NLP

by Tom Hoobyar

  All and each of us operate this way, and yet each of us is distinctively different in the exact thought patterns we have created as a result of our sensory-based thinking. We all live inside our self-created minds. Our unique reality is a result of our individual biology and the influence of our individual, mostly random personal history. Understanding that we all live in and operate from a personal model of reality is the key to making our lives better serve us.

  By understanding this, you can truly understand yourself and other people, how you and they do the sometimes strange and sometimes pleasing things people do. You can figure out how to give yourself more of what you do want and less of what you don’t.

  Most important, you’re going to find out how to assess what you really want and how to know that it’s really right for you. In this book, you’ll be introduced to processes you can easily put to use right away to give you relief from what you don’t want and more satisfaction with what you do.

  An inner picture or sound can truly be a resource. Rather than just talk about how this is true, let’s play with this concept by doing a process together. Having a little experience with this concept now will give you an understanding of how valuable this book can be for you. The approach you’re going to learn is especially useful anytime you want to have a greater sense of comfort and ease when you are doing something you need to do.

  A Taste of NLP: A Firsthand Experience

  In this first activity, Accessing Personal Resources, I’m going to ask you to remember a time when you had a strong sense of ease and flow in your work. Think of a vibrant memory, one that you will enjoy reliving. Choose a time when everything just seemed to move easily and you were really able to do what you wanted to accomplish. By vividly remembering that time, you’ll be drawing upon your personal resources and past experience. Then I’ll show you how to create a special memory trigger, so you can have that feeling again whenever you want or need to.

  What could you accomplish if you could easily step into that sense of focus on your work, free from distractions, so everything flowed smoothly and almost effortlessly? What other positive feelings would you want to reexperience if you could simply transfer them from the time they actually happened in your life to where you really want to have them again? The “Circle of Excellence” process will do just that. This process is adapted from the popular book NLP: The New Technology of Achievement.

  Discovery Activity:

  Accessing Personal Resources

  Ready? Let other thoughts about the day move into the background as you focus on this activity. First of all, this is a real contrast to the way you probably do most of your thinking. In these Discovery Activities, the only way to go fast is to go slow, to start. You want to really s-l-o-w d-o-w-n your thoughts as you follow the instructions, especially the first few times. This will make it much easier and more successful for you as you do these processes. So take a breath, relax, give yourself some time, and enjoy.

  Now go back in your memory to a time in your work when you were really experiencing a sense of excellence, a sense of easy flow, a sense of accomplishment. Relive that experience—seeing what you saw, hearing what you heard, feeling what you felt.

  As you feel that sense of flow building within you, imagine there’s a circle on the floor, like a spotlight, right in front of your feet. Notice how it’s big enough that if you were to step into it right now, your feet and your whole self would easily fit inside it. What color is the circle of light? If you want to, you can change the color and make it more blue, golden, or even sparkly.

  Listen carefully for a moment; is there a sound that goes with your circle? Maybe it has a soft, steady hum that echoes the powerful energy of the moment. Maybe you hear a song or applause. What do you notice?

  As you recall this experience and imagine the colored circle and this sound, what feelings are you aware of? Maybe you feel kind of tingly or your posture is more erect. Perhaps you have a feeling of confidence or pride. What feelings do you notice now?

  Once you’ve really relived that feeling of excellence, that feeling of ease and flow at its fullest, step into that circle, bringing everything you see, hear, and feel into the circle.

  In a moment, you’re going to step out of that circle and leave all those feelings inside it, knowing you can come back to them whenever you want to. This is an unusual request, and you can do it. Do this now, just step out of the circle, leaving all those mental pictures, sounds, and feelings inside it.

  Now, as you are standing outside the circle, think of a specific time in your future when you want to have that same feeling of excellence, that same focus, ease, and flow. Take a moment to see, hear, and feel what might be happening in that upcoming situation—what happens just before you want to reexperience your feelings of excellence. Perhaps you see your desk. Maybe you hear a voice introducing you as the speaker at an event. Maybe you feel excitement about what’s going to happen. Whatever comes up for you, just notice that now.

  As these cues are coming up in your mind, step back into your circle and relive those feelings of excellence, focus, easy flow. Notice, as you imagine that future situation unfolding, how these feelings of flow and easy confidence are fully available to you—that you can easily access those same powerful feelings of excellence, focus, and flow.

  Now step out of the circle again, leaving those powerful feelings in the circle. Once you’re outside the circle, take a moment and think about that upcoming event. You’ll find you automatically recall those feelings of confidence and flow, that sense of ease. This means you’ve already reoriented yourself for that upcoming event. You’re feeling better about it and it hasn’t even completely happened yet. When it does arrive, you’ll find yourself naturally responding with more focus and confidence—you’ll have that sense of easy flow.

