Bad Habits? Use The NLP Six-Step Reframe That Guarantees Instant Personal Changes

Date:2007-06-27

For nearly all people, the highway to personal transformation and self-improvement is a long and winding street filled with intricate barriers. Pharmaceutical companies in particular have capitalized on and created massive fortunes because of 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 unconscious mind.

One of the rules of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) is that "there is a positive intention behind all behaviors." And based on that law, when it comes to getting rid of negative behaviors, there is an equation that we should always keep in mind. I'll let you in on the secret in a minute. But first, I have a riddle for you to solve.

Riddle: A preacher made his son drink lye, which burned out the child's vocal chords. What was the positive intention behind this action?

If you are like 99.9% of the clients who have come into my office since 1978, you'll say something like: "There's no positive intention behind that behavior." But you would be totally mistaken. To answer this riddle, you have to separate the behavior from the positive intention of the behavior.

The minister's son was cursing. And the minister believes that if a child curses, his soul will be condemned to Hell. So the answer is that the minister was burning out his child's vocal cords so that he couldn't curse. By doing so, he was saving his child's soul from being destined to Hell.

The secret equation for personal change works as follows:

We must respect the positive intention behind every behavior. If we have a compulsion to apply a behavior that we do not like, we can easily get rid of the impulse to use that behavior. All we must do is to find another 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. This is called a REFRAME.

When clients come into my office, one of the first things that I do is to take a detailed case history. Let's pretend that they come to me and ask me to help them lose weight. Experience tells us that the two main reasons that anyone eats excessively are: (1) to reduce stress; (2) because eating can be a conditioned response. Case in point, 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 a craving for food.

However, the above answer only takes into consideration the possible secondary gain from the behavior of eating. What if they also have another behavior that is concerned in the equation? For example: What if being chubby is also a behavior for this person? I can hear your mind grinding right now as you think, "Being overweight isn't a behavior, what are you talking about?"

Sorry but you could be entirely incorrect. Here is one classic textbook example that will illustrate the fact that being overweight 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 breaks her heart. Her subconscious wants to protect her emotionally and keep her from having her heart broken again. So it motivates her to get overweight to keep her out of relationships. That way she will not get her heart broken again.

Everyone is totally different. And sometimes there are elements at work causing uncontrollable behaviors. These are elements that are different for each person.

Here's another instance: A woman comes to my office complaining of an uncontrollable compulsion to eat way too much at mealtime. During my case history, upon questioning, the woman explains how she has never been able to satisfy her dad.

During an age regression, we learned that one of her early memories was of eating dinner with the family. And her dad was insisting in a very loud voice that she finish all of the food on her plate, even though she was stuffed. So she ate the food left on her plate because of fear, and her dad praised her for finishing 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.

Jump forward to the present. Her father has been gone for years, but the subconscious program he created is still working. She still has an urge to eat all of the food on her plate, even if she is feeling stuffed to the gills, because by cleaning the plate, in her unconscious mind she is getting her dad's approval, and eliminating her own fear!

So if you are having a problem making personal changes, remember that there is a positive intention that causes all behaviors. And the formula for success is to alternate a different behavior that will achieve the same secondary gains, but in a manner that is more consciously suitable to you, as an individual. The most effective way to get your subconscious to take the responsibility for making this kind of alteration for you is through a Neuro-Linguistic Programming 6-Step Reframing Method.