There is nothing you can notice, see, feel, or hear, which is not part of who you are. Your beliefs about “how IT is” create moment by moment, day by day your experience of this “IT”.
Now, the first seven (7) years of your life have defined your world view – in NLP this is called the Model of the World (MOW). The tricky part is that most if not of all your beliefs and attitudes at that age were given to you by your family, by the kindergarten and pre-school, by the games you played and the children’s movies and shows you saw. And the people in your family and kindergarten, and pre-school were programmed themselves by others when they were small. The question is who gave them and their parents and their parents’ parents the beliefs and attitudes they consider to be “the truth”. Because who did control them and now controls you by controlling your mind!
So I am sure you have not stopped to consider that your most cherished beliefs and the way you behave when you think you’re doing the “right” thing may not be so at all. I am sure you have not stopped to consider that all your MOW may not even be yours but borrowed and adopted and the only “IT” you call reality. But by now they’re deeply rooted and you relate to them as the absolute truth. In this simple way, unconsciously you defined and set in place boundaries and barriers for experiencing anything else.
Look at the massive changes in beliefs and decisions the new generation (millennials and after) have compared to you. Just compare them. Are you even aware of the massive gap opening between you and the people in their early 20s and younger?
So unknowingly you have devised a well-constructed screen, based on some beliefs imposed on you, on which plays the movie called “your life”. On this screen you see reflected this very realistic “movie” and it is real,.for you only. Your MOW, this movie is not real for anybody else but you. It keeps you from knowing or experiencing anything else but the narrowed down portion of reality you call “this is how IT is”.
Actually the analogy with the movie is very telling – when you go to the theater to see a movie, during the movie you forget about your “real” life and you become part of the movie plot. You live it and for the duration of that movie you experience it as if it is real. Your blood pressure, breathing rate, brainwaves frequency, reflect your experience in the moment.
Well, I have news for you – it isn’t real.
Why do you assume that because somebody believed something and told you that means “this is IT” there is nothing else?
Because when you do, your inner power of creativity and insight, and imagination and discovery, and most important your power to change what you don’t like is limited and conflicted. If you’re naturally good at connecting with your Unconscious Mind, your body will tell you something and your mind will reframe it and tell you something else. The result? Permanent inner conflict.
So this becomes a game where you seem to chase your own tail, never escaping the difficulties you once experienced and keep experiencing every day of your life. Your memories with Negative Emotions from the first 7 years of your life have created chains of reaction, behaviors, beliefs, decisions, strategies and even meta-programs on which you still operate now and will operate in the future unless you learn first how to discover them and then change them one by one. The process is called Time Line Therapy®.
Without this imprint (and let’s admit – before age 7 you’re too young to know what’s good for you and what limits you) it would not be a game at all. You would realize that inner power I was talking about above and the non-satisfactory game would be over. So why do you persist with this illusion?
Humanity is very much like the hippopotamus tied to a rope from birth. As the hippopotamus ages, it could easily break free from that rope at any time, but it doesn’t. It accepts the restriction because it does not realize as it ages that its strength exceeds what it perceives as a limitation to its freedom. It is conditioning that keeps elephant from understanding its power. I wrote elsewhere about B. F. Skinner‘s Operant Conditioning (see the article Why People Have Trouble With The Truth).
This is what’s happening to you. You were conditioned – nothing else.
Like the hippopotamus you accepted conditions on yourself and agreed to them. You agreed you cannot be happy, so you remain unhappy. You agreed you are not good looking so you feel miserable about your looks. You agreed you’re not good enough so you feel you’re not good enough. You agreed that only others can be prosperous, so you remain poor. You agreed you cannot be healthy, so we remain diseased. You agreed to fear everything until you fear even fear itself so you remain meek and submissive. You agreed that once a traumatic event happened to you there is nothing you can do so you remain a victim. That’s why you better choose Sabino Trauma Treatment in Tucson , safety to work on the trauma, alcohol addiction, drug addiction, anxiety, and depression that have held you in its grip.
But there are also those who at some point get literally fed up with the limited status quo and they stop their agreement to the above. They literally change their life. Their families and peers, their life and business partners cannot understand what happened.
You’re changed – they say. You’re not the old you anymore. And you explain to them that for the first time in your life you feel happy and free and ..oh!…”miraculously” you become truly successful and satisfied. Your self-esteem goes through he roof but they say – “you’re now so selfish and so ambitious”. What happened to you?
To them you have become the black sheep. You stepped out of the status-quo.
And you know what it took? A decision. A simple decision. We see this all the time on our trainings where during a week (the NLP Coaching Practitioner Training for example) people literally transform under our very eyes. Now do they really transform? We believe they already had all the resources they needed even before the training – but they could not access them. They were blocked and stuck and now they feed themselves from the old beliefs and decisions and behaviors, What a freedom that is!
The coming year will hold an incredible opportunity for growth beginning in the spring – it seems that it will happen around the spring equinox. You can make new decisions and stand for what you really desire in your life. If you’re really fed up with living a mediocre and pointless existence ridden with fear and limitations, you can make that decision and then there is no turning back into the darkness of your old restrictions. From that point forward you will have freed your creative power not only for yourself but also for teaching it to others.
Personally I am looking forward to meet those of you who’d like to join us on this path. It is wonderful, it is challenging, it is eye-opening and worth living.
Check out our schedule of events for all the NLP Coaching, and Time Line Therapy® trainings.
Until next time, be well.