NLP Diploma Online Course Module 4

Channelling the Power of Your Mind

Unconscious Change

Change occurs on the unconscious level first. You'll know this if you think about how many

people try for years to wilfully break a habit without success. But a person can watch an

inspirational movie or read a book that changes his views about the world forever. In fact, all

learning takes place in the unconscious. Perhaps, at some point in life, you were presented

with an idea that just didn't make sense to you or seem relevant to your life. Perhaps, you

went on for years without revisiting this notion. Then, one day, something about that idea

resonated with you on a deeper level and you suddenly got it. This kind of occurrence is commonplace. That's because you can only realise something once your unconscious mind

has made the appropriate associations to do so. It then brings what it has learned to the

conscious mind and into your awareness.

The importance of this is that in order to create lasting changes, you must work at modifying

your subconscious interpretations. NLP is one of the best tools that we have for doing just

that. Instead of telling yourself that you are going to do something different, you can change

the pictures, sounds and symbols in your head, making the transition virtually effortless. One

of the best things about unconscious change is, in fact, that it occurs instantaneously. There's

no need to wait several months or even years to make a positive transition in your life.

Cause and effect

Every action is a cause that has an effect. Everything that you see around you is the result of

things that have been done before now. People built the room that you're in; made the clothes

you have on, and designed the car that you drive. You've also made choices in your past that

have brought you to this particular place on this particular day and into the current conditions

of your life. But this section is not about exploring the philosophical theories of natural law.

It's about what you choose to place your focus on most of the time. We all have the ability to

choose our point of focus and what you focus on determines what you will be capable of

creating.

You see, as long as you are focused on the effects of your life the job that you don't have, the things you haven't done, the money that you haven't made, it takes away all of your power

to do anything different. All of these things are results, consequences of what happened in the

past. Since you don't have a time machine to go back and change the past, it does you no

good to focus on what's gone wrong up to now.

People who are focused on the effects in life are often looking to deny responsibility for the

things that they see. These are people who easily play the Blame Game, making others accountable for their perceived shortcomings. A person with this mentality might say, Well, if it wasn't for him or what she did to me, then everything would be okay. But this type of thinking doesn't open up the opportunity to do anything new right now. In fact, excuses are

just distractions that prevent you from getting what you want. Because when you lean on

excuses, it means that you're simply carrying a lot of excess baggage, reliving past mistakes

over and over again.

The effect-centred person is thinking: I'll be happy when I get the new car, have the new house, get my degree, etc. He is constantly pushing pleasure out into the future. The truth is that there will always be something that could be better. So an effect-centred person never

finds the conditions ideal enough to turn things around. The effect side is where you can cop out of the responsibility for pursuing your dreams. You can say things like: That's easy for you to do. You've had all the brakes. I'm not the right race, height, weight, gender, etc.

The cause-centred person, on the other hand, has the power to do whatever is required for

improvement. That's because everything happens from the inside out. Being at cause means that you are taking control of your focus and looking at what you can do right now to get the

results that you want. If you want to produce something different, then you must do

something different. You must focus on something else.

The person who looks to be the cause of his own success is someone who says, Yesterday happened, but I can be a little more than I was then, starting right now. It's in this mindset that all the creativity lives. It is where you put away worries and mistakes from the past. You

learn from them, but then you leave them far behind where they belong. You have your

stories about what's happened, we all do. But you want to keep focused on the part of those

stories that really counts: at the end, where everything starts from right now. As it's been said

many times before, you can either have reasons or results, and reasons don't count.

At cause people dont cop out. They take on the philosophy that, If other people can do it, so can I. How do you know whether you are at the cause or effect end of this spectrum? Well, there is an easy way to tell. When you describe a certain situation or difficulty, pay

attention to the words that you use. When a cause person speaks, there is an implication of

choice in the words that he says.

For instance, say that you were going to skip a workout session with your personal trainer in

order to catch up on some paperwork from the office. An effect person would say something

like: Sorry, but we can't work out today because the boss put too much work on me this week. A cause person, on the other hand, might say: Sorry, I underestimated my workload this week and Im going to skip today's session in order to meet the deadline.

Take a closer look at the last two statements. The effect person is shifting all matters of

choice to things outside of his control. He is saying that someone else made it so that he can't

attend his regular session. While many people explain things in this way, it is a very weak

position to assume in life. The cause person is placing himself at both ends of the equation.

