Change the way you Process Data
In this post, we talk about changing the way you represent situations that take place in your life. I've learned that we don't have to let things in our lives put us in restrictive states!
Change your Internal Maps - Change your Experience
All of us process incoming information in different ways. For example, If you get lost, on your way home from a long day in which you had to travel, you may start to get irritated after a while of driving around trying to find your way. This may turn into a horrible situation based on what you're doing in your head with this situation. You could focus your attention on the mental images that you may be having, (your significant other being mad that you are late) you could focus on things like the fact that you don't get to watch your favorite TV show tonight, or that you'll have to miss dinner, and there are a thousand other ways you could angle it that put you in a bad place in your mind. Does it have to be this way? Some people will tell you, Yes. Some people will tell you that you have no influence over those things and cannot control the way you angle situations. You could say "of course it's bad, you're going to be late, what's good about that?"
The Internal map this person was using leaves them feeling completely disempowered, and creates an environment where frustration, anger and negative thoughts breed! Now, imagine this for a second. A different person, in the same exact situation, lost as heck driving around trying to find their way is actually having the time of their life! Seeing a new town, getting to look at different people, different businesses, and different types of houses than they're used to! This person chooses, (chooses) to focus on the things that have the absolute ability to bring joy and as a result, this person experiences joy. This person understands that it is no use to focus on what's wrong about the situation, because that puts you in a negative state, leaves you powerless and has the absolute ability to fuel a horrible mood. This person realizes that having a greater level of choice in life brings the best results and this person also has taken a great level of control and responsibility over their own mind. What's the difference? Answer: One person is incredibly frustrated and unhappy, the other is joyful, learning new routes, planning a different night based on the shift and truly experiencing the situation they are in rather than feeling obligated to be in it. This is the difference in Internal maps and the processing of information.
Processing information in your brain the way that the second person did takes training. You can hit a threshold where you absolutely won't settle for creating feelings of unhappiness and decide that you'll do everything you can consciously do to enjoy the majority of experiences in your life, and as a result, you'll do just that but what I've found is that people need to be retrained. Changing the way you represent something that happens in your life is a matter of shifting the incoming sensory data in your nervous system. Most people believe that the way they currently process information is the only way it can be, but in fact this isn't true at all. The facts are that anyone, at any time, can begin to change the way they do that by wanting to. If you're holding onto an old belief, an old paradigm, an old "map" of reality, then that may mean you take some kind of ownership of it, and have in the past benefited from it. Human beings do what they're comfortable with. This has a lot to do with why some people don't seek out new employment, new relationships, and new ways of life even when they are fully aware of the fact that they're current situations are REALLY BAD!
In studying Neuro Linguistic Programming, not just to get to know it to teach it to other people but as a result of my own internal and external challenges, I found something very interesting that not only has merit, but explains the perception problem. (the challenge that we all see things differently, and actually believe that our vision is correct or truth) I found the phrase "The Map is not the Territory." You see, whatever is happening on the outside, in reality, is an ever changing, radically ambiguous field of information. Nothing is static, regardless of how certain we think we are. In order to navigate through life, we make sense of sensory data (what we see, what we hear, what we feel, what we touch, what we taste and what we smell). Some of us process this information in different ways than others and as a result, some human beings are simply more effective than others. This has nothing to do with luck, this is Internal Representation. NLP uses the word "maps" as the actual maps we create, based on what we've learned, to navigate the world and the idea is that the MAP is not the reality, the reality is the reality. If we alter our maps, we alter the reality. If we never alter our maps, we experience the same reality but the true significance of this phrase lies in the understanding that the map, the foundation of information, beliefs, values, past experiences and so on, govern your perceptions. So you only think in accordance with your internal maps, that were built from things that have happened in your life, your trial and error as a human but those maps are not to be confused with reality itself, which is obviously different than the internal maps you work from in your brain. If the map was the territory, we'd all think the same.
I run into this all of the time with people that I interact with and since I've come to this realization, and it's freed me to actually live the life I've always wanted to live, it saddens me a when people won't allow themselves to see that. Listen, your map is not what's out there in reality, you don't have to keep working from it. That internal foundation, once altered in the right way, can have radically awesome changes on your life! I'd love to hear your opinions on this! I have a strong conviction that we create more of our lives than a lot of us think we do. I've personally seen the transformation that takes place both in a persons mind and in their lives as a result of taking more of a position of command over their internal processes. Whatever is inherently good or bad, could still be inherently good or bad, but we don't have to make it as bad as some of us do. I'm not into telling people to look at life through rose colored glasses and to live in a fantasy world, I'm subscribing to the theory that John Grinder and Richard Bandler came up with in that we can change the way we process information, and thus change the feeling, resulting in different actions, and ultimately, different results. NLP goes into a lot more detail than just changing the meanings of life situations and altering your internal maps. Some of the most known and most effective mental strategies are submodality alterations, where you actually change the attributes of mental images, internal dialog and body sensations. NLP intrigues me because Bandler and Grinder looked at what Psychology was not looking at, and that is HOW we create our world on the inside. People will tell you all of the time, "just be optimistic" but if they don't tell you HOW to be optimistic, what use is that? NLP actually gives you a way to do that, among many other things. Called the science of personal achievement, the study of the structure of subjective experience and more, I call NLP "Teaching people how to effectively use their brains." It's better to have a choice in how to respond to your world! That's just one person's opinions, what's yours?