The Self Image Maker NLP Technique

The Self Image Maker NLP Technique

          I would like to remind you that using NLP techniques you are programming your brain through your mind both conscious and unconscious. Remember that your unconscious mind is a storehouse of all your resources, beliefs, values and experiences both positive and negative. One of the interesting presumptions about the unconscious mind is that it can’t manipulate the realities and can’t differentiate true or false! All such processing is the duty of your conscious mind.

          I will explain it with an example. Lightning and thunder is common in many part of the world. Every heavy thunder increases our heart beat. Why? Our unconscious believes that thunder is dangerous and to be scared. Now the interesting thing is that not only the thunder but all severe sounds pump up your heart beats. Because unconscious don’t know whether it is thunder or bomb! Even the sound of a train crossing in the opposite direction of the train you are travelling increases your heartbeat! Considering your frequent conscious reactions and thinking process about sounds, your unconscious concluded that every heavy sound is dangerous. Unconscious can’t discriminate whether it is a train, thunder, bomb or earth quake. All reflex actions are innocent reactions of unconscious without discriminations. If unconscious start thinking before taking action you can’t act upon life threats like fire, flood, accidents etc!

          Unconscious mind innocently react towards life experience without prejudices. That’s why little children believe what we tell them! Their consciousness has not developed much. Unconscious is like an innocent child. May be that’s why we refer unconscious as a donkey. ‘Self Image Maker’ is an NLP technique developed using the innocent reaction of unconscious towards the life experiences.

          Once again think about the statement we have discussed in our preliminary sessions “you are what you think”. It means the ‘process of thinking’ influence your life to a great extent and you think based on your beliefs, values and experiences. Thus your beliefs influence your self-image! If you can’t consider you as a gentleman how can you behave like a gentlemen. If you don’t believe that you have the right to be respected and that people respect you, you can’t behave like a gentleman.

          Now tell me the reason why a scoundrel does evil things.  First of all he believes that he is a scoundrel! Secondly he does not expect love or respect. It is not much difficult to identify a true beggar and a false beggar. A true beggar believes that he is a beggar and has the right to beg from the public. And he should also believe that in order to get the sympathy of the public he should begs politely. Whereas a false beggar curse you and behave unpleasantly if you reject any help.

          In ‘self image maker’ you are showing the unconscious mind a conscious positive mental image and telling the unconscious that replace the old image with the new! Forget the old person and accept the new. Now let us have a look into the steps to be followed.

1.     Hold both of your hands about one foot in front of you keeping both palms facing you. Imagine ‘old you’, the way you are today, in a typical scene in your mind. Put this ‘undesirable’ picture in a frame like a portrait and centre it in the palm of your left (less dominant) hand. Make sure it shows all your weakness and negative both physical and mental. It should be the ‘unwanted old you’.

2.     Now imagine the ‘new you’, the person you want to be, in a typical scene in your mind. Put this picture as well in a frame and place it in the palm of your right (most dominant) hand. Make sure it shows all of the new attributes (attitudes, behaviour and habits) you desire.

3.     Focus on the ‘old you’ for a moment. See the picture in black and white and dim (remember you don’t want it). Imagine the scene as being dull and undesirable and slowly shrinking in size.

4.     Switch your focus on the ‘new you’. See the picture bright and colourful with music and animation. Imagine this scene as being totally delightful and desirable and being to expand in size.

5.     Now ‘Swish’ the two images as follows.

As you are focusing on your left hand (the old you), quickly bring your right hand (the new you) and place it on the left facing you, saying ‘Swish’’’’’’’’ in a loud, firm and confident voice. You literally erase the old undesirable image with the one you really want.

6.     Repeat the exercise faster and faster, each time saying ‘Swish’’’’’’ with the affirmation that assuming that ‘I am changing’. Continue it until the old picture flash only a fraction of second and the new picture flash in and sustain with all the positive feelings. Later you can see only the ‘new you’.

This is a wonderful exercise to create self image as well as to help the children to create their positive images and stamp their goals in their mental screen. Practice it and see the change. Best wishes. 

Application of Anchoring

Application of Anchoring in

Personal and Professional Life

          We have already seen various steps to set an anchor. Anchoring can be used as tool for self help as well as a tool to enhance life change in others. And it is clear from our earlier discussions that anchoring is not something introduced newly but it is part of personal and social life that when we utilize it for a specific reason it becomes an intervention. Moon and stars are very common to us in the sky and babies like it. However when the mother utilizes such scenes to feed child daily it becomes an anchor. If you can be in a resourceful state while sitting in a particular chair it’s anchoring. In fact there is no specific power on the chair! Sometimes a specific song put you in a romantic mood, yes, it’s anchoring. In all these cases a mental state is being anchored with something. Now let us think of how we can utilize anchoring in our personal and professional life.

1.  If you feel too lazy and show no interest in doing things frequently and if you observe no physical problems or illness, it’s definitely an off mood mental state. If the state is repeated frequently it will affect your life. So what is the solution? Create an anchor for a resourceful happy state (a state in which you are able to access all your internal resources). When you feel mood off fire the anchor and you becomes resourceful.

2.  The same kind of anchoring you can utilize when you want to read something seriously or when you want to be in a learning state (to study something seriously). The anchor may be recall a memory of an inspirational speech or listen a recorded one, reading a specific paragraph from a motivational book, see a recorded visual, visualize a particular future happy event etc.

