Change your Habits with NLP

January 23, 2008

NLP, Neuro Linguistic Programming is the software to the brain, the best computer known in the world. Many times the human computer is corrupted with unwanted thoughts and habits. The Neurological system is based on how we experience the world through the senses. The input what goes in through what we see, what we hear, we feel (also smell and taste) gets translated into our own perceptions and produces certain outcomes which may be useful or not so useful.

The outcomes are because of the way we translate our experiences to create our own perceptions. Linguistic in NLP, refers to the language we use to sense and perceive the world.

Interestingly we can program the communication channels that we establish within ourselves. We can perceive things differently and organize and structure to produce the best possible outcomes. Few of these perceptions and actions tend to be not useful what we call as bad habits.

We ascertain to our belief system that there are certain bad habits which we wish to get rid of. Bad habits such as eating too much or eating chocolates, snoozing alarm, not exercising, procrastinating and many many more. The general feel is that these habit appear from nowhere all of a sudden, where as these habits are because of constantly conditioning ourselves towards the actions. For example, eating junk food is because of a conditioning of the neuro system which is programmed to understand that the junk food is so tasty and make you feel good. The very fact of that junk food existing would send ripples in your neuro system and acts accordingly. We do not care about this feeling and it keeps growing and when the intensity is at its peak we realize and wish to change it forever.

Why do people not change these habits? Because many believe that they are struck with this bad habit and are of the strong belief that nothing can be done to change the habit. Many are under the perception that the change would only be temporary and so why bother about something that is bound to come back? This again is a conditioning of the neurons and it is imperative that we change the whole system of thinking.

Understand that any habit is because of 1) the thoughts that run in the mind 2) the feeling that you sense because of the thoughts (these are called triggers) and 3) the way you program the mind to react to that feeling.

Internal Representation Say for example, you wish to stop eating chocolates
(I have seen many people who wish to do this and hence the same example) and you are not able to do the same, you must have to program your mind to stop craving for the same.

You must have to change the thoughts and the outcome of the thoughts to avoid the action. Remember your mental state is what drives to take action and you can control your mental state. Logic does not determine action because if that was the true then every person in the world would be perfect and can chose what they want to do and what they do not wish to do. Its emotions that drive action and these emotions are formed because of the certain pictures, sounds and feelings that we have.

The moment you see a chocolate (of any food or any event) you run pictures of how it would be if you were to eat it. This is called the TRIGGER. This puts you in the compulsion to eat the same. Probably you run pictures of you enjoying the taste, the chocolate smelling good, it melting in your mouth and so on. Does this differ from person to person? Definitely yes and that’s why your liking does not match with everyone else. Its only because of how we perceive it internally in the Neuro system. The moment you create these kind of favorable representations in your mind, you tend to be motivated to take an action immediately and hence grab the chocolate and eat it too (later feel guilty J)

Changing the Habit

Step 1: Change the way you perceive the Trigger: In this example, the chocolate is the trigger and you perceive it in a certain way. Smelling good, melting inside your mouth and so on. Change these representations of the trigger. Make the chocolate smell bad, feel is so hard and thorny in your mouth and so on.

Step 2: Intensify the new feeling: Since you have changed the perception of the trigger, the feeling automatically changes. You are no longer so compulsive to take the chocolate and eat. Importantly when you are changing the perception of the trigger, it must be at the peak to ensure that you break the threshold. Once you feel different intensify the same feeling. Make it feel some 100 times more so that you do not pick up the chocolate immediately.

Step 3: Install the new identity: Feelings and beliefs are because of identity. You do not stop a habit because you see yourself holding to the habit. So once you have stopped yourself from holding to the habit, internalize to yourself that you have changed and create a new pattern and the older neuro pattern that’s strong in the system is broken and hence will never be created again. This will give you utmost certainty, that you have new fresh and good habits too.

Following the 3 steps will ensure that you program the perception or the neuro pattern and hence the linguistic or the communication component. And every time you do this to yourself you stop the old bad behavior and start creating new one. If creating bad ones and easy creating new useful habits is much more easy.

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Comments

6 Responses to “Change your Habits with NLP”

Change your Habits with NLP on January 24th, 2008 6:43 am

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Shanu Goyal on June 3rd, 2008 6:14 am

NLP, Neuro Linguistic Programming as it is rightly called is not a new word for me since I read Anthony Robbins, Awakening the giant within. In his book he says, a person ddoes a thing just beacuse of two things- either out of pleasure or out of pain. This statement in itself is thought provoking as we really do a thing because of pleasure and we do not do a thing beacuse of pain. The choclate example you gave here can also be connected to thses two feelings.

Even I want to move out of my city to learn NLP and be a trainer myself and it gives me great pleasure but it gives me pain when I think of moving away my family in search for my career goal.
priyanka on September 26th, 2008 5:06 am

don no whose you…but whovr ur…tussi bade acche ho ji..:)
i love programming my subconscious………n i love hearing to my inner voice…its so very beautiful and innocent…presently in engineering..placed in tech mahindra….but oops want it to make big in the hotel industry….very big ..toooooooooo big……….n ill do it in with the power of my mind n thoughts….if u a bit intersted in my story…u can give your golden valuable ever cherished feedback
NLP opleiding on June 19th, 2009 7:17 am

you can also chain anchors..