There is no such a thing as failure

There is no such a thing as failure

Presupposition 8: There is no such a thing as failure, only result or feedback.

          Now we are discussing about a very important presupposition which can make changes in all areas of our life. The word ‘failure’ is a very common word we heard from nursery school. Teachers always warn us not to fail in examinations (because higher authorities warn them!). “There is no such a thing as failure, only result or feedback”. Honestly speaking I have never heard the word ‘success’ during my school days instead the word ‘pass’ was very familiar to us.

          Failure and success are two words that denote the extremes of an action or a work. The word ‘Failure’ usually indicates that the person couldn’t meet the criteria to pass. The comments ‘you failed’, ‘he failed’ or ‘she failed’ remind the persons that they are behind to those have more progress. If you mark a point somewhere on a scale to indicate the demarcation between pass and failure, that point creates different thoughts and emotions in the person. Negatively thinking people see the demarcation point as a hurdle on the race of life. Unfortunately many institutions imprint a ‘stamp of failure’ on the mark list if the position is between zero and the point of demarcation!

          In fact there is no such a thing as failure only results or feedback. Say for example we perform an activity and we mark the progress on a paper from 0 to 100 graphically. Each and every point on the sheet indicates our progress at a particular time of measurement. Each point indicates the progress until that time. Point 1 positively indicates that you have already finished 1% of the work and point 99 indicates you have finished 99%.  If you think negatively, at point one 99% work is pending and 1% is yet to complete at point 99! So there is no question of failure in any point but should be the ‘result of performance’ or ‘feedback of progress’ at that time.

          To see the poor progress of a person with a negative angle of view and stamp it as ‘failure’ is a common mistake done by authorities. We can see this in every walk of life including the little nursery school. There are a number of reasons for the poor performance of a person during a specific period of time. It doesn’t mean that a person once performs poor always performs poor. And also a person poor in one area of life is good in another area and best in some other area. Einstein was not good in school and he received only a diploma from the school initially however every educated persons in the world now know him because he became a wonderful scientist great achievements.

          Another mistake we do in our life is that we observe and do research only on success stories. We have to give equal importance to stories of the so called ‘failure’. To know why a person didn’t succeed is equally important to know how a person succeeded. The former gives you certain warnings and latter gives you the steps to follow.

          Stories of winners are not only the stories of ‘carpets of flowers’ but are the stories of ‘pathways filled with thorns and stones’ too; it includes struggles, hurdles, obstacles, pitfalls and rejections. Great leaders and winners of remarkable achievements like Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Alwa Edison, Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King experienced ignorance and rejections in their life.

          Do you remember that day in your babyhood when you learned to stand up first time and you declared yourself as a winner! Probably you forget it. You must have noticed the efforts the kids take to learn walking; they first crawl using their abdomen, then their knees and shortly they stand on their feet but how many times do they fall. Upon falling if they decided to not try again nobody could ever walk. They never disappointed instead they try again and we encourage them. After the continuous efforts the number of falls comes down and finally they achieved their goal. Babies have no sense of failure!

          The one who view the results as ‘failure’ think negatively and give up their dreams. The success is not a result of luck but an outcome of continuous efforts, hard work and dedication.  Adults are less willing to make mistakes and take risk and perhaps such an attitude lead them to think of themselves as a failure.  Adults look for immediate success. They are not ready to consider mistakes and poor performances as feedbacks and learning opportunities for corrections and betterments. Eliminating what doesn’t work is an effective way to find what does work. Edison wasted large quantity of materials for bulb before inventing the first successful model. Abraham Lincoln experienced the taste of failure many times before achieving the president’s chair.

          We do not fail. We can do it again and improve with feedback. Every failure is a stepping stone towards success. This is what winners are always doing. So remember the most important presupposition that can change our life “There is no such a thing as failure, only result or feedback”.

There are always choices

There are always choices

Presupposition 7: There are always choices.

          Who commits suicide, those have no other choices! To have choices is very important for the betterment of life. However the question is who provides choices and where the choices are available.

          Winston Churchill says “optimist sees opportunity in difficulty and pessimist sees difficulty in opportunity”. One who searches choices will find it. Searching choices is a life sustaining activity which is the result of positive thinking. Choices are required for the betterment of life and ‘to have a choice is better than no choice’. More choices in life mean more freedom.

