Your mind will represent your thinking in pictures, sounds and feelings and sometimes even smells and tastes. The quality and detail of your representations will vary according to whether your thoughts are positive or negative. Knowing how you represent your thoughts, of which values, metaprogrammes and beliefs are a part, will help you make the changes you want in areas where you would like to improve your results.
When you feel anxious, uncertain, confused, angry or frustrated, you become tense and stressed. Being in that state prevents you from accessing all your wonderful inner resources. Whatever situation you are in, if you are feeling any of these, it is unlikely that you are performing to your full potential. Think of a time recently when you were feeling stressed and recall what was on your mind. Your thoughts were responsible for creating your feelings. Every thought you have results in a feeling, so the way to control your feelings is to control your thoughts.
Test this out. Sit quietly and think of a situation where you did something that you didn’t feel so good about. Notice what feelings come up. Now take a deep breath and think about a situation where you did something that you felt really good about and, again, notice the feelings that come up.
You have just used your imagination to recall two experiences that resulted in very different feelings. You can use the connection between your imagination and your feelings to put you in control and enable you to choose the way you feel. Your feelings have a direct impact on your capability, regardless of the situation.
Everything begins with a thought and that thought will attract similar ones until you have a cluster of thoughts. That cluster becomes a pattern of thinking, which forms a habit. The habit will then be applied to many different scenarios. Scientists believe that the conscious mind is able to cope with only about seven pieces of information at any one time and can become overloaded very quickly. This means that if you fill your conscious mind with negative thought patterns that create negative feelings, you have no room for anything else. By taking control, you are exercising more choice over your conscious thinking and, the more you do this, the more you will build a reserve of unconscious patterns that work effectively for you.
The first step in taking control is to be aware of how thoughts are generated. When you think, you have an internal selection process. If you were to absorb everything happening around you, your brain would become overloaded, so you select what you consider to be important and ignore the rest. For example, think about a conversation you had recently or a television programme you watched – how much of it do you remember? Chances are, you will be able to summarise the event and expand on the aspects of most interest to you, but you won’t be able to recall every word. Your internal selection process has chosen what it wants to retain as a combination of images and sounds with the feelings you had at the time. Added to this will be some internal dialogue – in other words, what you have said to yourself about the situation.
This is how you represent your unique version of reality – in pictures, sounds, internal dialogue and feelings, as well as, sometimes, smell and taste. You capture your personal understanding of reality via a combination of your external senses and inner thoughts and it is this captured version that you use to make decisions and form judgements. This unique perspective of events is called your ‘internal representation’ or ‘map of reality’.
Let’s take a look at these components of your internal representation, beginning with the visual sense.
Bring to mind a pleasant memory and spend a few moments enjoying it. Capture the imagery, then come back to this page when you are ready.
Describe the image you created. Was it clear? Was it in colour? Did it have a frame around it or did the edges fade away? Did it have depth? Was there any movement? Was it bright or dark and murky? How about the contrast and detail? How close was this image to you and did you project it above or below the horizon? Could you see yourself in the image or was the image all around you?
Just as you can look at the visual details of a photograph or film, you can look at the details of the images that make up your thoughts. Those details refer to the qualities of the image, but not the image itself. The ability to imagine and change those qualities is unlimited. The number of different qualities you can work with in your mental imagery will be determined by the amount of practice you have had at doing so. Just as you intentionally imagined a pleasant experience, the very same process happens hundreds, if not thousands, of times each day to represent each thought you are having. Sometimes you may not be aware of your mental imagery, but it is there nonetheless and you can use it to good effect.
Harriet was having difficulty leaving her work behind at the end of the day. She was becoming more and more stressed as the pile just didn’t seem to go down.
During coaching, we acknowledged that Harriet was very fond of pretty things. We asked her to visualise herself at the end of the day wrapping the outstanding work up in pretty coloured paper, tying a coloured bow around it and leaving it there until the next morning when she could unwrap it and continue with her work.
Harriet became much more relaxed about her work after that and her productivity increased.
Let’s play around with your visual imagery a little and see how easy it is to change, or reprogramme, your thoughts and feelings.
It is quite easy to eliminate bad feelings for any situation in which you would like to feel more in control or be more confident.
