Neuro-Linguistic Programming or NLP is a behavioural model that studies the patterns (programming) of how excellent individuals think (the brain=neuro), communicate (linguistic) and move to become successful.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming provides all of us with the tools and processes to uncover these patterns of success, to discover and eliminate ineffective behaviours that sabotage our goals. NLP techniques are widely used in the fields of education, counselling, business, personal development and more.

NLP was created by Richard Bandler and John Grinder at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1976. Richard Bandler’s background was in mathematics and gestalt therapy and John Grinder was well versed in linguistics. They sought to formulate a practical model of therapy and counselling, with explicit skills and techniques, by observing the patterns of excellence in Fritz Perls (creator of Gestalt Therapy), Virginia Satir (renowned family therapist) and Milton Erickson (founder of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis). They then formalised their modeling techniques, which were later used to model experts from diverse fields of professional communication, including psychotherapy, business, hypnosis, law and education.

NLP’s basic premise is that the human brain functions similarly to a computer, which executes ‘programmes’ or mental strategies in ordered sequences of instructions (or internal representations). NLP specifically and objectively measures and identifies the physiological state and mental strategies a person is using at any point in time, and provides specific means to change and improve the mental and physiological state of the person.

Present State + Appropriate Resources –> Desired State

Excellence and mastery come from having many choices; wisdom comes from having multiple perspectives. With NLP, you’ll have and perceive more choices available in the world around you – helping you to be more effective.

To improve the quality and effectiveness of your performance, NLP techniques focus on the thought processes that influence your behaviour. It identifies, uses and changes patterns in these thoughts so that you become more masterful.

Some common, easily attained benefits are:

• Quick rapport building with people

• Enhanced communication with others and yourself

• The ability to influence and motivate people

• Managing your emotions and personal composure

• The breaking of unproductive and unhealthy habits, such as procrastination, over-eating etc.

• Resolution of self-sabotaging and conflicts

• Turning limiting beliefs into empowering ones

• Heightened creativity and ability to learn

• Release of destructive relationships; enhanced or attraction of rewarding relationships

• Powerful coaching skills to assist others in achieving their goals

• Expanded belief of what is possible for you

• Discovery or reinforcement of your purpose in life

And much much more…

Beyond the hype and misconceptions that surround NLP, there are practical tools and skills that allow you to move toward personal mastery, thereby manifesting what you want with meaning and purpose.

Modeling – NLP allows you to reverse-engineer your own and others’ successes, replicate them and even teach them to others.
Versatility – NLP helps you develop the capability to deal with diversity and adapt to changes in life.
Consolidation – NLP lets you connect the dots of what you have experienced and learnt in life, integrating them to serve you better.
Clarity – NLP cuts through the clutter and helps you define what you want clearly.
Meaning – With clarity, you can put meaning back into whatever you intended to achieve in the first place. NLP helps you to align your actions to what you deem important for you.
Operationalisation – Even with all of the above, you will still continue to stay where you are unless you translate all your intelligence and knowledge into clear, distinctive and measurable steps, processes and strategies. NLP allows you to turn your vision into action through mindset and behavioural changes.

NLP can only be mastered experientially. People may present very similar problems or behaviours, but each person has a different psychological make-up and way of viewing the world. NLP training gives you hands-on competence to deal with each unique situation confidently.

Training will guide you to:

• Understand how you create your subjective reality

• Customise your NLP techniques to fit each unique individual

• Practice your new skills with live subjects

• Get immediate, quality feedback from the trainer and the participants

• Grow from strength to strength with fellow participants, as you share discoveries and enrich yourself

• All this can only be possible when you work with “live clients”.

At Mind Transformations, we offer the complete NLP Practitioner Certification and NLP Master Practitioner Certification programmes.

Barney Wee, our certified NLP trainer, has studied with the original and key NLP developers, namely, Richard Bandler, Tad James (American Board of NLP, Time Line Therapy™ Association), Robert Dilts (NLP University). These certification programmes have been running since 1997, with several classes held consistently each year.

1. Does the organisation have a proven track record?
Can they prove that their graduates have made specific & measurable improvements in their personal & professional lives months/years after completing the programme?

2. Does the training material comprise work of several originators & innovators of NLP?
Not just one or two schools of thought, but a comprehensive and holistic approach?

3. Is the Certification recognised by the leading authorities of NLP?
Can they prove that their Certificate is recognised and accepted by leading NLP bodies such as The American Board of NLP & NLP University, when you enrol for the NLP Trainers’ training in the USA?

4. Does the organisation offer you personal coaching & support?
Before, during and after your training?

5. How do you know if you can trust the trainer?
Have you heard what the graduates say about him?
How much of their business is through referrals (word of mouth)? Are you one of them?

