What is happening in your world? Have you ever imagined yourself on stage?

I’ve been in an Elvis mood. There was nobody in the office today but me. I turned the volume up and did my best Elvis impersonation, with every vocal affectation and shaking hip.

And it was fun. Between you and me, I won a national competition and was once the top Elvis impersonator in the UK.

I was young.

I had hair.

Well, we each need a brief escape from the mundane from time to time. But let’s get down to business, shall we?

In the last couple of newsletters we’ve been exploring the theory behind programming our minds. We said the necessary first step is a goal. Have you established a goal for programming your mind?

Now what?

Now, you have to practice the change in your mental patterns. Did you choose one of the many excellent NLP techniques for change? You’ll notice I chose “techniques” and not “principles.”

And that may seem odd, since we spend so much time in this newsletter discussing principles. That’s because the unconscious mind responds to specific precision changes in patterns, and not to general thoughts or feelings.

Let’s put this in context.

Suppose you wish to change what you’re eating and become slim, fit, and healthy. You visualize yourself thin. You have thin photos on the wall that you created from pasting your head on a thinner body. Yet, you still find yourself drawn to pizza and cake. And occasionally apples, ‘cause you don’t want to eat too much junk food.

And though visualization is a powerful way to re-program your mind, the results aren’t coming.

Your visualization was too general. It reinforces your goal, but doesn’t help you to drill down to specific changes.

Let’s say at 8pm each night you the fridge starts calling your name and begging for attention. “Come and eat cake,” it coaxes you from the kitchen attempting to put you into a deep hypnotic trance.

You won’t eliminate a specific habit like hitting the ‘fridge each night at 8:00 for something sweet, no matter how salient the “trim and fit” goal is.

But there are several proven NLP techniques for switching your thinking. You need specific changes (an apple instead of cake) to reprogram your current thought patterns.

Like jujitsu, you’ll use the weight of your current habits against your old thought patterns.   And whichever technique you choose, you will replace with something else (the apple) what you’re taking away (the cake).

Bang. Mind programmed.

Techniques give us structure. NLP has a great many techniques, but that’s not what makes NLP work.

NLP Practitioners recommend specific techniques because they understand the underlying principles. The NLP Practitioners with great reputations help their clients to understand the principles, too.

What we’ve been covering these last few newsletters is a natural way that the human brain reprograms itself. We call it… what? What was that? The buzzer? Oh. Well, we’re out o f time for today. We’ll continue this discussion in the next newsletter.

But, while we’re waiting, may I ask a favour of you? Will you pop over to iTunes and subscribe to our new podcast, and give it a 5-star rating? This will help us to be featured in iTunes “New and Noteworthy.”

Besides, if you enjoy this newsletter, you’ll probably like the podcast, too.

I think I’ll dust off my guitar and do my version of “That’s All Right” by Mr. Presley.

All the best,

John “Elvis” Cassidy-Rice

 

(Graphic by freepix)