Designed Thinking

To understand how we take information into our neurology and how that affects our behavior, NLP has something called the "model of communication". It is based on the notion our five senses, sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell, take in two million bits of information at any one moment. Our conscious mind however, is only able take in approximately 7 bits of information during this same time period.

In order to compensate for this vast difference (two million down to seven) the mind filters the events our senses take in by deleting, distorting and generalizing the information through our language, memories, attitudes, values, beliefs, decisions, etc. We then make an internal representation of the world we are taking in, with pictures, sounds and feeling. That puts us in a state of mind, which can change our physiology that affects our behavior. All this happens in a fraction of a second and none of it has to happen in any particular order. We are in a constant state of flux, where our physiology can affect our attitudes just as easily as our behavior can affect our language.

This model is the basis of all NLP. If we did not delete, distort and generalize the events we take in, consciously we would be in sensory overload. It's the sensation of more things happening than you can handle, which can be quite overwhelming, can't it?

DELETE - This is when we omitting data or selectively paying attention to certain of our experience and not others. Think of a time when you were so engage in a conversion with someone that you were unaware of other events going on around you.

DISTORT - My friend Bob and I were one of the only men at a meeting where a woman mentioned that male hypnotherapists should not work with women. Later as we talked about the event, Bob said he couldn't believe that the speaker said, "Men should not use hypnosis". That is not what was said, but that's what Bob's mind interpreted, even though it was not what was said. Distortions are when we misrepresent our reality

GENERALIZE - In the above example, the women's comment that male hypnotherapist should not work on women is a good example of generalization. It is putting ideas, people or things a convenient group or category, or drawing global conclusions.

Watch the filters you place your world in, for the world is never what we think it is. If we are taking in 2 million bits of information and only aware of around 7 bits, there is much data we are missing.

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Last update June 15, 2007

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