Comprehensive Guide to NLP
Updated: Mar 12, 2021
INTRO Increase your success and happiness.
NLP transformed is the Art of communication & changed our own lives.
(NLP) is one of the most sophisticated and effective methodologies currently available to help you communicate effectively.
NLP:
is about understanding what it is to be human – how people do what they do
takes you from being stuck in a problem to achieving outcomes
is about how people think and behave
techniques can help you through difficult times
offers a means for you to learn, grow, and develop yourself
helps people to stay centred and focused on their core values and self-awareness, and so remain in tune with their health
The NLP toolkit offers a collection of models and exercises, as well as encouraging an inquisitive mindset,
Neuro relates to what’s happening in your mind. Neurological
Linguistic words and body language. Way you use language
Programming Patterns of behaviour. Your personal programming
NLP as ‘the study of the structure of subjective experience’; or;
Divide this book into seven parts
Intro - best NLP question of all, which is ‘What do I want?’,
Winning friends and influencing people - what if others just did what you wanted them to do? We can make your worst enemies smooth putty in your hands – but rapport is such a key theme in NLP
Opening the toolkit – manage thinking, difficult situations & changing habits
Using words to entrance - language you use doesn’t just describe an experience, but has the power to create it.
Integrate your learning – Apply!
Part of 10s – the meaty stuff
Appendix – further reading
PART 1
Chapter 1
Getting to know NLP
It all started with some smart people in California
Into what’s happening in your brain and unconscious thinking,
Sufi story: A man being followed by a hungry tiger, turned in desperation to face it and cried: ‘Why don’t you leave me alone?’ The tiger answered: ‘Why don’t you stop being so appetising?’
In any communication between two people, or in this case between human and beast, more than one perspective always exists.
INTRODUCING NLP
All able-bodied humans are born with the same basic neurological system.
Your neurological system transmits the information you receive from your environment through your senses to your brain.
Your ability to do anything in life – depends on how you respond to the stimuli on your nervous system.
Begin to notice how you think
You may think that words only describe meanings, but in fact they create your reality
Formal definition is that NLP is ‘the study of the structure of our subjective experience’.
Art and science of communication
Understand what makes you tick
Getting results
Influencing
Milton H Erickson, Bandler, Grinder, Fritz Perls, Varginia Satir
When you head for win/win, you’re on track for success.
Pillars of NLP
Rapport: Mirror and empathy
Sensory awareness: Like the famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, you begin to notice that your world is so much richer when you pay attention to all your senses.
Outcome thinking: to beginning to think about what you want
Behavioural flexibility: This
You need to bring out all your skills in building rapport with the customer service manager before anyone listens to your complaint.
You need to engage your senses – particularly your ears as you listen carefully
Notice how to control your feelings and decide on your best response.
You need to be very clear about your desired outcome –you may need to be flexible in your behaviour and consider different options if you don’t achieve what you want the first time.
Discovering Models and Modelling
Modelling is at the heart of NLP
The NLP premise begins as follows: if you can find someone who’s good at something, you can then model how that person does that thing and learn from them.
How you process the information that comes at you from the outside. According to NLP, you move through life not by responding to the world around you, but by responding to your model or map of that world.
This insight means that you and another person may experience the same event and yet do so differently.
It simply helps you change the way that you observe/perceive your world.
This perspective is empowering,
Using NLP to Greater Effect
Attitude comes first
At its essence NLP brings a positive attitude about life and possibilities rather than dwelling on problems.
people looking at the negatives
By conditioning yourself to concentrate on what you do want, positive results can be achieved very quickly.
curiosity – accepting that enlightenment is always preceded by confusion. ‘you don’t know all the answers – and a willingness to be confused
Changing is up to you. It’s about trying things out, having a go. Test out the ideas for yourself – don’t take our word for it.
NLP involves much fun and laughter.
CHAPTER 2 BASIC ASSUMPTIONS
learning is serious work that’s serious fun
‘The person with the most flexibility in a system influences the system’.
convenient beliefs – which form the basis of NLP
The map is not the terrority
Referring to the fact that you experience the world through your senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste – The terrority
You then take this external phenomenon and make an internal representation (IR) of it within your brain – the map
If you ask a botanist what Belladonna means, they may give you the Latin name for the plant and describe the flowers and slight scent while making a picture of the plant in their head. Whereas a homoeopath may explain its uses in treating certain symptoms and see a picture of a patient they treated. If you ask a murder-mystery writer about Belladonna, they may say that it’s a poison.
This external phenomenon and make an internal representation (IR) of it within your brain – the map.
Your senses bombard you with millions of different bits of information every second,
As a result, an awful lot of information is filtered out.
This filtration process is influenced by your values and beliefs memories, decisions, experiences, and your cultural and social background, to allow in only what your filters are tuned to receive.
Each of you write a short description of what you observe: for example, the view from a window Notice that people’s descriptions are individually tailored by their own life experiences
To make communication easier, a really useful exercise is to at least attempt to understand the IR or map of the person with whom you’re communicating.
Man had declined, quite rudely, to fill in the form. Romilla asked the ladies whether they had considered how the poor man may have felt if he was illiterate, and that perhaps he was rude because he was embarrassed.
Able to let go of all the negative feelings.
Count all the blessings in your life
Examples of your own good fortune rattling around in your brain, put on your most generous hat.
Ask yourself what may be going on in this other person’s world that would warrant the behaviour.
You may find that not only are you happier with your lot, but also you accept people and their idiosyncrasies with greater ease.
People respond according to their map of the world
There is no failure, only feedback
Between allowing yourself to be waylaid by your undesirable results or taking on-board the lessons that present themselves, dusting yourself off, and having another shot at jumping the hurdle.
Do not be afraid of failure.
Failure is one of the most powerful tools to learning;
Feedback result or outcome you may get from a particular situation.
Edison’s genius lay in trying out his ideas, learning from unexpected results,
Edison simply saw each trial as yet another way of discovering how not to make a light bulb.
Think of something you ‘failed’
What am I aiming to achieve?
What have I achieved so far?
What feedback have I had?
What lessons have I learned?
How can I put the lessons to positive use?
How am I going to measure my success?
Then pick yourself up and have another go
What would happen if a builder started by slapping bricks on one another without a plan?
Positive feedback works brilliantly
Patricia’s teacher found another way to reach her.
Verbal = 7%
Tonality = 38%
Physiology = 55%
The circle of excellence exercise asked Tom to imagine that he was Arnald Schwarzer
She realised that it was her way of getting the love and attention she had craved from her mother but never received.
