For example if this makes perfect sense you might sense, “oh, I see what you mean”.  That would be linked to the visual system.

On the other hand you might still be wondering what I’m talking about and say “it’s all Greek to me”… which would be auditory (what you can – or in this case cannot – here).

By this point you might find yourself saying “oh I’m starting to get a handle on it now” which might suggest… that’s right, a kinaesthetic preference.

It can be fun to watch out for the predicates that you and other people are using (yes, that was me being visual).  It’s another way to improve communication with other people (and your self!)

You will be familiar with the idea that we pay attention to the outside world through our five senses:

seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, tasting

These translate in NLP terms as:

visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, olfactory, gustatory

Sometimes you will just see the letters that stand for them:

V, A, K, O, G

Well, just as we see, hear, taste, touch and smell the outside world we also re-create or re-present those sensations in our mind, using our senses inwardly.

We use all of these systems, but we will tend to favour one over others.  This is what is known as the preferred representational system.

Joseph O’Connor defines this in the NLP workbook as “the representational system that an individual typically uses to think consciously and organise their experience.”

You might find references to representational systems in relation to learning styles.

For example a visual learner will want to see things (pictures, diagrams, handouts); an auditory learner will gather information from the spoken word, sounds, and noises; someone with a kinaesthetic learning style will want to learn through touching, feeling, holding, doing or practical hands-on experiences.

Increased awareness of these representational systems can help us communicate better with other people.  It can also make us more self-aware – perhaps of things that help us to learn, or get in the way of our learning.

Words that link to a particular representational system are known as predicates.  You can find out more about predicates here.