New Behaviour Generator
“Bad habits are easier to abandon today than tomorrow”. ~Yiddish
Proverb
Do you ever find yourself repeating certain types of behaviour over
and over again? Once you have repeated the behaviour you think dam
I can’t believe I did that, I can’t believe I have done it again.
All of us have habits, some of them serve us and some of them can be
detrimental and self destructing to ourselves and the people around
us. Do you have any habits you would like to change? are the certain
things you do that you are fed up doing, and have reached the point
you want to kick that habit.
Whether it’s biting your nails, lighting a cigarette, eating to much
chocolate cake, approaching a potential date you can’t get the right
words out, or any other form of destructive behaviour.
The good news it is possible to change negative habits very quickly,
with a technique we shall go through later in the module, so providing
you want to remove an existing habit it is possible to remove it very
quickly.
Once a habitual behaviour has been learned it can be beneficial for
positive behaviours i.e. exercising, eating well, or be detrimental to
negative behaviour such as smoking and drinking. Sabotaging our
relationships, living with our limitations.
Examples of some positive and negative habits
Keeping your self in good shape by exercising = good habit
Lighting a cigarette when your stressed at work = bad habit
Tying shoelaces = good habit
Driving a car = good habit
Biting your nails = bad habit
Fear of flying = bad habit
Drinking excessive alcohol bad habit
Consciously we can distinguish a good or bad habit; most people know
smoking damages their health. And what foods such as fruit and
vegetables are good for them. However why is it that people carry on
sabotaging their lives by smoking, drinking, feeling negative?
If people are aware something isn’t good for them why don’t
they change?
Habitual behaviour is typically a way of creating order or structure to
day-to-day life. Habitual behaviour is learned and then becomes
automatic without the person being consciously aware of doing it.
Negative habitual behaviours can be detrimental to physical and
mental health, the most common being smoking and drinking. They
can last a life time and be detrimental to someone’s life.
Subconscious / Conscious Mind
The mind has two parts: the conscious and the subconscious. A useful
analogy is an iceberg. The conscious mind is the bit that sticks out of
the water. The subconscious mind is the bit hidden away underneath
the surface.
The subconscious is where all the things that you have learnt to do
without thinking is done.
For instance, when you first drove a car, you had to consciously work
out where to put each foot and how to use each new control. As your
driving skills developed, you handed more and more control over to
your subconscious mind. Now you are so proficient that you can drive,
navigate and talk to your passenger all at the same time!
Surprisingly, it is the subconscious that can be in control of our
behaviour most of the time. Once you realise that, a lot of things begin
to make sense. This is the reason people find it very difficult to stop
smoking – they have consciously decided that smoking is bad for their
health, costs a fortune, is ruining their complexion, etc. However, they
have not taken into account their subconscious reasons for wanting to
carry on smoking. Go back to the iceberg analogy; if the little bit at
the top wants to go one way and the huge bit at the bottom wants to
go the other way, guess who’s going to win?
Consciously we know smoking is bad for you, we know eating too
much chocolate makes us put on weight; we know drinking to much
alcohol isn’t good for you.
So why do we do it?
Once you understand about the role of the subconscious, you can
understand where a lot of odd behaviour comes from. People get stuck
in a rut because their subconscious doesn’t know how to change.
People can get disturbing thoughts or feelings because the
subconscious thinks that something bad is about to happen.
The conscious mind is only aware of a limited amount of
information at any given time, (i.e. try drive, talk on your
mobile phone and do your make up at the same time).The
unconscious mind is aware of everything else, the sound of the
cars outside, the breeze blowing through the window, the
sound of the TV in the background, your feet landing against
the pavement as you walk, the aeroplane flying overhead. The
million of memories we store in our mind from the day we are
born, birthdays, scoring that winning goal, your first kiss.
Roles of Conscious/Subconscious Mind
The conscious mind does your intellectual thinking. Is
responsible for your self-talk.
Your unconscious mind does your perceiving and feeling.
The conscious mind is logical. It likes things to make sense –
have a reason.
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The unconscious mind is intuitive and can make associations of
information easily.
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Your conscious mind is associated with the waking, thinking
state.
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The unconscious mind is associated with the dreaming (including
day dreaming), reflecting, meditating and sleeping state.
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The conscious can voluntarily move parts of your body.
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The unconscious can involuntarily move parts of your body.
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Your conscious mind is only aware of the now.
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Your unconscious mind is unlimited in time and space. It holds
all your memories and future constructs.
