Transcription
Welcome back to Day Four of Personal Power. Hey, I want to congratulate you on your commitment and keeping it to follow through each and every day and build one success on the day before. It's this kind of simple daily input that creates the chains of positive success programming instead of the old conditioning that may have controlled some of your success or failure in the past. So, let's get started.
Obviously, you've already done your exercise. I don't even have to bring that up anymore, do I? Well, good. Today, what we're going to study is what is and how to use neuro-associative conditioning, step-by-step. Now, this science of neuro-associative conditioning, or NAC, as I call it, the metaphor I use is giving you the knack of taking control of your life. I developed this science out of frustration, quite honestly. You see, for many years, I've been considered to be one of the top experts in the science of neuro-linguistic programming. And that was a science that I originally studied with its co-founder. I didn't develop it, but I really mastered what he taught, and I was incredibly impressed by the work. It allowed me to make changes in people with lightning-like speed, changes that for years they'd been trying to make in their own life but have been unable to do. In fact, I became rather famous in a short period of time by getting on national television and basically challenging other therapists, saying, "Bring me your worst patient. Give me somebody to have difficulty with, or give me somebody out of your audience right now that's got a lifetime problem, maybe a phobia, for example, and I'll eliminate that problem right here on television over the next 30 minutes." And it wasn't a magic bullet. It didn't work in every case, but fortunately, it worked every time I was on TV, and that really helps.
But the bottom line is, I got frustrated where it didn't work. You know, I began to wonder, "Okay, why isn't it working in this situation?" because I was looking for the cure-all, if you will. And I also noticed something else that bothered me about NLP, and that was that a large number of the people that were involved in it became almost, uh, well, it became almost like a religion where it was like that was the only answer. And I wasn't for that because I could look around and see that every kind of therapy works. I don't care what it is. You want to change in your life, you always want to change one of two things. You either want to change how you feel about things, or you want to change your behavior. You say, "No, Tony, no, that's not what I want. I want to change my money situation." Well, the only way you're going to change your money situation is by changing the way you feel and the way you behave. Does that make sense?
So, I've noticed that I don't care what the problem is, whether someone was raped, they've had a tremendous fear trauma growing up, uh, it was a situation where they were physically harmed, something they were emotionally harmed, it was a bad set of habits, I don't care what it is you want to change in your life, you got a poor relationship with your mother or father. Every form of therapy works some of the time. So rather than making all the therapies wrong, I find out what really did they all have in common that made them successful when they were successful, and once they discovered that common element, how can we make that happen more rapidly and with less pain? Those are my criteria for success.
So, let's take a problem. Let's say, for example, you had a problem with your father and you felt like you're overwhelmed by them, like it controlled you, and you can't express yourself because you are always in a subservient position. And now you live that way in your daily life, and you see it doesn't work because it doesn't allow you to express your feelings. You don't go for it a hundred percent. You feel shut down. How would you deal with that? Well, there are zillion ways using various types of therapies. Let's take a look. We've already said that what we do is based on what we associate to things. So again, if you associate expressing your opinions going to equal pain, you're not going to do it. So what does the therapist's job? Get you to associate that expressing yourself could mean pleasure and not pain, but not expressing yourself with mean pain. What are the various ways of going about that?
Well, one would be to use Gestalt therapy. In Gestalt therapy, what would you do? Well, they would take you, and the therapist would understand that a lot of the frustration and challenges in your life come from your beliefs about your relationship with your father and what you can and can't do. So what will this good Gestalt therapist do? Highly likely, they'd pull out a chair and they'd say, "See this chair? This is your dad. You got to change how you feel about him and realize you're in power." What he'll tell you is, "I want you to scream and yell. Let me know how you really feel. Let them know that you're in charge. Let me know. Let them have it." And so you go, "Well, Dad, um, I don't feel like you gave me enough space to communicate." Now, "Go, no, no, express how you really feel. Let it out there. Yeah, yeah, yeah." And sure enough, finally, you may get emotional. "If I'm, Dad, I'm in charge. I'm a big person now." And you know what? As silly as this sounds, it works. If you really think that that chair for a moment, if in your head you associate that's your dad, and you feel strong. There's your dad. You feel strong. And there's your dad. You feel strong. For the first time in your life, when you think your dad, you may feel strong, be able to express yourself clearly. So it does work, as silly as it may sound. Now, obviously, this is a generalization about Gestalt, but it gives you a good picture.
