Neuro-Linguistics is the study of language as it relates to physiology as it relates to psychology. Patterns have been found in the way people talk, work physically, and the way they think. The great thing is understanding the brain and body are connected and an incredible amount of knowledge is stored in both. When you understand Neuro-Linguistics, you can interact with people in an easier way.

Here are some of the basic things to look for:

• Modality Languaging
  One of the best things to help understand people the most is if you understand what their learning style is. When you're listening to people there are key words to listen for to help determine their learning style and how to effectively communicate with them.

Visuals often use words such as "can you see/imagine/visualize this?" You can help connect with that person by creating visuals with them. You can say “imagine this," "what would it look like if," ”or “picture this.”

Auditories will use words like hear, say, listen, and understand. They have a need to be really understood and often their biggest challenge is that no one is listening to them and that people don't understand them. When you hear those words, you have to kind of match them. “I need you to listen to what I’m going to say." "Hear what I’m saying." "What would it sound like?" "What would you say if I were to do this?”

Kinesthetics are all about how things feel. They often talk about whether or not they are comfortable in situations and are often the kind of people that crave some sort of physical connection, like a hug, high five, or a handshake. They are good at saying what they feel but may not be good at actually getting it out. They can close their eyes and focus in and their emotions should be able to come up a bit easier.

• Handle Negatives
  A lot of people use negative language patterns. If you ask a friend, what’s going on, they’ll often go straight to the negative things and skip the positive things and often when we’re negative about something we don’t even know why we’re negative about it. So when someone says, “oh, I hate when that happens,” dig into it and ask, “why do you hate that?” When we’re negative about something there’s often another issue that we’re covering it up with. What has caused that negativity towards that thing? Dig into it until those negatives start to get clearer and removed and you’ll start dealing with much more positive people.   

• Positive Mental Imaging
  Creating positive mental images is matching the picture in your brain to somebody else's. In communication our goal is to be understood. Words travel into the brain going your left, logical brain first then into your right brain. There are some words we don’t have a clear picture for and one of those in almost every language is the word not. We can all picture do, but when not comes in our brain gets confused and when it doesn’t have a clear picture it just skips it and moves onto the other words. Therefore, when you tell someone what not to do they actually do the opposite. Part of this is skill in ensuring your languaging matches your image. Focus on what you want and state that very clearly.  

• Open Loops
  Everyone has all three learning channels and the one that is easiest to grab is the auditory channel. It needs to be completed or else it will play loops trying to recall what it is missing. When you are communicating with other people, you have to understand what they want to hea as well as understand what they want to talk about. You can start by stating your intention and that you will come back to that later. Then you can slip in all the stuff that you want to say in the middle.

• Paraphrasing
  When someone talks to you they really need to know that you have heard what they said. One of the smart things to do is put exactly what they said back to them. When people talk to you really listen for some key points for what they have said and then repeat it to them.