insights that provided the breakthrough. What are these
different perspectives and how can we take ourselves through
them in a way that gives us the breakthroughs we want in our
personal and business lives?
There are three primary positions (you can take many more
if you choose, but we will concentrate on three).By putting ourselves in 1st position we are able to fully
appreciate what is important to us personally. To do this we
need to be able to see, hear, and feel the situation from our
own perspective (in our own shoes). In this position we think
in terms of what is important to “me,” what do “I” really want.
We speak using language such as “I feel,” “I want,” “I hear,” “I
see.” We tap into the truth of our own perspective on the
situation. This is a way of thinking that allows us to know what
we really want. We can see and hear the other person (or
people) and we experience them from our “map of the world.”By putting ourselves in 2nd position we are able to
understand where the other person is coming from and what
has to be true for them to be doing or saying what they are. It
is quite different to “put yourself” in the other person’s shoes
as opposed to “thinking” about what it must be like to be in
their shoes. By putting ourselves in the other person’s shoes
we experience the situation as if we are them. We are able to
imagine how it is to look out of their eyes and hear out of their
ears and be in their body, such that we see, hear, and feel the
situation as if we are them. Of course we can never absolutely
do this, but it is amazing just how uncannily close we can get
when we are skilled in this way of thinking.
When you are fully in the other person’s shoes and have
their perspective on the situation, you are able to understand
their map of the world. No matter how bizarre someone’s
behavior might have seemed from your own perspective, in
their shoes it is normal and perfectly understandable. To put
ourselves fully into the shoes of another person allows us to
tap into the emotions behind what they are doing and saying.
This is often a position of amazing insight about what is really
going on for the other person in a situation.310 NLP AT WORK