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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:
- Process the thought of a train through your kinesthetic or "feeling" channel.
- Process the thought of your mother through your olfactory or "smell" channel.
- Process the thought of your final exams through your gustatory or "taste" channel.
- Process the thought of your favorite food through your auditory or "hearing" channel.
- 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! |
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