The map is not the territory (2)
There's an NLP joke which goes something like - If you have ten witnesses to a bank robbery and you interview them all, how many different stories will you get? 10? No - the correct answer is 11 because there's always one multiple personality.
Okay, it's not the best joke in the world but it does illustrate another important point on the theme of The map is not the territory - the differences between one person's internal map of reality when compared to another person's map can be quite striking. This is the guiding principle behind another of the Presuppositions of NLP - Respect the other person's model.
Respecting the other person's model empowers us to communicate with that person more effectively. We may need to suspend some of our own beliefs, the ones based on our model, to truly hear what the other person is saying (we're not giving up our beliefs here, just suspending them temporarily). By doing so we might, just might, find out something useful that we can use to enrich our own model. If the other individual can do the same they too stand to gain more from the communication - a true win-win outcome.
Try this simple exercise to illustrate the point. Sit down with a piece of paper and a pen and imagine taking a walk along a familiar street - perhaps your local high street. As you go, write down each landmark (shop, house etc.) that you pass. Try also to include any small details about each one that stick out such as the colour of the door or of any signage, any particular sounds or even smells that are associated with that part of the journey.
Ask a friend or perhaps a family member to undertake the same exercise by themselves - do not compare notes at this stage.
Once you've both completed the exercise then it's time to compare notes. There are likely to be a lot of similarities between the two but what we are interested in are the differences - and you may find a lot of them. The differences illustrate how our internal maps of the same external locations and events can vary significantly
The final part of the exercise is to walk that journey for real to see whose internal map best matched the real world and maybe even find areas where the real world is completely different from either of your internal maps.
FRIENDLY TIP - reading about subjective exerience and NLP is a good place to start but always remember that actions speak louder than words. You will learn far more from getting out there and actually DOING than you ever will from reading alone.