Maximize our confidence with Neuro-linguistic Programming Part 2

 The power of good habits and characteristics  How to create consistent actions leading to success?  By personal rituals or habits. Because they control our lives on a daily basis.  Habit -> character -> destiny  Good habits pull us to our goals; bad habits take us away from our goals.  Now, identify the bad habits and create new ones. Habits/rituals and power of anchoring

 Do you have negative feelings regularly? Frustration, anger, depression, …?  If you have a certain feeling regularly, it means that you have a ritual (habitual) way to look at things.  The ritual way of moving your body and conceiving things determines how you feel regularly.  This ritual way of doing things is like computer coding in our brain.  Write down 3 negative feelings you have regularly. (Hatred, fear, anger, depression, disappointment, sadness,…)

 What are the ritual ways of doing or thinking about things in order to feel those negative feelings?  For example, to feel disappointment you need to visualize in advance how things will happen. If they don’t happen exactly as you expect, you feel disappointment.  To feel disappointment, you also need to believe there is no way you can change things around.  If you understand what you do and think constantly (rituals) in order to feel a certain feeling, then you can start to change it.  An interesting question to ask: If I want to be as disappointed/frustrated/… as you feel, what should I do? What are the steps I should take?  These rituals and steps you take to feel some kind of feeling is like the recipe for making food.

 Practice: Write down the steps you need to take in order to feel a good feeling. And write down the steps for feeling a bad one.  You are the creator of your own feelings!  A lot of people cannot follow through in taking good actions because they only learn to do things consciously.  We can learn to trigger the good rituals automatically!  This is called anchoring.

 We can develop our own “conditional reflexes” to trigger good habits and ultimate success.  Fact: We have been doing this throughout our lives. We create neuro-association all the time.  Whenever you have a certain (strong) feeling and at the same time something else (might be totally irrelevant) happens consistently, you get anchored.  Story of connecting sorrow with shoulder tapping, and connecting the feeling of love with a song.  Do you have similar experience? You feel excited or depressed all a sudden but you don’t know why. Reason: a certain anchor is triggered somehow.

 Any kind of sensory input (visual, auditory, olfactory, …) may trigger your anchor system.  A lot of relationships die because of negative anchoring. (Always being with the one you like when he/she feels bad may not be a good idea.)  You can create your own anchor. Go back to the kind of feelings you want (by walking, breathing, or doing things in exactly the same way you did).  And at the same time, do something unique consistently (like rubbing your elbow) to connect this action to the feelings.  If you do this well, you can have the kind of feelings you want immediately whenever you rub your elbow.

 Why do we need to create positive anchors?  Because it is almost impossible to feel some good feelings when we are not in a good mood.  Get rid of the negative anchor by creating an even stronger positive anchor to collapse the negative one.  Use anchoring to affect other people. Example: In formal presentations, presenters dress up to make the audience link to a professional image.

 Picture yourself in a bad mood or habit (which you really want to change).  Then create an image of you the way you want to be. That is, your ideal self.  Place the bad picture (the one you want to change) in front of you.  Imagine that the good picture is pulled away (while creating spring tension in front of you) behind the bad picture.  Then the pulling force disappears and the good picture is coming toward you and breaks the bad picture. Swish pattern

 If you just tell yourself to be confident, it will not be very useful.  You will feel confident if you are certain that almost everything is under your own control.  Example: If you are bothered by something, first identify whether the situation can be changed.  If the situation cannot be changed, change your response (reframing, pattern interruption, anchoring).  If it can be changed by yourself, start to do it (by knowing your outcome, having detailed plans, and motivate yourself with pain/pleasure/anchors)  If it can be changed by someone (who does not listen to you), use covert influence techniques. Conclusion on maximizing confidence