Improving Your Relationship With Yourself

It seems to be normal in our society for most people to beat themselves up emotionally on a regular basis. This is mainly in the form of negative self-talk (internal dialogue) and people say things to themselves that they wouldn't dream of saying to anyone else. It is one of the most common issues faced by our students as they make their journey through the NLP Practitioner Training.

Our research has shown that by the time the students have finished the course this negative internal dialogue has reduced significantly and their relationship with themselves has dramatically improved. Many other things have improved significantly too, like self-confidence, wellbeing, having more choices about how they experience life and even evidence of what Abraham Maslow called self-actualisation, the final level of psychological development that can be achieved when all basic, emotional and mental needs are fulfilled.

It's a strange business this 'beating yourself up', for example, "Why am I always so stupid?" Who is doing the beating up and who is being beaten up? There must be at least two of you in there! And yet the beliefs of the culture say there is only one of you. So which is it?

I think the simplest and most useful way to address this conundrum is to say that there are at least two of you in there: your conscious mind self and your unconscious mind self. What do I mean by conscious mind and unconscious mind?

Well, your conscious mind is where 'conscious you' lives. That endless flow of conscious thoughts creates the virtual reality of who you think you are - pretty compelling stuff. But where does this flow of thoughts (including beat myself up thoughts) come from?

From unconscious mind, which decides which thoughts are going to pop into you conscious mind next. Neuroscience shows that unconscious mind prepares these thoughts for 'popping' over 500 milliseconds before they 'pop' into conscious mind. Now this makes 'free will' look distinctly endangered, but it's place is taken by 'free won't'. Any thought may pop into your head (e.g. beat myself up again), but having popped, you can consciously decided whether to follow it, or abandon it and replace with something more useful. This is a habit well worth mastering.

One practical tip, when you do have an unhelpful thought, ask what its positive intention is. For example, what might the positive intention be for calling yourself stupid? Paradoxically, it might be to get you to be more intelligent in future. How might you do that? By asking yourself the learning question, "How would I do that differently next time?"

At its simplest there are three different levels to the unconscious mind.

* The first of these levels includes everything that is outside of present moment awareness - shift your awareness and you can be aware of something (internally or externally) that was previously unconscious.

* The second of these levels is the sum of all experiences and memories that you can be aware of by shifting your attention internally. This is your maximum conscious mind reality.

* And the third level is all of the unconscious processing the brain/mind does in order to create and sustain the (almost illusory) conscious mind. This is the level of greatest unconscious capability. This is where 'unconscious you' lives. And this is the level most worth making friends with and harnessing.

I want to leave you with a simple but powerful strategy for doing exactly this. I first came across a version of this modelled from top creative artists. It is very effective. All you need is the belief that your unconscious mind is better equipped to solve your emotional problems than your conscious mind in - not too hard really. Notice when something is getting to you emotionally. Think of the issue as clearly as possible, and then think of the best question to ask. For example, "What would the best resolution be to this issue?"

Hold this question in your mind from time to time, and ask your unconscious mind to let you know when it has found the answer. (Do NOT try to answer it consciously).This process usually takes hours, days, or sometimes, weeks. This is pretty much what happens when you've got a difficult decision to make, and you decide to sleep on it. Your unconscious mind does the thinking while you're asleep, and when you wake up, the decision has made itself.

I call this process 'Holding the Question'. May you find it useful.

"The image used was found using a creative commons search on flickr and is by spaceamoeba"

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Origin: dominant-male.blogspot.com