Your mental maps are very different to those of anyone else on the plant. The way you create your concept of reality is unique to you and everyone else has their own unique map too. Once you learn to accept and respect that someone will hold a different model of the world to you, it means you can avoid confrontation and conflict and perhaps gain new ideas and learn new things. To respect another person’s model of the world is to value their opinion and shape your communication accordingly.

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2. Resistance in a client is a sign of a lack of rapport. Let’s imagine that there are no resistant people, only inflexible communicators. When someone is resisting your communication, erecting barriers to agreement at every junction, the first assumption you make should be that you are not in rapport with that person and so they have no connection on which to build openness and trust.  Effective communicators accept and utilise all communication presented to them. Spend some time building rapport prior to delivering the key points of your communication and the barriers will soon tumble, leaving the road open for a useful exchange of ideas and thoughts.

3. People are not their behaviours. Sitting within your judgement filters, you observe people and their apparent behaviours and then judge them accordingly. It’s extremely easy to get stuck in a primary judgement of someone based completely on a single behaviour that you have observed. If you step out of that mapping and notice that you can accept the person, because the behaviour can change, you open the door for an excellent verbal exchange. A leopard can change its spots if it is motivated to do so. You can open up the possibility of an effective interaction with that person if you accept them at a deeper level and encourage behavioural change that is good for that individual.

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4. Everyone you meet and have a conversation with is doing the best they can in their current context with the inner resources they have available to them right now. Every behaviour that a person elects to engage in is motivated by a positive intention, for them. After all, human behaviour is naturally geared up to be adaptable and at any one time, the presenting behaviour is the best choice available to that person in that moment within that context. Sometimes the choices that you make work out, sometimes they don’t, always remember that you made those choices with a positive intention in mind and everyone else is making choices through the same mental processing. This assumption allows you to forgive a behaviour that didn’t work out, by first noticing the positive intention and the resources available at the time.

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5. The map is not the Territory. Here’s the thing. You do not respond to reality directly, you respond to your perceptions of reality. In other words, the ‘maps’ you create in your mind, comprising your thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions, do not accurately and objectively represent the actual ‘territory’ or the external reality. Your mental maps are merely highly individual interpretations of that territory, shaped by your personal experiences, cultural background, language, and biological sensory limitations. The words you use are not the event or the item they represent. The accurate choice of words therefore becomes crucial to an effective communication. Always remember, when you communicate, you are communicating your own map and your may is not representative of reality.

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6. Imagine that you could never fail again in your whole life. What would you do differently or more of if you knew you could not fail? This is a tremendously powerful assumption to adopt, there is no such thing as failure, there is only feedback! When you engage in an activity and the results are not what you expected or hoped for, that isn’t failure to succeed, it’s feedback which will support your success. As you go about your business today, play a game of zero failure and see how much valuable feedback you can collect and integrate into your behaviour and processes. Free from the shackles of fearing failure, you will become capable of so much more and highly motivated to engage in new things.

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7. Finally, adopt the assumption that meaning of any communication that you make is only evident in the response that you get reflected back at you. If a person mis-understands your communication, that isn’t their responsibility, it’s yours. It is important to be on standby with an alternative structure around which you can re-deliver your message in the way that will be meaningful in that it matches your intentions. Effective communicators are highly flexible communicators and are ready to re-phrase multiple times until their meaning is accepted in the intended way.

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The convenient assumptions that I have briefly outlined for you today represent a choice, you can take them onboard or not and even if they are not ‘true’ in your current model of the world, accepting them will seriously enhance your ability to connect with your fellow human beings and to communicate with them more successfully. On your journey towards your goals, communication is key, you never do anything in isolation, people are important in supporting your success.

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