Is reality real?

[Tomcat]

Part 1
Many people would like to change their lives. And if you do not change it completely, then at least correct it. For most of them, this seems like a daunting task. After all, most of all a person wants to correct what, as it seems to him, does not depend on him - living conditions, circumstances. For example, the size of the apartment, the size of the salary, your weight ... This is usually the beginning of all complaints about life, isn't it?

It's time to check yourself: what does not suit you in your life? Answer, do not be lazy.

It would seem that external circumstances are something that should be accepted without a murmur, even if you do not want to accept them. And if a person cannot restrain himself on his own, the sages (or current psychotherapists) always have the means to force him to do it. In one eastern parable, a poor man complains to a priest: "I have a large family, and the house is so small, so cramped that it is absolutely impossible to live." The priest advised: "Take a goat into the house." The bewildered poor man did what the priest said, and it became even harder for him to live. He endured for some time and went back to the priest.
- I followed your advice, but life is not getting better. It only got worse.
- Well done, that exactly fulfilled the task, - answered the priest, - now send the goat back to the yard.

The poor man was overjoyed that it was possible to free the house from the goat, and happily followed this instruction. Both he and his loved ones experienced great relief. And when he met the priest again, he turned to him with gratitude: "Thank you, Father. We feel better in our house now that there is no goat in it."

Everything is relative. And this is not just a story, but an illustration of a way to make a person accept reality. This is true, but you are unlikely to rush to apply this method to your life. Why? Perhaps because, along with the acceptance of reality, one has to accept the immutability of this reality.

It follows from this story that it is not these circumstances themselves that prevent a person from accepting circumstances, but his attitude towards them. If he manages to look at these circumstances in a different way, he is quite able to accept them. Indeed, this story is really a good reminder that a person does not live in the objective world, but 90% in the subjective picture of this world. And all his dissatisfaction refers to his subjective perception, as well as all his joy.

How do we perceive?
How does the subjective world arise? It is obtained from the interaction of the senses with the environment. The person does not know the external environment directly. He receives signals from the senses, which give him a lot of sensations: visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory and gustatory. These sensations cannot yet be called the world. The baby already has a lot of sensations, but does not know how to single out a single object in it. The baby's gaze slides without stopping or focusing on anything. For him, external reality is an amorphous and continuous environment.

As they grow up, the parents teach the child to recognize in the mass of sensations such objects as dad, mom, toy, spoon, etc. Pointing to objects, they call them a word. Gradually, the child's reality is structured, becoming not amorphous, but consisting of objects. Thus, the division of reality into objects is the result of learning.

In Taoist philosophy, there is a koan question for those seeking wisdom: "Who created this beautiful green meadow? Who created this beautiful blue sky? .." The answer to which the student comes: "I created it myself."

The process of detecting new objects continues further, in an adult state, ie constantly: at school, at the institute and further in professional activities. After all, people can no longer look at the world so as not to see it consisting of objects. An objective picture of reality for a person depends on his language, the culture in which he was brought up, and on the education he received. It is common for people from the same cultural background.

At the level of an objective picture of the world, people quite easily come to an agreement with each other. Objectively perceive what is happening is a useful ability, for example, in journalism or in scientific research. However, it can be difficult to maintain an objective view, because the perception of reality is distorted by human intentions.

Intentions force a person to pay attention only to significant objects. They distinguish them in perception, and push everything else to the background. Intentions color perception emotionally. As a result, a person has a completely individual (subjective) picture of reality, which does not coincide with the picture of the reality of any other person. Ask two people to talk about the same event, and you will be surprised at how differently they perceive them.

To illustrate, remember something you don't like. Remember when it came into your life. You will probably be able to remember not only this moment, but also those decisions that made this reality your reality. Although these might not have been your decisions, but the decisions of your parents.

Situations and contexts
Let us introduce the following definitions. The situation is an objective picture of what is happening, ie a set of objects and processes that occur with them at a certain moment, in a certain place. Context is a subjective perception of a situation, which is set by the intent of the perceiving subject (that is, by his decision to take some action).

Two students attended a summer labor camp.
- What was there? - asks their friend.
- Hard labor! says one.
- Have fun! adds another.

The context can be given a name, and it usually reflects well the uniqueness of the given perception of the situation. Even in the short name of the context, it is usually easy to read the intention from which this perception derives.