Perhaps the thought of facing a difficult situation with someone is causing you to feel frustrated, tense or low in confidence. At times like these, when you are emotionally stressed, you consume a great deal of energy making yourself feel bad. Even though you don’t enjoy feeling bad, it may be something over which you have had no control in the past. When you are feeling this way, you have entered the realm of ‘self-preservation’. As a result, your ability to think rationally and make sound decisions is impaired. The goal then becomes one of survival, saving face, winning or seeking recognition. You only have to feel that way once or twice before a habit, or programme, is formed and then you have set a pattern for thinking yourself into bad feelings.
Eliminate the bad feelings by using the following technique:
Zapping away bad feelings
Bring to mind a specific time when you were unhappy with the way you felt or behaved.
Now focus on the image that comes to mind as you first access the memory. Quickly send it zooming away into the distance. As it goes, notice that it gets smaller and smaller until it disappears completely. It’s just like the starship Enterprise whizzing off at warp factor 10 into deep space and, in a fraction of a second, disappearing completely from view.
You can do the same thing with all your images of unpleasant experiences – just zap them off into deep space. As you do, notice how much better you feel.
John had an away from pattern that was causing him a great deal of stress as he predicted all the awful things that might happen to him. He had plenty of time to dwell on his thoughts when walking his dog in the mornings. As he did so, his head would go down into the internal dialogue position as he told himself how awful things were.
During coaching, we suggested that, while out dog-walking, he might keep his head up and notice the scenery around him, visualising all the good things that had happened the day before.
Now exercise your ability to choose something different using the following technique.
Choosing to respond differently
As soon as you have zapped away the negative image using the technique described above, bring to mind a memory with positive feelings attached to it. It might be an experience where you were very confident or highly motivated to achieve a positive result.
Now work on the image. Make sure that it is colourful, big and bright.
When you have intensified those qualities, bring the image closer and imagine stepping into it. Take a few moments to absorb and enjoy the positive feelings generated by the effect.
As well as making pictures in your mind, you can replay conversations with other people, environmental sounds and music. Do you sometimes replay conversations or anticipate a future event and actually hear what people said or might say? Your internal audio may or may not be accompanied by images.
What about your internal dialogue? What do you find yourself saying over and over in your mind?
Your internal voice is very powerful and has a direct influence on how you feel at any particular moment in time. A large part of how you feel is reflected in the tone of your voice – both your spoken words and those you say to yourself.
Here’s something to think about. If you were to record all your internal dialogue for one day and then play it back, would it motivate you?
You can explore and change the qualities of your internal audio in much the same way that you changed your mental imagery above. Use the following technique to change the way you feel when you think about a future event. It can be used in all kinds of situations when you want to feel a certain way. How do you want to feel when you wake up in the morning, when you get to work on Monday, when your partner does something that annoys you? How many different voices can you create for yourself?
Use your inner voice to change the way you feel
Think about an upcoming event that is important to you and decide how you want to feel at that time. Now choose an actor or someone you know well who has the tone of voice that you want to have at the event.
Imagine that the event is just about to start and have a conversation with yourself in the tone of voice you have chosen. For example, you may want to feel confident and determined to get a result. Choose the voice of one of your heroes, saying, ‘This is an important day for me. I will be asking some tough questions and expecting clear answers. I will be positive, focused and determined to get a result we can act on.’ Now say it again and turn up the volume. Adjust the tone and pace until you begin to feel confident and determined.
You can also turn the volume down when your internal dialogue gets carried away with itself. When you keep repeating negative dialogue over and over, telling yourself what a mess you made of this or that or churning over a work problem when you are trying to sleep, simply turn the volume down and notice the words fading away into the distance until they have gone completely. You can also change negative voices into humorous voices, such as Bart Simpson or Mickey Mouse. Notice how easily the negative feelings disappear when you do that.
When you realise that you have control over your inner voice and associated sounds, you can walk around with a symphony orchestra in your head and a host of film stars and cartoons at the ready, should you require their services. Have fun!
The feelings you have during a day are the result of how you have chosen to associate with your experiences. This is the emotional domain. The word used to describe those feelings is ‘kinaesthetic’.
