Rapid Belief Change Using The Pen And Paper Technique

I was doing an informal coaching session with a colleague the other day who wanted to lose weight. Early on in our conversation, he said "I've always thought of myself as a slightly overweight person."

My spidey-senses started tingling, ">

Our self-perception has great power over our experiences. This person had been watching what he ate, exercising for an hour at a time, 4 or 5 times a week. What's more, he'd been doing it for ages. So why couldn't he seem to shift this excess weight?

His self-perception: "I've always thought of myself as a slightly overweight person."

This is an identity statement, ">is sense of "Who I am". We all like to be somebody, ">).

After thinking about it some more, he decided that rather than being "a slightly overweight person", he would like to be "of average weight".

So I had him do a simple exercise. I asked him to take two pieces of paper ">Losing weight is...
* Being average weight is...
* People who are average weight are...

Then I got him to brainstorm ways of completing the sentences for a couple of minutes (I helped out by saying the sentence-stems above with various tonalities, then waiting for him to complete them).

He started out with "party-approved" ideas like:

* People who are average weight are...healthy, happy, fit

But after a while, some unexpected conclusions started popping out, like:

* People who are average weight are...boring, stupid, nasty, with daft trousers

Suddenly, he started laughing as he remembered various incidents from his school days involving people of average weight, whom he'd sworn to himself that he'd never be like.

While at a conscious level, he'd wanted to become slim & fit, his unconscious mind was holding various negative associations with those ideas. With the process of remembering them & laughing about them, he seemed to be making some significant shifts, but I wanted to be sure, so I invited him to say "I am a person of average weight", then notice & accept any thoughts or sensations that arose.

He did this various times, & I did a bit of future pacing to lock in the changes.

While I was using this simple technique for making changes around weight, you can use it to explore ">Money ">Relationships (I got a woman who was keen to have a relationship to do this exercise, & she came out with "People in relationships are smug ">Success in general: "Success is...", "Becoming successful is...", "Successful people are..."

* Any other area of your life

The wording is optional - you can tune it to whatever your situation is. But keep writing responses until nothing else comes out - then do a little more. :-)

I received a call from my colleague two weeks later, who reported that he'd lost eight pounds, but the strange thing was, he hadn't even been thinking about it! This is often the case with NLP & Hypnosis - something which had been perceived as a problem, & had been a focal point for worry etc, isn't any longer!

I can vouch for that - I can't believe the things I used to think!

Reference: art-of-pickup.blogspot.com