          Sometimes a person is in such a situation where by his thinking process is totally disturbed or mind get stuck and he can’t think of or access the choices or solutions anymore. There are number of internal and external reasons for it. However major reason is the internal filters and the resulted internal map based on which the person processes thinking. The person lives at the ‘effect’ of the perceived ‘cause’. Here is the importance of a choice provider. A good friend, an influencing person, a counsellor or a social worker can be a choice provider.  Even a good speech or an influencing experience can release the mental blockage.

          In fact a choice provider never provides the choice but act as a catalyst to alter the process of thinking and help the person to discover and access the choice. There are always choices but because of the mental blockage the person is unable to see and identify it.

          Let us see what happens in the case of depressed persons. They conclude that it is impossible for them to live any more, all roads are closed. Some of them believe that everybody around them laughing at them and are their enemies. Some believe that all are cheating them. Some of them want to take revenge against them and others want to escape from the people and the world.  Others want to get rid of all headaches and shame. The only way in front of everyone of them is to end the life because they can’t think of any other choice.

          The same thing is happening in the case of phobia also. Having just one choice is no choice at all. Every time when the phobic trigger comes up we feel that there is no other choice. Hence we believe that we have no protection from the object of phobia (snake, height, dog, water, lift etc) and which create a fear. Trauma is the worst form of phobia which makes one’s life so difficult.

          Many people take hard decisions in the walks of life because of mental blockage. Many others are unable to take decisions. Mental block disables persons from searching choices. One of the major objectives of NLP is to provide more choices. Many of the NLP presupposition along with NLP techniques are developed to increase the number of choices available in any given situation. All communications should increase choices. The outcome (result) of the therapy enables the client to move from the point of ‘effect’ (fear) to the point of ‘cause’. At cause the client have access to choices.  At effect client has no other choice. 

        

You have all the Resources for Success

You have all the Resources for Success

Presupposition 6: People have all the resources they need to succeed and to achieve their desired outcome.

          What are resources? Resources are the source of wealth, aid, support, input materials, tools and tackles including professional skills required. We are talking about the personal resources required to succeed in life and to achieve the desired outcome. Resources required for personal achievements comprise internal and external resources. Knowledge, beliefs, values, decisiveness, skills, talents, abilities, confidence, thinking power etc are internal resources. Property, manpower, money, education, profession, political power, family, friends, relatives etc. are external resources. There is no limit or demarcation for the resources and anything required to achieve the desired outcome can be considered as a resource.

           

            You can’t achieve a desired outcome without the required resources. When we talk about the resources required for a student the first instant we usually think of books, notebooks, stationery and resource persons (teachers) with teaching aids but we know that it also include money, food, school uniform, a guardian to take care, healthcare etc. However the most important is the internal resources which include the student’s thinking power, beliefs, values, skills, talents, confidence, decisiveness etc.

          Complaining against the lack of resources is one of the human weaknesses. It is the common nature of people to equate one’s property with others and make the balance sheet! We always look what we don’t have and we never look what we have. It says ‘count your blessings not your troubles’. Resources are like treasures.  You have to make a treasure hunt to discover it. Sometimes we forget about our resources due to our ignorance. Winners are hunters of resources and choices! They find most of their resources and utilize it systematically to achieve their desired outcomes.

          Do you know the most fundamental resource that we have? It is the ability to dream, making pictures in mind. It is the essential requirement for a powerful internal representation. Without this resource you can’t become an engineer, a designer, an artist or a planner. Using this resource we travel through time and place and have memories. We can see the mental pictures using our inner eye.

         

          Another important thing is that we can make these pictures live providing sounds, emotions, smells and tastes! Thus your internal representation is more powerful. Waltz Disney has created the entire Disney world first in his mental screen. Then he transformed it into drawing papers. Later on after corrections he converted it into a movie. He has watched the movie and updated it. He has commissioned the Disney World first in his mind! Upon utilizing all his internal and external resources wonderfully he became world’s number one entertainer.

          Most of our internal resources are given by God or the nature free of cost like the natural resources in the earth. People have all the resources they need to succeed and to achieve their desired goals or outcome. They have deep storage of possibilities, strengths and powers but are hidden and unknown. Many of us are limited by what resources we believe that we have and what is possible for us to achieve. Limiting desires is in one hand a good thing to avoid risks but in the other hand it is the biggest hindrance against our growth. People with limiting belief either have not identified the resources or they don’t know how to access it.

