NLP

“Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me” Remember that old favorite your parents used to teach you to say when the school bully used to pick on you? “Words will never hurt me?” Words are the most powerful thing any of us have. Words start wars, words can pick you up when you are down, words can tell somebody how you feel about them, words can both start and end relationships, communicating with words can be very powerful.

One of our major focus’ in NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) is communication. Did you know there are two forms of communication? That’s right; the first one is called outward communication while the second and most important is called internal communication. Every second of every awakened moment we are doing one of these sometimes we are doing both at once.

Now be honest how much of your day is spent talking to yourself? My experience tells me you would spend quite some time in conversation with yourself. My question is how you are talking to yourself is it in a positive way or a negative way?

They way you talk to yourself will be indirect proportion to your levels of success. If you are talking to yourself in a negative way i.e. “I am fat and I could never lose weight” or “Nobody likes me because I am ugly and stupid” (imagine that stupid AND ugly can you get any lower?) you are not only giving away your power but you are also running emotions through your body that are not serving you in any way at all.

It’s time for a change.... But what to do?

I have a belief that you can ask your brain any question and it will always come up with an answer even if there isn’t one. Let’s look at an example above if you asked your brain why am I fat and can never lose weight. Now we both know there is no answer for this question but you will get an answer like “Because you eat like a pig and have no will power” or “Its all your parents fault”

In NLP we say "better questions get better answers" try this “How can I lose some weight and keep it off?” or better still “How can I lose some weight, keep it off and have fun during the process?”

A different way of putting the same question but now your brain will come up with a million ways of doing this.

Another part of NLP is the focus of your thoughts. Do you know it’s impossible not to think about what you don’t want to think about without thinking about it? Try this don’t think of a pink tree, now in order for you not to have thought about a pink tree you would have had to thought about a pink tree. In other words when you start thinking about the things you don’t want in any given situation you are in fact bring them into your life.

So think positive it is always there if you look for it and self talk in positive ways, you will be amazed at how these small changes will impact your life and your success!

Scott Gilson

NLP Master Practitioner