In previous articles you’ve been learning that you make sense of events in your surroundings through your model of the world. In other words, you create maps that help you navigate through your day-to-day situations.
A map is a representation of certain elements of a territory. Different types of maps exist. There are street maps, topographical maps, thermal maps, and so on. A piece of territory could have several maps referring to it. Each map is designed to provide specific information about the territory. For instance, a street map would point to the layout of the streets in that specific territory. A topographical map would point to terrain variations in that specific territory. A thermal map would indicate the temperature of the earth in that specific territory.
As you notice, many different maps can point to the same territory. And you can refer to more than one map depending on the information you need to use at any given time.
In NLP, you study that you build your Model of the World using your senses. In NLP jargon, we call them sensory modalities. We also refer to them as representational systems. These are:
1. The visual representational system (sight)
2. The auditory representational system (hearing)
3. The kinesthetic representational system (touch)
4. The olfactory representational system (smell)
5. The gustatory representational system (taste)
You must drill into your mind that these maps exist in your nervous system. These aren’t just ideas suspended in mind. These are actual physiological phenomena grounded in your biology.
Stop and read the previous paragraph one more time. Herein lies the NLP distinction. You build these maps with and into your nervous system.
No kidding.
Think of the implications this holds for your health, for your well-being and for your emotions. As you begin to do the exercises I suggest next, you’ll also notice changes occurring in your levels of physical well-being as you begin to streamline the way you represent your experiences and shift to more appropriate representations.
Stop for a second and think of this example. What would be five different ways to represent pop corn?
1. How would you do it visually? Imagine the white robe of the pop corn as it jumps out the pan when it pops.
2. How would you do it auditorily? Can you hear the sound of the corn popping in the pan as it cooks?
3. How would you do it kinesthetically? Feel the crunch of the pop corn as you munch it. What’s its texture like?
4. How would you do it olfactorily? What does it smell like?
5. How would you do it gustatorily? Does pop corn actually have a unique taste?
Think about this. Just one phenomenon: pop corn. But five different ways to encode pop corn into your nervous system. That’s how you’d recognize pop corn in your mouth though your eyes might be shut: because the texture is also encoded in your nervous system.
In NLP, these different encodings also account for why different people have a different experience of pop corn. Some people find it irresistibly attractive (visual) while others find it unbearable to munch on it as it reminds them of Styrofoam (kinesthetic).
The modalities you use to encode your model of the world strongly influence how you’ll react to everyday situations.
Over the next few days, take some time to play with sensory modalities. Choose 3 objects, events or people every day and represent them in all 5 modalities. Within a week, you’ll notice how much sharper your senses have become. Send me an email and let me know about it.
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