6 Steps To Cure Test Anxiety with NLP

Here is a nice little tip for all you students who suffer from test anxiety.

1. Think of an image in the past where you had test anxiety. Anchor that state at the peak.

2. Then think of a time you were resourceful, anchor that emotion. Think of a time when you were proud of yourself, anchor that. Think of a time when ....(positive emotion)..

3. Break State

4. Fire both anchors and collapse the negative anchor.

5. Test, by thinking of taking the dreaded test and see how you feel. If you don't feel like you will past that test and get A's on your tests, repeat steps 1-4.

6. Future pace and imagine you passing every test while feeling relaxed and confident.

http://www.modernjedi.com/

NLP New Orlean Flexability Drill and NLP Change Personal History

What is the New Orleans Flexibility Drill?

The New Orleans is rarely used and has been replaced by Time line Therapy. And in the spirit of the psychology I will spare you the details and briefly describe this ancient treatment.

This drill is used to delete negative feelings from a specific situation by collapsing past negative anchors installing more resourceful anchors. For instance, when my mom talks to me it make me want to pull out my hair.

What is the NLP Change Personal History?

Personal history change is relatively easy and effective (like all NLP techniques) and is used to create a more resourceful past experience.

The first thing a NLP practitioner would do is to have the client imagine the reoccurring negative emotion that happened in the past and anchor that emotion.

Then, build a series of positive anchors. Next, have the client lay down and imagine the negative emotion that was in the past. Then, the NLP practitioner would fire off the positive emotions anchor.

Test the past emotion, and repeat as many times as necessary and future pace.

http://www.modernjedi.com

NLP Psychology or Excellents and the Ring of Power

What is the psychology of excellence?

To discover, elicit the pattern of, and utilize excellent behavior in themselves and others.

Or, said a little easier, it's classic nlp modeling. Find someone who posses attitudes and behaviors what you would consider excellence. Find out what they do and then do the same things.

There are two different strategies to elicit. The first is going to be the mechanics of the strategy, and the second will be attitudes, beliefs and behavior strategy.

For instance, let us pretend you would like dance like Michael Jackson. However, you are shy but physically you are prepared. So, you ask Michael, how do you dance like that? He tells you, I do this move, and then that move and end with a thingamajig. Cool, now you have the mechanics of how he dances.

Then you ask, but how do you do that with all the energy and emotion, it looks like you own that stage? He then tells you, I imagine the crowd going crazy, I picture myself doing everything perfect, the more the crowd cheers the more energy I put into each move. Then I go do what I just saw in my head.That would give you his internal mental strategy.

Now armed with this knowledge, go out and dance, just dance!

Describe the ring of power process as if you were doing it to yourself.

This is kind of a fun and crazy strategy for creating anchors.

First stand up and imagine a ring of power in front of you. This ring of power will give you what every emotion you want to feel.

1.Then, imagine a feeling you really want.

2.When you have the emotion and are feeling the feelings at the top jump into the ring. When the emotions starts to fade, step out.

3.Lastly repeat the process with as many emotions you want. When your finished, break state, and test by jumping into the imagionary ring of power and see if it triggers those emotions that you wanted.

www.modernjedi.com

NLP Collapsing Anchors

Now that we have a general understanding of anchors, it is time to jump into the deeper water.

How do you collapse an anchor, and when would that be useful?

There are quite literally dozen of anchors that we are not even aware of, and maybe just as many that we are aware of. However, when we realize we have an anchor that we would rather not have, that is where collapsing the anchor will come in helpful.

For me, hearing the sound of people chew or sometimes even watching other people eat drives me crazy. It's like hearing nails on a chalk board, or whatever image makes your skin crawl. As you can imagine, this can be somewhat of a problem whether going out to eat, having a quiet dinner, and even seeing people eat in there car.

I have learned many different ways to deal with this problem, like not having people eat before I do because the sound of my chewing drowns out the sound of them chewing. I really don't eat at the dinner table because it is to far away from music, or TV that can drown out the sound. So, mostly we eat at the coffee table, outside, or with the music on.

To be perfectly honest, I have no idea how this got anchored, but either way at a very minimum is an annoyance, but usually it's frustrating for me. But, wouldn't be nice just to sit down and eat without having to go through this?

This is the process that a person could use to rid themselves of a negative anchor, no matter what it may be.

1. R.A.C.E. the negative anchor
Recall the anchor, Anchor to your physical body, Change emotional states, Evoke the emotion using the anchor to test and see if it worked.

