Get the Life You Want

This allows you to change your beliefs and begin to believe in yourself and in a brighter future. When you have control over what you believe, you can start generating new, resourceful beliefs that help you to live happier and better than ever before. When you follow the steps to this exercise, you’ll find yourself with a plan that you can implement to help you change your expectations of the future.

The Belief Change Technique (Belief Swish Pattern)

1 Think of a limiting belief you no longer want to have. For example, that you will have your problem for the rest of your life, or for quite a while at least.

2 Think of a resourceful belief that you do want to have. For example, that you will be free from your problem for the rest of your life and live very happily.

3 Study the submoda lities of certainty and uncertainty that you have already elicited.

4 Imagine the limiting belief you want to get rid of firing off into the distance and snapping back into the submodalities of the uncertainty.

5 At the same time imagine the resourceful belief firing off into the distance and snapping back into the submodalities of the strong belief.

6 Repeat this a number of times, each time quickly.

Most problems that we face in life, as I have said already, happen in our minds. Furthermore, problems generally exist in our concept of the past and the future. The past and the future don’t exist except in our minds.

When people mentally suffer, they usually do so by feeling bad about the past, feeling stuck in the present, or feeling scared or worried about the future. In language, we talk about ‘getting over’ things and putting things ‘behind’ us. We talk about getting through what’s right in front of us. We talk about getting ‘to’ things and looking ‘forward to’ our future. For many, this is an indication of how they actually represent time. In order to change how we think about and process the past and the future, let’s explore the concept of timelines.

TIMELINES How You Mentally Code Time (#ulink_0c72f9f7-44ca-5394-8bb3-f404e8ce5bd4)

Timelines refer to your own ability to code time. We think about time in certain ways. The images of the past will be in a different place than the images of the future. If you think about events in the past and imagine events in the future and notice where they are located in your mental space, you can draw an imaginary line from the past to the future and that will be your timeline.

For example, think about you brushing your teeth five years ago. Notice where you represent the image. Next, think about brushing your teeth one year ago. Notice the location. Think about brushing your teeth today. Again, notice where the image is. Think about brushing your teeth in one year and then again in five years. When you notice where each image is you can create an imaginary line linking all the images. This is your timeline and it shows you how you think about time spatially.

Generally, there are two main types of timelines. One is where time is spread out with the future in front of you and the past behind you and the present inside of you. This is referred to as ‘in time.’ The other is when the past is to the front of you located on your left, the present is straight in front of you, and the future is in front of you to your right. This is known as ‘through time.’

The differences between locating your timeline in these two ways are that there is usually a difference about how you approach time. For example, people who code time ‘in time’ generally don’t remember the past very much or very often – they put the past ‘behind them.’ People who tend to code time ‘through time’ on the other hand, can usually remember incidents easily and tend to be pretty punctual.

Discover Your Timeline

1 Think of a time where you brushed your teeth five years ago and point to where you represent it.

2 Think of a time where you brushed your teeth one year ago and point to where you represent it.

3 Think of the present moment of you brushing your teeth right now and point to where you represent it.

4 Think of a time where you will brush your teeth one year in the future and point to where you represent it.

5 Think of a time where you will brush your teeth five years in the future and point to where you represent it.

6 Draw an imaginary line from five years ago through one year ago, the present, one year in the future to five years in the future. This is your timeline.

7 Extend the timeline further out into the future and past.

The key is in learning how you can begin to change the way you think and feel about your past, present, and future. Becoming aware, as you are now, about how you represent time makes it easier for you to change how you feel about it. Thus, your inventory is complete.

This book will focus on teaching you how to make unconscious changes by using your own brain and learning to think differently. You will be able to do this by becoming aware of how to use submodalities to make changes and learning how to create new feelings and attach them to new thoughts. You will also discover how to believe in yourself and a better future and you will find yourself able to change how you think about your life and all the moments of it. This inventory has introduced you to the tools and skills you will be using. Now it’s time to get over your problems.

Part 1 GETTING OVER IT (#ulink_d2fb368d-eeb2-534a-9f49-34cc6c159470)

In the domain of getting over things, what kinds of things do people need to get over? Let’s first go down the list.

The first thing that people need to get over is bad suggestions. From the time we are born, we are told how the world works and we learn so much about ourselves, about who we are and what we’re supposed to do.

We’ve already talked about the importance of holding useful beliefs, so it’s crucial for people to learn how to get over bad suggestions so that they can start to believe in the right kinds of thing and develop new ways of thinking about the world and their future.

Another thing that people have to get over is fears. People have a fear of flying and can’t get on an aeroplane. People have a fear of elevators and can’t go up the easy way. Not all meetings are on the ground floor. People have fears of public speaking.

There are lots of kinds of fears that people have to get over and different approaches to different kinds of fear which we’ll cover.