He is both a part of the cause and someone who is experiencing the effect. This is a much

more powerful point of view because, if you are at least partly responsible, you always have

the power to do something different and make things better next time. One person is giving

reasons and the other is producing results.

All this is to say that you can't become immersed in your content, your story, and your drama.

You must put self-pity aside for the greater good and give yourself a new methodology that

allows you to enjoy a much greater quality of life. There are times when you must hold

yourself accountable and insist on taking responsibility for your own stuff. Failure to do this may mean that you avoid the one piece of information that you need to succeed. As

stated before, you aren't broken. You have simply adopted a maladjusted strategy for existing

in a certain area of life.

When you talk to other people, notice which part of the cause and effect equation they are on.

Do they speak in a way that gives them choices about how to act? Or do they talk about

things happening to them. Everyone may sometimes slip slightly into one side or the other.

But the power lies in where you keep your focus most of the time. You may not really be the

cause of everything that happens in your life but if you take on the perspective that you are, it

puts you in a much more empowering position.

It is important to remember that both your conscious and unconscious choices create your

life. You may not be consciously at cause for many things that happen. But unconsciously,

you contributed to whatever took place. Let's look at, for example, a person who repeatedly

gets cheated in business. Now, of course, he doesn't consciously choose for these things to

happen. But let's look at this from another perspective. How does he choose which people to

trust and rely on in business? He probably doesnt even think about it, he does so unconsciously. There are also a number of internal motives and needs that drive his decisions,

expectations, and beliefs about what's happening. All these things operate at the unconscious

level. So he literally doesn't intend to make bad things happen, but part of him is operating in

a way that does. It's like the person who runs into the same kind of bad relationship over and

over again. They are simply not aware of choices that they are making underneath their

normal level of awareness.

If you don't put yourself on the cause side of what happens then you can't get the lessons that

are there for you. This includes the resources, strategies, and useful beliefs that will help to

keep you from repeating the past. You simply can't learn what you need to from the situation,

if the cause is always out there.

Exercise: Cause and Effect

Consider some part of your life that you have been unsatisfied with. Fill in the following

sentence, using any reasons that you have given yourself in the past for things not working

out in this area.

I am____________________________________________________, because___________

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

Now, scratch out the first segment of that sentence -the I am part. Rewrite your Because reason below, then fill out the remaining portion of this sentence:

Because____________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________, I can _____________

___________________________________________________________________________

Notice how much more empowering it is to think of things in this way. Practice making this

phrase your new mantra; something that you repeat to yourself over and over again. For, in

large part, you are the sum total of your experiences and interpretations. Because of what you

have gone through in the past, you now have the experience, tools, and abilities to do much

greater things than before. Bring this philosophy into all areas of your life and use it to re-

evaluate your past perceptions.

Perception

Whatever is happening on the surface level of your life has an underlying cause. Any event,

itself, is not the issue. It is merely input, filtered into your version of reality. At any moment

in time, all of us are being bombarded with something like 2,000,000 bits of information.

That is way too much data for the conscious mind to manage. That's why we are all equipped

with a built-in system for filtering out unnecessary facts. Actually, the conscious mind your normal everyday level of awareness can only process approximately seven to nine bits of information at any one time. If you were trying to pay attention to everything, you'd quickly

become overwhelmed and probably go insane.

Your mind's filtering system works in at least three ways that we know of. In order to make

sense of reality, we all delete, generalise, and distort the outside input that comes in, allowing

us to create those internal maps by which we navigate the world.

Generalisation

Earlier, we briefly looked at the topic of generalisation, but let's take a moment to explore

this idea more fully. Your mind is built to take the things that you learn and apply them to a

wide range of similar experiences. This can be a very good thing because it helps you to learn

very quickly and categorise things in a useful way. For example, you don't have to figure out

how to use a doorknob each time you walk into someplace new. Once you've learned how to

work one doorknob, you can take the information with you and apply it to a number of

different scenarios. You don't have to think about what a chair is each time you encounter a

new style or model. You pick up the general shape, draw what you know from that category

in your mind labelled Chair, and can sit down with no problem.