2. R.A.C.E. multiple positives anchors such as love, laughter, power, gratefulness, etc in on spot. For instance, on the left thumb knuckle.

3. Break state

4. Fire both anchors off at the same time, then release the negative anchor, hold the positive anchor 5 more seconds, and check how you feel to see if the negative anchor is collapsed.

www.modernjedi.com

NLP Anchoring, This is how we do it!

The four steps to anchoring are as follows: R.A.C.E.

1. Recall a vivid emotion experience. (Such as love, power, success, sympathy, etc.)

2. Anchor a specific trigger at the peak of the emotional state. (For example, touching your left thumb with your right pinky.)

3. Change the persons state. ( Think about something else, shake it off (literally), or do something so you no longer in the emotional state.)

4. Evoke the State. (Test and use the anchor, if you feel the emotional state after you used the anchor, it worked. If it did not work, simply repeat the steps.)

The 5 Keys to anchoring:

The quality of the anchor can be influenced by these 5 key areas. I-T.U.R.N.

1. The intensity of the emotion being anchored.

2. The timing of the anchoring (at the peak of the emotional state).

3. The ununiqueness of the anchor (the more original the anchor the easier it will be to trigger the emotion.)

4. The replication of the stimulus. (How well we can do our anchor). If we set an anchor where you have to reach down with your right hand and touch the back of your left heal, that is unique, but difficult to reproduce.

5. Number of Times

www.modernjedi.com

NLP Anchoring

What is an Anchor?

Anchoring is a way to trigger an instant recall of an emotion, thought, or picture.

The most well known study on anchoring was done by Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov, had two dogs that he was experimenting with (I know that sounds bad, but hang in there). Right before he would feed the dogs, he would ring a bell. Then, after a certain period of time, he would ring the bell and the dogs would begin to salivate.

Whether known or unknown, people have tons of anchors. Someone could hear a song and it would remind them of a time, or an event.

A person could smell the Cologne or perfume of a complete stranger and it would remind them of someone else.

Or how about the smell of fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, yum! Reminds me of growing up as a child.

Anchors can be produced in any of the five senses. In fact, every time I see a red, late '80's Toyota Celica it reminds me of someone and I get an awful feeling.

The good news is, people can create positive anchors, and trigger any feeling they desire at will! How cool is that!

An anchor is created when a person is in a strong emotional state and something happens over and over again. For instance, if I was to gently touch my wife's earlobe and whisper, I love you, and did that over and over again, eventually all I would have to do is touch her earlobe and presto chango, she feels loved.

www.modernjedi.com

NLP and the Milton Model

What is the Milton Model?

The Milton Model is a way of communicating with people in such a vague way the language, is, or almost appears to be hypnotic. This style of communication was developed by Milton Erickson who was well know for getting rapid results with this clients.

Below is examples of the Milton Language patterns.

Prepare a hypnotic phrase for each of the language patterns:

1. Mind Reading: A mind read is where a person assumes to know what the other person is thinking. For example, I know you are wondering about.....

2. Conversational Postulate: Is in the form of a question and has to be answered as either yes or no. For example, Is this something you feel that you understand?

3. Simple Conjunction: Would include words like and or but within the sentence. For example, Welcome, it's nice to see you and I would like you to sit down and begin to relax.

4. Cause and Effect: Are statements that use words like force, makes, causes, requires, and because. For example, every time you hear the bell it causes you to relax more and more.

5. Selectional Restriction Violation: Is a sentence that doesn't really make sense and causes the listener to decode the statement. Also, these statements are illogical because that situation could never possible happen. For example, "The walls have ears." or "My car doesn't like it when you do that."
6. Lack of Referential Index: Is a statement that fails to identify a specific. For example, THESE are much easier than it looks. THIS is always the case.

7. Deletion: Involves part of the sentence missing. For example, "He doesn't love me."

8. Unspecified Predicate: Is a statement that has an unspecified verb. For instance, "Notice how you can..." and "As you continue."

9. Analogical Markings: Marks a portion of the sentence using nonverbal ques, such as a hand gesture or a louder tone.

10. Ambiguities: A) Phonological: Two words that sound the same, but have different meaning. Such as hear and here.
B) Syntax: is a word that cannot be immeadiately determined by the sentence. For instance, "They are visiting relatives." "Selling salesmen is tricky." "I am really over managing managers."

