NLP as a Thinking Model: Will the Real NLP Please Stand Up?

In this article, L. Michael Hall explains that NLP is more than a communication or therapeutic tool – at its core, it is a model of thinking. NLP reveals the structure of thought behind experiences and enables critical, creative thinking as well as personal transformation. Understanding NLP as a model of thinking fundamentally changes how it is applied, taught, and understood.

It is much easier to say what NLP is not than to say what it is. So let's begin there. NLP is not a therapy model. It is not a version of psychotherapy. It is not a modeling model. It is not a hypnosis model. It is not even a model for personal development. It is none of these things – although NLP can be used very effectively for all of them. NLP can be applied successfully in therapy, hypnosis, modeling, and personal development. Just as easily, it can be applied in leadership, medicine, healing, and well-being.

So what is NLP then? Surprisingly, that remains one of the ongoing questions that continues to trouble the NLP field. And because of NLP's wide range of applications, many within the field find it difficult to agree on a single definition. It is also an excellent question if you want to "tease" an NLP practitioner a little.

Certainly, NLP relates to all of these disciplines. In fact, they represent some of the primary applications of NLP. And there are many more – parenting, leadership, management, coaching, counseling, education, health, fitness, and so on. These applications are so central that to this day they are often mistaken for NLP itself. That is why some say NLP is modeling. Others say it is psychotherapy. Still others say it is hypnosis. And some claim it is self-actualization. NLP certainly enriches each of these applications. But what, at its core, is NLP?

NLP is actually much deeper than all of this. Over the decades, most practitioners and trainers have come to view NLP as a communication model – which is how it is most often presented today. When we look at NLP as a communication model, it is about how we communicate with ourselves and with others, which in turn shapes our experiences (states, skills, knowledge). Because NLP reveals how communication works and provides fundamental communication principles, we discovered that it gives us the inner, hidden structure of experience itself. And when you understand the structure of an experience, you can model it, replicate it, and improve it.

But what most NLP trainers, authors, and researchers do not realize: NLP is more than a communication model – it is a thinking model. In fact, this is not new at all. It was there from the very beginning, but hardly anyone noticed. I myself did not recognize it, even though I researched it for decades and immersed myself deeply in the original sources.

• "When I began modeling, it seemed logical to find out what psychology already knew about thinking." Richard Bandler, Using Your Brain for a Change (1985, p. 14).
• "NLP is the science of thinking about thinking." Joseph Yeager, Thinking about Thinking with NLP (1985, p. viii)
• "Human thinking is illogical without context.... Thinking occurs within a context, purpose, or frame of reference that is unique to each individual. If you do not know another person's thinking context, many things may appear illogical to you." (Ibid., p. 23)



• NLP offers "a distinction between thinking and feeling. In NLP, feeling (kinesthetic) is defined as a cognitive event. That means feelings are also thoughts. Put simply, the experience of intuition is a kinesthetic form of thinking.... Every stroke between S and B represents a mental image... a thinking pattern.... That is what we all refer to as thinking within any experience." (Ibid., p. 182).
• "NLP is a new way of thinking – a new model – that involves the use of changing patterns which depend on contextual conditions and feedback within and between ongoing observable behaviors." (Dilts, Bandler, Grinder, DeLozer, NLP Volume I, 1980, p. 15)
• "The acts of seeing, hearing, or feeling are behaviors. Likewise, 'thinking,' which, when broken down into its components, involves sensory-specific processes such as seeing in the mind's eye, hearing an internal dialogue, feeling emotions about something, and so on." (Ibid., p. 19)
• "The reason for writing the book (NLP Vol. I) the way we did was more to create a new vocabulary, a new syntax, a new way of thinking about the world – rather than trying to adapt the NLP model to existing ways of thinking." (Ibid., p. 280)

When Bob Bodenhamer and I compiled NLP for the two volumes of User's Manual of the Brain (1999/2001), we stated that it was essentially a communication model. The evidence for this lies in the fact that the first NLP model was the Meta-Model of Language in Therapy, and the second model was the Representation Model, which encompasses our communication (including submodalities, or the cinematic features of our inner movies).

The third model, the Strategy Model, shows how communication creates and "programs" experience. Fourth: the Milton Model of hypnotic language patterns and how trance states work. Fifth: the model of Meta-Programs, which reveals how people think within their communication. That's quite a lot of evidence for NLP being a communication model. Yet, could it be something deeper? Could we call it a thinking model? What if thinking is the deeper level behind all the applications of NLP? If so, then what is a thinking model? How can thinking itself be modeled? Thinking seems so fundamental and irreducible—what would its components be? Perhaps this is why none of us originally saw NLP as a thinking model. Now imagine we begin to regard NLP as a thinking model.

