NLP Lesson - Learn to change content

Chris Harrison - July 2007
©2007 PlanetNLP Ltd

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We’re going to begin with something so obvious that once you get it, you'll be shocked at how many people don’t seem to be in control of it.

I have a friend who used to have a phobia of worms, not a very common phobia, and one that doesn't really make much sense.

I can’t remember anyone being attacked by a worm; I can’t remember reading stories in the newspapers about deaths caused by worms, and I've personally never had an unfortunate experience with a worm, but well - she was afraid of worms.

So when I managed to pick myself up off the floor and stop laughing, I had to ask her what was it that made her scared of worm because when I think about a worm, or see a worm, my response is, well, somewhat under-whelming.

So, this is what she told me:

Whenever I'm gardening, if I put a trowel in the ground and begin to pull it back, I visualize in my mind, a worm coming up with the trowel.

Its a really big fat worm, much larger than a usual worm, more like a fair sized snake.

I can see the slime all over it.

Then as I lift the trowel up, the worm is flicked upwards, really quickly and comes flying up towards my face, covering me in slime.

Sometimes it even ends up in my mouth.

Yuck. Now I understand why she doesn't like worms!

So even though this actual event never happened to her, and was ‘all in the mind’ the idea of it was so horrible that unconsciously she believed this was going to happen if she dug the garden.

One of the keys here is that your brain is not quite as clever as you think it is, and for some people its not even that clever!

In fact your brain cannot really tell the difference between what happens on the outside and what happens on the inside.

My friend's brain reacted to the idea of a worm flying into her face in exactly the same way it would have reacted if it was a common event, and was really likely to happen when she dug the garden.

But don’t worry, because there is one important difference between the inside and the outside - You can change the things on the inside.