NLP and Memory

Each person has a tendency to recall information using one of his or her favorite senses: touch, sight, or sound.

The pictures in our heads are symbolic information, but when recalling it we use our senses to make it more real.
We can see it in pictures, feel it kinesthetically, or hear it as sounds.

You can tell which sense you resonate with the most by the words you use to describe the information pulled out of our brain.

For instance, you could say roughly the same thing in one of three different ways:

• If you’re kinesthetic, you might say, “I am out of step.”
• If you’re visual, you might say, “I don’t see what you mean.”
• If you’re auditory, you might say, “It doesn’t sound good to me.”

If two people are trying to communicate but are using different dominant senses, they might not understand each other very well.

For instance, your boss might tell you to “jump on it” (kinesthetic).

You might say, “I’ll take a look at it” (visual). Your boss might feel that you don’t understand the urgency of the matter that he was trying to convey to you.

If instead you had responded with a kinesthetic reply along the lines of “I’ll get moving,” he would more likely feel that he had communicated effectively with you.

If you have a boss, co-workers, and/or subordinates, pay attention to the types of words and images that they use when they are talking to you.

Do they prefer pictures, words, or sports clichés?

Of course, don’t make the mistake of simply assigning a single category to everybody, since no one is exclusively visual, auditory, or kinesthetic. People may prefer different modes for different situations.

You may meet someone for the first time, listen to his or her style, and assign a particular style of communication to them.

But if you meet them again, be careful not to stick a label on them without thinking. Actively listen to them each time, and then respond appropriately.

When people are making a decision about whether to buy something or not, they generally use the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic senses to make their decision.

And more than likely, one of those senses dominates the others.

To reiterate, the basic idea of NLP is to identify which patterns highly successful people are using to become successful, and then figure out how you can mimic those patterns yourself.

This means that you may need to force yourself to disregard certain things that you currently hold to be sacred business truths. If the successful person you’re modeling does or believes things that go against what you believe, you may have to decide which belief to discard.

If you’re trying to earn money in a specific type of business, then you model the successful people in that type of business.

If your problem is that you aren’t making enough money at what you’re doing, simply sitting back and believing in the natural abundance of the universe isn’t going to make you rich.

While the universe is naturally abundant, you still have to go out and model the successful people in your business that are making good money, and do what they’re doing.