Steve Andreas - Help with Negative Self–talk Volume I

12. Testing/Feedback Make a promise to yourself to check a week or two in the future to find out how well these changes are working. You can always make further modifications any time you want to.

This process can be used to adjust what we say to ourselves in any problem situation, in order to make it more useful in supporting our life goals. Changes in our core question will usually generalize widely, and have a broad impact on our lives, far beyond specific problems. A live workshop presentation of this process is available on CD (6)

In this book I have collected and presented a wide variety of ways to transform negative internal self–talk, learned from over 30 years of training and researching. Much of this has come from others who have taught me, or contributed ideas, while some of it has come in little "Ahah!" moments in assisting someone, or reviewing a communication or a transcript of a session. Others I have learned from participants in seminars. All these little bits and pieces had to be collected and then fit together into a coherent whole, a process that was a further learning process in itself.

My own internal voice has been an essential ally in doing this. Sometimes I have thought to myself, "There's something missing here." "If this is true, then that must also be true." "That's not very clear; how does that really work?" "How can I say this better?" And there have also been delightful moments of discovery. "Oh, I know how that works!" "I see how these two elements relate to each other!" As this book grew, it eventually became too long for a single book, so I decided to split it into two volumes, as I did with my previous book. (5)

In this volume, I have mostly ignored the historical roots of our negative voices, focusing on the structures that the history put in place, and changing them in the present. However it can also be useful to change a voice by tracing the origin of a troublesome voice back in time, and learn more about the original context that created a negative voice.

In volume 2 of this book I go on to utilize many of the principles presented here—and some only hinted at—to develop a systematic process for communicating directly with a troublesome voice. This makes it possible to learn much more about the voice—especially its positive intent and its understanding. With this additional information the meaning of what it says changes, so that it is even more supportive and useful, becoming a supportive ally, instead of a troublesome critic. Then you can go on to "tune up" a voice to make further changes in what it says, and how it says it, so that it is even more useful.

Steve Andreas June 2009

If you would like more NLP resources to help you in reaching your life goals, resolve problems, or just enhance your life, here is a "short list" we think you'll find useful:

FREE! NLP Blog by Steve Andreas

This blog gives you access to free articles on NLP. You'll also hear about occasional NLP training events or products that we think are special opportunities. Read Online and subscribe at www.realpeoplepress.com/blog

Books:

Like to read? Here are some excellent sources…

Heart of the Mind: Engaging Your Inner Power to Change through NLP, by Connirae & Steve Andreas. This unique introduction to the field of NLP is packed with specific methods you can use in many areas of your life. Each chapter focuses on a special area, including decision–making, motivation, getting over unwanted habits, overcoming anxiety, self–healing, healing trauma & abuse, parenting, and much more. Includes examples, short transcripts, and outlines you can use. Available on Kindle as well as quality paperback.

Core Transformation, by Connirae Andreas & Tamara Andreas. A deeply transforming method in which our limitations become the doorway to profound states many describe as spiritual, such as "presence" "peace" or "oneness. Available as a book and also on DVDs of a complete 3–day workshop.

To Order, and to See our complete list of NLP books from leading NLP Trainers & Developers, visit www.realpeoplepress.com

NLP on CD:

Transforming Troublesome Internal Voices, CD, Steve Andreas. Listen to Steve presenting some of the key methods in this book. 120 min. 2 CDs, plus 4–page handout.

See complete list ofCDs, and Order at www.realpeoplepress.com NLP on DVD:

Core Transformation — the Full 3–Day Workshop on DVD, Tamara Andreas. This amazingly powerful workshop is now available in easy–to–use DVD format. Experience the life–changing benefits that come from three gentle yet profound processes: Aligning Perceptual Positions, Core Transformation, and Parental Timeline Reimprinting. Aligning Perceptual Positions is not yet in book form — this is its most detailed presentation! No background needed. These processes are a direct route to experiences of wholeness, inner peace, and oneness, while transforming our lives for the better. 7 hrs on 4 DVDs, plus 39–page manual.

Eye Movement Integration, DVD, Steve Andreas. EMI, developed by Connirae and Steve Andreas, is NLP's kinder, gentler, more rapid and effective version of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). In this demonstration you will see the entire treatment process with a Veteran who had experienced repeated intrusive memories of a nighttime firefight — over a period of many years, and for whom other methods had not been effective. EMI is a very simple method that is particularly effective with problematic memories from the past, and anxieties about the future. Since EMI is a general way to integrate our brain's processing modes, it can also be used to resolve — or at least clarify — a wide range of other symptoms and problems. 50 min DVD with 6–page booklet.

Client Sessions Series: NEW! These single session DVDs demonstrate how NLP can be utilized effectively, often in one session, to improve the quality of our lives:

Resolving Musical Performance Anxiety.

Personal Boundaries: Preventing Burnout.

Resolving Night Terrors.

Visit www.RealPeoplePress.com for complete list of DVDs and to order.

The question "What is NLP?" is a bit like asking, "What is Physics?" because there are so many possible ways to answer it.

One answer is that NLP is able to accomplish what the beginnings of psychology promised a hundred years ago, and never quite delivered — a practical way of understanding our thinking and our behavior that can be used to make rapid and useful changes in our lives.