Views are patterns of perception
In the fifties, psychologists conducted the following experiment. A group of subjects was presented with a playing card for a split second. During the set time of presentation, the subjects could correctly identify both the suit and the value of the card. Then a non-existent card was presented - eleven diamonds. All subjects identified it as a dozen diamonds. When the black eleven worms were presented, the group was divided. Half of the subjects identified the card as ten worms, the other half as ten spades. Moreover, each of the subjects claimed that he clearly saw both the suit and the dignity of the card.

The experiment illustrated the property of constancy of perception. In other words, the experiment can be described as follows: a person perceives objects, recognizing in them what is familiar to him; in place of the identified object, a person, at least in the first moments, sees a pattern embedded in his memory.

The child remembers a huge number of such sample images when he learns to recognize and name objects. It is generally accepted that a child learns only the names of objects, but in reality creates many reference images that will serve as the basis for his perception of the world in the future.

Representations are patterns of perception of objects and situations (and the associated response habits) fixed in the past.

We defined "context" as a person's subjective perception of a situation. I will add to this that the context is the result of the interaction of the external situation and the person's perception of this situation. The concept of "context" is broader than "representation", since includes both representations and external reality.

But is it not an empty abstraction hidden behind the word "representation"? How can representations be discovered? Think about something and close your eyes. How do you know what you think of this subject? Perhaps you will notice a vague or clear image, you will have a certain feeling or a whole range of feelings associated with this subject. All that you have noticed is the tip of the iceberg of the idea of an object, which is available to your consciousness at the moment. As soon as you begin to really interact with this object, other parts of this idea, no less familiar to you, will appear.

Have you ever gone mushroom picking? Remember when after picking mushrooms you returned home, went to bed, covered your eyes, what did you see? Vague or very distinct images of mushrooms. Moreover, these were not always specific mushrooms that you found, but often generalized images that absorbed the features of a certain type of mushroom.

And remember when you returned from a party where you spent the whole evening in a pleasant company of friends. Falling asleep or just closing your eyes, you again saw faces, eyes, smiles. Both the images of mushrooms and images of friends are performances that helped you find more mushrooms in the forest, and it is pleasant to chat with friends at a party.

However, what a person sees with open eyes is also the result of the work of his ideas. Although they differ from internal images in greater detail and clarity, all these details are organized into one picture by human assimilated patterns of perception.

I once asked the famous NLP trainer Annie Entus: "What is meant by the word" map "in the presupposition" map is not territory "?" She replied: "The way you perceive the situation in which you are now is your map. It would be a mistake to think that I see the situation in the same way as you do." I agree with her one hundred percent. You can say the same in terms of representations. The different ideas we have about objects, about each other, about the process of communication, make us see the situation in which we both find ourselves differently.

Success in any activity depends on what a person has about this activity and the objects with which this activity is associated. Clearer, clearer, detailed ideas about the subject allow you to work more effectively with this subject.

Do you want to be convinced?
Choose an activity that you are good at doing. Think about it, be aware of your idea of it. Now choose an activity that you are not good at. Imagine this activity. Notice how much more detailed and clear to you the first image is in contrast to the second.

With the beginning of the use of NLP in sports, the so-called ideomotor training began to be widely used. Athletes - for example, arrows from a bow - clearly and clearly imagined how they raise the bow, aim the arrow at the target, pull the string, release it smoothly and hit the exact center of the target. This kind of work with internal representations gives much more tangible results than real shooting. And this applies not only to sports.

Entering and exiting a view
When a person perceives an object, the idea of this object goes into an active state (while the other representations are inactive). An intermediate phase between active and inactive - when a person thinks about the idea, but is removed from it so that it does not affect his feelings. A representation is completely inactive when a person has not in any way called it up in his memory.

Various performances are organized in the inner world like air "bubbles" floating in a transparent liquid. Each "bubble" is a concept that has emerged and has become entrenched in the process of life. Some of the "bubbles" are close in the field of human attention, while others are in the periphery. A person can attract any of the "bubbles" to him if he keeps his attention on it. The "bubble" will approach, and a person will see the world around him through its walls, which will shape his perception in a certain way. In this case, feelings, thoughts, behavior (that is, all experience) will fully correspond to this perception.

To enter a representation (to make it active), one should bring its image as close as possible to oneself (by placing it between oneself and the perceived reality). You may notice a subsequent change in the perception of the environment, for example, some objects will be more conspicuous. There will be a desire to react differently to these objects and the whole situation.