          It is not the lack of resources but the lack of control over the resources and ignorance about resources building walls against success. To make a resource available to us we have to label it and consider it as part of our identity. Say for example if you ask a small kid “baby, are you confident about it?” The word ‘confident’ may be a new word for the kid. But at the moment the kid replies that “yes, I’m confident” he recognize one of his internal resource! If he says “no, I’m not confident” doesn’t mean that he can’t be confident.  We can help him to create confidence and that’s the duty of the motivator, the teacher and the parent. Using the available resources one can create or bring in new resources both internal and external. This is applicable to every person in their life.

          NLP intervention is to help a person to identify his resources and make use of it. Most of the personal problems we face in life are the lack of utilizing resources and choices. Let us think of ‘stress and anxiety’ which is a common issue for most of the people especially in the middle class society. I hope after you have gone through the previous sessions you understand that stress is the result of negative thinking about future events! What will happen to my children? Whether they will reach safely? Can he pass the exam? What my friends will think of me? Can I get the promotion? Whether my wife comes to know it? What will be the result of the lab test? Whether the pilot is a terrorist? Whether the lift stops at mid way? What the audience will think? Am I cute? Whether they accept me? All these kinds of negative thinking patterns results in subsequent thinking process which stacks up more and more negative conclusions.

          You can think in a thousand ways to become stressful or anxious. That’s what we discussed earlier that ‘you are what you think’. Depression, phobias, traumas etc are nothing but the results of a series of negative thinking. NLP intervention helps the client to change the thinking pattern and to think positively. It helps the client to discover the internal resources like self-confidence, will power, self-esteem, positive beliefs, values etc and utilize it to think differently.

          So remember the presupposition People have all the resources they need to succeed and to achieve their desired outcome.

The Person and Behavioural Change

The Person and Behavioural Change

Presupposition 4: Even though the only reliable information about a person is the behavior, the person is not the behaviour.

Presupposition 5: Behavior and change should be evaluated in terms of context and ecology.

We have already learned three presuppositions:

1. Everyone lives in their own unique model of the world. 

2. Map is not the territory.

3. Underlying every behavior there is a positive intention.

          In this session we discuss two presuppositions together considering their interrelationship. It is related to person, behaviour and its change. Behaviour and its change determine the quality of the life of a person. Behaviour is the basis of all personal progress. It determines success and failure. Also behaviour is an indication of the mental state of a person at any moment. It is the key attribute that constitute the personality. And NLP is all about behaviour and behavioural change.

         

          The fourth presupposition to discuss is ‘even though the only reliable information about a person is the behaviour, the person is not the behaviour’. This is one of the key presupposition which enables one to see a person separate from his behaviour so that counseling and healing will be effective. Usually it is the human nature to evaluate a person based only on his attitude, behaviour and habits. That’s true because those are the only reliable first hand information about a person we have. And it is one of the reasons for all relationship problems.

          Usually nobody take initiative to study what is the reason for a person to behave in such a way so that the problem has been created or why the person shown a wrong attitude. Instead they come up with a conclusion that the person dislikes them or is now their enemy. So now the problem has created a wall of separation between two friends or two relatives or two coworkers. This is how daughter in law concludes that her mother in law is a devil or the bride thinks that her husband is not a gentleman. This is the reason for children sometimes dislike their parents of rejecting their needs. Most of the bosses are enemies for subordinates because they think that behaviour is the person.

          If a person behaved in a wrong manner in the family or in the society we stamped him as wrong, perverted, antisocial etc. We never ask why or how? Also this is a common mistake done by parents and teachers towards children. They generalize and put black mark on some children as lazy, fool, naughty, idiot, average, nuisance, headache etc. And interestingly many of these so called black marked children later become great political leaders and rule the excellent group, brilliant engineers and scientists! However the unfortunate thing is that we lose many of such children in the dark corridors of the life.

          A therapist, healer or counsellor can’t think like a common man. They must think based on the presupposition ‘even though the only reliable information about a person is the behavior, the person is not the behaviour.’ It means that if the behaviour changes, the person changes and the behaviour and change should be evaluated in terms of context and ecology.

          I will make it very clear. There was a murder case in south India in which the accused kills his uncle and aunty to steel their gold and money to lead a luxury life with his friends. The crime has been proved with clear cut evidences and witnesses. The court has sentenced the convict life imprisonment which is unfortunately only 12years in India. Now see the twist. During his tenure in the jail the man changed himself. He obtained a good behaviour certificate from the jail superintendent. He confessed his sin and become a social worker. Now he served as a missionary in the jail! And he is also looking after the children of prisoners.

