NLP in Action - How To Create Super Motivation (Part Five)

Instant motivation is a reality. As we have seen in the previous four articles in this series, the science of NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) can offer you ways to link a task or activity you do not like to do (and thus put off or avoid doing whenever you can) to an activity you find intensely pleasurable. This linking actually enables you to experience much of the same pleasure when you are doing the thing you previously avoided doing.

Once this link is made, your biggest problem will be getting yourself to stop doing this once-dreaded activity.

In our previous articles, we have imagined that you are a college student with real issues getting yourself to study. At the same time we have imagined that you are obsessed with skiing. Every year you cannot wait for winter to come and the first snow to fall so you can get on the slopes.

In our example, we have shown how you can create triggers to transfer some of that same pleasure you get from skiing to help you enjoy studying more.

In many cases this NLP technique of creating triggers works just this easily and you can complete the process, and create the motivating links, in less than a half hour.

But what if you cannot recall anything you enjoy as much as our imaginary student enjoys skiing? Remember, the key principle for this technique to work is to link more pleasure to this target activity than you previously found pain in it.

Let me put this another way. Whenever you find yourself avoiding or putting off a task or activity, the reason you are avoiding it is because you associate something unpleasant or "painful" with this activity.

In order to conquer this avoidance behavior, you must create a link in which the pleasure from another experience surpasses the pain or unpleasantness of the activity you have been avoiding.

Many of us, unfortunately, either cannot call to mind an activity that gives us this much pleasure, or else our ability to visualize is limited to the point that we cannot re-create the sensations of pleasure when we attempt to hold this thing in our minds.

Fortunately, NLP researchers have identified three ways to overcome this problem, all of which we will discuss in greater detail in future articles of this series:

1. The first technique is called "stacking." This simply means that if one single pleasurable element is not strong enough to offset the pain of the avoided activity, we use several pleasurable elements and "stack" them until they combine to provide enough pleasure that we can link to counteract the avoided behavior.
2. The second technique is multi-sensory visualization. When someone cannot create a visual image that is pleasurable to suit our purposes, often the reason is that the visualization is flat and dull. It is as if the person can only visualize in black and white, with no sound, smell or feel. But with a few simple instructions, most people can be taught to use more senses (colors, sound, smell, feel, etc.) when they visualize, creating a more substantial emotional impact as a result.
3. The last technique is hypnosis. Almost anyone has a great wealth of pleasurable experiences stored in their brains that can be used to offset almost any unpleasant association. The problem many people have is with their recall. Fortunately, a few simple instructions in self- hypnosis is usually enough to help these people access these pleasurable experiences.

In actuality, this problem of finding pleasurable experiences powerful enough to offset the discomfort associated with the target behaviors is a very easy one to solve. In the next several articles, we will discuss how it is done.