There are thousands of ways that you use generalisation to your benefit each day. If you

didn't have the ability to sort and classify things in this way, you'd probably never make it out

of your house in the morning. You'd spend all day trying to figure things out, and have no

attention left to engage with life.

But there's also a negative form of generalisation, which typically occurs when you place a

label on some experience and apply that same label to things that may be quite different. A

person may have found that withdrawing to his room as a child was a good way to avoid

being attacked in a hostile home. But if he uses that same strategy into adulthood pulling away every time he's met with opposition, he will go on to lead a very impoverished life.

Someone who was burned once on a business deal may develop a fear of pursuing future

opportunities. You can see how this type of generalisation can hold you back and prevent you

from accessing your true potential.

Deletion We delete things from our awareness so that we don't become overwhelmed with everything

going on around us. This ability also serves a good purpose because you really don't need to

pay attention to everything. Certain things are relevant to your life and others are not, so you

don't want to waste your time, resources, and energy pursuing things that have no value.

Here's a good example of the deletion process at work:

Take a moment to notice the feeling of your feet on the floor. And as you do that, you may

also become aware of everything that you weren't listening to until now. You can see things

in your peripheral vision that you weren't directly looking at and notice even little sensations

you may feel inside of your left ring-finger. Now, you probably weren't consciously aware of

those sensations until I mentioned them. But they were actually there all of the time. At any

moment, you are seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, and smelling a lot more things than you

have any awareness of. It would just be way too difficult for you to notice everything that's

going on all of the time.

And yet, there are also negative forms of deletion. This can occur when you remove things

from your awareness that are important to remember. When you are steeped in anger against

a family member, for instance, you may forget about all of the reasons that you have to love

them. A good example of this is with people who are depressed. Depressed people generally

don't recall any time when they didnt feel depressed. They forget about all the things that are going well and all the things to appreciate in life. This creates an unrealistically negative view

about reality.

Distortion

The third way we filter reality is through distortion. We have the ability to mentally alter the

shape and structure of the world that we see and fitting it into our individual maps of reality.

And, make no mistake, people greatly benefit from this ability. All creativity is based in

distortion the capacity to take things from the now and transform them into what has yet to be seen. Distortion allows us to fantasise, to plan, and design the future. It enables us to

create a vision of what it is that we want and persist when things are not going well.

Basically, things that you see all around you are products of distortion. Somebody or maybe a

group of people took different ideas and imagined how they could be combined to create

something new.

But, this ability to distort reality can also work against you. For instance, you could create

experiences for yourself that you don't want. What if you thought that anyone talking quietly

around you was talking about you in a negative way? This could lead you to become paranoid

and perform poorly doing everyday tasks. Or you could come to believe that the world is

working against you and start to see everything through that filter. Or you may perceive

yourself to be smaller or much less capable than you are. These are just a few of the ways that

people can distort reality in ways that produce unwanted consequences.

You see, we can't just take 2 million bits of information and make sense of it all at once. We

have to reduce that information to manageable levels in order to get any kind of grip on

reality. NLP is a way of getting into those structures, so that you can learn to filter the right

things. When your map is working well, it means that you are getting the behaviours and

results that you want. Because your internal representation controls your state, physiology,

emotions and behaviours, you can't see anything in the outside world that doesn't already

exist inside.

Physiological Influences

Another way you can get yourself to take on new perspectives is by working with your

physiology. The mind and body work together as a complete system. They do not operate

independently, as most people think, but are involved with each other on every level. If you

think certain thoughts, you'll start to feel a certain way and it's the way you feel that

influences your behaviour. But this process also works in reverse. If you stand, walk, breathe,

gesture, and carry yourself in a certain way, it will also affect how you feel. Those feelings

then influence your thoughts and cause you to choose different responses.

Let's do a little experiment. Wherever you are, whether you're standing or sitting down, for a

few moments just allow your shoulders to slump forward, allow your head to drop down,

look toward the floor and take short, shallow breaths. Now, while you're holding this posture,

just try to get yourself in a good mood. What you'll find is that it's very hard to do so. Now,

let's change things up a bit. Pull your shoulders back, lift your head up, take strong, even,

deep breaths. Raise your eyes up toward the ceiling and put a giant smile on your face. As

you hold onto this posture, now, just try to feel bad. Notice how it is equally as difficult. This

is because your posture, your movement, your breathing, your facial expressions are all

trigger mechanisms that let your mind know what state you're supposed to be in. So just by

changing the way you use your body, you can start to get positive results.