An additional trick for entering a view is to find as many signs of the similarity of this view with the objective reality in which you are now.

To get out of the representation (to make it inactive), one should mentally distance it from oneself ("remove" from oneself the feelings and thoughts associated with it; change the posture, breathing).

An additional technique for exiting the representation is to find as many differences as possible between the image of the representation and what you perceive here and now.

Exercise "Enter View".
Select the state or behavior that you would like to enter now.

1. In what situations do you usually have this condition? Bring up an image of this situation and imagine yourself in this state.
2. Find some similarities between the present situation and the situation where you usually have this condition.
3. Bring the idea of this state closer to yourself. Entering it, change your posture, notice how your breathing and sensations change. Notice what has changed for you in your perception of the environment.

Exercise "Exit View".
To stay out of the view, it is not enough to get out of it. In order not to "fall through" into it again, it is best to enter into some other idea. If you want to improve your present condition or behavior, do the following.

1. Notice how you feel the undesirable state now, what thoughts and images are associated with it.
2. Do you ever feel differently under the same circumstances? (Or what other state could there be in this situation?).
"Remove from yourself" the feeling of an undesirable state, move away from yourself the images and thoughts associated with it. Feel freer and notice changes in your posture and breathing. Take a neutral and objective look at your present environment.
3. In what context would this state be appropriate? Find as many differences as possible between this context and the present situation until you feel the weakening of the influence of the unwanted state.
4. Select the state you want to have instead of the previous one. In what context do you usually have it? Find as many similarities as possible between this context and the present situation, until you feel the increasing influence of this state on you.
5. Bring the idea of the desired state closer to you and associate with it. Notice how this affects your sense of self. Notice how the perception of the environment changes.

How do emotions arise?
Emotions are a discrepancy between the actual at the moment of his idea and the objective facts that he perceives, experienced by a person.

If the emotion is negative, the person is faced with a fact that is worse than he expected in accordance with his current perception. If the emotion is positive, he noticed something better than what he imagined.

Emotion is the energy designed to correct the idea after being aware of the information.

Whatever the emotion - positive or negative - this is a message about the inconsistency with the actual circumstances of the idea from which the person is coming at the moment.

It is generally accepted that negative emotions are evil that must be got rid of. As you know, in the distant past tyrants often executed messengers who brought them bad news. But from the fact that the messenger is dead, the news does not lose its significance.

A more reasonable reaction to a negative emotion is not to try to get rid of it, like getting rid of pain by taking analgin, but to understand which idea is at odds with reality and correct it. Thus, negative emotion can be beneficial for development.

Exercise "Fit a fact into a view"
1. Choose a (non-activity) situation that "makes" you feel some kind of negative emotion. What fact in this situation is causing this emotion?
2. Identify the idea that comes into dissonance with this fact. Why is this fact so important? With what is important for you, does it come into conflict?
3. Choose a more correct attitude to this fact. What attitude would be more appropriate to this fact?
4. Mentally evoke an image of an inadequate representation. Include in it the image of the fact that evokes emotion, so that they connect in a consistent way in one picture or film.
5. Bring the new idea closer to you. How does it affect your condition?
6. Enter mentally into a future situation where you have to face this fact again. How do you feel?

Interaction with reality

How to change reality? This question remains relevant for us, even if we understand that reality is our subjective reality. Since what a person calls reality is created by his beliefs about reality, changing reality no longer seems like an insoluble task.
A person acts in accordance with his beliefs, and these actions confirm the "correctness" of his beliefs. A person's beliefs and actions are a system that supports itself. This is usually obvious to an outside observer, but it also opens up to the person himself when he begins to look at himself from the outside. After all, as the popular saying goes, you cannot see a log in your own eye, and a speck is noticeable in someone else's.
Thus, reality is created not only by a person's belief about it, but also by the actions that a person takes in relation to it. From reality, however, a person receives a reflection - a response to his own actions. So, reality is created in the interaction of a person with what he considers to be reality.
If you do not like something in reality (X), ask yourself, what actions in relation to (X) have you usually taken in the past or now ?. You can understand that by your own actions you make reality (X) be like this. Ask yourself further, why are you doing this? And you will realize that it is beliefs about (X) that make you act that way.
Beliefs and actions are like two halves of the same vicious circle. Being inside the circle of interaction, people are usually aware of only part of it, therefore they are not aware that they are creating reality themselves.

