Have you ever met someone that just took your breath away? Someone that you just knew you wanted to spend more time with? And have you ever thought about a person from the minute you wake up until the moment where you put your head on the pillow at night? But then, one day, maybe things change. And they’re no longer the person for you – something has changed and you know that they’re not the one for you… but you keep thinking about them. And instead of those moments of thinking about them being happy joyous moments they have become moments that leads to heartache or frustration. What if you could do something about that? What if you could take control of your thoughts and remove that unwanted infatuation? Well, the good news is that you can. You definitely can, and best of all it is something you can do yourself with a tiny bit of practice.
Not long after I had started working with NLP I had a client session with a man in his mid 20’s. He had been in a loving relationship for several years and, all of a sudden, the relationship ended. There was no explanation given by his girlfriend, none at all. He was left questioning everything he had, and hadn’t done, and wondering why it had happened? But, worst of all, every time he thought of her the thought was closely followed by a horrible feeling of knowing that he could no longer be with her. This process that I am about to share is one of two processes that was all it took for him to totally forgive his ex-girlfriend and begin to move on with the rest of his life. So that when he thought about her he had only good and neutral feelings – that horrible feeling had totally disappeared and he had a tool, this tool, to tackle it should it ever return in regards to another person.
You may not have thought about this before, but every time you think about something your mind will have an internal picture. If I were to ask you, “When you think about a car, do you have a picture?” and you were to fully consider it then the answer would have to be, “Yes”. And the interesting thing is that the picture would be in colour or black and white. The picture would be big or small. The picture would be framed or panoramic. You’d either be able to see the picture through your own eyes, or you would see yourself in the picture. The picture would be in a certain direction from you (Maybe to the left, or the right) and the picture would be close to you or far away. There may even be sounds or feelings that are important too. In Neuro-Linguistic Programming we call this picture an Internal Representation, or I/R. And all of these finer distinctions about an I/R are called Submodalities, or SMDs. And the interesting thing is that the Submodalities are what determine how you feel about the Internal Representation.
So here is where it gets interesting. Let’s try a little exercise together. Is there someone that you can’t stop thinking about? Maybe an ex-lover, someone that was you trouble or an irritating ex-coworker. Have that person in your mind and go through the following exercise:
How do you feel about that person right now, on a scale of 0 to 10? (Where 0 is absolutely fine and 10 is the most intense it has ever felt)
Then ask yourself, “When I think about this person, do I have a picture?”
And with that picture then ask yourself:
Is the picture colour or black and white?
Is the picture big or small?
Is the picture framed or panoramic?
Do you see the picture through your own eyes, or do you see yourself in the picture?
Is the picture bright or dim?
Is the picture near or far?
What direction is the picture from you?
Note: The faster you ask these questions the better as if you don’t move quickly enough the Internal Representation in your mind may change.
Great, so now you have a list of the submodalities of the Internal Representation you have about that person. Now you know where you need to hold Internal Representations to think about a person in the way that you currently think about this person. The next step is to change the submodalities of this Internal Representation.
Ask yourself again, “When I think about this person, do I have a picture?” and now, with that picture firmly in your mind, I want you to make some changes… Essentially you want to jumble up the submodalities until the feeling disappears. Start by turning it from colour to black and white (Or vica versa if it were black and white already). Then try making it really small, say the size of a match box, or really huge, say the size of a billboard – which one feels the most neutral? Then put a frame around it if isn’t framed already or otherwise take the frame away and see it panoramic. If you’ve been seeing yourself in the picture then see it through your own eyes, if you don’t see yourself in the picture then see yourself in the picture now. Play with the brightness, make it so bright it almost washes out as white, or so dark it almost washes out as black, and see what feels the most neutral for you. Finally try sliding the picture around so it is waaaaaaay away from you and behind you, or really close and to the left, or wherever you can think of until you find the spot where it feels most neutral.
With those changes made I want you to lock those changes in there. You know the sound a padlock makes as it locks tightly shut? Yeh, that sound… Great, with hearing that sound just lock those changes firmly in there.