That her own mother’s behaviour was based on her mother’s problems and weren’t Janet’s fault
When you identify the concealed positive intention that’s causing a person to behave in a particular unresourceful way, you can increase your flexibility and thereby your ability to communicate effectively with that person. You can then help to change the unwanted behaviour by satisfying the intention of the behaviour in a more positive way.
He would spread himself out. He sprawled in his chair, which meant it was pushed out away from his desk and people in the corner had to squeeze past. He was loud, made demands on everyone around him, and was extremely unpleasant to his secretary.
An office gossip revealed that poor Patrick’s behaviour was the product of a domineering mother and even more masterful wife. Unfortunately, his need for acceptance, and
By showing him a degree of acceptance, they were able to satisfy his needs a little and mellow his behaviour
People can behave badly when they don’t have the inner resources or ability to behave differently in that instance.
Helping people to develop capabilities and skills, or move to a more conducive environment, can often change their behaviour dramatically and propel them to new levels of excellence.
People have several levels at which they function: Identity, Values and beliefs, Capability & skills, Behaviour, environment
When Bob was helped to change his beliefs about his capabilities, however, he became a very valuable contributor to society by working for an animal charity.
Move into an environment where he felt valuable.
The mind and body are interlinked and
Modelling successful people leads to excellence
Practice the tests in this book until they become second nature
Pick one for each day
CHAPTER 3 – WHO’S DIRECTING YOUR LIFE
Breathing goes to show the huge influence that your unconscious mind has on the running of your body, outside of your conscious awareness.
Here we get to meet out unconscious mind
How to use your brain to get your goals easily
Learn about your values which are the buttons that motivate you
Taking charge or your emotions, memories and the way you respond to people
The conscious mind can be compared with the tip of an iceberg and the unconscious mind with the nine-tenths of the iceberg that’s submerged underwater
Conscious mind is logical and on the left side
Unconscious relates to right brain and is creative
Meditating develops both sides
Your unconscious can’t process negatives: it interprets everything you think as a positive thought. So if you think, ‘I don’t want to be poor,’ your unconscious mind focuses on the ‘poor’ and, because it doesn’t do negatives
The focus becomes poor
That’s why stating your goals in the positive is so important. E.g. I want to be wealthy
Yogis liken the unconscious mind to a mischievous monkey, always leaping from tree to tree
Open up communication b/w conscious and unconscious mind by meditating and examining the memories presented to you by your unconscious
Part of the function of the unconscious mind is to repress memories with unresolved negative emotions.
‘Come back mummy, my tummy hurts.’ Diane realised that the stomach ache she used as a child as a ploy to get her mother to come back had been recreated by her unconscious
Another function of the unconscious mind is to present repressed memories for examination in order to release trapped emotions.
A terrorist can kill and destroy without qualms because his moral code teaches him that he’s a freedom fighter.
however, your unconscious mind decides that you deserve to be punished, you can be wracked with guilt and exhibit behaviours designed to punish yourself
Jane admitted to feeling that she manipulated men and discarded them when she felt they were looking for commitment.
When she was five years old and had ‘manipulated’ her father, who was verbally violent, into apologising to her.
Tracking information – Your RAS
With billions of pieces of data coming in through your five senses every second, you need a way to maintain your sanity
This filtering network is called the Reticular Activating System, or RAS
it works like an antenna, noticing stimuli and alerting your brain to pay attention.
RAS just lets in data which is:
Important to your survival
Has novelty value
Has high emotional content
Effectively the RAS operates on stimuli that are above its threshold of observation.
Mundane and daily routines slip below this threshold helping you to notice things that are relevant to your current goals
Examining How Memories Are Created
The traumatic event gets trapped within the amygdala and the hippocampus is unable to present the memory to the neocortex for evaluation, which means the brain can’t make sense of the event
PTSD sufferers it stays in a constant state of arousal, causing flashbacks and high levels of anxiety.
Phobias and PTSD are part of a group of anxiety disorders.
That a memory stays trapped in the amygdala
This process ensures that you examine an experience while you’re doubly dissociated from the memory, creating a separation between you (in the now) and the emotions of a trauma or a phobic response.
BELIEFS & VALUES Accepting That Beliefs and Values Make a Difference
Accept that values and beliefs make a difference
Your values and beliefs are unconscious filters that you use to decide what bits of data coming in through your senses you pay attention to and what bits of data you ignore.
Your beliefs can help you to health, wealth, and happiness or keep you unwell, poor, and miserable
Beliefs are the generalisations you make about your life experiences.
Generalisations save energy but can limit experience of options and differences, e.g. all women are a pain
You can use one empowering belief, for example, to help you to develop another belief to the next level of achievement.
Being bullied at school, you may have developed a belief that people, in general, aren’t pleasant
May make you behave quite aggressively towards people when you first meet them.
Limiting beliefs = such can’t, should, shouldn’t, could, couldn’t, would, ought, and ought not,
The really scary thought is that other people’s preconceptions can place false limitations on you, especially if the other people are teachers, bosses, family, or friends.
Teacher for one group was told that the students in the group were gifted,
The good news is that beliefs can and do change
When you think of a belief you make a picture have These qualities of your beliefs – visual (pictures), auditory (sound),and kinaesthetic (feelings) – are called modalities,
These can be fine tuned using submodalities: qualities such as brightness, size, and distance for pictures; loudness and tone for sounds; and pressure, heat, and location for feelings.
Values are the why you do something.
Beliefs direct your behaviour, which then helps you to fulfil a value –
Values are the ‘hot buttons’ that drive all your behaviours and are your unconscious motivators and demotivators
Each of these areas of your life, family, work, leisure, and so on has its own values hierarchy, with the most important value at the top
Values = Happiness, Love, Companionship, Togetherness, Friends, Family, Employment, Money, Success, Power,
Values can be ends values or means values,
Means values are those that need to be fulfilled in order to get you to your final,
ends value values can drive you towards pleasure or away from pain:
Love Guilt
Freedom Sadness
Health Loneliness
Happiness Anger
Wealth Poverty
Away from values can be can be released using techniques such as time-line therapy
Unconscious mind to release the trapped emotions.
