What is meant by Perception in NLP?

In Neuro-Linguistic Programming there is a lot of time dedicated to understanding how humans ‘perceive’ the world around them. Humans are amazingly capable at receiving information about the ouside world. But, our minds are poorly equipped to consciously process all of it at exactly the same. In fact, our Unconscious Minds spend most of the time ignoring most of the information available to us so that what goes on inside our head relates to what is most important to us at any point in time.

“We filter around 2 million bits of information per second down to seven plus-or-minus two chunks of information.” - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

This isn’t the easiest concept to grasp but there is an overwhelming amount of information that you are just not conscious of for most of your life. You’re probably not aware of how your clothes feel against your skin, the taste in your mouth of the last think you ate/drank or how the seat feels beneath you – yet as soon as you read this sentence each and every one of those will have entered your conscious awareness! This is information that is simply ignored BUT sometimes we distort the information and see it differently to how it actually is. Don’t believe me? Look at the image below:

Do you notice how the yellow lines bring your attention to two parts of the image? Focus on the colour of each part. Now, ask yourself: Is the top part darker, lighter or the same as the bottom part? Look really hard and what do your eyes tell you?

If you are anything like most people then you probably notice that each part looks different. Most people say that the top part is darker than the bottom part. Which is interesting. Because if we hide some of the same image you’ll notice something peculiar:

In fact both parts of the image are the same colour! This is an example of your perception WARPING the external world so that you cannot see it as it really is.
(This is a well documented error in perception known as Adelson’s “Corrugated Plaid”)

So this is where life gets interesting. What if our Perception wasn’t just misrepresenting those little images? What if our Perception was misrepresenting more important things, such as the people in our lives? Because, the truth is, it absolutely is. Now, this isn’t a problem if you understand how your Perception is influencing your experience with the outside world BUT if you are not currently aware of how that works then there is every chance that it is detracting from your communication skills.

To learn more join us at our next Perth NLP Practitioner Training – it would be great to see you there. Click here for more information about our Perth NLP Practitioner Training.

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