          This is a real story pointing fingers towards the behavioural change for person. The behaviour of a person is an acquired attribute part of his internal representation and not something obtained by birth. The internal representation depends on the perception and filtration which are created by the ecology in which the person is born and brought up. I mean you can’t simply blame a person for his negative behaviour. And the most important thing is that the particular behaviour which creates a problem to the person or to others is only a very little part of his actual behaviour. That particular behaviour is not the total sum of his personality.

         

          We should not equate a person’s worth or identity with a particular behaviour.  Say for example the naughty behaviour of a child never indicates the core personality or the positive self worth of the child. A clear distinction should be made between the self, the intention and the particular behaviour. In the case of the convict we have discussed above, his core personality was positive and that’s why he could change his unwanted criminal behaviour. Our society makes a major mistake when it writes off the possibilities of correcting the behaviour of a person and considers the unwanted behaviour as the identity of that person.

          NLP evaluate a person’s behaviour in terms of context and ecology. We have seen earlier that no event itself has a meaning and we give meanings within the limits of our internal map. Another common mistake is that we separate the behaviour from the context. When a student shows unsatisfactory performance in an exam teacher should enquire about the context and ecology. What elements affect the student’s performance? What behavioural change he has? Verify his ecology? Are there remarkable changes in the ecology? What are the latest events?

          The only reliable information about a person is their behavior. Behavior is not the person. The person is much more than the behavior. Never equate a person’s worth or identity with a particular behavior. Accept the person first and then systematically approach for a behavioural change.

          Behavior and change are to be evaluated in terms of context and ecology. Behavior is created specifically to the situation and the reality currently being experienced. Whether this behavior is good, bad, useful or un-useful, it was adapted to the situation in which it was created. A negative behaviour may be the result of a negative context or ecology.

          The above presuppositions are very important for a healer or a counsellor. They should not approach a client with prejudice mind. They have to accept the person and change the behaviour. Give much value and considerations to the positive self worth of each client. Teachers and parents must learn NLP so that they can manage their children systematically and easily to change the behaviour and therefore achieve the desired outcomes (goals). Unfortunately our teachers and parents are so uneducated in facing such life situations and they send their children to hospitals!

          Almost all the Obsessive Compulsive Disorders and Impulsive Behaviours are the result of context and ecology where a person is born and brought up. As we have seen earlier that a vulture hatched and brought up with chickens can’t behave like a vulture! It is applicable in the case of every animal however for the human beings the good thing is that we can teach and trains them new behaviour to replace the old comparatively with little efforts. But the Changer should approach the client with the required expertise and patience.

         

          Once again remember the Presuppositions even though the only reliable information about a person is the behavior, the person is not the behaviour and Behavior and change should be evaluated in terms of context and ecology.

Behaviour and its Positive Intention

Behavior and its Positive Intention

Presupposition 3: Underlying every behavior there is a positive intention.

          There is a driving force behind every work. Science says without force no work or action is possible. Work = Force x Displacement is a very familiar formula among students. Here displacement means a change from one position to another. Keep this in mind let us think about the statement ‘underlying every behaviour there is a positive intention’.

         

          It may be little difficult to understand this statement at once because there is a word ‘positive’. If we remove ‘positive’ the statement may be acceptable to more people. Everybody agree that there must be an intention behind behaviour and the intention is the driving force.

          Then, what is a positive intention? When we talk about positive, definitely negative also comes into picture. Positive doesn’t mean ‘good’, it’s a common mistake. Most students make similar mistakes in addressing their teachers they use ‘teacher’ for females and ‘sir’ for males!

          Anything supports or gives advantage to a particular goal is considered to be positive for that goal and the other therefore is negative.

          Read the above sentence once again carefully. What does it mean? Positive is a relative term with respect to a goal. You are well aware of the positive and negative terminals of a magnet. Both attract metals and you can’t say one is more powerful than the other. And the important thing is that both are part of the same physical body!

          Let us come to the point. Underlying every behavior, there is a positive intention. Positive and negative intentions are relative terms to be considered based on the context and not the content. The positive intention in a particular context may be negative in another context. Say for example a teacher punishes a student. What is the positive intention underlying it? Intention is ‘changing the bahaviour of the student’. For some students and their parents the ‘act’ of that teacher is the ‘behaviour with negative intention’.  So the ‘act punishment’ is positive for some body and negative for some others.