Language Meta-Model	Linguistic distinctions – reveal how we think
Representation Model	Sensory representations – encode VAK (Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic) thinking
Submodalities Model	Film-like features – show how someone thinks
Strategy Model	Structure – how thought patterns are organized
Milton Model	Hypnotic language patterns – invite thinking in possibilities/metaphors (metaphorical thinking)
Meta-Programs	Thinking styles – determine how someone perceives
Perceptual Positions	Perceptual positions – thinking from different perspectives
Reframing Model	Reframing strategies – methods to interpret meanings differently
Meta-States	Reflexive thought processes – thinking about thoughts generates more complex states
Social Panorama	Submodalities thinking – film-like features of our inner "mental movie" for symbolically mapping relationships (L. Derks)
Symbolic Modeling	Using hidden thought structures in and behind metaphors – to model a person's experiences (James Lawley; Penny Tompkins)

What lies at the heart of every model? The answer is: thinking. This perspective makes one thing clear: not all thinking is the same. There are many types and dimensions of thinking. At the core of communication lies a driving force—namely: the quality of your thinking determines the quality of your communication. And just as thinking can sometimes go wrong, be flawed, or become distorted, the same applies to everything that arises from it. No wonder that change and transformation—whether in individuals or in organizations—require new thinking in new and different ways.

What am I really saying with this? NLP is essentially a model of thinking. If you truly understand NLP, you know that it is a way of thinking, a way of re-thinking, and a way of thinking both critically and creatively. And even more than that. At the core of every change lies re-thinking. It is fresh thinking, and it is meta-thinking—the ability to reflect on your own thinking to ensure that it is accurate, specific, precise, creative, and ecological.

Thinking has been at the core of NLP from the very beginning, but we have overlooked it. Perhaps because "thinking" seemed too small or too obvious. Perhaps we wanted something that sounded more marketable, something more commercially appealing, something that sounded sexier—communication, change, reframing, modeling, and so on. As a model of thinking, NLP provides direct access to everything human, because every science and every society is built upon thinking.

If NLP is a model of thinking...

Looking at NLP from this perspective has far-reaching implications: It changes what we can claim about NLP, how we can present or "sell" NLP—and perhaps even the future of NLP. Let's begin with the premise of the title: If NLP is a model of thinking, what inevitably follows?

1) NLP enables improved thinking. The idea of "thinking" suddenly becomes much more concrete and applicable. I discovered this when I first learned NLP. When I studied the sensory representation systems—learning that we think in images (visual), sounds (auditory), sensations (feelings, kinesthetic), and also in smells and tastes—I realized that I had almost completely ignored the auditory channel. Why? Because of a misconception I had picked up in college: that I was "tone-deaf." After twenty years living with this misunderstanding, I simply hadn't paid attention to this representation system. Suddenly, I discovered an entirely new area of information encoding. I wasn't unmusical at all!

Once you understand the VAK sensory systems for representing information, far more specific thinking channels become available. You have many more ways to enhance your internal snapshots and mental "movies" of things. There is a whole set of cinematic features (submodalities) that you can now use to enrich what and how you think. It's actually quite brilliant. It makes Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences model (see Frames of Mind, 1983) actionable.

2) NLP enables effective critical thinking. If the VAK model enriches your internal encoding of information so that you can "think" with much more depth, the Meta-Model empowers you to learn the essence of critical thinking. Critical thinking means thinking more clearly, precisely, accurately, and rationally. To do this, the Meta-Model specifies 21 linguistic distinctions to pay attention to, ensuring that your thinking is "well-formed" rather than suffering from the unformedness caused by deletions, generalizations, and distortions (Communication Magic, 2001).

It's not as complicated as it sounds. Almost all deletion distinctions are already intuitively familiar to native speakers. If you hear, "He rejected me," you intuitively know that the verb "reject" is not specific. You ask, "How exactly did he reject you?" Generalizations and distortions are sometimes intuitive, but most must be learned. Recognizing a linguistic distinction prompts you to ask a question. That is exactly what the Meta-Model is—a collection of distinctions and questions designed to help someone become more specific and precise. How important is this for anyone who communicates? For leaders, parents, therapists, coaches, teachers, etc.?

When I began researching critical thinking, I found that not a single book in the field mentioned the NLP Meta-Model. Not one! So I wrote the first: Executive Thinking: Activating Your Highest Executive Potentials (2018). Why? Because the Meta-Model is the most direct and simplest way to learn how to become an excellent critical thinker.

3) NLP enables effective creative thinking. As a model, the Meta-Model not only allows you to think and communicate more precisely but also to see the underlying structure—the thinking structure—that shapes an experience. Every experience has a structure, and this structure reveals how someone thinks. The NLP Strategy Model and the Meta-Programs Model allow us to discover structure. Now we can create and/or model expertise.

In the history of NLP, this was actually an accident. It wasn't planned. The founders simply wanted to figure out how Fritz Perls and Virginia Satir, two brilliant therapists, were able to achieve such great results in psychotherapy. So they listened to how they spoke and inferred what they must have been thinking. From this, they created a list of "patterns" to reproduce their expertise. These patterns form the content of NLP training and show how to guide a client to a new way of thinking and experiencing.

4) NLP enables problem-solving through thinking structure. Through this "accident," the founders realized that solutions and healing are not based so much on the content of someone's thoughts, but on the process of how someone thinks. This explains why different therapies work—they work because of shifts in thinking within the content.

From the very beginning, NLP was recognized as a metadiscipline. The "magic" wasn't in Gestalt therapy, family systems, hypnosis, or any other model, but in the internal structure of thinking. Without even knowing it, the founders had aligned with what Korzybski said: "Structure, and structure alone, is the essence of knowledge."

Key message

When you view NLP as a model of thinking, it goes far beyond communication. Thinking plays a crucial role in every human discipline, and the quality of our thinking determines the quality of our lives and our actions.