Now that you know: how do you create your reality, what prevents you from changing it? Nothing but two problems. First, you need to know how you want your reality to be. Secondly, it is necessary to overcome the fixity of the old familiar reality. It has been held by something for a long time, and no matter how you want to change, this fixation may have its reasons and its own mechanisms.

What is a psychological problem?
It is natural for a person to repeat his experience and not always only positive.
In some examples, you can find this fact in your life. Just remember how your every morning goes from the moment you wake up to going to work or school. You almost always repeat a set of the same actions. Remember, if suddenly one day you wake up later than usual, then it is easier for you to be late than to exclude some actions from the usual procedure. It's as if some kind of force is forcing you to do everything that you usually do. Is not it?

A psychological problem will be called inadequate perception and response to a situation, ie inappropriate to what the person himself or the people around him considers appropriate. The core of the psychological problem is an embedded past experience that has become inadequate. The solution to the psychological problem is to recognize the experience and change it to a more adequate form.

Three kinds of states
If our task is to learn how to make changes in our experience, then we need to figure out how and thanks to what the experience is fixed (fixed). As you will see later, the experience becomes difficult to change only because of the person's attitude to the content of this experience.
Three types of fixed experiences should be distinguished. An ancient metaphor about three elements will help to describe them: stone (or earth), fire and water. A stone is something inert, dark, solid, motionless. Fire is passionate, hot, mobile, active. Water is calm, relaxed, flowing, taking the shape of a vessel.

Closedness
The first type of relationship is denial, avoidance, which boils down to unwillingness to be aware of something (to know about something). We will call it "closed". Closure brings a person into a state of stone.
Think about something you want to avoid. Notice what sensations in the body will accompany this. Most likely, these are static sensations: tension, stiffness, pressure, hardness. At the same time, attention does not go outside, but remains inside, as in a cocoon.

Fear is also an example of avoidance.
Closedness is the lack of awareness of something in your experience. But the lack of awareness does not lead to the disappearance of experience; on the contrary, it only fixes and stabilizes it.
The reason for avoidance (or fear) is the meaning a person places on a situation. A person avoids (or fears) not facts, but the meaning that he himself gave them. It is possible in relation to any fact to artificially create a state of constraint or fear, if you associate with this fact a meaning that seems unacceptable or terrible to a person. Conversely, if you separate the fact from the importance attached to it, you can remove the fear of that fact.

The state of the "stone"
In a state of "stone" a person says that he does not accept something, that he avoids something, and that he prefers not to notice something. In speech, he uses the negations "not", "not possible", "impossible", "unacceptable", "terrible", "disgusting", "bad", "just not", "get rid of", "prevent" ...
In facial expressions and gestures, the state of closeness is manifested in greater than usual immobility, stiffness of movements, tense and motionless posture.
If a person is asked at the same time about internal sensations, then he will find sensations of hardness, heaviness or static tension in the body. Most likely, these sensations can be found in some area along the midline of the body: in the abdomen, chest, neck, face. On this basis, a person can easily recognize a state of a closed type in himself.
Exercise: Ask your partner to talk about anything they fear or feel they should avoid or dislike; as you talk, notice signs of a closed state in words, facial expressions, gestures, and internal sensations.

Directionality.
The second kind of relationship to experience is "focus." Direction arises when a person strives for something, considers something important and, thus, narrows his consciousness on this seemingly important thing. Direction brings a person into a state of fire.

Many obsessions arise in humans due to this type of fixation. For example, an obsessive desire for cleanliness. Do you think only women suffer from this? No matter how it is. The captain is standing on deck. Before him is a line of sailors, just finished washing and cleaning everything that is only on the ship. But the captain is unhappy with everything: he lies down on the deck, and if at least one speck remains on his snow-white jacket, the crew will scrub the entire deck again.
The state of direction arises when something important, desirable and valued by a person is not present, as it seems to him, in reality. For example, when a person strives for an unattainable ideal.

Think about what you want. Notice what sensations appear in the body. Most likely, these are sensations of movement, bubbling, or irritation. Attention is narrowed, concentrated and absorbed by the object of striving. You can create this state artificially. To do this, it is enough to think about the ideal, which we would like, but which is not.

