So after my last post which was decidedly a little anti-tech, I’ve decided to switch it up and offer a couple useful pieces of NLP knowledge that I use to keep my state positive and happy. I shouldn’t have to remind everyone though that over dependence on this kind of thing is not healthy at all. This sort of technique is powerful and does produce immediate changes, but changing your state is only part of the process. The real insight comes when you start to realize that any changes you make could have been made anyway with no technique at all, the technique gives you something to use and believe in until the desired state is only a thought a way.
For example, I once read a story by a guy who was notoriously good at meeting women. He said that in high school he had been terrible and lacked any inkling of social intelligence. Needless to say, his love-life was non existent. When he started to learn a few interesting lines or some good jokes to open up conversations at bars, he thought it was kind of tacky to have a canned introduction, but they gave him something to say so he wouldn’t end up standing there shuffling his toes looking bored. He eventually found himself doing better and better, able to relax and open up, be confident and meet the kind of people he was interested in. He started to realize that the openers and routines that he used to use weren’t necessary and he could just walk up to a girl and confidently say ‘hello’. The openers weren’t that impressive in and of themselves, it was the confidence they gave him which was making others interested in meeting him.
Using these kinds of NLP techniques is the same way. The change you’re trying to make is really only a thought away, just like the process you go through when you remember something. You don’t need to rub your elbow or say some magic phrase to remember something, just the simple desire to do so and it happens. The process of self change can be just like that when you build up enough reference experiences to realize that change doesn’t have to be hard.
In the meantime getting to the point where you have those reference experiences can be difficult. That’s where these kinds of tools come in. Use them to get where your going then leave them behind once you get there.
That’s where the idea of spatial anchoring is going to really help you. We’ve talked about the notion of anchoring before but in this post I want to focus on anchoring’s relationship to the environment around you. I.E. Spatial Anchoring. Here’s an example:
The Visualization Walk
Find a place where you’ll have five or six feet of floor in front of you and behind you. Standing where you are, close your eyes and imagine a quality of yours just as it is. For instance if your trying to build more confidence, start by imagining a situation where you exhibit the level of confidence you have right now… however much or little that is. Make an effort to see yourself first from the third person, as you imagine you appear to others, then imagine seeing the same situation through your own eyes, in the first person.
Remember to make the picture bright and clear.
Really spend a minute or two feeling this state out. Its not just about seeing the image, its also about getting into the sensations in the body, the sounds, everything. Do whatever it takes to bring this image alive to you.
Now were going to take a step backwards. When you step backwards imagine your confidence decreasing. Think of a particularly un-confident scene from your life. If you have never felt less confident than you do now, make up a scenario that to you would seem a notch down from the situation we imagined at first. Feeling yourself getting less confident as you take a step backwards and notice how easy it is to move into a worse state than the current one. You simply subtract a certain amount of confident qualities from the last step. Adding qualities should be just that easy.
Now take one more step backwards and really get into the worst possible version of the state you’re working on. Imagine yourself at your least confident, least secure, least whatever and really get to know that nasty state. Remind yourself as you imagine it first in third person, then in first, that moving down in state is simple, just as simple as moving up.
Now step forward. Spend a second or two back at this point before taking another step forward and into the base level state we started from. Now I’m sure you can guess what to do next. Take a step forward and into a more confident you, a calmer, healthier, happier you. This is where you have to actually use that third person view to really see what kind of qualities you need to amp up to achieve the state you’re pushing for. Remember how easy it was to turn down certain qualities and imagine yourself worse off, now we’re doing the opposite and spotting those qualities in yourself that your higher You would possess. Maybe she stands a little taller, has better posture, maybe she carries herself with a different calmness and more grace. Maybe he’s reading more and going to bed early, maybe hes out socializing at night and going to bed later, its really up to you but remember to make the picture big and colorful. Make it as real as your mind’s eye can make it.
Once you’ve spent enough time in that higher state, open your eyes and march confidently back into the world. Know that at any time you can turn the space around you into a sliding dimmer switch of resourceful abilities. You can turn the volume up on the qualities that you already possess and become the kind of person you’ve only been dreaming of becoming.
That’s just one possible way to do it. You get the basic idea though. When you use spatial anchoring your teaching your nervous system to associate certain parts of the environment with certain types of states. By stepping backwards first into a lesser or more negative image you’re brain is getting the idea that each state is really just a combination of certain emotions and images in your mind. By changing our relationship to them and exploring how easy it is to make them worse, we also notice how flexible a state is and how easy it can be to imagine ourselves better.
