Change Your Mind, Change Your Future

62

KURT DRUBBEL/THE AGENCY COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES

CHANGE YOUR MIND, CHANGE YOUR FUTURE

Depressed that your New Year resolutions are looking shaky already?

You might need to change the way you think—as NLP expert David Shephard explains On September 5, 2011, a newspaper published a report stating that 38 per cent of Europeans are suffering from some sort of mental or emotional disorder—and most of them, for all the drugs, therapy and counselling available today, are never given the appropriate care. Which means that if you’re out with a few friends for a drink, at least one, if not more, of them is not OK. Maybe including you. So what’s to be done?

We’re clearly living in troubled times, with an ever-increasing amount of uncertainty. Everything’s changing so rapidly it’s hard to keep up—not surprising when you think that 95 per cent of the information on the planet today didn’t exist before we were born in those pre-internet days.

What’s more, the world seems to lack the heroes we once knew and relied on. The stuff of legend. Leaders that led! How can we survive and thrive in the fast-paced 21st century?

THINK ABOUT IT

In 1990 I discovered Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP. In essence, it’s one of the most effective ways to learn how to run your brain. After all, between your ears you have the world’s most powerful computer—nothing man-made has come even close yet—but, unfortunately, when you took delivery of your brain, it didn’t come with an instruction manual. So most people end up feeling that their brain somehow runs ► FEBRUARY 2012 READERSDIGEST.CO.UK

63

◄

them rather than the other way around. So how do you put yourself back in the driving seat?

The secret is to develop a few techniques for taking control of your mind—and therefore your life. This is very different from therapy or counselling—this is training, whereby you learn to use your brain in the way nature intended, eliminate problems and get the results you want.

Your brain actually runs two minds: the conscious and the unconscious mind. Your conscious mind is the one you use to think, make sense of things, analyse and rationalise. Your unconscious mind is the one you feel with, and where you get intuitions and gut instincts. Psychol ogists say that we don’t develop a conscious mind until we are five to seven years old. However, most adults

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant.

We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift” —Albert Einstein

ATTITUDE IS ALL Ricky was a shoeshine guy in the gentlemen’s toilets in the MGM Grand Hotel, Las Vegas. As he was polishing my shoes I asked him if he’d been busy and also what time he finished. “$400,” was his reply. “I finish when I’ve made $400.

Sometimes that’s early, like 10pm, other times it’s late, like 6am. I go home when I’ve made $400.” What a great way to think about achieving goals: just keep going until you’ve met them. Ricky worked six nights a week. He was making the best part of $10,000 per month cleaning shoes!

64 READERSDIGEST.CO.UK FEBRUARY 2012

have become overly reliant on their conscious mind, even though it’s our unconscious mind that holds the power to create our dreams.

The truth is that we require both minds. You could think of your conscious mind as the captain of a ship, with your unconscious mind being the crew: if the captain doesn’t show up, the ship isn’t going anywhere; just as if the crew doesn’t show up, the ship isn’t going anywhere either. Your unconscious mind needs the direction of your conscious mind just like the crew needs the orders from the captain.

One of your unconscious mind’s jobs is to give you something to focus on. But a little-known secret of the unconscious mind is that it can’t process negatives. If I ask you to not think of a blue tree, what do you think of? A blue tree, right? If you’ve ever done an advanced driving course and taken a car on a skidpan, you’ll know this. When the car first starts to skid most people look at what they don’t want to hit and are then horrified that the car skids in the very direction they don’t want to go! Strangely, when they look at where they do want to go—between two trees, for example—the car skids in that direction. It works the same way in life.

The problem is that culturally we’re conditioned to focus on what we don’t want. Watch the news or read the newspapers and very little of it is what you actually want to see or hear. Indeed, when I first ask my clients what they want, they give me a long list of what they don’t want and find the question “What do you want instead?” very difficult to answer.

TRAIN YOUR BRAIN

When I first met Sally on one of my seminars she had a goal.

She was a commercial pilot, but wanted to be a Boeing 747 jumbo jet captain for a particular international carrier. The problem was she had no clue how she was going to achieve her goal.

But through deciding exactly what she wanted and by when, she successfully “trained” her unconscious mind to respond to her wishes. She quickly realised what steps she needed to take and found the answers to questions she’d previously found challenging. Today, she’s one of the very few female 747 captains.

So how can you do this, too?