          Why do babies cry? To draw attention of parents to achieve their needs! So the positive intention is ‘drawing attention’. A child kisses his mother to show his love. What is the intention behind drinking alcohol? If we ask we get the answers to get rid of tension, to enjoy the kick, for the company sake, to forget the sorrows etc! Smokers also give a similar response. These are the positive intension to the person who drink or smoke. And its consequences may create negative impacts for the person itself or family or the society.

          Why Jean Valjean stole the bread in the novel ‘Les Miserables’, written by Victor Hugo? - To feed his sister’s children during an economic depression. But the court sentenced him to jail! The positive intention was feeding the children.

           

          Positive intention behind capital punishment is to give a message to the society as well as to protect the society from the criminals. But the court in fact commits a criminal activity! Since the intention is positive the society agrees it. In every case we have seen that there is a positive intention behind the behaviour. Without that positive intention person will not produce that particular behaviour. And that intention may not be good for the person himself, for the family or the society.

          Since behaviour is a result of intention we can change the behaviour without changing the intention or in other words if we know the positive intention we can change the behaviour, if it produces negative impacts. How? Let the person achieve the result of the intention through some other bahaviour which produces positive impacts.

          Say for example the child cries and the intention is to get milk. If you give milk it stops crying. However you don’t have milk at that time or due to some reasons you are unable to feed milk at that time. What will you do? The child keeps on crying. You have to give him something to stop his hunger and the feed should be tasty and may be a similar liquid. When the intention achieves the child stops crying.

          Friends, in NLP the child is your unconscious mind. Your unconscious produces most of your unwanted habits and behaviours as a result of your stalked internal representations. There is a positive intention underlying that action. No actions without intention. So to change your bad habits and behaviour find the positive intention behind it first.

          Children who get no care, no love, no enjoyment and no support may try to get rid of the distress and frustration by drinking or smoking. The solution is to provide them care, love, enjoyment and support somehow. Most of the headaches are the results of physical or mental problems which try to draw your attention producing the headache. Unless you attend and solve the problems permanently you will never get rid of the headache permanently.

 

          You have to provide more choices and resources so that the unconscious will go for the better choice which will support the positive intention. Everybody perform the best they can with the available resources based on their internal map and the ecology (context) they are functioning.

         

          So the major constraint is the inaccessibility of choices and resources. The role of NLP is not only in finding positive intention but also in providing accessibility to choices and resources. There are effective NLP therapies and techniques to help people this regard. So the presupposition is underlying every behavior there is a positive intention.

Map is not the territory

Map is not the territory

Presupposition 2: Map is not the territory.

          Map is not the territory is a simple statement, but contains great meanings. Territory is the geographical area of a state and map is its diagrammatic representation. However territory is entirely different from the map. It is the actual physical being of what the map represents. In NLP we are dealing with the internal map which is the internal representation of a life experience or world of reality perceived through five senses. You can’t change the world of reality but you can change the way you perceive it.

          You have already learned in the previous sessions the process of perception, filtration (deletion, distortion, generalization) and modeling (forming internal map). A person lives upon his internal map. Map act as a compass for the person to navigate his life. What is the significance of the statement ‘map is not the territory’ in NLP and what is its meaning?

          Map is not the territory indicates that the ‘internal map’ is not the ‘real experience’ in the external world however it is the ‘present reality’ in the internal world for the person. Meaning of the present reality may not match with the meaning of the real experience. In fact an event itself has no meaning, we give meaning to it!

          One of my friends stays in the city goes for morning walk daily with his wife. One day he sees a young boy and girl come in the opposite direction. They smiles at my friend and family and continue walking. His wife said ‘what a perfect match, both are handsome too’. He agreed and said ‘May be they are working at one of the IT companies’. They meet again in the next day and smiled each other. This time friend’s wife wishes them saying a ‘hello’ but amazingly the couples don’t replies and walked away. As a middle class woman she gets upset. “See, this is the problem of new generation, no manners, what do they lose in saying a hello” she expresses her dislike. “My dear, I think they smiled.” he says to cool her down. “So what, since I wished them they must have to respond, I’m wondering what culture their children learns from them”. The dialogue continues. Every day they meet. One day they meet their neighbour, a retired army chief on the way and he just wishes the young couples by swaying his hand. They responded in a similar manner. Then he turned towards my friend and his wife, wishes them and asks “how are you, do you know who they are”. “No”, friend replied. “They are the children of Captain Roy Thomas. Both are deaf and dumb but very smart, doing their research in the university”. They got ashamed of their negative thought.