11. Embedded Commands: Is a presupposition that directs a persons thoughts. It assumes that a person is doing an action (or should be doing an action). For instance, "When you exercise tomorrow, pay attention to how good it feels." or "When you are attracted to her/him, do you feel the need to act?"

12. Extended Quotes: Is a quote in the form of a story that is used to get or give information. For instance, " I remember a long time ago, my grandpa told me a story... and he told me how change can be easy and fun."

13. Tag Questions: Is a question that is added to the end of a sentence to ensure the person is listening, following along, and/or understand the information. For instance, "What happens is...Does that make sense?" or "That makes sense, doesn't it?"

www.modernjedi.com

NLP and Meta Model Violations

Identify the meta model violations in each of the following sentences, Including whether it is a deletion, distortion or generalization and indicate what the appropriate meta model challenge would be:

a. He makes me happy.

This could be an example of both a generalization and deletion using universal quantifiers for the generalization and nominalziations for the deletion. The statement he makes me happy is generalizied because it lacks specificity. A person could challenge this statement by using counter examples, effects and outcomes. It is also a deletion because maybe the person does not alway make them happy. This could be challenged by turning back the process, and recovering deletions.

b. It’s wrong to cheat.

This statement is an example of a distortion and possible a generalization. It is a distortion using a lost performative. To challenge this statement a person could ask, How do you know? or According to whom? A person would gather information to find out how this person aquired this belief.

c. I regret my decision

This is a distortion example of Cause and Effect. It presupposes that a bad decision was made and the effect of the decision was regret. To challenge this statement a person would need to bring back the fact the decision was a choice.(NLP presupposes that the best choice is made given the resources available).

d. Nobody ever pays any attention to me.

This is a deletion example of a lack of referential index. To challenge this statement, specifics are needed. "Who is nobody? Ever listen to you?

e. Sue loves me.

This is an deletion example of an unspecified verb. To challenge this question a person would need to specify the verb. Ex. How does sue love you?

f. Susan hurt me.

Distortion, Cause and Effect. A person could challenge this statement by recovering the choice. For example, who's choice is it to feel hurt? Is it possible for someone to say or do those things and not feel hurt by them?

g. I’m angry.

1. Distortion using a presuposition. To challenge this by having the person realize that an emotional state is a choice.

2. Deletion using simple deletion. To challenge this statement a person could ask specifics like, when are you angry? To recover the deletions made.

h. I should study harder.

This is a distortion example of cause and effect. If presupposes the person did not try very hard and they had a negative result because of it. To challenge this statement a person would recover the choice.

NLP, Internalizations and the Meta Model

There are simply three steps to internalizing information:

1. Generalize

2. Distort

3. Delete

Each process will produce a unique experience for every individual. I know you are wondering how does your brain know whether to generalize, distort or delete information? Good question!

Your brain can only process so much information, so what it does is chooses information based on beliefs, relevancy, past experiences, and much more. Then, based on the information your brain provided, it will do one or more of the three processes.

A great example of this might be that men never listen. Suppose someone close in your life held that belief and (assuming you are a man)they were talking to during your favorite show right at the good part. You might not even hear that person because you completely deleted what they said because you were in the zone. However, the person talking might say, "see, men never listen." Still, maybe men don't listen, or maybe they only don't listen during there favorite shows right during the best parts. Either way, the brain distorted the situation, and generalized because of past experience, and beliefs.

www.modernjedi.com

NLP Meta Model

What is a Meta Model?

In the early '70's Richard Bandler and John Grinder discovered the Meta model while developing, or understanding, NLP.

The Meta model simply states that the map is not the territory. In other words, the map is simply a representation of the actual physical territory. Meaning, the event that happens to us is not the actual event, it is simply our interpretation of the event.

Right now you may have millions, if not billions of pieces of information that your brain is trying to make sense of. For instance, to the untrained observer, I am simply typing in my blog. However, our brains need to make sense of everything, like the temperature of the room, air quality, the motor skills to type, the feeling of the keyboard, digestion of the food I just ate, the itchy feeling right behind my left ear and everything else.

Yet, and thankfully, we cannot consciously process all of this information. So, our brain has developed a way to do everything we need to do without "thinking." Our brains will either Generalize information, Delete information, or distort information.

We all do this, in fact it is absolutely necessary. People will often generalize a person, situation, or product to quickly evaluate what it means to them. For example, all Honda products last a long time. People from Oregon are hippies. All people who drink are.....

