Change Your Beliefs And Change Your Life

It's been around since the sixties, and is used daily as a therapist tool to get rid of unwanted behaviours, fears, phobias and beliefs. What is it?

It's called NLP, which stands for Neuro Linguistic Programming, which sounds a mouthful, but basically means re-programming the mind to think differently.

It is often said that it will take several weeks to learn or unlearn a habit. Well, if you believe that, that is just how long it will take. However, if you really believe, for example, that you can stop smoking straight away, then that is what will happen too.

If you discover a cheaper loaf of bread that actually tastes better that your usual one how long would it be before you changed that old habit? Would you continue to buy the more expensive one for a few more times, before you changed to the new one? I don't think so.

You can change your beliefs very quickly with some simple NLP techniques, as I will now show you.

Whenever you think of anything, it will normally be represented internally as a picture or video, which will have any number of seeing, hearing or feeling experiences attached to it.

The trick to understanding how your mind 'sees' a particular thought, belief, phobia, etc is to analyse exactly how your mind represents it to you.

Let's take a particular thought and follow it through the process.

What about confidence?

Think of a time when you felt really confident. Have a particular event in mind.

Now examine how that is represented internally for you, by answering the following questions.

SEEING :-

Is it one image in your mind or several?
(confusion or indecision could be represented by a number of images)
Is it a still picture, or is it a moving image?
Is it colour or black & white?
Is it bright or dim?
Is it focussed or blurred?
Is it framed or panoramic?
If framed, then is it circular, square, rectangular ..?
Are associated or disassociated from it?
(associated means that you are seeing it through your eyes, or feeling it inside you)
Where is the image? Close/Distant Left/Right ...
Is it a 2D or 3D image?

HEARING :-

What sounds are there?
What's the volume?
From what direction?
Is it harmonious?
Is it fast or slow?
Is it rythmic?

FEELING :-

What is the feeling?
Where is it located in your body?
What's your breathing rate?
What's your pulse rate?
What is the temperature of your skin?

Examine each image, sound and feeling that relate to the event you've chosen.

Take your time to really understand your internal representation of this event.

This technique really comes into its own when comparing two situations together, e.g. if you felt really down and wanted to feel motivated to do something, then think of the two situations i.e. a scene representing your depression, and also another scene representing a time when you felt really motivated. Then, run through the above analysis for both and work out where the differences are.

If, for example, your depressed mood was a still scene in dim light and your motivation scene was a moving image in bright light, then apply these properties, in your mind, to the depressed mood scene. That could be the trick that flips the mood in your mind. If not, look for other differences ...

Let's start with a possible current belief, for example,
"I am destined to always struggle financially"
to a new belief, for example,
"I am becoming more and more wealthy".

The steps to change your mindset from the current belief to the second one are detailed below. It is important not to just remove the current belief without installing a new one, as your mind will want to fill the void left with something similar to the old belief.

STEP 1 :- Examine The Current Belief
"I am destined to always struggle financially"
Use the technique presented above to see how your mind 'sees' this.

STEP 2 :- Open The Old Belief To Doubt
Think of a time when you were doubtful, for example,
you were unsure of who that famous person was on TV.
Check how your mind 'sees; this, using the technique above.
Now, also compare this with step 1 results, and find out what difference there is that causes this to be doubtful, and merge the 'doubtful' properties into the current belief scene until that belief seems 'doubtful'.

STEP 3 :- Get Rid Of The Current Belief
Take the current belief scene merged with the doubtful properties, make it much smaller - in fact into the shape of a small ball, then imagine taking that ball to a far-away place, throwing it on to a fire and watching it explode into tiny fragments that go up, up and away.

STEP 4 :- Install The New Belief
"I am becoming more and more wealthy"
Examine the submodalities of this (that's the NLP technical term for the process described above).

STEP 5 :- Become Open To Believing This
Think of a time when you was expecting something to happen that was highly likely, for example, that it will rain tomorrow (which is highy likely here in England at present).
Examine the submodalities, and compare them with the ones you found in step 4.
Then take the differences that you found and merge them into the scene you created at step 4, to create a new imaginary scene in your mind.

STEP 6 :- Make The New Belief A Certainty
The last step is to consolidate the new belief. This is done by again thinking of another event - this time in the near future - something that is absolutely certain to happen, something that you have absolutely no doubt about. Of course, something could happen to change it, but your current thinking is that there is no doubt at all.

Let's say that you are certain that you will meet a particular person tomorrow.
Examine the submodalities of this, and compare it with the image created at step 6, and merge the differences into it again.

That now has created your new belief and anchored it into your subconscious.

This is one of those techniques that seems to be a lot more complicated writing it down than it is in reality. I have performed this process on my clients many times with great success. It gets much easier with practice.

Of course that is a therapist doing it on a client, but it works just as well doing it on yourself. Or perhaps you want to help someone else.

The most essential part of the process is to 'see' the images in your mind. Now, that does not mean entering an altered state and actually 'seeing' the images, it is just a process of imagining them as vividly as possible,

As an example, just create an image of your front door in your mind and 'see' as much detail as you can. Don't get hung up on 'seeing' it - imagining it is the key.

If you do not understand any of it, or would like some more information, or would like to give me a report on how it worked for you, then I would be very pleased to hear it, by submitting a comment below.