The mind: A browser, not a hard drive
When most of us think about our mind, we tend to think of it in the way that we are conditioned to use it through education: as a place where we store information. The smarter ones amongst us are the ones who can recall that information in, more or less, the same form as it went in and so we are able to pass exams that are set predominantly as a test of memory and the application of that memory.
Perhaps, as I mentioned in the previous chapter, it’s because when I was growing up, I wasn’t very good at that, but to me it just never seemed like a particularly good way to measure smartness. I knew many people who were straight-A students but couldn’t wire a plug or solve a basic life problem, or who, despite having a brain the size of a planet, just couldn’t get along with people or apply that knowledge in the real world in a way that helped them navigate their own course any better or with fewer mistakes than anyone else.
Even growing up, the problem seemed really obvious to me: education is about fixed, solid facts for the most part whereas life is about thoughts, emotions and people. But thoughts and emotions are not fixed and so nor are the answers. IQ is what gets you through school, but EQ (emotional intelligence) is what gets you through life.
This is a book to help you not just get through your life, but thrive! And so we need to think about the mind very differently. Your mind is much more like an Internet browser than a hard drive. Sure, we can cache information for easy access, but just like your browser, if you don’t open it for a while, you lose it. Yes, we all have a history but it can be cleared, and we are all able to search and find the information we need. It’s how we do that which really matters and makes the difference – how we search for and find what we are looking for.
Let’s take this analogy just a little further. Back in the dark ages, when the Internet was but a child, when we didn’t find what we were looking for on the first page of Google, Yahoo, Excite, MSN, AOL or whichever of the many different browsers our dial-up modem (very slowly) took us to – with the horrible electronic noise as the soundtrack for our journey into cyber space – we would click on the second, third, fourth, fifth page trying to find what we were looking for.
Now, think about the way the Internet has evolved. It’s always on, always available, the answer is right there in your pocket and when you search, if you don’t find what you are looking for, you don’t click down into the depths of more wrong answers trying to find the solution, you just change the search, don’t you?
Now think about how you run your head; is it anything like that? Has it evolved too? No!
For the most part, we assume that what’s readily at our disposal is all we’ve got to work with. We search based on what we have always searched for and when the same wrong answers come up, we either try them again and get the same result as before or dismiss them, knowing them to be wrong. And in doing so, we leave ourselves stuck. It’s not what we have in our head that’s the problem; it’s how we use it.
So, let’s start by changing what we are searching for. How would you like to be and what would you have in your life, even if you have no idea how to get it?
Do that right now. What is it that comes up for you? What is it that you would most like to change? Now let me pop a little caveat in right here. While we are not talking about being able to change the world around us, let me be very clear; when you make the changes in your mind, they will filter through into your environment faster than you think. That part is absolutely inevitable; it’s just a given, but without starting in the right place on the inside, you will likely have just as much of a struggle as you’ve had until now. So let’s stop that and I’ll explain not only why getting the change you want is easier than you think, but also the inevitability of how it will play out for you in the real world.
It all starts with your thoughts. The problem, of course, is not that we have thoughts; the problem is that we believe them and engage with them and allow them to shape our lives. Of course, when we start on our personal development journey, we get that concept pretty quickly and, just as quickly, jump to the usual and rather inevitable conclusion that if bad thoughts equals bad things then surely the solution to feeling better is simply to think good thoughts, right? And I’ll bet you’ve tried that already. How did that go for you?
I’m no mind-reader, but I’ll bet that it went fine while you were doing it, but just like everyone (and I do mean everyone else), you couldn’t or didn’t keep it up and so went right back to where you started. Only this time with the added thought that change must be harder than you thought, harder then all those self-help gurus make it out to be. Right? Of course! Part of you wishes it was different and a big part of you wishes that you were different and perhaps it’s that part that has caused you to keep looking till now for the solution that’s right for you. Of course, you keep all this to yourself, don’t you? I mean, like most people, you would very nearly die of embarrassment, if you thought the world could hear your thinking out loud.
But that’s where I’m going to depress you just a little bit further: whether you like it or not, the life you are leading IS a product of your thinking.