6. Does the organisation offer Free Refreshers?
Can you come back for revision after you’ve graduated, to keep yourself updated on the latest developments?

7. Can you see the Training Materials (Course Outline & Content) prior to signing up for the programme?
How do you know what exactly you will gain out of the programme?
Will you tangibly acquire the skills stipulated in the Course Outline?

8. Post Training Support – What happens after you have completed your training?
Does the organisation provide value-added services on a regular basis?
Do they promote community engagement & networking among NLP Practitioners?

9. How does the organisation support continuous growth and enrich your learning? Can you continue your NLP training with them?
Do they have an NLP Advanced or Master Practitioner Certification programme?
Can you help facilitate subsequent classes, and learn even more?

10.  How do you know you have earned your Certification?
Does the organisation have an Evaluation Process at the end of the programme?
If not, how can you be sure that you have mastered the skills and are able to put them into daily use?
Are you proud to engrave the title “Certified NLP Practitioner” on your name card?

Due diligence is essential towards gaining mastery in any field, including NLP. Through years of training and coaching, we have also come to understand what makes learning impactful and sustainable.

Rather than compressing more content within a given time, we emphasize on structure, comprehensiveness, depth and quality. With significant amount of time devoted to hands-on practice and quality feedback, we have been able to consistently nurture competent and confident NLP Practitioners, who are able to bring forth their inner potential and make a lasting difference in their lives.

Even though there are various bodies accrediting NLP training providers such as the ABNLP, NLP University, Society of NLP, ITANLP and so on, NLP is an unregulated industry.

We have had this element of assessment ever since started we started conducting NLP training for one simple reason – to raise the standards of NLP beyond what is normally expected within the industry.

NLP is such as powerful tool that its practitioners deserve to uphold the foundations of competency and mastery, with integrity, meaning and purpose, which is usually fuzzy in this industry.

Besides having the practical evaluation as part of the certification criteria, the evaluation focus on delivering high quality feedback and support to participants which are useful especially after they completed the training.

After the evaluation, participants can better understand their potentials, their blindspots and how they can act differently to produce better results in their future endeavours.

Besides the trainer, there will always be at least 1 (but usually 2 or more) course facilitators from Mind Transformations staff, associates and NLP graduates to support your learning. In between the training sessions, we are available through email, skype, phone and small group meetups for revision and practice.

After graduation, you can reattend training as many times as you want, either to make up lessons you have missed previously, or to refresh your learning, at no additional costs. As a course facilitator, you will further develop your NLP mastery through pro-active classroom practice sessions.

You can still join the class even if some of the dates clashed with your schedule, although you are required to attend at least 10 out of the 12 training days in order to qualify for our final day evaluation leading to the NLP certification.

That being said, we allow flexibility for participants to complete their NLP learning whichever stage they are at. With at least 3 NLP intakes per year in Singapore and the region, you can choose to return at any time in the future to continue where you left off, complete your training and receive your certificate.

More importantly, the nature of NLP is about constantly exploring and trying out new learning in your life and to provoke feedback – be it good or bad, as it will only help you become better. Even if you attended only a few days of the programme, there will already be more than enough useful elements of NLP which you can apply immediately in your life.

Therefore, do not worry about needing to master everything within 1 intake. After all, we can’t know everything about anything in life. Use what you have, do what you can and start at where you are now because this is the way to get better and becoming more confident in whatever you do!

There are many so called “proven methods” & “secrets of success” models that are available in the market today. However, it does not make a whole lot of difference if one fails to develop the fundamentals, which are ourselves and our personal development.

Adaptation through feedback and transferring the necessary skill sets to others is key to NLP modelling. What NLP provides is the inner structure & dynamics for human excellence. With that, we are equipped with the capacity to handle diversity and change. Instead of searching for secrets of success outside of yourself, NLP focus on tapping into your inner potential.

Throughout these many years of NLP training, we have realised that many problems today comes from the “fast-food solutions” of yesterday.

Through NLP training, many participants begin to realise the importance of intelligent information gathering and looking at the larger scheme of things before coming up with suggestions and solutions. The difference that makes the difference is helping people to uncover their inner resources or answers within, rather than prescribing them quick solutions.

Many training providers tailor their NLP programmes to a specific context, e.g. business, health, leadership, sales and so on.

At Mind Transformations, we believe the power of NLP lies in its versatility and robustness to handle diversity or change. By learning the essential structure of human experience, NLP Practitioners can extract elements in their talent or strength from one aspect of his/her life and utilise it in another (known in NLP as “mapping across”).

Take for example, A good dancer is currently facing difficulties in handling his business projects.

With NLP, he can map across his skills in dancing, such as mental flexibility, creativity & sense of timing, into the context of managing a business.

