Transforming Your Self: Chapter 9: Building a New Quality of Self-concept pt 2

Do you have any questions about this videotaped session?

Fran: It just seems too easy and undramatic. Most people think that identity level change is very difficult and takes a long time.

Well, anything is hard, if you don't know what to do, or how to do it, and most things are easy when you do. Can you all think of an experience of using a new piece of equipment for the first time, and being frustrated and upset by not knowing how to use it? But as soon as you found out how, it was easy?

What I demonstrated with Peter is the simplest kind of identity change. It was a change that he congruently wanted, there were no negative beliefs to get in the way, and there were no conflicting outcomes to satisfy.

Most people who attempt to build a more positive sense of themselves find it very difficult because they already have a negative sense of themselves that gets in the way of this. That's a little like trying to lift a big rock that is firmly attached to the ground, so of course it's very difficult, and very dramatic.

Soon I'll teach you how to deal with those kinds of situations, but they do complicate the process somewhat.

Many people equate a large show of emotion with effective change, and I think that is one reason why NLP has often been criticized for "leaving out the emotions." There are plenty of counterexamples to the idea that drama and emotion is a sign of effectiveness, and I think that this idea is actually exactly backwards. Quite often when people are very emotional, they are simply expressing their frustration, and their lack of resources to deal with a difficult situation.

In contrast, when your resources are adequate to cope with a difficult situation, you may not even think about it, much less become emotional about it! Think of tying your shoelaces, and all the other things that were insurmountable challenges for you as a small child, that are now so routine and unconscious that you don't even think about them.

Engineers know that any machine that makes a lot of noise is inefficient, because noise is a form of energy that is being wasted (unless the purpose of the machine is to make noise). An efficient machine is very quiet, because all its energy goes into carrying out its function.

Many years ago, I used to do Gestalt Therapy, which has lots of drama--people screaming and yelling at empty chairs, and pounding pillows. It was very dramatic, but the results were seldom particularly useful. Before antibiotics or immunization, every family experienced many life and death dramas as their children struggled with diseases like scarlet fever and smallpox that are now virtually unknown. Antibiotics and immunization are very undramatic, and very effective. In nearly every field, when we know exactly what to do, change is easy, and very undramatic. Many of the changes you have already experienced were very undramatic, but they will have far-reaching consequences for you.

Dan: What if someone can't find examples of the quality that they want to have?

That is usually a matter of how they are searching for them. Often when they can't find any examples, their criteria are too high and perfectionistic. If they're searching for examples of "courage," they may think that word can only be exemplified by winning a small war single-handed. Or they may examine all their examples of courage, and find that none of them are quite perfect. In that case you need to loosen their criteria, and broaden their definition a bit, so that more of their memories will fit that word. Courage can mean a wide range of behaviors in which someone stands by their principles and values and bravely faces some kind of opposition. Once you have broadened their criteria a bit, most people can find plenty of examples.

But let's say that someone still couldn't find any examples. In that case you could use all your skills to help them access appropriate resources and revise memories so that they were courageous in the past, and then future-pace them into the future, so that the person has future examples as well, and then use both for the database.

Ann: Can you give an example of that?

Sure. If they can't find examples of courage, ask them to think of a time when they weren't courageous and wanted to be. Then you ask them to review that situation and think of what personal resource would have made it easy for them to be courageous. Perhaps if they had simply thought at the time of the effect of this situation on their kids, or someone else, it would have been easy to take action. Then they can replay that situation with this larger frame in mind, running a movie of what they would have done differently until it's what they want. Then put that experience into the future wherever they are likely to need it, and then put both the revised past example and the future example into a new database for courage.

Or perhaps they were too concerned about other's opinions of them. Then you could ask them for a time when they didn't give a damn about someone else's opinion, and when they are fully experiencing that feeling, have them rerun that situation, and see how it unfolds differently. They can do this kind of adjustment and testing as many times as they want until it is satisfactory, and then put this experience into the future, and into the database.

Bill: I'm wondering if people might have different kinds of templates for different positive qualities.