Values are formed over 3 periods
Imprint, birth – 7
Modelling, 8 – 13. Core values formed around the age of 10
Socialisation, 14 – 21
Conflicting values = become thinner and enjoy food
DAYDREAMING YOUR FUTURE REALITY
Allowing your mind to wonder can be a powerful step in achieving your goals
Give yourself permission to dream and play
Imagine that you have all the influence, contacts and resources
Now, while still daydreaming, imagine floating out of your body and into the future, to a time when you may have achieved this goal.
Notice the pictures, sounds, and feelings, and manipulate them.
From the place in the future, turn and look back to now and let your unconscious mind notice what it needs to know about and help you do in order for you to achieve your goal.
Remember to notice what the first step would be!
When you’ve savoured the dream fully, come back and take that first step!
CHAPTER 4 BECOMING THE DRIVER OF YOUR LIFE
Taking Charge of Your Life
Put your seatbelt on and prepare to go for a drive
Taking control of your memories
Memories are recorded as pictures, sound and feelings
by adjusting the quality of how you see, hear, and experience them, you can enhance positive memories
you find out how to recall and manipulate a positive memory so that you can feel good, or even better, at will:
1. Recall a day when you felt really happy
2. Notice what you see, hear, and feel when you bring back the memory.
3. If the memory is a picture, adjust its quality by making it bigger, brighter, and bringing it closer.
4. Take note of any sounds in the memory.
5. Examine any feelings you have.
second exercise shows you how to change the qualities of an unpleasant memory and distance yourself from it.
Recall a memory that’s only marginally unpleasant.
Notice the pictures, sounds, and any feelings that the memory brings up.
3. If you’re in the picture, step out of it to become an observer
Change any sounds so that they’re softer, or perhaps make people in the picture speak in ridiculous voices.
Adjust the quality of the picture.
You See It Because You Believe It
Her supervisor, along with the departmental secretary, ganged up on Mary, being very unpleasant and extremely petty.
that the supervisor was a very lonely woman who had no friends and was very unpopular at work
she imagined that the supervisor was holding a placard saying: ‘I feel I’m worthless and unlovable
Replaced fear with compassion. She realised that her own self-esteem needed a prop and began standing her ground – she discovered how to challenge her colleagues whenever they were unpleasant to her.
‘I can’t get my leaking roof fixed because I don’t have the money,’ you put yourself in a problem frame.
‘I don’t have the money because my louse of an ex hasn’t paid me my settlement’ – is putting yourself in a blame frame.
By reframing the experience, however, you think differently and can break out of constraining thought patterns.
you need to step away from the problem frame and take actions to secure what you want
you tend to look backwards when something goes wrong in order to analyse what didn’t work
One of the nasty side-effects of this tendency is to lay blame.
A more constructive approach is to ask what you hoped to achieve by doing something, or what your purpose was behind doing something.
outcome-frame process, = ‘Becoming smarter than SMART
Outcome frame is a different way of thinking about your problems and issues,
Keep asking yourself, ‘What’s the lesson that I need to learn so that this problem is no longer an issue?’
The Path to Excellence
you need to use all your ingenuity to direct your brain towards helping you to achieve your goals. If you can create a compelling, irresistible future, your brain helps to align your behaviour in a way that moves you towards your desired outcome quickly and easily. The first step is working out what you want.
4 POINT FORMULA FOR SUCCESS
Know what you want
Write your own obituary
Your unconscious mind is a wonderful ally in assisting you to achieve the goals you want.
We discovered that she had lost her much loved grandfather as a very young child. The trauma of this particular event had gone very deep into Denise’s psyche, and her fear of loss had been driving her to end her relationships before she had to experience the pain of loss again. Because Denise was focusing, at a subconscious level, on what she didn’t want
Tell them that, despite all the odds and in keeping with your values, you did something spectacular?
Become smarter than smart by forming well-formed outcome
SMART model, goals need to be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timed
by adding sensory-specific information, which can help you modify your behaviour
NLP builds on the SMART approach by making you use all your senses to design a goal
Explore the how’s and whys to understand your true motives
1. Is the goal stated in the positive?
2. Is the goal self-initiated, maintained, and within my control?
3. Does the goal describe the evidence procedure? When do I know I’ve achieved my goal? What will I feel, see & hear?
4. Is the context of the goal clearly defined?
5. Does the goal identify the necessary resources? Acting as if you have the resources now helps you to recognise and shift any beliefs that may be holding you back. It
6. Have I evaluated whether the goal is ecological? The following questions are the laser-guided system that helps you lock on to the nub of your desires.
What is the real purpose why I want this?
What will I lose or gain if I get it?
What will happen if I get it?
What won’t happen if I get it?
What will happen if I don’t get it?
What won’t happen if I don’t get it?
7. Does the goal identify the first step I need to take?
Dwelling on the negative can damage your health
Focused their energy on defining the jobs they wanted and finding better employment. Instead, of not wanting to be there
Often, change isn’t of the dramatic breakthrough kind, but a drip, drip, drip effect – slowly getting what you want.
You must create a breakdown of an action plan, showing the steps to get you to your goal.
Four point formula for success
1. Know your outcome and precisely what you want
2. Take action.
3. Develop sensory awareness.
4. Maintain behavioural flexibility.
The person with the most flexibility of behaviour can control the interaction.’ Or more directly: ‘If it ain’t working, do something different.’
Spinning the Wheel of Life
Keeping a Dream Diary of Your Goals
Think of a goal as an appointment with a desired outcome and write it down.
Commit to actions to achieve them, and work on your plans every single day.
The RAS is a network of nerve cells that operates like a radar, directing your attention to what’s important to you.
Crucially, the act of writing down your goal switches on your RAS.
what you’re really doing is designing the future you want to live
Write down your goals and include the date by which you want to achieve them.
7. Break the goals down into monthly, weekly, and daily goals, and write them in your diary along with their dates.
8. Each night before you go to sleep (and this takes only a few minutes) look at your dreams and make a list of what you’re going to do the next day in order to meet your goals.
sense of gratitude, both for the opportunities you’ve had and the people you’ve met along the way who’ve enabled you to get to where you are.
UP and Ellie’s diary
Just Go for It
Janice was following her passion whereas the relative was deeply envious (a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else's possessions, qualities, or luck.) of her travel adventures
Operate from a position of believing that they have few or no options and project their fears and lack of confidence on to others.
Part II - Winning Friends and Influencing People
Winning friends and influencing people
Connect elegantly with all kinds of characters.
Graceful and stylish in appearance or manner.
