So far we have focused on how one thought leads to another and how your thinking determines your behaviour. It’s your behaviour that has an impact on the people around you and that they respond to. Your attitude of mind is an important factor in forming your behaviour. So, if you have an aggressive attitude, your behaviour will take on aggressive qualities; if you have an attitude of superiority, your body language will send that message to others; a relaxed attitude will result in a relaxed posture.
From this we can see that your attitude directly affects your behaviour and consists of a collection of experiences generalised into a set of values and a complex web of beliefs. In Changing Belief Systems with NLP (Meta Publications, 1990), Robert Dilts developed a universal model to explain how this works. You can use it to organise your thinking for successful results in any context. You first of all consider each of five levels of thinking in relation to any specific purpose, as shown in the diagram that follows. Awareness of these levels will make it easy to choose the most effective NLP technique for the change you wish to make. The key to using this model is to begin with a clearly defined purpose.
Alignment Model
In all situations, you have an intention. Often this is unconscious – that is, you engage with other people or undertake tasks without first thinking what you intend to achieve. For example, what is your intention when having a particular conversation with your partner? Is it to inform, gain support, satisfy your need to be heard, seek attention or something else? What is your intention when undertaking a part-time job or choosing a new career? Is it to leave behind a tedious or stressful job, do something you have aspired to for some time, increase your income or have flexible working hours?
If your intention is unclear, then you run the risk of behaving in a way that will sabotage your best efforts and leave you feeling dissatisfied. A classic example of this is when someone is feeling bad about his or her life in some way and decides to move to a different city or country to make a fresh start. At a deep level, the intention is to remove the bad feelings that have grown over time. What often happens, though, is that the new life follows exactly the same pattern of events as the previous one.
Having a clear sense of purpose will enable you to make a conscious choice about how you approach situations. It will bring your deepest intentions to the surface and determine the role you play in the pursuit of your purpose. Having clarified your purpose, the next step is to organise your thinking within each of the five levels of alignment shown in the diagram.
In life, you play many different work, family and societal roles. You may split your time between being a parent, sibling, provider, chairperson, technician, leader, carer or any number of combinations of roles. What’s important here is not the label for your role, but how you define it because your definition has an impact on your results. The manager who defines her role as taskmaster and organiser will elicit a very different response from her team than the manager who defines her role as people developer. Children of parents who define their role as protectors will grow up very differently from children whose parents define their role as nurturers. The teacher with the role of disciplinarian and controller will elicit very different results from another who defines her role as challenger and learning facilitator.
The role you define in the pursuit of your purpose will interact with your values and beliefs, which determine what you pay attention to and what you ignore.
If you are a nurturing parent, you will probably have strong values relating to providing opportunities for life experiences for your children. A manager who believes in getting the best out of people will have strong values concerning trust and the potential of the team. A teacher creating a positive learning environment will value discovery, exploration and creativity.
These values will be supported by any number of beliefs. The nature of a belief causes you to focus on your values and proves the belief to be true. So, whatever you believe to be true, you will seek evidence to prove it and ignore evidence to the contrary. That is why it is so important to make sure your beliefs are empowering you to achieve the results you desire. For example, a teacher with the belief that a child has a learning difficulty will continue to reinforce the difficulty. On the other hand, a teacher with the belief that the child has potential, and the challenge is to find a way to release it, will undoubtedly achieve better results.
Your values and beliefs have a direct impact on your capability. Quite simply, if you believe that you can, then you will find a way of doing so. If you believe that you can’t, then you won’t bother to look for a way. Empowering beliefs unlock capability and limiting beliefs act as a barrier.
Limiting beliefs stop you from putting effort into things. It’s like the kaleidoscope is stuck in the same pattern and you have the power to change it, but refrain from doing so because you are either unaware or unsure of the consequences. Eventually the pattern becomes dull and loses its excitement. Once you believe that it’s not possible to change it, then you will find every excuse to make this true. It is very common for people to use illness as an excuse for continuing to believe that they can’t achieve something. You only have to look around you to find many examples of people who have achieved great things, against the odds, due to the power of their belief.