How do you feel about that person right now, on a scale of 0 to 10? (Where 0 is absolutely fine and 10 is the most intense it has ever felt)
Enjoy the result!
So, there you have it. That is the basics of the process and that should be enough for you to successfully use this process with yourself. There are a few things to be aware of when you use a process like this. The first is Ecology. It is important that you only make these changes if it is in your best interest to do so. For example, if someone is hurting you then it is appropriate for you to feel unpleasant – those feelings serve as the drive for you to keep yourself safe around that person. So in that situation it would be inappropriate to use this process. While if someone is no longer in your life and you still think about them (Such as an ex-lover or an ex-neighbour) then this process could be very useful. Secondly, there are many, many submodalities to be aware of and I have just listed a few of the more common submodalities. It is normal for one or two submodalities in particular to make the biggest difference as to how you feel about an Internal Representation (The ones that make the difference are called ‘drivers’ in NLP jargon) so if the list I’ve provided doesn’t include the submodality for you then the change won’t be as profound or noticable. That’s okay – just drop me an email or a Facebook message and I can send you a full list of submodalities or even walk you through it over the phone/Skype.
So does it work? Here is some feedback from a reader:
“Well Lloyd, after reading this and trying out those listed technique things I must say it really helped – really pushed the worry head out my head after a year of trying to get over it all ”
If you are interested in this, or anything else of mine that you have read, then remember that I offer a free 15-minute phone or Skype session to each and every one of my readers. These sessions are also really useful if you want to be pointed in the right direction in relation to a personal situation, goal you are striving for or even for technical NLP/Hypnosis questions.
A key concept in Neuro-Linguistic Programming is that reality and our Perception of reality are two entirely separate things. While our body’s nervous system has the ability to take in 2,000,000 (2 million) bits of information per second our brain is only capable of processing a mere 134 bits of information per second. That is a lot of information that our brain ignores, or in NLP jargon there is a lot of information that our brain generalises, distorts and deletes.
But, I hear you saying, surely that’s not true for me? I know what is and isn’t going on. I’m not ignoring large chunks of the world, I couldn’t possibly be… could I? Well, stop for a moment and fully consider these questions:
How do your feet feel against the floor?
How do your clothes feel against your skin?
Can you hear any noises when you listen for them that you weren’t previously aware of? (Such as the hum of a computer)
What is the taste in your mouth at the moment?
As you read those questions did it bring something new into your awareness? My guess is that is probably did. As soon as you read those questions your brain was able to focus on those bits of information to know the answer, yet up until that point you’d probably been blissfully unaware of how your clothes felt against your skin.
So here is where it gets interesting. There is a phenomena that exists that relates to Phantom Pain, and more specifically Phantom Limbs. These terms are often used to describe people who have physically lost a limb, for example in a military accident, yet they still have the feeling in their limb as if it were still there. Imagine if you had lost your entire arm in a car accident, yet you still got an itchy elbow! How do you scratch an itch that wasn’t there? Or what if there were tingling in your fingers and no matter what you did you couldn’t get rid of it?
And this leads me to the main purpose of this post. Thanks to a very dear friend I have stumbled upon an amazing article in the New Yorker. And I wanted to share something from it in particular with you about Phantom Pain:
Ramachandran performed an experiment with volunteers who had phantom pain in an amputated arm. They put their surviving arm through a hole in the side of a box with a mirror inside, so that, peering through the open top, they would see their arm and its mirror image, as if they had two arms. Ramachandran then asked them to move both their intact arm and, in their mind, their phantom arm—to pretend that they were conducting an orchestra, say. The patients had the sense that they had two arms again. Even though they knew it was an illusion, it provided immediate relief. People who for years had been unable to unclench their phantom fist suddenly felt their hand open; phantom arms in painfully contorted positions could relax. With daily use of the mirror box over weeks, patients sensed their phantom limbs actually shrink into their stumps and, in several instances, completely vanish. Researchers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center recently published the results of a randomized trial of mirror therapy for soldiers with phantom-limb pain, showing dramatic success.
