Neuro-Linguistic Programming Models Summary (05 of 14)

Focus Sorting

Screener, easily influence and can't focus

Why / How

Find reasons / find solutions

Origin / Solution

Reasons / solutions

Static / Process

Real things / energy

Analog / Digital

Analogue – continuously varying between limits. Eg In our NLP submodality work our pictures have varying brightness, size and loudness.

Brightness varies from very very bright, or startlingly bright, all the way down to dull or dark. There are lots of varieties of brightness in between very very bright and darkness.

Digital – Either one way or the other eg Black or White, not in between. 0 or 1. In NLP we refer to a term Auditory Digital, which is our self talk. This is language and our words do not vary in consistency, they are spelt a certain way, thus digital.

In our NLP trainings we assess analogue properties in the images that we create in our heads, our feelings, and the sounds that we hear. We can change these analogue properties in order to make ourselves feel happier, more energised.

Emotional Coping

Emotions are feelings. To start to understand your emotions, you need to ask yourself two questions:

• How do I feel?
• How do I know?

But others also have emotions. At the same time as being aware of your own feelings, you also need to be aware of those of others.

You also need to ask:

• How do others feel, and how do I know?

There are several ways that we can tell how others are feeling, but particularly by observing what they say, and how they behave, including their body language. Research suggests that more than 80% of communication is non-verbal, meaning that it comes from body language and facial expression. Many of us don’t like to talk about our emotions, especially not if they really matter to us, so they tend to be expressed even more in our body language. See our page on Non-Verbal Communication for more.

Emotions and the Brain

Emotions are not consciously controlled. The part of the brain that deals with emotions is the limbic system. It’s thought that this part of the brain evolved fairly early on in human history, making it quite primitive. This explains why an emotional response is often quite straightforward, but very powerful: you want to cry, or run away, or shout.

It’s because these responses are based around the need to survive.

Emotions are strongly linked to memory and experience. If something bad has previously happened to you, your emotional response to the same stimulus is likely to be strong.

Babies feel emotion, but can’t necessarily reason. Emotions are also closely linked to values: an emotional response could tell you that one of your key values has been challenged. See our page on Dilts’ Logical Levels for more about this.

Understanding this link to memory and values gives you the key to managing your emotional response. Your emotional responses don’t necessarily have much to do with the current situation, or to reason, but you can overcome them with reason and by being aware of your reactions.

Try This:

Take some time to notice your emotional responses and consider what might be behind them, whether values, memories or experiences.

Also consider what results in positive emotions and what is more negative.

Remember, you can change how you feel.

For more about this, see our page on Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

Learning to Manage Emotions

Much has been said and written about how to manage and control emotions.

You can choose how you feel. - Anon

You can’t control other people, but you can control how you react to them. - Anon.

Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy. - Aristotle

The grid below shows the balance between high and low, and negative and positive energy:

Emotional Energy Matrix showing the various states arising from high and low and negative and positive energy.

High positive energy enables you to perform well, but you can’t stay in that state for ever. Sooner or later, you need to reduce the energy. Stay positive, and you will recover quickly. Dip into more negative feelings, and you will feel burnt out.

High negative energy is quite an uncomfortable place to be: it feels like you’re fighting for survival all the time. Again, you will have to reduce the energy at some point since it could lead to burnout.

Positive Actions to Help you Manage Emotions

There are a number of actions that you can take that will help you to manage your emotions. Many of them are very general, but try them because you may just find that they work.

• Exercise: this releases reward and pleasure chemicals in the brain such as dopamine, which makes you feel better. Being fit also makes you healthier, which helps in managing emotions.
• Be kind to others, because this helps stop you worrying about yourself.
• Be open and accept what is going on around you. Learn to appreciate what is happening and avoid excessive criticism of others or of situations. This is linked to mindfulness, which is about being aware of what is going on in the moment.
• It’s good to talk. Spend time with other people and enjoy their company.
• Distract yourself. Yes, you really are that shallow. Watching a bit of TV, reading, or surfing the internet will probably help you forget that you were feeling a bit down.
• Don’t give in to negative thinking. If you find yourself having negative thoughts, then challenge them by looking for evidence against them.
• Spend time outside. Being in the fresh air, especially around nature, is very helpful for calming the emotions. There is evidence that we need to see horizons, so if you can go up a hill and look at the view then do.
• Be grateful. Thank people in person for doing nice things for you, and remember it.
• Play to your strengths. That often means doing things that you enjoy, but it also involves doing things that are good for you.
• Notice the good things in your life. In old-fashioned terms, count your blessings.

This list may sound quite old-fashioned, but then perhaps our grandparents knew a thing or two about managing emotions that we may have forgotten. Finding the right balance for you can help reduce your stress levels and may help fight depression.

Applying Reason to Emotion

As we said above, you can change how you feel. The key is to be aware of your emotional response, and understand what might be behind it. That way, you can apply some reason to the situation.

