Alter your sound track. Re-process the way you hear yourself and others talk. How would you want to make your voice different? Or the voice of someone else? What qualities would make the memory less intense? What voice would you like to have heard? Install an internal voice to help you through this situation.
Add tonal qualities to the sound track that make it better. Take an unpleasant memory and put some nice loud circus music behind it. Watch the movie of it again; how do you feel? Put circus music to other memories of anger and annoyance.
Apply your spiritual faith. If in your spiritual belief system you can bring in your heavenly Father, a loving heavenly Father, etc., then split your screen and see through the eye of your faith your Guardian Angel hovering over the earthly scene of your memory. See and hear your Angel caring and loving you. Perhaps you hear, “I am with you.” “I will help you.” See Jesus touch you with his healing hand.
Symbolically code the memory. For instance, you might want to make the people in your memory transparent. Color them according to how you think/feel about them. Draw a line around the three-dimensional people in your memory, make them two-dimensional and color them according to your evaluation of them.
Humorize your memory. Since laughter gives us a great distancing skill, use your humor so that you can laugh this emotional pain off. How far in the future do you need to transport yourself before you can look back on a memory and laugh at it? What difference lies between a memory you can laugh at and one that you can’t? Do you see yourself in one, but not in the other? Do you have one coded as a snap-shot and the other as a movie? What difference lies in color, size, brightness? Imagine the hurtful person talking like Donald Duck. Turn your opponent into a caricature cartoon character with exaggerated lips, eyes, head, hands, etc.
7.5 Thought Questions To Assist Your Learning:
What other words can you think of that describe what we call “Frames” and “Framing” in NLP?
List all the Frames that you recall in this chapter or know about in NLP.
When or where would you use the Backtrack Frame?
Describe a time when you used the “As If” Frame in a creative and productive way.
How skilled would you gauge yourself at this time in using the Dissociative Frame in handling criticism, phobias, negative emotions and traumatic experiences?
We recommend John Grinder and Michael McMaster’s (1983) Precision: A New Approach To Communication; and Bob Bodenhamer and Michael Hall’s (1997) Mindlines: Lines For Changing Minds for further reading on frames.
7.5.0.12 Notes – Chapter 6
8Steve and Connirae Andreas, Heart of the Mind (Moab: Real People Press, 1989), pp. 46-54.
9 Ibid., p. 51.
10Richard Bandler, Using Your Brain For a Change (Moab: Real People Press, 1985), pp. 43
8
The Art Of State Management
8.1 What you can expect to learn in this chapter:
The meaning and importance of resourcefulness
The NLP State Management model
How to interrupt disempowering states
How to access, elicit, and amplify states
How to anchor states
When you add your internal representations (the stuff in the mind) and your physiology (the stuff within the nervous system and body) you then have the component pieces of “a state of consciousness.” Such states come and go throughout a day. Some enhance our lives and therefore empower us; some limit our lives and therefore disempower us. Can you tell the difference? Can you identify the triggers that induce the various states that you find yourself experiencing? Can you then alter your state?
The ability to manage state describes the difference between those who achieve their outcomes and those who fail to achieve their outcomes.
In NLP, we call the effective management of states “state control.” And success at reaching desired outcomes (goals) comes to those who know how to manage state control, does it not? And does not this, in fact, describe the difference between those who achieve their outcomes and those who fail to achieve their outcomes? The difference lies in the ability to put yourself into supportive and enhancing states so that you can then produce the behaviors that move you to reach your goals.
Developing the ability to direct and manage your states highlights the key to your main source of “power.” By power, we refer to your ability to think, emote, speak, behave, respond, etc., in the ways that you so desire. This offers another facet of the art of learning to effectively “run your own brain” and neurology. To do this necessitates understanding your states, and your subjective factors that drive your states.
The problem with regard to state management does not lie in the fact that people do not have the personal resources to do such. The problem lies in knowing how to access the resources, how to amplify resourceful states, and how to do so when we most need such resources! The problem lies in that when we get into an unresourceful state, our resources seem less available.
In this NLP manual, we offer the following information about state management in order that you can get the most out of all of the material that follows. With these skills, you will tap into your powers to access learning states, relaxation states, states for clarity, creativity, curiosity, respect, passion, etc.
State Management
1. State Understanding
2. State Awareness
3. State Alteration
4. State Utilization
8.2 1. State Understanding
A first key lies in understanding the dynamics of states and the factors that comprise our states.
What creates any given state that you find yourself in?
If you saw a “state of consciousness” what would it entail?
