Everyone already has all the resources they need or the ability to get them

which also complements nicely the presupposition that people are not broken.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming believes that experience has a structure, and that structure is composed out of 5 senses: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory or gustatory. And if every experience is composed out of these same building blocks, so is every state or resource.

Therefore, you already have the resources you need inside of you or the ability to get those resources.

Modeling: From Zero to Hero

In NLP 101: Experience Has A Structure I told the story of how researchers were able to break down the skills of good skiers to teach to beginner skiers and prove that skiing was a matter of skill at a time when people believed it was a matter of talent.

Why was this possible? Not only because experience had a structure, but because we all have the same resources within us, it’s only a matter of how we use them.

This process is also known as modeling, which NLP is excellent at (I talked more about this in NLP 101: What is NLP Special for The Super NLP tigger). Presuppositions like these are what’s allowed it to model spelling strategies, for example, from spelling geniuses and teach them to struggling kids who can reproduce the same result. It’s not that they’re broken or they’re bad in any way, it’s just that they had a limited map of resources to be able to spell well.

In fact, Robert Dilts, one of the first and foremost co-developers of NLP, is a genius at modeling, and he’s been generous enough to share a list of articles and techniques he’s modeled from people like Walt Disney, Darwin and even Jesus on his NLPU articles page.

How Do You Use This?

Remember the takeaway from the Pygmalion effect post? That people can do better than other people just because they’re expected to do so, yourself included.

If you’ve been noticing, all the NLP presuppositions come together to form a holistic whole. Since you cannot not communicate, and you cannot not change the world with your map of the world, what if you held the beliefs that people are not broken and that they already have all the resources they need inside of them or they can get it, yourself included?

Compared to the results you’d create from holding the beliefs that people are broken, and they do not have all the resources they need or they cannot get them, yourself included.

If You Already Had All The Resources You Need Or The Ability To Get Them, What Would Be Different For You?

What if you recognized that you already have all the resources you need within you, or have the ability to get them, what would be different for you?