Your feelings are generated by imagined events as well as real experiences. If you have an argument with a partner or a disagreement with a shop assistant, the feelings you experience will be part of a learned pattern of reacting to those circumstances. A memory consists of visual, auditory and kinaesthetic elements, sometimes including smells and tastes as well. Feelings result from thinking in a particular way. For example, a feeling of apprehension may be the result of creating dark, murky images and internal dialogue that is warning you to be on the alert for an awkward or difficult situation. Imagine how this contrasts with the feelings of another person in the same situation who is creating bright, clear images with internal dialogue that is full of excitement.
You have the capacity for a wide range of feelings – from excited highs to heavy lows and, at worst, depression. There are many techniques to help you feel the way you want to feel. Some of them help you to change the feelings you have attached to negative memories, while others give you a way to create any feeling you want at any time.
The way we attach feelings to our thoughts is very haphazard. We allow people and circumstances to influence the way we feel. Once a thought has a feeling attached, it becomes well and truly anchored. Each time we recall that thought, the exact same feeling will surface. For example, when you look at a photograph taken on a great holiday, the feelings you had at the time return. When you answer the phone and hear the voice of someone you had a negative experience with, you feel the same way as when that experience happened.
Anchored feelings become embedded in your memory very easily. A classic anchor is when you have a bad encounter with a sales assistant and decide never to visit that shop again. Whenever someone mentions the shop’s name, you relive the feelings you had at the time of your encounter, even though it may have taken place a long time ago.
The process of anchoring feelings to thoughts is an automatic feature of the unconscious mind. The result is called a ‘state’. It is not just a state of mind but also a state of mind and body, as the way you think and feel causes the body to become either relaxed or tense.
Now, what if you could use this process to create great feelings, or states, whenever you wanted them? In other words, exercise choice over the feelings you anchor and the states you create. What if you could produce feelings of being courageous, confident, calm, decisive, optimistic, attentive, playful, empathetic, curious or focused? What if you could create a positive state for learning and being open-minded; for leadership, motherhood, fatherhood; for being dynamic or having abundant energy; for love, sensitivity? Well, you can with the following very simple technique.
Louise had to present to the board of directors on a regular basis. The more she did it, the more nervous she became.
On one particular day, she was excited that she was going to present her new idea, which would save the company a great deal of money. She was also anxious about blowing it and really wanted to get the board to listen to her idea.
We helped Louise to access a confident state she knew well from another situation and anchor this state to the boardroom door handle. As soon as she touched the handle, the confident state emerged and she was able to give her presentation.
Anchoring resourceful states
Decide which positive state you would like to anchor. Choose one from the list on the previous page – or you may have some other specific state in mind. For the purpose of this exercise, we will call it ‘state X’. Read through the exercise and commit it to memory – you will need to keep your attention focused internally throughout the process, so you will not want to be checking the book for what to do next.
Preparing for the exercise
You are going to attach a state to a trigger point somewhere on your body, such as pinching your ear or squeezing your thumb. Choose something that you are unlikely to do accidentally and can repeat with precision.
The procedure
You can test the anchor by future pacing. Think about a situation in the future where you will want state X. As you run through the scenario in your mind, fire your anchor. The key to successful anchoring is the intensity of feeling, the timing of setting the anchor and the precision with which you set and fire the anchor.
Just as you can create a positive anchor, you can eliminate negative anchors. For example, you may have had a negative experience with someone when you did not cope well. You may have had bad experiences at work that are still causing you to lose confidence or become frustrated. Your reactions in those situations create a negative state that makes your inner resources inaccessible. Even though the incident might have happened some time ago, you still carry the feelings associated with it and behave accordingly. Your behaviour reinforces your state and forms a strong habit, such that, every time you find yourself in a similar situation, the limiting behaviour is triggered.
The following technique uses space and physical location to relieve those negative and stressful feelings. You needn’t keep such bad feelings in your memory – you can collapse them and, if you wish, replace them with positive feelings.
Phil realised, with coaching, that he had deliberately been perpetuating a negative relationship with Sarah, his colleague. Whenever they met, he would be in a negative, defensive state, which Sarah would pick up on. They would argue and part feeling bad.
Using the collapsing anchors technique, below, Phil was able to establish a new way of approaching Sarah to rebuild the relationship.
Collapsing anchors
Anchors are all around you, causing you to feel a wide range of emotions – happy, sad, frightened, jubilant, angry or even nauseous. You may even be an anchor for someone else, causing them to respond towards you in a way that you may find confusing. Such responses can be either within your awareness, in which case you can connect precisely with the incident or circumstances that produced the feelings, or out of your awareness, in which case you can connect with the uncomfortable feelings but not the memories of the incident or circumstances that caused them. Here are some examples.
