“You’ve got to ac-cen-tuate the positive,
E-lim-inate the negative,
Latch on to the affirmative,
Don’t mess with Mister In-Between.”
Lyrics by Johnny Mercer (1944)
From time to time we need to sort through an accumulation of things in order to make space for what we want to keep. However, many people have great difficulty doing this. Would you like to learn a ridiculously simple trick to make this easier?
When most people do this, they look through their closet full of clothes, the drawer full of socks, or the shelf full of books, and try to decide what they don’t want. While this seems very logical and straightforward, there are several reasons why it’s not the best way to accomplish the task.
Imagine that you went to a grocery store to buy some food, and you were focused on what you don’t want. Pause for a moment to imagine actually doing this in your mind, to find out what this way of shopping would be like for you. . . .
Doesn’t that seem a little backward? Now imagine shopping the way you usually do it, by focusing on what you do want. . . .
Whether you have a list of things that you have already decided that you want, or whether you look around to see what appeals to you (or both), focusing on what you do want is much simpler and more direct.
There are probably only a few things that you do want, and an immense number of things that you don’t want. If you were focused on eliminating what you don’t want, it would take you much longer, because there is so much more of it that you would have to process.
You have only a certain amount of attention; if you are focused on what you don’t want, you have much less attention for what you do want, and you might even lose track of it altogether, which is what happens in paranoia.
Perhaps most important, if you are focused on what you don’t want, you will be having the feelings that go along with thinking of those things. Those feelings are likely to be much less pleasant than the ones you have when you think of what you do want. Try this in you imagination. First think of a food that you don’t want, . . . and then think of a food that you do want. . . .
Which feels better? If you think of what you do want, you will feel better, and you are likely to keep on shopping. But if you are having the feelings that go with thinking of all those things that you don’t want, you are likely to stop soon, so that you can feel better!
So far I have written about what you do want and what you don’t want. But there is another category of stuff that is even larger than both of these put together; stuff that you don’t much care about one way or another—“Mister In-Between.” When you focus your attention on what you do want, all this is ignored along with all the stuff that you don’t want.
To summarize, if you are deciding what to buy in a store, it makes a lot more sense to focus on what you do want than what you don’t want. It is also much simpler to do, because it is harder for us to process negations like “don’t” (“do not”).
Now let’s go back to the task of sorting through an accumulation to decide what you want to keep. All the factors I have discussed above are equally true when you want to sort through stuff. If you focus on what you don’t want, it will be more difficult, less direct, it will take longer, and it feels unpleasant, so you will probably soon give up and do something else—perhaps berating yourself for your sloppiness and “lack of willpower” or “lack of persistence.”
How can we apply the way that we naturally and efficiently acquire stuff to the task of discarding stuff?
It’s absurdly simple: empty out that closet, drawer, or bookshelf completely and put everything that was in it somewhere else. Now imagine that this is stuff in a store, and you can select what you want from it—absolutely free! Now look through it to decide what you want to keep, and discard the rest of it.
There is an additional advantage to this way of sorting through stuff in order to simplify and streamline your surroundings. If you were successful in doing what most people do—focusing on what you don’t want, and discarding that, you would still have all the stuff that is meaningless to you—“Mister In-Between.” But by selecting what you do want from that pile of stuff, all the “Mister In-Between” stuff remains in the pile to be discarded.
If you are someone who likes to keep “in between” stuff around for a while in case it might become useful, put it in a box, and date it. If you haven’t looked at it after a given length of time—perhaps six months or a year—look through it quickly to be sure there is nothing you want to keep, and then dispose of it.
Another little trick I use is to think of who would be happy to have the stuff that I’m discarding. Even though I don’t have a use for it, it might be important to someone else; the thought that someone else might appreciate it gives me additional pleasure at the thought of passing it on to someone else, making it even easier to let go of it.
This is only one specific application of the importance of focusing your attention on positive outcomes—what you do want, rather than what you don’t want—a key element of NLP, and of living a life that works for you.
Do you have other strategies or “tricks” that make it easier for you to clean stuff out? If so, I welcome you to add them to this discussion.
Hello I am 23 and have a very keen interest in NLP and hypnotherapy and would love to get properly qualified and trained to be able to make a professional career out of helping people with them. I’ve looked on the internet and the length of courses last from 3 days to 9 months! I don’t want to just go to something where I only hear the being methods talked about I’d want to become fully proficient in them. I also don’t want to be ripped off.
I’ve found a course that I think looks good :http://www.nlpacademy.co.uk/NLPPremierPractitioner.asp
combined together with
http://www.nlpacademy.co.uk/certification/MasterPractitioner.asp .
NLP doesn’t really have a governing body that sets criteria for course standardization so I don’t know how to check it. what do you think I should do?
Hello Paul
As a Hypnotherapist myself you can pay thousands or hundreds – they all teach the same thing. Here is one link, it looks unprofessional but he is the real deal http://www.hypnotherapy-training.com/
If you feel drawn to a company, then follow your own instinct. It is an area where people charge a lot of money, & costs doesn’t always mean that they are better than those cheaper.
