Personal development encompasses a wide range of ideas and ideals. The central premise of personal development or self-improvement is to learn to grow into a better functioning person. By better functioning, I mean a happier, more successful person. You see, the key to all success is successful habits and decisions. Neuro-linguistic programming or NLP is used by nearly all motivational speakers and personal development gurus for one simple reason, it works.
What is NLP?
NLP is the study of excellence. A combination of psychiatry and hypnosis, NLP was developed through the novel approach of modeling successful human behavior. One of the basic premises of NLP is the idea that all people are equal. This means if a person can accomplish something- say, go from shy to confident, make a million dollars a year, overcome phobias, etc. – then another person who uses the same patterns, habits, beliefs, and behaviors will arrive at the same position.
Originally designed to help people overcome mental issues at a much faster rate, NLP quickly spread to personal development. Again that basic premise that if one person can accomplish something, then another person can achieve the same thing if he or she embodies the same beliefs, patterns, habits, and behaviors.
Observing the mind as if it were a computer that needs to have its programming updated, a person can use NLP to upgrade his or her software. Taking this analogy further, say you have a computer programmed to achieve a task, and let us say this task is to output the number 3 every time the operator enters the equation 2+2. The machine has no idea it is producing the wrong answer because it is doing what it was programmed to do.
If this was your computer, what would you do? I have no idea how to program a computer, so I would be stuck with a computer that I knew wasn’t working right. I would need to either study programming or hire an expert to help me. This is what personal development is about, you know that the outcomes you are experiencing in your life are incorrect, but you don’t know how to fix it. Maybe you feel like you are doing all of the work to make a $1,000,000 a year, yet you are only earning $100,000. In this case, NLP can help you change your mind’s internal programming to match that of a person making a $1,000,000 a year.
