Rookies Guide

/ 01 March 2010

NLP
Mind maps and learning behaviours

NLP: Mind maps and learning behaviours

NLP stands for neuro linguistic programming, a methodology designed to study, model and train individuals in human excellence. Another way of describing NLP is as your own personal toolbox for accessing and influencing the human mind. We are all a part of the same world, breathing the same air and standing under the same sky, but our individual experience and understanding of this world is as unique to us as our fingerprints.

Rookie buster
Every problem has a solution; sometimes it may just need another perspective

NLP uses the analogy of maps to describe the neurological blueprint that we work with when attempting to understand and decode our personal experience of the world around us.

The map is simply our interpretation of our own reality, our past, present and future. This map is an intricately detailed blueprint for our subconscious mind to follow, to refer back to and to use in our translations, judgements and understandings of how to appropriately relate and interact with our surrounding environment. Everyone’s map is different.

Every action we perform is a response to a combination of various different thoughts, programming, systems, structures, patterns and conditioned understanding. All our behaviours are a result of more than just one, singular conscious idea, making it very difficult to influence them through logical thought and reasoning alone. 

Rookie buster
Our conscious mind is the part of our mind that is constantly alert and aware. The subconscious mind is the part of the brain that runs  our automatic functions. It operates our behavioural strategies, habitual patterns, emotions and memories

Before our subconscious mind attempts to learn any new behaviour, it must first understand why we want to do it. When we first learned how to open a door, the original intent (why) may have been anything from freedom to independence or simply attainment of something beyond the door.

Whatever the original intention, it will have been motivational enough for our mind to begin the processes of learning. This means applying hours of conscious trial and error, understanding all the elements and processes involved (cognitive and motor skills – moving our fingers, clutching the handle, contracting our muscles) until eventually our conscious mind finally understands how.

In NLP, the process of learning can be explained in four stages. First is unconscious incompetence, where our mind is completely unaware that there is something it may want to do but currently cannot do.

Next is conscious incompetence, where our mind is aware there’s something we want to do but doesn’t know how to achieve it.
Then there’s conscious competence when our mind is aware of how we can achieve what it is we want, but it still has to stay focused on the process to achieve it.

Finally, we reach unconscious competence. At this stage, our mind understands the process and has turned it over to the subconscious mind to become a habitual programme, to be run automatically without any conscious thought or awareness.