One of the most essential strategies of NLP is modeling. In a nutshell, modeling is a technique of imitating the skills of another person until those skills are internalized and become your own. One of the first areas of expertise that modeling became an important tool was in skiing.
In the early to mid 20th century, it was commonly thought that a person was either born with the skills to become a great skier or the person was born without those skills.
Instructors thought they could teach a beginner a few basics, but after that, either their students had the right stuff or they didn't.
Then along came slow motion photography. Students could then watch films of expert skiers and mimic their moves in front of the screen. What these students were doing was matching the physiology of the skiers as they watched them.
Modeling has since been adapted to help salespeople improve their selling skills, soldiers improve their marksmanship, golfers improve their swings (you knew golfers would quickly get hold of any way to improve their game, didn't you?), lawyers improve their courtroom skills.
Nowadays, there is even a whole body of literature popping up on the internet to help insecure men learn to pick up women, just like rockstars and professional athletes. And guess what? These NLP techniques work and really are helping these men become more successful with women (we'll leave the ethics of this for a later discussion).
Researchers have found that any skill or area of expertise can be modeled. Now realistically, not everyone has the physical talent to become a Tony Romo or a Tiger Woods. But within the limits of a person's natural talents, an athlete can make huge gains by modeling one of the greats.
Literally no area of human accomplishment is out of bounds when it comes to modeling. In James Van Fleet's book, Hidden Power, he even give the example of an Army officer who had had too much to drink at an officers' party. Afraid that he was embarrassing himself, he went into the restroom and stood in front of the mirror.
Little by little, as he adjusted his posture and facial expression to what he saw of himself in the mirror, he "sobered" himself up. Now I don't doubt for a minute that a modern blood-alcohol test would have nailed him, but to all visible appearances ,this man was sober for the rest of the evening.
He was able to do this because he had seen himself sober and also had a solid imprint of others in the state of sobriety. The mirror gave him the visual feedback he needed to adjust his physiology to match sobriety.
I don't want to over simplify modeling for you. It requires a lot of study, both of the techniques to be used, and of the subject you intend to model. Nevertheless, the promise NLP offers for modeling is incredible.
Just imagine any skill that you want to acquire. Neuro-linguistic programming can show you how you can make that skill your own. There are only two requirements:
- You must have the raw talent to build on. In other words, I am not, starting off at the age of 52, going to become a professional athlete.
- You must find someone sufficiently skillful in the area you want to model and be able to spend time observing that person to find what that person's strategies are.
Now I'll grant you there is a lot more involved than what I have briefly discussed here. In the next article in this series, I'll give you a reading list of books and materials you can use to learn more about NLP and modeling.
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