Covert Metaphor

We experience so-called reality through our physical senses. The sense impressions of the external world are received predominately through six central sense receptors. A combination of what we hear, see, feel, smell, taste, and touch make up most of our experiences. NLP traditionally uses five senses, disregarding taste, but I feel taste can be used very powerfully in a metaphor. The senses in NLP are referred to as The Representational System. Each person accesses the external world through a unique sequence of The Representation System. NLP emphasizes the three senses of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic (VAK); our eyes see pictures, our ears hear sounds, and our body feels sensations. Everybody represents information primarily through visual, auditory, or kinesthetic, but people aren’t necessarily fixed in any one system and will tend to shift according to the situation. But for the most part each person prefers one representational system over another which can cause a discrepancy in communication. I find it unfortunate that the public school system in the US doesn’t teach children based on their favored representational systems. I suspect it’s the same in other countries as well. All children are forced into one mold, and if you didn’t process the information according to the teacher’s representational system, then tough luck!

Each representational system uses specific predicates or process words to represent a model of the world. When you construct a metaphor or story, it will be to your advantage to include all representational systems if you are speaking to more than one person. This ensures all people listening, get the message. Of course if you are speaking to one person and you are aware of their preferred choice of processing, then you can tailor your vocabulary to match their own.

See if can match the following examples to their correct representational system:

“I can clearly see it in my mind’s eye.”

“Yeah, we got into this heated argument, but in the end we we’re able to get a handle on the situation.”

“Please state your purpose loud and clear.”

I’m currently preparing a free sensory word list for download. It should be available sometime this weekend. 

admin :: Jun.22.2007 :: NLP :: No Comments »

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