Published in The Healing Springs Journal, Issue #16, Dec.04/Jan.05. The Healing Springs Journal is an independent publication committed to printing articles regarding the wellness of body, mind, spirit, and environment. The Healing Springs is distributed in the New York Capital District, Saranac Lake and everywhere in between.


WHAT DOES YOUR “MAP OF THE WORLD” LOOK LIKE?
by Belinda Nicoll

Have you ever been “stuck” in a dysfunctional situation, habit, or relationship? You absolutely know that you have to get out of it for your own good, but somehow you’re just not able to respond to the warning signals! If you relate to the paralyzing effect of this mysterious condition, then you know how often it prevents us from making the positive behavior changes required for creating a more fulfilling and meaningful life. Being “stuck” has become a universal catchphrase for describing one’s inability to transition from a problem state to a solution state. The good news is that becoming “unstuck” is no great mystery at  all, according to the relatively new science of neurolinguistic programming, or NLP.

NLP was developed in the early 1970’s by John Grinder and Richard Bandler, who shared a mutual interest in the art and science of personal excellence. Their objective was to create a practical method for understanding and transforming human behavior. They believed it was possible to imitate the behavior patterns of successful people and make their unique thought and behavior processes transferable to other people. Their earlier efforts resulted in modelling techniques that gave others the opportunity to create successful outcomes too. Ultimately, Grinder and Bandler managed to produce an elegant therapeutic model that explains the structure of subjective experience. At the base of this model is a set of presuppositions that form the essence of NLP.

Presuppositions—also called “maps of the world”— are subconscious assumptions that we hold about ourselves and the world we live in. These assumptions are the principles or beliefs that guide our thoughts, communication, emotions, and behavior. Presuppositions help us to make sense of our experiences. The following are some of the most important presuppositions of NLP that explain how it is possible to become “unstuck” and move easily from where you find yourself to where you truly want to be.

The map is not the territory.
The reality that you experience—that you create—is the result of your physical and genetic design and your unique personal history. Whenever you act, you respond to your map of reality, not to reality itself. Your map contains certain possibilities and capabilities available to you at any given time. It follows that if you had to change your map, and expand the choices available to you, it would be possible to change your behavior.

The meaning of your communication is the response that you get. Communication is not what you intend to say. Rather, it’s the response that you get from your listeners. You are always communicating. Using verbal and body language, you apply all three major representational systems—visual, auditory, and kinesthetic—to tell people about yourself, all the time. Human interactions form a cybernetic system, and communication evolves continuously by way of systemic feedback loops. The benefit is that if you don’t like the feedback you get, you can always change your behavior until you get the response you want. Remember, there’s no such thing as failure, only feedback.

You work perfectly and have all the resources you need.
You do not have to be “fixed” or “corrected”, because you’re not wrong or broken. However, if you understand how your thought and behavior processes operate, you can improve your skill at accessing these internal resources at appropriate times so that you can act more effectively to achieve positive outcomes.

Your behavior has a positive intention.
No matter how strange, hurtful, or inadequate it may seem to others—or even to yourself—your behavior is appropriate within the context in which you created it. You are doing the best you can do with the resources available to you, or you’re  doing what you’re doing because your believe it is right. In view of that, it would  be more productive for all of us to respond to the intention behind behavior rather than the apparent outward expression of it.

As a life coach and master practitioner of NLP, I want to emphasize the importance of this last presupposition. The positive intention of behavior resides at a deep structure level of the psyche. When you change a problem state and move toward healing, it is crucial that you find the core intention that supports the problem behavior. You will only be able to sustain your new healing state when you find a positive alternative behavior that continues to support the positive intention.

Here is an example: imagine that your problem state is a phobia of public speaking. You discover that the positive intention of your irrational fear to speak in public is a desire to protect yourself from ridicule. An alternative way to protect yourself from ridicule might be by adopting a bold attitude. Since a bold attitude is a healthier state than irrational fear is, this would be a sensible exchange. Using a cross-mapping NLP technique, you can replace the submodalities that represent “phobia” with the submodalities that represent “bold attitude”. Once these are in place, there are truly no obstacles to you achieving your desired outcome of being a confident, successful speaker.

By recognizing and separating positive intentions from behaviors, you can quickly change your map of the world in very significant ways. Good luck to becoming “unstuck” successfully!


Belinda Nicoll is a life coach and a master practitioner of neurolinguistic programming (NLP). She is lives in Saratoga Springs, NY. Belinda combines the benefits of NLP with life coaching to help anyone who is interested in making rapid and effective change move from where they find themselves, to where they truly want to be.