Meetings at work often highlight opposing viewpoints and sometimes emotions can run high. If not carefully managed, people can leave feeling negative and inadvertently anchor that state to any follow-up meetings on the same topic. This can have a number of outcomes.
As the sales director of a large company, Joe had been attending the same meeting on a regular basis, 40 miles from his home, for 2 years. The meeting always had the same format and people had adopted their own ways of dealing with the negativity that had grown over the years.
The meeting consisted of a series of reports from various sectors of the business. When he first started to attend the meeting, Joe had put forward an idea as a result of a presentation by the HR director, but his idea had been ignored. That caused Joe to feel that, if he were to offer ideas in the future, the same thing would probably happen. Because of that, the very thought of attending the meeting put him into a negative state. He never offered an idea again and, when others were speaking, Joe would be checking his e-mails on his mobile.
You could say that by checking his e-mails Joe was making the best use of his time in the meeting, if what he believed was really true. No one ever challenged him – they just accepted that was what Joe did in meetings, in the same way that Mary, the operations director, brought her production analysis sheets and worked on them until it was her time to present.
If no one was listening, what was the point of the presentations? Each director might just as well have produced a report and sent it round to their colleagues to read in their own time. The amount of high-level management time that was being wasted due to a set of anchors which had become engrained in the culture was extraordinary.
You need to prevent such anchors from taking root if high levels of productivity are to be maintained. Some simple steps would be to ensure that very clear outcomes for each attendee as well as for the items on the agenda are established, so individuals can make an assessment of the value of them attending the meeting. As far as possible, breaking routines, such as where people sit, the venue, length and format of the meeting, also helps to break negative anchors and keep proceedings fresh.
Chris was being coached. Following a number of personal relationship failures, he felt that he needed some help to restore his self-belief.
Things were going great until one day he arrived at the coach’s house and tarmac was being laid outside in the driveway. The smell of the tarmac took Chris right back to a really nasty experience. The coach used the collapsing anchors technique to help Chris to regain his equilibrium.
Here are some everyday anchors that can evoke different states in people:
Advertisers know full well the power of anchoring – hence the use of music in shops to create a certain atmosphere, aromas to entice people into coffee shops and restaurants and the suggestion of wonderful relationships resulting from the scent of a particular aftershave in television advertising.
Once you are aware of what you are anchored to in your environment you can choose to change your responses. Take some time to notice things and people around you that trigger specific responses in you. If you enjoy a particular response and it is getting positive results for you, then use the anchoring technique mentioned earlier in this chapter to make it even more powerful. If not, then use the collapsing anchors technique to rid yourself of it.
You and others around you will slowly notice a change in you as you take control of your behaviour in response to triggers that may in the past have produced a negative response. Being aware of the anchors that trigger your responses, being able to change them and having the techniques to create brilliant new anchors gives you more control over your emotional states, your relationships and your life.
Phobias are exaggerated anchored responses to everyday situations. They can cause muscle tension, hyperventilation, perspiration and dizziness. When a phobic response is being experienced, your internal dialogue and imagery will be predicting dire consequences. Phobias are irrational fears – as opposed to the rational fears caused by things that actually happen, such as the house being on fire. Because phobias are irrational, they are relatively easy to overcome.
NLP is very effective at fixing all kinds of phobias, including fear of bridges, confined spaces, open spaces, flying, lifts, spiders, bees, birds, frogs and snakes. This even extends to phobias about wet hair in the shower plughole, or oranges and bananas.
In our experience, many people try to hide their phobias and avoid situations where they may have to face their fear. That is because they perceive their problem as being ridiculous and try to avoid the embarrassment caused by their reaction. At a deep level, this can have an adverse effect on self-esteem, as a phobia is often thought of as a weakness.
Underlying any phobia is a belief about what will happen in the situation causing the phobia. For example, when Paul was a teenager, he choked on an orange. Over time, he unconsciously anchored a negative response to that experience. Eventually, this became a phobic reaction to oranges, to such an extent that he had to leave the room whenever someone began to peel an orange. He believed that if he ate an orange he would choke.