Sensory Awareness (noticing more of the world around you and how you can engage with it, and); and Rapport:
value of hearing how people use words in different ways,
So you can see a situation from another point of view
And Master the skills of great communication
Chapter 5 Pushing the Communication Buttons
Meaning of the communication is the response it elicits.
general overview of how people’s filters affect the messages they receive
What you intend to communicate isn’t necessarily the message that the recipient understands.
Introducing the NLP Communication Model
communication model is based on cognitive psychology
when people behave in a certain way (their external behaviour), a chain reaction is set up within you (your internal response),
which in turn causes you to respond in some way (your external behaviour), which then creates a chain reaction within the other person (their internal response), and the cycle continues
The internal response is made up of an internal process (consisting of self-talk, pictures, and sounds) and an internal state (the feelings that are experienced).
So caught up in his emotions that all he can feel is bitter resentment welling up. He starts ranting
The internal process monologue such as, ‘He promised. I knew I shouldn’t expect anything from him.
External behaviour is ranting
Instead of exploding, he recognises his internal state and how that can affect his behaviour. So he takes a deep breath and asks Drew why the grass hasn’t been cut. Drew, expecting recriminations, gets defensive as he explains that the mower broke down. From past experience, Dan realises that Drew is likely to retreat into his shell and so he offers to show Drew how to mend the mower.
By changing the internal process, having disengaged his emotions, is able to proceed down the path that keeps communication channels open in order to achieve the desired outcome:
Dan has the flexibility to recognise Drew’s behaviour patterns and modify his own responses in order to get his outcome, thereby controlling the system.
Understanding the process of communication
1. They know what they want
2. There very good at noting the responses they get
3. Have the flexibility to modify their behaviour to get what they want
always manages to keep his cool and usually achieves his outcome even in the most difficult situations.
Does so by distancing himself from his emotions and keeping his focus on the result he wants. He also attempts to understand the other person’s point of view in order to arrive at a win–win result.
A person can hold seven, plus or minus two, bits of information;
The way in which the external stimuli of the world are converted into internal representations in your brain involves three fundamental processes: deletions, distortions, and generalisations
1. Deletions happen when you pay attention to some information coming in through your senses but are completely oblivious to other stimuli.
2. Distortion misinterpret information coming in through your senses and create meaning from a situation that’s not necessarily true:
A cynic may say that being in love is a form of distortion, where you go all starry-eyed behind your rose-tinted glasses (to mix metaphors), completely oblivious to the faults of your ‘perfect’ partner.
Perhaps you’re so keen to find your true love that you ignore aspects of the person’s behaviour that can ruin the relationship in the long term.
You can also distort the meaning of another person’s actions.
When Jacqui understood that Tom’s upbringing was responsible for his behaviour, she no longer reacted emotionally.
Generalisation: You make a generalisation when you transfer the conclusions you came to from one experience to other similar situations or
Useful as they help build a cognitive map of the world
Can be limiting as though. The beliefs you hold about your world are generalisations and you delete and distort to the best of your ability to hold them in place
When you feel confident about doing something, the chances are that you’re usually successful because you expect a positive result.
Very high chance exists that your experience goes on to reflect your beliefs.
all people delete, distort, and generalise differently
Meta Programs
Meta Programs are filters.
They are the way in which you reveal your patterns of behaviour through your language.
A useful way to think of how meta programs work is to imagine a sliding scale with a tendency towards one aspect or another at a certain time and in a particular setting
So, extroverts, please take care to tone things down when you meet people who aren’t as responsive as you are,
Here’s a tip: the answer to the question ‘Do you prefer company or being alone when you need to recharge your batteries?’ gives a very strong clue to a person’s tendencies.
You learn your values, almost by osmosis, from your parents and close family up to the age of 7
Then friends and peers
Values
Values are what motivate you to do something
But they can also work as breaks
Values are arranged in highrarchy Examples of values are health, wealth, happiness, honesty, friendships, job satisfaction, and so on
1. Happiness 2. Enriching lives 3. Being with my family 4. Freedom 5. Variety 6. Support network
These values were obtained by asking James ‘What’s important to you about your work?’dffd
5. For each value, can you identify how you may be making a deletion, a distortion, or a generalisation that’s stopping you from fulfilling a desire? This question’s the crucial one!
Beliefs
Beliefs are really powerful; they can propel you to the heights of success or drag you to the depths of failure
Henery ford whether you believe you can of believe you can’t your right
Choose your beliefs very carefully because they have a tendency to become self-fulfilling prophecies!
Attitudes
Your attitude is your way of thinking about a topic or perhaps a group of people: it tells others how you’re feeling or your state of mind
Your attitude is a filter of which you’re very conscious and is formed by a collection of values, beliefs, and opinions around a particular subject. Changing an attitude is challenging because your conscious mind is actively involved in building and holding on to attitudes.
You can get some awareness of other people’s attitudes from what they say and how they behave.
attitude is based on your values and beliefs, it affects your abilities by making you behave in certain ways.
ask them if they’d rather live out of a cardboard box and sleep in a doorway
Tell them to think of how good Friday afternoon will feel when the work is done.
If you hear someone backbiting another person, say something positive about the victim.
Tell the whiner that people who have a positive attitude to life are less stressed and live longer.
Memories
Your memories determine what you anticipate and how you behave and communicate with other people.
When memories get jumbled up, they bring along all the emotions of when they actually happened.
Your current experience invokes old memories and you find yourself responding to memories and emotions of the past rather than to the experience you’re currently having.
Decisions:
Your decisions are closely linked to your memories and affect all areas of your life.
Decisions can be limiting (limiting decisions) e.g I cant spell. If I go on a diet I l be hungry all the time
Many limiting decisions are made unconsciously
Giving Effective Communication a Try
Fortunately, you don’t have to be at the mercy of your unconscious mind.
Taking awareness of communication can be liberating and empowering
Engage your brain before your mouth: Think of the result you want
Speak and behave with that desired outcome in mind.
Tread softly: This gives power and power can corrupt
Allows you to work with generosity and kindness
Chapter 6 Seeing, Hearing, and Feeling Your Way to Better Communication
Sensory Awareness – Exploring the amazing power of your senses
Noticing through preferred language how people think differently
Spotting and deciphering people’s eye movement
Understand how people make meaning of the world and create their own reality through their senses
special creature with highly developed personal antennae.
mini learning machine with eyes and ears, and a sense of smell, taste, and touch
most distinctly human quality – the ability to experience an emotional connection with others.
you form mental maps of the world and get into habits of thinking and behaving during childhood
NLP encourages you to become curious about how you form these mental maps.
