Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a form of applied psychology that shows you how your mind works to enable you to make sense of the external world and help you overcome these communication glitches.

The magic of NLP is that we too could programme ourselves to be more successful and better people, says Dr. A. Abraham, Director of MindMasters and a master practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming in an interview. Excerpts:

The youth often find it difficult to communicate in English especially in a job interview. What should they do to communicate effectively?

English is taught as a subject not as a language and the students tend to learn in the mother tongue and then convert it to English. Even in spoken English Classes, the emphasis is on grammar. The flow of the language will come only when it is not translated literally.

Those who wish to be fluent in English should watch BBC and CNN and speak constantly in the language.

There is nothing wrong in making mistakes. Failure is often considered a taboo. People prefer not to learn rather than fail. But the more you fail the more you learn. If one can overcome the limiting self-belief then one can do anything.

How can teachers teach better? How should the parent handle the child?

The word "Teach" is the culprit and should be removed from the vocabulary. The teacher should only enable a child to learn, not force knowledge into his head. It should be an experience. Teachers often tend to hide behind the `Learning Disability' label as the reason why a child cannot understand, when in fact the reason may be teaching disability.

The teacher should use all the preferred language channels while addressing a class because if the teacher uses only one of the preferred languages then 2/3rd of the audience is likely to switch off at any given time. Children tend to learn faster during the kindergarten stage because there is not much teaching there. As for parents, the days of authoritarianship are over. The best thing to do is to put oneself in the position of the child (perceptual position) to understand the child better. Rather than take a stance against them it is best to understand them and their dreams.

Could you tell us why call centres often fail to give satisfactory results?

The training imparted at call centres is unfairly speaker-oriented communication. The emphasis is on accent and voice training and there is very little on understanding of the mental makeup of the caller, who should be the prime factor. What is important is that call centres give us the desired results, not just mouth "Have a nice day". NLP understands the world of the caller through the five senses and their thinking styles and tries to speak in the preferred language of the speaker. The call centres need not necessarily use NLP but they should try to understand the customer.

In this rapidly changing world what is the future of marriages. What should two people do to keep a relationship going?

In the modern scenario what is happening is that there is equal opportunity and choice for both. The wife is exposed to the same world as the husband and sometimes the choices are more for the woman.

What is imperative for a marriage to survive is mutual trust and respect for each other's world. Listen rather than assuming you know what the other means.

How can one manage stress?

Stress is power and should be managed to work for you than against you. NLP believes there is a positive intention to every action however bad the action is.

If the positive intention is identified then the real problem can be dissolved easily.

MINU ITTIYIPE / The Hindu NOV 12 2005

Then what is "Better You"? How is it different from NLP?

It is based on the principle of NLP. It is a subtle form of psychology which tells you how your mind works and is basically concerned with the "how" of things rather than the "what" or "why." For instance, if you have a problem, most people are concerned with what is the problem. In doing so, you are actually re-traumatising the person. NLP asks ‘how you made a situation into a problem’. Now if you can answer this question, you can re-train your mind so that that the problem no longer seems to be so. NLP is an attitude and methodology that leaves behind a trail of techniques. The attitude involves one of intense and excited curiosity, willingness to experiment and to take all failures as feedback. It focuses on what you want, how you want to be and how to find the resources and attributes you already have to assist you in making changes. This means that dramatic improvements in your life can be accomplished in a relatively short time. Along with NLP, "Better You" incorporates Brain Gymnastics which fine-tunes our brain to make it more effective and alert. Besides, soft baroque music is played throughout the sessions. This music has special significance since its beats are 60-62 per minute which is the beat of the resting heart. With this soft music in the background, your heart will start synchronizing with its beat and you become calmer and more peaceful.

How exactly does this retraining happen?