3.   When you feel totally disturbed and stressed and if a particular melody can make you cool play it and relax.  Thus that music is the anchor.

4.   You can create anchors for confidence state and utilize it while addressing the public (to get rid of stage fear) or facing an interview.

5.     You can become more powerful with your resources by stalking anchors every time you elicit it. In this way you can become a wonderful speaker forgetting all your earlier states of shy and stage-fear.  You can prepare children for elocution and make people wonderful speakers using anchoring techniques for confidence (eg. circle of excellence).

6.  You can empower children and those required with specific resourceful states by creating anchors for them and training them to utilize it. You can build anchors for positive states such as ‘keen attention’, ‘feeling comfortable’, ‘love and care’ etc for children.  You will be able to change states from fear to fearless, insecurity to security, disturbed to relax, stressful to cool etc using anchors with children.

7.  Teachers can use anchors to create various learning states in children such as curious, eager, interest, serious etc. Teachers can use different positions and places in the class room as anchors for various states. Say for example a particular side and position for important topics, another place for stories and another place for comedy etc.

8.     Anchors will make wonderful changes in your family if you can utilize for positive changes. You can create anchor for surprises, humour and anticipation with the entire family. If you are planning to go for a picnic trigger the anchor to make the family know it.

9.  Some specific music can be utilized to change the state of patients with mental illness and violence.

10.You can elicit particular emotional state on your client (patient) if you are a therapist by creating anchors. This will enhance your change process and counselling. Anchoring techniques can wonderfully utilize in NLP therapies to make the therapy the most effective.

Circle of Excellence (solution for stage-fear etc.)

Circle of Excellence

(Ring of Power)

I am posting this NLP technique presuming that you have already learned and understand the previous sessions of NLP online training program. One of the major advantages of NLP is that you can transfer your excellence from one area or field of life to another, from the past to the present or you can model the excellence of someone you admire to your life. NLP is a science of modeling excellence. It is very common among teachers and parents to remark about students that some of them are excellent in one subject but poor in other. In fact poor performance is only the present reality of that student. The students can copy their excellence in a particular subject to a poor one and thus change their performance in that subject.  If you are excellent in making tea why can’t you be excellent in baking cake! Of course it is possible if you can copy your excellence from ‘tea making’ to ‘cake baking’.

Our problem is that we never try to be aware of our actual potentials. We never try anything other than what we think as very comfortable to us or the one which is most important for our life existence. One of my friends lost his wife due to severe diabetics. Around one year she has underwent dialysis twice a week. Their children were working abroad. Anticipating the dialysis he learned driving at the age of sixty and bought a car. He resigned from his job. He appointed a servant to help them. Unfortunately after one year of dialysis and palliative care she died. Later his big problem was the cooking.  He doesn’t know even how to make a cup of tea. The interesting thing is that the man who learned driving at the age of sixty believes that he can’t learn cooking! Our belief has an important role in exploring our potentials or resources.

          Remember the NLP presupposition “People have all the resources they need to succeed and to achieve their desired outcome”. All our experiences and resources are stored in the unconscious mind and we can bring them up to the conscious to solve our current problems. ‘Circle of Excellence’ or ‘Ring of Power’ is one of such NLP technique which enables us to access these resources. This is an excellent technique to boost confidence level on occasions like public speaking, making presentations, facing interview, conducting meetings and training sessions, meeting higher authorities, stage performances etc. This is a wonderful NLP technique that can be used by persons of all age. The original script of ‘circle of excellence’ has been developed by the founders of NLP Richard Bandler and John Grinder.  If you have any doubt in understanding or practicing the steps stipulated below please do not hesitate in contacting me.

Steps to follow in practicing the circle of excellence:

1.     Identify a situation where your current or anticipated behaviour not provide you the desired outcome or result. Say for example public speaking.

2.     Break state (break state means you relax to your normal state of mind)

3.     Visualize a circle of excellence or a ring of power on the floor just in front of you. Make the circle of adequate size to step in, make it colourful and also give an auditory representation with a humming sound. You shall make the circle powerful one producing different sensory inputs.

4.     Recall a time you had those resources required for such performance. (Say, when talking to you spouse and children or when discussing with your friends.)

5.     Think of three different resources you had for a wonderful performance.

6.     Elicit one of the resourceful state (thinking of the event in which you performed well using the resource) and at the peak of the resourceful state, step into the circle of excellence. Experience as if you are reliving it now.

7.     Feel it kinesthetically and say an inspiring word such as ‘wonderful’, ‘excellent’ etc.

8.     Release the elicited feelings into the circle to make it more powerful and step out of the circle.

9.     Break state

10.            Choose a physical gesture (say, make a fist) and repeat step 6 and 9 long with the same gesture.

11.            Repeat step 6 to 10 with two or more events of resourcefulness. Remember that now you have a pool of resources in front of you which we called as the circle of excellence or the ring of power.

12.            Now step into the circle and re-access the resources and feel the resourcefulness.

13.            Test the resourcefulness by a trial performance of the ‘difficult task’ (say, public speaking) and feel the emotions as if it is happening now.

14.            Collect all resourceful energy and anchor it on your wrist or forefinger or somewhere else conveniently and step forward out of the circle.

15.            Think of a future situation. Assume the ‘ring of power’ in front of you and access the resources using the anchor and perform as if the event is happening now.

16.            Anchor the resource back again (stacking) on the same point. Every time you perform repeat the stacking of resources.