  Whenever I experiment with a new approach, I know the first time is likely to be less than perfect—simply because I’ve never done it before. You know the old saying, “Anything worth doing, is worth doing poorly to start”? That’s especially true when making personal changes. If, after doing the activity, you were only partly successful, just do it again, paying close attention to each step, because the sequence and timing are important.

  When you apply NLP concepts and techniques, you’re taking the initiative. You are deciding for yourself how you want to react to the events in your life. In this activity, you took the feelings of ease, flow, and confidence from a past experience and attached them to a future situation that you might have felt uneasy about. This is a process you can do for as many different future events as you want, with as many different kinds of feelings as you want.

  If you’ve ever experienced a resource, even if it was only for a second, that means you have access to it forever! Using the “Circle of Excellence,” you can choose to use your resources any way you want—whenever you want. In any situation, you can choose how you want to feel and how you want to respond. You can choose to live your life on purpose, by choice. You really do have all the resources you could want or need. Isn’t that great?

  You First: Understanding How You Work

  Now that you’ve had a little taste of NLP, I sincerely hope you’re hungry for more. So let’s get started.

  All humans have pretty much the same wiring in their central nervous systems. Because we’re born with the same wiring, we learn many of the same things in the same way. We may all be concerned with similar things, and yet we don’t all think the same way. In fact, each one of us thinks in a slightly different way from any other human who has ever lived, or ever will live. Each of us is as unique as a snowflake or a fingerprint.

  In this chapter, you’ll learn how humans think, and you’ll learn how to discover your personal thought processes. Most important, you’ll start learning how to change your thought processes to get you more of what you do want in life. As you go through the first section of the book, you’ll learn how to apply this knowledge to yourself. The second section focuses
on how to use these understandings and processes with others.

  You might be wondering, “Why should I care how I think?” Here’s why. Most of us go through our lives getting used to small discomforts, as well as emotional and mental limits. We say, “I’ve never been good at numbers,” or “I just don’t have a green thumb.” These thoughts are no problem, unless you have a reason to want to become good at numbers or at gardening.

  But what if it’s more serious?

  Suppose you’re just not able to handle necessary confrontations with a coworker or a family member. Everyone needs to be able to set and protect his or her boundaries. That’s how we create our personal feelings of safety and get other people to respect our choices.

  What if you “just can’t get anything done on time.” Or you’re not able to keep your poise when speaking in front of an audience. Or you’d like to change your health by stopping some old habits and building better ones. Or some other behavior that you’d like to change, but haven’t succeeded at doing so.

  The thing is, we can all be more of who we want to be. But most of us just give up after a few decades of life, and accept that “we are who we are and that we can’t change.” Not true!

  It’s just that until recently, people didn’t have the right tools for personal change.

  When you discover your personal thinking patterns, you can “get under the hood” of your vehicle and change old unwanted habits. You can choose new ways to behave in situations that make you uncomfortable. You will discover new skills and become easier to be around. Essentially, you will become able to redesign yourself. Many of my coaching clients have done just that. So have I, and so can you, if you want to.

  You can change whatever you want to change. And, if you later decide the change isn’t desirable, you can put things back the way they were, or choose a new way. So come along with me, and allow me to guide you on an exploration of your personal thought processes.

  Most of us experience our feelings like we experience weather. “Oh, I’m having a bad day . . . Oh, so-and-so made me mad . . . Ah, I don’t know, I’m just off today . . . I just can’t get it.” It’s kind of like being caught out in the rain without an umbrella, isn’t it? You’re at the mercy of whatever come along, or you try to suck it up and be a good soldier. Maybe you tell yourself, “Don’t be a crybaby. Push through anyway.” That’s the hard way; that’s like trying to open a door using the wrong end of the key.

  An easier way to do it would be to understand how those feelings were created in the first place. If you’d like to know, I’ll tell you.

  “Ouch” or “Yahoo”: How We Create Our Feelings

  Here’s how feelings are created. The first thing that happens is that you get some kind of external stimuli. For example, when you woke up this morning, the first thing you had was your inner commentary. That was just you, right? But then, you began meeting the world—a whistling coffeepot, a crying kid, a dog that needs to be let out, the newspaper in the front door, the TV on. Whatever your world consists of, you had that stimulation coming into your brain.

  As soon as sensory input comes into your brain, it’s interpreted. You assign a meaning to it. This is really important because this happens so fast you aren’t even aware of it. The interesting thing is that as soon as a meaning is assigned, you have an emotion. You create a feeling about it.

  You might think, “It’s going to be a crappy day . . . There’s gonna be traffic . . . It’s smoggy . . . I hate politics . . . The economy’s down . . . We ran out of coffee . . . Doesn’t anybody else take care of the damn dog?” Sound familiar? Or, if you’re as lucky as I am to be happily married, it might even be “Good morning, sweetie. What’s on your docket for the day?” Bottom line? There’s one thing or another going on in your mind.

