18 – Using NLP to Improve Your Confidence

Hello and Welcome to Episode 18 of the Everyday Confidence Podcast from theSkillfulmind.com. I’m your host, Steve George and today I’d like to show you to some NLP techniques to control your anxiety, and help you become more confident.

 

Hello again. Okay, today I want to talk a little bit about Neuro-Linguistic programming, or NLP. And go over briefly, three of the techniques we use in NLP to help with things like overcoming the anxieties you feel when you’re trying to make changes to your life.

 

Specifically, those anxieties that can leave you feeling ‘less than’, or anxieties that can immediately block your motivation, or make you even more resistant to the changes you know you need to make, if you’re going to improve.
Often, we know exactly what we need to do, but it’s the possible negative side effects of those actions, that holds us back. Because we’re probably going to be doing something that’s outside of our comfort zone, or it’s something we’ve not been very successful with in the past.

 

Okay, so today, the three tools we’re going to look at are… Anchoring, Meta-Modeling and reframing. And, each of the three can be used independently, or together as an overall system.

 

Now, I’ve mentioned these techniques briefly back in episode 10. But, they can be so powerful, especially when you use them all together that I wanted to spend a bit more time explaining each of them individually today.
Okay, so the first technique, as I just said, is called Anchoring. And an anchor is very similar to a bookmark.

 

When you’re reading a book, it’s likely that you’ll come across certain things you want to remember. Especially if you’re reading something like a non-fiction book.Now, you can make few notes, or try to keep the information in your head, but what you’re left with is never as good, or as helpful as the original information.

 

So what’s the answer? Well, you could put a piece of paper in between the pages you want to go back to. Or you can fold the corner of the page over, or something like that. And then that way, when you want to go back and find that information, you can just flip immediately to the page and read it again. You’ve used an anchor, to quickly find what you’re looking for, without having to think about it.

 

And an anchor for your confidence, or motivation, or to overcome a particular anxiety, works in exactly the same way. You get your bookmark, by recollecting a time when you were experiencing the emotions and feelings you want to experience, again. Then, you anchor that, by associating those feelings and emotions to an external, repeatable stimulus, usually a gesture of some kind.

 

So, Anchoring works by conditioning a particular trigger, to cause a specific response. So, in simple terms, let’s say you wanted to be able to feel more Motivated to do a particular task.

 

Then, close your eyes, relax, and remember a time in the past, when you experienced intense motivated feelings. A time when you were feeling really motivated. It doesn’t matter what you were doing at the time as long as the feelings and emotions you were experiencing were feelings of motivation. It doesn’t have to be a memory of you doing something similar, it can really can be a memory of anything.

 

Okay, now while you’re in that memory, remember all the sensory cues associated with it as well. Things like, what you saw, what you heard, were there any distinctive smells, things like that? Now, fully concentrate on that memory and bring the entire experience to its most intense point. Then, when you’re really feeling all of those emotions and all those feelings again, associate those feelings to an anchor (so, for example, pull your index finger, pinch your earlobe, touch your middle finger with your thumb) something like that.

 

Now be careful not to choose a trigger that you’re going to be doing naturally anyway, coz you wouldn’t want to be firing off all these powerful feelings all the time would you? So, be careful to pick something quite specific. Otherwise, you’ll be walking around super motivated all the time.

 

Anyway, once you’ve anchored those feelings, take a short break. Let your mind slip back into it’s normal state.

 

Then, repeat exactly the same steps again. And the more often you boost the anchor, by repeating the process, the stronger the effect will be. You can use a different memory if you want, as long as the new memory is also about a time you were highly motivated.

 

Now, once you’ve anchored those feelings, you can test it. Fire the anchor by doing whatever the associated gesture was (so, pull your finger, pinch your earlobe.) whatever it was, and all those intense feelings from your past memory will flood back again.

 

Now, whenever you need to feel motivated, you can just fire the anchor and give yourself an immediate boost.
Okay, so that’s anchoring. And next is… Meta-modelling.

 

Now, everybody’s already got a meta-model, because a meta-model is basically, the set of questions we use to design our model of the world, or our map of what’s real to us. I’ve explained in another episode, that what we perceive as the event happening to us, is really just our interpretations of what’s happening to us, rather than the actual event itself and I’ll link to that podcast on the podcast page for this episode, in case you haven’t listened to that one yet.

 

Now, the problem with the model we use everyday though, is it causes us more problems than it solves because of the way we tend to generalize, delete and distort information coming into out minds, through the way that we use our speech.

 

In fact, Neuro Linguistic Programming literally means the way our mind (or neuro) and our language (linguistic), programmes us to act in a particular way.

 

So, if we can analyze, then change the way we use our language, we can develop a more useful meta-model.

 

Okay, so the three ways I said we create problems with our language, Generalizations, Deletions and Distortions. I’ll give you an example of each one, so you can get a better idea of what each one is.

