Mind Adventures (NLP): Rapid Learning

Day 1 of Neurolinguistic Programming GradDip Part 2, Unit on Advanced Modelling
Thoughts and insights
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Imagine this: what if you could learn anything — yes, anything! – in half the time that it would normally take to do so?

Take a foreign language for instance. How long does it take to learn a new language? Months? Years?

Well, John Grinder, the founder of NLP*, learned a new language with first level fluency in only 5-6 weeks! This means he is able to hold conversations comfortably with native speakers in such a short period of time.

While we may not be as good as he is, we all have the ability to learn something rapidly like he did, not just for language, but in various situations. The secret is allowing our unconscious mind to do the job of learning for us. This is called modelling**.

As children***, we all naturally do this.

Think about it: How did you learn to talk from a simple “da”, “ma” to “daddy” and “mommy”, then to “I love you, mommy”? We learned single syllables, complete words, phrases, then simple sentences, and so on and so forth.

We didn’t learn, sitting in a classroom, listening to a teacher about phonetics, characters and grammatical structures. Yet, as adults, this is how we attempt to learn a new language. We have the urge to first understand before we do anything. It’s as if, we need to be comforted by the rules first before we can start to do anything.  We feel we need to know the map exactly before we explore the territory.

What if we don’t have to know the rules? What if we just step into this new territory and explore without a map?

What if, like children, we hear what we hear from others, we feel how they say what we hear, and then we say it, without attempting to interpret anything? We simply pay close, very, very close attention to what is being presented to us. No judgement. No analysis. No questions.

Well, that is exactly what I did.

One of my classmates in my NLP class is Indonesian. I “modelled” the words he were saying, said them myself as closely to the way he said them, as I heard them. When I did that, I started to sense something. It’s vague. So he said, “feel the words as I say them…”

I paid as much close attention as I could — the breathing, the gestures, the eye movements, where he’s directing his attention, his use of space, the quality of the sound coming from his mouth.

There were no language rules to follow. I did not analyse, I did not deconstruct, I did not guess. I simply allowed my whole being to be in his space. By simply being there, the meaning popped. I told him what I sensed he was saying.

In this totally foreign language, in this new territory, he smiled at me, amazed, and said in his broken English: “you got precisely the meaning of my words.”

You have two paths in front of you, both going to the same destination. The first path has a clear map, the second, only clues. If you miss any of the clues, you could stray off the path. If you pay close attention, you will get all the clues. With these clues, you will definitely get to the destination in half the time. Would you rely on the map, or would you rely on your ability to pay attention?

If you could model someone to learn new skills, what would that do for you? And if you consciously choose to model someone ‘excellent’, what would that create for you? What would then be possible for your world?

Just imagine…

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 *NLP – Neurolinguistic Programming
**Modelling activates “mirror neurons” which then fires up circuitry in the brain of the modeller similar to the neural patterns of the model. This is why learning is accelerated with skillful modelling, to the level of patterns demonstrated by the model.
***Children naturally model their parents: they model anything from behaviours, values, even thinking patterns, which may or may not be useful. Hence there are patterns that get passed through generations.