Leonardo da Vinci mused that the average human ‘looks without seeing, listens without hearing, touches without feeling, eats without tasting, moves without physical awareness, inhales without awareness of odour or fragrance, and talks without thinking.’
fine-tuning your incredible senses,
Getting to Grips with the Senses
how you think (the process), only what you think about (the content). However, the quality of your thinking determines the quality of your experience.
So the how is just as important, if not more important, than the what.
You begin to notice that you can control how you think about a person or situation.
Realise that not everybody thinks like you do
Filtering Reality:
As you experience reality, you selectively filter information from your environment in three broad ways, known in NLP as visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic, or VAK
VAKOG if you include the olfactory (smell) and gustatory (taste) aspects
one sense may dominate for you.
start to experiment with different ways of taking in information.
Listen to a cd vs watching a film vs listening to an audio book
Relax and let the words sink in naturally
People learn best when they are in a resourceful state
Where you are able to be open, curious to learn, and able to access all the resources to solve any problem
Resources may be internal e.g. willingness to learn
External = other peoples techniques
the different channels through which humans represent or code information internally using their senses are known as the representational systems, also called the modalities
The submodalities are the characteristics of each representational system, such as colour and brightness (visual), pitch and tone (auditory), and pressure and temperature (kinaesthetic).
Hear how other people are thinking:
people tend to have a preference for one modality over the others
60% of people are dominant visual
LISTENING TO THE WORLD OF WORDS
The representational systems refers to a whole complex system of activity that includes input, processing, storage, retrieval, and then output.
everyday language that you use provides clues to your preferred representational system
listen to the types of words that people use,
Build rapport through words
Begin by listening more carefully and identifying other people’s language preference
Obama and Attemborough use a lot of sensory specific words
dispute: 1. Bob sums up the situation in visual mode to Betty and auditory mode to Bill. The conversation goes something like:‘So, Betty, it looks like you have a clear picture of the situation (visual). And Bill, you’ve still got some important questions to talk through (auditory).’ (Heads nod in agreement.) 2. Then Bob shifts into the third system (kinaesthetic), which is neutral ground for both arguing parties.‘You both want to get this moving and off the agenda. So how about we all kick around the stumbling blocks for an hour in my office, reshape the problem, and finally put it to bed.’
Importance of the eyes
These movements are called eye-accessing cues
when people move their eyes in response to a question
pretty much guess whether they’re accessing pictures, sounds, or feelings
knowing, even without them uttering a word, which system they’re going to use and how you can talk to them in a way that makes them respond positively to you
Visual constructed – top right
Visual remembered top left
Visual blank stare ahead
Audotiary constructed Blank stare ahead
Audotory constructed center right
Audotory remembered – Center left
Audotory dialog Bottom left
Kinaesthetic – Bottom left
The illustration in Figure 6-1 is drawn as if you’re looking at someone else’s face and shows how you see their eyes move.
for example, if they’re moving up and to your right into the visual remembered position, your own eyes would be shifting up and to your left if you’re trying it out on yourself in a mirror.
become more attuned to how people may be thinking at different times.
When you know this information, you can select your words so that they listen to you.
the secret lies hidden in our micro-expressions.
Some 42 different muscles move in a person’s face to create thousands of different micro-expressions.
Ekman’s had spent thousands of hours meditating, and appeared to have the sensitivity to read other people’s emotions very accurately from their fleeting facial expressions.
1. Get your friend to think about something neutral so that you can check what their face looks like in a neutral state. Washing up or sock-sorting may be a pretty safe and mundane subject to suggest.2. State one instruction or question at a time from the Eye Movements Game sheet. As you do so, pay full attention to their eyes.3. Pencil in arrows on Figure 6-2 to record the direction in which your friend’s eyes move.
What does the Queen of England look like on TV? 2. What do you see when you wake up in the morning? 3. Picture a pink elephant 4. A circle fills a triangle; how many shapes are there?5. Remember the sound of a car horn.6. What are the first words you said today?7. Imagine Donald Duck saying your name and address.8. What do you say to yourself when you've made a silly mistake? 9. How hot do you like the water when you take a shower? 10. What is the sensation of crumbs of food in your bed?
Making the VAK system work for you
VAK dimensions (which we describe in the earlier section ‘Filtering reality’), life becomes more interesting.
Influencing a business meeting, training session, or presentation
Vary your presenting.
Aid the visuals to see information with pictures
The auditors to hear it loud and clear
The kinaesthetic to experience it with feelings
Think of what the goals look, sound, and feel like – speaking loudly, slowly and clearly for people in the back
Imagine all the fine details of future experience by putting up a movie screen
help them to explore what things may look like when the task is complete and the hard work done.
Increase the impact of written words by broadening vocabulary to cover all representational systems (senses)
Keep a pad by the phone and make a note of the kind of language they use – can you hear visual, auditory, or kinaesthetic language?
Focus on one sense a day
Chapter 7 – Creating Rapport
Getting people to listen to you
Handling difficult people
Say no
Increasing your options on how to respond
Gaining insights into other peoples experience
Rapport is a pillar and goes to the heart of NLP
The first rule of communication is to establish rapport before expecting anyone to listen to you.
True rapport is based on trust and integrity
encourage you to do so with people where it may prove valuable for you
Knowing Why Rapport Is Important
dictionary definition is ‘a sympathetic relationship or understanding’
when you experience a genuine sense of trust and respect with another person,
When you engage comfortably
When you know you are listening and being listened to
Rapport is the key to success and influence in both your personal and professional life, because
Ultimately, rapport preserves your time, money, and energy. What a great stress-free way to live!
1. Think of a person you have rapport with. What signals do you send, how do you create and maintain rapport?
2. Think of a person who you don’t have rapport with
3. What can you do with the 2nd person?
What’s important to the other person?
Good relationships take serious investment – time to build and nurture.
Simply that investing time in building the right relationships is just as worthwhile as getting the job done
Having Basic Techniques for Building Rapport
You can build rapport constantly through
the way you look, sound and behave
The skills you develop, The values you live by, Your beliefs, purpose in life and being true to your natural identity
Sharpen you rapport
Take a genuine interest in getting to know what’s important to other
Pick up on the key words,
Start to understand them
How does the person like to handle information, lots of details or the big picture?
Check how a person uses the representation systems (VAK) & use similar language
Breath in unison with the person by looking at their neck
Look out for someone’s overall intention
work on the assumption that people’s hearts lie in the right place.
