Using NLP on Yourself

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Rewire Unhelpful Emotional States: [For the purpose of this assignment and in keeping with working on your self, this technique is helpful for everyday life unhelpful emotional responses that vary on the level from 0-6. This approach is not recommended for highly traumatic incidents.] This next assignment is one of the most useful NLP processes you can drive yourself through in order to have more freedom and choice in any given moment. All of us at some time or other have been pre-wired up to have certain unhelpful emotional states when specific things happen in our life. In fact this process is an example of unconscious learning and is occurring all the time. For example two months ago you loved getting take-away from that special Indian curry house but now the thought of eating there makes you feel yuck-ee!. A something happened between the first time you eat from there vs. how you feel about it now. This change didnt just descend upon you one day for without any cause. Throughout our life we are all getting wired up to have a certain emotional responses to various experiences. This is an invaluable and essential skill for our survival, and is very diverse. In fact the same external stimulus can result in two very different emotional responses. For example take something like the Tower of Fear, a common adventure ride at amusement parks. The Tower of Fear is a 225-foot high vertical tower which adventure park customers get on to get their adrenaline going. Imagine this: you sit into this hard plastic chair, this locking arm is pulled down over your head to keep you secure, but you dont feel snug. There is an uncomfortable amount of room, which feels like it could but big enough for you to slide out (of course though it isnt). There are three to four chairs per row and once everyone is onboard, the chairs slowly wind up to the top of the tower. You quickly become aware of your feet, which are hanging loose and unrestrained beneath you. You can see the amusement park growing smaller and smaller below you and right there in front of you is this every expanding vista of the park below and the city beyond the edge of the park area. As the chair continues to rise, you begin to realize how high up you really are! Then suddenly the chair come to a halt, you wait nervously, and then without warning free-fall drop about 200 feet rapidly heart beating out of your chest before slowing to a halt at the bottom, and a great sense of relief rushes through your body. The experience was somewhat petrifying. You turn to your right and you see a young twelve-year-old boy who is smiling broadly saying: Can I go again, mommy? PLEASE!!.


He looks totally delighted. You walk away wondering, how is he able to not be scared? You see the fascinating thing is even when two people have the near same physical experience their brains can wire up two very different messages about what that same stimulus means. The good news is whatever your current undesired emotional response is, it doesnt need to be that way. You can choose and then re-wire yourself to response differently to just about any situation. There are many contexts in which having greater choice about how we will respond can be useful. In the video I shared with you an example of a business situation where a hypothetical colleague called Mary had a perceived derogatory tone that caused an unwelcome response. From an NLP perspective we call this an example of a powerful anchor that fired off a series of representations that lead to an unwanted feeling annoyance! Most unhelpful emotional states will have a similar structure. Our thoughts and feelings, for the most part dont just come out of the air and suddenly infect us with bad feelings. If we werent born into the world feeling an instant sense of annoyance towards all people who are called Mary or who whenever talk in a specific voice tone create a feeling of annoyance then somewhere along the way you had one ore more experiences where you unconsciously LINKED UP (created an anchor) that whenever X happens Y occurs. So first off list out ten areas of your life where apparently someone or something causes you to feel or experience an undesirable emotional state. Detail what the trigger is and the desired emotional state instead. Ive includes a sample in the table below. You are going to use the second half of this assignment to re-wire these. Undesired Emotional States:

Undesirable Emotional State

Trigger(s) Desired State

E.g. Annoyance Whenever I see my partners clothes left on the floor Calmness E.g. Helplessness My mother looking at me, he head is tilted to the right and she is squinting at me, while her lips are downturned Laughter


Undesirable Emotional State

Trigger(s) (Describe using sensory based words) Desired State (Describe using sensory based words)


Re-wiring your own emotional states: There are several keys to re-wiring an unhelpful emotional state. These are: 1. Have a clear representation of what it is you want instead of your current behaviour. What is the desired state you wish to experience in the place of the current emotion? Make sure you are able to describe that desired state/behaviour in sensory-based words. Rather than saying I want to feel happy, you might say I want to be standing up right, breathing fully from my chest, there is a big smile on my face and I see The reason why you want sensory based description of what you will be occurring when you are doing the state of happiness is so your brain and body knows this is what the target is.

