Presuppositions

The meaning of your communication is the response that you get.

In other words, have you communicated well? Did your message get through? If not, it is your responsibility to do your best to give your message differently.

People already have all the resources, mental and emotional, they need to succeed.

People may simply need to recognize what these resources are and how to use them to their advantage.

People make the best choice they can at the time.

We do the best we can with the tools and level of understanding we have at any given time. When we know more, then we make different choices.

The map is not the territory.

The world is as it is but how we each experience it may be very different. My personal reality, called a “map” or “model” of the world, is my subjective experience, not reality itself. Therefore, the map, or model, can be changed. NLP is the study of subjective experience and how it can be changed to benefit us.

All human behavior has a structure.

Since it is a structure it can be changed.

People are not their behaviors.

People learn behaviors but they are not necessarily representative of the person. We want to separate the person from the behavior.

There is no failure, only feedback.

With the feedback we get, we can make different choices.

Behind every behavior is a positive intention.

The behavior itself may not be appropriate or beneficial but the reason the person is doing it is to gain something important to them (secondary gain) such as fitting in to a group, or to have social connection, or to be heard.