Psyche Builder: How to Gain Access to Mental and Emotional States

Psyche Builder:?How to Gain Access to Mental and Emotional States

Knowing it’s wise to be able to access a large variety of states is one thing. ?Knowing how to consciously access any given state is another matter entirely. The NLP model Accessing States is a collection of specific techniques to help you enter into a chose state at will.?Here are the primary techniques.

• Break State. Interrupt, distract, or guide your partner or yourself to a ‘neutral’ state.
• Memory. Think of a specific time, associated, when you had that state.
• Imagine. Imagine seeing, hearing, and feeling the state you want.
• As If. Pretend you are in the state you want.
• Model. Which person that you know or have heard of has access to the state you want. Imagine that you are this person.
• Metaphor. Is there a poem, show, book, or movie that elicits the state you want?
• Change the Intensity. If the state needs a higher or lower intensity, play with an imaginary knob that turns it up or down.
• Adjust Physiology. How would you be sitting, standing, breathing, talking if you were in the state you want?
• Smell. What smell do you associate with the state you want?

Present State > Desired State Model -- Everything in NLP can be boiled down into this simple model.

The purpose of NLP is to move from your present state (or mindset) if it’s useful to do so – to a more desired state in which you have more resources. ?NLP tools & techniques can help you accomplish that. ?There are three primary ways we accomplish moving from a Present State to the Desired State.

1.????Explore the Present State to understand it in a new light.

a.????NLP tools provide a way to understand your present state or mindset with a structural understanding. This means you’ll learn to discover how a particular mindset works within you, as opposed to merely knowing which mindset you happen to be in. When you know how a mindset works, you can change it at will.

b.????Learning NLP is like discovering the settings tab for your mind. Imagine sitting in front of a computer. The desktop image, screensaver, screen dimensions, color scheme, language, and so forth are all set according to the default settings. If that works for you, go with it. But what if you don’t like your screensaver? What if the screen dimensions are wrong and you can’t see an entire page in one frame? What if your default language isn’t your native tongue? What if the screen is too dim?

c.????Are you stuck with these settings? Not if you know how to access your control panel or system preferences. In the control panel, you discover how to restructure the settings so that you can have the experience you want, within reason, with your computer.

d.????We could say that NLP is a tutorial on how to access and change the system preferences in your subjective mind. Most people are surprised to learn their mind is structured a certain way and they can change it, not by changing the content (what we are thinking and feeling); in NLP we change the settings (how we are thinking and feeling). Changing the structure alters how thoughts and feelings show up, which makes all the difference. This is what we mean by understanding our present state in a new light.

2.????Define the Desired State in such a way that makes it attainable.

a.????You’ll learn an excellent goal-setting model in this training, but the desired state is something different than a goal. The desired state is whichever mindset would be most useful in a given situation. Whether that be confidence, curiosity, compassion, motivation, hope, calm, etc.

b.????It’s interesting that most people rarely ask themselves which mindset they’d like to be in at any given moment. If someone is frustrated, do they stop and think, ‘I’m frustrated. What state of mind would be better right now and how do I get there?’ Not too often, right?

c.????Just raising the issue of the desired state is often enough to mobilize our resources to transition that state. Sometimes, however, we don’t feel like we have a choice. We may be stuck in a state like frustration. That doesn’t mean we can’t leave it – and it’s still a great idea to know which state we’d prefer.

3.????Use specific NLP Tools to move from the present to the desired state.

a.????There are dozens of NLP tools – models and step-by-step techniques in this training designed to move you from a present stuck state into the mindset you desire. When working with others using NLP, we habitually ask what people want (desired state) and what stops them from getting there (present state) so that we can find a method to transform the present stuck state into the desired state.

b.?????NLP can be as simple as that. The tools are sophisticated, yet their purpose can be boiled down to this model. If you accept this simple model as an overarching way of understanding NLP, it will help you keep perspective as you move through the training.