I mentioned on twitter a while ago that I would write an article about this very subject, and so here it is!

The mind loves generalizations. It sees something happening in the world and thinks: “Oh, it’s those people again”. This is a form of association and generalization. If we strip it back to the bare essentials, it’s basically linking two experiences together: a thought and a feeling.

I know what you’re thinking: “That’s a lovely story, but what does that have to do with my life?” That’s a good question and I’ll answer it: just about everything the mind does works that way. Let’s have you experience it by doing a quick “feeling bad and good” experiment.

Feeling bad and good experiment

Can you remember something from your past that still hurts now? And can you remember what you saw, heard, felt, tasted and smelled? Are you looking out from your own eyes or are you looking at yourself in the picture? Now quickly erase that thought and think of something that made you feel absolutely wonderful inside - where you felt your inner beauty radiating outwardly in to the world. That’s right. Feel how it felt, see what you saw, hear what you heard, smell what you smelled, and taste what you tasted. And when it feels very good, then double that good feeling right now. That’s right. Now triple it. Ok that’s good enough…for now.

What are the similarities in those two experiences of feeling good and bad? There were both thoughts and feelings linked together, and they were linked together in the same way. In other words, you were looking out from your own eyes and feeling those feelings very intensely - whether they felt good or bad.

Is that good or bad? It’s neither, because that’s the way the mind works. But when you’re still feeling bad over something that happened a while ago (let’s say longer than 1 week ago) then it’s time to do something about it, don’t you agree?

Disassociation

Therefore it’s time now to learn how to disassociate from the bad feelings and only associate with the good feelings. You can do this easily. And everyone can visualize, even if you think you don’t. Can you remember the front door of your house? Yes? Good. Now where is the handle of the door? Is it on the left or the right? In order to obtain that information, you had to visualize it. Congratulations, you’ve just visualized!

Now, have you ever been to a cinema…or saw one on television or in a movie? Yes? Ok. Imagine that you enter a cinema right now, with all the funky red chairs, a big white screen and an enormous projector. Take place in the middle of the theatre, and preferably in the center of the screen too. Ok? Now, imagine that you are in the projector room, and you see yourself sitting there in the theatre. The screen is far away, and you are decently far away too. What we are going to do is project a movie on the screen - something that happened to you that still makes you feel bad now. This time we’re going to do it differently though - you see yourself on the screen while you see yourself sitting in the cinema - and the projector only projects in black and white, like in those old charlie chaplin movies. Is that clear? Ok. So you see yourself in the movie, in black and white, from the projector room, while looking at yourself sitting there in the cinema looking at the screen. That’s a double disassocation.

How do you feel different now when you look at that bad situation? When you are disassociated like this, then you are literally disassociated from the bad feelings. This wasn’t the whole experiment though, because the fun begins now!

Run your movie backwards in black and white

We are going to run your bad memory completely backwards in black and white on the screen. This means you see yourself in the picture and everything moves backwards: cars drive backwards, you walk stairs backwards, people talk backwards, etc. Let everything move backwards as fast as you can imagine. Let’s begin to alter your memories now.

The screen now turns black and says: “THE END”, with bold and bright white letters, and this means the end of your suffering is here now because you are in control of your thoughts. Now run the bad memory backwards in black and white; see everything moving backward and with great speed, so that you rewind your entire memory in max. 10-20 seconds. Do this again and now move everything faster and faster backwards, so that it’s max. 10 seconds long. And do it again, but now play a circus tune underneath your movie. That’s right, make it really ridiculous.

Ok…how do you feel now about this memory that used to feel bad? My guess is that you’ve had a big release in tension and that it’s feeling either neutral or at least better than it was before. If you turn your bad internal experiences into black and white, then all intensity that is associated with it immediately drops away because only color can contain intensive feelings.

How can NLP help you feel good?