So this is just one experiment. But it sounds pretty extraordinary. The jury is still out and by no means is there any consensus as to what science attributes this to. There is a lot of weight been given to the theory that maybe these results are because of the change in Perception that this experiment allows. By tricking the brain to take in new visual information (Of having the second arm) they are able to get rid of something that may have made their life less than comfortable for more than enough time. Perception is so easily played with – I wonder what else could be improved through a change in somebodies perception? In my experience coaching I find that when you change someone’s perception, you change their life.
Flow is one of the few theoretical concepts that I have fallen in love with recently. It has been written about extensively by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, a Russian Psychologist with a particularly long and hard to pronounce name – try and say that name ten times fast! In a nut-shell Flow is the experience of optimal human experience. That feelings where you get so absorbed in what you do that you totally lose track of everything else. All that seems to exist is the experience itself and you totally get into it. Athletes also commonly call this “the zone” so I thought it followed on nicely from my last article about Sports Hypnosis and Self Talk.
Personally I tend to experience it through my sport, when I’m writing, when I’m teaching and normally when I’m with clients. I’ve also experienced it in the past when playing computer games, doing timed tests and while with friends over a coffee. What gives me a heads up that I am experiencing Flow is when I notice a distortion of time (Things moving much faster/slower than I realised) and losing track of my basic needs like eating, drinking or going to the bathroom.
Mihály Csíkszentmihályi suggests that there are ten factors that are likely to accompany an experience of flow:
Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one’s skill set and abilities). Moreover, the challenge level and skill level should both be high.
Concentrating, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).
A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
Distorted sense of time, one’s subjective experience of time is altered.
Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).
Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).
A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.
A lack of awareness of bodily needs (to the extent that one can reach a point of great hunger or fatigue without realizing it).
People become absorbed in their activity, and focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself, action awareness merging.
Interestingly, not all of these factors are needed for flow to be experienced.
Mihály also suggests that fundamentally there are certain areas of life that people are likely to most easily achieve Flow:
Sports or competitions where you are playing to win.
Gambling or situations where there exists a high degree of chance/risk.
Mind Altered States, especially those induced by drugs.
Escapism, such as through drama, the theatre, TV, DVDs or a good novel.
Early this year when I was explaining this to a client they summed it up nicely by saying, “So basically shouldn’t we try and spend as much of our life in Flow as we can then?”. And I tend to agree. The more of my life I spend in Flow, the happier I tend to be. And if you think about it, Flow is the exact opposite of Anxiety or Worry.
In what areas of your life do you find yourself experiencing Flow? How could you increase the feeling of Flow in your life through slight changes to what you already do but by applying these factors?
Sports Hypnosis is a term that is being thrown around more and more loosely these days. There is lots of great information available about the power of Goal Setting and Mental Rehearsal but very little I’ve been able to find that addresses the power of Self Talk. With that in mind, and given a recent request on Facebook, here are some thoughts on what you can do right now to start improving your results using a little bit of self hypnosis. In fact, I’ll even give you a simple process for harnessing this yourself in whatever sport you may be currently focusing on.
As you may know I am a passionate amateur Triathlete. When I signed up for this crazy sport I looked at the distances involved in the races and wondered how I was going to do it. What I didn’t realise was that I would travel so much further than any of those distances many, many times in the lead up to each and every race. What I experienced was that doing the training didn’t come down to my physical ability very often, what it came down to was my ability to manage my thoughts. My success over endurance distances I would say is almost entirely down to my ability to manage my thoughts during the long training sessions. And what I found is that my thoughts followed a specific sequence when things were going well, but also when things were going badly.
Take Cycling for example. One of the regular rides is a Sunday morning ride where we head to the Perth hills for a 90~110km cycle. Now I’m not sure if you’ve ever ridden a bike much but if you have you may be aware of the impact a hill can have in your performance. What I noticed is that on the up hills I would fatigue easily, find myself struggling and find my cadence (Speed I turned the pedals) really drop, even if I were in an easy gear. While on the down hills it didn’t matter how hard I had worked getting up the hill, how tired my legs were or what gear I was in – I could always find some extra umph to keep those legs powering along. So I began to wonder… what is it that makes the difference? What I found, for me at least, is that I have a really different voice in my head when I’m going up a hill. The u phill voice is a nagging voice that is talking about how far it is, how tired I am and how heavy my legs are feeling. Yet, when I’m going down hill the voice in my head was an exuberent and childish ‘wheeeeeeee’ that left me feeling full of joy, with loads of energy materialising from nowhere. Woah… so here came the moment of truth… What would happen if I used that childish downhill voice on the uphills?