Thought creates feelings, feelings create actions and actions create outcomes. So whether you like it or not, while the exact detail might be hidden, the world can already witness the outcome of your thinking every day, every time you leave the house or interact with someone.
Now, let me cheer you up again. The problem is not that we have thoughts; the problem is not even that they are hard to change from negative to positive and the problem is not even one that you have created. It’s all just a big misunderstanding. We are taught throughout our lives that in order to make sense of things, we need to be able to explain them logically and we need to be able to apply certain laws and universal constants to them in order to be validated. The problem for those of us making changes on the inside is that we apply the wrong laws to the wrong thing.
If I had a big tree root in my garden and I wanted to remove it to plant a flowerbed, I could quite reasonably expect it to be hard work. The tree is heavy, it’s been there for a very long time and its roots run deeper than the foundations of my house itself. You might reasonably expect that I would need some tools and that I would need to struggle and put my back into it and that, if I did that consistently, I would first of all see the root start to move a little, then I might be able to use that little movement to get some leverage. From there, I might be able to break it loose from what had been keeping it stuck and then, with even more effort, I might be able to lift it out and take it away. Sounds about right, right?
Of course, this will take some time, but in our favour, we do have nature on our side. Just like going to the gym – if I kept at it and kept at it, my body, without any additional mental input from me and without my asking, would just naturally get stronger to cope with the physical strain of the load I was putting it under and help me to reach my goal. First of all, we recruit all the resources we have available in the form of additional muscle fibres and then when we need even more, those muscle fibres start to grow thicker and stronger, and that is how we build muscle.
However, when we want to make changes in our mind instead, those laws of physics and form simply do not apply and, in fact, the inverse is true. When we consistently apply an additional physical load to our body, we get stronger, but when we consistently apply an additional mental load to our mind, we get weaker. Not because it’s our fault, it’s just how we are made, how we are naturally wired up. The body is designed to do more on the outside and less on the inside; we just don’t tend to run it like that any more… the laws of physics and form simply do not apply to the world of thoughts and mind; we just think they do, until we know better, that is.
Think about it this way: if you have had a DVD in your collection that terrifies you every time you watch it, it doesn’t matter whether you’ve had it for 20 years or 20 minutes, you can throw it out and be done with it just as fast.
So here’s the best news: we know that it’s much easier to change our mind than the world around us already. But a few weeks ago, while driving home, I was struck by yet another example of how we habitually get it all wrong when it’s just as easy, in fact, even easier, to get it all sorted.
If, like me, you’re a reluctant fan of all things electronic, then you will be familiar with the ‘read only’ message that often pops up when you try to edit a document. You have no problem accessing it; it could even be right in the forefront of your mind on your desktop, but you just can’t change it; you haven’t ‘permission’ to do so.
I had just finished fighting with one such issue and was listening to the Richard Bacon Show on BBC 5 Live on the radio when those same words caught my attention, ‘there are no read-only files in the brain…’
I turned it up and listened carefully: ‘Every time we access a memory, we change it; in all the studies, it has been found that the act of recalling a memory has the effect of distorting it in some way.’ This wasn’t just anyone’s opinion; the voice from my dashboard was none other than that of Simon Watt, evolutionary biologist and fellow Huffington Post columnist. Simon knows a thing or two and, as I listened to him on the BBC that afternoon, I really got to thinking.
If every time we open a memory file we inadvertently yet automatically change it in some way, then this surely explains why, over time, with sustained attention, the problems, pain and fears we suffer do tend to get worse. It certainly explains post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and even phobias and panic attacks.
Think about it; do you tend to think about your problems rather a lot? Yes, of course. But did you realize that by doing so, you are changing them and probably making them worse? I bet not…
But, if a memory changes every time we access it, then it absolutely stands to reason that we can change things for the better just as easily.
That’s certainly been my experience working with literally thousands of people all over the world. Add to this the fact that our default setting is actually ‘OK and happy’, and it explains why I often describe my work as being like hitting ‘restore factory settings’, and why my clients experience change at a rate and with an ease that suggests they are not just deleting individual files, but making some profound and innate changes at a much deeper level.
All lasting change happens from the inside out and, call it what you will, it’s official: ‘there are no read-only files’ in your mind and you can change your mind and thus change your life much faster than you think… literally!
