NLP Marin: "Life Is Easier Than You Think!"

By Julie Clayton

By now most of us have at least had an introduction to the operating principles of the "law of attraction." The premise of this "law" is that there are only two kinds of information in this universe: energy and matter. If something is not one, it is the other, and each influences the other. At a personal level, the most useful aspect of this premise relates to the quality of our life experience: our thoughts are energy, and they influence our matter, a.k.a. our reality or experience. If we want another experience, a better experience, then all we need to do is change our thoughts and we will attract a different matter/experience. In theory, this sounds fine, but asking someone to change their thoughts can be like asking them to shift from second into third gear when they've never driven a stick shift.

At NLP Marin, we work with the change model known as Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and the process generally begins with some basic questions. Usually, the first question we ask is, "What would you like?" or, "What do you want?' If the client replies, "I want to change my thoughts," we then work with the client to "chunk down" and specify this desired change. We work with the client to articulate their want as a manageable size—not to change their desire, but to put it into a relevant context so that we can immediately introduce resources that will change things so that they can achieve what they want.

So, how does one "chunk down" and take control of the unruly things called thoughts? It's really quite simple. First we have to understand that our thoughts are a conglomerate of our five senses. We humans experience the world primarily through images, sounds and feelings, or in NLP terminology, V's, A's, and K's (visual, auditory and kinesthetic senses). Our conscious mind works primarily with language; our unconscious mind communicates in images, symbols and feelings. In addition, the unconscious mind takes things literally and does not process negatives. (It won't hear the word "don't" in the phrase "don't forget," for example. The unconscious mind is mainly concerned with our physical health and well being—our survival. The conscious mind is what makes meaning from images and symbols, and gives expression to that meaning through language and behavior.

As an example, if I wanted to take control of eating binges I might say to myself, "I don't want to be a pig, so I'll just eat half of that cake." Unfortunately, the unconscious mind will quite happily make a picture of "self as pig," eating cake." Period. If I am unhappy in my work and I continually say to myself, "This is such a pain in the neck," my unconscious mind will very obligingly generate a feeling of pain in my neck. So, the process of understanding the structure of thoughts filters through the ranks of brain hierarchy and culminates in conscious awareness, with thoughts and actions that we broadly term as "regular experience."

To gracefully and respectfully change our own thoughts, we need to begin by noticing, chunking down and changing our words. Naturally, when we change our words, we will also affect our imagery and feelings—and that is the ultimate goal. Keeping things simple is the key. All that is required is to change our words is imagination. For example, what might happen if I were to say to myself, "It's easy for me to choose foods that support my health?" Imagine that you have the inner resources available right now to choose your words so that they support you in your highest good, and you do!

If you feel that life is constantly a struggle, chances are good that you have an internal dialogue that sounds something like, "Life is hard... no one gets a free lunch... I never get a break..." and so on. Imagine that you can turn those negative words into positive ones and you'll immediately put some high energy into your life. As a beginning, an internal rewrite might sound something like, "Life's not easy." (Remembering that the unconscious doesn't process negatives, the unconscious only hears, "Life's.... easy.") Eventually, you can work your way up to, "Life is great!"

The challenge in changing our words lies in our beliefs and identity—our often invisible assumptions about our self and our world. Our human systems have evolved to provide some remarkable ways of ensuring that our identity—our basic sense of ourselves—remains the same in day-to-day terms, regardless of how much we say we want something different. Neuro-Linguistic Programming calls this complex business whereby we "auto-stabilize" our lives the "ecology" of being human. In other words, all of our "parts" function together (although sometimes not very harmoniously, or so it seems) to protect the continuity of our experience. However, when we really want to make significant changes, we have to find some good ways to interrupt this continuity—and to do it in just the right ways and to just the right extent—and no more!

Practitioners of Neuro-Linguistic Programming are trained in the art of communicating with all the parts of human beings, so that just the right amount of interrupted continuity can flow smoothly to become changed thoughts and changed lives. Although there are numerous skills that NLP practitioners use, the art of using words to change our thoughts is called "reframing" in NLP-ese. Reframing literally wakes up and coordinates our conscious and unconscious minds. It allows us humans to use all of our natural survival patterning, which usually resists letting us change, to become the source of new freedom and personal power.

Try it for yourself. Notice how you feel and what pictures you make when you say to yourself, "I'm sick." Now try, "I'm not feeling well." Now try looking up and saying, "I'm feeling better all the time." It's a different experience each time, isn't it? Of course, reframing can be much more sophisticated than that, and one can become quite the word connoisseur. However, it really is okay keep things easy, at least to begin with.

So, the next time you want something different in your life, imagine that it's already yours. Then say the words and notice the feeling that comes with it. And, as the shampoo bottle directions say: wash, rinse, repeat.