The test for whether a person has a phobia or not – as opposed to being merely very concerned – is that he or she will react very physically to even the thought of the fear. Because it is the thought that produces the reaction, it can be eliminated without having to relive the experience.
If a phobia is affecting your enjoyment of life and/or your self-esteem, use the following technique – it has a very high success rate. We suggest that you familiarise yourself with the procedure before using it. This will enable you to complete the exercise without the distraction of referring to the notes.
During one of our programmes, Colin, a delegate, moved the curtains to shade us from the sun. As he did so, a large spider ran out and Colin virtually flew across the room and out of the door. Another delegate removed the spider and Colin returned to his seat, highly embarrassed. He explained the strength of his phobia and we suggested that, if he would like to deal with it, we could do so very quickly.
After a 10-minute phobia fix, Colin asked if he could go and find a spider. We found one in the conservatory and he was quite happy to stand and look at it from a distance of 6 cm (2½ inches).
Fast phobia fix
We are going to ask you to do a few things very quickly in your mind so that your phobia will never bother you again.
The exercises in this chapter will have helped you to work with the emotions attached to your thinking and given you access to your inner resources. There may be times when the way you are thinking is creating a barrier. You can change your perspective completely by reframing this kind of thinking in a number of ways. In the same way that placing a new frame around a picture can give it a whole new appearance, placing a new frame around your thoughts can give you a very different perspective.
Frank was ‘at his wits’ end’ (his words) regarding trying to get his youngest son, Timmy, to keep the house tidy. The relationship became increasingly strained as Frank continued to lay down the law. He often raised his voice and Timmy responded by retreating into silence and making himself scarce. The situation became progressively worse and Timmy’s performance at school suffered. Frank explained that he was lost for a way to help Timmy ‘get his act together’. Timmy was getting a hard time from his dad and his falling marks at school were a direct result of stress.
We offered Frank the following reframe:
‘It appears that you have been pushing Timmy to meet a certain standard of tidiness, which is causing him a good deal of stress and creating distance between you. His untidiness may, in fact, be a phase that kids of his age go through and a sign that he’s behaving normally. By letting him be a normal teenager, you might find that Timmy is not so stressed and is better able to focus on his schoolwork.’
In short, Frank was offered a reframe that moved him from thinking ‘my boy is untidy’ to ‘my boy is untidy, which is normal behaviour for any teenager’. It helped Frank to realise that his behaviour towards Timmy had caused the breakdown in the relationship between them. He immediately stopped hounding him about being untidy and started to help him more with his schoolwork.
This type of reframe changes the meaning of the situation. Another type of reframe shifts the meaning between contexts. For example, a person who may be highly critical of other people’s ideas might be perceived by his team as being difficult or negative. The presence of a critic on the team can be very useful, however, when evaluating ideas resulting from a creative brainstorm. It’s not that the behaviour of the critic is a problem, it’s more a case of knowing how best to use that particular skill. This type of reframe puts the behaviour in a positive frame in another context.
A common cause of frustration in couples is demonstrated in the next example.
Fiona likes to be on time and is obsessive about dates, times, schedules and lists. Mike, Fiona’s partner, is the exact opposite, preferring to take a more relaxed and laid-back approach to life. Mike was feeling torn, wanting to please Fiona while at the same time being unable to rationalise the pressure she was putting him under.
After some coaching, Mike realised that Fiona’s ability as an organiser was useful in many ways, including remembering family birthdays, shopping, planning holidays and generally running the family very effectively. Having reframed his thinking in this way, the pressure eased. It was attached to the way he had been thinking, not to the circumstances.
Any reframe is simply saying, ‘Don’t think of it that way, think of it this way’, ‘It’s not that, it’s this!’ You can apply simple reframes to all kinds of situations that are not working out as you would like.
A problem can only exist in your mind – outside your mind there are only sets of circumstances. That you call a circumstance a problem is indicative of your way of thinking. One person’s problem is another’s source of motivation. So, it really matters how you think about any situation you find yourself in because it has consequences.
The words ‘this’ and ‘that’ are used many times during the course of a day, but, when used with tasks and people – for example ‘that task’ or ‘this person’ – they indicate whether the speaker is associated with or dissociated from what he or she is referring to. Where there is a positive intention towards a task/person, there is likely to be a positive mindset around it – it’s a this. When there is no positive intention towards it, there is likely to be a negative mindset around it – it’s a that.
