“SELF TALK” AND NLP: Part 1

I’ll give a little rundown on how we talk to ourselves in our heads and also to those in our closest relationships, from the perspective of NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming). This is truly our undoing at times, and we may not sensitively recognize this when we allow our basest (least developed) self to take the lead, and we follow. We have been doing this all our lives, and it is a habit patterned into us by our culture, and is deeply engrained in our neural tracks, well-worn as these are.

If you think you can, If you think you can’t, You’re Right! Do you think there is not power in words? Where do words come from within us? What do they mean? Some things you might ask yourself…if you explore this area of your life.

It is about becoming conscious in the way we use language. The words we use come from our perspective on how we are thinking and feelings about ourselves and our endeavors we undertake. These can show our choice of attitude in facing life and living it. Words can respect and honor ourselves, or they can sabotage our becoming, setting us up for failure. It is our choice, if we allow ourselves to become aware. Otherwise, we are just following our earlier programming.

Programming and conditioning are working on us from the day we were born, and is comprised of repetition, over and over again, in almost all areas of life, ie.every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year since we were born. That is alot of repetition! We hear it at home growing up from our parents and relatives, from our friends, from our neighborhoods, churches, schools & books, political icons, and any teacher/mentor, etc.

When you hear the word Neurolinguistic Programming there may be a resistance that develops to the idea of using any neural technology to “reprogram” your Self. However, you may think of NLP in this way: It is neural reconditioning we can apply, because of Brain Plasticity, or the ability Humans have that gives them the capability of rewiring our brain circuitry, when this will benefit us! I do speak of NLP only in the use of Language we use. Its use is much broader than this, if you care to look into it further.

With NLP, the word hypnosis comes up early on. Thus the language we use when we talk to ourselves and our friends has the capability of self hypnosis. This is how it will be handled in this post. I am not looking at how you can hypnotize yourself, since you’ve already done this, but how you can develop awareness of your expertise in this area and be able to interrupt the “old” process, and develop new neural tracks that will benefit you, allowing the “old” tracks to dissipate through disuse.

There are certain words we use that I will call “inbetween words”, such as: I wish, probably, hopefully, I may, I might, maybe, I hope, we’ll see, It could be, etc. There are other words, but what they all have in common is their leaving room for doubt, showing a lack of self confidence, enabling you to put off outcomes for later that show you are not fully invested in what you are doing=all of this points more to a negative result for your intention.

In order to prove this to yourself, that you engage in this use of language, take a period of ~5-7 days and just observe yourself. Observe, but do not censor yourself. Allow to be as you usually are, and say what you usually would say in whatever circumstances your living has evoked daily. While you are doing this observation, also turn it onto what you say to friends, and others in general, and what all these say to you spontaneously, off the top of your heads…

When you hear something you say that rings this language bell, write it down, ie. make a list. You might surprise yourself. Don’t be too hard on yourself, since all cultures’ peoples are suppressed to fall into these similar wishy-washy, doubt enabling, actually negative-leaning words and phrases.

All are geared to get you to look to an authority outside yourself, so you will not think for yourself. So you will not exercise the Genius within…so that eventually you will not challenge the Powers That Be, literally, in any way. We are wanted to be like lemmings, senselessly following the lead of any strong figure that attracts us in our particular domains.

Strength of thought, strong intentions, and the persistence in follow-through steps toward what we want is what we are concerned with here. We are becoming Self Leaders. As a Self Leader, we literally do not want to allow our betrayal by the language we select! Discernment is paramount. Being able to see our way clearly to what we want is our goal, while interrupting our “mysticisms” that interfere.

We are wanting to pick the exact right words that fully express what we are about and want to accomplish.

This is enough for today…Happy Observation to All!

Lovingly, 
Lila Bennett