The two main components of states involve: internal representations and physiology; the condition and use of your physiology.
The two main components of states involve: internal representations and physiology; the condition and use of your physiology.
Internal representations, to a great extent describe your habitual patterns of representing things to yourself which you learned from your earliest models—your parents. This makes up the source of a great many of our beliefs, attitudes, values, and understandings which, in turn, form and pattern the kinds of representations you utilize. Internal representations include what (content) and how (form/process) you picture and talk in your mind.
Ultimately, what matters in your experience lies in how you represent things to yourself. As you learn to represent things in a way that empowers you rather than creates limitations for you, you learn the value of enhancing representations. You can represent things in a way that puts you in a positive state.
Keep in mind that you always have a choice about how to represent things to yourself. We like to describe this as representational power. Also, the kind of behavior that you produce when in a state also depends on your model of the world. These mapping functions that you have engaged in, also made up of internal representations, have become your stable “sense” of the world—your internal map for navigating reality.
So as you learn to take control of your own communications with yourself, you can learn how to produce the VAK signals to send regularly to your brain for what you want (your desired outcome). This will run a new program in your neurology and eventually produce positive results. It will keep you in a much more resourceful state.
Your physiology includes a multitude of things: muscle tension, what you eat, your breath, posture, overall level of biochemical function, etc. These things also greatly affect your state. Physiology includes posture, biochemistry, nervous energy, breathing, muscle tension and/or relaxation.
Internal representations and physiology work together to form a cybernetic loop or “system” that make up your unique “personality.”
Another important awareness: we all perceive the world from within the context of our states. Such “state perception” explains why we experience certain perceptio
ns at certain times. And since we always operate out of some state of consciousness that state always creates and filters the way we process things.
When we feel physically vibrant and alive, don’t we perceive the world differently from when we feel tired or sick? The condition of our physiology changes the way we represent and experience the world. In this way our internal world always affects our external world. Thus, our internal representation that describes how we experience an event does not precisely describe what happened, but merely a personalized re-presentation of it.
8.3 2. State Awareness
The next step involves developing the ability to pay attention and identify our current and ongoing states. Making this discernment enables you to make finer discriminations: what internal representational factors determine this state? What physiological factors contribute?
But a problem arises that prevents much state awareness. When we experience states repeatedly, over time, etc., they become habitual so that we lose consciousness of them. They then become like the air we breathe and we cease to notice them. So we have to learn to take a moment and gauge our states, and then make an overall ecological evaluation.
Is this neuro-physiological state enabling and full of confidence, love, inner strength, joy, ecstasy, belief, etc., and tapping your wellsprings of personal power? Or do you find it disabling (even paralyzing)? What characterizes it? Confusion, depression, fear, anxiety, sadness, frustration, etc.?
Some states give us power to do things, to think clearly, emote accurately, feel good, take effective action, etc. Such states empower us. Other states operate as “impotent states.” Getting into an unresourceful state doesn’t mean you have become a “bad” person or even that you have something wrong with yourself. It only means that you have gotten into a “bad” state. And as goes the state, so goes the behavior. Yet we exist as far more than our behaviors. The behaviors simply express how and what we think and feel at the moment.
8.4 3. State Alteration
Now the process whereby you learn to take charge of yourself and your states (state control) means developing the ability to effect the states you access, elicit, induce, and amplify in yourself (and others).
The good news: everyone’s state is altering all the time, and thus we experience a wide range of states of awareness. But how do you alter your consciousness? Answer: examine your IR and your physiology, note their component parts, and then alter those components of your experience.
But how do you do such altering of your consciousness? Answer: examine your IR and your physiology, note their component parts, and then alter those facets of your experience.
If you do a contrastive analysis between two opposing states, you will gain important information about how your neurology and brain operate. For example, what do you find when you compare the modality and submodality differences between self-esteem and self-contempt? What differences do you discover between how you language self-esteem and how you language self-contempt?
By exploring the language and the submodality qualities of the images, sounds, and sensations in these states, you will learn which ones operate most impactfully on you (your driver or kicker submodalities as well as your driver Meta-states). Or, if you really get playful and curious, you might begin to discover what happens to your experiences when you turn the submodalities of relaxation into how you normally code stress. Or, what happens when you turn the submodalities of resourcefulness, adult strength, and choice into those painful regressive states that characterize an old trauma. Pay close attention to the meta-states that govern the submodalities.