Now, let's try another form of therapy. Let's say you got the same problem, but you go to Rational Emotive Therapy. Their competent therapist is going to teach you that your frustration is not having anything with your boss or your dad or your brother or your sister, but specifically, it's not your dad. It's caused by your own irrational beliefs about your dad. Now you have the pain of feeling stupid for believing all this crazy stuff, and it's also making you suffer a little bit. And so your brain finally says, "I don't want that pain." And he says, "Look, if you just change your beliefs, you can feel better." And through this conversation, if you trust the therapist, and if they're competent enough, pretty soon you may change what you associate to your relationship with your dad. Sure enough, your behavior changes again. But notice what has changed when it works, because it doesn't always work. The neural association has changed. That's when the therapy works. When you now have a new meaning for what being with your dad means. You have a new meaning for a relationship.
Let's try another approach. Let's say you try Rogerian counseling. There, the therapist listens and reflects back what you say about yourself with your father with unconditional positive regard, with you, without any judgment for you. He or she will tell you that you have the resources within yourself to solve the problem. And what they'll do is create a place for you to feel very, very appreciated and loved, hold you in a very strong and respected light. And as you feel better about yourself and you talk about this, you have your kind of reputation to live up to. And as a result, pretty soon you may begin to change your associations in your mind about who you are and what that relationship really is. As a result, all of a sudden, the change you wanted has happened. You feel free. Now you can go out and communicate and be who you are again.
Simple approach. Let's say you got the same problem, you want to go for Freudian therapy, or as we call it, non-directive therapy. There, what happens is you lie on a couch and talk to yourself for about four or five years, being only slightly exaggerating here. And what happens though is that you say things, you ask questions, and all they do is reflect them back to you, get you to think about them. And by reevaluating your life and so many different details, and you're feeling different now than you did then, eventually, hopefully, you make new neuro-associations. Although there's no guarantee in this therapy because the therapist is not to direct you. That's what non-directive therapy means. The only challenge I have is how long it takes.
So, all therapies work, and we've already identified what happens at the moment they actually work. In other words, when somebody has a breakthrough, what is that breakthrough? The breakthrough is at that moment, the meaning of what's happened in their life has changed. They've changed what they associate to that person or that situation. For example, somebody had been raped, they were going to continue to have trauma until they changed the meaning. In other words, the reason they feel upset and the anger and the hurt and the pain, they have every right to, but the reason is what that means to them. That means they were violated. It means their life's out of control. It means, let's say, that they're dirty. Whatever it is that they've associated, their head is making them feel pain. Now, people who change that have changed the meaning. There comes a point where that rape now means that they're stronger than they've ever been in their life, and they can now help other people. Or that rape now means that it'll never happen again because they know how to handle themselves. Or that rape means it's a chance for them to expand. I don't know what it is. It's different for every person. But if the meaning doesn't change, the person's life doesn't change.
