Free Yourself from Fears (23 page)

Others are never convinced. This is known as the
consistent
pattern.

For them each time is like the first, they have to prove they have the resources. This makes it difficult to trust their abilities. The same people usually do not trust others either (unless they are very externally referenced).

People with the faith or automatic pattern may be overconfident and be mistaken about their abilities. It is usually better to develop the resource rather than assume it is there. Some people with the period of time or number of examples pattern may spend longer than they need in trusting themselves. The consistent pattern makes it difficult to trust your abilities however much you have developed them, but at least you will never be complacent.

180

TRUST AND INTUITION

Convincer metaprogram patterns

Automatic

Based on faith

Number of examples

Period of time

Consistent (never convinced)

Skill for freedom

Trusting your experience: What reference experiences
count?

This exercise will help you see what evidence you need to know that you can trust yourself.

J Think of some resource that helped you change in a good way, or got you out of a dangerous situation in the past.

J How did you know that you had the resources you needed for that change?

— How important was other people’s feedback?

— What experiences did you have that convinced you you had the resources you needed?

— Did you assume that you had them anyway and went ahead?

(Faith)

— Was one past experience enough to convince you that you had the resource? (Automatic)

— Over what period of time did you have these experiences before you were convinced? (Period of time)

181

FREE YOURSELF FROM FEARS

— How many experiences did you need before you were convinced?

(Number of examples)

— Did you never really believe you had the resources, however much you had shown them in the past? (Consistent)

— Are you satisfied with the way you trust your experience? If you are not satisfied, what would you prefer to do?

Learning from experience

Regardless of how many times you show that you have a resource, one bad experience can loom large and can make you question your ability.

It can cancel all the good experiences where you did show the resource.

This need not be a problem. Learn from that experience so that it will not happen again. When you know what went wrong, why it went wrong, and the difference between what you did then and what you did on the other occasions, then you can learn from the experience. Learning is impossible without mistakes, so never make the same mistake twice!

Here is a skill to learn from your mistakes, which is a variation of learning from the past (page 66).

Skill for freedom

Learning from experience

Sometimes a bad experience can make you doubt your abilities and be afraid to try again.The following pattern will turn this bad experience into a resource and learn from it.This pattern is not suitable for trauma or phobia.

1 Think back to the experience that made you doubt your skill or resource. Make sure that you see yourself (so that you are dissociated) in that situation as if on a television or movie screen.

182

TRUST AND INTUITION

2 Notice what was happening then, what other people did that contributed to the situation, and how it was impossible for you to control every aspect of the situation.

3 How might you avoid similar circumstances in the future?

4 Notice that there is a difference between having an ability (because you have expressed it before) and expressing it in this situation.What circumstances made it difficult for you? What were you trying to achieve? What did you want to happen?

5 With the benefit of hindsight, how should you have acted in order to achieve what you wanted?

6 Relive the incident again in your imagination the way you wanted it to happen. See yourself doing things differently, using the ability, and getting the result you wanted. Stay outside the experience; watch yourself acting in the situation on a mental screen.

7 When you are satisfied with that, imagine stepping into the situation and relive the incident in your imagination, the way you wanted. Be back there, seeing through your own eyes, acting the way you should have acted and getting the result you wanted.Then blank your mental screen.

8 Do step 7 at least seven times, reliving the event in the way you would have preferred it to happen, and then blanking out your mental screen at the end of each replay. Do it faster and faster each time.

9 Store this new experience you have just created as a mental video under “learning experiences.”

10 Finally, think back to some experiences when you did have the ability.

Go through them again associated—be inside the memory, seeing what you saw, hearing what you heard, and feel the satisfaction of being able to act in that resourceful way.

Understanding your reference experiences helps you to trust yourself.

183

FREE YOURSELF FROM FEARS

The first reference experience

Suppose that you have no reference experience yet, or you have a consistent pattern when every time seems to be the first time. You need to create or assume a reference experience.

Here are some ways:

J Have faith in yourself. Faith is deeper than confidence. You need faith when you have no reference experience for the resources you need, but you go ahead anyway because you believe in yourself as part of something greater. You know that you are more than your skills or behavior. You feel the fear and do it anyway. Faith is often associated with religion, but it always goes with a feeling of connection with something greater than yourself, something more than your isolated ego.

J You can use a similar experience in the past as a reference experience if it is close enough to what you want.

J You can act as if you have the resource you need—you can express it in your behavior, even if you feel you do not have it.

J Find someone whom you trust and who believes in you. Ask them why they believe in you and what they have seen and heard that makes them think that you have the resources you need. Listen to what they say and see if this is enough to convince you.

J You can trick yourself or someone else can trick you.

This last method was how I learned to swim. When I was about six years old, I used to go to the swimming pool every week, although I could not swim yet. All of my friends could swim and they tried to reassure me that I would be able to. (In fact, I was not worried so much about swimming, I would have been happy just to float.) They would jump in and splash about and have a lot of fun. They would try to prove that I wouldn’t sink if I kept air in my lungs. They told me it was easy and I should just do it. They held me up in the water, but as soon as they let go I would start to struggle and panic. I did not doubt what they said, I believed that they were sincere, but somehow I was afraid—afraid of the water, afraid that I was the one exception 184

TRUST AND INTUITION

in the whole of the human race that would disprove the laws of physics. Surely I suffered from negative buoyancy and would sink whatever I did.