Find out in my next post…
ONLY KIDDING! What I found is that suddenly I was getting similar results from my legs on the up hills. Now, I had to trick my mind by changing what I was seeing too. I’d focus on the front forks of the bike seeing not much besides the bike, the road and the curb. But it worked, just by mindfully creating that down hill voice I was getting co-operation from my legs that previously I could only have dreamed of.
So I thought, how do I get the most of this in the other sports I enjoy? How do I trick my mind in the harder situations so it behaves like I know it can in the easier situations? And what I found is that just by paying attention to my self talk I was getting similar improvements to the ones I had with my cycling in my running, my swimming and my sailing.
So what is Self Talk? Self Talk is that little voice in your head. If you say to yourself your 7 times tables… Yep, it is that voice! Now your Self Talk changes based on the content it is sharing with you. It may be in your voice, it may be in the loud encouraging voice of your coach or maybe even in the discouraging voice of a parental figure. And the voice probably has specific words based on the situation. Are they dis-empowering words like “You’re not good enough” or are they empowering phrases like “You can do it” or “Wheeeeeeeeeee”. In fact, it is core to the story of The Little Engine That Could (Click for YouTube video in case you’re unfamiliar with it).
I promised something from this post that could apply for yourself, and here it is:
First, you need to come up with two situations within the same sport (Or any activity really). You want one situation to be disproportionately hard compared to other situations in that sport and you want the second situation to be disproportionately easy compared to other situations in that sport.
Then for each situation you would want to ask yourself: “When you think about that situation do you have a picture? And are there any sounds that are important?”
Now focus on what the sounds are, you may want to write this down. What words (if any) do you hear? Is it your voice, or the voice of someone else? Is the voice loud or soft? Is the voice talking quickly or slowly? Does the sound come from any direction in particular?
Repeat the previous two steps for the second situation.
Now you need to work out what is the difference that makes the difference? Is the voice different? Are the words different? Is one quieter or softer than the other?
Now, and this is the final step, see what happens when you use the Self Talk from the easy situations when you’re physically in the hard situation. Do your results change, or not?
So there you have it, a quick intro to the power of Self Talk in the context of Sports Hypnosis. Hope that your results are as useful as mine have been so that you may improve your performance with a just little tweak between the ears. If you found this post useful please drop me an email, a Facebook message or leave me a comment on the blog and I can post more in this domain.
Update: In the few days since posting this information I’ve already heard back from someone that has had great results. Here is what they had to say:
“Just had to tell you how much you impacted my life Lloyd. I took your advice with the running and thinking of it being easy, like running downhill. I Never cud run hills at all. Today, run up and down 2 different hills 7 times….and it was easy. Love your work. WOW” - Karen, Queensland
Recently I received a request, via Facebook, to provide some commentary on the language patterns of Adolf Hitler. This is a little bit tricky because many of the subtleties of language are specific to the language that is being spoken. For example in English there is phonological ambiguity between here and hear (i.e. they sound the same yet have totally different meanings) yet those are totally lost in translation. I’m also not a German speaker so I am relying on the strength of the translation into English. With that said, here is an example speech by Adolf Hitler and my commentary on some of what he is doing…
The speech starts with Hitler looking up and into the distance. Looks remarkably like eye fixation to put himself into a light uptime trance state. You may also notice the initial tension in his neck/jaw that dissolves once he is properly into state.