I haven't investigated that. What I demonstrated with Peter has always worked fine, so I have assumed that a person's templates for different positive qualities are either the same, or else so similar that any differences don't matter. I think it was Gregory Bateson who said that "A difference that makes no difference is no difference." I have been most interested in the practical question of what people can do to change, but that would be an interesting thing to research, and you might discover something useful.

Lois: I'm surprised that you didn't give Peter more detailed instructions about what to do. It obviously worked fine, but I'd think he'd need more specific direction.

This was in an NLP Master Practitioner Training, so I could presuppose that Peter already had a lot of advanced skills and understandings about submodalities and so on. If he had any difficulties, I would have made the instructions more detailed and step-by-step.

Sometimes people need more instructions, and sometimes less. Some are really fast, and will run ahead of you. If you give detailed instructions, some will interrupt and say, "Will you please stop talking. I'm already doing the process, and you're distracting me." At other times you describe the next step in a process, and they say, "Yeah, I already did that." Of course, sometimes they run ahead in the wrong direction, and you have to back them up to where they got off track. The main thing is to notice what the person needs, and adjust your behavior to make it as easy for them as possible.

Stan: It seems to me that Peter was an example of what you described earlier, someone who was competent, but not confident.

Yes, I agree. Peter was a pleasant guy to be around, and his wife loved him, and many others liked him. However, he simply hadn't assembled his experiences into a form in which he could know that as an aspect of himself. I really want to emphasize how important it is to assemble experiences. When I began, I said to Peter, "I think of you as lovable," but it just didn't compute. I'm sure all of you have had the experience of trying to convince a friend or a client of something by offering a counterexample to their limiting belief, and getting nowhere. A single counterexample is usually (and often literally) just brushed aside. But when you assemble a group of examples, in the appropriate form for the person you are working with, they become very compelling. Now Peter thinks of himself as lovable, and this is just as automatic, and "built into me" as he put it, as his knowing that he is intelligent.

Fred: It seems to me that what you did could also be described as building a piece of what has been called "internal reference," the ability to know something internally, independent of others' opinions.

Yes, that's another useful way of thinking about the change in the way Peter thinks about himself. When people use the term "internal reference," they often think of it as a single thing--that someone is internally referenced about everything, rather than understanding that it is made up of many smaller aspects that are often dependent on content and context. Saying that someone is internally referenced is always a huge overgeneralization, because there will always be contexts in which someone will be externally referenced. Before I worked with him, Peter was internally referenced with regard to his intelligence, but very externally referenced with regard to being loved. Learning a new skill is a situation in which it is totally appropriate to carefully choose an expert in that skill as an external reference.

You could also say that Peter had been very dependent on others in regard to loving and affection. By helping him create an internal knowing that he is loved, he was no longer dependent on others for this. I also want to mention something else that I think is very important. Many people mistakenly think that independence results in indifference. As the follow-up interview shows, now that Peter is independent with regard to being loved, he is both more loving, and also able to enjoy his wife's affection and caring much more than before. Independence frees you to respect and appreciate and interact with others, instead of being caught up in your own desperate needs.

A participant in a previous seminar worked with a man who was very critical, building a quality much like the one I built for Peter. The next week the man's girlfriend came to see her, very curious about what she had done with him. The girlfriend said that she had been about to leave him, but that he was now softer and more open-hearted than she had ever seen him, and once when he was irritable, he apologized instead of blaming her.

Ken: When you were testing at the end and you asked him if he was lovable, you followed up by asking how that felt to him, and he said, "Very strange." You described that as simply being unfamiliar, and that seemed to fit for him. I thought that could have been an indication of an objection to the change.

It could have been an objection, but strangeness is a very common response at this point, because they literally think of themselves very differently, so the difference is in the thinker as well as what is being thought. In all change work it's very helpful to make a clear distinction between an objection to a change and simple unfamiliarity. Unfamiliarity is not an objection, just an observation. They notice how different they feel, and comment on it--it's strange, but it's OK. The nonverbal indications of "strangeness" are quite different from those of an objection. Some of the most prominent ones are that in strangeness, the eyes are typically wide open, and the face is somewhat relaxed and open, and the head moves slightly forward. In an objection, the eyes are usually narrowed, the whole face is more tense, and the head moves back a little. In order to sensitize yourself to these differences, you can ask a friend to alternately think of an experience of each, and notice how they differ.

