The previous article introduced submodalities, one of the most powerful concepts in NLP, and contained a little thought experiment using visual submodalities which I hope you tried out and got the benefit from.
The logical next step would be to write an article about auditory (hearing) submodalities, and how they can help you to, for example, silence the “inner critic”, “chatterbox” or “gremlin”. Since I wrote a perfectly good article years ago covering how to silence the inner critic with submodalities, I’ll just invite you to go and read that one, and (please) try out the exercise (you may find the submodalities checklist in this article useful).
Then come back here to consider the implications of your newfound skill with submodalities for your personal effectiveness and happiness.
The key thing about the exercise in that article (you did do it, didn’t you?) was that you can change how you feel about something by changing the way you think about it – the way you represent it – more effectively than by trying to change what you’re thinking about. You weren’t trying to change the words that inner voice was saying, and you certainly weren’t trying to set up another voice to argue against it.
All you did was change the submodalities of that inner voice – pitch, speed, location, tone, and so on. I hope you’re now beginning to see the truth of what the philosopher Epictetus said two thousand years ago – we respond not to things themselves, but to how we think about them.
That’s a simple idea, and one that’s been around for a long time, and I’m sure you’ve heard it many times before in different forms. What submodalities gives you is a way to put that idea into practice – so that you have a practical way of changing the way you think about something, or the way you experience your life, if the old way isn’t working for you.
Just take a moment to consider the implications for your life, starting right now. Since you now have a way of turning the intensity of how you feel about something up or down, what impact could submodalities have on managing your stress levels, for example? What if you could make your future goals and targets so compelling that you automatically feel strongly motivated to move towards them?
In future articles we’ll explore some more amazing things you can do with submodalities. The best way to make sure you don’t miss them is to subscribe to the Practical NLP newsletter – you’ll get a free ‘Practical NLP’ audiobook too!
Image: US government wartime industrial safety poster from Wikipedia – public domain.
© 2013 – 2023, Andy Smith. All rights reserved.
