What influences your daily experiences and reactions? How can you harness the power of your mind to create positive change in your life?
Managing your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors is the first step toward personal transformation. In NLP: The Essential Guide to Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Tom Hoobyar, Tom Dotz, and Susan Sanders share methods for taking charge of your mental processes and creating meaningful changes in your life.
Keep reading to discover powerful strategies that will help you maintain positivity, boost your self-esteem, and achieve your definition of success.
Taking Control of Your Thoughts, Feelings, and Behaviors
In their book, Hoobyar, Dotz, and Sanders explain the processes underlying your thoughts, covering where thoughts come from and how sensory nuances influence how you feel about and respond to your experiences. Though these processes typically occur beneath your conscious awareness, the authors argue that you can take conscious control of them and choose your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors—and this will enable you to enhance all of your experiences.
(Shortform note: Joseph Murphy (The Power of Your Subconscious Mind) explains the interplay between your subconscious and conscious minds, clarifying how it’s possible to consciously control processes that usually happen unconsciously. Your subconscious mind, the part of your brain that manages your automatic responses to stimuli, relies upon your habitual conscious thoughts to form your mental associations and memory networks. According to Murphy, your subconscious mind is malleable and reflects your habitual conscious thoughts. This means that, by regularly and intentionally changing the sensory nuances you focus on, you can change the way your subconscious mind responds to incoming sensory information.)
The authors offer techniques for aligning your thoughts with three overarching goals:
- Maintain a positive attitude.
- Enhance your self-esteem.
- Achieve success.
Goal #1: Maintain a Positive Attitude
According to the authors, negative sensory nuances such as visualizing potential failures in vivid detail, hearing critical voices with harsh tones, or feeling anxiety-related sensations can make it challenging to maintain a positive attitude. They recommend a two-part process for cultivating a more optimistic mindset: Immerse yourself in positive sensory experiences and distance yourself from negative ones.
1) Immerse Yourself in Positive Sensory Experiences
Practice recalling positive memories as vividly as possible, emphasizing as many sensory nuances as possible—for example, by increasing brightness, size, volume, or intensity. Hoobyar, Dotz, and Sanders explain that this will create a more immersive experience, heightening the positive emotions you feel during recall.
(Shortform note: Virtual reality design research supports the idea that vivid sensory nuances create a more immersive experience, heightening emotions associated with that experience. In one virtual environment study, researchers manipulated sensory inputs—such as visual sharpness and acoustic richness—varying their intensity and complexity. They found that the more vivid the sensory inputs, the more participants reported an increased sense of really being there and stronger emotional responses.)
Next, the authors recommend establishing a tactile link to this positive memory by touching your thumb to a specific knuckle while you recall it. According to the authors, this creates a mental association between the action and the positive emotion (the authors refer to this as an “anchor”). You can then repeat the action later to trigger the positive feeling on demand.
(Shortform note: In the field of neuroplasticity research, Hebb’s theory adds insight into how establishing a tactile link helps trigger positive feelings. According to this theory, your brain continuously forms new neural pathways in response to your habitual behaviors—a neural pathway is like a well-worn trail in your brain that allows you to perform actions or recall information without conscious effort. When you consistently pair two behaviors, you strengthen the neural connection between them, forging an automatic association. As a result, engaging in one part of the paired behavior effortlessly triggers the other.)
2) Distance Yourself From Negative Sensory Experiences
Pay attention to the sensory nuances that precede your negative emotions so that you can identify their underlying causes. For example, you might notice that you visualize yourself looking uncomfortable, hear a harsh inner critic, or feel a knot in your stomach before you begin to feel anxious about public speaking.
Once you’ve identified these nuances, mentally diminish them to reduce their impact on you. For example, decrease the size or brightness of a troubling image, change the tone of a critical voice to a humorous one, or imagine any physical tension you feel being washed away by waves. The authors explain that this creates psychological distance between yourself and the sensory nuances, which lessens their influence on your emotions.
(Shortform note: In contrast to the authors’ advice, researcher Daniel Siegel (Mindsight) recommends that you observe sensory nuances without trying to change them. According to Siegel, observing these nuances disrupts your habitual emotional reactions, allowing you to respond more intentionally. On the other hand, attempting to manipulate these sensations promotes the misconception that certain sensations are inherently problematic, rather than a result of the associations you’ve formed. This misconception may inadvertently intensify the negative emotions you’re trying to avoid. For example, manipulating the tone of a critical voice can reinforce your negative response to that voice, heightening anxiety instead of reducing it.)
