Reminder: Please pick a topic (related to “being successful” or “self-development”) for your midterm group presentation. At least 4 people from each group will need to present, and the duration is limited to 20 minutes.
Personal Power: Motivation with neuro-association
Review 1. Ultimate success formula. Review 2. Pain and pleasure (stick and carrot). Don’t let other people or things use them to drive your behavior. The meaning we associate to a given situation can strongly affect our thoughts and behavior. Example 1: diet; charming or dying? Example 2: smile; encouraging or mocking? Movie: Shallow Hal.
We may associate different meanings to the same thing, and our behavior is driven by the stronger association. If you haven’t started doing something (which you should have started long time ago), you need to change what doing it means to you. Not just by talking to yourself. Your whole neural system needs to be convinced. If we want to change our lives, the first step is to change our neuro-associations.
What are the key associations in your mind that are directing/controlling your life? If you change them, lots of things also change simultaneous just like magic! Thinking positively is good but not enough. When you tell yourself to think positively, usually you do NOT want to think positively at that moment. In this stimulus-response world, it might be too late when you decide to start thinking positively.
When getting a cold, which medicine do we take? We know the answer without thinking. Why do we know the answer even without thinking about it? Because we have been “conditioned” to respond in a specific way. It is extremely important to “condition” ourselves to respond correctly. For example, some people link smoking to a cool and mature guy. They are “trained” to feel good in smoking!
Practice: Discuss with your group members and find out some neuro-associations which are actually wrong. How to design your destiny? From small things, not magic events. For anything you do, there is an effect. The accumulation of the effects will move you into the direction toward your destiny. In order to have the kind of destiny you want, what do you need to believe or associate things happening to you?
The time to design your life 20 years from now is Right Now! Not 20 years from now. Aware the negative neuro-association which controls you, and change it. Example: Playing piano with feet. ( ) Blade runner ( ) The meaning of giving. Do you associate more pain or more pleasure to giving? Story of offering this class. Misuse of pain and pleasure: alcohol and drugs.
Whenever we have strong feelings, things happening repeatedly at the same time get linked to the feelings. (Anchoring) Anchoring in action: NLP Anchoring Technique for Success and Wealth ( ) Derren Brown subway amnesia ( ) Banishing Phobias the Bandler way ( )
More about anchoring: Don’t console someone too often if you really like him/her! (You and the negative feelings will get linked up!) Are you often reminded by something which has seemingly no relation to the thing you remembered? That is the power of neuro- association. Scientific background of this: Ivan Pavlov’s experiment of conditioned reflexes in dogs.
We have been conditioned to doings by the influences of TV commercials … etc. Now it’s time to take the control back! If you want to know why people succeed, just look into their neuro-associations. The major difference between geniuses and ordinary people is that geniuses quickly focus on and take actions on things they want. This can be done easily with good neuro- associations.
PPractice: Write down two empowering and two disempowering neuro-associations which shaped your life. For the disempowering neuro-associations, how will you change them? WWhen does any psychological therapy work? IIt works whenever the meaning associated to the specific event is changed. EExample: Being dumped by the one you love. MMovie: Life is beautiful.
Neuro-associative conditioning (NAC): similar to tuning a piano or straightening teeth. We need to condition ourselves frequently until a new lifestyle is shaped. There are three fundamental elements of NAC. These elements will certainly make you change your life and the changes will last for a long time.
1. Get leverage on yourself. This means you must decide the following: A. Something must change. B. I must change it. C. I can change it. 2. Interrupt your current pattern of association. This is best done by using something unusual. 3. Condition a new, empowering association.
More explanations about the above: 1. A lot of courses charge a great deal of money because this is a good way to create leverage. (You must totally believe you can change before willing to pay this amount.) 2. The way we recall an experience is like playing a CD/record. When something happens, our immediate response is to play a related CD. If a CD has too many scratches on it, can it still be played in the same way? (Remember the scene in the elevator in “Shallow Hal”?) 3. Install a new choice, and reinforce it until it is conditioned (= a habit). This can be done by linking pleasure to your new choice.
Homework: RRemember in your previous homework you were asked to list new actions you know you should take now. Pick at least one action you listed and do the following: 11. Get leverage: Write down at least five reasons why you must change that behavior now; then list at least five reasons why you know you can do it. 22. Interrupt your old pattern: Design at least two ways to get yourself out of the limiting association and have new positive association when you think of the thing you want to do. 33. Condition yourself with the new positive association. Give yourself a sense of accomplishment and pride or joy each time you start taking actions. Do this again and again until you feel good automatically when you just think about it.