Values and beliefs work together – if you value something enough, you will generate a belief that it is possible to achieve it and put your energy into finding a way.
Sally opted out of a language exercise, saying that she was no good at English. She explained how her English teacher had encouraged her to pursue a career with numbers because her English was so poor. She followed this advice, took a job as a junior accountant and disliked it intensely. She left after three years to work as a shop assistant, from where her career developed.
On being quizzed about her current role, she revealed that she had been promoted to the customer services team, writing letters for the department – and really enjoys it. Sally also receives regular praise for the quality and creative nature of her letters. Despite this praise, however, she still maintained the belief that she was no good at English and developed the habit of withdrawing from any activities based on language. The acceptance of her teacher’s belief limited Sally’s natural ability in this area for many years.
Your behaviour is a result of the way you have organised your thinking at each of the three levels above. Once Sally was able to change her belief about her capability in English, it opened up a whole new range of activities for her. She began writing short stories and articles and even attempted some poetry.
Some of your behaviour will be working well for you, other aspects will not. Once behaviour becomes a habit, it is almost undetectable by you – until someone points it out.
A group of elderly couples were walking arm in arm through a hotel lobby to dinner. One lady was limping and carefully holding on to her husband’s arm. As she limped across the room, she suddenly realised that she had left her glass of wine at the bar and took off with a determined stride to retrieve it. She had forgotten to limp. The limp was not in her leg, it was in her mind.
Which parts of your behaviour are no longer of use to you? What tugs are you feeling? What would happen if you gave your kaleidoscope a small twist?
The way you organise your thinking at the four levels above will determine the impact you have on your physical environment. Limiting beliefs and an unclear purpose create stress.
The blame for stress is often placed on external factors in the environment. That moves the focus away from the self and, in doing so, takes away the power of influence. With empowering beliefs and a strong sense of purpose, you are likely to take responsibility for changing your environment. Even unconsciously, you are likely to have a positive impact.
Often you may believe that the environment is causing you some stress and feel emotionally tugged. The stronger the limiting beliefs about your capability, the more likely it is that you will recognise what is wrong in the world yet do nothing positive to create change. People who change things believe that they can.
The first step towards taking control is to identify the level at which a tug is taking place.
Jamie is of Middle Eastern origin and settled in the UK with his beautiful wife Anika. He was finding life hard – not getting along with his colleagues at work, his social circle was getting smaller and he felt increasingly isolated. He blamed the culture in the UK and felt unable to fit in. He decided that it was time to move back to his home country.
Anika explained to us that Jamie was exactly the same in his home country. She didn’t want to move back and knew that his problem was nothing to do with country or culture. Jamie was merely shifting the responsibility for how he was feeling on to the culture and country. Anika knew that the real problem was Jamie’s shyness.
Fortunately, it took only one coaching session with Jamie for him to become aware of his shyness pattern and learn some strategies for making friends and being a more confident person.
Sometimes a change in behaviour does not follow a change in thinking. Have you ever been in a position where you have done something that you didn’t want to do? Perhaps you did it to please someone and then felt that you had done yourself a disservice. Maybe you made a decision to lead a healthier lifestyle and take up running or yoga, but, when the time came to attend a class or go to the gym, you let yourself down and reverted to your regular unhealthy habit. It’s at times like these that you feel the instinctive tug of misalignment.
In NLP, this state of misalignment, resulting in a behaviour that doesn’t fit with the other levels, is called ‘incongruence’. Deep inside you want to act a certain way, but, when the time comes, you resist the inner urge and maybe tell yourself, ‘Not this time, maybe next time’. That is incongruence and it is not something success thrives on.
Success requires congruence, which means an alignment of all the levels – from purpose all the way through to behaviour. Only then can you affect your environment in the way that you really want. Creating such an alignment is the process of building self-confidence, as you then know that you have executed a change of mind and acted accordingly. Being able to recognise when you are being incongruent is the first step towards making your desired change happen.