Adopt a similar stance to another person in terms of your body language, gestures, voice tone, and speed of talking
7% is communicated through words
38% quality of voice (tonality)
55% through gestures, expression, and posture
the tone of your voice and body language has a strong impact
A large percentage of the perception of your sincerity comes not from what you say but how you say it, and how you show an appreciation
Matching and Mirroring:
have you noticed how two people look when a rapport exists between them?
Matching and mirroring is when you take on someone else’s style of behaviour and their skills, values, or beliefs in order to create rapport
Mismatching = totally out of sync with each other, just from their body posture and gestures.
Discovering how to say ‘no’ sometimes is one of the greatest skills for modern living, if you’re to protect yourself from being overloaded and then becoming sick with the stress
making himself seriously ill through overwork.
NLP suggests that you can also deliberately match and mirror someone to build rapport until it becomes natural
1. Body posture and gestures
Breathing rates
Rhythm of movement and energy levels
Tonality and speed of speech
Do so gradually in no-risk situations or with strangers you aren’t going to see again
Don’t be surprised though if it works and the strangers want to become your friends!
In order to lead people – to influence them with your point of view – remember to pace them first. This approach means really listening to them, fully acknowledging them, truly understanding where they’re coming from, and being patient about it.
To build rapport NLP advises you to pace, pace, and pace again before you lead.
The most effective leaders are those who pace the reality of their people’s experience first.
They listen, listen, and listen some more about what the customer’s needs are – what the person really wants
People resent being sold to
At its best, the virtual team spells freedom and flexibility of working practices, diversity, and a richness of skills: at its worst, it’s lonely, isolated, and ineffective.
People are being recruited more for soft skills – the ability to influence and negotiate –
develop rapport over the phone and in teleconferences
Building rapport in virtual communication
1. Introduce and welcome people with a roll call.
2. Work to a clear agenda. Set outcomes
3. Encourage the quieter individuals to take part; say, for example, ‘Mike, what are your thoughts on this?’
Discourage small talk
Speak more slowly and precisely than in face-to-face meetings.
Listen for the style of language
Get attention before making your point (otherwise the first part of the message gets lost). Begin with phrases along the lines of ‘I have something I’d like to mention here . . . it’s about
Use people’s names more than in face-to-face meetings.
Visualise the other person at the end of the phone
you may even like to have a photo of the person in front of you
Summarise and check your understanding of points and decisions continually.
Knowing How to Break Rapport and Why You May Want To
Breaking rapport such as dressing very differently, speaking in a different tone or at a different speed, adopting a different physical posture, or behaving quite differently from the other person.
Indeed she is a great listener, and patients loved her approach. However, in order to get through her case load during normal surgery hours, she had to discover how to limit the time with each patient
How you look and move physically: You can move physically away from someone, break eye contact
Raised eye brows say also and turning your back is even more powerful
How you sound and remember the power of silence
They stopped inviting him to meetings for fear he would dominate. His career progress suffered.
Do it with consideration
Grasping the power of ‘but’
NLP calls this verbal reframing
connective words such as ‘and’ or ‘but’ make listeners focus their attention in different ways
With the word ‘and’, people tend to recall what you said before and after it.
When you use the connection ‘even though’, the effect is to focus attention on the first statement
‘It is snowing today even though the weather men said it would be clear.’ By changing the order of words in a sentence, you can change people’s experience
‘but’ seems to naturally lead the conversation to a negative place and detract from the original good idea
Contrast, the word ‘and’ builds one good idea upon another.
Understanding other people’s point of view with perceptual positions
The first position is your own natural perspective
The second position is about shifting into someone else’s shoes
The third position involves taking an independent view
Get into the habit of mentally shifting your thinking into the second and third positions when you’re in conversation
The meta-mirror approach allows you to step back and see the problem you’re facing in a new light
Took him out for a beer, explained how dissatisfied I was feeling, and we agreed a tighter schedule of stages in the build where I would release money in smaller amounts as work was completed.
Although doing these exercises can seem very strange at first, do persist. When you move physically into a different space, considering the different perspectives is important. Simply by moving your body to another place in the room, you unlock the thinking of the previous position. You can also do these exercises by moving between different chairs.
Resistance is often cited as a lack of rapport. For example, somebody may resist your attempts to get to know them better by being stand-offish and excluding you from a conversation. Or,
Refine your rapport building skills by deliberately matching, mirroring and pacing the other person until they are willing to connect with you
because you have to examine your past to understand your defensive behaviour
Chapter 8: Understanding to be understood – Meta programmes
Meta programs are some of these unconscious filters that direct what you pay attention to, the way you process any information you receive, and how you then communicate it.
Dress, behave and speak like that person
Use their vocabulary
People use meta programs mostly unconsciously, when you match their meta programs, what you say has the added dimension of communicating with their unconscious mind simultaneously with their conscious mind.
Getting to Grips with Meta-Program Basics
People pick up their meta programmes through parents, teachers and culture
1 Proactive/reactive
2 Options/procedures
3 Toward/away from
4 Internal/external
5 Global/detail
6 Sameness/difference
7 Time perspective
Meta programs aren’t an either/or choice. aren’t a means to pigeonhole people; aren’t right or wrong
Myers–Briggs Type Indicator, which is one of the most widely used profiling tools today.
As George Bernard Shaw said, ‘Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.’
part of the modelling successful people e.g Richard Branson process requires that you understand and use his meta programs
1. Proactive vs Reactive
take charge and get things done. You find yourself upsetting some people, especially if they’re more reactive, because they liken you to a bulldozer
Reactive = fatalistic, You may need to be careful not to analyse yourself into a paralysis.
A proactive person is likely to have quicker movements, showing signs of impatience. These people are likely to hold themselves erect in a ‘shoulders back, chest out’ posture that’s ready to take on the world. A reactive person displays slower movements and may keep their head down and shoulders slouched.
To discover whether someone’s proactive or reactive, you can ask: ‘Do you find it easy to take action when you find yourself in a new situation, or do you need to study and understand what’s going on first?
2. Moving towards / away from (pain)
moves you towards pleasure or away from pain
Towards people are motivated by the promise of the carrot. Tell them about the benefits of improving revenue and receiving a bonus and watch their eyes light up. they’re excited by positive benefits
Away from people have a tendency to notice what can go wrong and are very useful to employ for maintaining production plants and aircrafts, managing crises, or conducting critical analysis. These people are motivated more by the stick than the carrot. You can motivate away from people by threats of job losses and the negative consequences
You can find out whether a person has a preference for moving towards or away from something by a series of questions,
Person A: ‘What’s important to you about your work?’ Person B: ‘I know I have security.’ Person A: ‘So what’s important to you about security?’ Person B: ‘I don’t have to worry about paying my bills.’ Person A: ‘And what’s important to you about paying your bills? ‘Person B: ‘It means I’m not in debt.’
