As modellers, we are interested in figuring out what someone who is excellent at something does in terms of how they organise their perceptions of the world so that we can then create a simplified model of their experience, that we can then teach ourselves or others.

Richard and John did this for the early exemplars like Fritz, Milton and Virginia, which started the whole field.

Think of modelling as somewhat like being an architect and builder. Let's say you and I are architects and are walking in the country one day when we come across this amazing home. And we instantly decide we want to be able to create a similar home for one of our clients. Well, as architects, we understand what matters is not just the materials you use (i.e. your thoughts, feelings and senses) but how you use them. So we go and find the guy who lives there and we figure out from him how the structure of the house was put together, where the key beams are that help keep it upright and looking so lovely. We don't write everything down, we just take the keynotes that represent sufficiently how the structure of the house works and stays upright.

Later, when we go back to the office, we decide we are going to build a similar house, so we go off and take out our notes and follow the same procedure, organising our building structure similar to the amazing home and we also make sure we build the house the same way, using roughly the same or similar materials. And hey presto, if we have done our modelling and building job well, we will have created a similar-looking house that will make us very happy.

Now let's apply this same process to something else. Let's say you want to know how a snowboarding friend of yours is able to jump so well. You go off and model him until you can get a similar result. The powerful thing with using NLP in this way is you can do this process over and over again, in all different fields and produce far superior results than if you tried to figure it out all by yourself with no exemplar to guide you.

Why? Because we are interested in the structures someone uses to organise their experience and we know there are only so many components that we need to pay attention to.

It's out of this process called behavioural modelling that practitioners in the field have created numerous techniques and applications to improve people's lives.

In fact, NLP has been used by millions of people around the world.

From world leaders, NASA, the armed forces, elite sports teams, multinational companies, entrepreneurs and parents. And over the past 40 years, it has been used by people around the world in numerous industries because it provides an exceptional toolset for achieving truly impressive results, whatever you decide you want those to be.

NLP is much more than a set of techniques. It's an insatiable attitude of curiosity about human beings - that gives you a set of skills, tools and techniques to make magical things happen. To communicate better, to learn better, to develop greater control and choice over your mind, body and nervous system. To create the very best version of yourself.

Modelling is at the heart of NLP. Discover what it is and how it works. Watch the video below.