They walk among us.

People who psychologists call ‘natural sentinels’.

A select group with a rather unique trait.

They are highly skilled at detecting lies, using just their senses.

No James Bond kit or NSA communication snooping required.

These folks are highly sensitive to threats in their environment.

It makes them really good at spotting “tells” in others.

The secret behind their perceptual powers?

Fear of separation and abandonment.

At least that’s according to one group of social psychologists who study human’s reactions to threats.

People who they qualified as “anxiously attached” tended to be hyper vigilant.

To be able to detect incongruities and threats in their environment long before regular folks.

In NLP the role of perception is paramount to being skillful with the tech.

If you can’t detect it, you can’t pattern – and basically you’re hosed.

Entire categories of information can go right past you and you’d never know it was there.

What you can’t see you can’t use.

Information captured and used is power.

There are circa 30 organising presuppositions in NLP.

These presuppositions are the foundational building blocks of the technology.

Not because they are necessarily ‘true’, but because when embodied and operationalized, they act as powerful enabling filters in how we interact with the world.

One of the most important presuppositions in NLP is:

All human behavior is purposive or adaptive within some context, whether you can detect it or not.

Next time you find yourself or a loved one beating themselves up for repeatedly doing something that doesn’t work; pause.

Don’t judge or damn it.

Reflect on what function does that or could that behaviour serve?

How does the behaviour benefit you/them?

How does it fit into their overall system of behaviour of the person?

You’ll find some surprising answers…

Both about yourself and others.

When you begin to tap into what truly drives a person’s behaviour you can access a very powerful way to influence them.

You’ll also free yourself up from endless loops of “negative internal bashing” when you realise that every behaviour even those you thought to yourself afterwards “WTF was I thinking?” were serving some valued purpose.

Pause, reflect. Re-align your actions with your desired results.

When you do, you may get the biggest benefit of all.

Only having to make mis-takes once; and success will become so much closer.