There's a gentleman by the name of Viktor Frankl who wrote a book that you should read. It's called "Man's Search for Meaning." Fabulous book. Viktor Frankl was a psychiatrist of Jewish heritage who during World War II had the unbelievably unfortunate experience of being locked up in a Nazi concentration camp where death seemed certain. Now, the interesting thing that happened there is while most people just gave up and died, he somehow, through a series of experiences, began to trigger and associate to being in that camp the possibility of power and pleasure. What do I mean by that? Well, what he noticed was that maybe one out of 25 people were going to live, but he wanted to know what made that one out of 25 make it while everybody else around them died. And as he began to study and pay attention and talk to these people, he found the difference is what they associated to their experience in the camp. For most people, being in the camp meant instant death. They gave up right away. Or they began to think about and focus on continuously, "Why has God done this to me? Why am I going through all this pain?" The people who survived developed a reason to do so. That is, they developed a meaning for their suffering. In other words, instead of just suffering for no reason, which means ultimate pain, they said, "I am suffering so that I can come back and tell the story to my children, make sure this never, ever happens again on Earth." And for them, the ability to come back and tell that story, the ability to touch the future, was enough pleasure that it enabled them to create a meaning out of their present pain. In other words, if they could just hang in here through this pain, the ultimate pleasure in the long term would be worth much more than the pain they were going through. They had a reason to live. They had a meaning. And by changing the meaning of their suffering to something that would eventually make a difference, they were able to make it through, and they had a will to live that was so strong, they pulled themselves through the toughest times.
I'm here to tell you that what we've talked about is nothing but changing meaning. Changing the meaning of dieting to pleasure instead of pain. Changing the meaning of developing your own business to ultimate freedom instead of massive risk and potential loss. Changing what stopping smoking means. For most people, stopping smoking means, "Oh my gosh, I may gain weight. Oh my gosh, I'm giving something up." And as long as you're giving something up, it means pain. Changing instead to freeing yourself. Changing your associations, or the meaning of what a relationship means, from "It's a leash around my neck that takes away from my freedom" to "It's one of the most empowering, fun, powerful, transforming experiences I could pray for in my life." That process of transforming meaning, changing what we associate, is what all therapies do when they work. So you don't have to go to therapy. You can learn to do it on yourself just by changing what you link up inside your own head.
Having seen that the real difference, what changes people, is when they change meaning, what I began to do is analyze, "Well, how come some people did that in one session and some took seven years?" Well, part of it was the approach, obviously, the type of therapy that was used. But also part of it was where was that person and their level of commitment to making a change. I mean, I know some people, I mean, you could change them in a heartbeat. Didn't take any effort at all. Other people, boy, you really had to push. And some people never seem to want to change at all. They kept coming, they'd want to pay somebody, they want to go talk to the therapist, but they don't really want to change. So I began to look at what was it that got somebody to the point of really making the change in this session, so that I could develop a way to create results in people literally in one session instead of five hundred.
When I taught NLP, neuro-linguistic programming, people would come see me and they'd want me to change them, and I would. I'd go in there and change their associations, and it really worked. But I also noticed that in some cases, not most, but some, after a couple of years, the change would go back. Let's say somebody was smoking, and I got them to link to smoking massive pain and a not-smoking pleasure. Well, once that happened, sure enough, their behavior changed. Their brain needed to avoid pain, so it avoided cigarettes, and it wanted pleasure, so it moved towards the new behavior that we installed. But the whole idea of programming basically set me up. And that is, I got people actually thinking that I was doing something to them that they couldn't change back, which is not true. Two or three years later, they needed some new way of changing the way they felt, and they went back to cigarettes for whatever reason, and they could go, "See, this stuff doesn't work." And I'd say, "What do you mean it doesn't work? It worked for three years." They'd go, "Yeah, but it didn't work forever."
What I developed was a new metaphor, and the metaphor is that of conditioning. And here's the difference. Recently, had somebody come to my house to tune my piano. Now, I don't play the piano, but I got this great piano that sounds logical, doesn't it? Somebody in my family is going to start playing it. Looks good, though. Hey, what the heck. The bottom line is, my kids are finally learning to play. So we have this guy come in and tune our piano, this great grand piano. So the guy comes in, and he adjusts the piano, and the way he tunes it is he changes the amount of tension that's going on these wires. There's literally tons of tension on them. And in his doing this, I thought, "Okay, well, that's it." He said, "No, no, I gotta come back next week." And I said, "What do you mean? I thought you just tuned it." He said, "Yeah, but see, it's been stretched in this way for so long that what I got to do is, I got to re-tune it, and I got to keep stretching this new pattern in. I got to condition those wires so they stay this way." I said, "Why can't you just do it once and last?" He goes, "Oh, because it's been pulling in that other way for so long now that you just got to condition it." And sure enough, even while he was there, before he left, we tested it, and some of them had already gone back to the old way. So he adjusted him again, and now he has to come back out in another week, and then he's going to come back out again, I guess, in two weeks, then he comes back out in a month, and he comes out every three months, then he comes out eventually every six months. Even to keep it the way it is, he's got to condition it at least twice a year. And that's my metaphor for life as well. I didn't become, quote unquote, successful in my life because one day I reprogrammed myself and everything was perfect. Most of the success that I experienced, the abundance I experienced mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, financially, is because every single day I condition myself to be at my best, to feel at my best, to give my best. And that's what neuro-associative conditioning is about. That's why I don't talk about just programming per se as much as I talk about conditioning.
