Unlimited Power - Chapter 6

 

Chapter 6  - Mastering Your Mind: How To Run Your Brain

 

People don't usually lack resources: they lack control over their resources or don't know how to get access to their resources.

This chapter teaches you how to be in control of your states and, therefore, in control of your actions.

I see our neurology as a jukebox that has records of our experiences that will be played back at any time if the right stimulus in our environment is triggered.

So we can choose to remember experiences or push buttons that play "songs" of happiness and joy, or we can push buttons that create pain.

If, however, you hold the traditional therapeutic model that we have deep-seated negative experiences that build up inside like a fluid and finally burst and overflow and you follow a therapeutic plan of re-experiencing those negative experiences-i.e., hitting the same button that creates pain time and time again-you may be reinforcing the very negative states you want to change.

So let's discover not only how to push the buttons that play the pleasure "songs," but also how to push a button that used to play a sad song, but instead now brings up an ecstatic one-or even learn to re-record over the disk and take the old memories and change them.

We look at the structure of human experience, not the content.

We look for answers as to "how" someone creates pain and pleasure.

We don't ask "why" questions that bring up the content.

The difference between how you produce the state of depression versus the state of ecstasy is the way you structure your INTERNAL REPRESENTATIONS.

We structure our internal representations through our five senses, and primarily through the three major modalities (representational systems): visual (V), auditory (A), kinesthetic (K).

You might consider your senses the ingredients from which you build any experience or result.

But as any good cook will tell you, you have to know the precise quantity of each ingredient as well in order to get the specific result.

We refer to the quantities of each modality as SUBMODALITIES.

We can change two things about the way we represent events in our life.

We can change what we represent-thus, for example. if we imagine the worst possible scenario, we can change to picturing the best possible scenario.

Or we can change how we represent something-for example, some people find that picturing something as being very, very large is critical for a state of great motivation. Other people find that the specific tone of voice they use when they talk to themselves makes a major difference in their level of state of motivation.

Submodalities are the smallest and most precise building blocks that make up the structure of human experience.

Here's a list of virtually all of our possible submodalities:

Visual:

1. Movie or still frame

2. Panorama or framed (if framed, the shape of the frame)

3. Color or black and white

4. Brightness

5. Size of picture (life-size, larger or smaller)

6. Size of central object(s)

7. Self in or out of picture

8. Distance of picture from self

9. Distance of central object from self

10. 3-D quality

11. Intensity of color (or black and white)

12. Degree of contrast

13. Movement (if so, fast or slow tempo)

14. Focus (which parts-in or out)

15. Intermittent or steady focus

16. Angle viewed from

17. Number of pictures (shifts)

18. Location

19. Other?

Auditory:

1. Volume

2. Cadence (interruptions, groupings)

3. Rhythm (regular, irregular)

4. Inflections (words marked out, how)

5. Tempo

6. Pauses

7. Tonality

8. Timbre (quality, where resonating from)

9. Uniqueness of sound (gravelly, smooth, and so on)

10. Sound move around-spatial

11. Location

12. Other?

Kinesthetic:

1. Temperature

2. Texture

3. Vibration

4. Pressure

5. Movement

6. Duration

7. Steady-intermittent

8. Intensity

9. Weight

10. Density

11. Location

12. Other?

For pain:

1. Tingling

2. Hot-Cold

3. Muscle tension

4. Sharp-Dull

5. Pressure

6. Duration

7. Intermittent (such as throbbing)

8. Location

9. Other?

You can let it treat you the way it has in the past. You can let it flash you any picture or sound or feeling, and you can respond automatically on cue, like a Pavlovian dog responding to a bell. Or you can choose to consciously run your brain yourself by manipulating your submodalities.

Manipulating submodalities gives you precise control about how you represent anything in your mind, and therefore, control over your state.

Discovering your key submodalities for intensifying your resourceful states will allow you to enhance the wonderful experiences in your life, and minimize the intensity of your unresourceful states.

If submodality manipulation seems like a strange thing to do, think about the way we describe experiences in life in terms of submodalities: "Something is weighing heavily on my mind," "My future looks bright (or dim)," "That person blows things out of proportion," "I have a mental block," "That person is really hot" or "Cool as a cucumber," "You have a distorted image of what happened," "She has a colorful personality," "He only sees things as black and white," "She has many dimensions to her personality," "He looks askance at everything," "His perception is askew," "He has a grave tone of voice," "My life is like a pressure cooker-ready to explode all over everything" "I'm vibrating with excitement," "That person's thinking is very dense," etc.

