Product Description

NLP has a simple premise: take someone who′s good at something, model how they do it and learn from them. This way it is possible to understand the thought processes common to excellence in any field and weed out negative or habitual thinking.  Neuro–Linguistic Programming techniques extremely popular in many areas including business, education, sports, coaching, counselling, personal development and relationships. Neuro–linguistic Programming for Dummies avoids the jargon of many other books and provides both the basic essentials for the beginner and advanced theory for experienced NLP readers

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1030 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 354 pages

Review
“…well written…will undoubtedly interest and delight many people…” (Resource Magazine, August 04)

“…thankfully avoids the jargon of many other books and provides basic essentials..” (Campus.ie September 2004)

“...If you buy a book with “For Dummies” in the title then I guess there isn’t much room for complaint…” (Honest ABE’s NLP Emporium, 3^rd December 2004)

"…aims to give you the skills to think clearly about your own actions and understand the motivations for other people′s..." (Independent on Sunday, 2^nd January 2005) 

“an excellent and straightforward guide that is worth every penny”. (Candis, March 2007)

“It is friendly and accessible, written by enthusiasts who have an obvious love of their subject.” (First Voice For Business, May 2007)

Review
“…well written…will undoubtedly interest and delight many people…” (Resource Magazine, August 04)

“…thankfully avoids the jargon of many other books and provides basic essentials..” (Campus.ie September 2004)

"…aims to give you the skills to think clearly about your own actions and understand the motivations for other people′s..." (Independent on Sunday, 2^nd January 2005) 

“an excellent and straightforward guide that is worth every penny”. (Candis, March 2007)

“It is friendly and accessible, written by enthusiasts who have an obvious love of their subject.” (First Voice For Business, May 2007)

Independent on Sunday, 2nd January 2005
"...aims to give you the skills to think clearly about your own actions and understand the motivations for other people's..."

Customer Reviews

Still going?
Does anyone outside of the world of dodgy management training scenarios take NLP seriously anymore?

read the title... it is quite clear who this book is aimed at
This book has been harshly reviewed by people who have knowledge of NLP: "don't read this book if you know anything about NLP" is apparently the take home message. Fine. But that is kind of like telling a rocket scientist not to bother reading a pre-school chemistry book!

For those who no nothing about NLP, i.e. the intended demographic, this is a great book with plenty of examples relating the theory to real life. Sure, it isn't advanced NLP but you can't run before you can walk.

I am a complete beginner and this book captured my imagination and made me think more analytically about my actions, thoughts and communication skills. My advice is go to a book store and read a chapter or two before making your mind up.

The Pits
Have you ever run into the sort of person who talks about things they know nothing about, but talks on and on and on, apparently in the hope that if they keep talking for long enough then the law of averages means they must get at least one thing right?

That's what I felt I was up against when I was reading this book.

Firstly, it is badly laid out, by which I mean that it has no obvious flow other than (I guess) the order in which things popped into the authors' heads.

Secondly, a significant amount of the material has little or nothing to do with NLP - like the "Wheel of Life" and the stuff on PTSD - and quite a lot the material, whether about NLP or not, is at best ambiguous and at worst plain inaccurate.

Thirdly, the frequent, pointless repetition of very basic material, and the inclusion of the irrelevant material, means that a whole lot of genuine NLP material gets left out.

In the case of the meta programs, for example, only six meta programs are included, and even those aren't explained particularly well. Indeed, at one point in the book the authors claim that all meta programs ("metaprograms", as they call them) work along a sliding scale. Which clearly is NOT true of meta programs such as the "Work Preference Filter", the "Primary Interest Filter", and especially not in the case of the "In Time/Through Time" or "Time Storage Filter" meta program, which the authors confuse with "Time Lines" as in Time Line Therapy.

Worst of all, there doesn't seem to have been any attempt to edit the book once it was complete. Thus, for example, there are several places where a topic flagged up as being covered "later in this chapter" actually turns up on the very next page.
Likewise the text itself is inconsistent, as in:

"We get very good at one style of thinking and processing information and let the rest of our senses lie dormant in a rusty heap."

Not only is this not true, psychologically speaking, but the authors flatly contradict themselves less than three pages later:

"As human beings we naturally blend a rich and heady mix of these three main dimensions, yet we tend to have a preference for one mode over the others."

So, "rusty heap" or "rich and heady mix"?

If you know enough to recognise which description is more accurate then you already know far more about NLP than this book will tell you. And if you don't know enough to weed out the nonsense, I'm afraid you're likely to end up with a pretty confused view of the subject if you read this book.

Having been around NLP for well over ten years, and having read quite a few books on the subject, I have to say this is definitely one of the worst books on NLP I've ever read read.

There are plenty of good introductions to NLP on the market, and for usefulness and accuracy just about all of them get a higher rating than this.

(Suggestions: Genie Laborde, Joseph O'Connor (NOT the Irish novelist), Andrew Bradbury, O'Connor and John Seymour, Andreas and Faulkner, Larry McLauchlin.)