Hey, you wouldn't run out if you want to be physically full of energy and vibrant, you wouldn't run out and work out one time, say, "Do aerobics one time and say, 'Boy, I'm glad that's done. Now I'll be healthy for life.'" You know, that's not how it works. What you've got to be able to do is condition yourself day after day, and pretty soon you love the conditioning, you begin to get addicted to it. It's just part of your lifestyle. You wouldn't get up and not brush your teeth. You wouldn't get up and not shower or do your hair. So you shouldn't get up and not condition yourself for success each day. So start thinking about this as a lifestyle, not a program that you listen to a long time ago, but something you're conscious of daily.
So, how do we condition ourselves to really have our changes last? Let me share with you what I think the three fundamental key distinctions are that cause people to change when they do change, and the change lasts. These are the three fundamentals of the science of neuro-associative conditioning systems. And here's number one: In order to get a change where it's going to absolutely happen and it's going to last, you must first get leverage on yourself. What do I mean by leverage? I mean, you must get to the point where you believe that something must change, that you must change it, and that you can change it right now. You gotta get to the point where you feel like not changing would be painful, massively painful, and two, change would mean pleasure. In other words, you've got to use all things we talked about up until now. You've got to get that connection. If you're only at the point of believing that you should change, or you could change, or you ought to change, or you might change, that is not enough to create long-lasting change in most cases. So you've got to get yourself to the point where you've got leverage. And lots of ways to get it. Some people will change out of rapport. You know, they go to a therapist, they really like the therapist, the therapist wants them to change, so they do. I mean, it literally can be that simple sometimes. Some people change because, God, if they don't, they're gonna lose everything. Some people, in spite of all kinds of pain, still don't change because in their head they think, "I don't have to," or they think, "I'm doing this because somebody else wants me to," or they think in their head, "Well, gosh, you know, changing would be too fearful, too painful." So in order to make a change last, you got to get to that point where it must change, you must change it, and you can change it. That is number one.
I'll give you an example. When people come to me sometimes for private consulting, I've trained all kinds of other people to do this work now, so I don't do private consulting. But invariably, I still have a few people that want to do it with me personally for whatever reason, or no one else seemed to get the results. So I'll take the challenge on personally. Well, first of all, I make it very difficult for these people to ever get to the point of working with me in the first place. I may have to go through a waiting list, so hopefully they'll decide to change on their own. I make them have to pay a fairly large chunk of money to be able to do this as well. But even after all of that, when they finally come, and they've flown out to meet me, and we're sitting down face to face, I then will turn to them and say, "Look, I don't know if this is the right thing for you." And they'll say, "What?" I'll say, "Look, before you invest any more time or any more capital, and before I invest my time, I got to know that you're really absolutely committed to changing, because I got to tell you something. I only work with people they're going to change right now, not after 15 sessions. I do one-stop therapy, and that's what we've got to do, otherwise you'll screw up my entire record." Usually, they'll laugh at that, but I'll say, "I'm serious. I won't work with you unless I'm convinced you must change. Not you should, not you might, but you must." I then have them go on, and they got to convince me. They're taken back a little bit, but for the next 15 minutes, they've got to try and convince me how they absolutely must change their life, because if they don't, it'll cost them this in their relationship, it'll cost them this in their health, it will cost them this in their self-esteem. It's already cost them all these areas, and they're tired of it and they can't take it anymore. You remember the movie, don't you? "I'm mad as heck, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" You got to get to that point. That's called leverage. That's when change happens. And you know what? When they're to that point, my job is easy. I simply go to step two.
