NLP - Map/Territory

Free Coaching Resources from NLP Coaching:

"One of the first concepts to be introduced in an NLP practitioner course is the idea that people are like mapmakers. We create internal representations of the world. We absorb information through our senses and code it so that it can be stored as part of our mental map. Then it is available to us when we need to interpret new experiences.

For example, we may need to go to a building we have never been to before. When we get there, we know from our internal map, 'This is a door, it indicates where to enter the building.' We may never have seen that particular door before, but we know from our mental map what the purpose of a door is and how to use it.

Maps are essential. But for maps to be useful, we must distort, delete and generalize. If we did not delete parts of our experience, the mental map would be too cumbersome. Imagine if a map of Alaska were the actual size of Alaska without any distortion, deletion or generalization. It would be too big to be useful. Similarly, we cannot include all the details of our experience in our maps.

NLP is interested in how we distort our experience to make our maps. How we feel, our state of mind, our knowledge and memories are shaped by our habits of distortion, deletion and generalization.

One of the NLP presuppositions is that 'The Map is Not the Territory'. This presupposition reminds us that all of our experience is subjective. Every internal map we have of an event or person or situation is distorted. Our map of the event is not the event. It is not a perfect representation of objective reality.

This seems simple enough to grasp, but it is human to forget and to think that our map is reality. For this reason, we are more often limited by our mental maps than by the constraints of external reality. We don't question the map."