As you contemplate altering your state, identify what resource you need that would make a positive difference in the pattern that you currently find unsatisfactory. If the pattern that does not work for you involves “losing your head” and yelling angry words when stressed, then what resource would you need at that point? The ability to delay your reaction? Calmness of soul? A sense of confidence and self-esteem? An awareness of what you want to accomplish?
All resources do not work equally with everybody. What do you need? What would make a difference in your neurology? Do you know?
Try on several and experiment until you find something that makes a difference. The person who knows how to tap into their resourceful parts, to access those states, to alter their current states, etc., will become the one who achieves personal excellence in their chosen area.
8.5 4. State Utilization
Utilization means using your power to alter and access states. It describes your power to apply a resource when you need it. In other words, becoming resourceful alone will not be enough. The objective is to become resourceful when you need a particular resource.
State utilization refers to developing the abilities to call on the kind of internal representations and physiology shifts that you need when you need them. Then you could experience life much more as a matter of choice. For example, you could find yourself “snapping your fingers” (or firing off some other anchor) when you chose and suddenly finding yourself going into the most dynamic, resourceful state at will. How valuable would you find that? What if you could access and then amplify any given desired state? What if you could get into a state where you feel excited, confident, where your body crackles with energy and your mind feels alive with new and creative ideas? This describes what we mean by “utilization.”
8.6 The Pattern
Take a moment to think of a time when you have felt powerful. Now represent things in a way that puts you in such a resourceful state where you feel empowered. Represent how things will work, not how they can’t or won’t. Forming internal representations of things working begins to access the internal resources that will tend to produce that state. It works like magic!
Knowing the dynamic of how internal representations and physiology work together to create states (out of which behaviors spring) enables you to work backwards. This will let you know what specific things to do to elicit the state you want. Make the kind of generalizations about yourself that will effectively govern and direct your states.
We all can change our states in a matter of moments. We can “fly into a rage” or “fly into a calm.” The ability to effect our own state in moments simply reflects a mechanism within our personality. Once we learn to access and elicit a state then we can anchor it. Associate or link it with certain behaviors, words, gestures, symbols, etc., so that you can quickly and easily get back into that state. This will cultivate in you a powerfully resourceful state of representations and physiology. Later in this work we will give a complete explanation of anchors and how to set a self-anchor.
People who excel tend to become masters at tapping into their own most
resourceful parts.
Such utilization will set you apart from most people who take little conscious action to direct their states since they attempt to direct so little of their own thinking, emoting, speaking and behaving. They just let them happen. People who excel tend to become masters at tapping into their own most resourceful parts. They don’t wait for the state to “naturally” appear, they access, elicit, amplify and anchor their resourceful states. This makes them less and less dependent on, and determined by, the winds of fate that blow their way. They aren’t so much at the mercy of whatever comes their way.
8.6.0.13 Exercise
Practice identifying an enhancing state of excellence in groups of 3. Person “B” states a resource they do not yet have, but would like to have (e.g. confidence, poise, self-worth, enthusiasm, love, energy, etc.).
Persons “A” & “C” elicit, access, and amplify this enhancing state in terms of internal representations. As “B” fully accesses the state that expresses this belief, have them adopt its physiology. “Sit or stand or hold yourself in such a way that it expresses a physiology of excellence in a way that seems congruent, believable and attractive for you.”
8.7 The Skill Of Elicitation
8.7.0.14 How to Elicit and Work With Subjective
States
One of the most crucial NLP skills consists of the ability to do effective elicitation. This skill enables you to discover the structure of subjective experiences wherever you find them in yourself and others. The skill of eliciting also enables you to learn how to effectively transform experiences. It plays a crucial role for effective communicating, persuading, motivating, etc.
Move to an up time state. Get all of your sense receptors open to inputting sights, sounds, sensations, etc.
Assist the person in accessing the state. This becomes important in order to elicit good clean information about a person’s experience. The person needs to get into the state. “Think about a time when you were honestly and completely confident (honest, forthright, in love, etc.).” Eliciting the structure of almost any experience without that person being in state reduces your ability to explore effectively the state they are experiencing. That removes it one level from the thing itself and will give you more of the person’s theory about it rather than the experience itself.
Elicit as pure a state, or experience, as possible. If you ask for a “strong belief,” pick something that the person doesn’t have laden with emotionally significant issues, like, “I’m a worthwhile person.” Pick, “I believe the sun will rise tomorrow.” “I believe in the importance of breathing.” The mental processes involve the same kind of thing, but the less emotionally laden content will give you “cleaner” information.
The User's Manual for the Brain Volume I Page 17