Now go out and do something useful with that resourceful state, don’t just sit there feeling good, go make the world a better place.
Sleep is something we’ve discussed before on the blog and how using relaxation and mindfulness techniques can help you doze off for a better night of rest. This time I want to talk about another aspect of sleep which is slightly different in aim than the techniques of the last sleep post. I want to talk about sleep programming.
So Sleep Programming is a common idea found in many different self improvement and psychology books as well as plenty of historical anecdotes. It’s basically the process of focusing intently on a certain goal or image just before you fall asleep at night. The idea is that something strongly visualized, maybe even a little obsessed over before sleep will work its way into the subconscious mind, programming your deep belief systems while you snooze away.
I would imagine nearly everyone has had some kind of experience with Sleep Suggestion in their own lives. Falling asleep with the television on, just to wake up from a terrible nightmare about getting chased by vicious dogs. You open your eyes to find a t.v. show about police dogs with angry german shepards biting the arms of bank robbers. Or maybe you needed to be up a half hour earlier than usual the next day for an important meeting at work that you’ve been preparing for. Worrying about the possibility of waking up late at the usual seven o’clock you set your alarm for six thirty and fall asleep. Six thirty… six thirty… six thirty….
and when do you wake up ? six twenty eight… just before the alarm.
This isn’t much different than the work and ideas of Emile Coue, who we discussed in the auto-suggestion post, but with the emphasis being on the unconscious sleep state as a back door to the underlying mental activity that occurs even beneath the awareness of the self.
I’ve been experimenting a little over the last few days… Trying to use auto-suggestion just before I go to sleep at night to help smuggle commands deeper into my consciousness. I’m far from a sleep suggestion master at this point but I do feel like I’ve already managed to gain a few interesting insights.
Sensory Modality:
The first night I tried, just as an experiment, to repeat the experience I mentioned a moment ago, only this time intentionally. Mentally setting a time to be awake and allowing your body to wake itself up on your pre-set command.
I usually hit the sack fairly late for someone who writes a self improvement blog but managed to get in bed at an early (for me) 11:30 and spend about ten minutes laying there repeating six thirty… six thirty… six thirty…. and dozed off into a well needed rest. Unfortunately I woke up the next day at seven thirty, well past my designated wake up time. So attempt one was a failure and I spent a bit of my morning mindfulness walk conjuring up ideas for why it didn’t work.
What was it about the type of excitement, the type of state I’m in on those nights when I do manage to unintentionally set my mind with a command? Maybe it was the WAY I was repeating it. In the past I’ve found that I can generate a positive state in myself through auditory mental suggestion, but going for the visual modality as they say in NLP, visualizing in the first person what I want to happen is much more effective for me personally.
So Saturday night I chose to VISUALIZE myself, in the first person, looking out my own eyes, rolling out of bed and looking at my alarm clock… the little red LCD numbers displaying in my minds-eye a really clear 6:30
I went through this mini-visualization journey maybe five or six times, from the beginning to the end, allowing the images to merge into the usual mishmash imagery of the hypnagogic state and gently drifting into unconsciousness.
To my surprise… I was awake the next morning at 6:22, rolling over, looking at my alarm, and realizing that the experiment had at least SEEMED successful. Of course it’s always possible that I just happened to wake up that morning around six thirty. Sunday night I repeated the practice and managed to wake up at around 6:20 again…
Visualization vs. Auto-Suggestion
I’m still experimenting with the process and plan to write a good bit more on the topic since I find it so fascinating. My next plan is to start visualizing certain goals and objectives for the next day while I’m falling asleep and explore the most effective ways of programming myself to accomplish them. My only conclusion about the whole process of self-programming at the moment is that the more vivid it is to the mind’s eye the better. Auditory suggestion is great for when your in the car, or to use as a mantra perhaps while practicing meditation, but engaging as many modalities i.e. visual images, movement, sounds, smells, feelings makes the command sink into the mind that much easier.