I used to play in the pool wearing a small inflatable lifejacket and would quite happily jump in and swim across out of my depth, confident that the jacket would support me. One day, I was at the pool and playing with my friends. I jumped in as usual and started swimming across the pool. When I got halfway across I suddenly realized that I was not wearing my lifejacket. This really was a sinking feeling.

For one terrible moment, I struggled and started to go under, before realizing that I had made it halfway across the pool under my own steam and all I had to do was to keep on doing what had got me that far, and it would get me the rest of the way. It did. After that I had a reference experience and have enjoyed swimming ever since. Some skills such as swimming and riding a bicycle only need one reference experience.

Intuition

We can avoid most danger if we pay attention to our intuition.

Intuition lets us know something without knowing how we know. It is not logical, because it does not come from the conscious mind, but it is not illogical. Our intuition has a reason; we just don’t know what it is. A good intuition has a compelling urgency. But how can we tell a genuine intuition from our imagination? How can we develop a good intuitive sense?

First, intuition is not a gift for the lucky few, but a natural quality.

We notice far more than we are aware of. We can feel how another person feels because emotions are contagious, we have empathy with others. All emotions are expressed in the body in facial expressions, muscle tensions, and altered breathing patterns that result in different voice tonality. When two people talk, you can see something called “motor mimicry.” When one person smiles or frowns, the other will smile or frown back, even though those smiles or frowns 185

FREE YOURSELF FROM FEARS

may be for a fleeting fraction of a second. We mirror other people’s expressions without noticing. This happens without our intention; we do it from infancy as a way of connecting with others and building rapport.

These unconscious responses can come to consciousness as an intuition about what another person is thinking or feeling, because our body is going through the same expressions and so we recognize them and link them to emotions.

Second position

We notice the slight changes in color, breathing, voice tone, and muscle tension of another person. We imagine what it would be like to take on those patterns. When we do this, we feel the same as they do; it gives us the same feeling because we are both human and our neu-rology works in the same way. We then get the intuition of what the other person is feeling. In NLP, this is called emotional second position.

The other kind of second position is cognitive second position.

This is when you have an intuition of what the other person is thinking. The basis of intuition is to sharpen your skills of second position.

How do you experience your intuition?

For some people it is a feeling, usually in the pit of the stomach. We talk about “gut feelings” that we have at a deeper level than logic. You may have these feelings anywhere in your body. Have you ever had the experience of the hairs on the nape of your neck standing on end, or goose pimples on your arms for no apparent reason? This could also be your intuition.

For other people, intuition can be an internal voice, telling them to be careful. Sometimes it tells them not to trust someone. Trust is often based on intuition. Most people want to be trusted, and to appear trustworthy.

Intuition can save your life, and it can make the mundane world a more interesting and vibrant place.

186

TRUST AND INTUITION

Skill for freedom

Getting to know your intuition

Remember an occasion when you had an intuition about someone.

Make sure this intuition was:

J Accurate.

J Useful.

J Surprising because it was not obvious.

How did you experience it?

(If you cannot recall an occasion, imagine what it would be like.You can also do this exercise later when you have developed your intuition from some of the following exercises.Then you will have a real experience to use.)

What intuitions did you have about the person?

How did you become aware of those intuitions?

J Was it an internal voice?

J If so, where did the voice come from?

J How loud was it?

J What was the tone?

J Was it your voice or did it belong to someone else?

J How far away did it seem to be?

J Was there anything else you noticed about that voice?

Was it a feeling?

J If so, where was the feeling located in your body?

J How big was the feeling?

J How deeply inside your body did it seem to be?

J Where did it originate?

J What temperature was it—hot, warm, or cold?

187

FREE YOURSELF FROM FEARS

J How intense was it?

J Was there anything else important about that feeling?

Was it an internal picture?

J If so, where was the picture located in your visual field?

J How far away did it seem to be?

J How bright was it?

J Was it black or white or colored?

J How intense was it?

J Was there anything else important about the picture?

This will help you to be aware of how your intuition comes to you, so you will be more familiar with it and know when it is trustworthy.

Allow your intuition

There are many ways to develop intuition. You pick up far more information than you are consciously aware of, so you are always having intuitions. Do not “try” to have intuitions; this will stop them.

Intuition is like a shy friend who has to be coaxed into your house by making it a welcoming place. Therefore, the main way to develop intuition is not to block it. There are three enemies that will block intuition, one visual, one auditory, and one kinesthetic, and to each there is an antidote.

The three enemies of intuition

The
visual
enemy of intuition is foveal vision. How you use your eyes affects how you think. There is a spot in the center of the retina of each eye called the
fovea centralis
. It has the greatest concentration of cells (called cones), which are sensitive to color and bright light.

Foveal vision is staring directly at an object; the image falls on the fovea. It engages the analytical conscious mind; it focuses directly on the object and does not see the space around it. Foveal vision is good for concentration and analysis.

The antidote is peripheral vision. This is when you let your field of vision expand to take in as much as possible without straining.