Vitality News Health Articles

For nearly all folks, the road to individual change and self-improvement is a long and winding street filled with intricate barriers. Pharmaceutical companies in particular have capitalized on and created gigantic fortunes based on the elusive search for the “Magic Pill” that will answer all of your prayers. 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 presupposition, when it comes to eliminating negative behaviors, there is an equation that we must always keep in mind. I’ll let you in on the secret equation in a minute. But first, I have a riddle for you to solve.

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

If you are like almost all of the clients who have come into my office since 1978, you’ll indignantly say something like: “There isn’t any positive intent behind that behavior.” But you would be totally wrong. To answer this riddle, you have to disconnect the behavior from the positive intention of the behavior.

The minister’s son was cursing. And the minister believes that if his son curses, his soul will be condemned to Hell. So the answer is that the minister 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 condemned to suffer in Hell.

The secret equation for successful personal change works as follows:

We should value the positive intent behind every behavior. If we have a compulsion to apply a behavior that we don’t appreciate, we can easily get rid of the impulse to use that behavior. What we must do is to find another behavior to substitute in it’s place. To be successful, the new conduct must be as accessible and efficient at accomplishing the same outcome, but be more consciously acceptable to you. This is called a REFRAME.

When clients come into my office, the first thing I do is to take a thorough case history. Let’s imagine that they come to me and ask me to help them eliminate a weight problem. Conventional wisdom tells us that the two main reasons that anyone eats too much are: (1) for relaxation and pleasure; (2) because eating can be a conditioned response. For example, if a person eats while they are watching TV, they will develop a conditioned response, and thereafter, every time they sit down to watch TV, they’ll get cravings and an urge to eat.

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

Sorry but you could be entirely off the mark. Here is a classic textbook example that will clearly illustrate the fact that being tubby can be a behavior. It can be a behavior because it can supply secondary gains.

Example: A woman falls in love. Her partner leaves her, and her heart is broken. Her unconscious mind wants to protect her emotionally and prevent her from ever having her heart broken again. So it motivates her to get tubby to keep her out of relationships. Because if she isn’t in a relationship she cannot get her heart broken again.

The point is that everyone is totally different. And sometimes there are subliminal elements at work that cause neurotic behaviors. These are elements that are different for each person.

Here is another example: A woman comes into my office complaining of an out of control urge to eat way too much at mealtime. During the case history, the woman explains how she was never able to please her dad.

During an age regression, we learned that one of her early memories was of eating a meal with the family. And dad was insisting in an angry voice that she eat what was left on her plate, even though she was full. So she cleaned her plate because of fear, and dad commended her for eating all of the food. It was one of the only times in her life that she could recall her father telling her that she had made him happy.

Shoot forward to present day. Her father has been gone for years, but the unconscious program he programmed is still at work. She still has a compulsion to eat all of the food on her plate, even if she is feeling stuffed to the gills, because by cleaning the plate, in her subconscious she is getting dad’s approval, and eliminating her fear!

So if you are finding it difficult to make personal changes, you should remember that there is a positive intent causing all behaviors. And the secret formula for success is to use a different behavior that will bring about the same secondary gains, but in a mode that is more consciously suitable to you, as an individual. The most effieient way to get your unconscious mind to accept the responsibility for making this kind of change for you is through an NLP Six-Step Reframe.

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

- Alan B. Densky, CH