For a lot of people, the boulevard to individual change and self-improvement is a long and winding road filled with complicated barriers. Drug companies in particular have capitalized on and created colossal fortunes based on the elusive search for the “Magic Pill” that will cure all ills. As it turns out, there is a secret formula for success, and it begins in the subconscious mind.

One of the presuppositions of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) is that “there is a positive intention behind all behaviors.” And based on that rule, when it comes to successfully eliminating negative behaviors, there is an equation that we must always keep in mind. I’ll let you in on the secret equation in a minute. But I have a riddle for you to solve first.

Riddle: A preacher made his son drink lye, which burned out his voice box. What was the positive intention behind this action?

If you are like most of the clients who have come into my office since 1978, you’ll angrily say something like: “There’s no positive intention behind that behavior.” But you would be completely wrong. To answer this riddle, you must disconnect the behavior from the positive intent of the behavior.

The preacher’s son was cursing. And the minister believes that if his child curses, his soul will be condemned to Hell. So the answer is that the minister was burning out his son’s voice box so that he couldn’t curse. By doing so, he was saving his son’s soul from being predestined to Hell.

The secret formula for success works as follows:

We must value the positive intent behind each behavior. If we have a compulsion to exercise a behavior that we do not appreciate, we can quickly get rid of the impulse to use that behavior. All we need to do is to find a different behavior and substitute it in its place. To be successful, the new conduct must be as accessible and effective at accomplishing the same secondary gain, but be more consciously tolerable to you. This is called a REFRAME.

When clients come into my practice, the first thing I do is to take a careful case history. In this example, let’s pretend that they come to me and ask me to help them overcome their appetite. Conventional wisdom tells us that the two main reasons that anyone eats too much food are: (1) to reduce stress; (2) because eating can be a behavior triggered by other behaviors that it has been associated with (a conditioned response). For instance, if a person eats while they are working on a computer, they will develop a conditioned response, and thereafter, every time they work on a computer they will get an urge to eat.

However, the above answer only takes into consideration the possible positive intention behind the eating behavior. What if they also have another behavior that is concerned in the equation? Case in point: What if being heavy is also a behavior for this person? I can hear your mind grinding right now as you think, “Being chubby isn’t a behavior, what are you talking about?”

Sorry but you could be entirely wrong. Here is a classic textbook example that will clearly demonstrate the fact that being chubby can be a behavior. It can be a behavior because it can supply secondary gains.

Example: A woman falls in love. Her partner leaves her, and her heart is broken. Her unconscious wants to shield her emotionally and keep her from having her heart broken again. So it motivates her to get chubby to keep her out of relationships. By doing that she will not get her heart broken again.

The point is that everyone is totally different. And sometimes there are elements at work that cause uncontrollable behaviors. These are elements that are different for each person.

Here’s another case in point: A woman comes into my practice complaining of an out of control urge to eat too much at dinnertime. During my case history, upon questioning, the woman explains to me how she has never been able to please her dad.

During an age regression, we learned that one of her earliest memories was of eating a meal with her family. And dad was insisting in an authoritive voice that she eat everything on her plate, even though she was bursting at the seams. So she ate the food left on her plate because of fear, and dad praised her for eating all of the food. It was one of the only times in her life that she could recall her father telling her that she had made him happy.

Shoot forward to the present. Dad’s been dead for years, but the subconscious program he created is still at work. She still has a powerful compulsion to clean her plate, even if she is feeling stuffed, because by cleaning the plate, in her unconscious mind she is getting dad’s approval, and eliminating her own fear!

So if you are having a problem making personal changes, keep in mind that there is a positive intention causing all behaviors. And the secret formula for success is to use a different behavior that will accomplish the same secondary gains, but in a manner that is more consciously acceptable to you, as an individual. The most effective way to get your unconscious to accept the responsibility for making this kind of alteration for you is through an NLP 6-Step Reframe.

Article Source: http://www.kokkada.com

Alan B. Densky, CH is an NLP Practitioner. He began his professional practice of hypnosis & NLP in 1978. He offers an interactive NLP Six-Step Reframing CD on his Neuro-VISION Self Hypnosis website. Also available are his Free hypnosis article library, hypnosis & NLP newsletters and MP3 downloads.

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