How to control your mind
So how do you take more control over your mind? Well, we trap ourselves by the way we run our brain. As we take information in from the world through our five senses, we have five internal ways of representing the information. We make images, talk to ourselves, and experience feelings and tastes and smells through which we make sense of the world. It’s the way that we represent the world internally that determines how we feel and what we do. This reflects your automatic, habitual way of thinking.
The way we think and interpret the world affects how we feel and our mental state at any given moment. To think and act more effectively and feel more resourceful, we must learn to alter our natural habitual thought programmes.
Joe was leaning forward on the edge of his seat.
For example, if I were to ask you where your car is parked or where the train station is, you’d have to go inside your mind and mentally create or remember a picture of the route to get to it. If I ask you what you did yesterday, you’d only know because you’d remember it in the form of a picture. Now, these pictures or images are unconscious. We all make them, but we rarely notice that we do. The trick is to become aware of them first; then we can do something different.
So all of our thoughts are made up of images, sounds and feelings. Once we become aware of how we formulate our thoughts we gain the ability to change them. Because our feelings and behaviours are determined largely by how we think, then once we discover how to think differently, we can achieve more effective results.
Think, for example, of someone who annoys you or makes you feel bad. Make an image of them in your mind. Now, notice the qualities of the image. Notice the size, where it’s located, whether or not the image is in colour or black and white.
Joe tried to do this. Into his mind popped his boss, sticking his head into Joe’s office and demanding that he finish a report by the end of the week because he was going away and Joe was the man for the job. Joe thought of their argument, about the fact that he didn’t have the ability to do it and that it was unfair to expect so much of him in such a short time-frame. He thought of how his boss had laughed in his face and how he had told Joe to ‘get on with it’.
Now, as you think of this image of someone who annoys you or makes you feel bad, do the following: take the image, and if it’s colour, make it black and white. Make it really small. Reduce it in size. Now move it way off in the distance. Notice how you feel.
Richard smirked, as if he already knew the answer. He pointed to a man in the front row.
You, sir. Did you do it? Now, I want you all to really do this exercise. Let me reveal a secret to you.
He whispered to the audience:
you don’t do it, it won’t work.
Joe joined everyone else in laughter.
It takes you a few seconds and actually changes how you feel.
Joe focused on what Richard had asked. He took into his mind the image of his laughing boss
and first made it black and white. Then, he made it as small as a piece of a puzzle, and finally he moved it as far away as he could. Suddenly he was very surprised to discover that the negative feelings that he had just moments before were not nearly as bad. He now just felt a little annoyed. If someone had told him it would help this much, he wouldn’t have believed them. ‘That is cool,’ he mumbled to himself.
The incredible thing is that the qualities of your mental images can be easily altered, and this will affect how you experience these images. You can also take something that makes you feel good and make it bigger and brighter and bring it closer, and you’ll probably feel the feeling more intensely.
Joe decided to try this as well. He thought about a time when he was at an important game played by his favourite football team, and they had won. It was a magical evening. He remembered how good it felt. He remembered the image of how the fans and the stadium looked, and immediately he felt fantastic. He made the image bigger, brighter, more colourful and more vivid. He could feel the elation increasing inside of him. A smile crept across his face.
Whenever you think of something, you make images of it or run movies of it. You can’t avoid it. Your brain works that way! So if you remember an experience that you went through, you’ll probably imagine a movie of that experience, either looking at yourself in the movie or from your own perspective back then. Those images or movies affect how you feel. That’s why people feel good or bad. It often comes down to what kinds of things they’re thinking about and what kind of movies they’re playing to themselves inside their own heads.
The secret is to take the images in your mind that make you feel bad and make them small and black and white, move them farther away from you and get rid of them, then take the things that make you feel good and make them big, bright and vivid. When you do this you’ll be teaching your brain to make good feelings stronger and bad feelings weaker.
Joe was really struck by the logic of this method. This was a huge revelation. He pondered the many implications that this had for his life. Was it possible that this technique could change how he felt about everything?
The answer came from his critical voice, the voice that was often ready to destroy his hopes, the kind of voice that we hear when we think of negative things or we represent pessimistic possibilities. Don’t be stupid. Are you really going to fall for this? It’s too easy. Change is very hard. He shook his head. His critical voice was right. It all seemed too good to be true. What comes next?
Well, it’s time to have a break. I want to introduce some of my trainers who will help you during the next few days.
Can I ask all the trainers to stand up and raise their hands, please?
