Aspiring Spirit

For the majority of people, the boulevard to personal transformation and self-improvement is a long and winding highway filled with tricky barriers. Drug companies in particular have capitalized on and created gigantic fortunes based on the elusive search for the “Magic Pill” that will answer all of your prayers. As it turns out, there is a secret formula for success, and it begins in the unconscious mind. One of the presuppositions of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) is that “there is a positive intention behind all behaviors.” And based on that rule, when it comes to getting rid of negative behaviors, there is a formula that we should keep in mind. I’ll let you in on the secret equation in a minute. But first, I have a riddle for you to solve.

Riddle: A minister made his child drink lye, which burned out the child’s voice box. What was the positive intent behind this behavior?

If you are like almost all of the clients who have visited my office since 1978, you’ll exclaim something like: “There isn’t any.” But you would be 100% wrong. To answer this riddle, first you have to detach the behavior from the positive goal of the deed.

The preacher’s child was cursing. And the minister believes that if his child curses, his soul will be condemned to Hell. So the answer is that the minister was burning out his child’s voice box so that he couldn’t curse. By doing so, he was saving his child’s soul from being predestined to suffer in Hell.

The secret formula for successful personal change works as follows:

We should value the positive intent behind each behavior. If we have a compulsion to engage in a behavior that we do not like, we can easily get rid of the impulse to use that behavior. What we must do is to find a different behavior and substitute it in it’s place. To be successful, the new conduct must be as available and efficient at accomplishing the same secondary gain, but be more consciously acceptable. We call this a REFRAME.

When clients come into my office, the first thing I do is to take a meticulous case history. Let’s pretend that they come to my office and ask me to help them eliminate a weight problem. Conventional wisdom tells us that the two main reasons that people eat too much are: (1) for relaxation and pleasure; (2) because eating can be a conditioned response. For instance, if a person eats while they are talk on the phone, they will develop a conditioned response, and thereafter, every time they talk on the phone they will get a craving for food.

However, the above answer only takes into consideration the possible secondary gain received from the eating behavior. What if they also have another behavior that is involved in the equation? For instance: What if being overweight is also a behavior for this person? I can hear your mind grinding right now as you think, “Being tubby isn’t a behavior, what are you talking about?”

Sorry but you could be absolutely off the mark. Here is a common textbook example that will illustrate the fact that being tubby can be a behavior. It can be a behavior because it can accomplish positive outcomes.

Example: A woman is deeply in love. Her partner breaks up with her, and her heart is broken. Her unconscious wants to protect her emotionally and stop her from having her heart broken again. So it motivates her to get tubby to keep her out of relationships. That way she cannot get her heart broken again.

The point is that everyone is totally different. And sometimes there are hidden elements at work that cause neurotic behaviors. These are elements that are different for each person.

Here’s another case: A woman comes to my office complaining of an out of control urge to overeat at mealtime. During my case history, the woman explains to me how she has never been able to satisfy her dad.

We did an age regression, and one of her early memories was of eating a meal with her family. And her dad was insisting in an angry voice that she clean her plate, even though she was stuffed. So she finished the food on her plate because of fear, and her dad praised her for eating everything. It was one of the only times in her life that she could recall her father telling her that she had made him happy.

Jump forward to the present. Her father has been gone for many years, but the subconscious program he installed is still working. She still has an urge to clean her plate, even if she is feeling stuffed, because by cleaning the plate, in her subconscious mind she is getting dad’s approval, and eliminating her fear!

So if you have a problem making personal changes, please remember that there is a positive intent behind all behaviors. And the formula for successful change is to alternate another behavior that will accomplish the same positive intent, but in a mode that is more consciously satisfactory to you, as an individual. The most effective way to get your unconscious to accept the responsibility for making this kind of alteration for you is through an NLP Six-Step Reframe.

Alan B. Densky, CH is an NLP Practitioner. He started his practice of hypnosis & NLP in 1978. He offers an interactive NLP 6-Step Reframing CD on his Neuro-VISION Self Hypnosis site. Also available are his Free NLP research library, NLP & hypnosis newsletters and MP3 downloads.

- Alan B. Densky, CH