Being dissociated from something is a source of procrastination. If you could choose not to get involved, then there would be no issue, but, when you have to get involved because it’s your job to do so, then you are forced to associate, which is when negative feelings can take hold of your thinking. In situations of forced association, it is useful to reframe your thinking and turn that into this with a positive intention.
There are four key principles involved:
There can be any number of reasons behind you considering something or someone as a that. Examples of that could be:
You can find absurdity in just about anything. Consider the statement, ‘I have to have dinner on the table by 6 p.m. every day.’ It implies that all the family members will be hungry and ready to eat at exactly the same time every day. The likelihood of that being the case is remote and, therefore, the statement is absurd.
This technique takes the absurdity in your thinking and exaggerates it. In doing so, your situation becomes so ridiculous that you will want to change your view and reframe it because it is too painful to continue thinking in the old way.
Peter was a project manager who was a real stickler for detail and procedure. He had been given responsibility for a major project involving Simon. Simon became more and more anxious whenever he thought about the project.
Peter and Simon had clashed from the outset. Simon didn’t know how to deal with Peter when he insisted on introducing details that Simon believed were unnecessary at the meetings. This began to affect his ability to contribute rationally. He would sneer and make derogatory comments about Peter’s style of management in front of the project team. When questioned about the situation, Simon replied, ‘He needs to learn a lesson if he’s going to get on – I’ll teach him, don’t you worry.’
Simon was offered the following reframe:
‘So, Simon, it seems you want to go on feeling bad about this relationship, don’t you? You are going to continue to snipe at Peter and have everyone else laugh and snigger at you behind your back. You don’t even mind that they perceive you as behaving like a child. The project will suffer and your emotional energy will be tied up in creating negative feelings towards Peter, so you will have very little left for creativity in relation to the project. You won’t mind that, though, because teaching Peter a lesson is so much more important to you than building good relationships and getting the project completed successfully. Your antagonistic behaviour will serve you well when you find yourself not being invited on to the team for future projects. You may even find yourself without a role at all and that’s OK because the most important thing here is to make Peter look silly, isn’t it?’
This technique may appear a little harsh, but, with the right person, it could be the most effective tool to use. In this case, Simon is the type to allow his ego to get in the way, so the technique had to be stronger than his overinflated ego. What Simon received was a reframe that moved him from thinking ‘Peter needs to be taught a lesson’ to ‘My career is more important than the way I feel about Peter’. This caused sufficient pain to Simon’s ego for him to let go of the need to teach Peter a lesson and instead make positive adjustments to his own thinking and behaviour.
The absurdity technique may do the trick for some people (we hope you tried it out on your own situation with state X), but sometimes you may need a little more positive encouragement. However negatively you view a situation or a person, there is always some good to be found.
Michelle was having a problem with her flatmate, who seemed to be interfering in her life. She took it to mean that her flatmate didn’t trust her to make her own decisions about boyfriends. Michelle began to mistrust her own judgement and became withdrawn, refusing invitations to nights out.
When questioned, she said that her flatmate didn’t want her to have a good time and was jealous of her boyfriends. This frame of thinking caused a deep rift in the friendship.
Michelle was offered the following reframe:
‘Michelle, could it be that your flatmate cares about you and doesn’t want to see you get hurt? Maybe she has had a painful relationship and doesn’t want you to experience the same pain. Perhaps focusing on the perceived jealousy is keeping you from noticing ways in which she really does care. However it may seem to you, the reality could be very different. If she does care for you, what is it she does that will tell you this?’
Michelle decided to look for evidence that her flatmate really did care about her well-being. She discovered lots of small things she did for her that had previously gone unnoticed. The relationship improved and they healed the rift. The point at which this situation turned around was when Michelle flipped her that mindset to a this mindset and created a positive intention to find the good in her flatmate.
Flipping a that to a this
Thinking in a this way will allow your mind to be creative and come up with solutions and ideas rather than becoming stressed by the bad feelings associated with that-type thinking.
Every new skill you attempt requires a degree of practice. The more you practise these techniques, the more you will reprogramme your thinking to create new feelings and behaviour that serve you well. Take one technique at a time and practise it several times on issues that are real for you before moving on to the next technique.
In this chapter you have learned that: