Research suggests that if you are single then creating a loving relationship is one way to positively impact your quality of life. Love is the foundation of so much that is good in the world. Having that special connection with someone that you love and they in turn love you is magical – you would do anything for that person, and in turn they would do anything for you. Tony Robbins talks about relationships needing to have both love and passion for them to be healthy and long lasting.
I was asked recently – ‘can NLP help us find & build loving relationships?’ – the answer is ‘Yes, absolutely’ – and this blog gives a sample of ways that NLP can help ….
Beliefs – do you think finding love is possible?
It’s useful to check in with your beliefs around relationships. If you do not believe it is possible to find your Mr or Mrs Right, then it’s highly likely it will become a self fulfilling prophecy. What do you belief about yourself that might be holding you back? What do you believe about dating, your ability to find someone etc?
A Limiting belief is something you believe all or the time – if that’s not you, then perhaps you have an internal conflicts (where part of you thinks one thing sometimes and part of you thinks something else at other times). The good news is that NLP Practitioners can help you change your beliefs and get rid of your inner conflicts. What ever you think or believe, you’re right – so ensure you have empowering beliefs about yourself and about your ability to find ‘the one’.
Motivation – are you motivated to find love and by what?
People are motivated by different things. You need to check in with your own motivation – your ‘why’ will 
be key here – Why are you looking for Love? What do you hope to gain? Are you motivated to give? Are you motivated towards what you want or away from what you don’t want? (e.g. towards a loving/fulfilling relationship or away from you fear or don’t want – something such as loneliness).
Our Values are critical here – they drive our motivation (Check out this blog for more info). Master NLP Practitioners will have a detailed understanding of what motivates someone – they know how to elicit someone’s relationship values, to check they support someones relationship goal and if they don’t, they know that we can change someone’s values to support their goal. They also know how to elicit meta programmes (filters of our unconscious mind that are huge determinants of personality – such as the direction filter – are you motivated towards what you want or away from what you don’t want) – By working with Time Line Therapy and Values we can ensure you are motivated towards what you want so that your get consistent results.
Goal setting – get focused and get clear
You need to get clear on what key qualities & attributes are of Mr or Mrs Right – do this before you even start checking out dating sites or meeting people. This gives you clarity and focus – it’s easy to spend lots of time dating people and whilst that’s great (and might fulfil your need to socially connect) if you want a loving relationship it’s more important to spend time with people that are going to measure up to what you are looking for (and I don’t mean just for an attraction point of view – Love goes much deeper than that). Those people who have been on our NLP Practitioner course will know about the keys to achievable outcome – use these skills to write a really compelling relationship goal and if you know about Time Line Therapy you’ll know that we can put goals in our timelines (which means are unconscious mind will chase after it – it’s our unconscious mind that drives our behaviour – it’s the part of our mind that’s the goal getter). Practitioners – remember not to write the name of the person in your goal (you can’t force them into a relationship with you however much you might like them!) but do describe your ideal person using your sensory description language.
Take Action – Get ‘doing’ the right stuff
This point reminds me of the 5 principles to success – they can be applied equally to relationship areas of 
our life as other contexts.
- Know your outcome
- Take Action
- Notice what happens – have sensory acuity
- Be flexible – if it’s not working then change your approach
- Work from a psychology and Physiology of excellence
Once your goal is set, you need to take action. Do something every day towards your relationship goal (even small steps will keep the momentum up). If what you’re doing isn’t getting you the result you’re after – then have the confidence to change tract and try something different.
We’re all busy right? – so you need to decide that you’re prepared to ‘go without’ so you can create time for seeking out and building your loving relationship – perhaps you need to reduce the amount of TV you watch or cut back your time on social media – it’s surprising what time we can create if we’re really focuses and motivated on a goal.