 

Right, so Generalizations are things like… “This always happens to me”, or “I’ll never get this right”, or “Why do I always feel like this?”, “No one likes me”, “Everyone tries to ignore me” things like that. So the key words here are things like, Always, Never, Everyone, No one.

 

And what we tend to do, is we tend to generalize one incident onto every similar incident.

 

So, if you find yourself using a generalization such as… “All Men are arrogant”. You should Stop, and ask yourself questions like, “Is that really true? Are ALL Men arrogant?” “Do I know any men who aren’t arrogant?” And that’ll help you see that generalization can’t possibly be completely true.

 

Okay, next is Deletions. Now, you’ll experience deletions most often if you’re someone with a low self-esteem, for example. Where, because you’ve got a low opinion of yourself, you’ll quickly accept the negative things people say about you. But you don’t acknowledge the compliments you get, as being relevant.

 

So, if for example, someone compliments you on a particular task you completed at work, you’ll probably respond with something like, “I was just doing my job, it’s nothing. Anyone could’ve done it” So, you delete the compliment as something anyone could have done and it had nothing to do with you specifically.

 

Now, if you use a deletion, like brushing off a compliment, ask yourself something like… “Could what this person’s saying, be true?”, “could it be, that I have done a good job?”.

 

And finally, Distortions are when we make an unrealistic judgment about something, without any proof. So, for example, thinking “Joe hasn’t called me for a week, so obviously I must have done something to upset them”.We ascribe a specific result, based on our unproven thoughts about ourselves. So, for example, because ‘X’ has happened, I must have done ‘Y’.

 

And if you find yourself using a distortion like… “Joe hasn’t called me for a week, so obviously I must have done something to upset them.” Ask yourself if there could be another, different reason why he hasn’t called?

 

By using this type of questioning, you can help yourself become much more resilient to what are called, cognitive distortions, or thoughts that cause you to inaccurately perceive reality.

 

And finally, the third tool is Re-framing.

 

Now Re-framing is exactly what it sounds like. You re-frame an event in your mind, so that it means something else. So, when you experience any event, or situation, that event, or situation is filtered through your belief system. And your belief system gives you a frame of reference to work with. And especially in people with a low self-esteem or problems with confidence, those frames of reference can very often be negative.

 

Now I know I’ve mentioned it before, that our emotions are trying to help us, but it’s absolutely true. They’re always trying to give us a positive outcome, even if sometimes, we think they’re restricting the things we really want to do.

 

And that’s because our mind has developed some very powerful skills to protect us from danger. It’s just unfortunate, they can be a bit over zealous at times and jump to some unhelpful conclusions.

 

So, let’s use the simple example of a fear of flying (Aerophobia). When the time comes to get onto a plane, your ‘fear of flying pattern’ starts to run. And, you begin to think of all the reasons you shouldn’t be getting on the plane. Things like, “What if the landing gear breaks?”, “What if one of the engines catches fire?”. And then on to those thoughts, you add in the odd generalization like, “If any of those things happen, I’m definitely going to die!”.

 

And that’s just your mind trying to protect you.

 

So, the way to re-frame this, is to focus on all the positive aspects, flying will give you.

 

A great example is to remind yourself that approximately 1.35 million people die in road accidents every year around the World. And that’s an average of 3,700 people per day! And in the whole of 2019, 287 people died in a plane crash!
By choosing not to get on the plane and driving there instead, it effectively means you’re 4,704 times more likely to die, than if you just went by plane!So, by choosing to fly, you’re actually increasing your chances of survival.

 

You’ve reframed what in your mind, was initially the real possibility of death, to something that’s much less dangerous than the alternative.

 

Now, before I get a load of nasty emails. I know it’s not as easy as that and flying is quite an extreme example, but it gives you a good idea of how the process works.

 

And obviously, the belief systems you’re using every day has taken you years to build and strengthen, but using these tools does work. Like I’ve said loads of times before, build on your successes. If you can talk yourself into flying once, that’s a success and every attempt after that is going to be easier.

 

And you can use exactly the same technique for almost anything you’ve got a negative reaction to.

 

Also, always check your beliefs for conflict. Usually, your mind is using some sort of outdated pattern to try to keep you safe. But, by questioning those patterns, you can make some pretty big positive changes.

 

There you have it. Three NLP tools that can help you achieve huge changes to your life.

 

So today, there’s no single action step for you to take, because everyone’s issues are going to be different. But, take the time to identify which of these things are causing you the biggest problems. Then use these techniques to help you change them.

 

There’ll be links on the podcast page, which’ll be theskillfulmind.com/podcast/18. To different posts and podcast episodes that’ll help you understand a bit more about them. And if you’ve got any questions, leave them as a comment on that page and I’ll do my best to help you find answers.

 

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening and I’ll speak to you in the next episode. Bye for now.