My NLP Journey
The mind needs to be managed. Until this realisation dawns, we experience life through perceptual visibility of an un-curated mind. We find ourselves in a sea of vulnerabilities, exposed to unwarranted fear, stress, unhappiness, low morale, lack of energy, uncertainty about future, worries, and we don’t know how to deal with it. The rigmarole of a negative chain reaction that sets in, sends our mind and heart space, spiralling towards south, where the very purpose of life may become a challenging answer to find. I have walked down to these dungeons as well, often times not knowing why this paranoia was engulfing my core. The numbness began to ache painfully. Unable to take a step forward, my feet felt as if they had turned into rocks. I wanted to move, but I couldn’t. There were too many cobwebs of worry and speculation that bound me in invisible threads from top to toe. And though I could visualise them as mere threads, I could not garner the energy to break free.
This was not the real me or rather, the me, I used to be. My mind often raced back several years ago, when I was like a hurricane, moving fast towards my goals, destroying every possibility of failure in my way of success, purely based on my will to make things happen. That will seemed to have gone comatose now.
I tried self-help. The ‘pep-myself’ talk, the resolution tirade, the positive thinking bit…all of it. It worked in bits as well, many times. However sustaining the new found motivation, continued to be challenge. I desperately needed a systemic approach to re-strengthen the process of self-healing and motivation.
I had heard about NLP and how it had helped people to get desired outcomes in life, merely by programming the mind to be success oriented. After extensive research online, I was sufficiently enamoured about the science and art of NLP and therefore underwent a practitioner program a couple of months back. The learning enabled me with various techniques that I could use to unleash my frozen faith in self.
I realised that I needed to stop prodding ideas that were not working and to then stop blaming myself for failures. I needed to give myself the opportunity to be successful. I needed to give myself ‘choices’. I experienced that, having options, helped me from feeling gutted, when my singular idea did not work. With choices on hand, I was able to hop on to another space of hope and light, when I saw darkness loom over the spot I was standing.
I learnt ‘Creating Positive Anchors’ and ‘Collapsing Negative Anchors’ techniques. Slowly I began to recap my shining moments in the past. Sealed them into touch-activated anchors to get into the right state. Bring mind, body and soul to align in a delightful conjecture, from wherein success springs forth.
There was another painful moment that took a little bit of my life along with it. The baby that I long cherished for, came and went a bit too early. I miscarried. That one big hope, a possible outcome of 10 long years of endeavour of meeting doctors, hospitals, procedures, tests … the one effort in which I braved all rituals with patience, determination, physical and mental strength hoping for success, believing strongly, that I too would cross that bridge they called motherhood. But I did not.
The scars of this failure left me numb in my headspace. I could not believe that this was happening to me. I could not imagine that this was to be a closed chapter in my life. The shock was tremendous and my soul recoiled within. Sub-consciously, I was now scared of trying anything at all. This was my mind read, as an easy approach to save myself from any misery of failure ever again in life. And it got replicated in every aspect of my life thereon. I stopped pushing hard. At every first signs of difficultly, I decided to not pursue at all.
Several years have passed since then. My life seems routine and normal, though it seems not accelerating as before. This was kind of bothering my subconscious, however I managed to not let it ever surface.
Then during the NLP certification program, we learnt to practise the basics of Time Line Therapy®. I volunteered to be the subject. As the moderator helped me to figure out my Time line, I became more and more aware of the past, current, the future and the energies I was choosing to seamlessly flow from one time zone to the other. I realised that as a person, I had always built on my strengths for the journey ahead, but that one place I got knocked so hard that the shining golden ball of hope slipped my clasp and rolled away…far away from me. Of course I got up, dusted myself, but the ball of hope was gone. I had lost it along with the baby.
As the trainer explained about the Time Line…I began realising that when I got up from the fall, I did not look for my sense of hope hard enough and let it roll far away from me. It was time to now go back and look for it. Ease myself of the misery of failure without realising that I did everything I could to make this work. There was therefore no failing, just no results. I got to read this situation in a manner that was fair to me. I had to let go of these negative emotions.
I visualized myself bending down to unshackle my ankles of chains as if releasing the burden of all fears and failure to set myself free. Then I future paced life with the same hope and aspirations, knowing well that the only failure in life is when we do not try.
A simple technique of NLP redeemed me. I feel new faith in life. I am now a practitioner and helping others to learn and use these wonderful techniques of NLP and to help people to create Life for themselves.
Author: Harshita Mankad