What's step two? I simply interrupt their present limiting associations, their limiting pattern of association. So, for example, somebody's got a phobia, and what happens right now when they see an elevator or even think of one? They have a patterned way of responding. They have an immediate association. That association is: elevator equals ultimate pain. And immediately their body freaks out. So, what do I do? Well, I first get into leverage, so that I know they're going to change and I know they're committed to it. And then I do whatever it takes to change that association, to interrupt that pattern. So the minute they start thinking about, let's say, this elevator, and they start to freak out, all of a sudden I reach over and I say, "Stand up." And they go, "Huh?" I say, "Stand up." And right at that moment, it interrupts their pattern. And that's okay. "Sit down." They sit back down again. And I say, "Well, tell me about this elevator thing." They go, "Huh?" And sure enough, they start to go in the thing again. And all of a sudden, I ask him a question. "Let me ask you a question. Right in the middle of them thinking about the elevator, would you eat a bowl of live crickets for forty thousand dollars instantly?" What happens? Their brain goes, "What?" And again, I've interrupted the pattern. I'll do all kinds of things. The key to interrupting somebody's pattern is you want to do something they don't expect, something that will jolt them. It's kind of like, have you ever been so caught up in a conversation you were like totally immersed in it, and then somebody came by, stood right next to you, asked a question that had nothing to do with what you were talking about? In order to answer them, you went over here and answered, and you came back, and you couldn't remember what you were talking about. Have you ever had that happen, even when you were like, real committed to talking about this particular thing? What it did is that person interrupted your pattern, and it was hard for you to get back to it. I mean, think of it this way: if you interrupt somebody's pattern enough, eventually they can't ever get back to it.
Think of your mind as being like a jukebox, and in that jukebox, you have a zillion little records, and these records, at any moment in time, you can play any one of them. And depending upon which one you play will determine how you feel. So if you played a sad song record, you're going to feel lousy. If you play a positive record, you're going to feel really great. The challenge is, for a lot of us in life, something happens, and it like pushes our buttons, and instantly we start playing one of these records, one that makes us feel sad, or feels frustrated, or feels angry. And what we've got to learn to do, though, is interrupt those patterns, to change those records. What would happen if I took a record out of your brain, a memory, if you would, or a pattern, and I took that record and I just started scribbling across it? I took a knife and went across it back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. You'll never be able to play that record the same way again. That's called interrupting somebody's pattern.
I'll give you another simple example. I was doing a seminar one time, and this woman came up to me. We had just done a session, it's pretty powerful, on relationships. And she came up to me and she said, "Mr. Robin, she said, I've got this problem with my husband and I, and we really..." And she began to cry like crazy. Now, I really care about people very deeply. So initially, in the early days of my really working with people, I would immediately say, "Hey, please relax. It's okay. Please don't worry. Whatever it is, we'll work it out." You know what the problem with that is? That's what everybody does. So rarely does that interrupt somebody's pattern. In other words, they expect you to say, "It's okay," and it doesn't usually change the pattern. They go, "Well, yeah, I guess you're right," and then they go and run the pattern again. Does that sound familiar? So what I now learn to do is jolt people, to literally interrupt their pattern so they can't get back into it, to change their neural association radically. And I do it in some pretty outrageous ways.
