NLP – Calibration

Calibration

Primary Experience

Have you ever heard, “People don’t see the world as it is, they see the world as they are!”? There is a lot of truth in this quote. The issue is that of our internal filters deleting, distorting or generalizing the information from our senses to fit what we expect or would like to see. This is one reason a lot of men new to Alpha concepts will say “a girl would never respond to that” simply because it is outside of their filters. And that will lead to a multitude of problems. If we base our decisions on faulty information (information changed to fit our filters), there is little to no chance of making “good” decisions.

One of the main reasons people tend to find themselves in difficult situations is from natural nature for attaching meaning to everything. For example: you see a woman sitting alone in a bar with a smile on her face. Some people would interpret that scene as sad – a lonely woman sitting by herself. Others may call her devious, as the smiling facial expression seems “off” to them since she is alone in a bar. Others still may admire the woman for being so happy and carefree in this social situation. But these are all interpretations forced on the scenario. This is just how we process the only real information we have. The only facts we know are true are that there is a woman, sitting at a bar, alone, with a smile on her face. Everything else is a (poor) attempt to Mind Read the situation.

 
All humans have an obsessive desire to place a label on things and this tends to create limitations. Take for example a basic table. What did your mind see? Did it loose value in your mind from the adjective “basic?” By accepting the description of the item as basic, we place it in a mental box with a label and that eliminates all other potential perceptions of it: the fine wood, its unique molecular structure, its use as a shelf, a toy, a weapon, fuel, raw materials for another project, etc. And keep in mind, a “basic” table described from a poor Middle East village will be different than what Bill Gates might describe as a “basic” table.

This type of thinking is a normal bad habit caused by lazy thinking. We want to rapidly label and box the item so we can progress to another task. By limiting the scope of what the table means we don’t have to think about it anymore or even truly perceive it. This is where most people turn their minds off and stop responding to the stimuli. It happens to the baby elephants and the chain we described earlier, and it happens to you. Everyone does this to a varying degree, hence the saying “You can’t judge a book by its cover.”

This desire to label everything around us is largely responsible for peoples failure in business, relationships and life. It creates misunderstandings, inappropriate responses, disappointment from those responses and many neurotic conditions.

But what if we could retrain ourselves to see a clearer representation of the stimuli? That would allow us to make better decisions, communicate better, and move our life forward towards achieving our goals. The only way to achieve this is to retrain your perception so you interpret the stimuli as close to the Primary Experience as you can.

Almost every neurotic condition (insecurities, phobias, depression, guilt, low self esteem, etc.) that humans tend to endure will disappear as soon as you stop making assumptions about life and only pay attention to what is happening in the here and now. Fear of approach, limiting beliefs, anxiety, etc. are all responses to stimuli passing through your inter filters and being misinterpreted.

Think about it. People love to “get away from it all”. Bars, clubs, amusement parks, cinemas, sporting events, play, really almost anything that allows you to stop focusing on “life” (like social media) all do the same thing, they stop us from worrying about the past, or fearing the future and focus our attention so firmly in the actual moment, hopefully in a direct and enjoyable sensory experiences so that for a time you feel happy, satisfied and fulfilled.

Paying attention to our sensory experience is something you can do anywhere. On the surface it seems simple, but these maps run deep and it takes a lot of effort. To stop repeating old patterns in our heads, talking to ourselves from a place of fear and jumping to conclusions about misinformation takes a very intense kind of attention. It takes extreme mental effort and training to undo the old filters. To be honest, without the tools of NLP, most people would never achieve such a goal.

The good news is that building this kind of mental muscle is just like building any other kind of muscle. We practice, get tired, rest and grow stronger.

Learning to use your perceptions well is one of the most important things you can ever learn to do. A lifetime spent on refining your perceptions, is a lifetime filled with adventure, love, sex and money.

Behavioral Manifestations of Internal Representations – BMIRs

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