Appendix 9 · free

Glossary.

Twenty-five terms — explained in a sentence you can say.

Most NLP dictionaries are written to sound clever. This one is written to be used. For each term: what it means, in a sentence you understand — and where in the book it is discussed further.

1. NLP

Neuro-linguistic programming — a set of observations about how mind, language and habit affect what a person gets in life. → Appendix 1

2. Map and territory

What a person thinks about a situation is not the situation itself. Everyone carries their own map. → Appendix 1, assumption 1

3. Calibration

Reading another person's state before words: breathing, skin colour, tempo, the change in the voice. → Appendix 1, A4

4. Rapport

A state in which the other person feels understood. It is built by matching tempo and tone — not by imitating. → Appendix 1

5. Representational system

The way a person takes in and processes information: image, sound, feeling, smell, taste. → Appendix 2

6. Submodality

A detail inside an image or a sound — brightness, size, distance — that changes how something feels. → Appendix 2

7. Anchor

A link between a signal (a word, a touch, a place) and a state. It can be made on purpose, and then the state can be called when needed. → Appendix 1

8. Meta model

A set of questions that bring back what was deleted, distorted or generalised in a sentence. → Appendix 2, B1

9. Milton model

Deliberately unclear language that lets a person finish the sentence themselves — and so arrive at their own image. → Appendix 2, B2

10. Sleight of Mouth

Changing a belief without arguing — by reframing it, not by demolishing it. → Appendix 2, B3

11. Belief

A sentence about the world or about oneself that a person holds as fact, not as opinion. → Parts I and IV

12. Value

What gives a person direction: security, freedom, belonging, respect, meaning. The difference between people is not in the values, but in their order. → Part IV, chapter 18

13. Well-formed outcome

A goal stated positively, checkable by the senses, and inside the person's control. → Part III and appendix 7

14. TOTE

Test–Operate–Test–Exit: a model of how a goal is reached — check where you are, take a step, check again, exit when done. → Part III

15. Neurological levels

Six levels on which a person changes: environment, behaviour, ability, belief, identity, purpose. A change on a higher level changes everything below it. → Parts I, V and VII

16. Perceptual positions

Three places from which to see a conflict: mine, theirs, the observer's. → Part III, chapter 13

17. Reframe

Changing the frame of an event — same event, different meaning. → Appendix 2

18. Swish

Replacing an unwanted image with a preferred one, by fast switching. It works with habits, not with insight. → Appendix 2

19. Timeline

The way the mind stores past and future in space. It changes as the person changes. → Parts V and VII

20. Association / dissociation

Being inside an experience (associated) or watching it from outside (dissociated). It changes the intensity — and that is the only thing to know about it. → Appendix 1

21. Meta program

A filtering pattern: towards / away from, internal / external, global / detailed, similarities / differences. → Part IV

22. Satir's categories

Four styles of communication under pressure: blaming, placating, rationalising, distracting. The fifth is congruence. → Appendix 2

23. Congruence

When words, body and tone say the same thing. When they don't, people believe the body. → Parts I and IV

24. Regression (in this book)

When a forty-five-year-old speaks like a seventeen-year-old. It is not going back — it is where they stopped. → Appendix 1

25. Stuckness (in this book)

It is not a lack of strength. It is an absence of place. A person sees, knows, and cannot move — because there is nowhere to. → Chapter 0