          The above story is just an example of how people perceive life experiences. As I have mentioned earlier that event itself has no meaning, we give meaning to it! If you do not tell a child that ‘A’ should be pronounced as ‘A’ and ‘A’ is the first letter of Apple the child may pronounce in a different way and give his own meaning. When a person laughs, you are free to give meaning to it as ‘laugh at’, ‘laugh away’, ‘laugh off’ etc. When husband is angry wife may give different meanings to it! When wife get into a mood off state husband may think differently ad give his own meaning to it. Different person gives different meanings to the same experience.

          How do different persons give different meanings? We have already learned that filters and thinking process influence the perception. The internal representation is ‘perception plus the meaning given to it’. The person act on the meaning he gives to the experience and not on the actual experience.   That’s why we consider it as a presupposition. The meaning a person gives to an experience influences his life positively or negatively. It may affect his personal and professional life. It may lead him to success or failure. It may disintegrate his family life.

          The advantage of NLP is that it can help a person to change the meaning he has given. NLP makes him to see the experiences in a different angle. You can’t change the world of reality but you can change the way you perceive it. In the above example my friend and family changed their attitude towards that young couple. But the real experience (meeting them in the morning) does not have any change! Positive thinking is nothing but to view an experience in a different angle in such a way that it should support one’s life. Since map is not the territory we can change the map! ‘Changing one’s internal map’ is the basis of NLP life change interventions’. So keep in mind the presupposition Map is not the territory.

NLP Presuppositions

NLP Presuppositions

          Interventions for healing and personal change in Neuro Linguistic Programming do not treat the body with medicines or any other physical means. Medical science is based on lab results and physical verifications however NLP intervention is based on analysis of internal world and thinking process of a person. NLP deals with the mind and not the body and thus the mind change leads to life change and physical change (for psychosomatic problems).

          Medicines make chemical changes in body and the healing is based on chemical actions, supply of nutrients, vitamins, hormones etc. where as in NLP healing is based on internal and external communications (linguistics) and intervention in thinking process. Medical science prescribes medicines based on the predetermined effects of its chemical actions and subsequent results on the human body. NLP intervention techniques are developed based on presuppositions derived from positive thinking and optimistic approach towards life change. Without knowing NLP presuppositions you can’t proceed with the coming sessions of NLP training program.

          Presupposition is a positive statement or belief that determines the future of a new statement or an action. ‘Mothers take care of their children’. Based on this presupposition courts always considers a mother as the legal custodian of a child. However if a judge believes that all women are not good mothers, he is true. The judge is free to keep that belief and take further action. NLP life change techniques and healing therapies are developed based on presuppositions. There are many presuppositions however we will discuss only the important ones hereafter.  Let me introduce the first one in this session and other presuppositions in the coming sessions.

                            

Presupposition 1: Everyone lives in their own unique model of the world. 

          We have already seen in previous sessions how a person perceives the world experiences and forms his own internal world. The person perceives experiences through his five senses; visual (see), auditory (hear), Kinesthetic (feel), Olfactory (smell) and Gustatory (taste). Every person come across different experiences because the person is born, brought up and living in different ecology or environment. They meet different people with different knowledge, attitudes, behaviour and habits. So their perceptual input and therefore their filters use to develop the internal world are different. So everyone has unique filters and hence unique model of the world or the internal world.

          Why people have different opinions and decisions? Because people have unique filters and thus the process of thinking and method of decision making are different and unique. It is the reason for conflicts, different attitudes and behaviours. Children says ‘papa know nothing’. Mom says ‘my son do not listen to me’. Husband says ‘my wife is not bold’. Teacher says ‘he never changes’.  Daughter in law says ‘my mother in law is a devil’.

          We have also seen people say ‘he is my beloved friend’, ‘they are made for each other’ and ‘she can’t leave him’. In all these cases the villain and hero is the internal map. To make a friend accepts his internal map. To transform ‘mother in law’ to a ‘mother’ respect her internal world. To change students, understand their inner world and accept it first.

         

          Respecting other person’s model of the world is one of the important criteria to make a change program effective. Change program include counseling, success training and healing therapies. It is the basis of relationship management. It is one of the qualities of effective leadership. You never get respect if you don’t respect others. We can term it as ‘give and take policy’.

