NLP Mapping
YOUR MAPS OF YOUR WORLD!
If not careful, it would be so easy to fall into the trap of using so much jargon that you could wonder why people say that NLP is about exquisite communication skills! During the early days of NLP writings and training, the elegance and effectiveness of NLP was often hidden under a barrage of jargon. In fact, it took Antonia a full 3 years searching before she found a trainer who made sense to her, and who she could fully understand. Looking up ‘NLP words or expressions’ in dictionaries frequently did not help her, because NLP seemed to have a language of its own, and unless you had the key, it was very hard to unlock its mysteries!
However, things have improved and there are now some excellent and readable books available.
One of the phrases you might come across is: “The map is not the territory”. This might be easy for some people to grasp, but to Antonia it was as clear as mud.
It simply means that we all have our own sense of reality in our own head. How we experience what is happening to us is the only reality that counts for us as individuals. We might believe that we really understand what goes on in another persons mind and in their life, but what we see is totally coloured by our past experiences, our beliefs, our background, upbringing, etc. etc. So even if we have an inkling about another person’s sense of reality, because we might know them very well, ultimately they will be the masters of their own universe. In other words, they will have created their own world out of their own map; just like you do.
So what this means is that individuals operate totally from their perspective of their world. I.e. we draw our own maps and our own horizons. Often those maps are useful and give us guidance and keep us on the right road to whatever it is that we want out of life. Sometimes we go adrift and lose our sense of direction and we don’t know where we are and even where we want to get to.
A good NLP Practitioner can assist people to finding their way again and maybe lend them a hand to change their map. This simply means that you, the client, gets a different outlook. Their map becomes richer in many ways, giving them opportunities and possibilities for change. They will discover a map which is more useful and one that has more resources for them.
The result this has is often startling in its effectiveness and speed. It means that they have more and new choices available to them, and most importantly of all, they are then capable of making these choices. The know that once more they are in charge of their own existence, and in charge of drawing their own map for their own life.
As an NLP Practitioner, one of the first things we learn during a good training is to truly understand that other people’s maps are to be respected. We learn not to assume that we understand other people’s maps as we understand our own. All we must do, as practitioners, is to look out for the kind of obvious patterns or programmes a client uses. Most often this happens unconsciously. As Practitioners we see if we can help make changes in those patterns, so that the client has a clearer view of their own capabilities, beliefs and values. The clients will then make the changes that are appropriate to them, depending on their own life, lifestyle, beliefs and environment. An NLP Practitioner will use certain NLP techniques and models that are tried and tested. Often these take the form of ‘mind’ exercises. If the Practitioner is experienced and skilled changes are made conversationally, so that it is not obvious to the client that any ‘work’ is being done, until they find that magically their life and map is changing!
What would be absolutely wrong is a Practitioner trying to and give their own personal understanding of how the world works, i.e. using our own map, as an example to a client. If as a client, be it personal or professional, you hear an NLP Practitioner say things like: “If I were you…” or “What I would do in your place…” just run a mile! Just keep hold of your own map and aim to expand your horizons and make your map richer and more potent.