NLP co-founder Richard Bandler once wrote about a woman who came to see him for

depression. Bandler gave the client a simple assignment, which merely consisted of

examining the different designs of every rooftop she passed throughout the day. When she

returned to Bandler's office, the woman reported that there was a spontaneous improvement

in her mood. What Bandler knew was that this woman had a compulsive tendency to seek out

bad feelings. And in order to find those feelings, she was continually looking down to the

bottom right corner of her visual field. By getting her to keep looking up throughout the day,

the pattern was disrupted and the woman had access to more of her natural experience.

Your psychology shows up in your physiology and vice versa. This is because the mind and

body are designed to do certain things together. There are other ways that you can use this

information to your advantage. A change in state is correlated with a change in physiology. If

you seek to complete a task and notice a shift in your demeanour, you might ask yourself,

What's going on inside as I say that? That way you can pull out anything that might get in the way beforehand.

Psychological Filters

It is said that Eskimos have more than 50 words to describe snow. Therefore, their experience

of that particular element is a much more complete one than most of us have. An Eskimo can

make distinctions that allow him to know which snow is best for drinking, building, walking

on, etc. And if you've lived in an Arctic environment, it would be very good to have one of

these people around. Most of us have a map that would be completely useless in those kinds

of surroundings. This demonstrates why it's so important that you design a map that works in

your life. That takes us back to the personal nature of NLP. There is not a single model of the

world that works just as well for everybody.

Focus

What you focus on will determine the results that you get. Of course, you can focus on what's

going wrong, what you don't like in the world and what you don't like about yourself. But that

wouldn't be a very useful practice, would it? You want to live out of your imagination and

not your past. In the past, there are setbacks, mistakes and bad decisions; none of which can

be changed. It is an old model of the world that simply doesn't work anymore. The future

however, is limitless, full of promise, potential, and opportunity. When you see what you

could become from that moment forward, it gives you the opportunity for a fresh start. And

this is where you want to be in a place where you can begin fresh and start a new game. The old rules just don't apply.

Renowned self-improvement author Dr. Wayne Dyer often uses a quote that goes: You can't get thin from thinking the words 'I hate being fat'. Because if being fat is what a person is focused on, then he will just bring more of that condition into his reality. What you focus on

is what you get. Many people will have a particular goal in focus, but will simply be looking

at it from the wrong end of the telescope; with the ideal drifting further and further away.

NLP is designed to help you get more of what you want and less of what you don't. So these

are some of the perceptual structures that you will need to change.

Science actually shows us now that every thought you have has an effect on every single cell

in your body. In fact, those thoughts act like instructions that produce the appropriate

physiological responses. Your internal representations come together to create your focus.

That combination produces your state and your physiology. All these things come together

and become manifest in your behaviour, and behaviour is what gives you results. So the key

lies in focusing toward what you want. But in order to do this, you have to know what

pictures you're holding inside your mind.

You must go beyond self-talk because self-talk is often in opposition to deeply held beliefs.

Those are things that we repeat to ourselves at deeper levels; its these images, sounds, feelings and symbols that determine what we truly believe. For instance, you can spend all

day telling yourself that you are a strong and capable person. But if, while doing that, you're

creating images of being weak and incompetent, the picture will override your words.

Affirmations have their place but the subconscious mind does not use language as we know

it. So you really need to get into those deep structures, those pictures, sounds, feelings,

symbols, tastes, and smells, and use them to conceptualise whatever is happening.

Your mental constructs must also be ambitious. Some people simply focus on keeping things

the way that they are. But life is always moving, transforming and evolving. You can't really

stay still because everything around you is in constant transition. That's why many people in

the self-development industry say that we're always either moving forward or backward. If

you're not making progress, then you're sliding back, simply because the rest of the world is

moving on.

We've all heard of the comfort zone. And that's what people who are focused on staying still

in life fall into. It's a place where things are not really great, but they are not exactly the

worst. Think of how many people respond to the question How are you doing? with Not too bad. Not too bad? What does that even mean? It's not good, great, or even fantastic. Not too bad isn't even comfortable. This kind of linguistic phenomenon demonstrates how often people use their focus in the wrong ways.