The state of "fire"
It is easy to get into the state of fire if you pretend that the ideal is real.
In the state of "fire" a person speaks about desires, goals, values, actions and motives, about some significant objects. In speech, he uses the words "I want", "desirable", "good", "better", "great", "excellent", "ideally", "main", "most", "most important", " important "...
At the same time, in the facial expressions and movements of a person, there is more dynamics than usual, more emotional expression. At the same time, the nature of internal sensations corresponds to external expression (excitement, mobility, changeability of sensations). It is not something immovable, but on the contrary - trembling, striving and moving.
Exercise: Tell your partner about something that you consider important to yourself, about any of your goals or ideals; or, conversely, ask your interlocutor to tell you something like that.

Openness.
Openness is a willingness to accept something, agreement with something, involvement and involvement in something. Openness is the consent to know reality and the recognition of oneself as included in it. Openness brings a person into a state of water.
When a person recognizes something as a reality, he thereby fixes both his state and his experience around this reality. Each belief is a recognition of something as reality. But we know how strong our convictions can sometimes be.
Think about what you admit, consider necessary, or really exist. Notice how you feel in your body when you think about it. Most likely, it is calmness, relaxation ... Or maybe even apathy, hopelessness, if this reality is pessimistic. At the same time, most likely your attention is defocused and distributed around you.

The state of "water"
You can come to a relaxed, calm state of "water" if you accept what you do not want to accept.
When a person recognizes something as reality, his point of view on it remains subjective, so the consequences of accepting reality will depend on what point of view the person has taken on it.
In the state of "water" a person speaks about what is, about accepting something, about being involved in something, about real involvement in something, about responsibility to something (someone). In speech, he uses the words "must", "must", "must", "necessarily", "correct", "appropriate", "appropriate", "we", "together", "together", "simply" , "there is" ...

Exercise: Ask your partner to talk about something that he knows for sure, but it should not be objective facts, but his assessment and interpretation of the facts, in which he is confident. Notice all the manifestations of the state of acceptance of reality.

Author: Salikhov Boris, psychologist, NLP trainer

 

[Tomcat]

Good afternoon everyone, this is Pavluu. We have recently published an article about the management of reality by B. Selikhov. Today, in continuation of our topic about reality, I found several more articles by the same curious author, who continues to share his experience on how to change reality and overcome the difficulties that we face in life. In order not to overload with reading, I will post only a few exercises, because the article itself is very long ...

How to reshape perception?

Perception is formed under the influence of ideas received in the past. And although each new situation is unique, in the first moments of meeting with it, our brain automatically decides what this situation is like, and then begins to perceive it as known. After this moment, it is quite difficult to somehow influence your perception.

It is no coincidence that in the psychology of communication, the first minutes of a conversation with a new person are considered the most important. It is during this short period of time that your interlocutor decides what kind of person is in front of him, assigns you to some type known to him and begins to treat you like all people of this type. Then getting out of this communication loop is already quite difficult.

Hence, psychologists draw the correct conclusion: you must immediately demonstrate yourself to a new acquaintance the way you want him to perceive you.

Thus, any perception of reality is a search for an answer to the question, "What does this reality look like?"

It follows from this that any idea of reality is a metaphor, that is, a comparison, when one is perceived to be similar to something else.

If you have a problem, ask yourself what it looks like, and your psyche will easily present a metaphor or a similar memory from the past for it. While these comparisons may sound ludicrous, they should be taken seriously because they shape your perception of the problem.

Is it possible to control this process? What if you compare the situation with something else? Maybe another metaphor would be more appropriate for this situation? What would you like the situation to be like?

To change the idea that has served a person for several years, it is often not enough logical agreement with a new point of view on the situation. The old image is so strong that it arises automatically even before a person has time to think about anything. To create a new image of the situation and limit the effect of the old image, it is helpful to mentally transform the old image into a new one, much like a computer program transforms an animal's face into a human face (I hope you saw this ). It is better to do this transformation several times, each time rendering it brighter and faster.

The exercise. Feel like a creator

1. Select the situation (activity) that you want to improve for yourself. Describe what are you doing there? Why?

2. Find a metaphor for this situation (object, activity). What does it look like to you?

Visualize the metaphor. Bring the image closer to you. How do you feel in it?

3. Live mentally the future situation (activity). Describe what you are doing, thinking, feeling, what you are paying attention to.

4. Answer the following questions:

(a) What is the main thing for you in this situation (activity)? What do you pay attention to in it? (Let's say it's X.)

