Success is a lot of fun to achieve. You want something, you want to lose weight, you want a certain job or you want a certain turnover as an entrepreneur. You want to be able to do something, but you are not succeeding. Then you can ask yourself the question, "What is stopping you?"
This is an interesting question, because people often have all kinds of processes internally. You do all kinds of things and then you say, "I can't do this."
By asking yourself that question then, you can look at:
- Whether you need to learn what to achieve your goal.
- Whether you have beliefs that are holding you back.
- Whether it's your environment holding you back?
There may be many things going on in the background that are holding you back, so there are many (mental) places to explore.
Many more questions are possible. This question provides insight into what is holding you back in your mind from doing what you need to do.
For example, someone may say it's anxiety. Then, as a hypnotherapist, you can expand on that. For example, that person may be afraid of being laughed at. As a result, that person cannot do it. Then you can ask about that again.
What would happen if you did?
It can also be done the other way around. You ask instead of "what's holding you back?", "what would happen if you did?"
Then you get very different answers. You get information that takes place externally.
When you ask what's holding you back, you get answers from what's going on inside of people preventing them from achieving their success.
In the other question, on the contrary, you get information about the external world. If I did do it then this and this and this could happen. This is more external to the person.
Therefore, these two questions are super interesting.
Sometimes the second question will also give you an answer with a but behind it. This then also gives you an entrance into the inner world.
How do you know?
How do you know is also a great question to ask. You then ask about the strategy people have for determining what reality is for them.
Memories, experiences and rules (of that person or others) then often play a role in the response.
"Yes I know, because I used to be bitten by a dog and I've been afraid ever since."
Then you know immediately what the root of the problem is.
If you combine these three questions or even add "who says so?"
When someone says "no one loves me," you ask "no one?"
These questions all address the meta-model that people have. At least in NLP (Neuro linguistic programming), this is what it is called. This is the model people have of the world and the idea they have of how you function in that world.
When you use these questions you find that problems literally unravel for people until there is nothing. Many problems are founded on nothing. Because your problem is often based on an experience, you have distorted that experience (unconsciously) and therefore it is not actually a real experience. You call that distortion your problem.
If you start dissecting that completely with these kinds of questions, suggestions, re-approaches, counter-questions, counter-examples and maybe even provocations - but at least in a good conversation about what you're really doing - you'll find that what you're really doing is not a problem at all.
That there is actually nothing at all.
Michael Breen[1] has worked out this meta-model completely well with a diagram, it is also explained during the training of the Hypnosis Institute Netherlands. His is the best explanation of the model, which was really an eye-opener for me.
This model has become my favorite because of him.
These questions, when you add more of them, you'll find that you get to valuable information faster than if you didn't.
- What's holding you back?
- What would happen if you did?
- Who Says.
- Always, nobody, never?
- How to do it.
- What exactly do you mean?
Experiment with this if you are a coach or in conversations with children, colleagues or loved ones.
Also listen to this podcast:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/195236/1637632-wat-houdt-je-tegen?play=true
Questions for greater self-awareness
These NLP questions also help people with greater self-awareness. NLP is also designed to help people get over their self-perceived subjective problems. So these come from within the person and are not problems that other people say he/she has.
After all, what NLP does is affect the neurological networks that people have in their brains. With NLP, you assume that everyone has the solution to their problem inside them, but that that solution has not yet made the connection in the brain with the neurological networks you normally "think" with. With NLP, you try to make that very connection[2].
Questions about the future
In addition, unlike hypnotherapy and regression, for example, NLP often involves focusing more on the present and future.
The development of NLP is also an extension of hypnosis. For example, the developers of NLP were curious about Erickson's results. They wanted to see if they could analyze this in a more structured way and then developed NLP[3].
NLP to achieve goals in a healthy way
So you can ask these questions as a coach or therapist, but you can also help yourself with these types of questions. For example, Japan is a country with very high work morals or ethics. This often causes depressive symptoms.
For Japanese employees, having NLP training or skills have been studied for the effect on their mental health. This research shows that Japanese have much lower rates of depression and stress after NLP training .
This means that through NLP, Japanese can achieve their successes for change with much less stress and depressive symptoms[4].
In addition, NLP is also increasingly being studied by managers to influence employees in a positive way. This is to improve mutual communication and to motivate people .
NLP, for example, improves workplace communication and makes it clearer, more effective, persuasive, confident and precise.
Changes in the company can also be better implemented because managers can, for example, better explain the importance of a change, include employees in it, and better communicate to employees that their work is valued and important[5].
Overcoming depression and anxiety with NLP
As mentioned, NLP can be used to solve problems and achieve certain goals, such as the goal of simply living a happy life. A life without anxiety and depression, for example. A case study looked at whether NLP could also help with depression and anxiety caused by guilt. The following NLP techniques were used in that treatment:
Anchor
With anchoring, you link a positive feeling to a certain movement, so that when you don't feel good and you make that movement for a while, it makes you feel a little better.
Swish
With the swish technique, you swap an image from your life that you no longer want to see with an image from your life that you do want to see. For example, instead of being sad lying in bed, you want to be calm and relaxed. You then replace those images with each other.
Reframe
With reframing, you try to look at a situation in a different way. For example, crying in bed is simply letting your stress out of your body for a moment, which already makes it feel a lot less bad.
Neuro hypnotic pattern change
With this technique, you first feel how a thought moves inside your body and then you move a thought outside your body instead of inside your body and do a series of exercises to get rid of the feeling of that thought.
Timeline Technique[6]
With the timeline technique, you view the timeline of how certain feelings have developed - and are going to develop - with the goal of removing the negative feelings from your timeline and, in that way, not being bothered by them in the future.
All of these techniques helped the woman in this study suffer less from guilt and, as a result, overcome depression and anxiety.
So NLP is smart questioning about something that is holding you back from achieving success, but many more questions can be asked than just, "What is holding you back?" If questioning is not enough, there are still more than a handful of techniques that can help you solve problems.
Want to learn more about hypnosis and NLP? Then come to a free online master class on hypnosis.
Or enroll directly in one of our training courses where you can learn these aforementioned techniques. Trainings are conducted online from a professional studio and classroom-based whenever possible.
[1] https://mbnlp.com/about/michael-breen/
[2] http://dspace.vpmthane.org:8080/jspui/bitstream/123456789/4654/1/MKP_35.pdf
[3] http://currentstudents.homestead.com/nlp.pdf
[4] https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/MHRJ-09-2018-0030/full/html
[5] http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.735.9568&rep=rep1&type=pdf
[6] https://books.google.nl/books?hl=nl&lr=&id=nbidDQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA179&dq=NLP+psychotherapy+problem+solving&ots=LaITengfgD&sig=K2oJyyAf8C6yjgNRw0QDbIn9Fd4&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=NLP%20psychotherapy%20problem%20solving&f=false (page 183)
birch forest
on15 Oct 2020