Quit Smoking, Lose Weight, Make Any Change - There Is A Secret Formula That Guarantees Your Success

For a lot of folks, the highway to individual transformation and self-improvement is a long and winding path filled with intricate barriers. Pharmaceutical companies in particular have capitalized on and created immense fortunes because of the elusive search for the "Magic Pill" that will fix everything. As it turns out, there is a secret formula for success, and it begins in the unconscious mind.

One of the rules of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) is that "there is a positive intention behind all behaviors." And based on that law, when it comes to getting rid of negative behaviors, there is an equation that we must always keep in mind. I'll let you in on the secret in a minute. But first, I have a riddle for you to solve.

Riddle: A holy man made his child drink lye, which burned out the child's voice box. What was the positive intention behind his action? If you are like most of the clients who have come into my office since 1978, you'll angrily say something like: "There isn't any." But you would be 100% wrong. To answer this riddle, you must detach the behavior from the positive objective of the deed.

The preacher's child was cursing. And the minister believes that if his son curses, his soul will be condemned to Hell. So the answer is that the minister was burning out his child's vocal cords so that he couldn't curse. By doing so, he was saving his child's soul from being damned to Hell.

The secret equation for success uses NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and works as follows:

We must respect the positive intention that motivates every behavior. If we have an urge to engage in a behavior that we do not appreciate, we can easily get rid of the compulsion to use that behavior. All we need to do is to find a different behavior to substitute in its place. To be successful, the new action must be as accessible and efficient at accomplishing the same outcome, but be more consciously tolerable. We call this a REFRAME.

When clients come into my office, the first thing I do is to take a methodical case history. Let's pretend that they come to me and ask me to help them eliminate their appetite. Experience tells us that the two main reasons that anyone eats too much food are: (1) for relaxation and pleasure; (2) because eating can be a conditioned response. For instance, if a person eats while they are talk on the phone, they will develop a conditioned response, and thereafter, every time they talk on the phone they will get a craving for food.

However, the above answer only takes into consideration the possible secondary gain from the behavior of eating. What if they also have another behavior that is concerned in the equation? For example: What if being chubby is also a behavior for this person? I can hear your mind grinding right now as you think, "Being overweight isn't a behavior, what are you talking about?"

Sorry but you could be completely wrong. Here is a common textbook example that will clearly demonstrate the fact that being overweight can be a behavior. It can be a behavior because it can supply secondary gains.

Example: A woman falls in love. Her partner breaks up with her, and her heart is broken. Her unconscious wants to shield her emotionally and keep her from having her heart broken again. So it motivates her to get overweight to keep her out of relationships. By doing that she will not get her heart broken again.

Everyone is totally different. And sometimes there are unconscious elements at work that cause uncontrollable behaviors. These are elements that are different for each person.

Here is another case in point: A woman comes into my office complaining of an uncontrollable compulsion to overeat at dinnertime. During my case history, upon questioning, the woman explains to me how she has never been able to satisfy her father.

During an age regression, we learned that one of her early memories was of eating dinner with her family. And dad was insisting in an authoritive voice that she clean her plate, even though she was bursting at the seams. So she finished the food on her plate because of fear, and dad commended her for eating all of the food. It was one of the only times in her life that she could recall her father telling her that she had made him happy.

Jump forward to present day. Dad has been dead for years, but the unconscious program he created is still operational. She still has an urge to eat all of the food on her plate, even if she is feeling full, because by cleaning the plate, in her unconscious mind she is getting dad's approval, and eliminating her own fear!

So if you have a problem making personal changes, remember that there is a positive intention causing all behaviors. And the formula for success is to substitute another behavior that will achieve the same secondary gains, but in a manner that is more consciously suitable to you, as an individual. The most efficient way to get your unconscious to take the responsibility for making this kind of change for you is through a Neuro-Linguistic Programming 6-Step Reframing Technique.

Author's Bio

Alan B. Densky, CH is an NLP Practitioner. He began his practice of hypnosis & NLP in 1978. He offers an interactive NLP Six-Step Reframing CD on his Neuro-VISION Hypnosis site. Also available are his Free NLP research library, MP3 downloads, and NLP newsletters.