Question of the Month: “How to Get Over It, Get Through It, and Get To It”
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Welcome Members to our April “Question of the Month.” I’m Kevin Schoeninger.
This month, we’ve been discussing material from Richard Bandler’s book “Get The Life You Want.” In the first two Weekly Messages, you’ve explored the ways that you mentally process events and represent them to yourself. The more you get to know “how you do these things” the more skillfully you can enter the process consciously and guide yourself more successfully.
In this Week’s Message, we’re going to summarize the overall approach of NLP and talk about how we relate to things in our past, present, and future. We’ll learn three techniques, one for each of these time-frames. Specifically, you’ll discover how to “get over” a past event, “get through” a present challenge, and “get to” something that you want to do, but haven’t been able to accomplish.
First, let’s reinforce the overall thrust of NLP. As Mr. Bandler says, “Your brain runs all the time, and it’s either going to run in the direction you want it to go or it’s going to run all over the place.” (P.208 GTLYW) “The more you’re in charge of your own mental processes, the more you’ll be in charge of your life. . .If you aim your thoughts and you aim your feelings and you aim your conscious and your unconscious desires in the same direction, there’s literally nothing that humans can’t accomplish.” (P.209 GTLYW)
So the goal of NLP is to put you in charge of your mental processes, first by making you aware of them and then by giving you some tools to step in and guide the process. The best way to understand NLP is to do it, so let’s get right into trying out three more NLP techniques. I’ve found that even a little practice with any of these techniques frees up my mind, makes my thoughts and emotions more fluid, and helps me to take a more creative and successful approach to anything that I want to do in life.
Let’s begin with “getting over” something that happened in the past. The reason we want to get over past events is that the feelings from those events intrude into our present experiences. These feelings interfere with what we want to do now. We all have our personal examples of past experiences that are getting in the way of present experience. We’ve all been traumatized or criticized, or lost loved ones, or experienced failures that continue to haunt us. NLP offers many different techniques to free us from the past. Let’s practice one of these now.
Mr. Bandler says that there is one key that is consistent among the people he has worked with who have overcome negative past experiences. No matter which technique you find helpful, there is one common thread that will give you success in moving on. You will reach a point where you say, “Enough is enough.” You will hit a place where you say, “I am sick and tired of this experience and I am committed to getting over it.
Until you reach that point, you will most likely stay in your old rut. You won’t be able to muster the energy to do something new. You’ve got to be sufficiently motivated to do something different. Until you reach that point, you’ll be content to languish in your old patterns, complain about them, and continue repeating them. When you are ready to move on, NLP can help.
To get over the past, it can be helpful to recode it. Let’s try the following exercise together.
Recoding the Past Exercise
1. Call to your mind something that repeatedly haunts you from the past. It could be a person that did you wrong, a critical comment that repeats in your head, or an event that you are rehashing past the point where it is healthy for you and those around you.
2. Ask yourself what would be a more conscious, positive, or helpful way to look at that event. Sum that up in phrase to yourself. Let’s call this a healing phrase. For instance, if someone hurt you and you are holding onto your pain or your anger, you could forgive them and, even one step more, you could bless them. You do this not because they deserve it or because what they did was excusable, but because it is time to move on, because you are ready to be free.
3. Mentally take yourself back into that past event or interaction. Experience what it is like to be in that situation or with that person. Then, say your healing phrase. Say the phrase repeatedly until you really believe it and feel it in your body.
4. Whenever that memory or event comes to your mind again, repeat your healing phrase until you believe it and feel it in your body.
How did that feel to you? Do you feel a little freer? It may take some repetition to fully recode the past. Recode the person or event as often as it comes into your awareness.
O.K. Now, let’s use NLP to address a present challenge, to “get through” something that you find difficult right now. We all have things that overwhelm us while we’re in the midst of them. Breaking a bad habit is a good example of this. We will go to great lengths to avoid dealing with our bad habits. We’ll rationalize, we’ll make excuses, and we’ll find infinite ways to fudge the facts so that we can repeat our bad habits.