I’d love to hear from some other folks about their experiences with sleep suggestion and how its impacted their life. Look forward to some more updates shortly…
At home, work, and everywhere throughout or live anchors exist that in part determine but are not wholly responsible for our inner states. Image yourself at home after work. In your mind walk through your door and notice the first objects that you associate with being in your space, calm, and relaxed. Image yourself at work, stressed out there are probably objects, people, or sounds you associate this with that help your body and mind know it is time to be anxious. In the same way one might go to a certain place in the home to meditate, we can place and strengthen anchors intentionally to assume the brain state we wish to achieve. We all do this automatically, mentally associating physical sensations or objects with inner states, it is empowering to take control of those anchor and use them to our advantage. In fact if we do not become aware of these anchors the negative association will continue to exist that will hamper our growth.
So many times when we set a goal, try to start a new routine, or attempt to change an unwanted habit, we fall short because of all the anchors that exist in our life and our environment. An example might be if part of your routine is to relax after work, catch your favorite crime drama, and bite your finger nails to the quick, it is going to be difficult to excise the negative nail biting habit while it is anchored to your unwinding time. Another example might be that pet project you canít ever find time for. You come home, tired from work and fall into the same routine of home life or start into your project but get distracted by our own personal life.
When I was younger and my friends and I had a scheme in the works, either some business idea or if one of us had their eye on a girl that was way out of their league, we would convene a serious meeting and hang a sign on the wall to designate this special strategy time. I would take a sharpie and a piece of scrap paper, write in big letters ëWAR ROOMí. Once the sign was up we all got into character, and the scheme or strategy was launched. Once we assumed the role of the General our sixteen year old selves rose the occasion.
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As much as our internal environment is and should be independent from the external it is clear that our external environment does have an effect on our inner state, the extent we are affected varies with the anchors that exist in our environment. We can use this tendency in our nature to our advantage by placing and strengthening positive anchors we come into contact with everyday.
When I embark on a new project I create a list of goals, a time table, or at least a rough sketch and in the time designated to work on this project I stick my goals to the wall above my work station at home, I donít have an office. Iíll also put up a calendar, not the same one in the kitchen but a ëworkí calendar, no birthdays or dentist appointments. When my side project is posted, I get into that mode, if my phone rings or I get tempted to surf You-Tube I see the room I have created for myself and realize Iím on the clock. I realize that Iím in character.
Now simply putting up a calendar isnít going to get you to your goals. To strengthen that anchor you have to own it. Put it up and really get into character, exaggerate it if necessary, make a commitment to yourself that when you are in your new space you will be ëon the clockí.
This can also be very liberating, when you ëclock outí and revert your office back into that same old dining room table you can allow yourself to be free of the anxiety that may be associated with your new project. The anchor will become more ingrained the more you use it, you more you are able to visualize yourself in that new space where ever it is, doing what you desire to be doing and associating it with the augmentation you have made.
Challenge: Make an Anchor: Find or make an object, quote or sign. Use your favorite relaxation technique, visualize your new space, see it as wholly different from its former form. See yourself in this place, in character.
Strengthen Your Anchor: Get into character, if you are writing a resume put on a tie over your Metallica t-shirt. If you are putting together a business get a green visor and roll your sleeves up, soon the act of arranging your space will put you into the desired mind set and the character will be you.
Clock in and Clock Out: The time you are not using the anchor is just as important, allow yourself to be free of your self imposed obligation when you are on your own time. Use that lack of anchor and have control over your own mental state.
Screw Your (future)self Over: If you know you are going to be worn out and will make any excuse to avoid what you really should be doing, put the anchor up before you leave for work. When you get home you will just be entering your office, ready to work and not resenting the time.
The cornerstone of our philosophy at Focused Awareness, is that you make the final decision about where your going to place your attention. We don’t promise the existence of chakras or any kind of magic enlightenment experience when you practice the techniques we put up here, but I can guarantee you that with the right effort, any of these techniques and ideas can and will change your life.
That leads me into what I wanted to talk about today, something that I read alot about from other self-improvement junkies now a days, which is the idea of gratitude training.
Gratitude training in and of itself might be one of the greatest examples of the kind of ‘focused awareness’ we’re trying to promote on the blog. When you stand back from your life and really look at its ups and downs, your bound to have a mixed bag. But how you choose to interpret and read that data is entirely a choice a person has to make for themselves.
Your going to have some ups, and your going to have some downs in life. Thats a given. But the very mind we use to perceive those events makes a decision to either interpret this as a wall preventing you from getting to your dreams, or as the late Professor Randy Pausch said in his lecture on pursuing your dreams “The challenges are there to keep out the people who don’t want it bad enough.”
You must learn revel in the pursuit of the things you’re passionate about. You have to be empowered by the sense of desire that you know will seperate you from the rest of the pack and inevitably allow you to succeed where those who don’t want it bad enough fail.
