By: Shantanu Das Sharma, Sr. Associate Editor, ICN Group
Quick recap of what we have covered in Part 25
Mapping Across Love to Disgust
Step 1. Elicit the Sub-modalities of a Food You Love
Step 2. Elicit the Sub-modalities of a Food You Hate
Step 3. Notice the Differences. These are Called ‘Drivers’
Step 4. Take the Sub-modalities of ‘Hate’ and Put it into the ‘Love’ Experience
Step 5. Test it Out
Applying Distortion Technique: How to Remove an Intense Negative Experience
The Swish Pattern: How to Change a Lifelong Habit Now
Do you have a limiting habit that you would like to change? It is generally believed that changing a bad habit takes months or even years. This is an extremely limiting belief. In fact, if you think about it, change almost always happens in an instant. When someone stops smoking, that change of behavior happens in an instant. When someone stops biting their fingernails that change also happens in an instant. What takes an eternity is preparing for that change. Like some people may take five years trying all kinds of ways to quit smoking until one day they just stop, never to take it up again. Why does it take so long? And what eventually led to the change?
There are three keys that must be present for someone to make any kind of change…
1) This MUST change
All of us know logically that we should change our bad habits. But we never do because it never became a MUST in our minds. Only when changing becomes an absolute MUST, does the change occur. It must come to a point when it becomes extremely painful for us not to change, in that moment our mind shifts changing (the habit) into the number one priority.
I have a friend (many years older than I), who couldn’t quit the habit of smoking for twenty years. Then one day his beloved 10-year-old daughter came home from school crying hysterically. Her tears were too much for him to bear and he asked her what had happened? ‘Dad, I don’t want you to die! Please don’t leave me! ‘Darling, don’t be silly, who says I’m going to die?’ She cried, I learned in school that smokers die because of cancer! I don’t want you to die!’. At that moment, the pain of seeing his beloved daughter’s anguish and fear was so great that he stopped smoking and never took it up again. Or it could be rising to a challenge that causes the change.
Here is another true story. Amit said he quit smoking about 20+ plus ago when his very young daughter threw him this challenge. He had been trying, to no avail, to get her to stop sucking her thumb. When he, once again, prevailed on her to stop, she turned round and said: “Dad, I’ll stop sucking my thumb if you stop smoking.” It was a challenge he could not turn down! He stopped smoking there and then!
The first thing you have to do in order to change any habit, it to find a compelling reason to stop now! I want you to think of a limiting habit you would like to change such as biting your nails or watching too much TV. And I want you to write down, in the space below, all the reasons why you MUST change!
I Must Change Because …..(Write your topmost reason)
2) Create an Alternative
If you think of all the times you changed a habit, it is always because there was an alternative behavior that replaced the habit. Stopping a behavior leaves a vacuum in our minds. Unless we replace it with something else, the old habit will return. For example, people who stop smoking will always find themselves doing something else that meets the need that the smoking provided. So they start eating or exercising or playing with kids in order to relax and kill their boredom.
3) A New Pattern is Re-conditioned
Not only must the old bad habit be replaced with a new positive behavior, the new behavior must be conditioned until it becomes a new habit. It is generally believed that you must perform a behavior consistently for 28 days until it becomes a new pattern. In other words, if you can get up early and go for a jog for 28 straight days, you will definitely create a new pattern. Why? Because we need to create a new set of neuro-connections that control that new pattern in our minds!
The good news is that with the Swish pattern you are going to learn, you can create a new neurological pathway and install any behavior within twenty minutes!
The Swish Pattern of Rapid Change
Are you ready to make some fast and lasting changes to your habits? There are six major steps in the Swish pattern.
Step 1. Elicit the Negative Habit to be Changed
First, identify the bad habit which you would like to change. For example, it could be feeling sleepy whenever you need to do some homework, chewing fingernails, over eating, over sleeping, smoking etc. Write down your bad habits now.
For the purpose of this example, let’s say we work on over sleeping in the morning.