Your unconscious mind stores and organises memories for you. What few people realise

People give me a long list of what they don’t want and find the question “What do you want instead?” very difficult to answer —David Shephard (pictured above)

is that they have “memories” for the future as well as the past. These are the things you expect to happen. So if I ask you what you were doing yesterday, last week, last month, last year or even five or ten years ago, you’d be able to tell me. And if I asked you what you’ll be doing tomorrow, next week, next month, next year or even five or ten years in the future, you’d be able to tell me some of that, too. When they think of the past or the future, most people realise they go in two different directions. Maybe the past is behind and the future in front. Or perhaps the past is off to the left and the future off to the right.

The directions of the past and the future suggest a line— your timeline.

You need, literally, to insert “memories” of what you want to happen into the future. Your unconscious mind needs to know exactly what you want and when. Your conscious mind’s job is to decide how to get there. Try this: 1 Think of something you realistically want to happen in the future in the minutest detail.

Remember: it’s what you want—not what you don’t want: eg, “I weigh 12st 4lbs and ►

FEBRUARY 2012 READERSDIGEST.CO.UK

65

◄

have 13% body fat. I am both fit and healthy.

2 Then ask yourself the question, “What’s the very last thing that has to happen for me to know I achieved it?” That would be, “I’m standing on bathroom scales that read 12st 4lbs and 13% body fat. I can wear my grey dress/suit comfortably.”

3 When you have the answer, visualise it as if it’s happening right now and you are watching yourself enjoying the moment.

4 Then take that picture and put it out in your future timeline right where you want it to happen, eg, April 10, 2012.

This is the best way to change your future memories and tell your unconscious mind what to create for you.

TURN BACK TIME

The most important thing to realise is that nothing is just the way it is—you have the power to change the meaning of the past and create your future the way you want it

The first time I met Tony he was attending the Warrior Programme (warrior programme.org.uk), a training programme run by a charity for ex-servicemen and women. Tony hadn’t slept properly since leaving the services 12 years earlier; he continually heard noises and voices in his head and was too paranoid to eat out in public. Traditional treatment hadn’t helped.

But in just three days of NLP techniques, learning how to remove emotions 66

READERSDIGEST.CO.UK FEBRUARY 2012

such as anger, fear, hurt and guilt from the past, and how to delete beliefs like “I’m not good enough”, he was sleeping, the noises and voices were silenced and he achieved both the goals he’d set himself: taking his wife out for dinner and getting a job.

But what can we do about the past? After all, it’s happened. All we can change is the impact our memories of the past have on us now.

Two sayings I hear all the time are “If I could turn back time” and “If I’d known then what I know now I would never have...”. You’ve probably said them many times yourself. But in your mind you can indeed turn back time.

You can revisit the events in your past that trouble you and re-evaluate them in such a way that their negative impact is massively reduced or even eradicated. Here’s how: 1 Think of an event in your past that’s bothering you.

2 Bring to mind the direction of your past and imagine floating over your past timeline until you are above the event.

3 Ask yourself, “What can I realise and learn about myself from this event so it no longer bothers me and I know that if something like this happened again I’d handle it differently?”

4 Then float further over the past so that you are 15 minutes before the start of the event that used to bother you. When you get there, turn around and look back beyond it to the present time and notice how you feel differently about the event now.

These are just two ways that can empower you to change your life for the better.

The most important thing to realise is that nothing is just the way it is—you have the power to change the meaning of the past and create your future the way you want it. ■

» David Shephard is one of the world’s leading NLP trainers.

His new programme, Change Your Mind, Change Your Future— comprising six CDs and a notebook—is available now at a special price of £42 for RD readers (usual price £59.95). A Change Your Mind, Change Your Future event takes place on January 28/29 in Kensington, London. The usual price is £750, but RD readers can attend for just £250. Go to performancepartnership. com/RD for more details of both offers. You can also order a free Introduction to NLP CD.

BACK IN THE DAY: THINGS ARE WHAT THEY USED TO BE Blow out the candles! “Reader’s Digest” was launched 90 years ago this month below a speakeasy in New York.

Interestingly, as an article in the first issue shows, accusations of society dumbing down have been flying around long before “The X Factor” had been thought of.

“Is the Stage Too Vulgar?” had this to say about the theatre in 1922: “There’s a vast, ceaseless output of crude, indecent, indifferently acted plays, lingerie farces and suggestive undraped musical comedies, which discredit their managers RD founders Lila and and degrade the people DeWitt Wallace who patronise them.

“The obvious remedy is to educate theatre audiences to appreciate a higher type of play.

This is a difficult thing to do. The great prosperity of the country has brought to the theatre a new class, a creature of low mentality. He likes the theatre because it is a place of noise, lights and tinsel. The cruder and noisier the show, the more he enjoys it.”

FEBRUARY 2012 READERSDIGEST.CO.UK

67