What if you said "that really weighs lightly on my mind," or "that person just shatters what other people see as mental blocks," etc.

If you have an incessant internal dialogue that you don't want to hear, just turn down the volume, make it softer, farther away and weaker, or hear it nag in an incredibly sexy tone of voice, "You can't do that."

Your level of motivation (like any other state) can be directed with submodalities.

Use the following, chart to note what your submodalities are for motivation and lack of motivation.

 

Visual: 1. Movie or still frame 2. Color or black and white 3. Brightness 4. Movement (if so, fast or slow tempo) 5. Size of picture 6. Distance of picture from self 7. Focus (which parts-in or out) 8. Self in or out of picture 9. Periphery (frame) or panoramic 10. Size of central object(s) 11. Distance of central object from self 12. 3-D quality 13. Intensity of color (or black and white) 14. Degree of contrast 15. Intermittent or steady focus 16. Angle viewed from 17. Number of pictures (shifts) 18. Location 19. Other?

Auditory: (Words-What did you say/heal'?) 1. Volume 2. Cadence (interruptions, groupings) 3. Rhythm (regular, irregular) 4. Inflections (words marked out, how) 5. Tempo 6. Pauses 7. Tonality 8. Timbre (quality, where resonating from) 9. Uniqueness of sound 10. Location-proximity 11. Duration 12. Other?

Kinesthetic: 1. Temperature 2. Texture 3. Vibration 4. Pressure 5. Movement 6. Duration 7. Steady-intermittent 8. Intensity 9. Weight 10. Size/Shape 11. Internal/External 12. Other?

 

Classify them into Motivated  and not motivated

What if you were to take all the things you hate to do but believe you must and attach to them the submodalities of pleasure?

REMEMBER, FEW THINGS HAVE ANY INHERENT FEELING.

You've learned what is pleasurable and what is uncomfortable: You can simply re-label these experiences on the jukebox and immediately create new feelings about them.

What if you took all your problems, shrank them down, and put a little distance between them and you?

THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS. 

YOU'RE IN COMMAND!

These submodality changes are great, but what's going to keep them from changing back.

The SWISH PATTERN makes these changes automatic-it takes internal representations that normally produce states of unresourcefulness and causes them to automatically trigger new internal representations that put you in the states that you desire.

The best part of the SWISH PATTERN is that once you implant it effectively, you don't have to think of it again-it happens automatically, without any conscious effort.

HOW TO DO A SWISH PATTERN:

Step 1. Identify the behavior you want to change. Now make an internal representation of that behavior as you see it through your own eyes. If you want to stop biting your fingernails, imagine a picture of you lifting our hand, bringing your fingers to your lips, and biting your nails.

Step 2. Once you have a clear picture of the behavior you want to change, you need to create a different representation, a picture of yourself as you would be if you made the desired change and what that change would mean to you. You might picture yourself taking your fingers away from your mouth, creating a little pressure on the finger you were going to bite, and seeing your nails perfectly manicured and yourself as well dressed, magnificently groomed, more in control, and more confident.

The picture you make of yourself in that desired state should be disassociated. The reason for this is that we want to create an ideal internal representation, one that you will continue to be drawn to rather than one you feel you already have.

Step 3. "Swish" the two pictures so that the unresourceful experience automatically triggers the resourceful experience. Once you hook up this triggering mechanism, anything that used to trigger biting your nails will now trigger you into a state where you are moving toward that ideal picture of yourself. Thus, you're creating a whole new way for your brain to deal with what in the past may have upset you.

Here's how to do the swish:

Start by making a big bright picture of the behavior you want to change.

Then, in the bottom right-hand corner of that picture, make a small dark picture of the way you want to be.

Now take that small picture, and in less than one second, have it grow in size and brightness and literally burst through the picture of the behavior you no longer desire.

As you do this process, say the sound "whoosh" with all the excitement and enthusiasm you can. I realize this may sound a bit juvenile.

However, saying "whoosh" in an excited way sends a series of powerful, positive signals to your brain.

Once you've set up the pictures in your mind, this whole process should only take about as long as it takes to say the word "whoosh".

Now in front of you is a big, bright, focused, colorful picture of how you want to be. The old picture of how you were has been smashed to smithereens.

