I recently read Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath, and it made me realize something—I suffer from the curse of knowledge when it comes to NLP. I understand it so well, both conceptually and practically, that I struggle to remember what it was like not to know. This makes explaining it to others more difficult than I’d like.
A friend of mine, Trish, once suggested that NLP experts intentionally leave out the most crucial steps in their books so people are forced to attend their training. But I believe what’s really at play is the curse of knowledge—it’s incredibly difficult to recall the gaps in understanding you once had as a beginner.
When I talk about NLP, I often frame it in abstract terms, automatically thinking in advanced concepts. Just like once you learn to read, you stop thinking about individual letters, I’ve moved so far into NLP that I forget what it was like at the start. According to the Heath brothers, the way to overcome this is to get back to the core message. If I had to distill NLP down to its essence, it would be this:
Change can happen in an instant.
Rewiring your thoughts doesn’t have to take months or years, despite what many psychologists suggest. Change doesn’t need to be a long, painful process.
We’ve been conditioned to believe that transformation is slow, difficult, and expensive. The idea of therapy often comes with the expectation of years of commitment, self-discipline, and constant vigilance. For example, many believe that overcoming alcohol addiction is a lifelong battle, requiring daily effort and constant self-control—like trying to stay ahead of rising damp in a house, always fighting to keep it from overwhelming you.
But NLP takes a different approach. Those skilled in NLP understand that struggle isn’t just unnecessary—it can actually reinforce the problem. Instead of fixating on why an issue exists, NLP focuses on its structure.
Take phobias, for instance. Their foundation isn’t in the reasons behind them but in specific mental processes—like the way the brain associates and dissociates experiences.
I was watching The Biggest Loser recently, and the trainer asked a contestant, “Why do you eat like this?” She immediately started crying, recounting childhood memories. But the truth is, why doesn’t matter as much as how the problem operates. In her mind, when she feels emotionally or physically empty, eating fish and chips is coded as the solution.
By understanding the structure of a problem rather than getting lost in its backstory, NLP enables people to make rapid, lasting changes—proving that transformation doesn’t have to be a lifelong struggle.