NLP is often taught and learned as something that is completely new – something that is added on to the learner’s communication resources. But there is perhaps a more useful way to think of NLP.
One of my NLP trainers, Judith DeLozier, emphasizes that NLP is something that we all do naturally and that learning NLP is simply learning how to use it more consistently and effectively to get the exact results that we want in our lives. After all, NLP is based on modeling of actual human behaviour.
Formal NLP techniques such as the phobia cure weren’t pulled out of the air or from the mind of a scholar. These techniques were based on what people had actually done in order to overcome a phobia successfully. Richard Bandler and John Grinder placed advertisements in the newspaper asking people if they had successfully overcome a phobia. When he modeled them, he found that they were all doing something very similar – changing their perception of the original phobic experience from one that they were actively taking part in and seeing out of their own eyes – into a new perception of an experience which they were passively observing and in which they saw an older version of themselves taking part in the experience. They literally distanced themselves from the phobic experience in order to get a new perspective. Bandler and Grinder set out this naturally-occuring process as the phobia cure.
When we keep this example in mind, it is clear that NLP is something that human beings do naturally. An NLP modeler models a highly effective piece of human behavior and then teaches other people how to use that effective behavior to improve their lives.