Working with Habits - 3

• Personal Power.
• Making sure the World is playing on your side.
• No kidding.

Motivation and Goal Setting

In this chapter we are going to learn to feel good for no particular reason. Having this ability, we can use it as part ofour new strategy, right. Also, in the next article, we are going to work with the "feeling bad" part, applying it to an existing strategy, so that it becomes something we DO NOT want. This way, we will have an old unwanted strategy behind and a new attractive strategy in front of us, which makes the change easy.

The following technique is powerful and I always do it at the beginning or at the end. We will use it as a source of infinite power and simply because it feels good.

I would like to ask you to CLOSE YOUR EYES if you want to, but do not RELAX. I want you in an active state. Also, some people find that it is better to do standing, while others prefer to do it sitting. If you don't have problem standing, like a sore back, you better... well, you decide.

Take a deep breath. Close your eyes. Smile. It is very important that you keep your smile and the posture, and just pretend to be an omnipotent person. Because if you pretend then in thirty seconds to one minute you will become one - that's just the way our mind works miracles.

Now, take another breath and this time feel the air. Have you ever noticed how good it feels to breath in? Have it already occurred to you that by smiling when breathing you can learn to love breathing? Breath and feel GOOD. You can stretch a bit and maybe even straighten your back and shoulders while you ENJOY your breathing.

Imagine NOW yourself in front of the most beautiful waterfall in the woods in a nice day. See the water sparkling and hear the steady powerful sound of water. And as you are noticing some little details about it, you might also FEEL little drops of water in the air. That's right. Breath it in. Now. Walk the water towards the waterfall. I want to invite you to step into it. That's right - stay under the water and turn around to face the outside. Feel the temperature of the water and the power of it, the vibration as it falls at your shoulders.

Breath in, allowing this power to be yours. And now - make this stream of water to fly through you. That's right. As this powerful stream flies through you and each drop... Each drop washes away the negative. Things you don't need. See it being washed away in the stream and vanish in the light of day as you are getting stronger. Allow the water to wash away thoughts that were limiting you before. Ones you don't need. Breath with this energy and I invite you to notice how each drop of water leaves behind a tiny little bit of pure energy. And you may begin to see your body shine from inside with this energy you have NOW.

And now FLY - that's right - fly from the waterfall right into the sky and allow the sun to instantly dry the water from your skin and see the world from above. And notice how much more energy you have now. Like have you ever had this feeling of having all the energy in the world? Of being totally happy? Well, as you are flying through the sky - take a deep breath and double this feeling. That's right.

And double it again.

And as you look at the horizon, notice a little cloud out there. Fly towards the cloud. And as you are approaching it, turn it into a thunderstorm - have you ever noticed, how much power these thunderstorms have? And you can claim it - as you fly right into the storm clouds and the world around you turns dark, with bright lightnings and hear the thunder and feel the rain on your skin. Breath in this energy and allow few lightnings to go through you from the different directions, each bringing you more power of this new kind. And each lightning burns to ashes all things you don't need, all negative. Watch these ashes disappear in the rain.

And double the feeling again.

And fly from the thunderstorm into the liquid gold of the sunset and from the sunset into the night. A beautiful night, full of the moonlight. Allow this moonlight to give you some valuable lesson of how the silence can be so powerful. And not a single sound.

And you are flying way above the earth, towards the ocean. See the coastline and islands in the sea, some are big and some are just rocks in the water, under the moon. And from the sky you see weals in the sea... way below... and you don't know how, but you know that they are aware of your presence and they welcome you in their sky.

And now fly towards one of the islands in the sea. And notice a place of power on it, the most beautiful in the moonlight. It is waiting for you. Fly to it and enter it. Take a deep breath and notice how much power, how much energy you have now. And as your power raises - notice the light, some kind of aura that your body have now. Breath! That's right. Feel how different it feels and yet - how wonderful. And now, keeping this smile and this energy... slowly come back.

NLP and Motivation Factors

The old strategy is still there. Lets see, if we can change what we feel about it. Making it disgusting. Really. See, our behavior motivation is not logical at all. And what we do if often based on what we feel about it, This is one of very important goal setting tips - the old state should not be attractive.

The motivation and goal setting are closely related. You may set a goal, a nice goal, that gives you a lot of benefits... but if it takes a tiny little sacrifice, if your CURRENT state holds you back... Well, it will hold you back.

How the goal setting techniques deal with the situation? There are different approaches. First, when setting goals, you (or your NLP coach) must make sure it is "ecological", which means, giving you something important, it does not take away something else.

What if it does? What if to become a successful manager, you have to sacrifice your family life, or something like that?

