A key idea advanced by the NLP model is that structure of human experience and behavior is generated by patterns or strategies. Dr. Erickson referred to these as habitual sets. These patterns can commence with internal thoughts or external stimuli, such as interpersonal transactions or other tangible events in the world at any given moment. Detection of stimuli then occurs through the sensory perceptual system (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, gustatory and olfactory) and is next processed internally as thoughts and mental images, which are filtered through beliefs, mental maps and biases both consciously and unconsciously. Internal processing subsequently leads to changes in the physiological system or internal state and to the generation of feelings and both micro and macro behaviors.

NLP proposes that all strategies are successful at generating outcomes, but that some outcomes are less than desirable. It is these undesirable outcomes that the client expresses as their complaint. Dr. Erickson advised that one can make minimal interventions in the client's habitual set or pattern at strategic points which will eventually impact on the total person and the environment or system with in which he or she lives. He drove this point home to his students repeatedly by suggesting metaphorically that the change agent's intervention could best be likened to making a small snowball, starting it rolling down hill and then watching it grow due to it's own momentum.

By: Ron Klein
Certified NLP Trainer
Ron's email: aims@erols.com