Goal #2: Enhance Your Self-Esteem
Hoobyar, Dotz, and Sanders explain that you’re more likely to suffer from low self-esteem when you vividly recall past failures or embarrassments. To counter this, they recommend diminishing the sensory nuances of these painful memories (as described in Goal #1). Additionally, they suggest a two-step process for focusing attention on your positive traits and for developing new ones:
1) Reflect on what you like about yourself and identify the sensory nuances you focus on when you think about these traits. For example, if you pride yourself on your kindness, you might visualize a bright, colorful image of yourself helping others, or hear a warm, approving inner voice praising your actions. (Shortform note: If you find it difficult to identify what you like about yourself, you might find it useful to consider past achievements that you’re proud of, notice any compliments you receive, or ask friends and family members what they appreciate about you.)
2) Consider new traits you’d like to adopt and use the same sensory nuances you focus on when you think about your existing positive traits. This will leverage your brain’s positive associations, making it easier to integrate these new traits into your self-image. For example, if you want to be more confident, imagine yourself being confident using the same bright, colorful imagery you associate with your kindness.
(Shortform note: Can you reshape your personality just by focusing on sensory nuances linked to positive traits? According to research, the only way to effectively change your personality is to align your habitual behaviors with the traits you aspire to adopt. For example, to be more confident, you need to regularly engage in confident behaviors, such as sharing your thoughts more openly or going to events on your own. This suggests that you might need to combine the authors’ visualization technique with tangible actions that will reinforce the new traits.)
Goal #3: Achieve Success
Success means different things to different people—it may involve adopting new habits, communicating more effectively, achieving career goals, or reaching financial milestones. Hoobyar, Dotz, and Sanders suggest that, to achieve success, you first need to be clear about what success means to you.
They explain that a lack of clarity about what you want to achieve creates vague or conflicting sensory representations that prevent you from taking decisive action. And, without a clear target to aim for, you’re more likely to focus on obstacles in your way, creating negative mental associations that hold you back. For example, with a vague goal like “get in shape,” you might hold conflicting images of how you want to look, feel uncertain about which exercises to do, and focus on obstacles like lack of time or energy.
Hoobyar, Dotz, and Sanders suggest three techniques for clarifying and moving toward what you want:
- Set clearly defined goals that align with your values and desires.
- Create vivid, detailed mental images of what you want to achieve.
- Recall previous achievements, linking the sensory details to your current goal.
Technique 1: Set Clearly Defined Goals That Align With Your Values and Desires
The authors explain that setting clear goals that align with your values and desires ensures that achieving them will be genuinely fulfilling, increasing your motivation and commitment. For example, if you value your health and enjoy challenges, you might refine the goal to “get in shape” as follows: Run a 5K race in under 30 minutes within the next six months.
Technique 2: Create Vivid, Detailed Mental Images of What You Want to Achieve
According to Hoobyar, Dotz, and Sanders, engaging all your senses when envisioning your goal makes it feel more tangible and achievable. They suggest paying particular attention to how good you’ll feel once you’ve achieved your goal, as this will help your brain form positive mental associations that make it easier for you to take action toward your goal. For example, you might imagine the sense of accomplishment and joy you’ll feel as you cross the finish line in a 5K race, the sounds of the cheering crowd, and the sight of your time on the clock.
Technique 3: Recall Previous Achievements, Linking the Sensory Details to Your Current Goal
When thinking about your current goal, use the same sensory nuances you focus on when remembering past successes—to achieve this, apply the same method for adopting positive traits (Goal #2). The authors explain that this will encourage your brain to associate the positive sensations from past successes with your current goal, boosting your confidence in your ability to achieve it. For example, recall passing an exam, identifying the feeling of joy when you saw your passing grade, and the sound of your family congratulating you. Then, imagine experiencing these same sensory details—feeling joy and hearing your family cheer you on—as you cross the finish line of your 5K race.
Exercise: Immerse Yourself in Positive Sensory Experiences
According to Hoobyar, Dotz, and Sanders, recalling positive memories as vividly as possible creates an immersive experience that heightens positive emotions. This exercise walks you through this process.
- Recall a memory that makes you happy and write it down. (For example, when your child recited a heartfelt poem she wrote for you.)
- Reflect on what you see, hear, smell, touch, or feel as you recall this memory. Write down everything you notice. (For example, you might recall the bright color of her outfit, the clarity of her childlike voice, the raspberry scent of her hair conditioner, the weight of her hand in yours, and the taste of the tea you were drinking.)
- Write three ways you might emphasize any of these sensory nuances. (For example, you might heighten the contrast of her outfit, amplify the volume of her voice, or exaggerate the scent of raspberries.)
- Now, recall the memory again, emphasizing the nuances you wrote down. Note down any changes in how you feel about the memory after practicing this exercise.