Richard presented each of them briefly. He finally introduced the trainer that Joe had met at the registration table.
This is Alan. He has worked with me for a lot of years. He is one of the best trainers around. Really, he’s a Master Trainer. If you have any questions about the exercises, you can ask him. And now, enjoy your coffee!
During the break Joe remained in his chair. He didn’t feel like chitchatting and socializing with people. He picked up the brochure that he’d found on his seat and feigned reading it while watching the brown-haired woman out of the corner of his eye. Anna had shot out of her chair the instant the break started. Joe had a feeling that she wasn’t sure what to say about what she had just heard. Had Richard’s approach challenged her beliefs?
Joe turned around in his chair to see where the woman with the long brown hair was. He eventually spotted her at the back of the room. There were two guys fawning all over her. She seemed not to notice the depth of their interest and was smiling politely as they talked to her enthusiastically. Joe smirked at the spectacle and shook his head. Losers, he thought. Who do they think they are, trying to impress her? He tried to convince himself that they were being foolish, but if he was honest he would have loved to have the courage to approach her.
‘Are you going to talk to her?’ A familiar voice came from behind him. Joe turned round … It was the trainer he’d met, Alan. He nodded his head towards the brown-haired woman.
Joe blushed. ‘Well, no. Not now.’
‘Why not?’ Alan inquired. His tone was friendly.
‘I will. Later. Maybe. If I feel like it.’
‘Are you telling me that you don’t feel like it now?’ Alan asked with a smirk.
‘Yes. No. I mean … no, I do feel like it, but I don’t. I … well, I’m a bit shy and definitely too
nervous. I’ll just make a fool of myself.’
‘Isn’t that what everyone else seems to be doing?’ Alan pointed in the woman’s direction. As
Joe turned back around he saw the guy to her left bouncing around like a gorilla, trying to make her laugh. She was laughing, but more politely than anything else.
‘Yeah,’ Joe replied. ‘But I just wouldn’t know what to say. I’m no good with women.’
‘Here’s a thought. I’ve met a lot of people who feel bad about themselves, then wonder why nobody enjoys being with them. You have to learn to like yourself before you can get others to like you. Once you do that, the next step is to focus on how you make them feel. Far too often in life, it’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to impress other people. Instead of focusing on being impressive, it’s more useful to focus on how you feel and how you make others feel. It’s
important to start with yourself. If you feel good, they’ll probably want to be around you more. It’s that simple.’
Joe took this on board. He could give this a try the next time he spoke to someone he liked. It seemed so obvious that maybe it could really work.
‘What do you think would happen if you approached her?’ Alan studied Joe’s face for a response.
‘Well, I imagine she would just stare at me and wonder what was wrong with me. Then it would be awkward, and she’d make excuses and avoid me for the rest of the course.’
‘Wow, that’s amazing. You can see into the future and read her mind? Quite the skill,’ Alan teased, a broad grin spreading across his boyish face.
Joe smiled back. ‘Yeah, she would do that if I had nothing to say.’
‘When you think about her staring at you and wondering what’s wrong with you, how do you do that?’ Alan asked.
‘I’m not sure what you mean.’ Joe furrowed his brow.
‘Basically you’re making a movie in your mind of what would happen if she rejected you.’ Joe nodded.
‘Let me guess. This movie is pretty big and colourful and bright, right?’ Alan said.
Again Joe nodded.
‘OK, so what would happen if you practised what Richard just taught you and took that movie
and made it small and black and white and moved it farther away? Then what would happen if you replaced it with a new movie of you going over there, starting a conversation, getting her laughing and smiling and making her feel good, and made that movie vivid, clear and life-size?’
Joe found the new image in his head, and for a second he felt excited and confident about the possibility of talking to her. As he looked over at the brown-haired woman, he could have sworn that she caught his eye for a few seconds and smiled at him. Then, a reality check. ‘It’s a nice thought, but reality doesn’t work that way,’ he said to Alan. His critical voice spoke loudly: Too good to be true. It can’t be that easy.
Alan stared at him quietly for a second, and then said, ‘Maybe reality isn’t what you think it is. Maybe whatever you think becomes your reality.’ With that, he walked once again to the back of the room as people began taking their seats.
Dr Richard Bandler returned to the stage and continued speaking.
A young woman approached me at a seminar last month. She told me she was on the bus that blew up in London during the infamous July 7 tragedy. That was when explosions rocked London because the underground trains and city buses were targeted.