(b) Why is X important?

(c) What is X in essence?

From the answers to the last two questions, single out the new concept of W.

5. Reformulate the definition of the situation (activity) through the concept of W.

Find a new metaphor for the situation (activity), associate with it.

6. Adapt to the future. What will change for you in this situation (activity)? Describe what you are doing, thinking, feeling there, what you are paying attention to.

Balance of consciousness and unconsciousness
Consciousness cannot be aware of everything that is happening in the psyche, but only concentrates on one thing.

Due to the limited possibilities of consciousness, a person can be aware of only a small part of what is happening in his psyche at the moment, everything else remains unconscious.

We consider the division of the psyche into consciousness and the unconscious, similar to the division of an iceberg into above-water and underwater parts. In an iceberg, more than 90% of the total mass is under water, and the underwater part does not differ significantly from the above water part. Likewise, in the psyche there are much more unconscious processes than conscious ones, but in principle, some do not differ from others, since they are parts of one whole.

A natural question arises: do we always use the limited resources of consciousness correctly?

Most human actions are automated by repetition. And it is not at all a bad thing that a person is not aware of everything that he is doing at every moment. A person, for example, usually does not pay attention to how he breathes or how he walks. It happens by itself and he doesn't have to think about it. Otherwise, human consciousness would not be able to cope with all this information.

Ancient Indian philosophers compared consciousness with a rider, and the unconscious with a horse. The rider knows the end goal and monitors the surrounding situation. The forces for movement are at the disposal of the horse, it also determines how it moves. Similarly, in most situations, it is necessary to consciously determine your goal and consciously monitor the change in the external situation. Actions, thoughts and feelings are best left to automatic, that is, unconscious, regulation.

So, if the teacher is to give a lecture, he needs to consciously set a goal for himself. For example - have time to explain all the material to students. Further in the course of the lecture, he needs to consciously pay attention to changes in the external situation: to the faces of the students (to know if they understand the explanations), to the clock (to be sure that he is doing well) , to the diagram he drew on the blackboard ...

There is a certain class of problems that are expressed in the loss of natural behavior. For example, when a person cannot behave naturally in a new company, or when it is difficult for him to speak with a stranger, or when he cannot behave naturally at an official event ...

In all these cases, the spontaneity of behavior is lost due to increased conscious control of actions, movements or speech .... Later, this control of behavior turns into a habit and becomes obsessive.

You can restore natural behavior by doing the exercise below. For exercise, you can take situations where there is dissatisfaction with your behavior, or doubts about the correctness of behavior, or the lack of natural behavior, or confusion, or stiffness, or obsessive planning of your actions ...

The exercise. Restoring natural behavior

Choose a situation where there is difficulty in the lack of natural behavior.

1. Enter mentally into the situation, notice how you feel this difficulty, and get out of it.

2. Determine what your goal is in this situation. Speak out your goal statement before entering the situation in the next step.

3. Further, your conscious attention should be occupied only by the surrounding situation. Present and describe it at the environmental level. You can only name the elements of the context and their changes. What is there? What is happening there?

At the same time (after the fact) you may be aware of the emergence of behavioral responses to the situation that will arise unconsciously (you do not need to talk about them).

4. Walk through the situation to the end. Compare your feelings now with the feelings that were in this context before.

5. Mentally go through another future similar situation (without any instructions).

Just a few (two or three) performances of this exercise for specific situations are usually enough to master the general strategy of dividing functions between consciousness and unconscious attention. This leads to better interactions between them in other contexts as well.

As with any rule, there are also exceptions to this rule.

Creative experience
Have you ever watched a child learning to write? When his hand is tracing letters, all of his conscious attention is directed to the hand. From this, the movements of the fingers become arbitrary, although slow. Thus, the child gets the opportunity to master new actions for him. Then, when the skill is mastered, the child no longer needs to pay special attention to hand movements. Attention would only hinder automatic and therefore rapid writing.

Consciousness, if directed towards action, destroys automatism and makes action arbitrary. This is good in two cases: when a person learns new things, or when he needs to change the prevailing stereotype.

In those situations where changes in habitual experience or creative actions are necessary, at least two components of the experience must be aware. In this case, one component must be preserved (let's call it the "reference component"). A person is guided by it in changes. The second one will change (let's call it "operational component"). With the help of it, a person makes changes in experience. For example, when teaching the writing of letters, the reference component is the visual one - the image of the letter, the operational component is the action - the movements of the fingers.

When a poet composes a poem, he finds a certain feeling that he wants to convey in verse, and retains it in the process of writing (this is a reference component). Focusing on this feeling, he directs another part of his attention to the sphere of thoughts, and waits for a good verse stanza to appear (this is an operational component). This does not mean that the poet chooses the words consciously - the words arise by themselves - but awareness of words is necessary in order to notice them at the moment of their appearance.

Another example is the making of joinery. If the carpenter has done this work many times, he already knows what the goal looks like - the future product. Then he directs attention to the workpiece and monitors what happens to it. Actions and everything else that is necessary for this work will arise automatically in his experience.

If a joiner makes a product for the first time, then before getting down to business he needs to present the finished product (of course, the first time it is more difficult). But in the process of work, it will not be enough for him to follow only the workpiece, he will also direct maximum attention to his actions, that is, in the smallest detail he will be aware of the movements of his hands with the tool ... Only in this case he will find a suitable way to manufacture the product.

So, being aware of your actions is necessary if you are going to perform them creatively, and not automatically.

According to what has been said, in order to change - reprogram - your actions, you first need to determine the goal. What do you want as a result? Then, having entered the situation, you should direct your attention both to the external environment and to your actions. This way you will see how close you are to the result and creatively choose the appropriate actions.

This process is described step by step in the next exercise.

The exercise. Creative living of the future situation
Determine in which future situation you will need a new experience.

1. Define your goal: what do you want in this situation? Visualize this result.

2. Enter the future situation in your mind. Pay attention to the situation. What does it have?

Be aware also of your actions (or thoughts), if in this situation there is an operation with actions (or speech).

3. Describe what is happening out loud: "In the situation, X happens, and I do (say) Y ...". Live the situation until it ends.

Are you satisfied with the new experience?

4. Describe how you felt, what you thought, what you did and what you paid attention to in this situation.

Creating a new habit is like treading a trail in the snow. It is difficult to get through the first time, but easier the second. After a few passes, it is much easier to follow the path than to deviate to the side. Therefore, it is useful to adjust to several future situations. And in order for new behaviors to turn from virtual to real, you should experience them as vividly and in detail as possible.

Contextualizing old reality

Everything that the human psyche has learned during life is preserved and can continue to serve him. When solving a problem, the old reality must give way to a new reality, but this does not mean that it must disappear altogether.

For example, a little boy learned to use his fists. And, unfortunately, he began to use them even in relation to those children who are weaker than him. The educators managed to solve this problem, they taught the boy to negotiate. But this does not mean that in case of emergency, the boy will not be able to use his fist skills, for example, to protect himself.

Thus, in some contexts, the old reality remains relevant and does not present a problem. In them, a person, as before, can retain both the old outlook on life and the old way of behavior.

The exercise. Creating a metaphor for reality
Choose a problematic context in which you are not comfortable with the situation itself, or your state, or your behavior in it.

1. Become aware of your experience in this context. How do you feel? What do you think? What are you doing?

2. “Take off” this experience from yourself as a heavy clothing and “fold” at a distance from you. Feel that your body and breath are free of them, change your posture.

3. Notice other elements of the situation and your interactions with them. What are you doing, and what, from your point of view, are they doing in relation to you? What does this interaction look like? Create a mental symbol (caricature) of this interaction.

4. Find out your limiting belief in reality: why are you behaving this way?

Say the antithesis to the limiting belief, feel how it affects your condition.

5. Contextualize the old reality: in what situations (objective circumstances) is this interaction option appropriate? Is the old reality relevant to the present situation?

6. Create a metaphor for the new reality: Which metaphor is more appropriate for this situation? Create a new symbol of reality.

Smoothly transform the old symbol into the new one three times.

Bring the metaphor of the new reality closer to you. Feel what state it causes in you.

7. Mentally enter the future situation. Let your conscious attention be occupied only by the situation. Describe at the environmental level. What does it have? What's going on in it? At the same time, you do not need to talk about your feelings, thoughts, or anticipate your behavior. Just notice what will happen involuntarily.

Compare your sense of self with the one that was in this situation before.

8. When finished, describe how you felt, thought, did, and paid attention to in the situation.

Find a gesture (posture) that you associate with this state.

Author: Salikhov Boris, psychologist, NLP trainer