          Most of the relationship problems in a family can be resolved if the members are ready to accept other member’s model of the world (inner world). One of the reasons for afflictions or worsening relationships in family life is the unwillingness of one or both parties to accept inner world of the other. The question of ‘why you behave like this’ is the result of hesitation to accept and understand the inner world of other person. Don’t forget that their behaviour is based on their beliefs and values which is part of their internal representation. And they can’t behave in a way you expect until there is a change in their internal representation. The ‘trigger’ for beginning that change is the ‘acceptance’ they get.

          ‘Who accepts first’ is a common issue within the relationship problems. You can’t untie a knot without loosening the tension in rope. One should loosen the tension for the sake of better relationship and therefore a wonderful life. So remember the NLP presupposition everyone lives in their own unique model of the world. 

Applications of Mood Change NLP Techniques

Applications of Mood Change NLP Techniques

          In the previous session we have seen one of the NLP techniques to change mood. However many readers raised a question whether mood change is so important or not. Mood change should be considered seriously because negative moods are unresourceful and unhealthy states for everybody. To be in an unresourceful state for long period leads to depression. Being in angry mood for long time causes hypertension, stomach problems etc. The habit of being worried and tensed about future events results into anxiety disorder.

          Off moods create relationship problems. Husband wife tug of war begins with off mood! In off mood persons behave differently. Senses do not work accurately because of unwanted filters from the negative internal representations. Hence you feel no taste even for a nice coffee! Negative moods affect personal effectiveness and therefore affect professional and business performances. Men sometimes try to recreate the moods using alcohol which worsen the situation. Negative mood even affects immunity of our body. These are a few examples of the causes of negative moods.  NLP technique is very useful to change your negative moods as well as to help others to change their moods. 

         

          Generally it is the human nature to hide personal problems from others and become a victim of stress, tension, anxiety etc. If the problem remains for a long period a state of depression will be created. However no one is always depressed. One of the reasons for people get depressed is the lack of sharing personal problems. When a person is unable to find choices and solutions for his personal problems he should seek help from others. If they get a help on right time they can definitely stay safe from worse state. What kind of person commits suicide, persons who doesn’t have a good friend or an honest person to share their emotional issues and to help them to find other choices! NLP says there are always choices. Problem is the lack of self motivation to find choices and solutions.  

         

Applications of mood change techniques:

(1) You can use this technique to change your own negative moods to positive for the betterment of your professional life, family life and social life. It will help you to be in a resourceful state so that you can utilize maximum opportunities and best choices in life.

(2) You can use this technique to help your children in studies. Negative moods are one of the major problems that pull children down from the state of successfulness. Thus their overall performance will be poor.

(3) You can also help your friends and colleagues who are the victims of negative emotions and moods so that they find more choices and resources.

(4) NLP technique will enhance the profession of Counsellers since the result is very fast and long lasting.

(5) Socially motivated teachers can change their students and help them in obtaining better results. 

          Another question is whether one’s family members will do what he suggests. It is not necessary to intervene as a counsellor therapist in their life. Objective of NLP intervention is nothing but to change internal representation which creates the negative mood. People who feel a particular mood have their brains filled with very clear, bright, loud, close and heavy images (submodalities) of the experiences producing that particular mood. The mood or state may be good or bad for that person.

          Bad mood indicates that images to create good mood is lying dull, soft, far and light.  The solution is to change the submodalities of image that can create good mood to very clear, bright, loud, close and heavy and that of the unwanted image in the other way around. The submodality change exercise as mentioned above is an NLP therapy which will be discussed in detail in another session. A therapist or trained counsellor applies NLP technique systematically on his client however it is not easy for persons to act as a therapist or counsellor in home or office to change their relatives.

          How to change a person who is our beloved one from our family or friends circle? First of all you should maintain intense rapport with them so that they will open their mind fully towards you. Accept their internal world. Listen to them. Take care of them. Love them. Being the beloved one you have to recall wonderful moments of your life in which they are involved. Share funny moments with them.  Tell about events, persons and life activities that they are very much interested. Note that changing a person is a divine service and changing your beloveds is not a service but your responsibility.

          Even a telephone call from one of your best friend can change your mood. Here your friend unknowingly changing the submodalities of your internal representation. Telephone calls are villains too! A telephone call can make you mood-off.