Although this ugly act of terrorism struck the hearts of all of us who were there, most of all it affected those who were in the midst of the explosions and their loved ones. This young woman
stood in front of me, nervously hopping from one foot to the other, wringing her hands, as she told me she had been on the bus that had blown up.
She told me how she had survived but was now plagued by fear. She had not been able to get beyond it. Every person with a backpack, every package, every purse was a bomb. And, of course, sights like those only brought back the nightmare.
She was sure she would die soon. She said she could make no real plans. Her sense of continuity had been stolen. She, like most victims who can’t get beyond an event, was trapped in that event, so she needed, then more than ever, a lesson in freedom.
There was a line of other people behind this woman waiting to ask questions. I had 400 other people doing exercises, as this was in the middle of a seminar, so I had little time. I wanted to give her something that would help her feel even a little better about her experience.
I asked her a question that I already knew the answer to, and I gave her instructions that might sound silly on the surface, yet they’re powerful enough to break the chains that tie us to overwhelming past events.
I asked her if, when she thought about the event, it was life-size – were the images she remembered as big as real life? She said they were. In fact, she replied, ‘They’re bigger than real life.’
All at once she began to tear up and shake. All too often, someone like her is told that we must relive our nightmares to get over them. She was a perfect example of how untrue this is. She had been reliving and reliving this for some years, and it had only gotten worse. I knew it was time for some humour.
I asked, ‘Are you afraid of trains, buses or planes?’
She nodded, still trembling. I told her that the chance of being struck by terrorism is low itself, but the chance of being stuck twice is ridiculously low. I then told her that I’d like to hire her to fly in the seat next to me, ride in my cabs and be my bodyguard in all my travels, just so I could be safe.
She laughed. I needed to get her laughing so that she could focus on what I wanted her to do rather than being obsessed with the fear she was feeling. People are often afraid of making jokes with someone who has been through a trauma, but getting someone to laugh at their problem is exactly what they need, to start seeing things from a different perspective.
We were ready to begin.
There were two main problems that she had: the fact that she continuously imagined the event happening over and over again and also that she imagined it occurring as a bigger-than-life movie that was happening to her in the present. I needed to get her to change these two things.
I asked her to do something a little different than what she had been doing.
‘I know that this terrible memory has been terrifying you, but I want to help you begin to put it
where it belongs, in the past. To do that, can you think of the memory you have of where you were after the bomb exploded? Maybe a couple of hours afterwards, when you realized you had survived and that you were alive and OK?’
She closed her eyes and started to recall the time after the event and nodded.
I continued, ‘Now, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to imagine floating inside that “you” in this memory, and as you do I’m going to ask you to imagine the whole experience happening in reverse.
‘I want you to run it backwards so that you see people walking backwards, suck the bus back together so that you see it reassembling and riding backwards, the whole movie of everything that happened moving backwards so that you’re watching it in reverse. Run the movie all the way back until before you got on the bus.’
When she got to the start I asked her to stop. I got her to do this a few more times. While she carried out my instructions, I hummed circus music, ‘Dunt dunt dulluduh en duhduhdeh.’ She giggled. That, as I told you, is a very important thing. I asked, ‘Are you done?’
She nodded. I got her to run the movie backwards because she was used to imagining the event happening in the future. I wanted her to begin to put it back in the past. By having her reverse the experience in her mind, it got her brain to think about it in a completely different way.
‘Now I want you to shrink the memory of the tragedy to the size it would be if it was a tiny movie,’ I said as I held out my hands about three feet in front of her. ‘About this big. Look at what happened as if it’s in a tiny screen in front of you, and run the movie of that event from beginning to end, but see it small and in the distance.’
She did what I asked of her, with great precision.
‘Last, I want you to imagine yourself on a bus, looking at all the other people on the bus with their knapsacks and purses and see them taking pens and books out while they study.’
She imagined this and smiled. That smile meant a lot.
I then asked her to go back to the scary picture. A few minutes had passed, and here I was asking her to do the very thing she’s been avoiding and fearing for years.
She just shook her head and said, ‘It feels different.’ I told her to look at strangers with backpacks, at parcels on the floor of the train. She shook her head again and looked at me, shrugging, and saying, ‘It just doesn’t bother me the same way.’
Now, it’s not that she deleted the event from her mind. It would always be a horrible memory in her past. What I did was get her to stop her past memory from affecting her present. Because I got her to change how she represented the memory, she was able to diminish the feelings she had when she imagined it, and it was easier for her to cope. It was something for her to practise, and each time she did so she could cope a bit more. She had learned something that would help her
become free from this memory.
