I’m starting a new line of articles: NLP Jargon. These articles will help you figure out the myriad of terms used by NLP gurus in seminars and in the seminal books of the field.
Our NLP term for today is uptime. I first came across that word when I read Frogs Into Princes for the first time. Grinder and Bandler used it to describe a state of heightened sensory acuity. Let’s explore its meaning in a bit more depth.
You’ll find the term “uptime” used mostly in books about therapy and training. “Uptime” simply means that all of your sensory channels are focused on external stimuli. In simpler terms, you’re paying attention to your surroundings. When you’re in uptime, you pay little attention to internal dialogue, internal visualizations, or internal feelings. You focus on objects around you, micro-movements in people’s facial expressions, sounds in the environment, the temperature of the sun on your skin or the feeling of the wind in your hair.
When you’re in uptime, you perceive the world around you in much greater accuracy and you absorb patterns with much greater facility. Babies live mostly in uptime. When you engage in NLP Modeling, you enter uptime to unconsciously absorb the patterns of excellence you wish to model.
So as you finish reading this article now, you can begin to notice the all the sounds that surround you and the feeling of your weight on the chair. Allow your eyes to unglue from your monitor and begin to wonder how much more you can notice today…