Vitality News Health Articles

For the majority of people, the path to individual change and self-improvement is a long and winding road filled with tricky barriers. Pharmaceutical companies in particular have capitalized on and created immense fortunes based on the elusive search for the “Magic Pill” that will make all of your dreams come true. As it turns out, there is a secret formula for success, and it begins in the subconscious mind.

One of the presuppositions of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) is that “there is a positive intention behind all behaviors.” And based on that law, when it comes to eliminating negative behaviors, there is an equation that we should always keep in mind. I’ll let you in on the secret in a minute. But first, I have a riddle for you to solve.

Riddle: A preacher made his son drink lye, which burned out his vocal chords. What was the positive intention behind this behavior?

If you are like 99.9% of the clients who have visited my office since 1978, you’ll exclaim something like: “There isn’t any positive intent behind that behavior.” But you would be completely wrong. To answer this riddle, you have to disconnect the behavior from the positive objective of the deed.

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

The secret equation for success works as follows:

We should always respect the positive intent that motivates each behavior. If we have an impulse to exercise a behavior that we do not appreciate, we can easily get rid of the impulse to use that behavior. All we must do is to find another behavior and substitute it in its place. To be successful, the new action must be as accessible and efficient at accomplishing the same outcome, but be more consciously acceptable to you. We call this a REFRAME.

When clients come into my practice, the first thing I do is to take a comprehensive case history. Let’s pretend that they come to my office and ask me to help them eliminate their appetite. Conventional wisdom tells us that the two main reasons that people eat too much food are: (1) to reduce stress; (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 cravings for food.

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

Sorry but you could be totally wrong. Here is a common textbook example that will illustrate the fact that being heavy can be a behavior. It can be a behavior because it can supply secondary gains.

Example: A woman is in love. Her partner breaks up with her, and breaks her heart. Her subconscious wants to shield her emotionally and stop her from ever having her heart broken again. So it motivates her to get heavy to keep her out of relationships. That way she can’t get her heart broken again.

Everyone is totally different. And sometimes there are elements at work that cause compulsive behaviors. These are elements that are different for each person.

Here is another case in point: A woman comes to my practice complaining of an unmanageable compulsion to overeat at mealtime. During my case history, upon questioning, the woman explains to me how she was never able to satisfy her father.

We did an age regression, and one of her early memories was of having dinner with her family. And dad was insisting in an authoritive voice that she finish all of the food on her plate, even though she was full. So she finished the food on her plate because of fear, and dad commended her for finishing all of the food. It was one of the only times in her life that she could recall her father telling her that he was happy with her.

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

So if you are having a problem making personal changes, remember that there is a positive intention behind all behaviors. And the secret formula for success is to substitute another behavior that will accomplish the same positive intention, but in a mode that is more consciously satisfactory to you, as an individual. The most efficient way to get your subconscious to take the responsibility for making this kind of alteration for you is through a Neuro-Linguistic Programming 6-Step Reframe.

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

- Alan B. Densky, CH