Tragedy exists only in the mind as a terrible memory. A memory is just a representation of an
experience. When you change the way you represent an experience, you change how you feel about the experience. Now it’s time for you to get some practice doing something similar.
Joe found it difficult to believe that it was that easy for the woman to overcome the trauma that must have come from such a terrible experience. Richard’s idea itself made sense, though. It was true that what had made her feel so horrible was the memory of the awful event. It made perfect sense to Joe that, if you changed the memory, the resulting feeling would be affected as well. But such a dramatic change? And so quickly?
Richard then explained that it was time for the audience to do an exercise. Each person had to find a partner and get each other to think of a negative experience from their past. The exercise involved helping each other watch the experience on a mental TV screen, and then running the imaginary movie of what happened backwards in their mind while humming circus music. Then everyone had to get each other to see themselves in the experience, but with the experience working out in the end differently. Joe wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to do this. He considered wandering out of the seminar room until the exercise was over, but he thought twice about it. He had come this far, so for the first day at least he would do all the exercises. A slightly balding middle-aged man tapped Joe on the shoulder from behind.
‘Hey. My name’s Ross.’ He raised his eyebrows awaiting a response.
‘Joe.’
‘You got a partner for this exercise, Joe?’
‘Now I do.’ Joe smiled. ‘I’m not sure what we’re supposed to do, though.’
‘It’s cool. I’m a licensed Practitioner of NLP, so I’ll help you through it. I’ve seen Richard
before.’
Joe had been hearing the term practitioner recently. Maria had talked about Practitioners and
Master Practitioners and Trainers and Master Trainers. Joe had felt as if he were in a scene from Return of the Jedi. Would one of the exercises involve learning how to use a light-sabre?
‘Do you buy into that story that Richard was just telling us? I mean, a woman suffering from trauma? Surely that would have taken a long time to get over. Ten minutes is too quick.’
‘Well, I know it might seem hard to believe. I’ve had lots of doubts too, but I’ve seen Richard, and Alan for that matter, do amazing things with people. At seminars, Richard taught us to help people overcome their phobias using the same process he used with that woman. It really works. I’ve met many psychotherapists and psychiatrists who work successfully with phobias using this technique.’
Reluctantly, Joe was soon guided through thinking about an experience from his past that he wanted to feel better about. Joe immediately thought about Lisa, about their break-up, about the
guy with the six-pack. It still felt raw in his stomach.
‘OK, I want you to think about the experience that makes you feel bad, and I want you to run
the movie backwards. See the sights backwards, hear the sounds backwards and feel the feelings backwards. Go all the way back to before the situation occurred.’
Joe imagined the break-up with Lisa and ran it backwards in his mind. At first he saw the pictures of her with the other guy she left him for. As he ran the movie backward, everything went back like pressing rewind on a DVD player. It went from the constant fights toward the end of his relationship with her all the way back to the beginning of their relationship to even further back, just before they met. It was funny to imagine the break-up happening in reverse. After doing this a couple of times he was surprised to find himself feeling different about it.
Of course, nothing had changed: Lisa had left him. But the pain in his stomach seemed less sharp. He practised the same exercise on Ross, and Ross reported a similar result.
Ross began to explain the details of the technique they were practising and how it works. Joe listened carefully. ‘The way you represent your memories affects how you feel about them. So representing them differently in your mind makes you feel different.’
He seemed to be convinced. ‘This stuff really helped me. I’m in corporate sales, and I’m happy to say I was the most successful salesperson in our company for the last financial year. From time to time I have to present one of our products to a large group. Sometimes negative memories of presentations that went badly come to my mind, so when they do I just get hold of the images or movies and make them smaller and run them backwards. It helps. I also find that Brilliance Squared works a miracle and …’
‘Brilliance what?’ Joe interrupted.
‘I’m sorry. Let me tell you. This is a good one,’ Ross beamed, proudly. ‘Basically, Brilliance Squared is a simple technique that helps you create any feeling you like and trigger it in your body immediately.’
‘Right …’ Joe said, with one eyebrow raised. He looked at Ross sceptically.
‘Honestly, it works. You see, the secret is that you imagine yourself in the state of mind that you want to be in. You see yourself standing in an imaginary square in front of you. You give the square a colour. Look, let me show you.’
Ross asked Joe to stand, close his eyes and imagine a coloured square in front of him.