  Whatever the stimulus is that’s coming in, you assign a meaning to it, you have an emotion, and it’s those emotions that generate your reaction. That’s the way it happens for most people. As you begin to understand that your emotions come from the meaning you make of some thought or some external input, you can go back to that thought, “unpack it,” and change it. This is where the ability to slow down your thoughts will actually allow you to think more effectively, and to choose better responses.

  So, stimulus to meaning . . . meaning to emotion . . . emotion to action. This whole cycle happens in an instant. It happens millions of times every day, and almost always without our awareness.

  Remember, the tricky part is that we’re usually only aware of the first stimulus and then the emotion; the meaning is typically out of our awareness.

  Try on the following statements: “I feel great when I’m around you.” “He made me mad.” “That customer ruined my whole day.” Despite how these emotions are stated, the real author of our feelings is NOT that other person. The real author of our feelings is the meaning we make out of whatever caught our attention.

  Autopilot: The Mind’s Three Favorite Options

  There’s another really important thing that happens in the mind: it does certain things automatically—and without our awareness. It generalizes, deletes, and distorts information. Let’s explore a few examples.

  GENERALIZATION

  Generalization is noticing how an experience is similar to other experiences. It’s a natural process. We perceive people, things, and events by noticing aspects of the experience that are like previous experiences. There are many kinds of doors, right? Revolving doors, automatic doors, sliding doors, screen doors, the list goes on, doesn’t it? But, they’re all doors. An upscale restaurant may have nicer ambience, a specialized menu, more attentive service, and higher prices than a family-style restaurant, but they both have food, tables, and servers—so they’re both restaurants. And, of course, certain people remind us of other people. Experiences remind us of other experiences. This is how our brain generalizes. We experience a new thing or skill consciously a few times and after that we delegate it. We do this all the time.

  Even though generalization is useful and efficient, it can also get us into trouble. For example, someone who reminds us of a friend may well be a very different kind of person. A pepper in your food may look like a mild pepper you’ve had before, but in fact be a very spicy pepper. Something that looks familiar, a generalization, can lead to incorrect conclusions or ineffective actions.

  Generalizations can also contribute to limiting beliefs. For example, all people with green eyes are sexy or tall people wearing big boots are threatening. Such generalizations submerge and become beliefs. And those beliefs then start to run your life. Actually, beliefs are so strong that when you have a belief, it starts to alter what you perceive. Now all these external stimuli coming in have to get through these belief filters. Your mind doesn’t really get the raw information. It doesn’t get to choose anymore.

  Rather than getting the actual sound waves coming in, your brain just gets what it hears. And hearing, like seeing, takes place in the brain, not the eyes or the ears. The eyes and the ears are just channeling in vibrations, essentially electromagnetic waves. It’s just raw data coming in, but your mind is filtering that raw data and saying, “Is it dangerous? Is it safe? Is this interesting? Is this significant?”

  Your mind is filtering your experience to allow you to survive; so this is a good thing. It’s just that you might want a little more flexibility in this area. That’s one thing you’ll get as you explore the different Discovery Activities in this book—because the more choices you have, the better off you are. Of course, to create, examine, and make different choices, you have to use your brain, which means not living on autopilot. That becomes a problem when beliefs that were formed when you were a kid (knowing only what you knew then) are still making your choices. Those old beliefs have largely chosen your work, your politics, your mate, and your lunch.

  As you explore your beliefs and start modifying them using the approaches in this book, you will be able to have more choices available to you in the future, and that is a
very good thing. But, I digress.

  DELETION

  What’s deletion? Deletion is dropping away aspects of an experience. Deletion is natural. When we perceive or remember someone or something, we often leave out the background, other people and so on. That’s deletion. When we focus intensely on something and everything else disappears, that’s deletion. When we can’t remember something, that’s another form of deletion. When used effectively, deletion helps remove the noise, distractions, and minutia of life, so we can concentrate on what’s important.

  Here’s a “deletion” experience you might be having right now. You’re probably focused on reading these words, thinking about what they mean, arguing with the ideas, or taking notes. What you’re ignoring perhaps is the feeling of your body sitting wherever you’re sitting, on a hard chair, a comfortable couch, or a cramped bus seat. You may not be paying attention to your body, your environment, or what time it is. You may not be paying attention to the way your feet feel at the moment. When I mention it, maybe you notice them, but not until then.

  Another example is when you’re looking for someone in a crowd, you’re focusing on specific things and you’re deleting the background. You might scan a group of people searching only for a certain thing—the color of a sweater, the shape of a hat, or long blond hair—everything else in the picture is just background; you’ve deleted the other elements.

  DISTORTION

  Distortion is changing an experience from what it actually is to some modified form of what it is. (Let’s put aside whether you can really know what something is and just explore distortion further.) Distortion, too, is natural. We perceive and remember people, things, and events based on aspects of the experience: the typical dog, the ideal friend, the worst vacation, and so on. This is a distortion. It’s a bit of the experience, but we have dropped out a whole lot of details and filled in the rest with imagination.