I just read with some angst that yet another journalist has lumped NLP into the field of psychotherapy again. This is incorrect. NLP has its roots in linguistic modeling. It just so happened [...]]]> photo credit: Ranoush.

I just read with some angst that yet another journalist has lumped NLP into the field of psychotherapy again. This is incorrect. NLP has its roots in linguistic modeling. It just so happened that Bandler and Grinder were formalizing NLP methods by looking at some linguistic models who happened to be psychotherapists because it seemed like they were doing something extraordinary.

If they were modeling chefs, you can’t say that NLP is about cooking. NLP is a science of modeling, but it happened to be modeling processes of things that have already been working. Psychiatrists have said that NLP is not scientifically valid, but that’s silly. NLP is not about scientific validation – it’s about modeling.

In fact, the process of anchoring comes from psychology, known as conditioning. If conditioning works, anchoring works. There’s tons of literature on behavioral conditioning.

There’s plenty of literature on the fast phobia cure, which is based on the psychological treatment in desensitization therapy. If desensitization therapy works, then the fast phobia cure works because it’s been modeled.

NLP was never meant to be simply a model for psychotherapy. It is a linguistic approach to understand what’s going on in the mind. So, newbies, please don’t lump NLP together with psychological testing. If you want to see the effects of NLP, then show me a target, and I’ll model it for you. This is what good master practitioners of NLP do. We will model results and figure out strategies to reach outcomes appropriate to the model.

However, psychotherapists who learn NLP find out that they are able to deepen their understanding of psychotherapy. Marketers who learn NLP are able to deepen their understanding of marketing. NLP puts into the hands of the average person, a way to model the blueprints of excellence. You use NLP methods for modeling and achieving similar results as others.

One clear example is in the area of Public speaking. For the longest time, I just could not understand why I didn’t win speech competitions. Then after I applied my modeling strategies, I discovered that there were certain things I had to do in order to jump through the hoops. From 1997 to 2002, I cracked the competitive speaking code and emerged champion for Evaluation Speeches. Using the same models, I taught others to win other international speech competitions.

NLP is about linguistics – understanding the representations in your mind. It spans many possible theories, which are highly accepted in the professional field of linguistics. Some of them come from the now defunct Transformational Grammar. Newer linguistic models (Gricean Pragmatics, Speech-Act Theory, Systemic Functional Grammar and other models in Pragmatics) will point the way to the achievement of more effective representations of the way the mind works.

To find out more about this, join my mailing list and I’ll update you when I’m running a real NLP certification training.

What happens in your head when you’re unhappy? You think something isn’t right, or someone else should do something for you but didn’t – you basically think of things that are not going your way.

You may then make a conclusion that you’re [...]]]> There are a lot of unhappy people in the world, aren’t there.

What happens in your head when you’re unhappy? You think something isn’t right, or someone else should do something for you but didn’t – you basically think of things that are not going your way.

You may then make a conclusion that you’re not happy.

Well, actually, happiness is not what happens to you. Happiness is an emotional state derived from neuro-chemical changes in your brain. It’s based on the mental representations you build (see ‘submodalities).  The level of happiness is not created as a result of having something, well, at least not necessarily anything tangible.

So, think of all the things that you want. Imagine as vividly as you can that you are already living that life. How does that feel? Good? You could then say you are “happy”.

But some people will say that when they wake up from that dream, they become sad again because they are in a reality where they know that their imaginings will never come true!

Isn’t that sad! I mean, not sad that their dream will not come true, but to have an absolute believe that where they are and where they imagine are two different things or places.

The fact is, if you imagine yourself feeling happy, you already go there. The main issue is not whether you feel happy or not, but rather the expectation that you have to feel happy all the time. And true enough, we are all creatures of habit. The less we think about being happy, the less happy we become. We are also emotional masochists sometimes. We ruminate in bad feelings and are really good at feeling bad for no good reason. Don’t you know someone who can get upset at literally almost anything?

From a neurological perspective, what does that mean? Aren’t you rehearsing the same feelings, thereby begetting the same feelings? Neurology has discovered that when the brain fires the same patterns, they literally solidify and become easier to access. In other words, over 90% of the world’s population regularly trains their brain to make them feel bad.

Do I never feel bad?

Well, of course not. I’d rather just focus on the good feelings that I want to build and leave out the rehearing of bad ones. It doesn’t mean I’ll ignore the bad feelings, because bad feelings can also be signals. I mean… if I feel lots of pain, then it’s a signal that I have to attend to. If I’m stepping on a bear trap, I can’t just ignore the pain. I attend to where the pain is, and then figure out how to remove the thing that’s causing the pain.

