What did you have for breakfast?

If I ask you what you had for breakfast this morning or where you went on your last holiday how can you recall this information. Most people will say “Because I remember” my question to you is how do you remember? When I ask people this question I will normally get the same response “Well I can see it” Isn’t that interesting even though the holiday may have been three months ago people can close their eyes and they can see themselves walking on the beach or doing the normal crazy things people tend to do while away.
There are many ways of the person seeing the picture, let’s do a little experiment to show you. First close your eyes (not yet) and take a deep breath in and see yourself doing something you love it can be anything, next open your eyes stand up then sit back down, close your eyes and imagine yourself doing something you really don’t like doing. Now my experience tells me that they were some big differences in the pictures. For example the color may have been different, most people I work with say the one they like is in color while the other is in black and white, the brightness, size, angle, focus and distance of picture will differ from the activity you liked doing to the one you didn’t like doing.
Where am I going with this?  These days it seems you can’t go into an office or a public gathering without somebody telling you how stressed they are. My belief is there is no stress in the world yes I agree there are people who are so called “stressing” themselves out but there is no stress in the world, the world is exactly how it should be. These so called stressed people are just making bad pictures of everything that can go wrong in a particular situation then they use words to them self on why the situation just won’t work which in turns creates worse pictures. When I talk to these people about the situation it’s amazing what happens when you can change a few of the sub modalities of the picture they have in their head.

Now, we all live in the real world so I would like to give you a real world experience I had a few weeks ago.
I was at a pub with my brother and some of our close friends, about twenty meters away there were three girls playing pool, one of my friends wanted to go and say hello but for some reason couldn’t move of his chair. Now what pictures do you think he was making in his head? Correct pictures of the girls not talking to him or worse telling him to go away and having to come back to a table of guys laughing at him as only real friend can do. I took him aside and we spoke about the pictures he had in his head. After a quick session and changing some of the negative pictures he was seeing into positive ones he was well on his way.
The next time something comes up that used to “stress” you, close your eyes and take a deep breath. Make the picture of you successfully delivering your sales pitch, talking to that stranger on the train you see every morning, handing your report in on time whatever it is for you think in positive pictures. See yourself, feel the feelings of success hear what’s going on around you at the time experience it before it happens. These are your thoughts in your head so if you are thinking in pictures anyway why not make them positive ones!
“Changing pictures will change your emotions”

Scott Gilson
NLP Master Practioner