3 Simple Techniques to Cultivate a Mind of Gratitude.
1. Start a gratitude journal. Every day take a few moments to jot down a few things that you are grateful for having happened during the day. (Remember, you don’t necessarily need to feel grateful for something the moment it happens. Frequently something might bother or upset me but in hindsight writing about it later in my journal I realize there was a lesson in it to be grateful for.)
2. If keeping a journal isn’t really your thing you could always practice a simple gratitude meditation before going to bed at night or waking up in the morning. While still awake in bed or sitting somewhere quietly, take some time to visualize and go over all the people and things you’re grateful for.
3. Tell someone what it is about them that you’re grateful for. This is the most powerful, and my personal favorite if only because this technique shares the gratitude all around. You find someone whom is a great friend/lover/parent in your life and tell them, face to face, eye to eye if possible, just how much you love them an how grateful you are for their presence in your life. Schedule a time to take someone out to lunch, really demonstrate, not just with your words, but with your energy how much that person means to you.
This is all perspective. Those people who stand in front of a challenge and sigh heavily to themselves bemoaning the difficulties of their life will just make failure a self fulfilling prophecy. Those of us pursuing self mastery know that we already have enough to be grateful for… and in having enough, we are strong enough and fulfilled enough to make the effort necessary to do more.
We can’t control the circumstances of our existence here on this little rock but what we can do is decide that no matter what happens, we will choose to accept it with gratitude. Whether its a blessing or a challenge, we’ll remember that just existing at all, from the right perspective, can be viewed as a miracle.
A man is what he thinks about all day long. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
I’m a bit of a self help junkie. I enjoy reading about change psychology and what it takes to go from being the good person you are, to the great person you want to be. To be honest I don’t think I’ve even had a day of real depression in my life. Not that I haven’t had bad days…. who hasn’t, but I can’t remember ever looking at my self in the mirror and saying ‘I’m depressed’.
How we label emotions is essential to how we manage those emotions. Lets take a second to think about exactly what an emotion is.
Most of us talk about our feelings all the time but if you stop and think about it… what is it that makes love feel differently than hate? When you see your significant other walking through door, and a sense of adoration comes over you, where do you actually feel that in the body?
Emotions are just physical reactions to thoughts, and those physical manifestations are rooted in your body and anchored to your self talk.
Lets say you’re about to give a big presentation and your waiting while everyone files in and takes a seat. You realize that this is a really big opportunity to impress your co-workers and possibly earn that promotion you’ve been trying for.
As more and more people file in to take a seat you realize that this is a really big crowd of people, a lot more than you originally thought. You start to feel that familiar sensation in your stomach, the light queasiness, an internal perception that you recognize as stage-fright from the days of your high school speech class.
Now I have a secret for you… nearly everyone feels stage fright. Or to be more specific, everyone feels that little bit of nervousness at first before they jump up in front of a crowd. The difference here is how you label and work with that emotion.
The same feeling that you identify to yourself as anxiety of stage fright in the mind of a peak performer is ‘excitement’ or ‘the rush’.
Take that feeling into yourself and really give it presence. Become mindful of the actual physical sensation and start telling yourself clearly and confidently:
‘This is just the feeling of my body getting excited about what I’m doing’
or perhaps ‘ There’s that rush, I LOVE public speaking… it makes me feel totally alive.’
With practice and a serious effort you can change the habits and content of your mind to experience the excitement of conquering challenges, where it would have once recoiled in fear.
Most of the negativity and pain you felt on a daily basis would run its course if you gave them the totality of your awareness. By labeling our emotions with negative self-defeating titles like ‘pathetic, lazy, dumb’ we only perpetuate those negative thought loops and push us further away from the happiness that is our base level sense of being. Listen to your inner voice and decide whether or not you could relabel some of those emotions that are blocking you and use them to propel you into your most successful life.
When we consciously and deliberately develop new and better habits, our self image tends to outgrow the old habits and grow into the new pattern. – Maxwell Maltz
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but managed to get in bed at an early (for me) 11:30 and spend about ten minutes laying there repeating six thirty… six thirty… six thirty…. and dozed off into a well needed rest. Unfortunately I woke up the next day at seven thirty, well past my designated wake up time. So attempt one was a failure and I spent a bit of my morning mindfulness walk conjuring up ideas for why it didn’t work.
