What the f$%k is NLP?!?

I went to a party last night. I know! I don't drink and I don't socialise. But it was a surprise birthday celebration for my mate Irv. Or rather Ian Irving. So I had no choice. Right now he's a very big player in the Experiential Marketing scene, but back in the day he was part of a team who made a music video for my previous band and we've kept in touch ever since. The festivities kicked off in Londinium at 8:00pm, but having to wend my way via Britain's terminally blocked arteries (M6 and M1) meant my perfectly laid plans were fucked and out of the window as the tailback from Hades finally spat me out in Clapham 2 hours late.


For the duration of my arduous journey - soothing soundtrack provided by Miles Davis - I was thinking: "I could just drop him an e-mail or a text... Why am I even doing this?" The answer arrived most eloquently in the slack-jawed, joyous incredulity on Irv's face as I stepped into the venue. Awesome! It was fantastic to see him again. Many, many emotional, manly hugs later and Irv plays the perfect host as he introduces me to his guests (the great, the good, the beautiful and the celebrated) variously as: "The first celebrity I worked with", "The poshest man I know", "The coolest man I know", "He's an intellectual" and "Watch out! He'll NLP ya!" as he pulled a dramatic Bruce Lee pose.


The last of these intros generated the response which forms the title of this blog. Joel Beckett (Lee from The Office, Jake in Eastenders, Stand-up comedian and voice over artiste without compare) asked if it meant I could get inside girls' knickers really quickly: his enquiry accompanied by some extraordinarily sexually graphic hand gestures. Erm...


In those tumultuous and rambunctious surroundings it was difficult to give an appropriate response. So I figured I'd do a quick intro.


Ready?


Ok...


Whatever you do, do not think about a quaint little cottage situated at the foot of a mountain, the immense, glistening white slopes stretching ever upwards to a cloudless azure sky. Snow enveloping the cottage, covering the windows and piling up against the ornate wooden door. A beam of sunlight tumbling into the white, frozen valley and illuminating it with a bitter, glittering fluorescence.

What happened as you read the above paragraph? Did you picture in your mind's eye the cottage, the mountain and the snow even though I advised you not to? If so that's because the only way to make sense of what you read or hear is by engaging a little with the experience yourself. Once you grasp that truth the rest is all fun and games because just by saying a few words in the right way, you can transport people to specific places and influence the way they think. Richard Bandler and John Grinder, the founders of NLP, integrated Noam Chomsky's concepts of language and hypnotic patterns used by Milton Erickson to identify powerful tools of influence and persuasion. Thus, NLP is essentially the study of communication and its effects.

The most high profile exponent of NLP (amongst all his other trickery) in the UK is probably Derren Brown and in his book Tricks of The Mind he details how he attained his qualification in this discipline by attending a seminar with 400 other people for 4 days. My experience in becoming a certified NLP Practitioner was totally different. I studied with only 3 other people for about a fortnight under the tutelage of a world renowned NLP authority, Rintu Basu, and I had to competently demonstrate hypnosis, fast phobia cures, swish patterns and the accessing of eye cues amongst other similarly freaky things before I could graduate.

I volunteer this information so that you know that I know what I'm talking about. And whilst I may be an avid student of social interaction and its consequences, you're sitting there, reading this blog and that means you're already aware that language affects perception.

And politicians know this.

They know that in inter-personal communication if you're able to control the level of abstraction, you control the communication itself. The 'hierarchy of ideas' is a model which allows us to move (or 'Chunk') up and down, through and between different levels of abstraction from vague and ambiguous to definite and specific, and is one which everyone from Winston Churchill to John F Kennedy to Barack Obama has exploited.

If we take 'sex toy' as an example. The phrase 'sex toy' is at a particular level of abstraction. If we then chunk down on 'sex toy' we move to a lower level of abstraction - something more concrete and specific. So if the subject of the communication was 'sex toy' we might ask 'What type of sex toy specifically?' and chunk down to 'Rabbit Vibrator'.

If we required further detail we could 'chunk down' one more level by asking something like 'What type of Rabbit Vibrator specifically?' And we might get a response of 'Ultimate Remote', 'Aquagasmic Double Pleasure' or 'Wet n Wild Waterproof'.

With each increasing level of specificity we are moving down through the hierarchy of ideas and down through levels of abstraction. And, of course the further down you go, the more specific you get and the more opportunity there is for contention. For example, I might, as my personal political campaign platform, say we need to look to build a better, more vibrant Britain. Very few would disagree with that. However, were I to more clearly delineate the component parts of my policy and state that we would work our way towards this Utopian vision of Britain by feeding bits of Dermot O'Leary to a grizzly bear spazzing out on amphetamines on prime-time television every Friday night, the less creative amongst you might disagree with what seems a radical strategy.

When Obama talked about 'Change' and 'Hope' and 'Yes, we can' these were all concepts abstract enough for everyone, the world over, to be seduced by and rally behind. The specificity and day by day revelation of the detail of his programme of 'change' is what has so disappointed us all. And we see a similar tactic employed by David Cameron and the Tories. This is from Our Dave's website:

"David's vision is of a country where people have more opportunity and power over their lives; a country where families are stronger and society is more responsible; a Britain which is safer and greener."

See? It's impossible to disagree with ANY of those statements. Keep it vague and you'll invite complicity. In this instance most now perceive Dave as the Prime Minister in waiting. For now he'll avoid debate on definitive budgetary and taxation plans, for fear he and his party come across as cold hearted, Vampiric entities.


Pity, then, Gordon Brown who, at the last Labour Party conference, felt compelled to outline specific policy details with timescales. And figures. And percentages. And projections. All in an effort to make us love him more and instead lost the support of both his party - who recently staged yet another (failed) coup against him - and The Sun. Personally, I think the latter's a very good thing indeed. New Labour's lasting legacy will be that they presided over a near pornographic widening of the gap between rich and poor whilst grinding their collective tongue ever deeper into Rupert Murdoch's sphincter of supreme, nefarious darkness. Seriously, why would you want to consort with pure evil like Mr Murdoch? A man whom, it's fairly obvious, spends his waking hours hacking the limbs off orphans.

Anyway, Gordon is in desperate need of some basic instruction on the use of language to persuade, influence and reshape perception. If you see him, put him in touch with Basil Creese Jr. He'll NLP ya!


Now, take your knickers off and bend over.