That’s why in NLP, we say that, “everything is a metaphor for everything else.”

NLP emphasizes on understanding and changing cognitive, emotional and behavioural intelligences, in order to enhance competence in the various fields of human activities, such as business, relationships, health, sports performance, organization development etc. It is necessary as a foundation for human development – to help people move into empowering outcomes.

Master NLP dives deeper into the subconscious and the subtle elements of personal & professional development, in order to manage more complex and diverse changes with high levels of proficiency. These elements are pivotal in human excellence because they drive a large part of our habits, decisions and actions in life, such as a person’s beliefs, values, identity and longer term vision in life.

Practitioners at this level are equipped with the capacity to meaningfully influence people, events and situations with efficiency, wisdom, flow and clarity.

Being the longest running NLP training and coaching organization in the region (since 1997), our training has been refined over years of feedback, with the focus on comprehensiveness, practicality & integration of multiple disciplines (such as Enneagram personality profiling, quantum psychology, nutrition, balanced lifestyle) through carefully designed classroom exercises and practices. As a result, our graduates have been known to be highly competent and confident NLP Practitioners.

For a more comprehensive explanation, please refer to:
– The 7 key value propositions of our NLP training
– 3 reasons why people invest more days and money in our NLP training

Neuro-Linguistic Programming or NLP is a behavioural model that studies the patterns (programming) of how excellent individuals think (the brain=neuro), communicate (linguistic) and move to become successful.

NLP, by its very nature, provides you with modelling skills to replicate the successes of practitioners of other modalities. NLP’s mental frameworks gives you the resources to uncover and consolidate the key essences of different disciplines, so that you can apply them into your life.

Many of our graduates, after learning NLP with us, have reported that they now view other trainings differently, having become more receptive and smoothening their learning curves dramatically.

NLP, Hypnotherapy and Time Line Therapy are inseparable links of a chain. Used together, they integrate synergistically to produce the best outcome.

Hypnotherapy helps you gain access to an altered state, through the artful use of suggestions, to produce change at the unconscious level.

Time Line Therapy enables you to release the effects of past negative experiences/emotions and change ‘inappropriate’ programming. This tool also creates and installs compelling events into the future. Both are dependent on the linguistic skills learnt in NLP.

NLP training contains the structural elements of coaching. It highlights the development of new strategies necessary for a coach to think and act, through observation and feedback, bringing your client from point A to point B, helping them formulate their own winning strategies to reach their goals as opposed to problem-centred thinking.

At Mind Transformations, our NLP Practitioner Certification & especially our NLP Master Practitioner Cerfitication Course has been designed to contain the structural elements of coaching. It is useful to people who are aspiring to be a Life Coach as well as relevant, beneficial and practical for anyone to be equipped to coach themselves and others.

Find out more:
What is Life Coaching?
NLP Parallels Coaching

There are many so called “proven methods” & “secrets of success” models that are available in the market today which allow us to achieve the above mentioned benefits. However, it does not make a whole lot of difference if one fails to develop the fundamentals, which are ourselves and our personal development. But these can be strengthened through the combination of NLP and coaching.

NLP provides the understanding of the inner structure & dynamics for human excellence. With that, we are equipped with the capacity to handle diversity and change which is essential in adapting to rapidly changing market trends of today.

Instead of searching for secrets of success outside yourself, coaching focuses on tapping into your inner potential, as well as bringing to awareness your personal blindspots that limit you.

Through Mind Transformations’ NLP & coaching, many participants begin to realise the deeper meaning and higher purpose behind their goals and dreams, even if all odds are stacked against them!

There’s no correlation between NLP and 360 Appraisal & Balance Scorecord.

For organisational development, NLP “soft skills” makes a world of difference in facilitating the appraisal & quality management process. NLP provides skills like evidence procedures, values alignment, rapport skills and clarifying questions supports all OD processes.

Emotional intelligence and EQ Mapping are powerful fields of knowledge that supports interpersonal communication. From NLP’s perspective we do not have structured tools like EQ. However, we emphasize a lot about sensing someone’s non-verbal messages, getting in tune and relating with a person’s emotional state and controlling one’s own emotion / state for peak performance.

Leadership Development is a vast area, Mind Transformations do not teach leadership philosophy & models per se in our NLP certification course (we do teach it in corporate training). However, many of our participants have told us that the course provided them lots with tools and skills that helped them to lead their team better (eg. pacing & leading, recognizing cognitive styles, congruent communication, logical levels of alignment etc.)

Performace management is also a vast area. In the NLP certification courses we teach, we emphasize on coaching skills. So things like outcome clarity, problem space diagnostics, feedback mechanics, formulating self-sustained solutions, charting developmental paths, evidence procedures are all part and parcel of the NLP training at the Practitioner & the Master Practitioner levels.