2. Know what is the trigger that your brain is currently wired up to, so that it gets when X happens -> Y will occur. The trigger will be a representation (a sight, sound, smell, taste, touch) either internal (meaning for example a picture you see in your mind, a sound you hear, a smell etc.) or external (a sound that you hear in the physical world, a certain look a person gives you etc.) that triggers your brain to fire off an unwanted emotional response. In the previous video example the trigger that fired off the feeling of annoyance was the tone of voice and the specific look (looking down her nose) that Mary provided.

3. Modifying the trigger so that it swishes your brain in a new direction toward the desired response. Modifying the trigger can refer to 1) interrupting the triggering process so that the emotional response never fires and therefore the strategy never runs, 2) re-engineering the strategy so that when the trigger fires the brain has been conditioned to go down a new/different path than the previous and therefore the emotional response doesnt occur or 3) breaking up the old trigger so that when it now fires the brain does not go down the old path but does something else.


4. Conditioning the new pattern until it has stuck. Training your brain so that it acts the way you want is key. We have many ways to train the brain to learn a new pattern of behaviour. Two of the most simple and effective are the NLP Swish technique and process of driving yourself through the new strategy over and over 5-15 times until the brain gets Oh right this is how he/she wants me to respond/act in this situation Notice I use the phrase driving yourself through the new pattern. This phraseology is intentional. The big mistake that Ive seen many NLPers make is they simply try on a pattern but have no intensity to it, therefore the brain is left going no-thing of interest going on here and does not learn the pattern. If you want to have the pattern stick then it is essential that you immerse yourself whole-heartedly into doing the pattern. The richer, more vivid and real you can make the whole conditioning experience the faster the brain will learn and the more the change will stick. Vividness and intensity play a key role in conditioning in new behaviour. Hence, if we go back to the two customers on the Tower of Fear ride, both will have strong feelings evoked in them by the experience because it was intense. They designers of the amusement ride were very intentional in trying to make it as dramatic and intense as they could so that it would evoke a state of terror or exhilaration dependant on the worldview of the customer. At this point in the assignment you should have a list of ten undesirable emotions, ten triggers and ten desired states.

Implementing the process: Take the first undesirable state on your list and go through the process outlined below to wire up a new emotional response. Remember as Michael outlined in the original video in this program, you develop the resourcefulness in yourself before you need it.

1. Think of the person or situation that fires off in you an unwanted emotional response. 2. While holding that state, identify the trigger(s) what is/are the things/representations that fires off the unwanted emotional state in you? If you have done part 1 of this assignment then you will know what it is. (There may be more than one trigger for you, list them all).


3. Now is the time for you to mess with that trigger(s1) You can a. Change any sub-modality aspects of it. The sub-modality aspect of our sensory system refers to the qualitative aspect of our experience. For example for the visual sensory system we have how close/far a picture away is, is the representation a movie or a still?, how many images are there present?, how clear or hazy is the image(s)?, how big or small is the image(s)?, are you seeing the yourself in the picture (disassociated), or are you looking at events unfold through your own eyes (associated)?, etc. etc. So similar to my video about Mary, my trigger was a condescending voice tone and her looking down her nose. This evoked a state of annoyance in me

So I changed the voice tone to being ridiculous and the look on Mary to one of having Mickey Mouse ears on and a big Pinokio nose. I heard my inner voice say in playful, piss-taking way say Ahh, Mary she is a soft touch. 1 If you have more than one trigger which can fire off the unwanted state in you, then you will want to mess with each trigger systematically and change the sub-modality aspect significantly for each.


I quickly rehearsed seeing/hearing things this new way 2-3 times and instantly these changes made the representation of her ridiculous and caused me to laugh I was at the point where I couldnt take Marys condescending look seriously.