He starts really slow. A long pause and then begins talking slowly. As he gets into it he gradually picks up pace. At 1:40 following the clapping he really picks up the pace and goes clearly into the visual rep system. This is a great demo of the NLP Charisma Pattern
In fact the first 2:40 is mostly telling them what they already know. Seems to be Pacing the group and getting the group into Group Rapport
Plentiful use of Milton Model patterns. Especially Lost Performatives (e.g. 2:25 phrases such as ‘most valuable elements’), Universal Quantifiers (e.g. 2:30 ‘always been not in the majority’, 3:54 ‘will never relinquish it’, 5:32 ‘all upstanding Germans become Nationalist Socialists’), Modal Operators of Necessity (e.g. 5:32 ‘it must be shown’), Comparative Deletions (e.g. 5:40 ‘only the best’) and Selection Restriction Violations (e.g. 1:26 ‘courageous hearts’). Many of his statements are soooo artfully vague, such as “The German people is happy in the knowledge that a constantly changing vision has been replaced by a fixed pole” at 3:16 or “Once, our enemies worried us and persecuted us and, from time to time removed the lesser elements from the Movement for us” at 6:00.
Uses hand gestures to self to identify with the audience, such as at 2:15, where he thumps his fist on his chest as he talks about ‘WE’. Interestingly we also see use of the Satir Categories, such as at 2:27, where he uses Leveler and 4:53 where he makes use of Blamer. He seems to predominantly favour his right hand, but use both hands in parts. At 3:19 there is a really nice sweeping hand gesture from left (past) to right (future) to reinforce visually his point. At 6:32 a nice flicking gesture to reinforce that they “do not belong with us”.
Also a very nice use of embedded quotes and embedded commands. For example, at 4:26 he says “For them it is not simple enough to make the pledge: ‘I believe.!’ Rather, the affirmation: ‘I fight.!’” – see what he did there?
During the speech Adolf is future pacing the audience THOUSANDS OF YEARS!!! At 6:45 he says, “It is our wish and will that this State and this Reich last for thousands of years.”
Hitler makes use of many anchors (Many of them seem to be pre-existing). It is interesting watching the audience doing the Nazi Salute during particularly emotionally intense parts of the speech – this would be the equivalent of stacking an anchor in each of the participants that did that. Then when they make that gesture again those feelings would come flooding back. A particularly good example of this is at 9:30 when they do the motion combined with chanting “Long live Germany!”
And I can’t help but point out the lovely complex equivilance at 10:34 where it is said “The Party is Hitler.! But Hitler is Germany, as Germany is Hitler.!” – so if you take that all as true then I guess it is also true that the Germany is the Party too!
It is interesting that someone who conducted such evil against the world was such a persuasive communicator. I’m in no way a supporter of what he did, or what he stood for. Writing this post was quite an interesting exercise in analysing how he captivated the minds of the masses so persuasively though.
Would love to hear your comments. Especially if you’ve spotted more in this short video than I’ve mentioned. Look forward to your feedback
“Cheshire Cat,” Alice began, rather carefully. “Would you tell me, please, which way to go from here?”
“That depends on where you want to go,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where…” said Alice.
“Well then it doesn’t really matter which way you walk,” said the Cat.
“…so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
(From Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll)
I’m sure you’re curious as to why I’d start off a post with a passage from Alice in Wonderland… It’s simple. THIS is so often the mentality of the people we interact with on a daily basis, whether it’s a question being asked or a “possible” situation that people need to know about.
At the end of the day, it becomes obvious that you don’t always know WHERE YOU WANT TO GO.
Make no mistake, you’ll get SOMEWHERE… but of course you’ll think it’s NOWHERE because the somewhere isn’t nearly close to where you think you should be… at this stage of your life (as compared to what?)… or for the work you’ve put in (aimless work to what end?)… or based on the “knowledge” you’ve gained (but is it “knowledge” or more useless information?)… So you’ve already gotten SOMEWHERE. You’ve gotten a RESULT. But is it the result you wanted?
Probably not.
Why?
Because you NEVER KNEW WHAT THE RESULT WAS THAT YOU WANTED! So how about taking some time now, and some paper, and getting clear on what you really want. It doesn’t take long yet it makes a pretty massive difference to where you end up.
It has been said that whenever the will is in conflict with an idea, the idea invariably wins the struggle. Or as Carl Jung says, “What you resist persists”.
If you’re interested then you can prove this to yourself with a little experiment.