Step 2. Identify the TRIGGER that led to the Negative Pattern
Every behavior is triggered off by something we see, hear or feel (or a combination). This is called the TRIGGER IMAGE. For example, how does your brain know when to smoke? Normally, it is because you feel stressed or bored (kinesthetic) or you see others smoke (visual). You must identify what is the TRIGGER that sets off this limiting behavior. In our example, the TRIGGER might be hearing and seeing the alarm clock that fires off the old behavior of going back to sleep! Once you know what this TRIGGER is, create a PICTURE in your mind that is associated with this trigger. We will call this the TRIGGER IMAGE.
Step 3. Elicit the DESIRED STATE/BEHAVIOR that You Want
Instead create a DESIRED IMAGE. The next step is to train your brain to move towards a new positive state and behavior. This means that the same TRIGGER will fire off a new pattern to replace the old habit. For example, hearing the alarm clock go off (TRIGGER) will get you feeling energized, and jumping out of bed (DESIRED STATE/BEHAVIOR)! Now, create an image in your mind that is associated with the new desired state/behavior. For example, you can see yourself in a totally energized state, jumping out of bed and saying, ‘Get up Now, great day ahead!’. This is called the DESIRED IMAGE. Note that the DESIRED IMAGE must be one where you are ASSOCIATED into the experience.
In order to install this new TRIGGER ➤ BEHAVIOR, we need to literally condition this pattern in our brain so as to form a new set of neuro-connections. This is done in step 4.
Step 4. Swish the TRIGGER IMAGE Away, and Swish the DESIRED IMAGE Towards You at a HIGH SPEED with a ‘Whoosh’ Sound.
This is best done standing up. I want you to close your eyes and see the TRIGGER IMAGE as a picture in front of you. Now, imagine grabbing the image with both hands and throwing it forcefully away from you! Make the sound ‘Whoosh’ Imagine the TRIGGER IMAGE moving away at HIGH SPEED and getting smaller and smaller until it becomes a tiny dot. Then, see it become the DESIRED IMAGE coming back at HIGH SPEED towards you. It gets larger and larger until it reaches you, then you grab it with both hands! Keep on making the sound ‘whoosh!’ At this time, you must be ASSOCIATED with the DESIRED IMAGE. So, get yourself into an energized state by adopting the physiology and see yourself jumping out of bed! Say to yourself what you would say if you felt totally energized (in a very energized tone), ‘Get up Now, great day ahead!’
Step 5. Repeat this 10-15 times
Keep repeating this process with as much energy and speed as you can muster. It gets easier with repetition. You will know it’s habituated when you feel that this new pattern is a ‘normal’ feeling.
Step 6. Test by Future Pacing
The next thing is to test if it works. One way is by using a future pace. See yourself going out into the future where you will be in the trigger situation. For example, see yourself in bed and hear the alarm ring. Then see yourself with the new state and behavior.
Again, the ultimate test is what happens the next day! When done effectively, it will be the best model of change you will ever experience. After you do this, you might realize that this is not the only thing you need to do to succeed in waking up effectively. Everything you can sense in your working environment must be used as triggers to get you to wake up, including your bed, blanket and the presence of your body on the bed. Flexible people have multiple triggers to get them into states of absolute resourcefulness. Let’s discover even more strategies about how to condition your brain for success in the next article.
(I facilitate Thought Leaders, Change Makers; Professionals & Business Owners translate NLP concepts into actions to achieve and elicit personal excellence. I conduct NLP Lifestyle Coaching Certification programs for individuals, corporate and celebrity clients. In the next article, you will learn about anchoring – the keyboard to your emotions. And after that you will come to know in subsequent articles, how you can utilize concepts of NLP+ in all walks of your life to replicate the success blueprint of a winner mindset to win through life. So, stay tuned every Monday & Friday and fasten your seat belt to ‘Enhance Your Lifestyle With NLP+’)
Shantanu Das Sharma, Creator of the concept NLP Lifestyle Coaching with NLP+, Founder of Neuromind Leadership Academy is an Amazon #1 Best Selling Author, NLP Lifestyle Master Trainer & Coach, Clean Language Facilitator & Strategic Interventionist.