Now you do the same. Generate 3-5 big changes in the old way you represented the triggering thought(s) and replace it with the new thought process, which has all the key changes. If the old emotion feels heavy then break state change your physiology, fire off one or more of your accessing state anchors and become playful/creative as you think up of 3-5 different ways to re-present that old stimulus to your mind. Make sure you go for exaggerated changes that cause your mind to go over threshold and cant but change the way you feel about it. Run the movie through three times looking to find additional ways to change it so you cant take it seriously! You know you have been effective when you cant hold the same emotional state that you once did, that it causes you to significantly change state. Great states to aim to evoke from yourself include laughter, ridiculousness, silliness or feelings of whats all the fuss been about it feels unimportant. When you have changed your state-response adequately by changing the sub-modality aspects of the representation you will then want to


b. Anchor the new positive response As soon as you evoke a powerful positive state anchor it! The new emotional response will be a resource you can use to solidify the change and quickly swish your brain to how you want to respond in the future when you face the pervious stimulus. The key to anchoring yourself is to first be fully in the feeling of the positive state (that is associated) and then do anything unique and consistent to mark out the event in multiple sensory systems. In the video demo, I showed you how I anchored myself to three things: the fully bodied sound of me clicking my fingers followed by the word BOOM(auditory anchor) and the outward chopping expression with my hand (both visual and kinesthetic anchor).


Which trigged a radical state change in me From annoyance

To joy and laughter.

So as soon as you have a full-bodied powerful positive state evoked, make sure you do something unique and consistent to anchor it.


Next time you run the pattern through use the anchor to fire off the positive feeling and intensify the state you are already experiencing. This will give your brain the instructions wire this thought-feeling-response up. You want to get yourself to the point where replaying the movie of the old context instantly your mind-body flies down the new path of seeing the situation unfold BUT with the new changes in the way you now represent it (the sub-modality shifts) included and you have a positive state response which you anchored. Then the second time through the process you fire off your auditory/kinesthetic/visual anchor to intensify your new positive feelings.

4. Then generate a phrase that is congruent with the outcome you want and continues the direction your brain/state is headed The second last step to re-wiring up a new emotional response is to generate a phrase that is congruent with the outcome that you want and pushes your brain to continue in the direction you have set it. So for me the phrase I used was Ahh Mary she is a soft touch shes alright said in playful voice tone. This moved me from laughter, in to a state of relaxation, then a feeling of being at ease and completes the desired state response. The completed emotional state chain sequence looks as follows: Annoyance >> Laughter >> Silliness >> Relaxation >> Ease (not bothered) Generate 2-3 different phrases that reinforces the direction you want your brain to try them out as you run through the new state response process. Choose to pick a phrase and tone that amplifies the positive state you are in and accentuates that direction into the end desired state you want to feel.

5. Lastly Condition the Change & Test. The final step in the re-wiring emotional states process is to condition in the change. This means repeat, repeat and repeat again the new process you have wired up, each time looking to enrich and intensify the new positive state direction you have trained your brain to do whenever the old trigger shows up.


How many times you will need to repeat the process will vary from person to person. The key is to cycle fast through it, each time running through the new strategy over and over and giving your brain the necessary information for it to go OK this is how I am to act when I see/hear/feel this. Future pace the change by seeing yourself in the upcoming context when you will next likely have X event occur and notice yourself responding the way you want. Then imagine the situation is occurring right now and see/hear/feel the trigger response occurring and instantly the desired response should occur as you saw with me in the video. In fact when you have done this really well, you will find it difficult to recall/re-enact the old trigger and response, because your brain has been trained to hear/act/experience the trigger and everything that comes after it, based on the new wired up response. Once you have conditioned in the change you need to test the entire response. The best test is to put yourself in the context, which previously you were triggered negatively and notice how you respond. If the state chaining has been conditioned in thoroughly, then you will enjoy the new response, each and every time. And once that happens you can forget about it and let your unconscious mind take full responsibility for this new change to stay with you and you can go on living your life, enjoying greater choice, resourcefulness and freedom. Once you have run through this process successfully for your number 1 undesired emotional response, move on to the next one from your list until you have done all ten. As you do so you will have taken a huge leap forward in creating more of the life you want

Using NLP on Yourself

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