The tools I use

What NLP is, and why I use it

For years, I kept seeing the same thing. People who genuinely wanted to change. They had read the books, set the goals, made the promises to themselves. And still couldn't get there.

It wasn't that they weren't trying. They were trying hard. The change wouldn't hold. They'd shift something on the surface, and a few weeks later they'd be right back where they started.

That gap, between how someone is showing up and how they want to show up, is what pulled me toward Neuro-Linguistic Programming in the first place.

So what is NLP?

At its simplest, NLP looks at how language and attention shape our behavior. The name itself breaks into three pieces: neuro, linguistic, and programming. One caveat. The founders used "neuro" and "programming" as metaphors, not as neuroscience. I use them the same way. They're a model, not a map of your neurons.

Richard Bandler and John Grinder developed it in the 1970s. What they were really curious about was this: how do people who are excellent at something structure their thinking? What are they doing on the inside that produces their results on the outside?

That question, not the techniques, is the heart of it.

A few of the ideas you'll hear about:

• Anchoring: linking an emotional state to a specific trigger so that you can call up something like enthusiasm or confidence on purpose.
• Reframing: changing the meaning of a situation by looking at it from a different angle.
• Modeling: studying someone who's already getting the results you want, then unpacking what they believe, value, and do.
• Meta-programs: the mental filters that shape how we take in information and respond to the world.

It's a mixed bag. Some of these overlap with well-established psychology. Others are specific to NLP and carry limited or mixed evidence. I work with that difference out in the open. And here's where NLP tends to go sideways.

Why NLP gets a bad name

Someone asked me this at a networking event: Why do you think NLP gets a bad name?

My answer was simple. I believe some people are making promises NLP was never meant to keep.

I don't think that comes from bad intentions. Sometimes it's people passing along what they were taught. Other times it's the reality of a noisy world where big claims get attention. And that's hardly unique to NLP.

When people say they love or hate NLP, I've found it usually comes down to one thing: the techniques. They either worked, or they didn't. And I think that misses the bigger picture.

Bandler described it this way:

That line has shaped how I think about all of it.

The attitude is curiosity. The methodology is modeling. Studying people who've achieved something we desire to achieve and figuring out how they do it. The techniques? They came later. They were discovered by modeling people who were excellent at what they did.

So when someone treats NLP as a bag of tricks, they've got it backward.

Useful over "true"

There's something the founders were candid about from the start. They were more interested in what's useful than in what's provably true. They wanted to know how excellence works, not why. That pragmatism is a real strength. And it's also where NLP earns its skeptics.

The research on NLP as an approach is weak. Reviews find little reliable evidence that it beats other approaches, and some of its signature techniques have been tested and failed. I'll say that up front. I'm not here to sell anyone a claim on bad evidence.

A lot of NLP runs on useful beliefs. Assumptions you work from because they serve you, not because they're true in every case. Think of the gun-safety rule. Treat every gun as loaded. It's a good belief to live by. And there are still moments when you'd better check the chamber.

You don't need magic-bullet techniques for the mindset, models, and methodology of NLP to help. It's about using the right tool for the right job. If one tool doesn't work, we try another.

Why I start with the programming

Come back to those people who wanted to change and couldn't. Here's what I've come to believe about why.

Our programming influences our thoughts, emotions, and actions, which lead to our results. So when you want different results, and you start, for example, at the level of behavior, you're starting near the end of the chain. Real life is messier than a straight line. Thoughts loop back, environment pushes in. As a working model, though, starting at the programming is where I've seen change hold.

I'll go a step further, and this is a conviction I'm upfront about: I don't think we choose our beliefs. Ask yourself when you chose your level of introversion or extroversion, when you decided what counts as convincing evidence. It happened in the dark. Beliefs can change. And they change through a series of dominoes falling below the surface, not because we simply decide one day to believe something new.

The way I've come to hold it, borrowing from Robert Sapolsky: I don't believe I can change my mind. I believe I have a mind that can be changed.

None of that means you're stuck with the beliefs you've got. It's the reason I work where I do. When you want real change, you go to the level where the belief got set, identity and the stuff underneath it. Ask someone to white-knuckle a new behavior while the old programming is still running, and you already know how it goes. It holds for a while, then it slips back.

How I use it

I take a curious, structured, and flexible approach to helping people get the results they want. Curious enough to notice what's going on, structured enough to have a plan, flexible enough to change it.

That's also why a model like the Five Principles of Success matters so much to me:

• Know what you want
• Take action
• Have sensory acuity
• Have behavioral flexibility
• Operate from a physiology and psychology of excellence

The model isn't unique to NLP, and it is useful. I lean on it because it holds up... Not because of the NLP label.

I know my lane. I work in personal and professional development. I don't do clinical work, and I don't pretend the two are the same. When something belongs with a licensed professional, I refer it out. I learned early in my coaching career... When in doubt, refer it out.

Because at its core, NLP isn't a set of tricks. It's a way of paying attention to what works, and doing more of it.

Used this way, honest about the evidence and clear about the limits, NLP earns a better name than it has. That's the version I work to represent.