The bottom line in overcoming your bad habits is to change your belief about your ability to deal with your habit and then set yourself up for success with a new plan of action. The first step is to change your belief about your bad habit. Mr. Bandler uses the example of quitting smoking. You can substitute any bad habit you have into the same formula.
The first thing you have to do is to believe that you can control your craving. To do that, find an example in your life where you do control your craving. There are many situations in your life where you control your impulses. What you need to do is to elicit the submodalities of an experience where you easily control your impulses and apply them to your craving for cigarettes (or whatever bad habit you want to overcome).
Try the exercise below to change your belief about your ability to control a craving.
Believing Yourself a Nonsmoker Exercise
(from P.106 GTLYW)
1. Think of a strong belief that you have and elicit the submodalities. Where do you hold the image or the thought of your strong belief? What are the qualities of that image or thought? What do you feel in your body?
2. Think of something that you desire but you don’t act on and elicit the submodalities. An example could be desiring to sleep later, but getting up to do what you need to do. You do this because something else is more important to you than sleep at that moment. Where is that motivation in your body? What do you feel in your body? What image is in your mind? What are the qualities of that image?
3. Imagine a situation where you have the option to smoke in the future. Move that image away into the distance, then pull it up in the same submodalities as the thing that you want to do, but don’t act on, such as sleeping in. See yourself not acting on your urge to smoke and being a happy, healthy nonsmoker from now on.
4. Take this image of you not acting upon the craving and being a happy, healthy nonsmoker from now on and move it off into the distance and snap it back into the submodalities of strong belief.
5. Repeat steps 1-4, quickly each time.
By now you’re probably getting the hang of this. Whether you are confident in your ability to use NLP techniques or whether or not you believe that they will work for you, you are probably getting onto the logic of them. The only way for you to believe NLP will work for you is for you to try it, to practice it, and to see some positive results.
Let’s try one more technique. We’ve talked about how to recode a past experience so you get over it and how to shift your belief about your ability to control your impulses so you get through a bad habit. Now let’s talk about how to get yourself to do something positive that you are resisting. The example, Mr. Bandler gives is exercising regularly. You can feel free to substitute any good habit that you’d like to make into a regular habit. Here’s his process:
How to Exercise Regularly
(from P.187 GTLYW)
1. Think of a habit you have and do every single day such as brushing your teeth or taking a shower. Notice the submodalities.
2. Think of exercising regularly. Notice the submodalities.
3. Think of how awful it will feel to be overweight, lazy, lethargic, and unfit. Attach this to the thought of not exercising.
4. Think of how you will feel if you do exercise regularly and how good it will be to look great and feel great.
5. Take the image of you exercising and move it out and back into the image of you engaging in the habit that you do every day. Do this a few times quickly as you attach the good feeling. Do it until exercising feels like second nature to you.
Personally, I have been exercising consistently for the past 35 years and I can tell you that I’ve naturally used elements of this technique with great success. In fact, I do it with all the good habits I do in life. I imagine how good it will feel doing the positive habit and enjoying the results of having done it. I imagine how I will feel if I don’t do it. This is enough to get me to do it. The more positive experiences you have doing your good habit, the more you can draw on this type of technique.
The same idea applies to something like meditation. If you do a meditation that leads you into a positive state, you will want that state again and again. You will miss it when you don’t have it. This will reinforce your consistent practice.
That leads to one final thought about installing good habits. Do your good habits in ways that are both enjoyable and effective. When something is enjoyable and you get what you want from it, it is much easier to imagine yourself wanting to do it again and again.
At SGM we offer you a wealth of techniques to try out, so you can see what works for you. Find what you enjoy and what is effective for you. When you find something that fits both those criteria, you have a good tool for your spiritual growth Toolkit.
I hope that you’ve found some tools from NLP that work for you. I’d love to hear about your successes and your challenges in the Comments section below this message.
Also, make sure to mark your calendars for our Group Coaching Call next Sunday April 26th. On this call, we’ll review, practice, and share our experiences with NLP. I’ll also lead you through another special technique from Mr. Bandler’s NLP. This is a really good one that you won’t want to miss.
Until next time,
Happy practicing,
Kevin