We can live our lives with inner moods of frustration, resignation and fear, while to others it may seem like an happy life, full of opportunities and occasions.
On the contrary, we can live our lives with enthusiasm, we can consider it a life full of opportunities and potential, while to others it is a normal life.
Our good or bad feeling compared to an event does not arise from the event itself but it is due to the meaning we attach according to our schemes.
Everything is a matter of perception. Our brain is not able to distinguish from a real life experience and an imagined one.
Taking advantage of this mechanism it is possible to create in our minds imaginary situations that help us to reprogram our brains..
Many tools of NLP are based on the substitution of moments negatively lived with positive situations and intense happiness.
Limiting beliefs
The limiting belief is one of the most dangerous as prevents us from achieving a certain result because we are already discouraged from the start.
This initial distrust creates a circular effect that increase the limiting belief, in fact if we think of not being able to do a certain thing and we are going to realize that it will be a failure, we will put the best of ourselves and probably we fail, or however, the performance will be poor and it will increase even more the conviction that we are not able to do that thing. The main forms of limiting beliefs are:
- I AM NOT ABLE
I am convinced that the others are able to do something but I can’t. - I DON’T NEED
It ‘s the conviction of one who feels guilty and thinks that no matter how things go, the result will be negative. - IT IS IMPOSSIBLE
It is the conviction that comes from giving more weight to the opinions of the others.
Any belief, whether limiting or challenging, is the result of what we learned during our life and can be changed or canceled by developing a new capability for us.
How to create and develop new capabilities in 4 steps:
- I don’t know that I don’t have a certain capacity
- I realize, watching the others, that there is some capacity that I have not
- I decided to learn the skills by imitating that model and by training
- capacity becomes an automatic thing and act without thinking.
A new learning allows us to eliminate our limiting beliefs.
The disfellowshipped perception
When we are in situations of suffering and hardship it is very important to consider the events with a certain indifference and without excessive involvement.
In order to do this you have to assume the position of disassociated perception.
In the case of associated representations, we are into the image and we see things with our own eyes.
Instead, in the case of disassociated perceptual position we see ourselves from the outside as we’ll be viewers watching a film starring ourselves.
In the case of associated perception, the images are experienced more intensely and they give us more really feel as if we lived the experience.
To see our body and our face from the outside instead allows us to detach emotionally from the situation and then helps us to dilute and remove the feelings related to the experience, whether negative or positive.
To associate or to disassociate ourselves change the emotional impact resulting from the experience perception.
There are people who dissociate themselves from positive situations and other from negative ones.
Who is dissociated from positive situations is not able to live fully his successes, does not stop to congratulate himself, is never satisfied with what he does.
Besides, who dissociates from positive situations is brought to associate easily to negative situations, deeply involved in the states of suffering and making the sacrifice.
In contrast, people who dissociate themselves from negative situations know that they can do something that allows them to change the state of mind in which they are located.
They know that they are able to pass more easily and quickly the states of suffering and switch to moods lighter and positive.
The technique of Swish
With this technique it is possible to correct a behaviour without making real actions but only imagining them.
Mentally substituting the wrong image with the correct one you can eliminate the malfunction.
To learn the technique of Swish is very simple, as shown in the article “You can lose weight or stop smoking, the technique of SWISH”.
Anchors
We can induce positive and pleasant moods recalling those events and situations that made us feel good and that satisfied us.
When you associate a stimulus to a specific response you create an anchor.
Remembering particular happy and positive moments it is possible to create positive anchors, similar to what celebrations, rites and inaugurations so, trigging positive states of mind.
On the contrary, we can understand and recognize what are our negative anchors that make us unpleasant and suffering moods.
By overlaying our positive anchors to the negative ones we can cancel and exit form moods of frustration.
A simple way to create a positive anchor is to associate a gesture or a word to a particular positive mood (e.g. you can cross your hands, or touching an ear or pronounce a specific word). So you have to choose and relive a time when you felt really happy and perform the movement described above.
Repeating this mechanism will associate that movement or word to the positive mood.
All the times that will repeat the movement or pronounce the word will activate the positive state.
Negative thinking
Our brain does not perceive the negative formulations because it is not able to imagine them.
For example, if we say to ourselves to be careful about not getting dirty, first we imagine ourselves to be dirty and then we erase that image.
The result is that most likely we will get dirty.
This means that to not fail or to be more likely succeed, we must never make goals to negative.
It’s much better to say that I want an healthy life than to say that I do not want to smoke anymore or that I do not want to get fat.
So we have to stop thinking about what we don’t want or don’t want to be and focus more thinking about what we do and how we want to be.
Complaint or problem
The complaint is different from the problem in that it comes down to the simple observation and consideration of something that is wrong and that does not work.
The complaint induces negative mood and implies resignation.
The problem instead provides for the possibility that there is a solution, that there is a possibility and a goal of improvement.
The person who thinks about a problem glimpses the possible actions, imagines herself with the problem and without the problem itself.
In the act of imagining herself without the problem the person already focuses on possible solutions.
It is easier and more convenient to hide and resign rather than having the courage to instigate change and improvement.
Any complaint can be reformulated in a positive way by imagining a positive state:
| complaint (negative) | Positive state |
| I never have time for myself | I would like to devote more time to myself |
| I’ll never do that thing | I’ll find a way to do that thing |
| I’ll never lose weight | I’ll find a way to make an effective diet |
Many problems disappear just because having a goal, a motivation, a positive state makes them disappear.
Bibliography: NLP Neuro-Linguistic Programming, De Vecchi Publisher
Picture: freedigitalphotos.net