Articles

For a lot of folks, the road to individual change and self-improvement is a long and winding boulevard filled with difficult barriers. Drug companies in particular have capitalized on and created gigantic fortunes because of the elusive search for the "Magic Pill" that will cure all ills. As it turns out, there is a secret formula for success, and it begins in the unconscious mind.

One of the presuppositions of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) is that "there is a positive intention behind all behaviors." And based on that rule, 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 in a minute. But first, I have a riddle for you to solve.

Riddle: A minister made his child drink lye, which burned out the child's vocal chords. What was the positive intent behind this action?

If you are like almost all of the clients who have come into my office since 1978, you'll say something like: "There's no positive intention behind that behavior." But you would be 100% incorrect. To answer this riddle, first you must detach the behavior from the positive intention of the behavior.

The preacher's child was cursing. And the minister believes that if a person 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 predestined to suffer in Hell.

The secret equation for successful personal change works as follows:

We must always value the positive intention that motivates each behavior. If we have an impulse to employ a behavior that we do not like, we can quickly get rid of the impulse to use that behavior. What we must do is to find a different behavior and substitute it in its place. To be successful, the new action must be as accessible and effective at accomplishing the same secondary gain, but be more consciously tolerable. We call this a REFRAME.

When clients come into my practice, the first thing I do is to take a meticulous case history. Let's say that they come to me and ask me to help them eliminate their weight problem. Experience tells us that the two main reasons that anyone eats excessively are: (1) to reduce stress; (2) because eating can be a behavior triggered by other behaviors that it has been associated with (this is also known as a conditioned response). Case in point, 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 a craving for food.

However, the above answer only takes into consideration the possible positive intention behind the behavior of eating. What if they also have another behavior that is involved in the equation? Case in point: What if being overweight is also a behavior for this person? I can hear your mind churning right now as you think, "Being overweight isn't a behavior, what are you talking about?"

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

Example: A woman is in love. Her partner leaves her, and her heart is broken. Her unconscious wants to protect her emotionally and keep her from ever having her heart broken again. So it motivates her to get overweight to keep her out of relationships. That way she cannot get her heart broken again.

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

Here is another example: A woman comes to my practice complaining of an unmanageable compulsion to eat too much at dinnertime. During the case history, upon questioning, the woman explains how she has never been able to please her dad.

During an age regression, we learned that one of her early memories was of having dinner with the family. And dad was insisting in an authoritive voice that she eat what was left on her plate, even though she was bursting at the seams. So she finished the food on her plate because of fear, and dad praised 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.

Shoot forward to present day. Dad has been gone for many years, but the subconscious program he created is still working. She still has a compulsion to clean her plate, even if she is feeling stuffed to the gills, because by cleaning the plate, in her subconscious she is getting her dad's approval, and eliminating her own fear!

So if you are finding it difficult to make personal changes, remember that there is a positive intent that causes all behaviors. And the formula for successful change is to substitute another behavior that will bring about the same secondary gains, but in a way that is more consciously suitable to you, as an individual. The most effective way to get your unconscious to take the responsibility for making this kind of alteration for you is through a Neuro-Linguistic Programming 6-Step Reframe.