You feel good by associating with good experiences in life. Unfortunately, most people are excellent at feeling bad, but really bad at feeling good. Therefore it’s time now to learn how to feel good in more ways. The fastest way is to remember a time where you felt really good inside. Look through your own eyes, and see what you saw, hear what you heard and felt what you felt. If you are disassociated from that memory, then allow yourself to float back into your body and see it through your eyes. Step into your own body and see what you saw, hear what you heard and feel what you felt. Take your time to really feel it inside of your body.

Now think of a color that goes with this feeling. The first color that comes to mind is good. Got one? Ok. Now notice where the good feeling starts in your body. Is it in your stomach, your chest, your feet, or  somewhere else? And then notice how the feeling spins through your body. Is it going from your feet to your chest, in a circle from left to right, or does it spread out from your chest, or some other way? If you’ve noticed where it starts and in which direction it moves, then use your finger and paint with your chosen color the feeling in the space in front of your body on an imaginary piece of paper. That’s right. If it moves down from your stomach up to your chest, then draw it from your stomach up to your chest. Keep drawing it faster and faster and faster until you feel very good inside. That’s it.

When you feel very good…squeeze your thumb and middle finger together on either hand for a short period, like 3 seconds. This creates an associate link to the good feeling, so every time you squeeze your thumb and middle finger, you will feel good.

Of course, there are many ways to make you feel good with NLP…and this is just one of them…but it sure feels very good, doesn’t it?

By associating with the good feelings you are learning your brain that it can feel good in many other ways. Association means stepping into your own body in the memory so that you see everything from your own eyes - feel everything from inside your own body - and hear everything with your ears. If there’s a memory you still feel bad about, then disassociate from it - step outside of your body and look at yourself from a distance.

Those are the two basic ways of dealing with your emotions, and so your brain has learned now that associating is only necessary to feel good, and that disassocating from bad experiences is a good idea, because assocating with bad feelings just makes things worse and worse for you. They say that “repetition is the mother of all skills” and that is definitely true for your emotions; train your brain to feel bad by worrying about things in the past or the future, and guess what you get? That’s right - more and more associated feelings to thoughts that make you feel bad. The other side of it is also true; train your brain by feeling good more and more you will feel good. Think back of a positive situation and repeat it over and over again to feel really good. In this way your brain generalizes in a good way: “Oh I am feeling better and better - let’s do that more often” and this always results in what Paul McKenna calls “background happiness”. That means that you feel good most of the time and you still have the flexibility to feel whatever is appropriate for the present moment.

So associate with the positive and disassociate from the negative - so your brain realizes what it needs to do in order to handle life in the best manner for you.

Until next time,

Tom

This simple and basic question is the first question I always ask everyone who wants my help:

“What do you really want?”

And the response I get to this question is usually the same: a nice summary of everything people want to get rid of or away from. “I don’t want my relationship to end” - “I don’t want to look stupid at job interviews” - “I don’t want to dislike myself” etc.
That’s the way their minds work: they sort information by looking at things they want to get away from.
It’s a good starting point though, because you get a nice overview of all the problems they are dealing with. After that I usually have a follow up question ready:

“That’s good, but that’s everything you want to get away from. Imagine that everything went perfectly in your life, then what do you really want?”

This triggers a whole different perspective, doesn’t it? Instead of imagining what you don’t want and want to get away from - you now think about what you do want. Of course, I’m excluding silly factors such as “grow taller” - some genetic things just are impossible to change - but on the whole people start to flip to the positive side. I mean, what are you going to do with all that free time that you used to use for worrying and bickering about your life? You’ve got to fill it up with something positive.

And that’s when I start using all of my combined knowledge of NLP, EFT, The Sedona Method, Zen Bhuddism, Matrix Energetics, Quantum Entrainment and other influences that can help me to get you what you want.

So my question to you, the reader of this message, is: “What do you really want?” When you’ve honestly asked yourself the question, then post your answer now below in the comment box and submit it. Seriously, I want to know what’s going on in your life - what else can I do to know what you want? Only you know what you want, right? So let me know and I’ll make future blog posts about what it is that you really want.

Thank you and have a great day filled with love, laughter, excitement and fun!

Tom.