When you meet people – take time to build rapport
Whether our first interaction with someone is on the phone or face to face, rapport will be key in the first conversation. We are all experts at building rapport already – when we’re with people we know and like we naturally get into rapport. Rapport is at it’s essences about enabling great communication – it’s about enabling the unconscious mind of the person you’re talking to to consider what your saying, rather than reject it (people like people who are like them – read more about rapport here). I’m not suggesting you become someone you’re not, or that you should be ‘fake’ in anyway. What I’m suggesting is that you make the effort to build rapport to enhance your communication and so that you can ensure that the person your talking you (date or existing partner) at least considers what your saying (rather than rejecting it and not even considering – which is what happens when we’re not in rapport). NLP Practitioners will know how to break rapport elegantly should you want to do this too.
I remember going to a Tony Robbins events years ago and heard him talk about relationships. He talked about a number of couples who would go to him because their relationship wasn’t working. He always said to people they needed to do one exercise before he’d see them. He sent them home and told them to lie next to each other (making sure their bodies were not touching in any way) and to match the breathing of their partner for something like 30 minutes – he said he hardly saw any of them again!!!! (wink wink!). Those that have studied Rapport with us on any of our courses will know that matching breathing is one of the best ways to build rapport – Tony Robbins was getting people to build deep rapport!
Love Strategies & Preferences
We all have strategies that run in our mind for everything we do from brushing our teeth to decision-making – simply put it’s a sequence of things that get us a specific outcome – Love is no different. If your love strategies are not fulfilled, you may not feel loved or fulfilled – everyone has a different strategy for arriving at the feeling of love. There are a number of strategies that make up our overall love strategy, for example:
- Attraction strategies (the strategy that runs for us to know if we find someone attractive)
- Recognising Attraction strategy (the strategy you run in order to recognise if someone else finds you attractive)
- Convincer strategy (e.g. someone people are automatically convinced they’ve found the right person, some need to check this out over a period of time, or number of times – e.g. dates, and some are consistent convincers – they need to be consistently convinced that they’ve found love – exhausting for both people!).
Heres a series of questions you can use to start to understand your Love Strategies:
- How do you know someone else loves you?
- Can you remember a time when you were totally loved? A specific time?
- In order for you to know you were totally loved, was it necessary for you:
- to be taken to places, to be given things or looked at in that special way?, or …
- to hear that special tone of voice or those special words?, or …
- was it necessary to be touched in a certain way or certain place?
We all have preferences for either Visual, Auditory or Kinaesthetic (Practitioners will know this as our Rep systems). People will have a predominant preference for one of the Representational systems (although others will follow up quickly behind for many people):
- Visual – visual demonstration of love through seeing things – flowers, gifts, you see they’ve cleaned the house, going to a particular place, looked at in a special way etc
- Auditory – hearing ‘I love you’ in a special tone or a special phrase
- Kinaesthetic – this is about physical touch – e.g. a special hug, holding hands (perhaps in a particular way) or other physical contact
We all tend to love others in our preference – which can often be a challenge. If I’m a kinaesthetic person and for me its about holding hands in a particular way and I show my love for someone in that way, but their preference is visual and they want me to ‘show’ them I love them by buying them gifts or take them to places, then you can see a clear mismatch – successful relationships are about us showing someone we love them in a way that works for them.
NLP Practitioners and Master practitioners will be well practiced at formally eliciting strategies to help people understand their strategy – for example I might have to see something first, then hear something, check some criteria, then I get a feeling (which would be a V-A-Ad-K strategy). If the strategy they have does not serve them well, Practitioners and Master Practitioners know of ways to install new strategies that are much more helpful in the achievement of their goal through eye pattern rehearsal.
Can NLP help us find love?
Hopefully you can now see a number of ways in which NLP can help people find, build and sustain loving relationships. This blog contains just some of the ways that NLP can help – there are many many more ways that NLP can help – for example if you’ve had traumatic experiences in the past we can use the phobia model to help get rid of that negative feeling, if you’re filtering potential people who stories from the past we can help with that to … the list goes on and on …..
If you’d like learn NLP so that you can become more successful in finding, building and sustain long term loving relationships then you should consider attending our NLP Practitioner course and/or our NLP Master Practitioner programme. If you are or would like to be a relationship coach then how would it be if you came on the NLP practitioner course & Master NLP Practitioner Programme and learn’t how to help others with all the techniques I’ve mentioned above – just think about how you could help others transform their lives!
