The Difference That Makes a Difference: NLP and Science of Positive Change
Josh Davis and Greg Prosmushkin
St.Martin’s Essentials (July 2025)

The science of strategic learning, persuasion, and evaluation

As you may already know, Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) is a psychological approach that explores the connections between and among language, thought patterns, and behavior. NLP aims to help individuals understand how their internal representations of the world influence their actions and emotions, and to use this understanding for personal development and positive change. NLP techniques are used in various fields, including therapy, business, and education, to improve communication, enhance performance, and overcome limiting beliefs.

According to my notes, NLP has four “pillars”:

o Pillar 1: Outcome: The capacity to define your goals. It may seem obvious, but having a distinct idea of what you want to accomplish is necessary, indeed essential.

o Pillar 2 – Sensory Acuity: The capacity to distinguish between various states or events using only your senses.

o Pillar 3- Behavioural flexibility: The capacity to alter your own conduct in order to get the desired reaction from another person. It is known as “behavioural flexibility.”

o Pillar 4- Rapport: Why is it that specific politicians, entertainers, salespeople, and other interesting people can connect with you? Is all of it just organic chemistry? Sometimes. Professionals, however, are taught how to build rapport.

Josh Davis and Greg Prosmushkin explain how and why NLP  — viewed as a process — increases understanding of  “what makes people tick — yourself and others. When we understand how we and others think, feel, and act in key situations, we have the raw material with which to make change happen, often quickly and profoundly.”

More specifically, they explain how NLP can help you to

o Read almost any situation and the people involved
o Help people to change their limiting beliefs
o Built rapport and establish trust quickly
o Select your emotional state and state of mind
o Let go of old negative thought “triggers”…and help others to do so

o Understand what uniquely drives each person you interact with
o Help people to adjust/shift their perspective(s)
o Flexibly handle any question or point of resistance that you encounter
o Speak to people in a way they can clearly hear you

o Get others to want to hear what you have to say and influence them
o Win over skeptics
o Build/increase self-condidence
o Know and communicate your value(s)
o “Own” the narrative
o Earn the right (privilege) to be heard

Davis and Prosmushkin: “During the process of learning these skills, people will also learn how to change themselves. They stop being the ones wishing their lives could be different, and start being the ones who actually took charge of their lives. And they learn to model excellence — if others can do it, so can they.”

Note: Long ago, Aristotle observed: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit.” More recently, Warren Buffett warned against developing bad habits that are chains, “too light to notice until they are too heavy to break.”

In the Conclusion, Davis and Prosmushkin repeat five critically important questions previously posed in the first chapter. Your answers to them can serve as a “turbocharger” to achieving the given objectives:

“1. Is my focus on what I want, instead of on what I don’t want?”
2. Will getting my goal cause other [perhaps worse] problems for me?
3. Is achieving it within my grasp?
4. Can I clearly define success?
5. When and where, specifically, do I want it?”

I presume to add a few other questions to consider:

o What do I need to know, especially what I think I know…but don’t?
o What are the nature and extent of assistance I must have to succeed?
o How will I measure progress?
o What are the most important dos and don’ts to keep in mind?

I think this is a must-read for executives at all levels and in all areas of the given enterprise. I also highly recommend it to those who are now preparing for a career in business or have only recently embarked upon one.

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I commend Josh Davis and Greg Prosmushkin on their brilliant, substantial contributions to thought leadership throughout the global marketplace.  I think this is a must-read for executives at all levels and in all areas of the given enterprise. I also highly recommend it to those who are now preparing for a career in business or have only recently embarked upon one.

Developing the skills to master NLP and the science of positive change can be the difference that really can give your organization a decisive competitive advantage.

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Here are two suggestions while you are reading this book: First, highlight key passages. Also,  perhaps in a notebook kept near-at-hand (e.g. Apica Premium C.D. Notebook A5), record your comments, questions, and action steps (preferably with deadlines), and when when completing the exercises in Appendix A. Alszo, pay special attention to an exceptionally informative Introduction as well as to the remarks that conclude reach of the 28 brief but substantial chapters.

These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will expedite frequent reviews of key material later.