Deletions also do the same thing. For example, we might not notice how our socks make our ankles itch. Or the flaws in someone we love, which could be a positive or negative thing. That way our brains, and us, can function without having to focus on every little bit of info available.

Distortion are my favorite, because distortions can be completely different from person to person. For instance, if you went to a party and had a great time, your reality was that it was a great party. However, if someone else went to the party and had too much to drink, to some that is disgraceful, to others that might be funny, and still other might have been right there with that person drinking too much, yet to them everything was completely normal.

www.modernjedi.com

NLP Belief Change Grid

7. Belief Change Grid: Location is often the most important driver.

A. Where are your Limiting beliefs? (Notice if they are they similar to “true” beliefs)

I place my Limiting beliefs towards the the bottom left, slightly framed, where the picture is half cut off.

B. Where are your Old Beliefs?
In the center slightly off to the right.

C. Where do you keep your True beliefs?
Panoramic, center, moving, and in color.

D. Where are your desired Beliefs
Center and to the right.

E. Please list 3 limiting beliefs you would like to replace
1.Making money is hard work.
2. Sales is exhausting
3. Working a peak performance is not sustainable.

F. List what empowering or desired beliefs you would rather have.
1. Making money is easy and fun.
2. Sales is energizing, and rewarding
3.Being at peak performance is the most fun, rewarding, and is completely sustainable.

G. Run your 3 limiting beliefs through the Belief change grid as described in the Live training audios. Describe the process and how you feel after doing it. In other words, powerfully move your limiting belief into your old belief submodalities and then move your desired belief into your true beliefs location etc. Can you experience the shift with just the location Submodality or do you need to change the other drivers as well?

Changing the location did make a big difference. I noticed that I did feel better about my limiting beliefs. However, on some beliefs, I did run into some resistance because the picture in my head wanted to move back into it's old position in my head. So, I had to screw the picture in place and lock it down to keep it from moving. Lastly, I will continue to condition these new beliefs if the change needs more conditioning.

www.modernjedi.com

NLP Belief Change Experience

For the past 10 years I have only dabbled in NLP. I first started by reading a book by Tony Robbins, then I ordered Personal Power, then I realized that there was a lot of info on NLP. Then, I started getting books like NLP for Dummies and NLP Workbook, which were very helpful. However, it was not until I had taken Mark Sheppards course that really made the difference for me. Here has been my experience with just one area of my life so far.

I have always been bigger, muscular build, and it seems like on a diet sense junior high. During Wrestling season I wanted to cut weight and football season I wanted to gain weight. So, I developed a very unhealthy eating pattern. Always, dieting then gaining weight and it became exhausting.

Then, when I took Mark Sheppards course he had us do a limiting belief exercise. I realized that, and this may sound a little silly to some, if I lost weight then I was too small, my clothes fit funny, and I had to spend money buying new clothes, all which were negatives for me. So, what would happen is I would start to lose weight, then I would feel wimpy and small, and I would feel awkward because my clothes would fit funny, and I really value my money, so I did not want to spend more money, plus I don't really care for shopping and I really like the clothes I own.

Once I realized these simple beliefs were holding me back I decided to use some NLP belief change strategies to change my perspective. (more on this in detail tomorrow).

Now, I believe that when I lose weight my muscles will look much bigger (in my mind it's 10x's bigger) because I will be more defined. Also, I have plenty of clothes that I don't wear, that look great, because I got to.....comfortable. Finally, my wife is the queen at shopping for great deals and we could go together and make a day out of it, save money, get some cool stuff, and have a blastly-blast hanging out.

The really great thing about this, is that I really feel, on a gut level that this is true. It's not one of those things where you logically know that it is true. This new belief is congruent with every cell of my body.

To quote Anthony Robbins, beliefs may not always be true, so choose beliefs that are helpful.

www.modernjedi.com

NLP- Mapping Across

What is mapping across?

To build further on submodalities, mapping across is a simple process of identifying the differences in submodalities of one picture versus the submodalities of another picture. My mentor (Mark Shepard of www.modernjedi.com) gave me a similar example, and here is one that is more true for me. Here is how that might look:

If I think about vanilla ice cream with hot fudge and peanut butter, for me, I would picture a bowl of ice cream in the center of my view, close to me, it would be bright, moving (the hot fudge melting the ice cream), with a big scoop of peanut butter on the top right hand corner, in color and the picture would be clear.