Well... As goal setting theory teaches, it means the goal is not ecological, and you need to find a workaround. A compromice, that gives you your career without ruining your life in process. If you look for the solution, you will usually find one.

Let's take a weight loss motivatio as an example. Remember, we had to go to the fridge, as this was the only way to get a break from all-night work? What if you come up with some breathing excercises instead? Or eating apples, instead of chocolate? Or... There are many ways to make a goal ecological.

And yet, sometimes we just need an extra kick. Make an old strategy gross and disgusting. We have already found reasons behind it, we have already came up with "apples instead of cigaretes" strategy... We just need to make sure, that smoking is not even an option anymore...

How to set goals, according to Motivation Theory

(Making the old strategy unwanted using NLP patterns.)

This chapter contains some gross language and therefore the readers discretion is advised. In other words, I am going to show you how to make something UNPLEASANT. There are many ways, and I decided to use this one just because it is simple. If you want, you can do it using the "submodalities intervention" (see NLP eBooks), but this one is based on so called anchors.

As I have mentioned, it is a practical book, for the theory, read the NLP Tutorial eBook.

I am going to use smoking as an example. You are safe if you dislike smoking. But please do not do it with eating - you DON'T want to dislike eating. There are plenty of other techniques. But you may want do dislike particular food... If you are a "chocolate abuser", for example, changing your feelings about the chocolate IS a valuable tip on losing weight (but I still recommend running to lose weight as a fast free weight loss system ;)

Also - for those familiar with NLP, the approach is using anchors, but what we really are after is a strategy. For example, "take cigarette, inhale, enjoy" is a strategy, and I am going to change it into the "take cigarette, inhale, say "disgusting".

But if you feel like skipping the chapter, go ahead, there are no more "unpleasant" chapters in this text. Just ask yourself - what is the real reason for you to skip it?

We are going to use your left hand. There are two spots, one at the base of a pointing finger (nockle) and one at the base of the middle finger (I just thought that you need to get back your smile). In a moment I will ask you to touch them with the pointing and middle fingers of your right hand.

First, remember the moment, when you was anticipating smoking. You was about to smoke. Remember. The look of a cigarette. The way it feels in your fingers and in your mouse. The smell. The heat. Touch the base of your pointing finger, hold for 3 seconds, release.

Look around, just to break the state.

And do it again, same memory, same spot. Touch at the moment when the memory is the most intense.

Do it three times.

Now, let's have some fun. Remember this movie, Jurastic Park III? There was a very kinestetic (NLP term) episode when the dinosaur eaten a cell phone, and they needed this phone, so they had to dig it out from the pile of dino shit?

Imagine this as vividly as you can. The gray and brown pile, and the flies above it (and some of them are landing on your face by mistake). The smell - take a shallow breath, round your shoulders forward and move few centimeters back as if you are trying to get away from this memory. And a heat - a warm, rich, moist, sticky smell - feel it as you are approaching the pile... touching it - there is some gelly stuff, and some fibers, and broken bones... And you have to squeeze your hand deep inside, so that your face is almost touching...

Good, now at the peak of this experience, touch the base of your middle finger.

Do it three times - fully experience - touch - hold - release.

Now take a deep breath, touch the base of your pointing finger, hold for 3 seconds, and touch the base of your middle finger, and release the base of your pointing finger, and hold the base of your b.m. finger for another 5 seconds.

Done.

Ok, let me explain. Our brain is a pattern detector, the best we know. When Pavlov was feeding the dog and ringing a bell in the same time, it only took few repetitions for the dog to start salivating when hearing the bell.

Humans are even better. When we touched the point on our left hand while being associated with an experience, we created a link. In NLP it is called an anchor. Now, if we "fire an anchor" (an NLP term), we will re-experience the feeling. So what we have created were two triggers (two points to be touched) associated to two states (one of anticipation and one of a disgust).

The beauty of this technique is - anything can be a trigger. Gesture, voice tonality, code phrase - even another state. So when we fired the first trigger, we created a state of anticipation. Then we fired the second trigger, and released the first one - it is as if we told our unconscious, look - when you have the first state, it means that the second state is coming. We created what is called a chain of anchors.

I know a man who has a car. Once an NLP guy (not me) "anchored" the memory of this car, and a memory of a white horse. And he chained two anchors. And from that moment on the poor fellow was not able to think about his car without seeing an image of a white horse!

The moment you feel anticipation "I am about to smoke", this trigger fires the second state, which was "digging into a pile of dino shit". So after a brief moment of anticipation you will slide by the chain right to the "that's gross" state.

Cigarette, anyone?

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