Tuesday, March 27, 2007

NLP: NLP is about Thinking Part 9 - Why Modeling?

Hi,

This is Section 2 of our article series, NLP is about Thinking.

Someone asked me recently why we model. So, I decided to write this article (just one article) as Section 2 of the series - Why Modeling?

The co-originators of NLP, Richard Bandler & John Grinder started to model the greatest therapists to identify their models of effective and efficient therapy during 70's. This was the birth of NLP. Years after years, Bandler, Grinder and many other NLP co-developers, trainers and practitioners continued to model. The co-originators even declared that NLP is Modeling rather than the thousands of NLP models as the results of the modeling process. Why?

Because this unique NLP Modeling Process can help people finding out the "how" of the great techniques of great performers of any kind! Then we and all others people can follow the steps of these great people to excellence. (If you want to know more about the uniqueness of the NLP Modeling Process, have a look at my other article, 4 Key Elements of NLP Modeling)

But why should we learn the Modeling Process? Why can't we just learn from the existing models?

There can be hundreds of good reasons to model, here are 8 to consider:

1. Modeling Someone's Excellence. When you come across someone performing great in something you want to learn, you can model them by yourself! You learn faster!

2. Modeling Organizations and Cultures. You can also understand better how other (or yours) organizations and cultures functioning. We can benchmark them to get their strategies and we can also get along with them easier.

3. Modeling Others' Failures. You don't need to fail first to become successful in something. We can always model others' failures. We are not good at learning from failures so we fail again and again. Why? Because we do not have a systematic and effective method to learn. Modeling can be one of the answers. Modeling failures can also help us to help others to improve themselves.

4. Modeling Problems. One thing is quite sure for yesterday, today and in the future - Problems always exist. Many even believe that we are employed to solve the problems for our employers. We, ourselves have problems, at home, in the workplace, etc. If we can know how a problem works, problem solving is much easier.

5. Modeling Opportunities. Interesting? Yes, we can model opportunities! It is frustrating not to get hold of opportunities and let them pass by us. One of the reasons is that we do not know how they look so we can't recognize them. Even we can manage not to miss them, we might not be able to utilize them because we do not know how they work. Modeling helps us to notice them and use them.

6. Modeling Others' Thinking. Then we can communicate and persuade them according to their way of thinking! The problem why we can't persuade is that we are doing that according to our own thinking, not theirs. When we are proficient at modeling, we can Simultaneously Model others and get simultaneous feedback at the same time. Speed is everything, when persuading!

7. Modeling from History, Books and any other form of Information. Even we can't meet someone in person (we don't know them or they had already passed-away), we can still model them. It opens up a vast pool (or sea!) of knowledge to us! Learning from information is always difficult since we tend to analyze or memorize, rather than seeing how something happened.

8. Modeling Yourself. The last but not the least, modeling oneself is most important! We are aware of the importance of Self-Awareness, but we might not be aware of how to get it! We can model ourselves! We model our own successes, failures, problems, thinking and our history! We can then duplicate our achievements. We can stop repeating our problems and failures. We can adjust our own insane thinking. We understanding more about the most important person in the world - Yourself!

Learn Modeling and teach them to all others around you. Today, we are facing Information-Overflow, but we are always Knowledge-Deficient. Knowledge is the Understood and Usable Information. What can make it understood and what can make it usable? Modeling!

When more people are doing Modeling, we are adding knowledge to our world. This is my wish and this is my goal!

See you all again in Section 3 of the articles series.

Keith
Explore, Exceed & Excel