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A verb that deletes specific information in any way as to how, when or where is called in NLP Unspecified Verb. Unspecified Verbs are verbs (the doing part) in a sentence that don’t fully describe the action taking place. They don’t give enough information to let you know what is going on for them. People usually fill in the gap with their own experience – called Mind Reading. When people use unspecified verbs, all it means is that they do not have the descriptive way of representing what they mean and/or understand.
Sometimes it is useful and sometimes it prevents them from expressing themselves well or changing their views of behavior freely in response to new information or in new contexts. This is another area in which the line is thin between information gathering and intervention, because getting more detailed information is sometimes enough to allow changes that would not have taken place beforehand.
Are you able to picture the events in the statements? If you can’t, or the process is fuzzy, there is probably an unspecified verb (or noun) lurking. Try it “He sat on my foot” – I can make a movie of this. “He hurt my foot” – I am trying on different things in my movie. NLP Unspecified Verb.
Closely related to unexplained verbs are nominalizations, which are unclear verbs we twist into nouns. First the process is “Delete” then “Distort” is touched. My frustration with the boss makes me exhausted. (“My boss frustrates me” becomes a solid thing) NLP Unspecified Verb.
To some extent, every verb is unspecified. We would be overwhelmed if we specified everything. What will you gain by having more information on a particular verb? NLP Unspecified Verb.
A good question to recover and gain more information is to ask: “How specifically…” And still as you want to explore this pattern in more depth, you can ask questions like:
Remember, to increase your efficiency as a NLP Practitioner, know your positive intention for the message you want to convey, build rapport and pay attention on what and how you use language. Leave people and business in a better place that where you found them, every day!
Mind Tools provides NLP Practitioner and NLP Master Practitioner Trainings and Certifications. We educate you according to the renowned, latest and highest standards set by the Society of NLP. We will train you thoroughly in all the corners of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and some extras we learned from Richard Bandler directly.