I sense the restlessness in people almost everywhere I go - being lived by their work (or business), cellphones, social media, e-mail, text messages (SMS) - everything combined gives us an overload that most people are unable to deal with.

Let me tell you my story (in short)

And I certainly know what it is like to live that way. My boss used to own me back in 2006 and 3/4 of 2007 when he sent SMS messages in the evenings: ‘can you help me with this and that now?’ And I allowed this madness to continue for the most part of 2007. I work in the IT industry as a webdesigner and programmer and the high stress eventually got to me enough that I started looking for answers.

I used to be restless - I hardly ever felt at peace or at rest, stress coursed through my body and mind many times a day and I was supressing most of my feelings. I didn’t realize then that most people lived their lives that way. This was bad for my health as well.

I had started “seeking” about 2 years earlier, and stumbled across the best of the best in self-help and spirituality in 2006: The Sedona Method, NLP and Adyashanti (aka Steven Gray, American Zen Master). In the beginning it all worked beautifully well but along the way I got back in my ‘old’ ways; habits of the past took over once again in the middle of 2007. My mind was getting worried about the future, and was still struggling with issues from the past, and therefore I completely missed out on the present moment because I was covering it with all my thoughts and feelings. Back to square one again - but this time with a lot of experience and knowledge what to do about it. In September of 2007, the straw that broke the camel’s back was after a conference where we introduced one of our products. Afer that event I was so tired of it, that I took all of my combined knowledge and courage to break free from the slavery - I gave my boss two options: either there are clear boundaries between work and private life, or I quit now.

And surprisingly that’s when everything changed. My boss obviously had consciously no idea what he was doing to me and my collegues. The news came as a complete and total shock for him. People are often unaware of their behaviour because it is driven by your unconscious part of the mind. After that he did try to send some SMSes or call me a couple of times, but that all ended when I never replied and refused to pick up the phone. Things did improve after that and so I had no reason to leave. Fast forward to fall of 2008: the year went well and now I’m becoming an NLP Practitioner. Fast forward to summer of 2009: Just got started with my NLP based coaching business.

So how do you have peace?

Here’s something I realized  “Oh, I’m unable to have peace because I’m fighting with my thoughts and emotions most of the time. There’s no room for peace and rest because I’m occupying it by thinking and supressing emotions!”

Zen master Adyashanti once told a story about a young female child that was taken to a “Satsang” meditation session with her parents. She told Adyashanti that her parents often were engaged in trying to quiet their minds through meditation, and sometimes it worked and sometimes it had no effect. That’s when Adyashanti said to her: “Is the peace you’re searching for not already here now?” And then the child looked into the present moment - noticed the peace was indeed already there - and then stopped trying to find it.

So ask yourself the very same question: “Is the peace I’m searching for not already here now?” And then take an honest look in the present moment and notice that it already is here. Then you can relax and take that with you throughout your day.

That is the key lesson of this blog: stop seeking for it because the seeking literally keeps you away from it. Allow your thoughts and feelings to be here in the present moment. What do I mean with that? To stop struggling with them and to acknowledge that they are here. Most people are denying or struggling with their thoughts and feelings and therefore they go unconscious once again. Begin with allowing your thoughts to be here now, by asking yourself:
“When would I allow my feelings to be as they are?”

This will create an immediate shift inside. Then ask yourself:
“When would I allow my thoughts to be as they are?”

This too will create a huge shift inside. And then during the day, you can allow the entire world to be as it is without struggling against it. This means that you can still do your work, and interact with people and live your life - you are only taking the “reactive” part out of it by allowing things, people and everything else to be as they are. And if your mind is struggling with this, then allow that to be ok too - accept the struggle for allowing things to be as they are because that’s when the struggle disappears. And keep on breathing normally during this exercise - that will move the struggle out even more effortlessly. When you allow your thoughts and feelings to be as they are, you automatically have a relaxed body and quiet mind because that’s your natural state of being.

The peace you are looking for is already yours - when you stop searching for it. When you want to know more about this or have questions, then leave a comment or send me an e-mail: tom@freedomisfree.nl

With love,

Tom.