We humans do not experience the world as it is – we experience what is termed in NLP ‘a model of the world’. Or to use another common NLP expression.’ The map is not the territory’. Every road map mirrors only a model of reality, and our inner map of the world is in the same way only a model of the outer world. This, of course, is the reason why people often experience the same situation in different ways.

We receive ongoing impressions – or information- through our five senses. But only a tiny fraction of that information reaches the conscious mind. We human simply cannot accommodate the millions of bits of information we are bombarded with daily, so the information is “filtered” by our minds, which delete, distort and generalize what we see, hear, feel, taste and smell.

An example: When you stroll along the streets in a city looking at the shops, you probably look differently at the various outlets, in front of some stores you will stop & look more closely. Others you look at more briefly, & others you just pass by. When you finish your city stroll you will be able to remember much of what you have seen but there will also be much that you cannot remember. That there is something you do not remember does not mean that it has not been there; it simply means that your inner personal filter has deleted it as unimportant. This happens constantly with everything we experience; we notice only part of it while the larger part is overlooked or experienced differently from how it really is.
We experience the world through the sensory impressions we constantly receive, but only a very small part of this information reaches our conscious mind.
Between reality & the mind is a filter that determines what information gets through to the how the world works. The filter is formed by our personality patterns, some of these genetic, some formed during childhood. By filtering reality we create an inner model of the world, which is the one we react to.
The information that passes through the filter is called out interpretation, or internal representation, of reality. This part ‘represents’ the external reality. We are not experiencing reality as it is, but as a personal, internal representation of it.
The internal representation consists of internal images, sounds, words, body sensations, possibly odour & taste.
An Example: may be remembering an experience of walking on a beach along the coast. You see the beach with seaweed and rocks in the sand & see the waves washing up the beach. You hear the sound of the sea from the waves lapping up on the beach & the cries of gulls. You feel the warm sand beneath your feet & the warm wind that caresses the skin on your body. You smell the seaweed, which has rotted on the beach for a few days & you taste the salt from the water droplets which the wind leads to your lips.
When you think back on the event you may relive all this in a split second & get a happy inner feeling – what we call, in the figure above, the internal state. May be you will want to smile to a friend or start humming a particular tune – this is the reaction to the internal representation.
We unconsciously choose to represent an external event containing millions of bits of information in a simplified internal representation, which is critical to how we experience the situation & what impact it will have on us.
Deletion
As already mentioned, our mind omits large amounts of information. According to modern science, we receive approx. 11,000,000 bits of information per second! This information is received through the eyes & ears, mouth & nose. However, scientists have proved that our conscious mind can only perceive between 16-40 bits of information per second! It is also known that we store significantly more than 16-40 bits of information in the unconscious mind – information that we can access through the NLP techniques we will examine later. But still much is omitted. And the information that does come through his generally in keeping with the framework of understanding that already exists there.
You can read the daily newspaper thoroughly & still overlook certain articles, and you may believe that these articles do not exist. But many people have experienced that if they have a new interest, for example trekking in Nepal, they realize how many articles and stories there are about Nepal & trekking, or people who have children experience that the world is suddenly awash with prams - & it definitely was not before!
Generalization
To accommodate more information & to perceive new things faster, our mind generalizes large amounts of information. An artist or graphic designer can distinguish many shades of red, while most others generalize in pink, red & dark red. We recognize immediately ‘man’ or ‘woman’ at a glance. We categorize the ‘young’ or the ‘old’. Similarly, we generalize from one or two events – if we, for example, burned our fingers on a candle when we were children, we know that a lighted candle is hot. If we have been repeatedly scolded for being late for dinner, most people generalize that it is unpleasant to be late. Often, this generalization is with us for the rest of our lives, long after we have grown up & there is no longer anyone to scold us.
As mentioned above, the advantage of generalization is that it enables us to accommodate more information & perceive faster. On the other hand it can also mean that we do not see the individual behind the category, or we may generalize an experience to apply always. This is desirable when it comes to avoiding burns from a candle, but less useful when someone gives a small, unsuccessful talk when very young, and from this generalizes that “I am a bad speaker”! Too often our minds function in this way, generalizing from one unpleasant experience to think that this is always so.

Distortion
Apart from deleting & generalizing, our mind also distorts much of the information it receives. Distortion means that things are perceived differently than they are in reality. One example is the bank cashier, who is afraid of a robbery & who “could clearly see that the bulge in the young man’s jacket had the form of a revolver”-until he withdrew his hand from his pocket & opened his wallet. The bulge was distorted to have the shape of a revolver - & the cashier’s anxiety was causing the distortion.
In general, communication distortion is a very common phenomenon. We think we know what others think or what their intention is in what they say, & thus we hear them say something other than what they are actually saying.
One example is the man who says to his wife:”it gets dusty quickly in summer” & she replies:”I don’t want to bother cleaning today.” Whereupon he looks at her, puzzled because he has not asked her to clean, he just commented on the season.