For example, you might ask yourself some questions about possible courses of action, like:

• How do I feel about this situation?
• What do I think I should do about it?
• What effect would that have for me and for other people?
• Does this action fit with my values?
• If not, what else could I do that might fit better?
• Is there anyone else that I could ask about this who might help me?

This helps you to apply reason to an emotional response before reacting.

Example

Suppose you are afraid of being in the dark because once you got shut in a dark room when you were a child.

You always have an emotional response to the dark because of your earlier experience. But you can remind yourself that you are now grown up and that there is nothing to frighten you. All you have to do is walk over to the light and turn it on.

By practising this, you can help your brain to understand that there is no need to be frightened and gradually retrain your limbic system.

Making Decisions with Emotions

When you make decisions, you can draw on reason, emotion, or a mixture of the two.

Emotional decisions are sometimes seen as made in the ‘heat of the moment’, but emotions play a greater part in most decisions than we may be aware. If you’re married, for example, you’ll know that considerable thought may go into the decision about whether or not to get married. Very few, however, would argue that the decision is made solely on the basis of logic.

The best decisions are made using both logic and emotion.

If you only use one or the other, your decisions may either not be very balanced, or not support your emotional needs. Instead, you need to combine your emotional response with more rational considerations.

You can do this by:

• Stopping before you decide, to give yourself a chance to think.
• Think about how you will feel as a result of each possible action.
• Consider what might happen as a result, and how your decision might affect others. Would you be happy with those effects?
• Take some time out before making a decision.
• Consider the decision against your values. Does it fit with them? If not, why not?
• Think about what someone whom you respect would think about your decision. Are you happy with that?
• Finally, consider what would happen if everyone were to take the same action. If this would be a disaster, then probably best not to do it.

Emotions are Important

It pays to be aware of our own and others’ feelings. Highly emotionally intelligent people do this all the time. Like any other, it is a skill that can be developed and which is well worth acquiring.

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Internal / External

The way we value the feedback we get tells us whether we are internally or externally referenced. People who are internally referenced will be happy feeling good inside and telling themselves, “I did that well”, when they have completed a job. However, people who are externally referenced will need feedback from outside to reassure them that things went well. They need to read feedback forms, see sales graphs rising or get the order if they are to feel good.

It is probably true that most people are externally referenced. This is why a pat on the back and a “well done” work so well in the workplace.

It is a characteristic of very senior managers that they are able to provide their own reassurance and motivation by internally referencing that they have done a good job.

Entrepreneurs tend to have the same internal referencing process that enables them to work independently of the corporate structure that others need to support them with constant reassurance.

Team leaders can motivate the people in their teams especially well when they understand the referencing that each member of the team uses. It becomes a great deal easier to create meaningful feelings for the members of a team when you know what matters to them.

Observe yourself when you create an outcome. Did you manage to create good feelings for yourself or did you need to have some feedback from an external source before you felt reassured and able to feel good about the outcome.

Associated / Dissociated

• Associated – memory or thought as seen through ones own eyes is associated.
• Dissociated – seeing yourself in the picture.

These terms are used generally in NLP in submodality work, to ensure that the client has the correct picture in mind to create the desired results.

When is it useful to have a memory associated? 

• To make a state or event appear as real. In order to be immersed in one’s own experience. Feel emotions.
• Present state associated.
• Could be used to test emotions or otherwise on a future event.
• To bring back to life events and emotions from the past.

and dissociated?

• When you complete work on something that you want to make compelling. Such as working on successful outcomes as explained in detail on our NLP Practitioner training courses.
• Memory that is dissociated is a direction.  Memories put back in the future should be dissociated for this reason.
• Desired state dissociated.
• To look on some event in an objective way to take learnings from it- Trauma/Phobia

Feeling / Thinking

NLP & Values 1: identify the feelings you want to feel

If you have ever worked in selling you will likely know about hot buttons. They are the values or emotions which drive our behaviours. Although some people like to think of themselves as rational human beings the reality is that all of us are emotionally driven – by our values.

Knowing your values, and their relative importance, is a key to a happy and a healthy life. Because it is such a critically important subject both this edition of the newsletter and the next will deal with it.

What is a ‘Value’?

A value is a ‘hot button’ that drives a behaviour. Whatever you do is done in order to fulfil a value – even though you are unlikely to be consciously aware of that value.

You swim to fulfil the value of improving your health, benefiting from the relaxed state it later produces, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the sea, etc.

You drink alcohol to fulfil the value of feeling less inhibited, to enjoy the social scene involved, to enjoy the taste of the drink, etc.

You buy fashionable new clothes to fulfil the value of looking good, looking right for work, or not looking dowdy, etc.

Pleasure and Pain

Everything you do is a means to an end and this end is the fulfilment of a value. You do what you do to either move towards pleasurable feelings or values. Or to move away from or avoid painful values or feelings. (In NLP the Pain values are called Away From Values and the Pleasure values are called Towards Values).