When someone says, "I don't feel like myself," that's a very strong indication that you have made a significant change in their self-concept, and that the change will be very widespread, whether or not that was your goal. If you want to be sure that there is no objection, you can always ask, "All right, is it OK to be someone else?

Usually the feeling of strangeness wears off fairly soon, as they get used to it. But if they continue to be preoccupied with it, you can ask, "How many times do you need to experience something new for it to become familiar?" Usually people will give you a number that is ten or less, and then you can say, "OK, take a minute or two to experience it ten times, and let me know when you're done." Since your question (and their answer) presupposes that it will feel familiar after a certain number of times, it will feel familiar to them. But if it really was an objection, the feeling won't go away with repetition.

There is another frequent apparent objection that some people haven't yet learned to distinguish. Often someone will say about a proposed change, "I don't think that can happen." That is not an objection, that is a statement about their belief or expectation. All you have to do is acknowledge their doubt, and separate that from whether they have an objection or not. "Fine, I understand that you don't think you can make that change. If it did happen, would you have any objections?"

You really have to listen carefully to people's answers to your questions. If you asked someone where they lived, and they answered, "Thursday," you probably wouldn't accept that as a valid answer, so you'd ask again. Yet many people will ask if there are any objections, and when the person says, "I don't think it will work," they will accept that as an answer to the question they asked. Earlier I asked someone how a specific change affected the strength of a quality, and they said, "I like it better." Since that was not an answer to my question, I had to ask again.

Ted: I noticed that you didn't ask him to include any counterexamples in his new quality of being loved.

I agree. If I were doing this today, that is one of several things that I would definitely do differently. Remember that this video was made eleven years ago, and I have already taught you much more than I knew back then.

Ann: All you did, really, was to help him select and organize his memories in a particular way that worked for him. You didn't access resources, or anchor experiences, or do any of the other kinds of NLP change work that I'm familiar with.

I basically helped Peter select and assemble a set of memories into a generalization about himself, patterned on one that he already had for being intelligent. Eliciting his structure for intelligence serves two purposes. One is the obvious one of finding an internal structure that already works for Peter, so that I can build a new quality that will function as well as the one that he already has. The other purpose in eliciting this structure is that it is a powerful convincer for Peter that it is possible to have a stable internal representation that works to provide him with knowledge about himself. Without that, he might say something like, "Loved isn't something that you are; it's something you get from other people."

However, you could also describe this process in the terms you mention. Each of his memories is a resource that is an anchor for a particular positive state. A set of voices in a particular location is a powerful anchor for a group of experiences that are significant to Peter, and so on.

Each of us has an immense wealth of different experiences, but most of it goes to waste because it isn't organized. It's as if you had a big barn jumbled full of stuff piled to the roof, so you couldn't see anything but some of the nearer stuff on the top, and a few things near the door. You couldn't use all that stuff in that form, because it's not organized in a way that you can find what you need. In many ways, building a quality is similar to the "change personal history" pattern, in which you search for, and access a resourceful response, and connect it to a context where you want to have that response available. The major difference is that in this pattern we assemble a group of experiences, and we pay particular attention to the form of this group.

Most NLP patterns develop specific solutions for specified tasks or situations. But unpleasant and challenging events happen to all of us, and there is such a variety of them, that we can't be prepared with a specific response for every one of them. When you work with self-concept, you create much more general attitudes, capacities, and qualities that fit with your values, how you want to respond, and how you want to live your life, irrespective of what happens. Personal qualities like resilience, honesty, curiosity, patience, etc., constitute a resourceful personal foundation for finding solutions to a very wide range of specific challenging events.