Going to at least three levels of questions is useful because initially people may have a tendency to respond with something positive
In the example above, the initial answer is towards security, although subsequent answers reveal an away from preference.
When selling a product, research the customer’s language patterns
wants to buy the product in order to gain a benefit – such as buying a sports car in which they can have fun and feel the excitement of whizzing along with the sun roof down and the wind blowing through their hair – or to avoid a problem – for example, when buying a safe
Modify your language accordingly to save time and get results
You move away from or towards your values. If
person with more of a towards meta program uses words such as ‘accomplish’, ‘get’, ‘obtain’, ‘have’, ‘achieve’, ‘attain’, and ‘include’.
person who operates a more away from meta program uses words such as ‘avoid’, ‘remove’, ‘prevent’, ‘get rid of’, and ‘solution’.
3. Discovering Options / procedures
An options person, you enjoy trying out new ways of doing things. As a procedures person, you display a preference for following set methodologies.
Options person loves variety. They are good at starting something but not seeing things through
Heaven help you if you’re proposing to an options person!
Because options people worry about getting hemmed in, missing out on experiences, and so on.
Get options people to say ‘yes’ to you, you need to show them all the opportunities that open up for them if they do assent.
a procedures preference, you like to follow set rules and procedures,
You can find out which of the two preferences a person has in a given context by asking, ‘Why did you choose this job?’, ‘Why did you choose to come to this party?’, or ‘Why did you choose your particular car
Options people may give you a list of their values that were satisfied by choosing the job,
Procedures people launch into a story or list the steps that got them the job, how they got to the party,
mainly options meta program use words and phrases such as ‘play it by ear’, ‘bend the rules’, ‘possibilities’, ‘let’s play with this’, and ‘try this other ways’.
mainly at the procedures end of the scale using expressions such as ‘follow the steps’, ‘obey the rules’, ‘step by step’, and words like ‘first’, ‘second (and so on)’, and ‘finally
4. Internal vs External
If you trust your judgement when making decisions or knowing that you’ve done a good job, you operate at the internal end
If you need feedback from other people to know how well you’ve done, you probably have more of an external preference.
The crux of this meta program is whether the location for motivating yourself, judging your actions, and making decisions lies within you or with other people.
Children have an external frame of reference,
A similar transition can occur when you learn something new. You may have more of an external reference at first, needing other people to tell you how well you’re doing. Experience and knowledge can then shift the reference to internal.
People who tend towards the internal may do well as entrepreneurs, because they don’t have to wait for someone else to tell them what to do or how well they’re doing it.
Unless they explain the need for the outcomes they want in a job, internal employees may prove difficult to manage, particularly if your management style is to micro-manage. They want to do things their way and operate from their own standards. External people, on the other hand, are easier to manage as long as you understand that they do need direction and praise.
Find out by Unless they explain the need for the outcomes they want in a job, internal employees may prove difficult to manage, particularly if your management style is to micro-manage. They want to do things their way and operate from their own standards. External people, on the other hand, are easier to manage as long as you understand that they do need direction and praise.
an internal frame only you can be the judge, its entirely up to you, see for your self
External people will say the stats/studies show,
5. Going global or detailed
Some people find the big picture easy to see and others don’t
A person with a global preference breaks tasks into larger chunks than a detail person, a big-picture outline of what you’re about to be taught when you learn something new
When training other people, give an overview of the course before going on to talk about the specifics, to avoid losing the globally inclined people before you even get started.
To discover where on the scale between global and detail someone is, ask about a recently completed project. A detail person gives a step-by-step account,
as ‘overview’, ‘the big picture’, ‘in a nutshell’, ‘generally’, and ‘essentially’. A person at the detail end of the spectrum listens better to someone
using words such as ‘plan’, ‘precisely’, ‘schedule, ‘specifically’, ‘first’, ‘second’, ‘third’
6. Sameness / Sameness with difference / difference
Have a preference for sameness. Or, you may be someone who first notices the similarities in situations and becomes aware of the differences, in
Sameness have a head start in terms of rapport
rapport is all about matching someone else’s physiology and thinking –
For sameness with difference people change. In order to gain greater rapport with these people, try to emphasise things that are the same, followed by what’s different,
To uncover a person’s preferred meta program in a given context, ask about the relationship between their current job and a previous one
Sameness will respond there’s no difference
runs a sameness-with-difference meta program may respond, ‘I’m still writing programs for the accounting suite, but now I have the…….
The difference person may respond, ‘I’ve been promoted to supervise junior programmers and everything is different.’
7. Tackling Time Perspective
you have a propensity for focusing more on the past, present, or future
your focus on time – has a huge influence on your life: it affects the way you make decisions and the options that you think are available
Past pros appreciation of history, positive identity and foundation
Past cons – regret anger and less optimistic
Present pros – concentrate at task at hand
Present cons – Do not learn from past mistakes and may not plan for a uture
Future pros optimistic
Future cons may rush through life
can spot someone’s time preference by listening for the verb tense they use.
Remember when….
Someone whose focus is on the future may say ‘when . . .’ and ‘I will. . .’.
People who focus on the present adopt the present tense and talk about what’s around them,
the reason she ‘lived for the day’ was because her father had lost his business and she had witnessed him crying and saying to his wife, ‘I thought I’d got it all planned, what’s the use of planning?’
If someone is stuck in a past negative experience, agreeing with them is useful
because it allows you to lead them into a more positive state.
You can have a combination of meta programmes
Try to remember that this preference may change depending on the different circumstances in which you find yourself.
A project manager may combine difference, proactive, detail, and toward preferences when at work, but choose to be more of a sameness, reactive, global person at home.
jobs work best when the profiles of people fit the parameters of their jobs.
Can you identify the meta programs that you run in different areas of your life? This
Perhaps you allow your boss to dictate your future, which may be due to past, negative memories
Mismatched meta programs can result in a great deal of conflict and miscommunication. So make the effort to listen to the language that people are using and use their words when you’re talking to them.