Values are not neatly either Towards or Away From – there is a little of each behind everything we do.

Everything you do will move you a little towards fulfilling a pleasurable value and a little away from feeling a painful one. For example: you wash your face in the morning because you want it to feel and look clean and/or because you don’t want other people to think badly of you for not looking clean.

We feel good when we are successfully fulfilling our Towards and avoiding our Away From values – and may describe this as ‘happiness’. Unhappiness is when we are doing the opposite.

The challenge with Values…

Challenge No. 1

Few people have any awareness of their values. They are on auto-pilot. Driven by values that they do not know exist. We do things because we ‘want to’ but we rarely know ‘why’ we want to. We usually do things because they felt successful in the past or because others have told us they are appropriate.

Challenge No. 2

Most of our values were established many years ago. Many were laid down when we were very young children. Yet they are likely to be still driving our behaviours decades later – simply because we don’t know about them and have therefore never got around to updating them.

(A man came to see me some years ago – a millionaire – who had an impoverished childhood and, as a result, decided to move ‘away from’ poverty. He worked hard for decades to build up wealth. In his seventies he was still doing so – despite now being a very successful businessman. He’d never looked at his values – and so couldn’t stop to enjoy his success. He felt he had to keep working – even though he rationally knew it was no longer necessary. We looked at the values, changed them a little, and he now enjoys his life a lot more.)

Challenge No. 3

We usually have only one way of fulfilling a value. Take, for example, the value of excitement. Many people fulfil this by driving their car too fast for their own safety or that of others. Yet there are hundreds of other ways of fulfilling this value which are safer and more socially responsible.

Excitement is an important value of mine – I fulfil it by climbing the poles and trees of the High Ropes course and by wind surfing in high winds. I am now currently looking for further ways of fulfilling this value so that I will have lots of choice and variety – because variety is another value of mine.

Challenge No. 4

Some values are more important than others and, again, this ranking of values is likely to be both out of date and out of awareness. As a result we can spend lots of time, energy, and money attempting to fulfil a value that has relatively little importance while ignoring ones that are much higher on our list. This is a very common phenomenon.

Many people rank earning a living higher than looking after their health because they have never considered, seriously, how critically important is their health. Yes, it is important to earn a living. But if, in doing so, you damage your health what use is your wealth?

Many people rank immediate pleasure and gratification higher than how they look. So after a hard day’s work they slob out in front of the TV and eat and drink the night away. They call it ‘relaxing’. This is done through the winter evenings in higher latitudes such as the UK. Then, as Spring approaches and they start to think of summer beaches and clothing, they panic about their appearance, begin a furious programme of dieting and exercise, become disillusioned after a few weeks and go back to eating the night away – miserably. Because they do not remain aware of their values all year round.

The value of values

Knowing your values enables you to

Be more control of your actions and your emotions.

Make better decisions, since you have greater awareness of what is truly important to you.

Recognise what you need to do to feel good

Find lots of different ways of fulfilling them – rather than doing the same old things as before.

Action Step 1

Get to know your values. Make two lists. One will list the feelings you would like to feel and the other will have those that you would like to avoid feeling. (Avoid words like ‘happiness’ since this is the result of having successfully moved towards pleasure values and avoided unpleasant ones.)

Make this a thorough list. I once did an experiment to see how many values’ words I could find in the dictionary. I came up with over 1000 Towards and Away From values. (Yes, it’s true, I was very bored at the time! I had a two-hour journey each way every day for two weeks and reading the dictionary was my alternative to reading newspapers!)

Common Towards values include: loving, secure, successful, healthy, stimulated, excited, peaceful, serene, fun, humour, relaxed, etc.

Common Away From values include: anger, depression, worry, insecurity, loss, boredom, guilt, hurt, lonely, etc.

Important

Values must be feelings that you can achieve by yourself without requiring others to behave in a particular way. So ‘loved’ is not a value. It is an objective or a wish – because it requires another person to behave in a certain way. However ‘Lovable’ is a value because you can feel this without others behaving differently.

Action Step 2

Now take both lists and create your Values Hierarchy. This will be a short-list of your most important values.

This is best done through the Guarantee Game. Pretend that you have a guarantee that one value from the entire list will be fulfilled on a consistent basis from now on. So which of your values would you select? For example, would it be to feel secure, or healthy, or have peace of mind? Or to be guaranteed that you will not feel bored, or ill, or depressed? And pretend that you can only have one guarantee.

Whatever you choose becomes your No. 1 Value.

Now continue the Guarantee Game. Pretend that you have been given a bonus choice. You can keep the guaranteed No. 1 – and select one more from the list. This becomes your No. 2 value.

Continue this process until you have at least 6 or 7 values listed. This is your values’ list in order of their current importance in your life.