Our brain basically has a lot of filters. We take in information through our five senses. We filter it through our beliefs, values, generalizations and process it and form an idea which is quite different from reality. We seldom see reality. If, for instance, you disagree with me, you do so not because the reality is different; it's just that you see differently. So far, every communication skill that has been taught, is speaker-oriented and listeners are ignored in the bargain. NLP shifts the emphasis from the speaker to the receiver so that when I speak to you, I do so the way you would like to understand.

Is there any specific training or technique for this?

We have five senses and communication requires us to use three of them — seeing, hearing and feeling. However, each of us seems to prefer one sense predominantly over the other two when gathering information. For example, if 1 were to speak just two words. North Pole, it might evoke different responses from different people. You for instance, might visualise an Eskimo, an igloo or feel cold. So you use your visual sense more than the other senses. So the next time that I speak to you, I would use more visual terms to reach across to you. Every time that you communicate with people, they are giving you plenty of clues to tell you that either they understand you, are indifferent to what you're saying, or what you talk goes above their heads. If you make it a point to note these clues, you know you have to alter your mode of speaking to them in order to truly communicate with them.
But how do you achieve this when you are addressing a diverse group of people, each one may have different senses predominating?
In such a case you have to keep switching from one modality to another. As far as communication is concerned, adhere to the visual, auditory and kinesthetic (feeling) modes, periodically altering them to reach all members of the audience. Also, another important clue that listeners give is their eye movement. If they are looking upwards, it: implies they are visualising; if they are looking down, it means they're feeling. So accordingly you use terms to reflect these modes.

Where does the state of mind appear in all this?    

Yes, that's another factor which is important in NLP. Your performance in any field at any particular time depends on the state you are in and NLP has got a technique called Anchoring by means of which you can get into any state of mind whenever and wherever you want. For example, if a certain piece of music or song lightens your spirits and makes you feel good. Or if a particular incident or experience made you happy. Since we cannot physically recreate past experiences, we have a technique by which we anchor that experience to our system by physically applying pressure to some part of our body  say, a finger. This pressure becomes a trigger to recall and relive that joyous experience. In doing so, we are practicing positive reaffirmations, using a physical catalyst. This in turn allows us to switch to the pleasant mode when we feel daunted by any situation, like appearing for an exam or interview or consultation with a doctor for an ailment.
But is this not something like positive thinking, the reaffirmations associated with it?
Yes. But there's a subtle difference. Positive thinking can also become positive forgetting after a while. But the physical catalyst in this NLP technique due to anchoring helps keep us in the positive state.

What kind of problems does NLP deal with?

The approach of NLP is not restricted to any particular symptom or applications. It is successfully applied to diverse fields including psychotherapy, counseling, education, health and business. It has enabled people come out of phobias, traumatic situations, depression, addiction to smoking, to deal  with stress and negative emotions like anger, in a constructive manner.
Today NLP is widely used in business to improve management, sales, achievement and performance. It helps the growth of inter-personal. and intra-personal communication skills whereby employers' skills in recruiting the right kind of people, to the right jobs is augmented. Further, Perceptional Positioning would allow individuals to see things in a broader perspective, more from the others' point of view and hence make for healthier atmosphere, whether in the workplace or elsewhere.  In education it facilitates better under-standing of the learning styles of students, developing rapport among teachers, students and parents. It improves the art of learning, motivation and enables the students to realise the hidden talents they believed only others had. It enables you to become an effective communicator and negotiator and helps you see your failures as opportunities to make things work for you.

What are the limiting factors to NLP and I "Better You"? Are there areas where it will not be workable, in the health area, for example. Will it be able to cure dia betics or hypertension? Firstly, you yourself would be the limiting force for the workability of NLP. If you honestly seek a "Better You," you will practice, the techniques and exercises that the sessions teach and advocate; Like any other system, it needs you to apply yourself to it. Yes, but what it does is, once you get started on it, you are practically hooked to it because it's a highly motivating tool you cannot resist. To be very honest, it does not directly change your medical conditions. Of course, wherever stress contributes to your malady, "Better You" will help you deal with your stress in the right manner and thereby mitigate to some extent the intensity or frequency of your health problems