Hi, Hypnosis and NLP-interested People!
Happy Autumn! I love this time of year. Crispy! Fresh. A time for changes. Here’s a really easy, fun, fast, and amazingly powerful technique to create change–as it’s used here, a tool to combat procrastination.
Books and mountains of words of advice have been written about procrastination, that inertia that says: “Do it later.” We all know that feeling. It’s something we want to do–sort of, but are just NOT doing. Something stops us. And that something is unknown, unseen, but we feel it. Looking at that sink of dirty dishes, I know the feeling.
I get a lot of clients who express that feeling as well. They want to exercise. They just don’t. They want to start a business. They just don’t. They want to create something, write something, learn something, organize something, clean something, DO something. They just don’t. Excuses miraculously appear that “justify” delay, with an inner thought: “I’ll do it later, I’ll do it tomorrow.” Tomorrow, the same “put it off” feeling is in place, and more excuses appear. Is this a familiar pattern to any of you?
Any activity can elicit procrastination feelings. Some people’s joy and positive desire and “I can’t wait, I can’t wait!” is another person’s “I don’t want to. Maybe tomorrow.” Manana!
What if it were easy to change this? What if it were easy to attach a feeling of motivation, passion, joy or even just “routine” to what we want to do? It is. I like the idea of shift to routine. If something is routine, we just do it. Because we do. No thought required. No struggle.
Here’s a simple yet powerful Neuro-Linguistic Programming ™ technique to do just that. It’s officially called a “visual sub-modality shift.” Michael calls it “Magic in action.” I call it “fun!” I’m going to walk you through a process to turn an activity that you’re procrastinating on into a routine activity you do easily.
What is routine to you? We’re all different. An example from my life is “brushing my teeth.” I do that every day. No ifs, ands, or buts. No struggle. No inner discussion. I just do it. It’s not a hardship. It’s routine. It might be something different for you. You get up and get dressed every day. Routine. Michael drinks coffee every day. Routine. You check your email. You bathe. You comb your hair.
Pick an example in your life of a routine activity. Once you’ve settled on that, create an image in your mind that represents that activity. When you create a picture in your mind, the feeling attached (this is something I just do automatically) comes with it. Ok, got it? Good.
Now, what is an activity you’d like to become more routine? The thing you may be procrastinating on, perhaps like exercise. Make a picture in your mind that represents that. Just let it pop in. Got the second picture? Good.
Now, I’ll walk you through the process.
First, study the picture of your routine activity. Notice all the photo-shop type qualities of the picture. Is it in color or black and white? Is it three-dimensional or flat like a photograph? Is there movement in the picture or is it still? How many images? Is it landscape mode, portrait mode, panoramic? How big is the picture. Is it life size? Poster size? Index card size? How far away from your mind’s eye is the picture?
We actually carry our inner pictures floating around us in space. Some are right in front of our face, some are at arm’s length, some are across the room, some are to the right of us, the left, above, below, behind, etc. Find the picture in space. Notice the clarity, focus, contrast, brightness, the saturation of color if there is color. Notice all those photo-shop type qualities.
Step two. Take the second picture, the procrastination one, and MATCH every quality to be the same as the qualities of the routine picture. We’re not talking content of the pictures here, we’re talking those qualities I’ve just mentioned. Brightness, location, size, clarity, color/no color, etc. Make your procrastination activity picture match in every way the routine picture.
Now, count to five. Or, look out the window for a moment. Distract yourself. Think about something else. Just for a moment.
Now, think about the activity you had been procrastinating on…how do you feel about it now? Think about doing it right now or at your next reasonable available time. How do you feel? Are you making inner excuses not to do it or are you feeling more inclined to just do it?
If the change in feeling is pleasing to you, then, snap your fingers and tell yourself to keep the activity picture just like that–with the new qualities.
How we feel determines how we think, and what we do. This shift in feeling and thinking right now is going to lead to a shift in behaviors, what we actually DO in “the real world.” Prove it to yourself. Play with this and write to me with your success!
Enjoy your new-found power to get things done!
To learn more about NLP, and the magic of instant changes, visit our website: http://www.seattlenlptraining.com.
Warm Regards,
Connie