‘Imagine that the square is full of the colour you associate with confidence. Now imagine yourself standing in that square as you would be at your most confident, looking strong, feeling sure of yourself, feeling powerful. See how you would look. Notice the expression on your face, your body posture, the way you breathe, the light in your eyes, the grace and ease of all your movements.’
Joe saw the square in front of him. It was red. When he built up this image and saw this square
before him, he was immediately aware of how he felt and how he looked. He saw himself tall and strong. He saw himself standing upright, self-assured, positive. He saw his back straighten. He saw his legs appear solid beneath his body. The redness glowed forcefully from the square in front of him.
‘OK. As you do this, on the count of three I want you to imagine stepping onto this imaginary square and into this imaginary you … like putting a new suit of clothes on. I want you to step into that confident, powerful you and see through those eyes, hear through the ears and feel the feelings. Ready? One … two … three. Step in, and as you do, notice yourself feeling this feeling and this colour throughout every part of your body. Feel yourself filling up with a strong sense of confidence and strength. That’s right.’
Joe stepped in and at that moment felt the square delivering to him a new type of confidence. The energy from the square was spreading powerfully throughout every part of his body.
After a few seconds, Ross continued, ‘Now I want you to step out of the square and open your eyes.’
Ross brought him through this process five times in a row. Finally, Joe stepped back out, opened his eyes and returned to an awareness of the room. ‘Wow.’
Ross smiled. ‘You think that was cool? Wait till you try this,’ Ross sounded excited. ‘OK, now close your eyes, imagine the coloured square and step into it. Notice how you feel then. I’m not going to say another word.’
Joe closed his eyes, imagined the square as vividly as possible, then stepped in. Immediately he felt the feelings of confidence rushing back inside him. He felt himself almost lifting off the ground. Stepping out again, he opened his eyes. ‘Wow. That was –’
‘Brilliant.’ Ross finished his sentence with a laugh. ‘Hence the name.’
Joe listened for his critical voice but could not hear it. It was as if he was starting to experience things that the negative voice couldn’t explain. Joe thanked Ross, and they went back to their chairs.
Lunchtime came, and Joe was invited to go to lunch by Anna. He thought of declining, but he was slightly curious as to how she was going to respond to Richard’s critical appraisal of psychoanalysis. He looked around for the brown-haired woman, and saw that she was being whisked away by the Gorilla and his friend. To lighten the full impact of Anna’s analysis, Joe managed to rope Ross into coming along with them for lunch.
As they walked down the street, Anna’s reaction did not seem as defensive as Joe thought it might be. ‘Well, that wasn’t exactly what I was expecting this morning,’ she declared.
‘I’m sure he was just joking around,’ Joe said, vicariously offering her an olive branch. ‘I mean, he probably says some things only to shock people. He probably doesn’t really believe them.’
Anna nodded. ‘I know what he’s saying, and I know that he’s just trying to get people to see that reliving bad experiences isn’t always a good idea. I’ve always believed that if you find out the cause, then you can stop the effect.’
Ross seemed agitated by her comments and jumped in. ‘I’ve heard Alan suggest that the cause isn’t the event that happens, but how we represent it. If you change what you’re doing in your head, it changes the feeling. Thinking about bad memories doesn’t make you feel better.’
Anna tried to argue back. ‘But if you suppress the symptom, then it comes out somewhere else.’
Ross shot back, ‘Yes, but who says it has to come out somewhere bad?’
Joe lost interest and turned his thoughts to Richard’s comments that morning. At that point Joe just wanted to be left alone to think about what he had learned and how it could affect his life. All three eventually settled for lunch and, shovelling his sandwich into his mouth, Joe made some excuses and went for a walk alone.
On an alternative route back to the seminar hall, Joe stopped at a corner shop and bought a packet of cigarettes. The nerves he felt around the brown-haired woman needed to be calmed. He had taken in so much information this morning and his mind was beginning to spin. He lit up and inhaled deeply, regretting immediately his reliance on tobacco and what it had done to his fitness and his body. Now he was a fatty who stank of smoke. His critical voice dominated proceedings in his head.
When he arrived back at the room he noticed that some people were sitting in different seats than before. He moved a few seats closer to where the brown-haired woman had been sitting. If anything there would be distance between himself and Ross or Anna. Unfortunately for Joe, when they returned from lunch they sat on either side of him, blocking his exit on both flanks. He sighed. It was going to be a long afternoon.
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