So, knowing that and knowing that there’s a large part of you that is not only just open to change but really wants it, what’s stopping you? The how to is right here, but where do you want to start?
I would suggest, if I may, that we start where you think you will get the biggest benefit and go with that. Let’s find out where the smallest of changes on the inside make the biggest difference on the outside and on the outside world.
Now I’m guessing that you picked up this book for a reason so let’s start there. I don’t need to know what it is (that could be tricky), but so long as you do, that’s all that matters. You can write it down now if it helps, but if you do, make sure that you also keep it in mind as you read on. I want for this to be a meaningful conversation about you, one where you can get really clear – not on why you do things, I don’t really care about that; after all, we can’t go back and change history, can we? – but we can easily change how you feel about it. This is not a book about what and why; this is a book all about HOW: how you construct that subjective experience and how we can change that for you so that you automatically go back to being OK. That is your default setting, after all.
So how do you do it?
We said earlier that all human behaviour is a product of the state of mind we are in at the time, but do you know how we build those states?
Well, we build them on the inside in exactly the same way as we experience them on the outside, through our senses. We even say that we need to make sense of things in order to understand them. We create our internal experiences mainly in pictures, sounds and feelings. What’s your favourite memory? How do you create that now? Close your eyes if it’s safe to do so and notice what’s there on the inside when you think about it now. It’s most likely some pictures, some sounds and some feeling somewhere in your body, right? So if that is how you create that state and those ‘submodalities’ are the building blocks, let’s go a bit further and take just a few easy examples of places we can go to change our state. In fact, let’s take three of my favourites.
We have all had the experience of being completely lost in a really good movie. We feel sad at the sad parts, laugh out loud at the funny parts, get ready to jump out of our skin as the tension mounts and leave with the feel-good glow of a happy ending. The pictures are big, huge, in fact, and bright and bold and obviously they are moving and sometimes, in 3D, we feel like we are right there in the action, so long as those little 3D glasses don’t annoy us too much, that would distract us and ruin it. The images are so big they engulf our senses and take us to that magical state where we can suspend our disbelief and just go with it.
Then there’s the concert hall. The mood builds as the support band works the stage. They always have a tough time because it’s not their crowd, but that’s not important; they are there to get the crowd ready and ‘in state’ for the main event. Although, to be honest, at really big events, the main act would have to really suck from the outset not to get a good reception, because the anticipation of seeing them has been building in the audience for months, ever since they bought the album, then saw the advert for the tour and bought their tickets. All that time, the state has been building so that by the time the lead singer opens their mouth, 70,000 people are ready to burst with excitement.
The sound is big and loud and a whole team of technicians has made sure it’s just right, not just so that you can hear every note perfectly; that’s not what live events are really all about, but so that it does it for you for maximum impact on your senses. You are hearing the onslaught of audio for all it’s worth, so much so that you can’t hear yourself think. Have you ever heard that expression?
Well, that’s because we can only process one audio track at a time. Sure we can think and have sound in the background, but we must tune in to one or the other in order to process it. Perhaps, like me, you remember sitting in the classroom thinking about what you were having for lunch or what time the pub opens when a curt, ‘What was I saying?’ from the teacher jolted you from your trance. Of course, you had no idea; you were listening to your voice (your thoughts), the audio channel on the inside, not the one droning on the outside about algebra or something equally dull.
So, as the concert opens and the sound booms, you can’t hear yourself think for a while. But that is usually short-lived; even the very best performers in the world only have a short timeframe to impress you before your own inner critic kicks in. You may have started off in a peak state of anticipation and excitement, but if they don’t deliver, then your state will quickly change as you engage more with the voice of your inner critic and less with the sound on the outside… ever had that experience? I’m sure we all have.
The legendary comedian Jerry Seinfeld reckons that even the very best have a window of about five minutes to impress or flop. Their fame and the expectations of the audience will only buy them that much time before they have to deliver the goods or they are back to square one.
