For over nearly forty years NLP explorers have studied or 'modelled' the behaviour and thinking styles of particularly effective and successful people in business, education, sales, therapy, sport, and personal development.

The results of this work are nowadays presented in workshops and extended trainings which, in effect, provide real shortcuts to more successful living - you can learn in hours what may have taken the experts years to discover by trial and error.

NLP - What's in a Name?

The name Neuro-Linguistic Programming was an attempt to describe in a succinct manner the scope of this extensive body of insights and skills:

• Neuro - How the mind and body interact
• Linguistic - The insights into a person's thinking that can be obtained by careful attention to their use of language
• Programming - refers, not to the activity of programming, but to the study of the thinking and behavioural patterns or 'programmes' which people use in their daily lives.

The name is a bit of a mouthful and is certainly not NLP's strongest asset. By trying to be too comprehensive it has ended up being somewhat off-putting, either because it sounds complicated or, worse, that it sounds sinister (many people initially think the 'programming' part of the name suggests that NLP has something to do with 'being programmed'!).

The name Neuro-Linguistic Programming has been around for over 30 years so it looks like we are stuck with it. Which is why it is generally abbreviated to the initials NLP.

You could say that NLP has become successful not because of the title but in spite of it. And, let's face it - if something with such a weird name can become this popular it must be good - because the title does it no favours at all!

What they've said about it

Science Digest said that:

NLP 'could be the most important synthesis of knowledge about human communications to emerge since the sixties.'

Time Magazine announced that:

'NLP has untapped potentials for treating individual problems.'

Training & Development Journal reported that

NLP 'offers the potential for making changes without the usual agony that accompanies these phenomena' and that it 'allows for increasing options, flexibility, creativity and therefore greater freedom of action than most of us know.'

Best-selling author and motivational speaker Anthony Robbins said that:

NLP is 'an incredibly effective and enjoyable way to access more of the true potential of your brain.'