You have the power over what you think about. Your brain performs various functions, such as recalling, thinking, and
imagining, in particular ways.
Flexible Thinking
You have the power over what you think about. You also have the power over how you think about what you think about.
Your brain performs various functions, such as recalling, thinking, and
imagining, in particular ways. Each of your five senses includes a
number of subcategories of information—submodalities. When you
experience or remember something joyful, painful, or frightening, you
do so in a unique way, using particular senses and their submodalities.
By consciously changing the submodalities you use to remember
experiences, you actually change your memories and assign them
different meanings.
Time for Exercise:
30 minutes to one hour
Properties Required:
pen and paper
Steps:
Recall
an extraordinary experience in which you felt joyous, happy, and full
of wonder. This can be any experience, anywhere, anytime.
Identify
your key submodalities for this type of experience. For example, if you
are primarily visual, is the picture up close or far away? What color
is the background? Is the picture bright or dim? Is the picture black
and white or in color? Is the picture moving or still? Where in your
consciousness is the picture located, for example, front and center,
front lower right, behind your head, high up or low? Is the picture
associated (as if you were right in the scene re-experiencing it) or
disassociated (as if you were watching a movie)?
If you are
primarily auditory, is the sound loud or soft? Is it slow or fast? Is
it continuous or interrupted? Which direction is the sound coming from?
Is the sound stereo or monaural? Is it close or far away? Is it
rhythmical or discordant? Do you hear music and/or talking? Is the
experience associated or disassociated? Is the sound inside or outside
you?
If you are primarily kinesthetic, do you notice weight,
pressure, temperature, and/or movement? Does your skin feel tactile
sensations? Do your muscles and internal organs feel sensations? Where
are these located? Do they fade in and out, or are they continuous? How
long do they last? Where do they start and end if they move around?
Recall
any ordinary sexual experience. Don’t pick one that was extraordinary
(either great or awful). Identify your key submodalities for this
experience as you did above—visual, auditory, and kinesthetic details.
In
your imagination, deliberately change on sub-modality (visual,
auditory, kinesthetic) at a time so that your inner experience for the
ordinary sexual encounter is perceived in the same way as the joyous
experience. For example, if the ordinary experience is primarily visual
with the picture fuzzy, far away, off to one side, fading in and out,
black and white, but the joyous experience is clear, close up, centered
in your field of vision, and in color, deliberately change how you see
the ordinary experience. Make it clear, close up, centered, colorful
and so on. Notice how this changes your remembrance of the sexual
experience and your feelings about it.
Comments: You can use this process to change your perceptions of not just sexual experiences but of any situation.