The key to this pattern is speed and repetition. 

You must see and feel that small dark picture become huge and bright and explode through the big picture, destroying it and replacing it with an even bigger, brighter picture of how you want things to be.

Now experience the great feeling of seeing things the way you want them.

Then open your eyes for a split second in order to break the state.

When you close your eyes again, do the swish once more.

Start by seeing the thing you want to change as large, and then have your small picture grow in size and brightness and explode through-Whoosh! Pause to experience it. Open your eyes. Close your eyes. See what you want to change. See the original picture and how you want to change it. Whoosh it again. Do this five or six times as fast as you can.

Remember, the key to this is speed: and to have fun doing it. 

What you are telling your brain is, see this, "Whoosh!" Do this, see this, "Whoosh!" Do this, see this, "Whoosh!" Do this . . . until the old picture automatically triggers the new picture, the new states, and thus the new behavior.

You can also do a SWISH PATTERN with fears and frustrations.

You can also do the slingshot approach-imagine a slingshot in front of you. Between the two posts is a picture of the present behavior you want to change. Place a small picture of how you want to be in the sling. Then mentally watch this little picture being pulled farther and farther back until the sling is stretched as far as possible. Then let it go. Watch as it explodes right through the old picture in front of you and into your brain.

Association and disassociation are submodalities that are critical for everyone to be able to use effectively.

There are many people who spend most of their time disassociated.

The advantage is if you avoid very deep emotions about some things and events in your life, you will have more resources to handle them.

However, if this is your consistent pattern of representing most of your experiences in life, you're really missing what I call the juice of life, a tremendous amount of passion and joy.

On the other hand, if all or the vast majority of your internal representations are fully associated, you may find yourself an emotional misfit - on an emotional roller coaster.

The key to life is balance, including the perceptual filters of association and disassociation-we need to associate and disassociate consciously.

We can use submodalities for changing beliefs. 

Remember, a belief is nothing but a feeling (state) of certainty about something.

How do you represent that state of certainty? The way you represent any other state - through specific submodalities.

Do you think you'd be as certain about something that is dim, unfocused, tiny, and far away in your mind as you would be about something that is just the opposite?

Do the same exercise you did with the state of motivation to change feelings of certainty.

Start with a belief you're totally sure of, then think of something you wish you were sure of (you might pick one of the seven "lies" of success from the last chapter).

Run through the submodalities and make the contrastive analysis, notice the differences between the submodalities of the two beliefs, then reprogram the submodalities of the belief you're not sure of so they match the belief you are sure of. YOU'RE IN CHARGE!

You can do the same thing with physical pain. You can greatly reduce or remove physical pain by disassociating yourself by seeing (as opposing to feeling) the pain outside yourself, and seeing its shape and size, moving it ten feet away, make it bigger and smaller, causing it to grow and explode through the ceiling and then shrink it down. Push the pain into the sun and watch it melt to nothing and then come down to earth as sunshine to feed the plants.

And if you doubt your ability to do this, haven't you done this unconsciously many times you got caught up in something else, or something exciting happened, and you forgot about the pain.

YOU CAN CHANGE ANYTHING YOU FEEL IN YOUR LIFE BY CHANGING THE WAY YOU REPRESENT IT IN YOUR MIND, AND SUBMODALITIES GIVE YOU TOTAL CONTROL OF HOW YOU REPRESENT ANYTHING! TAKE THAT CONTROL BACK AND MAKE YOUR LIFE A MASTERPIECE!

If you commit yourself to decreasing the intensity in the way you represent the areas of your life that cause you pain by changing your submodalities, and increasing the intensity of the way you represent resourceful areas of your life, you will reap unimaginable rewards. If, in addition, you increase your level of motivation in areas that are important to you, remove fears, change beliefs, and learn to control physical pain, you will become powerful in every area of your life.

And if you learn to change behaviors by using the SWISH PATTERN, you will not even recognize yourself.

REMEMBER, THE ONLY TWO THINGS YOU'LL EVER WANT TO CHANGE ARE:

1) HOW YOU FEEL

2) HOW YOU BEHAVE.

Submodalities and the SWISH PATTERN give you total control over both of these areas.

What if you believed with absolute certainty and commitment that now that you know of these powers, as a king or queen, you MUST wield this sovereign power?! I wonder what your kingdom would look like, and feel like?