A person who is locked into the comfort zone may believe that he is simply taking the lesser

of two evils. And it's a thought that goes: Things are not really great, but at least what I have now is the evil that I know. If I try to change things, who knows what will happen? And, in a way, that's true. Because when you go outside of the familiar, by definition, you've moved

into uncharted territory. So, a person who thinks this way and keeps one foot stuck in the

comfort zone and the other teetering on the edges of possibility, may take action toward a

goal, but then move back into safety very quickly. This type of strategy causes a person to

continually go back and forth, wasting a lot of time, energy, and resources.

Some people will support you in being scared to change. If they haven't made the move

themselves, they'll offer plenty of reasons as to why you should stay exactly where you are.

Some of you have probably experienced this just before taking this course. A friend or family

member might have said, Why do you want to do that stuff? Or, Wow, you're spending a lot of money on that program. Aren't they just going to tell you things you already know? Or perhaps, I knew somebody who tried that stuff out, and he said there's really no point to it. Those guys just get rich by charging you to attend.

But, if this is the case, you still used the power of choice to make a decision that was right for

you. You chose to invest in your personal future, in acquiring a set of tools, skills and

abilities that will raise the quality of your life forever. And that takes courage. It's not as

simple as thinking about what you want. You also have to guard your mind against the forces

of mediocrity and indifference, controlling both what comes in and what goes out.

Perception is Projection

We don't see the world as it is. We see it as we are. We do take input from the outside world,

and our sensory faculties are, in fact, information gathering mechanisms. They are built to

receive certain types of stimulation from the outside world. That data then travels throughout

the body and to the brain in the form of electrical impulses. The brain then interprets the

information and gives us an internal representation of whatever was perceived. However,

those experiences aren't 100 percent accurate. First of all, we can't really detect everything

that goes on out there. There are certain spectrums of light that we cannot see, sounds we

cannot hear, sensations that we cannot detect. Therefore, we can only create our experiences

out of the tools we are given and are capable of recognising.

But there is another reason why we don't really experience a true representation of the outside

world. We have psychological filters that arrange the outside information into something that

complies with our internal maps of reality. We then respond to the interpretation created by

our belief systems, worldview, and past mental conditioning.

Most people think that they believe something when they see it. But this notion is often far

from the truth. In reality, people most often see things because they believe them. For

example, some people make a tremendous amount of money during times of financial crisis.

While the country's top financial experts are preaching gloom and doom, these people are

looking for that silver lining and eventually find the opportunities that they seek. Others,

however, buy into all the talk about recession and depression. And that belief system leads

them into thinking thoughts and making choices which make that internal version of the

world a reality.

We'll summarise this point with a story. There was once a young man who had become fed

up with his lot in life. He had no friends, money was in short supply, he didn't get along well

with co-workers, and was really unsatisfied with the way that he was living. So one day, this

guy decides to pack up his belongings, take up residence in another part of the country, and

start over. At first, everything seemed to be going great. It was exciting to be in a new town

and see new faces. The man was having a whole lot of fun exploring this new world.

He soon found a job in his field of industry and started to get on with his new life. Within a

few months, however, everything started going downhill. Soon, the man found that, again, he

had no friends, little money and didn't get along with others at his job. So one day, the man

says: This place is just as bad as the one I left. I need to find someplace totally new, someplace where people are pleasant, where there are plenty of good jobs and I can really

unlock my potential.

So he packs up his things, once again, and heads for new territory. And, like before, the move

is really exciting at first. But, also like before, he soon finds himself in the same predicament.

For the next three or four years, the man's life follows the same pattern. He gets to a new

place full of excitement and enthusiasm, but soon finds himself facing the same problems as

before.

Eventually, the man decides to move back to his hometown, hoping to get some support from

family. Shortly after coming back, he runs into an old acquaintance from high school. This is

someone with whom the man had strong connections as a teenager. Both of them liked many

of the same things, wanted to live the same type of lifestyle, and even went into the same

profession.

During a short conversation, the man finds out that his friend has been doing quite well. He

became a very successful business person who was highly esteemed by both peers and

competitors. He had lots of good friends, married a wonderful woman, and was enjoying

exactly the type of lifestyle that they talked about having as kids.

