Whenever you speak to someone, whenever you engage in conversation with someone, odds are that you are hoping for a particular outcome. You may simply want to have a pleasant breakfast chat with your loved one, or you may want to convince your boss that you deserve a promotion, or you may want to convince an attractive person to meet you for coffee.

However, if you don't know how to communicate effectively, your conversations may not have the desired result. In fact, they may have the opposite of the desired result - they may cause conflict or anger or misunderstanding.

In NLP terminology, you communicate your ideas in terms of "chunks". These "chunks" of ideas may be more broad or abstract - "chunking up" - or less abstract and more precise - "chunking down". "Food" is a broad concept. "Dessert" is a more precise concept". "Pie" is even more precise" "Apple Pie" and "Boston Cream Pie" are examples of lateral chunks - they are at the same level of precision.

You need to be able to recognize how other people express themselves and match it. If you are dealing with someone who is talking to you on a "chunking up" level you are likely to frustrate and annoy them if you try to work out precise details.

Say you are talking to your boss about a project that you are working on. He asks you "How's the Peterson Report coming along?" This is a broad question. If you respond with a precise level of detail, like "I'm having difficulty getting ahold of some of the vendors that I need to speak to, but I've managed to circumvent that problem via etc. etc etc." rather than, "It's going well, we're on target to complete the project by next Friday"...you are liable to irritate him without meaning to. You are talking to someone who is a "big picture" kind of guy, and bombarding him with what he will perceive as little nit-picky details.

Conversely, if you say to your girlfriend "Do you want to do something Friday night?" and she is more of a "chunking down" person she may be hurt and insulted because she perceives that you don't really care enough to bother thinking through the details. She would respond much better to "Would you like to see the new (insert movie title here) and then get some coffee at Panera Bread?" because to her, the fact that you have taken the time and effort to think through these details shows that you care.

If you would like your conversations to have more productive outcomes, NLP can teach you how to express yourself with precision, in a way that is most likely to elicit your desired result.

NLP practitioners learn that the ability to change our experience of reality is more important than the subjective reality that we are perceiving.

If a person can control their experience of reality and their belief systems they can change for the better their experiences and their reactions to those experiences.

People develop a certain pattern of beliefs, certain presuppositions, about the world and about the people that they interact with. People act according to those beliefs. If someone believes that people are dishonest they will act accordingly and treat other people in a certain fashion, because of their presuppositions. If someone believes that they are worthless and do not deserve to be treated well they will act accordingly, and they will attract people to them who also believe that.

We've all seen how someone stride into a room radiating self confidence, and we've seen how people react to that and how people treat someone like that.

Not everyone develops positive, helpful presuppositions, but they can be learned. The first step is to learn how to identify one's presuppositions. It is possible to learn how to change the presuppositions that come naturally to you so that you can interact with others in a more positive and effective way.

One thing is for sure: if you continue to act in the same way and do not change anything about your belief systems and your presuppositions, you will continue getting the same results that you always have.

If you want to change the results that you are getting then you will have to examine the core belief systems that you have been holding to see what would work more effectively.

We all listen to our inner voice so why not make it a pleasant experience rather than a negative one. You are in control of what you listen to even if the voice is your own. You can decide not to take any notice of this inner demon. Acknowledge your thoughts but train them to become positive ones. Challenge every negative thought replacing it with a positive one.

Use NLP to make the negative voice smaller, give it a squeaky voice, make it sound silly and ineffective. Take your positive voice and make it stronger, give it more tonal quality, make it louder and more commanding. Within a very short time and with NLP based reframing, your inner voice will become much more positive and creative helping you further along that road to success.