NLP Presuppositions, are very core a group of powerful statements in the world of NLP. These presuppositions lay the very foundation for all that follows that is NLP whether NLP for Business, NLP for Life Coaching or NLP for therapy.  Remember as stated in the early NLP classic, Frogs Into Princes Bandler and Grinder purposed to their audience that what they were about to present were “lies” and they just asked that for the course of the seminar that their students temporarily be open and accept their “lies”. In their famous beginner’s book, “The User’s Manual for the Brain”, Michael Hall and Bob Bodenhamer broke these NLP presuppositions down into four groups:

• 1) Mental Presuppositions:

• The map is not the territory
• People respond according to their internal maps
• Meaning is context dependent
• Mind and body are one psycho-cybernetic unit
• Individual skills function by developing and sequencing representational systems
• Respect each persons model of the world

• 2) Human Behavior and Response Presuppositions:

• We are more than (not) our behaviors.  People and behavior describe different phenomena
• Every behavior is appropriate in some context.
• We evaluate behavior and change in terms of context and ecology

• 3) Communication Presuppositions:

• We cannot not communicate
• The way we communicate affects perception and reception
• The meaning of communication lies in the response you get
• The one who sets the frame for the communication controls the action
• There is no failure only feedback
• The person or system with the most flexibility exercises the most influence in the system
• Resistance indicates the lack of rapport

• 4) Learning-Change-Choice Presuppositions:

• People have the internal resources they need to succeed
• Humans have the ability to experience one-trial learning
• All communication should increase choice
• People make the best choices open to them when they act
• As response-able persons, we can run our own brain and control our results

In follow up articles we’ll present way’s to challenge these “lies” to expand on your model of the world and thus increase your chance of being the “person or system with the most flesxability”.
 

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