Upon hearing this, the man in our example just had to ask, How did you make all of this happen? We grew up in the same place, had the same background and wanted the same

things out of life. Yet I have travelled the country, moving from one place to another, and

nowhere have I found the kind of people and opportunities that have come your way.

So the friend took a moment to think before responding. After a while, he said, So you've travelled the country, gone from one town to the next. But no matter where you go,

eventually you find yourself facing the same exact problems. Both comments, of course, were met with agreement. Then, the friend asked a very important question. He said, Every time you found yourself in a troubling situation, who was the one person that was always

there?

At first, the man was confused. He said, No, you don't understand. I have always travelled alone. The friend then responded, Yes, I understand all that. But, at the same time, I'd like you to think about who was always there, in each situation that caused problems. I want you

to think of that one person who was there every single time. Now the man started to get it. He said, Well, of course, I was there. I was the only one who was there every time. The friend quickly responded, That's right. You were the one who was always there. In every

one of those negative situations you talk about experiencing over and over again, there was

only one common denominator and that was you.

You see, this friend understood the fact that you take your problems with you. It may seem as

though misfortune is just following you around. People often strive to make adjustments to

the people, places and circumstances that surround them. But making progress in life really is

an inside job. Until you make some perceptual adjustments that open up the doors of

opportunity, you will continue to run the same patterns.

More Meta-Programs

Earlier, we talked about how people tend to either move toward their goal or away from

discomfort. But there are several other meta-programs that people use up when thinking

about a goal or making decisions. Let's look at just a few of these now.

Internal/External

You are motivated either by external incentives or an internal sense of what having the goal

would mean. And, as with each of these meta-programs, you generally make use of both

styles. But you're looking for the dominant one, the one that you perceive to be most

important. An external person is looking outside of himself for cues that identify whether or

not he has achieved a goal. This is about things like what other people say, and whether or

not your accomplishments are recognised. You may be looking to earn certain awards,

medals, or professional accolades. In short, an external person recognises feedback by what is

given to him in return for his efforts. However, any pattern can be run to excess. If you tend

to focus entirely on what others have to say, you may want to go inside a little bit to find

some internal value in the outcome.

The internal person, on the other hand, is focused on what he feels inside. This type of person

is looking to achieve some sort of emotional state. The internal style is about getting personal

value from a process. This could come from the sense that your life has meaning or has been

a contribution to the world. Many volunteer workers are internally driven and want nothing

but the satisfaction of supporting a worthy cause. But, internally driven goals can also be very

private. For instance, meditation is a practice that is unique to the individual and also offers a

solely internal reward. Many people find that jogging or participating in some form of

exercise gives them a sense of inner peace and comfort. But the internal pattern can also

cause negative results if taken too far.

Big Picture/Detail

Here is another interesting meta-program. When thinking about a project, some people have a

tendency to remain focused on the big picture, while others are more interested in the details.

A big picture person holds the final goal in clear sight. He knows exactly how he wants

things to look in the end. This is the type of person that comes up with all the big ideas.

However, a big picture person often starts many projects that he neglects to finish. This is

because he focuses so much on the final result that he misses many of the details that make

things happen. And that's a problem because any great idea requires a great deal of follow-

through. If you are this type of person, therefore, you may need to get out of the big picture

just a bit and into the specifics of everyday life.

The detail person is looking at all the little steps that it takes to get there. This person has a

more realistic view of the effort involved in making things work. But there are also some

setbacks to this type of mentality. The person who is too focused on specifics has a tendency

to get lost in the details and lose sight of the overall intended outcome. In this case, you may

need to chunk up and learn to appreciate the big picture.

Matching/Differences

You may be a person who looks for approval from others; you may want to match their

experiences with a preconceived concept of your goal. You'll notice this because when you

think about possible solutions, you'll go inside for a bit and then come back saying things like

Yeah, I think that will work, or Yeah, that seems like a fit.

A person who looks for differences, on the other hand, takes the opposite approach. This type

of person frequently responds with the phrase Yeah, but. If you are a Differences person, you may say things like, Yeah, but my schedule will get in the way or Yeah, but there are only certain times of the year when I can apply for the position. You are also measuring feedback according to an internal ideal. But in this case, you are looking to take actions that

don't conflict with certain things that could get in the way.