Day 68: Using Your Brain FOR A CHANGE

This excerpt from the book Using Your Brain FOR A CHANGE is from one of the creators of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) Richard Bandler.

"Running Your Own Brain

I'd like you to try some very simple experiments, to teach you a little bit about how you can learn to run your own brain. You will need this experience to understand the rest of this book, so I recommend that you actually do the following brief experiments.

Think of a past experience that was very pleasant - perhaps one that you haven't thought about in a long time. Pause for a moment to go back to that memory, and be sure that you see what you saw at the time that pleasant memory happened. You can close your eyes if that makes it easier to do....

As you look at that pleasant memory, I want you to change the brightness of the image, and notice how your feelings change in response. First make it brighter and brighter....Now make it dimmer and dimmer, until you can barely see it....Now make it brighter again.

How does that change the way you feel? There are always exceptions, but for most of you, when you make the picture brighter, your feelings will become stronger. Increasing brightness usually increases the intensity of feelings, and decreasing brightness usually decreases the intensity of feelings.

How many of you ever thought about the possibility of intentionally varying the brightness of an internal image in order to feel different? Most of you just let your brain randomly show you any picture it wants, and you feel good or bad in response.

Now think of an unpleasant memory, something you think about that makes you feel bad. Now make the picture dimmer and dimmer....If you turn the brightness down far enough, it won't bother you any more. You can save yourself thousands of dollars in psychotherapy bills.

I learned these things from people who did them already. One woman told me that she was happy all the time; she didn't let things get to her. I asked her how she did it, and she said "Well, those unpleasant thoughts come into my mind, but I just turn the brightness down."

Brightness is one of the "submodalities" of the visual modality. Submodalities are universal elements that can be used to change any visual image, no matter what the content is. The auditory and kinesthetic modalities also have submodalities.

Brightness is one of the many things you can vary...[though there are] exceptions to the impact brightness usually has. If you make a picture so bright that it washes out the details and becomes almost white [etc]