The Most Important Discovery I Ever Made, and How it Can Help You Too

OK, my title sounds overblown, I admit it...

What I mean by this is that I have recently made a discovery that I think might be the most important thing I have come across (for me, at least) in many years.

"Change your mind, change your life" was the title of a self-help book I came across many years ago. I never read it, I don't think, but, well, the title was catchy enough to remember, and holds more than a kernel of truth.

In short, if you live in a Western democracy, or are a member of the middle-class of a country like India, which also has a system resembling those of the West, then frequently the only thing holding you back from the success, or things, you wish you had but don't IS YOUR MIND.

In other words, it is often your mind, your emotions, your beliefs and your habits that hold you back from objectives you really actually wish you could achieve. Sometimes there are other blocks, out there in the real world, it is true, and sometimes the path to your goal might be complex, and involve many, many steps, but attaining more control over your own mind and emotions can only benefit you, in any case.

So, how do you change your own mind? Well, I have explored many, many avenues claiming to do this over the years. I have listened to (and read) Tony Robbins, I have read Stephen Covey and his The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I attend a Buddhist meditation group, I watch what I eat, and make sure I give my body a lot of exercise, and I try to avoid stress. I have also read a lot about Cognitive Therapy (and have a hub on this), and even tried "EFT", which is a do-it-yourself acupressure technique for the mind(!).

And I have tried NLP.

NLP, or neuro-linguistic programming, is, among other things, an approach to the mind, the emotions, and psychological processes developed forty years ago, and used by some therapists.

At its most basic level, and as I interpret it, the basic assertion about thinking to be found in NLP is the following:

When you have an emotion that is bothering you, this is normally "attached" to a thought. This is hardly controversial; it is standard psychological theory that emotions are frequently the result of having a "disturbing thought". Any modern psychologist would accept this.

Where NLP is slightly different, however, is that it suggests that, for any thought or memory, there has to be a way of coding that thought or memory. In other words, the spongy pink stuff in your skull cannot interpret information unless that information is meaningful.

In order for it to be meaningful, the brain/mind uses the tools that we already have -- vision, hearing, smell, spatial organization, recognition of movement, detection of size differences, color, etc. In other words, when you have a thought, then it must be presented to you, yes in the form of language, but normally also wrapped up in meaningful symbols.

This, too, is not a crazy idea -- it is well-known that systems are often borrowed by humans and applied across different areas: for example, we often use our system of language about space and position to express meaningfully something that has no position, or cannot be seen (think of the expression: "That's far out!").

The key insight of NLP, however, is that for those thoughts that are distressful, but with which you are "stuck" (things which keep coming back to your mind over and over, but which you do not want), it is because the coding is stuck, or frozen in place.

NLP therefore suggests that, if you change the coding of a memory or thought, or belief, that bothers or distresses you, you can actually change the experience of having that thought.

So, for example, if a certain memory appears to me as being in the bottom right hand of my field of vision (obviously you have to experiment with this to see how it works for you), and you move it to the top left hand corner of your "mental screen" over and over again, and every time you have it, you are messing up the code.

Or, perhaps it seems slow, or does not move. Speeding it up, moving it around fast, flipping it over, zooming it around your internal field of vision, or adding new elements, like stripes, or new colours, or new characters or personalities added to the frame in which the memory seems to occur, can alter your experience of that thought, idea, belief, or memory.

Experiment with this suggestion. It may not work for you. Or it may. Or it may work only partially. Who knows. Just try it.

What I like about it is that it is logical -- of course all of our experiences, once they are "in our heads" have to encoded meaningfullly for us. And of course, because the brain is not a machine, and we are apt to have a wild fantasy life, thoughts can get attached to all sorts of "sense-based" experiences, like visuals of various sorts, sounds, music, imagined smells, and so on. NLP says, change the soundtrack, or imagine a strong smell while having the thought, and it can change your experience of that thought, belief, or idea.

It works for me. In fact, it has truly, truly, changed my life, in many, many ways. Maybe it won't cleanse me of my sins ;) , but, hey, it has helped me very much. I offer it to you to give a try.