Another answer is that it is the study of the structure of subjective experience, the inner workings of our minds, and how to use that knowledge to enrich our choices. Much of this structure is typically unconscious, or preconscious. However much of this structure can become conscious, altered, and then allowed to become unconscious and automatic again.

Someone once described NLP as "Cognitive Behavioral Therapy on steroids" because although it is fundamentally similar in orientation, NLP makes much finer distinctions and has many specific processes, principles, and presuppositions that make change much faster.

Yet another description is that it is a collection of methods for achieving specific personal outcomes, along with a common understanding of how they all work, which can be used to develop new methods.

NLP is sometimes described as a pragmatic methodology for modeling human excellence that can be applied to any context that includes at least one human being.

Once modeled, anyone can learn the model in order to learn the skill, an example of a much–overused term, "accelerated learning."

Someone once pointed out that "The human brain is the only self–maintaining, general purpose computer that can be manufactured by unskilled labor." It is also the only computer that is only partially programmed at the factory, and doesn't come with an operating manual. A child's brain doesn't have the kinds of programs that we have as adults, and there are no instructions about the operating system, or how to program it well.

Although there is still some disagreement about exactly what kind of computer the brain is, it is clear that we input information through our five senses, process it in a variety of ways, using our ability to remember, forecast, connect different experiences, and generalize about them, and then output behavior and responses. Our output of behavior and responses then become additional inputs to be processed, in a never–ending cybernetic process.

Since we have no operating manual — and no keyboard — each of us essentially had to program ourselves, with some help from our parents and others. Despite the best efforts of our parents, much of our programming was somewhat random, and was often the result of accidental events, some supportive and some traumatic. Much of our programming operates reasonably well, while other parts usually don't work well at all.

So another definition of NLP is that it is an operating manual for the human brain, providing "software for wetware," that can be used to reprogram ourselves when we are less than fully satisfied with our responses.

The descriptions given so far may already be more than most people want to read. For those who want a little more specific description of what NLP is, and how it differs from most psychology and psychotherapy, read on… .

We can use the field of knowledge and investigation known as physics as an example for understanding different aspects of NLP. Physics can be divided into three different levels:

1. A practical technology that is devoted to specific applications in the real world, from building bridges, cell phones, and spacecraft, to determining the properties of atoms, viruses, and life itself — and everything in between. This technology takes the form of recipes that tell us what to do to reach particular goals or outcomes — in the same way that a recipe for a cake is a dependable way to achieve that outcome. As Paul Valery said, "The name science should not be given to anything but the aggregate of the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature"

2. A methodology or theory, a set of understandings that guide the further development and use of the technology. Methodology consists of all the ideas we have about the technology, how we think it all fits together. As Einstein said, "There is nothing so practical as a good theory"

One basic principle — well established by a wealth of psychological experiments — is that we can't know objective reality, we have only a "map" of reality provided through our senses. This principle was stated by Alfred Korzybski in his book Science and Sanity as, "The map is not the territory." There will always be gaps, errors, and omissions in our map. A map may be very useful and practical, but it can never fully match the reality that it attempts to describe. If it did match, it would be as complete, complex, and puzzling as the reality it describes, and it would no longer be useful as a map.

3. An epistemology, how we know what we know, a way of deciding what evidence to use to use to determine what is true or valid as we test both the technology and methodology. The epistemology of physics is that of scientific experimentation: testing our predictions and results in any way we can, with as many controls as we can. This testing is what distinguishes science from guesses, revelation, or superstition.

Like physics, NLP also has a large number of specific patterns, recipes, and instructions that can be used to help people reach specific outcomes. It does this by making changes in our experience — in our perceptions, our thinking, our actions, and our feeling responses to events.

Educational applications include teaching people how to spell accurately, how to learn a foreign language quickly and fluently, how to remember facts and rules, how to be in a positive state to learn easily, and how to transform some kinds of "learning disabilities" into effective thinking and learning, etc.

Psychotherapeutic applications include how to transform unpleasant feelings, change unwanted habits such as smoking, overeating, or nail–biting, how to cure phobias, fears and anxieties, resolve grief, shame, guilt, and other internal conflicts, eliminate addictions, compulsions, PTSD, etc.

Communication applications include how to use language — both denotation and connotation, and both explicit and metaphoric — to sequence and combine information for easy learning, and accurate transmission of that learning to others, how to develop rapport, how to negotiate and resolve conflicts, how to become intimate when you want to, and how to set effective boundaries, etc.

Sports applications include how to be motivated to stay with a training program, concentrate fully on performance and ignore distractions, how to acquire excellence in any sport, how to use the same thought and movement strategies that top athletes use to achieve success, etc.

Business and organizational applications include how to develop creative new alternatives for solving problems, make satisfying decisions, and detailed plans to implement them, how to stay on track in meetings, how to identify and select potential employees and partners who have the skills needed for the team, how to dovetail outcomes, how to manage in a style that matches your company and employees, etc.

NLP has a coherent set of ideas or understandings that can be used to understand the wide–ranging applications of the technology.