The feeling of incongruence doesn’t have to stem from a major life realisation – it can happen during the course of a business meeting or in a conversation with a partner. So, whatever you are doing, it pays to be able to recognise feelings of incongruence.
When you take a close look at the times when you are successful, chances are you also feel happy and confident. Sure, you can imagine all kinds of bad things happening if you choose to, but, when you are engaged in the act of doing something superbly well, you will be at your happiest. There is a saying, ‘If you have to ask yourself if you are happy then you are probably not.’ Happiness is a state of mind and you arrive at it by being congruent in your actions.
In the same way that similar thoughts congregate in clusters, so do people. If you feel depressed, you will attract depressed people and upbeat people will avoid you. If you gain the skills to help people improve their lives, those who need you will find you. If you decide to be unhappy, you will be. That’s how life works – it will bring you what you express with your whole being. Cynical people keep each other company and strengthen their cynical attitude. The key message here is, what energy are you giving off and who and what are you attracting?
Your feelings of incongruence are likely to transmit signals that other people will perceive as confusing and unpredictable. As a consequence, they may judge you as being unreliable.
You hear people referring to others as being smug, with a chip on their shoulder, arrogant, brash, stand-offish, stuck up, cold fish. These are all interpretations of the way a person is communicating. They may be true, but, as soon as you have interpreted a person’s behaviour, you have also chosen to relate to them with that judgement in your mind. The real truth lies beneath the behaviour in the kaleidoscope of their thinking. What is being picked up is a misalignment between levels – the result of the unconscious tugs referred to earlier. The key is to develop ‘curiosity’ about what is causing a person to behave in such a way, rather than interpret the behaviour you see. Then, you reduce your chances of falling into the trap of acting according to a misinterpretation and increase the likelihood that you will begin to understand the person and communicate effectively.
In our work, we meet all kinds of people. They come to us because they feel stuck with some aspect of their lives. We have worked with managers who are not making the progress they want with their team, life coaches who are struggling to make ends meet, couples who have lost the excitement in their lives, directors who are petrified at the thought of giving a presentation to the board, professionals who are snowed under with tasks, stressed and losing sleep, workers who are not meeting their employers’ expectations of performance, people with obsessions, phobias, stress, anger, frustration, apathy and all kinds of behaviour patterns that are causing problems. We meet people from all walks of life who are limiting their potential to succeed and be brilliant in all kinds of situations.
The one thing all these people have in common is a feeling of incongruence when they think about the conflict they are living with. What they discover is how one frustration or problem is related to others, such as weight loss or gain, smoking, cluttered thinking, frequent illness, low self-esteem, being able to feel and patterns of broken relationships.
When you feel under stress due to personal difficulties, your mind has a wonderful capacity to put your problems behind a veil. Doing so allows you to have some stability and maintain the status quo of your life, but passion and energy also become masked behind the veil. Even though you can create a smokescreen for your thinking, your body is not easily deceived.
Your mind and body are part of the same energy system and interact with each other in response to external stimuli. When you are having a tough day and your mind is working flat out to meet deadlines, stress accumulates in your body – for example, you may become tense and your breathing erratic. Your body will react to whatever changes your mind goes through and vice versa.
Your body gives signals to other people, so, even though you may be able to create a smokescreen and veil your problems in your own mind, others will intuitively know that something is incongruent. The only way to deal with this is to remove the veil of your thinking and create a change.
One of the people Bandler and Grinder modelled in the early days of creating NLP was Virginia Satir, a highly effective family therapist. Virginia achieved very quick results by using a unique way to help individual family members become aware of their incongruent behaviour. The behaviour she identified in Peoplemaking (Science and Behaviour Books, 1972) is not exclusive to dysfunctional families. You only need to look around to see examples everywhere.