However, if I think of sorbet ice cream (yuk!) I picture it far off in the distance, to the right, dark, dim, small, blurry.

So, mapping across would compare the differences between my hotfudge peanut butter ice cream to the surbet.

Visual submodalities

A. Ice Cream B. Sorbet

1. Close 1. Far
2. Clear 2. Blurry
3. bright 3. Dim
4. Center 4. To the right
5. Color 5. Color
6. Movie 6. Still

Therefor, if I wanted Ice cream to mean what sorbet means to me I would map across the differences and change the submodalities of Ice Cream into the submodalities of Sorbet.

As simple as that is, it is very effective.

www.modernjedi.com

NLP Drivers

What is a Driver in NLP?

To piggyback off of my last post, a driver in NLP is those few key submodality distinctions that make a difference in our internal representations. Said differently, drivers are how you know whether or not you like something and to what degree.

For instance, if you were to picture something you really love, maybe its a sport, or a pet, or a person, there are certain ways that you picture that person, sport or pet.

When I think of my wife, for example, I picture a beautiful, sweet, loving person, with glowing skin, a beautiful, warm smile, sparkling green eyes and I have a very loving feeling that seems to resonate towards my heart.

However, if I was to picture my wife far off in the distance, no smile, no glowing skin, maybe in black in white instead of color, then I get a completely different feeling, or internal representation, of my wife.

Even more, if I really wanted to, I can play with these submodalities, and see which ones really "drive" a feeling change.

Therefore, if I want to enhance my feeling towards my wife, I can make the picture bigger, brighter, more in focus, in color, and maybe even add her smell, and the sounds of her giggling, or her whispering, " I love you."

The really cool thing is, you can use drivers for just about any picture you can create. You can use this on foods you want to like more, or maybe less (for me that would be anything that contains chocolate and peanut butter).

Growing up I really did not like vegetables. I pictured vegetables as far away from me, dark, in color, but almost rotten, smelly, and if I wanted to bring the picture closer, my imaginary hand would come out of no where and push, no throw, the veggies out of my view.

So, I made a decision to change my submodalities. I now picture bright green veggies with other colorful veggies with them sparkling from just being washed. They are clean, fresh, and have a purifying smell to them. I also picture myself eating them and being blown away by there freshness and the crisp, cleansing flavor they have....YUM!

The really funny part is that my wife actually bought some cucumbers and when I discovered them in the fridge, without hesitation and realizing what I screamed out, OH YES, YUM! Afterwards, my wife looked at me puzzled, and I stated, "that was a first, I guess I really like cucumber?"

Fun stuff, give it a try, you might surprise yourself.

www.modernjedi.com

NLP Submodalities and Rapid Change

What are Submodalities?

In order to really grasp the concept of submodalities, I suppose it would be important to start from the beginning and explain what modalities mean in NLP.

Modalities: Is the way we experience our world. People accomplish this through our senses:
1. Sight
2. Sound
3. Touch
4. Taste
5. Smell

Those senses get filtered through our internal representation

1. Sight = Visual (V)
2. Sound= Auditory (A)
3. Touch = Kinesthetic (K)
4. Taste = Gustatory (G)
5. Smell= Olfactory (O)

For example, if a person was thinking about a particular food, like mom's apple pie, they might make a picture of a warm pie with ice cream(visual), they might be able to smell the aroma of the apple pie(Olfactory), and they might even be able to imagine taking that first bite (Gustatory) and hearing there mom say "be careful it's hot!" (Auditory). This is how people classify there experience in there mind, which is called internal representations.

Therefore, a submodality is all the little distinction of a particular sense. For instance, a visual (V) submodality would include:

1. Location
2. Brightness
3. Color/black and white
4. Movie/Still
5. Focus/Defocused

Auditory (A):

1. Location
2. Volume
3. Speed
4. Tone
5. Voice

Kinesthetic (K):

1. Location
2. Shape
3. Size
4. Density
5. Temperature

These submodalities can drastically change a persons experience of a situation. For instance, what if a person does not like there moms apple pie. Then maybe they imagine there experience like this:

1. They picture the apple pie as small, burnt, defocused, and far away in the distance.
2. They hear there mom voice as loud, right in there ear, with a smokers type graininess.
3. They the apple pie as dry, burnt, really thin, rotten apples, and burning hot.

This is how people experience there world. My Mentor, Mark Sheppard of ModernJedi.com stated that submodalities are the differences that make a difference in NLP.

www.modernjedi.com