I started of with a mentor & then went book mad. You can get some excellent books from Amazon etc, being self taught means I uncovered more stones than I may have done being able to afford traditional study at the start. Take yourself into hypnosis as many times as you can via recording real scripts onto tape etc.
Join our forum if you want to ask anything, will help if I can.
Sadhara
* see profile *
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Mark Holland uses an approach to psychotherapy and a model of change based on the subjective study of language, communication and change. Mark as a personal life coach & NLP business coach has a lot of success helping people.
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Here are 3 reasons why Mark Holland is very effective in helping people change, grow and succeed
1. Marks NLP coaching methods are solution oriented. One of the fundamentals of NLP coaching says that we need to look for what the client wants first. As your personal success coach Mark Holland will ask the following questions very early in the discussion “What is your objective? What do you want?” Instead of researching the past to find the possible cause of such and such problem, Mark determines an objective and find or create the resources that a client needs to step away from the problem and go towards the solution. The clients create their own objectives and Mark Holland will guide them through the steps toward the solution. Simply put, Mark Holland will help the client find his or her own solution with the resources he or she already has in him or herself.
2. Mark Holland uses brief therapy. No need to lie down on a couch for 20 years. Marks says Why not stand on the shoulders of giants like Freud, Perls, Erickson, Tony Robbins, Christopher Howard, Tad James, etc… find the best practices, the best strategies and help clients create their own success and help them realize that they already have all the resources they need to change. They just need a tour guide. That’s what Mark Holland is all about. Mark doesn’t have the solution to the problem but he knows how to help you find and discover the solution that is already in you.
3. NLP Coaching is not based on theory. It came from modelling exceptional people and exceptional psychotherapists. The founders of NLP Coaching, Richard Bandler and John Grinder, observed and tried to replicate the work of Milton Erickson (hypnotherapist), Virginia Satir (family therapist), and Fritz Perls (gestalt therapist). They were interested in what were the key strategies that made these therapists successful. Then Bandler and Grinder created models that we could replicate to have the same kind of success they had. In other words, we already know that when we apply the same models or patterns to a client, it is actually going to work and the person is actually going to be transformed. To give a concrete example, lots of scientists criticized The NLP change phobia cure or allergy process because of no scientific evidence that it will work. Nevertheless, the NLP coaching phobia cure technique can help a client get rid of a phobia 100% of the time if correctly done and the allergy process helps a client get rid of an allergy and it works 85% of the time.
Mark Holland is solution oriented, fast and not based on theory. Mark Holland as a Personal Life Coach & NLP Business Coach has a lot of success helping clients with communication, phobias, traumas or general health issues. But it is more than curing a phobia. It is about helping someone evolve and become congruent and aligned in all areas of your life.
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They say pain is a greater motivator than pleasure however I am confused. For the past 4 years I have been in a job I hate, so much so I have developed depression, so it is clear to see I hate it, Its a dead end job on minimum wage, On a Sunday night I am in tears at the thought of the following day, Yet even the depression hasn’t motivated me to get out there and start training to get some qualifications. I can’t seem to get motivated using NLP. It seems more painful to change than to stay where I am at.
Neuro-Linguistic-Programming right?
That is not proven to work, only some people get affected, someone can test you by asking questions such as "remember the colour of your first bedroom". If you are affected your eyes will dart up and left as it is remembering a fact. NLP can only work on a small percentage of highly suggestible people, from what I can see, you are not a suggestible person, this is a good thing.
What I think you need to do is take thing into your own hands, use you well-developed brain to work. Confidence can be hard to ‘build’ but here’s a little trick. Confidence is completely fake, just think "I’m confident", stand up, chest out, shoulders back, cheeky smile on face and then, you just try being unhappy, try being not confident. Hard isn’t it?
What I’m saying is, stand up look forward, grip your life by the horns and turn it right around. You can do it.
x
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The Magical Guru Dr. Jonathan Royle Reveals how to claim 1’00’s of FREE Hypnosis, Mentalism, NLP & Magic Ebook Downloads today, also discover the TRUTH about the internet and media stories about his controversial career to date and apply for the job and media oportunities posted on his blog today!
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Hi,
I have read a little about NLP and also been along to a course (just one session to get a feel for it – with maybe the intention of being a training in it one day).
Everyone I seem to meet who is an NLP ‘professional’ seems a little weird, crazy or on edge. Is this a symptom of NLP, because if it is, I think it’s probably wise to stay clear. I do think it has merit, but I don’t much like the idea of mucking with too much in my head – who knows what effect it might have.
However; I could be completely wrong and the few experiences I have had are not what others of had. I am struggling to find the answers by googling it, so hence the question on yahoo answers.
If you also know of where I can go and look to find out some more information, please let me know!
that has been described to me as another name for hypnosis, which
can be a wonderful thing in the hands of a very high minded
person.
You are right, how can you be sure?
Not everyone can go into a receptive state for the programming
to work.
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