Self-Improvement - There Is A Secret That Guarantees Success

For the majority of folks, the trail to individual transformation and self-improvement is a long and winding boulevard filled with complex barriers. Pharmaceutical companies in particular have capitalized on and created enormous fortunes because of 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 unconscious mind.

One of the laws 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 a formula that we should 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 holy man made his son drink lye, which burned out his vocal chords. What was the positive intent behind his action?

If you are like most of the clients who have visited my office since 1978, you'll exclaim something like: "There isn't any." But you would be totally mistaken. To answer this riddle, you have to disconnect the behavior from the positive intent of the deed.

The minister's son 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 child's vocal cords so that he couldn't curse. By doing so, he was saving his child's soul from being predestined to suffer in Hell.

The secret equation for successful change works as follows:

We must respect the positive intent behind each behavior. If we have a compulsion to apply a behavior that we don't like, we can quickly get rid of the urge to use that behavior. All we must do is to find another behavior and substitute it in its place. To be successful, the new behavior must be as available and efficient at accomplishing the same outcome, but be more consciously acceptable. We call this a REFRAME.

When clients come into my practice, the first thing I do is to take a detailed case history. In this instance, let's imagine that they come in and ask me to help them suppress 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 working on a computer, they will develop a conditioned response, and thereafter, every time they work on a computer they will get an urge to eat.

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 concerned in the equation? For instance: What if being chubby is also a behavior for this person? I can hear your mind grinding right now as you think, "Being heavy 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 clearly demonstrate the fact that being heavy can be a behavior. It can be a behavior because it can supply secondary gains.

Example: A woman falls deeply in love. Her boyfriend breaks up with her, and breaks her heart. Her subconscious wants to protect her emotionally and prevent 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's another case: A woman comes to my practice complaining of an unmanageable compulsion to eat too much at dinnertime. During my case history, the woman tells me about how she was never able to satisfy her father.

We did an age regression, and one of her earliest memories was of eating dinner with her family. And her father was insisting in an angry 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 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's been gone for many years, but the subconscious program he programmed is still at work. She still has a compulsion to clean her plate, even if she is feeling full, because by cleaning the plate, in her subconscious mind she is getting dad's approval, and eliminating her own fear!

So if you are having a problem making personal changes, remember that there is a positive intent behind all behaviors. And the formula for successful change is to use another behavior that will bring about the same secondary gains, 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 an NLP 6-Step Reframe.