To ensure you keep triggering happy thoughts, you need to build for yourself a reminder system. What are your successes? Who cares about you? What can you do that others can’t do? What makes people feel you are special?

As you build a mental database of these items, imagine if everything in your life just reminds you of these things. Even the worst of problems help you to connect to the mental database of great things happening in your life.

Most of the time, human beings forget that there are good things that have happened in their lives. We forget that even the time we could tie our shoelaces was a triumph, let alone learning to walk or swim or make friends. We take for granted these achievements, then say that life is bad.

Instead, we need to remember. We need to learn to re-connect ourselves with moments in our lives that matter, even for a split second. Even if it no longer matters today (lollipops may have mattered at age 5 more than they do now).

Travel back in time (see ‘timeline’) and associate in the moments of your success and happiness. If you do that everytime you open your eyes, turn on the TV, argue with someone, open a door, write an email, start your car… anything can remind you of the other side of you. Simmer in those good feelings for a while before you start your day!

Which, of course, begged the question, how does one get to know oneself better? Here’s what I think.

photo credit: h.koppdelaney

Whatever the case, the perspective I’d put [...]]]> I’ll bet you encounter depression once in a while. Or, you might actually be someone who has been battling depression for some time. Maybe you have someone you’d like to help.

photo credit: h.koppdelaney

Whatever the case, the perspective I’d put on this is that depression is normal. Yes, can be debilitating, but it’s normal. Millions of people go through it. Some people get out of it faster than others.

In recent days, especially after the announcement of major job losses in America, I’ve seen a surge in people seeking depression treatment or depression help. Somehow, many people are in a bad spot and just don’t know how to go about helping themselves.

To get out of a spot of depression, you’ll have to acknowledge that:

• what you are going through is not your regular self;
• it’s good to get out of the feeling of depression;
• if you’re not doing something, you have too much time to think about things that are going wrong in your life.

Most of the time, depression comes about from inner thoughts and connections. You might not know where those thoughts came from. It’s often due to a response from observing (although unconsciously) the world around you, and then the propogation of lots and lots of thoughts associated with that.

If you have trouble expressing yourself, it might cause you to think “wait, let me sort out my thinking first, then speak”. But that might simply aggravate the sensation of depression, anxiety or anger. Or worse, all of them.

NLP has a model known as submodalities. By learning to shift our mental images, we get to change the experience we have in our head. For instance, making an image brighter or darker in our minds can help to reduce or increase the intensity of a feeling.

Test it out.

If you look at an image of yourself depressed, how about making that image brighter or darker? Which direction works for you? Then keep doing it!

Of course, it’s not easy for someone to do this who has never done it before (I know some children who do this very well, though). It’s about mental flexibility and the ability to see different perspectives. If you are able to shift your perspective, coming out with alternative, healing mental images is going to be easy.

This process, in NLP, is known as reframing. Putting on different lenses and seeing from someone else’s perspective can help you to put things in context.

If you need to process your thinking, though, drop me a message and I’ll see if I can help.

Can money make us happy if we spend it on the right purchases? A new psychology study suggests that buying life experiences rather than material possessions leads to greater happiness for both the consumer and those around them. The findings will be presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology annual meeting on [...]]]>

Can money make us happy if we spend it on the right purchases? A new psychology study suggests that buying life experiences rather than material possessions leads to greater happiness for both the consumer and those around them. The findings will be presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology annual meeting on Feb. 7.

The study demonstrates that experiential purchases, such as a meal out or theater tickets, result in increased well-being because they satisfy higher order needs, specifically the need for social connectedness and vitality — a feeling of being alive.

“These findings support an extension of basic need theory, where purchases that increase psychological need satisfaction will produce the greatest well-being,” said Ryan Howell, assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University.

Participants in the study were asked to write reflections and answer questions about their recent purchases. Participants indicated that experiential purchases represented money better spent and greater happiness for both themselves and others. The results also indicate that experiences produce more happiness regardless of the amount spent or the income of the consumer.

Experiences also lead to longer-term satisfaction. “Purchased experiences provide memory capital,” Howell said. “We don’t tend to get bored of happy memories like we do with a material object.

“People still believe that more money will make them happy, even though 35 years of research has suggested the opposite,” Howell said. “Maybe this belief has held because money is making some people happy some of the time, at least when they spend it on life experiences.”

“The mediators of experiential purchases: Determining the impact of psychological need satisfaction” was conducted by Ryan Howell, assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University and SF State graduate Graham Hill.