But there is nothing quite like climbing into your own bed with crisp, freshly laundered sheets, is there? The feeling of being completely supported, of the covers gently nestling around your body as your head sinks into the pillow, and if you feel the soft warm touch of someone you love, then so much the better. Somehow, the feeling of comfort around you, beneath you and on top of you spreads right through you, enveloping you with a feeling that helps you drift all the way down into a deeply relaxing sleep. You don’t have to do anything to get there; you just have to be there and the rest happens all by itself.
All the senses we have on the outside are replicated on the inside. And to make sense of things, we have to represent them on the inside and filter/distort what we believe to be important about that information in order for it to fit best with our map of the world. So what is it about the cinema, a concert and snuggling up in your own bed that works so well for you?
Well, if you are predominantly visually oriented, then the cinema is really going to do it for you; the images being big and bold and bright are going to create some really powerful states in you, ones that you will be able to represent for a long time to come and, when you do, they will create even more powerful states, just like thinking back to a favourite holiday or the day your children were born.
You will most likely be able to see those memories through your own eyes; you will be able to feel like you are really there and be able to mentally run the movie forward to the best bit as if you have the control of the recorded live event on the hard drive that is your mind.
If the concert does it for you then you are most probably aligned in a more auditory sense, your memories will generally feature a lot of sound and fewer pictures and if you want to change your state you’ll likely listen to music or even just silence that’ll make you feel good.
If the thought of snuggling up in those crisp, clean sheets does it for you then you are most likely to be more aligned around your feelings that in NLP we call ‘kinaesthetic’.
While it’s not accurate to group people firmly into any category, never mind whether they are ‘visual’, ‘auditory’ or ‘kinaesthetic’, it is true that we tend to be more dominant in one with the other two major representation systems following on behind. If you are wondering which order you work in, we’ll figure that out next.
So, we have learned that all of us are dominant in one of those major internal representation systems, but there are also two more beyond the big three: taste (gustatory) and smell (olfactory), but most (unless you are a spaniel) don’t navigate their way around the world using taste and smell because that would be weird! So we humans use pictures, which we will call ‘visual’; we use sounds, which, of course, we call ‘auditory’; and we use feelings, which in NLP, we refer to as ‘kinaesthetic’, to ‘make sense’ of the world around us and create the thoughts, feelings, emotions and choices that turn into our lives. Our lives are shaped from this very basic level of internal pictures, sounds and feelings, but there’s more.
In addition to the three submodalities described above, there is one other factor to consider here. Not to complicate things, but ‘fact-or’ is in fact a really good word for it. Some people tend to be what we in NLP call ‘auditory digital’. In other words, they appear to process fact but with very little in the way of accessing any other internal systems. You’ll know them though; those are the people who, when you are talking to them, tend to stare straight ahead and answer in rather obvious and less subjective terms than most.
Simply put, predominantly auditory digital people deal with logic. To outline the difference between auditory and auditory digital submodalities, try out the following example and see if you can spot the difference. The first example is of an auditory digital response, whilst the second is an example of a standard auditory response.
AD: ‘You have provided me with a way to proceed that makes sense to me and I would like to have more details now.’
A: ‘You have told me of a way to proceed that sounds good and I would like to hear all about it.’
An auditory person may say, ‘I can’t hear what you are saying’ or ‘this doesn’t sound right’. An auditory digital person may say, ‘there is no logic in what you are saying’ or simply, ‘this does not make sense to me’.
The person who is primarily auditory digital uses words like logic, common sense, reason, system, understand, think, analyse, know, learn; and phrases like due diligence, I’ll consider the idea, to sum up, to make sense of. You will notice little or no emotion in their language and very few assumptions or constructs; they are interested in the facts, just the facts. A cute trick is just to remember that something which is ‘digital’ is either 1 or 0, on or off. There are no shades of grey; it’s either black or white.
In the next chapter, I’ll explain why we are never really starting from a clean slate, but also how to change all that faster than you think. But for now think back to your favourite happy memory again and complete this framework, noticing what you notice about what’s there on the inside and just as importantly what’s not, the parts you have to leave blank.
Now, more than ever before, ‘how’ you are in the world is so much more important than who you are or what you know. How you use your own mind is going to be the difference that makes all the difference. Before you start trying to use these techniques on or with anyone else, please first get to know you and how you are ‘wired up’, then use that new knowledge to make new choices and a new life, or at the very least, a new experience of it.