Go and buy yourself a nice long strong plank of wood. Say 20m long and about the width of your foot. Then lay that plank of wood out in your driveway. With a little bit of practice you’ll probably be able to walk safely from one end to the other with minimal effort. Now take that same plank of wood. And instead of laying it in your driveway how about you suspend it between two tall structures, such as trees or between two buildings. Now notice how it would be different. Going to walk along the plank up high in the air is a world apart from walking along it in your driveway… Yet, the plank is the same, the task is the same.
So what causes the change in your reactions? What happens is the changing of the location of the plank has created a suggestion in your Unconscious Mind, a suggestion of falling. The idea of falling is coloured with all the emotion your mind can muster as your Unconscious Mind’s highest purpose is keeping you safe. Without even thinking about it your Unconscious Mind has accepted the suggestion of you falling and is acting as if it is true – it will take control of your body, give you shaky legs, make you want to desperately go back and more. You wanted motivation? This is extreme motivation from the Unconscious Mind!
While Logic tells you that surely it can’t be that hard? You walked over that very same board not so long ago… But the more you think about it logically the more the suggestion of falling is aroused by your Unconscious Mind. Sure, you could stubbornly persist, but it wouldn’t be an easy or pleasant experience for most of us.
The same is true each and every time that we try and force ourselves to do something with Will Power! If you remember just one thing from this post let it be this – making changes by Will Power alone is equivilant to violence against yourself. Think about it…
As the French Autosuggestionist Emil Coué famously said, “We can now see that not only is the will incapable of vanquishing a thought, but that as fast as the will brings up its big guns, thought captures them and turns them against itself.”
Hypnosis and Neuro-Linguistic Programming provide an excellent means for programming and communicating with the Unconscious Mind. They can succeed at avoiding this conflict between our ideas and our will to make lasting changes. These techniques in no way devalue one’s “will power”, it merely relegates it to its proper place.
Personally I love how quickly changes in Values (What drive Unconscious Motivation) can totally turn a client’s behaviour around.
This video recently caught my intention and I thought it worth sharing. Judy Rees is heavily involved in the NLP Community and I was lucky enough to meet her for coffee when I was last in London. What I really like about this video is how Judy links up not only how the unconscious likes to think in metaphor but also how the metaphors that people use in their speech can reveal their unconscious thoughts – fascinating information!
One of the core concepts to Neuro-Linguistic Programming is the idea of modeling. Modeling is based on the presupposition that if it is possible for one human being to achieve something then it is also possible for others to do achieve it.
It is always fun to see people achieving things that at first glance don’t seem possible. You may enjoy this video:
Being Certified as a NLP Master Practitioner is based upon an agreed minimum level of knowledge and training duration. The American Board of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (ABNLP) specifies that for some to be certified as a NLP Master Practitioner they must demonstrate the ability to identify the following basic skills, techniques, patterns and concepts of NLP and to utilise them competently with self and others:
Integration, mastery and elegance of NLP Practitioner skills
Ability to manage one’s own state
Ability to do change work with self and others
Precision and resourcefulness through all representational systems
Conscious and unconscious embodiment of the NLP presuppositions
Ability to track logical levels
Ability to separate process from content about process
Ability to establish and maintain levels of rapport
Sleight of Mouth Patterns
Change and Install Strategies
Multi-level communications
Meta Programs (complex) – elicitation, calibration, utilisation, change, flexibility
Values – elicitation, calibration, clarification, utilisation, change work
Advanced patterns and techniques – such as sliding anchors, reimprinting, contextual marking, etc.
Duration of the Master Practitioner training must be a minimum of 130 hours (over a minimum of 9 days, face-to-face training), of advanced training taught by a certified trainer of NLP from a recognised NLP Training Institute.
These standards were created based on much research of various NLP courses throughout the world. A minimum training standard is applicable due to the numerous courses available and the potential for low standards of NLP being taught. Training taken to this standard, with a Certified ABNLP Trainer, will allow you to gain membership with the ABNLP and various other Boards around the globe.
Want to learn more? Then get in touch! We regularly teach NLP, Hypnosis and Time Line TherapyTM Techniques around the world. The best way to learn more is to get in touch with us by email:
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