People have to get over bad memories. There are many different kinds of bad memories. There are people who were abused when they were young. There are people who were traumatized when they were young. I’ve had clients who were raped, as I mentioned earlier. Bad things happen to good people. Reliving the bad things over and over and over again is not beneficial. If doing something once makes you have fear, doing it over and over and over again is only going to reinforce that fear.

The same is true of bad relationships and grief. The more people are stuck for a long period of time feeling bad about the past, the less time they have to begin to make life more wonderful. It’s important for people to know how to get over such things so that they can get on with creating new relationships and new joy in their life.

Finally, we have bad decisions that come about from bad thoughts and bad moods. It’s essential that we learn how to go in the best direction in our lives – and all that begins with learning how to make good decisions. The better the decisions you make, the better your actions, the better the results in your life.

Getting over things is often about helping people to learn how to get their mind to let go of things. It means that you put your problems into the past where they belong.

GETTING OVER Bad Suggestions (#ulink_041dfbd3-6de2-5e0a-ae22-4261f0d992d7)

The first thing to put into your past and keep there are the bad suggestions that others have shared with you. I once had a client whose name was Myra. Myra was a cute twenty-three-year-old girl but she had a poor opinion of herself that she dressed herself up like an ugly muffin and put on the worst horn-rimmed glasses you have ever seen.

She seemed to do her hair by driving in a convertible and letting the wind pile through it. When she came in, she told me that her problem was that she was lonely. The truth was that the only reason she was lonely was that she believed, as her therapist had told her, that she had low self-esteem.

When I asked her how she knew she had low self-esteem she said, Well I just feel nervous around people. The truth is nobody ‘just’ does anything. As I began to explore a little closer, I said, Well, how do you know how to feel nervous? Do you feel nervous when you’rein a closet picking out a shirt? She replied, No and I said, Well, how do you know when to feel nervous? She said, The voice tells me. So I said, Which voice? She looked at me and said, The voice inside my head.

I said, Is it your voice? and she said, Well it’s inside my head. So, I asked, Does it sound like the voice you have on the outside? and she said, No. I said, Does it perhaps sound like your mother’s voice, or your father’s voice, or your sister’s voice, or friend’s voice at school? And she says, Well, I’m not sure whose voice it is. It’s been there so long. Then I said, So long. I like that phrase. So Long Voice.

I asked her, What exactly does the voice say? and she said, The voice tells me that I’m nothing. The voice tells me I’m ugly. The voice tells me that no one will love me. We could spend hours, in fact we could spend years, going back into her childhood finding out where it came from and why it came but I frankly didn’t care. When you want a guide to changing your behaviour, you’re looking for quick ways to make quick changes.

In Myra’s case, I simply had her turn the volume of the voice up. She turned the volume of the voice up and moved the voice closer. The voice was actually on the left hand side and it sounded as if it was about twelve or thirteen inches away. I had it get closer and louder and she felt even worse. Then I had her move it further away and off into the distance and it diminished her feelings.

Next, I had her change the tone of the voice because I asked her a question. Did you ever hear somebody talk that you absolutely didn’t believe? For example, Richard Nixon popped into my mind. I remember Bill Clinton telling me how he did not have sexual relations with that woman and, as he said it, I knew he was lying. As she listened to the voice, I had her slowly change the tone of the voice to somebody she absolutely distrusted and wouldn’t believe.

I had her move the voice around to the back of her head so that it sounded like it was further and further behind her. Now, by doing this, not just once, but several times quickly, she got control over what was creating the bad feelings.

She hadn’t tried to be pretty. She hadn’t tried to speak in a cheerful voice so that she would meet nice people. Instead, she had always sought out the people that would reinforce the beliefs that she already had.

It was important not just to give her control over the voice but to change her entire belief because years of experience had taught Myra that she was a worthless, ugly, nothing of a person and the truth is that was the biggest lie of all. So, she had to think of it all as lies. When I got Myra to think differently about this old negative voice, changing the tone so that it sounded completely untrustworthy, it allowed her to be free. She managed to change how she felt about herself because she no longer took seriously her own self-criticism. Instead, she became happier with who she was.

What I like to do is to ask people what the biggest lie they’ve ever been told is. The one that, when they figured out it was a lie, was so much of a lie that even when they think about it now they get angry about it.

I elicit the submodalities of that just as we did in the inventory part of this book earlier. Stop now and think about something you no longer want to believe. Just like Myra, I want you to go through your list and find out first where is the voice? Where is the picture?

I want you to take the thing that you want to get rid of and I want you to compare it with the biggest lie you’ve ever been told. Compare it with the one you’re the most angry about. Go back and forth and notice the differences in the locations of the images. Notice the difference in the size of the pictures. Whether they’re movies, whether you see yourself in them. All the same distinctions that we went through in the inventory.

When you find the difference, I want you to take the thing that you no longer wish to believe and push it all the way off into the distance, move it over and pop it up on the other side so that when you look at it you know it’s a lie and you’re angry about it.