Our Behaviour
Because our behaviour is governed by our subconscious mind, think
about it, physiologically do we need to tell our finger nails to grow, do
we need to tell our hair to grow, our heart to beat, tell ourselves to
breathe, when we are hungry, feel like going to bed, do we need to
consciously tell our selves how to make a cup of tea.
We just do it almost like we are auto pilot. SUBCONCIOUSLY
Successful people, whether they are top athletes or entrepreneurs,
have mastered the power of their conscious and subconscious mind to
produce their success. Many of us haven’t tapped into the unlimited
potential of our minds because we lack the understanding of how our
minds actually work. When we decidedly focus our effort on creating
unity with the conscious and subconscious minds, we can achieve a
greater sense of happiness and success in our lives than we ever
thought possible.
That explains why people make conscious decisions at the start of
every January to go to the gym and get into best shape ever only to
give up by February; statistics say 90percent of people who join gym
give up in first six months. We have all the right intentions though the
sub conscious mind steers us away.
In order for behaviour to make change and last we must work at a
subconscious level ,if we are going to give up the cigarettes and stay
off them, then we need to change at a sub conscious level. How you
ask, how I can give up the chocolate, give up smoking, stop biting my
nails, stop sabotaging my success.
The New Behaviour Generator
is one of NLP’s simplest and most
powerful patterns for changing behaviour. Use it to…
Q Stop smoking
Q lose weight
Q get rid of anger problems
Q Break habits
Q Form healthier habits
Q Increase performance
Q overcome fears and anxieties
Q get more confidence
You see, the subconscious mind needs clear directions in a very
specific format if it’s going to motivate you to do something. Without
this “roadmap,” change can be very difficult. With this powerful
technique the new behaviour is easy and automatic. Old habits you
want to get rid of fall away; new healthy habits you wish to replace
them with take their place.
One of the things to bare in mind with this technique is by changing
your state of mind i.e. the state of mind your in when you eat that
chocolate cake, pick up that bottle, miss out on going to the exercise
class. You can change you state of mind from a negative one to a
more positive one, and in the more positive state of mind, you achieve
a more positive outcome.
For example you may link feeling stressed in a certain situation to
smoking, so by smoking you compensating for your feelings, be
changing your state of mind from feeling stressed, to feeling
empowered. The new state of mind produces a new outcome, so
instead of picking up a cigarette, in your new empowered state you
doing something more positive like eat a peace of fruit.
New Behaviour Generator
:
Technique to assist you in over coming negative behaviour and
unwanted bad habits.
First decide on a behaviour you would like to change and
decide on a new behaviour to replace it
1. Think of a time you demonstrated that behaviour you would
like, or choose a role model
that has the behaviour, skills or
abilities that you want for yourself.
I.e. confident, motivated, excellent public speaker.
2. Close your eyes and visualize yourself or that person in
action.
Watch it like a movie in your mind.
See how you or they look, how you or they how they use their body,
how you or they their posture; how you or they how they stand, walk,
and sit. Pay close attention. Hear how you or they talk, what you or
they say, and how you or they say it.
3. Ask yourself: do you really want to adopt this behaviour to
change the old one?
Confirm that it is what you want for yourself.
4. See yourself as the model or yourself conducting this choice
of behaviour.
You have stepped into the role model’s place. You are
watching yourself do as the model does. You have taken over the role
and are acting exactly like your role model. Or imagine reliving a time
you did the preferred behaviour
5. Do you feel any negativity come up within you when you
watch yourself?
Any doubts that you are capable of doing as the
model does or producing your new behaviour? Go through them one
by one and adjust them, or adjust your action in the movie, until you
are happy with what you see and hear in this new behaviour. Feel
positive and confident in your abilities.
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6. Mentally step inside the picture.
You are now inside your movie
image, looking through your own eyes. You are no longer watching
yourself. You are doing the new behaviour just as you did it in the past
or the model did it. How does it feel to perform this new behaviour or
be this person with these new behaviours? How does your body feel?
How is your posture? What do you hear? How does your voice sound
to you?
7. Imagine a future situation where you want to behave this
way.
Put yourself there. Look through your own eyes at this situation.
You are the star of this movie and behaving in the new way! Is it all
working? Do you need to make any adjustments?
8. Open your eyes and come to the present moment.
9. Imagine that you are now the new you with the new
behaviour.
Get up and walk around as the new model. Walk the walk
and talk the talk as they say. How does it feel?
Building new pathways in the mind is a great way to adopt a new
behaviour, one way I like to put it is re patterning existing negative
thought process and replacing it with a more productive level of
thinking, even by doing this technique it can be powerful enough to
move us forward into a more productive thought process and outcome.