Two men, both seriously ill, occupied the same hospital room. One man was allowed to sit up in his bed for an hour each afternoon to help drain the fluid from his lungs. His bed was next to the room’s only window. The other man had to spend all his time flat on his back.
The men talked for hours on end. They spoke of their wives and families, their homes, their jobs, their involvement in the military service, where they had been on vacation.
And every afternoon when the man in the bed by the window could sit up, he would pass the time by describing to his roommate all the things he could see outside the window. The man in the other bed began to live for those one-hour periods where his world would be broadened and enlivened by all the activity and color of the world outside.
The window overlooked a park with a lovely lake. Ducks and swans played on the water while children sailed their model boats. Young lovers walked arm in arm amidst flowers of every color of the rainbow. Grand old trees graced the landscape, and a fine view of the city skyline could be seen in the distance.
As the man by the window described all this in exquisite detail, the man on the other side of the room would close his eyes and imagine the picturesque scene.
One warm afternoon the man by the window described a parade passing by. Although the other man couldn’t hear the band – he could see it in his mind’s eye as the gentleman by the window portrayed it with descriptive words.
Days and weeks passed. One morning, the day nurse arrived to bring water for their baths only to find the lifeless body of the man by the window, who had died peacefully in his sleep. She was saddened and called the hospital attendants to take the body away.
As soon as it seemed appropriate, the other man asked if he could be moved next to the window. The nurse was happy to make the switch, and after making sure he was comfortable, she left him alone. Slowly, painfully, he propped himself up on one elbow to take his first look at the world outside. Finally, he would have the joy of seeing it for himself.
He strained to slowly turn to look out the window beside the bed. It faced a blank wall. The man asked the nurse what could have compelled his deceased roommate who had described such wonderful things outside this window. The nurse responded that the man was blind and could not even see the wall. She said, „Perhaps he just wanted to encourage you.“
Monat: Januar 2013
To give a sense of how submodalities code emotional information, consider the following study.
In research by Emily Balcetis, an assistant professor in NYU’s Department of Psychology, and David Dunning, a Cornell professor of psychology, volunteers tossed a beanbag towards a gift card (worth either $25 or $0) on the floor.
They were told that if the beanbag landed on the card, they would be given the card. Interestingly, the volunteers threw the beanbag much farther if the gift card was worth $0 than if it was worth $25 — that is, they underthrew the beanbag when attempting to win a $25 gift card, because they viewed that gift card as being closer to them.
These findings indicate that when we want something, we actually view it as being physically close to us. Moving an object, in our imagination, closer to us makes us see it as more significant.
This is then the basis for several NLP processes such as the “visual swish”, in which an image of a desired future self is moved quickly closer and becomes brighter.
„Johnny and Julie“ who live in the forest and they also have a little dog living with them. One day the dog starts barking and runs into the house and next minute we see pieces of glass and water on the floor of the living room and Julie is dead. What happened?
Elicit responses from the audience.
They can ask me question and you should answer yes or no only.
They come up with all sorts of crazy concepts… and usually have a very hard time figuring out what happened.
After enough answers, continue with the solution.
The solution is that Julie is in fact a fish – and she was in an aquarium which the dog pushed down from the shelves – the aquarium broke and Julie died.
The story nicely illustrates how you assume that Julie must be human – which is a distortion and generalization. It can help people realize how stuck we are with our maps.
It is there but is it available?
Today it was raining cats and dogs… Thank God I had my umbrella and my raincoat with me. However, my umbrella was locked in my car’s trunk and my raincoat locked inside my car. I was thinking about this as I was running to my car and I was getting soaked. I realized that this was a wonderful metaphor for the way we pass through the tempests of life: each one of us has the inner resources needed to face up with whatever life has to throw in our path. The problem is that often our resources are locked up inside where they cannot immediately do us any good. One of the best ways of freeing our inner resources is through hypnosis and NLP.
In a mother’s womb were two babies.
One asked the other: „Do you believe in life after delivery?“
The other replies, „why, of course. There has to be something after delivery.
Maybe we are here to prepare ourselves for what we will be later. “
„Nonsense,“ says the other.
„There is no life after delivery. What would that life be?“
„I don’t know, but there will be more light than here. Maybe we will walk with our legs and eat from our mouths.“
The other says „This is absurd! Walking is impossible. And eat with our mouths? Ridiculous. The umbilical cord supplies nutrition. Life after delivery is to be excluded. The umbilical cord is too short.“
„I think there is something and maybe it’s different than it is here.“
The other replies, „No one has ever come back from there. Delivery is the end of life, and in the after-delivery it is nothing but darkness and anxiety and it takes us nowhere.“
„Well, I don’t know,“ says the other, „but certainly we will see mother and she will take care of us.“
„Mother? You believe in mother? Where is she now?“
„She is all around us. It is in her that we live. Without her there would not be this world.“
„I don’t see her, so it’s only logical that she doesn’t exist.“
To which the other replied, „sometimes when you’re in silence you can hear her, you can perceive her.“
I believe there is a reality after delivery and we are here to prepare ourselves for that reality.
A widow from a poor village in Bengal did not have enough money to pay for her son’s bus fare, and so when the boy started going to school, he would have to walk through the forest all on his own.
In order to reassure him, she said:
‘Don’t be afraid of the forest, my son. Ask your God Krishna to go with you. He will hear your prayer.’
The boy followed his mother’s suggestion, and Krishna duly appeared and from then on accompanied him to school every day.
When it was his teacher’s birthday, the boy asked his mother for some money in order to buy him a present.
‘We haven’t any money, son. Ask your brother Krishna to get you a present.’
The following day, the boy explained his problem to Krishna, who gave him a jug of milk.
The boy proudly handed the milk to the teacher, but the other boys’ presents were far superior and the teacher didn’t even notice his.
‘Where did you get that jug?’
‘Krishna, the God of the forest, gave it to me.’
The teacher, the students and the assistant all burst out laughing.
‘There are no gods in the forest, that’s pure superstition,’ said the teacher. ‘If he exists, let’s all go and see him.’
The whole group set off. The boy started calling for Krishna, but he did not appear.
The boy made one last desperate appeal.
‘Brother Krishna, my teacher wants to see you. Please show yourself!’
At that moment, a voice emerged from the forest and echoed through the city and was heard by everyone.
‘I can’t! He doesn’t even believe I exist.