Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) 



Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a personal development system developed in the early 1970s by Richard Bandler and linguist John Grinder, in association with Gregory Bateson. It uses a toolbox of strategies, axioms and beliefs about human communication, perception and subjective experience. 
 
NLP's core idea is that an individual's thoughts, gestures and words interact to create one's perception of the world. By changing one's outlook, a person can improve his or her attitudes and actions. These observations can be changed by applying a variety of techniques. 
 
NLP teaches that a person can develop successful habits by amplifying helpful behaviours and diminishing negative ones. Positive change can come when one carefully reproduces the behaviours and beliefs of successful people (called 'modelling'). It also states that all human beings have all the resources necessary for success within themselves. 
 
Bandler and Grinder credited three successful therapists — Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir and Milton Erickson — as NLP's major inspirations. They 'modelled' the therapists and developed special "patterns" for general communication, rapport-building and self-improvement. NLP author Robert Dilts calls the system "the study of the structure of subjective experience". 
 
After more than three decades of existence, NLP remains popular as an approach to self-help, personal influence and business communication. It is also used as an adjunct by therapists in  
other therapeutic disciplines.  

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