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Our
five senses are focused on the world outside: our
eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin appear better
equipped, and by force of habit are more accustomed,
to picking up signals from the world outside.
A stethoscope picks up the noise we make inside of
us. And the trained ears of the physician can tell
any difference. Our ears are not even capable of
picking up sounds that a stethoscope could.
Naturally, we are aware of the obstacles to
development from outside – though, there is a whole
world inside that influences our behaviour, or our
development. Its a dark world, with many mysterious
forces operating in it!
Searching in the dark
The inner world of the human heart/mind is so near
and yet so far away. And, we seem to be at a loss
how to deal with this world. The outer darkness is
easily overcome. You light a torch and the darkness
vanishes. Besides, its dark only for half the day.
But the cave of the heart seem to remain dark, all
through.
And, you do have a lot of home work to do there:
House keeping. Or else, a lot of garbage
accumulates, and you could get stuck in mud and
filth! May be, you have already accumulated a lot of
garbage, over the years! This inside world is NLP’s
preferred area of operation! NLP prefers we try to
change the inside world rather than spend energy
trying to change others!
What do we have inside, when we are born?
Whereas animals are born intelligent, we humans seem
to lack any brains at birth! A human baby will put
anything in its hand into its mouth. Even the dirt
it produced! Animal hardly ever do it. A little
chick, just out of its shell, will peck only the
rice grains, leaving out the sand particles mixed
with it. And how many years it takes mothers to
introduce solid foods to babies, and to inculcate
table manners to children!
An animal will run away from fire and smoke. But a
baby will crawl fast to grab a lighted candle, or
into a burning hearth, if left unattended. It can’t
protect itself.
Do we have anything inside at all?
Today, I read in The Hindu, “Loyola students
spearhead helmet drive.” That each year, some 240
persons die for not wearing helmets in Chennai. And,
students from the No.1 college of India, Loyola,
Chennai, took out a campaign. One placard shows a
slogan: “Use UR brain to save UR brain!”
For some months now, in Hyderabad, the police insist
that the two wheeler-riders wear helmet. I see a
number of them wearing it on the carrier behind
their seat, like some charm to ward off the police
menace along the road! What an unhelpful brain we
have? Or an unhelpful habit of not using the brain?
An interesting title by the founders of NLP –
Richard Bandler and John Grinder – is: “Using your
brain, for a change!” Do read that book, and get
changed! NLP aims to help people to use their
brains! It helps to deal with (1) what we have put
into our brains and how we put them in (input); (2)
how we organize/manipulate what we put in
(processing); and (3) how we take out what we have
processed (output/behaviour).
Take responsibility for what you have put in!
We are born without any significant set of personal
preference of our own for anything – except a few
desires like for sucking milk, for being rocked,
being cuddled at a temperature of 98.4° F, and for
listening to the heart beat of another human.
And, we don’t mind from where we fulfill those few
needs, as long as we get them filled. If not from
the mother, milk from any wet-nurse would do! Even a
plastic model of the nipple is enough to suck milk
from! But, a calf will go straight to its mother-cow
in a heard of a thousand animals, and refuse milk
from another source.
But you see parents crowd at the gates of schools to
pick up their wards, spotting them out of the
uniformed heard of students rushing out, and picking
them up. There is always the danger of some uncle
dangling a chocolate and leading away the child!
Thus our brain, for all practical purposes, comes as
a blank sheet of paper, with hardly any useful
information to guide us…Sheets on which you could
write your fate, the way you like. We had no life
saving information; no preferences worth mentioning!
It is those around us that made us a vegetarian or
non-vegetarian; the member of one religion rejecting
all the other religions, or an atheist. It is those
around us that gave us our mother tongue, making all
others languages and culture foreign/alien to us.
Had you been taken in adoption and brought up in
another culture, amidst people speaking another
language, you would ‘naturally’ be doing what others
did: Speak a mother tongue your mother does not
know! Worship gods your people did not even hear
about…Eat foods your own people might refuse to eat,
even if they starved!
We reproduce the world we experienced. Nothing
original about our beliefs and values, habits and
culture: our behaviour! All that we have are what we
picked up as babies… However sacred they appear now,
and however non-negotiable they are today, they were
not there at birth! They are all what was put
inside, after birth…
Animals only appear great
You have a Ph D in botany. You lost your way in a
dense forest and feel hungry. But, you do not know
if the berry you find there, so inviting and sweet
smelling, is edible or not as that plant/fruit was
not ‘covered’ under the ‘syllabus’ back in your
class. If you had any intelligence, you would wait
for a monkey to turn up, and watch like a cultured
man/woman to let the monkey eat first. If the monkey
eats it, you will know you can eat it. But, if the
monkey does not touch it, you would be left
wondering if it avoided eating because it was
poisonous, or because the monkey was not hungry! [To
wait for a monkey to eat an unknown fruit is a
standard instruction to military personnel, leaving
on a combat mission in jungle areas.]
Obviously, animal brains are better coded to
decipher how to survive in this world. They can
build their homes without a Masters in Engineering.
They can find their food without an employment.
Without passports, visas and the related anxieties,
they fly across international borders, or swim
across continents for feeding or breeding.
Yet, human brain is superior
For all our apparent inferiority, human brains are
better equipped to achieve progress. As a child you
may not know to erect a tent; but you can learn to
build mansions; you may not be able to fly; but you
can learn to construct space ships – and repair them
while on flight, too.
You can progress. And, animals can’t. They construct
the same old nests, same old honeycombs; fly the
same way, swim at the same speed. And they will do
the same for ages to come! And they are least
adaptable to changed circumstances and habitats.
But, humans have survived on the moon; and are
aiming for the mars now.
Human brains are like a computer; you can load and
reload software of your choice. Animal brains, for
all their versatility, are like the calculator. But,
when we get stuck, it means, we have started using
our computers as if they are calculators! It means,
we have lost of our ability to improve our software;
improve performance.
NLP is the language/software (‘Linguistic’) of the
super-computer the brain (‘Neuro’). Welcome to learn
to reprogram the brain, and achieve your full
potential of being born a human! Reclaim your
ability to change; to learn and to relearn; to
program your way to success…to keep growing, using
NLP.
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