Virginia devised four categories of behaviour that she identified as being responsible for many family conflicts, and one that can be used to resolve conflict and bring people together.
Distracters seek attention to compensate for their feelings of loneliness or inadequacy. The positive intention behind their behaviour is to protect them from facing up to things. Distracting behaviour includes removing a hair from your jacket lapel while you are talking, sabotaging a conversation by making a joke, interrupting a conversation, frequently changing the subject. There are many other types of distracting behaviour that people use to deflect attention from a subject that may be reminding them of their feelings of loneliness or inadequacy.
Distracter patterns are usually learned early in life when you are at your most vulnerable to what is happening around you. At the time, the pattern is like a coping strategy, but it can become a long-term habit. Luckily we know how to break habits.
Derek was a forthright person with lots of confidence and intelligence. He was a senior director with a retail company and was getting squeezed out by other directors because they said that he was ‘far too arrogant’. He had developed a habit of kicking or throwing around any small items within his reach. It was as if he were releasing some negative energy as a response whenever he felt that he wasn’t being listened to or acknowledged, as if to say, ‘Hey, I’m here, can you watch me now.’
Derek was astounded at the number of years he had been holding on to this pattern and, after coaching, realised that it was no longer required. He was then able to relax and respond in a more mature way without needing to be the centre of attention.
The placater is out to please – talking in an ingratiating way, never disagreeing and always seeking approval. Feelings of an inability to cope alone create a martyr or ‘yes man’ (or woman!) A placater is often the first person to accept the blame when things go wrong.
Jenny just couldn’t stop herself from saying ‘Sorry’ at the beginning of almost everything she said. It was such a habit, that it just popped out all the time – ‘Sorry for asking, but …’, ‘Sorry, did you want to use this?’ or ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry, I didn’t think to ask, I hope you’re not upset, I’m ever so sorry.’ Jenny would say sorry for entering a room, sorry for being in the way and sorry for watching the ‘wrong’ channel on television.
Blamers find fault, never accepting responsibility themselves, always blaming someone or something else. They feel unsuccessful and lonely. They often suffer from high blood pressure and come across as aggressive and tyrannical. They will tell you what is wrong with things and whose fault it is and, in doing so, become powerless to do anything about it. By blaming external factors, they have absolved themselves of responsibility.
Damian had a set way of doing things. He appeared outspoken and stubborn to those who knew him. The combination of away from and procedural metaprogrammes caused him to ‘know’ the right way to do things and he would blame those who disagreed when things didn’t go his way.
Computer-like behaviour is that which is very correct and proper, but displays no feeling. The voice is dry and monotone and the body often very still and precise in its movements, which are minimal, masking a feeling of vulnerability.
Jo had worked with computers for a long time. Her main means of communication was via e-mail and she became awkward when in the company of others. Consequently, she remained as still as possible, speaking only when spoken to and her movements were controlled and deliberate.
This is the category to be in. Levellers have few threats to their self-esteem. Words, voice tone, body movements and facial expressions all give the same message. Levellers apologise for an action, not for existing. They have no need to blame, be subservient, retreat into computer behaviour or be constantly on the move. They are great communicators and have the ability to build bridges in relationships, heal impasses and build self-esteem.
The leveller’s response is a real-time, congruent response. All the other responses are the result of negative internal feelings causing words and actions to be incongruent. It is very easy, under pressure, to respond to a situation with, ‘It’s not my fault’ or ‘I’m sorry, it’s my fault again’ or laugh inappropriately or show no emotion at all. These behaviours don’t allow you to seek out rational solutions. The leveller’s response is the most effective behaviour for solving problems creatively.
Levellers:
Kieran was the chief executive of a pharmaceutical company. His team had a high level of respect for him due to his ability to be straight and honest with them. He was able to drive the business, admit when he made a mistake, recognise ideas and ability in others and have fun while keeping a cool head.
You can learn to adopt these attributes in the following chapters.
Be careful what you think – it can so easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In this chapter you have learned that:
