Ever notice how you can drive the same route to work for years, completely on autopilot?
Your conscious mind is elsewhere – planning your day, listening to a podcast – while something else navigates perfectly.
That “something else” is your unconscious mind.
And understanding how it works changes everything.
I’m going to explain what NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) is in a way that actually makes sense, because most explanations sound like mystical nonsense.
Let’s start with a simple truth:
Your brain doesn’t experience reality directly. It creates a MAP of reality.
Just like Google Maps isn’t the actual city, your mental map isn’t reality itself. It’s your brain’s best representation of reality based on what you’ve experienced.
This explains why:
– Two people can experience the same event completely differently
– You keep falling into the same patterns despite knowing better
– Some people feel confident in situations that terrify others
NLP is simply the study of how your brain creates these maps and how to update them when they’re not working for you.
But here’s the thing…
Many of our maps were created when we were children and haven’t been updated since, despite being wildly outdated!
These outdated maps aren’t personal failings or character flaws. They’re just outdated navigation systems running on autopilot.
Here’s where NLP becomes transformative:
Once you understand HOW your brain creates these maps (through images, sounds, feelings, internal dialogue), you can deliberately UPDATE them.
This is why NLP can create changes in minutes that traditional approaches take years to achieve. We’re not trying to analyze WHY the map formed this way – we’re simply installing the updates. By changing these elements (making threatening images smaller, moving them farther away, changing my internal voice tone), my experience transformed instantly.
The good news? Anyone can learn to do this.
NLP has been used by:
– Olympic athletes to access peak performance states
– Executives to overcome presentation anxiety
– Leaders to communicate more effectively
– Anyone seeking to break limiting patterns
– Employees to hit and break beyond their monthly targets
I help people identify and update these mental maps through NLP techniques that create lasting change without years of analyzing the past.
Have you ever felt like you know what to do but something keeps blocking you from doing it? That’s the map versus the territory. Comment below with what pattern you’d like to change, and I’ll suggest an approach that might help.
Next week, I’ll share the specific 10-minute technique that helped my clients transform lifelong patterns with surprising ease.
