Neuro-Linguistic Programming is a method that consists of studying and evaluating strategies used by successful people and applying them to reach success. This technique shows the kind of communication that matters the most and provides practical ways to change how we think, view past events, and approach our future.
This article explains what a neurolinguistic programmer does and the effect of the technique.
Who is a Neuro-Linguistic Programmer?
A neuro-linguistic programmer is a professional certified in NLP.
To better understand who a Neuro-Linguistic programmer is and what they do, let’s think of NLP as a tool just like hypnosis. Although hypnosis is not a form of therapy, it is a tool psychologists and life coaches use.
Psychologists and psychotherapists use NLP techniques within the context of therapy to help their patients overcome certain types of issues. Professionals in other fields, such as personal coaches and life coaches, use NLP techniques to help their clients achieve better states of success or behavioral change.
What Does a Neurolinguistic Programmer Do?
There are different contexts in which a practitioner certified in NLP works. I’ll use myself as an example.
I work in the health and fitness area and with individuals who deal with chronic pain. So, I can use NLP techniques of Neuro-linguistic Programming to assist my client with the issues that they are facing. For instance, my client is not only experiencing aches and pains but also dealing with what we call biopsychosocial elements that can influence the amount of pain or suffering they experience; one of those things might be a lack of sleep.
There are many different reasons why people don’t sleep well, which may stem from their beliefs about sleep. They believe that they have to get a certain amount of sleep or go to bed on time or anything else that they might think might cause them anxiety, reducing their ability to get good quality sleep.
Neuro-linguistic programming techniques can be helpful here to assist my patient with identifying the beliefs that they have that are generating some of those anxious behaviors. So, I can identify those behaviors and use NLP techniques like reframing and also introducing different states of relaxation and calm to combat that sense of anxiety and change those beliefs, and ultimately have success with a behavioral change.
So, how does Neuro-Linguistic Programming work?
Neuro-linguistic programming is about taking individuals from where they are to where they want to be. Most of the time, these will be internal changes because we can’t change something in someone’s life or environmental situation.
To help a person get into a specific state of mind, whether that means confidence, relaxation, or motivation, the person’s behavior has to change before there can be changes in the individual’s environment effectively
Some Neuro-linguistic programmers work on success-based coaching or business-based coaching.
An instance of business-based coaching is where you take what’s working in a business, extract the model, and implement it in another similar company to get similar success. For this to work, you have to look at the strategies and consider things like:
- What does a business do that helps it become successful?
- What are the organizational leaders doing to motivate their employees?
In Conclusion What Does a Neurolinguistic Programmer Do
NLP can be used on a larger scale, but make no mistake, most of the change occurring within the context of NLP coaching is changing how someone feels about accessing internal resources.
This will help change their outputting behavior so that they could be more effective in some specific contexts.
What a Neuro-linguistic programmer does depends on the context, and it depends on the change that is being sought and under what circumstances.
Certain things need to be done with a licensed psychologist or psychotherapist if it’s therapeutic.
Practitioners of the NLP technique, such as personal coaches, can help if it is personal development you are looking to achieve.