Part 3 – opening the Toolkit
Using anchoring techniques to travelling along your personal timeline, you discover the essentials that allow you to build your NLP repertoire for excellence
Chapter 9 – Dropping anchors
Your feelings may have overtaken or even overwhelmed you
Everybody has emotional responses all the time: some are great – falling in love, joy, and pleasure – others less so – falling out of love, sadness, and pain
Someone has ‘blown a fuse’ unexpectedly?
This may happen with the smallest provocation
NLP uses the term state to mean to look at, and become more aware of, how you feel at any moment in time.
These feelings of being overwhelmed and being out-of control can scare people.
They can affect your career and your social life.
People question whether such a person can be trusted in responsible situations or when they have to represent the company.
NLP will help you control yourself, your state & how you effect others
Effect is fantastic
NLP anchors help create a positive state
Like a boat’s anchor that provides stability in open water.
Anchors will get you in a ‘high-performance state’ or a ‘know-nothing state’.
Memories are stored as associations with the senses.
Smells are particularly powerful anchors to times and events.
1. Get clear about the positive state
Your positive state may be bold, witty, energetic
2. Recall a specific occasion in the past when you’ve been in that state.
3. Relive the experience as vividly as you can.
Thumb and first finger in a circle.
The key lies in recognising what triggers a negative response in you and realising that you have a choice in how you respond
NLP defines calibration as the process of discovering how to read other people’s responses. Good communicators learn how to heighten their skills of observation.
Friendly, social questions asked at the coffee machine or in the lift can help you calibrate people’s body language and develop your awareness of their responses.
First notice their starting position – to check what your friend looks like in neutral.
To get the person into a neutral state, ask a mundane silly question like: ‘What colour are your socks today?’ or ‘How many pens do you keep in your desk drawer?’
2. Ask them to think for a minute about someone they really like, whose company they enjoy – paying attention to any pictures, sounds, or feelings that arise.
Give the person time to really get into the experience.
3. Get your friend to stand up and shake that feeling out.
4. Ask them to think for a minute about someone they really dislike, whose company they don’t enjoy – paying attention to any pictures, sounds, or feelings that arise.
5. Observe your friend and compare the differences in their reaction to a positive and a negative experience.
Some people may demonstrate a dramatic change in their body language, whereas for others the differences may be so subtle that you’re hard pressed to spot them.
people can’t not communicate
Just by a look or a word, you have the skill to elicit states in other people and in yourself, and ii happens so easily
Take some time to record details of different experiences that make you feel good or bad.
You may feel good at home at the sight of a log fire or a vase of tulips on the table, the sound of your favourite CD, or the smell of a hot meal
As you concentrate more and more on the things that give you pleasure, you may begin to notice that those that upset you become less relevant over time.
Pick out five events or experiences that have given you pleasure.
Going Through the Emotions: Sequencing States
cool and calm, warm and interested
Peak performers have to be able to switch off and regenerate, recharging the batteries. Otherwise they suffer burn-out.
clients regularly demonstrate a full range of emotions from extreme anger, frustration, and worry to laughter in a very short space of time
Humour offers an incredibly resourceful and valuable way to change state.
The skill of any leader –ability to pace somebody through these different states and lead them to a positive outcome.
Strength and stability are the keynotes here
Whenever you notice that you’re not in a ‘good’ state, you have a choice
Either you stick with this uncomfortable state you prefer to identify and shift into a ‘better’ state. To do the latter, you can fire off an anchor to create a more positive state for yourself.
Negative anchors - unconscious mind indicates to you that you need to work on an underlying issue. For example, feeling tired may be an indication that your current work patterns are exhausting you. If you continue to override this warning sign with an energetic anchor, you can become burnt out.
Music affects both mind and body.
When you’re relaxed, your brainwaves are slower
Music with around 60 beats per minute seems to be the most comfortable across cultures
Baroque music is especially suitable for creating a state of relaxed awareness,
Bach, Mozart, Handel, and Vivaldi all offer good starting points.
Walking on someone’s shoes
find a positive role model – someone who seems to behave how you want to – and try on that person’s body language
upright or soft, smiling or serious
moccasin walk
If you’re a small woman copying a large man or vice versa,
Woman struggling to get attention at board meeting
She also now spreads out her papers and takes up a larger portion of the boardroom meeting table. Both moves are ways of marking out her territory and authority.
Becoming Sophisticated with Anchors
releasing a negative anchor is by desensitising. To start, you need to get into a neutral or disassociated state –
and then you introduce the problem in small doses.
if the issue is the slimming one mentioned above, you need to get first into a strong state when you’re able to say ‘no, thank you’ to fattening foods
design a chain of anchors
Anger – Worry – Curiosity – Calm
On stage. Perhaps you do the main delivery from the centre point of the stage but move to one side when you’re telling stories and another side when you deliver technical information.
CHAPTER 10 – SLIDING THE CONTROLS OF YOUR EXPERIENCE
You have control over the way you choose to experience your world
You become better at switching your submodalities; BY PRACTICING THE FOLLOWING EXERCISE
Recording Your Experiences with Your Submodalities
your five senses – seeing, hearing, touching (also called kinaesthetic), smelling, and tasting – are called modalities
submodalities for your sense of sight may be the size of a picture, its brightness or colour, and whether a frame surrounds it or not.
Grasping the Basic Info: What You Need to Know Before You Begin
you can control your memories simply by changing the submodalities of the pictures, sounds, and feelings.
Tom found that facing going to work became harder and harder DUE TO ANXAIETY
1. Think of someone you like.
2. Remember the last time you spent real, quality time with that person.
3. Record the qualities of the picture you see, any sounds you hear, and any feelings you get.
4. Change the picture you made, one visual submodality at a time; notice how each change affects the memory of your time together.
5. Change the sounds you hear, one auditory submodality at a time; notice how each change affects the memory.
6. Change any feelings that you’re feeling, one kinaesthetic submodality at a time; notice how each change impacts the whole experience of your time together.
Understanding Your Critical Submodalities
he found that it was in fact his mother talking to him and that he heard her voice inside his head
When Charles changed the voice to a whisper and moved it to just below his left ear, outside his head, he realised he didn’t feel sick and he felt a warm glow in his stomach.
we hope that you gain the conviction that you’re in control of your experiences and can change them in order to choose how you feel.
Just think: you can sit and program your mind on the train, in a traffic jam, or even over a boring meal with your in-laws
Changing a limiting belief
‘I can’t do that’, ‘I’m no good at maths’, or ‘I should learn to cook properly’? These statements are all examples of limiting beliefs
These beliefs can disable you