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.

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

Are you getting excited yet?

If you've read the first three articles in this series, you are probably beginning to realize how easy it can be to create super motivation to get yourself to do anything, regardless of how much you have avoided doing this thing, how much you tend to procrastinate doing it, how much you internally resist doing this activity or behavior.

In the first three articles, we have talked about how to create links between the activity you wish to get yourself to do (the target) and something you already derive a great deal of pleasure from.

We've been using a hypothetical example of imaging you are a college student who has a great deal of difficulty getting yourself to study. At the same time, you also LIVE to ski. You cannot wait for winter to come and the snow to start falling, because when it does, you head for the ski slopes and stay until the last snowflake melts.

We have then used the NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) technique of creating triggers for your studying and for skiing. In the example given in the article 3, you pinched one earlobe when you visualized yourself studying and the other earlobe when you visualized yourself skiing. By pinching both earlobes at once, you were able to create the same pleasurable sensations you feel when you ski, when you study.

Obviously there is some fine-tuning to be done before you can master this technique completely, but you now have all the basics.

But before we go any further, let's add one more final step.

You still have to reinforce the triggers you have created. You do this by pinching both earlobes simultaneously. When you do this, both the image of you studying and the image of skiing will flash back and forth for a while. Practice this step for a while and practice it every day for several weeks. Your goal here is to link studying so deeply with the same pleasurable sensations of skiing that whenever you pinch both earlobes at the same time, you cannot help yourself from studying.

Before long, your biggest problem will be stopping when they start to close the library on you. (I am of course only using the college student and skier examples as working analogies for this article, but the technique will work for you regardless of what type of behavior you are trying to create motivation for you to do).

Also, please note that all the examples we have used so far have been about creating motivation for behaviors you want to do, or want to stop procrastinating on. There are different methods to be used for behaviors you want to stop, which we will discuss in future articles in this series.

But what if you cannot think of something you enjoy doing as much as our hypothetical college student enjoys skiing? Remember, the pleasure that you are drawing from ( ie the skiing) must be greater than whatever pain you perceive is in the target activity you want to motivate yourself for (ie the studying).

In other words, if our college student didn't derive greater pleasure from skiing than the "pain" he or she perceived was associated with studying, this whole exercise would not have worked. Fortunately, NLP practitioners and researchers have discovered a technique called "stacking" which solves this problem.

We will discuss how stacking works and how you can use it in a future article.