GLOSSARY of NLP Terms (Your first-ever Business e-Coach)

Anchor - any stimulus which evokes a consistent response.

Anchoring - the process of making associations that work through conscious choice so that you can reaccess your own or trigger others' chosen state when appropriate.

Association - the state of being inside your own skin, seeing the world from your own eyes, hearing the world from your own ears and feeling the emotions of the situation, whether current, remembered or imagined.

Beliefs - assumptions we make about ourselves, about others in the world and about how we expect things to be. Emotionally held options treated as facts and the basis of our everyday decisions, skills and behaviors.

Congruence - having all parts of yourself working in harmony; being at one with yourself.

Criteria - the values and standards used as the basis for decisions.

Dissociation - the state of observing yourself as if you were an outsider. Seeing and hearing yourself from the outside. The effect of dissociation is to disconnect from emotions.

Eye accessing cues - movements of a person's eyes that indicate visual, auditory or kinaesthetic (feelings) thinking.

Filters - levels of thinking that determine where we put our attention and consequently what constitutes perception. These filters determine how we respond to situations and people.

Frame - the focus of attention you give to something.

Linguistic - the study of language and in the context of NLP the patterns in language that communicate our thinking strategies.

Logical levels - a form of personal and organizational hierarchy that impacts on change and how effectively we bring about change for ourselves or for others. Consisting of environment, behavior, capabilities, values, beliefs, identity and purpose.

Meta Model - a series of devices for achieving a better understanding of vague language patterns, including specific questions for added clarification.

Metaphor - having a parallel means of describing or observing. Metaphors can be parables, stories, analogies, pictures, actions. Often used to influence the unconscious mind and bypass conscious resistance.

Metaprograms - internal filters which people use to sort the information they receive in a systematic way, and which then determine their behavior.

Modeling - the process of understanding the thoughts and actions that enable someone to accomplish a task excellently. The process of unpacking your own and others' conscious but especially unconscious strategies in order to duplicate the results achieved.

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Neuro - the way we use our brain.

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) - the study of the structure of subjective experience. NLP is a process of modeling and increasingly the term is used to encompass the techniques and skills uncovered as a result of this process. The technique and the name was developed by John Grinder and Richard Bandler in 1975.

Outcome (well formed) - a goal that is characteristic of someone who consistently achieves what they want in ways that are a win for others as well as themselves. Different from traditional methods of goal setting in that it involves the use of all senses, including emotion.

Pacing - respecting the values, the needs and the style of another person in a way that leads to rapport. Going along with aspects of what is important to another and yourself.

Perceptual Positions - a technique to increase your effectiveness in relating to others by extending your information about the way they behave and how they make their choices; includes changing your position and taking different views - your own, your prospect, and that of an independent observer - of the situation to understand other peoples' maps of reality.

Predicates - the words we use that differentiate between representational systems.

Programming - the sequences of thinking and behavior patterns that constitute our strategies for achieving the results we do.

Rapport - a process of building a sustaining relationship of mutual trust, harmony and understanding. This happens through matching the accessing cues from words, eye movements and body language.

Reframing - considering an issue from many different aspects. The ability to make meanings of events in ways that work for you and create desirable emotional states.

Representational Systems - representation of information internally through our basic senses, i.e. pictures (visual), sounds (auditory), feelings (kinesthetic), taste (gustatory), and smells (olfactory).

Strategies - a set of thinking and behavioral steps to achieve a result.

TOTE (test - operate - test - exit) - the feedback loop used to guide behavior.