Using Your Brain —for a CHANGE

Woman: I think I understand that, but I'm trying to fit it in with some of the NLP anchoring techniques I learned earlier. For instance, there's a technique where you make a picture of how you'd like to be, then step into it to get the kinesthetic feelings, and then anchor that state.

Right. That's one of the old techniques. It has its uses, but it also has certain drawbacks. If someone has a really detailed and accurate internal representation, you can create a specific behavior that will work very nicely. But if you just make a picture of what you'd like to be like, and step inside it to feel what it's like to be there, that doesn't necessarily mean that you are there with any quality, or that you learned much along the way. It's an excellent way to build self–delusions, and it also doesn't give you anywhere else to go.

A lot of people go to therapists asking to feel more confident, when they're incompetent. That lack of confidence may be accurate feedback about their abilities. If you use anchoring to make someone feel confident, that feeling may allow her to do things she actually could do already but wasn't confident enough to try. That will increase her abilities as well. But it may only create overconfidence — someone who is still incompetent but doesn't notice it any more! There are plenty of people like that around already, and they're often dangerous to others as well as to themselves. I've been commenting for years about how many people ask a therapist for confidence, and so few ask for competence.

You can change somebody so that he believes he's the very best at something he does, when he can't do it very well at all. When a person is good at acting confident, he usually convinces lots of other people to trust in abilities that he doesn't have. It never ceases to amaze me how many people think that if an "expert" acts confident, he must know what he is doing. I figure that as long as you are going to have a false sense of security, you might as well develop some competence along the way.

Where's Amy? Did you finish doing the swish with the new picture?

Amy: Yes.

How long did it take you to do that five times? Amy: Quite a while.

I thought so. I want you to do it again faster. It should only take you a second or two each time. Speed is also a very important element of this pattern. Brains don't learn slowly, they learn fast. I'm not going to let you do the process wrong and then come back later and say, "Oh, it didn't work." Do it now, and I'll watch you. Open your eyes after each swish. . . ,

Now make that first picture. What happens? . . .

Amy: It goes away now.

Do you want a cigarette? (He holds out a pack of cigarettes.) Amy: No thank you.

Is the compulsion there? I don't care if you smoke or not. I want to know if that automatic urge is there or not. A few minutes ago you said you had the urge to smoke.

Amy: I don't feel compelled to smoke right now.

Here. Hold the cigarettes; take one out and hold it between your fingers. Look at them; fool with them.

When you do change work, don't back away from testing it; push it. Events in the world are going to push it, so you may as well do it so you can find out right away. That way you can do something about it. Observing your client's nonverbal responses will give you much more information than the verbal answers to your questions. (Amy smells the cigarettes, and her facial expression shifts quickly.) Oops, there it is again; the smell of the cigarettes brought back the compulsion. You'll have to go back and do the swish again, and add in smell this time. In that first picture, when you see someone offer you a cigarette, you'll smell that cigarette smell. And in that second picture, you'll see yourself satisfied that you can smell cigarettes and not be compulsed. Go back and do it again that way.

This is called being thorough. A mathematician doesn't just get an answer and say, "OK, I'm done." He tests his answers carefully, because if he doesn't, other mathematicians will! That kind of rigor has always been missing from therapy and education. People try something and then do a two–year follow–up study to find out if it worked or not. If you test rigorously, you can find out what a technique works for and what it doesn't work for, and you can find out right away. And where you find out that it doesn't work, you need to try some other technology.

What I've taught you here is a simplified version of a more general swish pattern. Even so, some of you got lost and confused. Another way to be thorough is to swish in all systems to start with. But it's usually much more economical to just do it in the visual system and then test rigorously to find out what else you need to add. Often you don't need to add in anything. Either that person doesn't need it, or she will add it in on her own without realizing it.