This might be a good time to put in a plug for a very useful and often ignored quality, tenacity or persistence. Many people could use a more robust ability to hang in there and stay with a project or job or marriage through the difficult times, in order to reach a worthwhile outcome over time. When someone is having trouble staying with a diet or exercise or some other program, usually people think of motivation, or excitement, or some other way of getting the person going. However, motivation and excitement are often fleeting, and usually the problem isn't in starting a program, but in staying with it. Many people have started on a hundred diets, but had great trouble continuing.

Tenacity can keep you going, not because it has intensity, but because it has duration, the ability to keep going through time. Many people desperately need tenacity to make a go of it in the world. Tenacity has a lot less drama than excitement, but it's usually a lot more useful.

A closely-related quality is commitment, making a decision now to do something for an extended period of time. If you decide to diet, or to get married, it doesn't work very well to wake up every morning and go through a process of deciding whether to stay with it or not. It works a lot better to make a commitment, at least for a period of time, and not reexamine that decision too often. Of course, there will always be times when tenacity and commitment can become a liability, when it might be better to give up what you have been doing and try something else. Any skill can become a limitation if it is overdone, or used in an inappropriate context.

Next I want you to experience what I did with Peter. This can be a real opportunity to build a wonderful new quality for yourself. One possibility is to search for an experience of dependence, such as Peter had, which often indicates where a quality is missing. Peter often asked his wife to show that she loved him, but the feeling he got from it didn't last, so he had to continually ask for it again. If you can think of a situation like that in which you repeatedly ask others for some kind of reassurance or validation, but when you get it, it doesn't last very long, that is probably an indication where this could be useful.

Peter's wife found his continual asking for reassurance "excessive." So another way to search for something useful to build for yourself is to think of the kinds of complaints that you frequently get from others, and examine those situations. What quality could you build for yourself that would make those complaints much less likely? For instance, if people tend to complain that you are critical and judgmental, perhaps you could build a quality of acceptance of how things are. If you often get comments about being distant and uninvolved, you could build a quality of being present and involved.

Another possibility is to think of someone that you have admired or envied, examine what it is that impresses you about them, and consider whether you would like to have that quality for yourself.

Or you could read through the following list and notice which qualities sound interesting to you: curious, gentle, playful, healthy, balanced, funny, sensual, witty, honest, steadfast, scintillating, courageous, thoughtful, flirtatious, organized, loyal, creative, wise, kind, loving, deep, impeccable, social, considerate, centered, thorough, useful, responsive, adventurous, passionate.

Remember that all these words are only broad nominalizations that can mean very different things to different people. For one person, "adventurous" might mean going up to someone and giving them a compliment, while for someone else that word might mean hanging by their heels from a bungee cord being towed by a helicopter over a mountaintop!

For one person "considerate" might mean thinking about someone's physical needs and convenience, while for someone else it might mean thinking about their feelings and emotional needs--and for someone else it could mean both.

So as you read down the list of words, or think of other possibilities, it's important to notice what the words mean to you. As you consider these possibilities, probably sometimes you'll think, "Yep, I've got that already," while for others you may think, "Nope I'm definitely not that." When you get to one where you respond, "Hmm, I never really thought about being that," that might be one for which you have no database, and you might consider building that, or some variation of it, for yourself.

After choosing a possible quality to build, ask yourself, "What do I mean by that word?" Think of specific examples of that quality, examine them carefully, and then adjust them so that they fit well for you. For instance, kindness, consideration, and thoughtfulness share many criteria, so they are very similar, and for some people they might be interchangeable. However, for someone else they may have very different meanings, because of the specific experiences that they use to give meaning to the word. One of them may feel appropriate and comfortable, while the others might not quite fit for you.

The next thing to do is to check carefully to be sure that you don't already have a negative or ambiguous database for this quality that would interfere with building a new positive one. One way to test is to think of your examples of this quality. If all your examples are of other people and they all stay distant and dissociated, that is probably an indication that you don't think of this quality as being part of your identity.

Continue to Part 3 of Chapter 9

This is an excerpt from Real People Press' new title "Transforming Your Self: becoming who you want to be".