Deletion is one of the ways our brain keeps us from becoming overwhelmed. Every second, we take in huge amounts of information through our senses, but if we noticed everything, life would feel chaotic and exhausting. So the brain quietly filters things out.
In NLP, this is called Deletion. It is the brain’s way of deciding what feels important and what can be ignored.
Ever walked into the kitchen looking for the ketchup, stared directly at it, and still couldn’t see it? Then someone points straight at it and suddenly it appears. We have all done it. Your eyes saw the ketchup the whole time, but your brain deleted it because your attention was focused elsewhere.
One exercise I use in sessions is called the Red Room Exercise. I ask someone to look around the room and notice everything red. Once they are finished, I ask them to close their eyes and tell me everything blue they saw.
Most people laugh and say, “But you told me to look for red!”
Exactly.
Their eyes saw every colour in the room, but the brain filtered out what it believed was unimportant. That is deletion in action. We are all constantly filtering reality, and no two people delete information in exactly the same way. That is why two people can experience the same situation very differently.
Ian Davies
