The quality of your communication IS the quality of your life…

We are emotional beings whose entire understanding of the world around us and our own unique part in it comes from information that has entered our brain through five highly sophisticated and yet limited senses organs or senses.

We gather information from the outside world through our senses of sight, which in NLP we refer to as Visual (sight and images), Auditory (sound), Kinaesthetic (feelings, sensation and touch), Olfactory (smell) and Gustatory (taste).

Our neurological mechanism constructs reality from what we receive and perceive both inwardly (from our own thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc.) and outwardly from information received through our five senses from the world around us).

In NLP we refer to the use of these senses as Representational Systems or the systems through which we re-present or represent the world as we perceive it..

In other words we use our senses to literally re-construct an internal mental model or ‘map’ of the world inside our head. We use this ‘map’ as our frame of reference on all aspects of our experience of living; past, present, and even future. You can find a visual representation of this at www.nlp4dummies.com/

Our senses are the frequencies through which we receive information about every aspect of the world outside of our own mind and body. In most cases our senses receive information accurately and with some considerable precision and yet our perception is often different, tainted and distorted. The challenge lies not in what we receive but in what happens to the information once we receive it. The process works something like this:

We receive information (caused by an external event) from outside of ourselves through our five senses, or any combination of them, depending upon the sensory stimuli available. The information enters our brain and passes through internal filters which delete, distort or generalise it according to a range of factors such as time, space, language, beliefs, values, experiences, fears, hopes etc, The outcome is a range of internal representations that our mind creates to represent that filtered information – pictures, images, sounds, etc. As a direct result of these internal representations we give the event or circumstance a meaning that relates to how we perceive it. This creates a state of mind regarding the event and how we ‘feel’ about it. This mental state influences and directs our body into a physiological state or body language (non-verbal response). The outcome of the whole process is behaviour or our outward response to the internal process. Our response (behaviour) in turn influences or affects the external world or ‘the event’ and those around us and the process starts all over again.

What is important about the latter process is that nothing really is what it seems to be. Our whole perception of reality is actually based upon programmed responses (our mental processes) that have previously been created or influenced by other external events. These events have taken place over time throughout our growth and development as human beings. And so it is that you should:

"Never confuse your nature with what you have been nurtured to become."

David Green

NLP is the science of excellence that provides an amazing range of sensory-based tools that can help almost anyone to transform their thinking and their way of perceiving themselves and the world around them. You can find out more and develop some of those skills at http://NLP4dummies.com. You will find a range of opportunities including FREE mini-courses and NLP resources that work in the real world.

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