Is NLP Manipluation and if so is that Wrong?

People need to stop running from the word manipulation like it’s some great big bad ogre that’s going to eat you. Communication is manipulation pure and simple. Everything and I mean everything you do is to manipulate.

The word you use in your emails or on facebook are designed to manipulate our senses and experience to both understand and make meaning of the nominalisations, complex equivalence’s, generalisations and rules that you’ve put together in a sequence intended to ‘get’ people to ‘see’ your point of view.

Manipulation Happens All The Time

You manipulated the words to gather the greatest impact possible without writing a book on it. You were careful in the selection of your words, some you deleted, changed, revoked, re-worded in your head, on screen, chose the full stops, the …’s. You are no different from I or anyone that reads this.

You are selfish by nature, you will brush your hair in a certain way, buy certain clothes, buy a certain style of car, listen to particular music and not others, you will move and act in accordance with your unconscious desires in order to manipulate your environment and circumstances to your best advantage. You will do this with the people you love, the people you like, the people you dislike.

You will choose where to go to walk, whom to look at what to say and how to say it to men and women, you will flirt with both. You will manipulate to get what you need.

You Are At The Centre Of Your Universe

It’s your world, you are the centre of your universe. You like I manipulate because we cannot help it. We cannot control all of our unconscious responses, movements, processes, needs, desires, emotions. We are designed to ‘look after ourselves’.

If you decide to call manipulation, influence or communication, that’s fine, you’re just manipulating yourself so you can feel better consciously about yourself. That’s ok. But it’s still manipulation.

Do you, or I or anyone, consciously, I mean really consciously, truly have any intentions that are so selfless, so giving, so flawless, pure and virtuous that in the moment of need, we consciously choose to act with that pure selfless intent to help another where our lives will be forfeit?

The Selfless Act

I think then, that very few people do, and that is was not a conscious decision and they act out of ‘spur of the moment’ it’s in the words…’I didn’t think about it I just rushed into the burning building and puller her out’…

…Because if this person had really thought about it… he would still probably be watching the building burn.

The act of moving to help save another is not a conscious decision… all the time… and yet… for those that do, it is because they give their lives in-sake of another and that other is somehow of greater value than their own life.

Like their children for example…and only then would I say they had a positive intention that was not selfish (and I mean selfish in the terms of – intended for self) and in aid of another…but –

I Still Argue The Case

I would still argue, that in even in these dire moments of duress – that they are selfishly motivated to save another because….they could not otherwise live with the consequences of being alive instead of the ‘valued’ other.

Therefore… they are manipulating the environment, themselves and others in order to preserve – the self – their self.

The consequence of letting your (for examples sake) child die instead of yourself as a conscious decision would be too much for your ‘self’ to live with.

If not children, something other than what would be perceived as of more value than the ‘self’.

I put myself in this category too of ‘manipulation’ and everyone too… and I don’t have any negative connotations with the word – it just – is –

TheDifference for Some

The difference I believe is not that we do not manipulate, rather, are our actions intended to help serve another. Do we intend to do good with our actions.

Though even with this, the good, may seem the bad to another. One persons milestone, another’s a seat.

So if NLP is about Manipulation and it helps people overcome difficulties and improves their quality of life. Then I think this is a good thing.

 

Disagree? then manipulate me to see your point of view 🙂

Tell me your thoughts below

 

Be well

Rob

Leave A Response

* Denotes Required Field