As you progress in learning and mastering NLP, you’ll come across the content-process distinction in a number of books and seminars. This distinction is one of the lynchpins of NLP and “experts” are constantly debating where the boundary falls between content and process.

How can we understand what they are talking about? What is content? What is process? Let’s use a metaphor to start understanding this.

Imagine a bag of apples. We’ll use this bag of apples as our example for content.

Now, imagine a fork, a blender and a juicer. We’ll use these tools as our example for process.

An apple can be processed in many different ways. Among them, you can squash them with a fork, you can purée them using a blender and you can juice them with a juicer. All the time, the content will remain the same: apples. But the way you process the apples will change the final outcome.

Now take this analogy over to thinking.

What you think is the content. How or the way you think it is the process.

Let’s take a lightly uncomfortable example. Let’s say you had an argument with a teacher when you were a kid and that episode marked you and let’s suppose that you keep rethinking that episode over and over, seeing a movie of your teacher arguing with you and hearing his voice in your memory.

The argument itself is the content. The movie and the voice is the process.

What would happen if you started processing the argument differently. First of all, accelerate the speed of the movie lightly, so that it’s playing at twice the speed. Next, blur it a bit and dim the lighting on the image. Next, pay attention to the accelerated voice, which is starting to sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks. Accelerate the whole thing until the sounds fades into a hum and the movie just becomes white light.

Now, how do you feel about it?

You altered the process, you altered the emotional outcome.

Now, why is this distinction important?

In most forms of changework, the therapist seeks to alter the content of his client’s thoughts. Returning to our apples analogy, the therapist would suggest that his client process oranges or bananas. Sometimes, this is just not possible or even ethical. It might mean imposing or forcing your view of the world and your beliefs on someone else. Working on process makes it possible to retain full integrity and respect of the client’s model of the world while allowing content shifts to occur naturally and spontaneously.

The motivational cliché “if life sends you lemons, make lemonade” illustrates the content-process distinction quite appropriately. Shift the process and you’ll shift the outcome.

When we start speaking of modality distinctions in future posts, you’ll learn all the ways in which you can modulate your own and other people’s thinking processes.

Meanwhile, begin playing with the content-process distinction. Let’s try a few games:

1. Process the thought of a train through your kinesthetic or “feeling” channel.

2. Process the thought of your mother through your olfactory or “smell” channel.

3. Process the thought of your final exams through your gustatory or “taste” channel.

4. Process the thought of your favorite food through your auditory or “hearing” channel.

5. Process the thought of water rehydrating all of your body cells through your visual or “seeing” channel.

Give these exercises a shot and let me know what you discovered!