Many people have asked me,
Where does NLP come from?
How did it start?
Where did it start?
When did it start?
So in this talk I'm going to take you through a very brief history to answer those questions.
Now in addition to therapy,
Which most people think of NLP being used in,
It's also been used very successfully in sales,
Business,
Education,
The arts and many other vocations.
And the components of NLP are very practical.
Their use can lead to exciting new opportunities and changes in your own life and the lives of those around you.
So NLP,
Which is short for Neuro Linguistic Programming,
Actually started in the 1970s when a professor of linguistics from the University of California,
A guy called John Grinder,
Teamed up with the fourth year undergraduate Richard Bandler and ex-student Frank Pusilich.
And Richard and Frank were very interested in psychology.
The three of them had a joined fascination with how is it that people who are really good at what they do,
How do they do that?
They had this quest to find out what was the source of human excellence.
And this kind of charted a path for them to model the behavioural patterns of three selected eminent therapists at the time.
And when we talk about modelling,
It's that process of observing and really getting behind and underneath exactly what's going on in the behaviours,
The thought processes,
Etc.
,
Of someone that does something really well.
Now,
Frank Pusilich and Richard Bandler used to run a group of students at the University of California and they were very interested in gestalt therapy.
What they did was they studied Fritz Perls,
Who's the master and founder of gestalt,
And copied what he did and how he did it,
All of this to try and replicate success that he had with his clients.
It's worth noting that Perls was not alive at this time,
But they had access to his videos,
His writings,
And spoke to those who worked really closely with him when he was alive,
So he'd get a real feel for the man and what he did and how he did it.
Now,
It turns out that Richard and Frank were really good at copying Fritz Perls.
Between them,
They managed to become so good at gestalt therapy that the group just grew and grew.
Now,
John Grinder was really interested in what was going on in these gestalt therapy meetings.
And for the first few weeks,
He just sat at the back of the room,
Quietly observing,
Watching what was going on.
Then,
After a few weeks,
He approached Frank and Richard with a boatload of questions.
Now,
At this stage,
Frank and Richard were just doing what seemed to work and they carried on doing whatever they thought did work.
But John was really interested in the thinking behind their behaviour and started to get really specific on how they were making it work.
Essentially,
John Grinder brought their conscious awareness to what they were actually doing.
Now,
Although Frank and Richard had this amazing ability to copy people successfully,
It was actually John Grinder's involvement that led to the creation of NLP and may never have happened without his input.
So the three of them together then went on to study two other eminent therapists,
Milton Erickson,
The founder of Modern Hypnotherapy,
And Virginia Satir,
Who is the founder of Modern Family Therapy.
And it was by modelling Milton and Virginia that they started developing NLP,
Or as they originally called it,
META.
Now,
They set out to figure out the answer to that question that they had.
How do people who are really good at something actually do it?
What they found whilst they were spending time with Milton and Virginia and modelling them was that one of the most important things was that beliefs played a huge part in what was actually achievable.
So let me explain this.
You'll remember that before Roger Bannister achieved the four-minute mile,
No one believed it was possible.
But once he did,
Everyone believed it,
And that record has been broken time and time again.
And this is where what you believe about yourself and what you can do actually has a huge bearing on whether it's achievable or not.
So between 1972 and 1977,
The three guys spent around 30 to 50 hours a week developing neuro-linguistic programming.
And along the way,
They were joined by some other great names in the NLP world,
Such as the world-renowned anthropologist Gregory Bateson,
Robert Diltz,
Judith Delossier and Stephen Gilligan,
Just to name a few.
Around about 1977,
Frank actually left the group.
What he wanted to do was focus on using the NLP skills that he'd learned and the therapies to actually help drug addicts break their addiction,
Which is an amazing piece of work.
How did NLP get out into the world?
In 1975,
Grinder and Bandler presented the first two NLP models,
The meta model and the Milton model,
Based on Milton Erickson and Virginia Satir.
These two books put NLP on the map,
And they came out in The Structure of Magic I and The Structure of Magic II.
People in fields related to communication,
Behaviour and change sought to learn how they too could get amazing results when doing change work.
So Grinder and Bandler willingly offered training courses on the application of their models.
The training courses they conducted proved that the NLP models were transferable to others,
Which meant that it wasn't just Bandler and Grinder that could use them,
But learners could actually learn those models and use them successfully in their own work.
So NLP has been expanded throughout the years.
From the original training of eight,
There are now many experienced and effective trainers throughout the world.
So that's how NLP started,
Where it started and who started it.
And since then,
It has grown and grown and grown.
And you can learn NLP in many ways,
In small chunks.
You can read books,
You can join training courses,
And the applications that it has to your own life and your work are immense.
So thank you for listening on this short potted history of NLP.