So she comes up and says, "Mr. Robinson, my husband and I, we go..." and she starts to cry. And I was drinking a glass of water, so I took the glass and went and I dumped this water on her. She jumped about four feet. She said, "What? Are you crazy? What are you doing?" I said, "Oh, nothing." I just smiled. I said, "Tell me about you and your husband." She said, "What?" And now she's laughing while she thinks about her husband and herself. "Ah, a whole new pattern." And she goes, "What are you talking about?" I said, "Well, tell me about you and your husband." I smile and I drink a little more of my water. She goes, "You're a little crazy." I said, "That's true, but go ahead and tell me." So she thinks for a few moments and she goes, "Well, my husband and I, and also..." She's fine about. "Well, we've been having some problems." And I said, "No, you were crying before, remember? You were crying." And I tried to get her back there. And she said, "Oh, yeah. Well, that's because of it." She started crying. I took my lunch and the other again. I mean, this time her makeup is kind of dripping right there. People standing around now, by the way. You shouldn't try this unless you've got some strong rapport skills as well, right? And got a strong connection. But she knew I cared, even though I seemed a little crazy. And she started laughing. She was like, "What are you doing? That's crazy!" And she's dripping the stuff over her face. I said, "Nothing. Just tell me about you and your husband." And she said, "Oh, we're fine." I said, "No, no, no. Come on, tell me. I got to tell me one more time." A little bit more water after that. Anytime she thought about her husband, she started cracking up. She said, "We're absolutely fine." That's called leverage, and interrupting somebody's pattern. The water was the leverage, and the pattern interrupt happened over and over again until pretty soon she couldn't play it again. When she thought about her husband, her, she started to laugh, and out of laughter, she was able to come up with some better solutions on her own. She wasn't stuck in the pattern. Does that make sense? We've gotta interrupt our pattern to create new results. That's exactly what this is about.
The third key to creating a long-term change, then, is once you've got leverage, what must change, once you've interrupted your present pattern, then the third key is you've got to condition yourself to have a new association, a new empowering association. So what I got this woman to do, for example, was I got to link laughter to her relationship by having laughter. All of a sudden, again, she's able to deal with the situation. Or with somebody with a phobia, I get them to think of times in their life when they felt incredibly strong and powerful, and I get them to associate feeling strong and powerful to, let's say, taking the elevator ride. And I do it over and over again and condition them until pretty soon, when they think of the elevator ride, they feel powerful. What happens? They feel differently. They behave differently. The problem is handled. And this can be done with virtually anything, as long as you get enough leverage.
Let me give you another simple example of this. I was doing a seminar one time, and I was telling the audience basically what I've shared with you, that the bottom line in life is that if you're not doing something, it's because you associate more pain to doing it than not doing it. Now, I had a woman who raised her hand and said, "Look, there's an exception to that. She says, for example, my husband and I, we'd like to get together and spend more time, but we just don't." I said, "Well, why don't you?" She goes, "Well, we just can't." I said, "You mean you aren't committed to?" And she said, "No, you know, well, I guess you're right. We aren't 100%." I said, "If you were 100% committed, could you find a way to spend time together?" She said, "Well, of course." I said, "Then why don't you?" She goes, "Well, I guess because we're not committed." I said, "Why not?" Boy, that opened up something. She said, "Well, I don't know. I just, you know, I I love my husband, but I can't commit 100% to him." I said, "Really? Well, let me ask you a question. If you don't commit to him, there's only one reason: you think committing is going to mean more pain than not committing. Is that fair?" She thought for a moment. She goes, "Well, I guess that's true." I said, "How come? Where did you get that thing linked up in your head?" And what turned out to be was that when she was growing up, she gave 100% in her mind to her family. She gave a hundred percent in her mind to her parents. She loved them a hundred percent, and she felt like here she was giving, giving, giving, and was totally committed to loving them, but she didn't feel like they gave back. She felt unloved. She felt like they didn't reciprocate. And so, as a result, she felt these tremendous feelings of loss, and that meant a lot of pain for her. So somewhere along the way, her brain linked up: if you commit and love somebody 100%, then what's going to happen is it's going to mean pain to you. She wasn't even aware of this consciously, but now all of a sudden, it was affecting her relationship with her husband, where they had drifted apart, they weren't spending time together. Part of it was just not feeling 100% committed, not being willing to give 100% of herself emotionally and physically and spiritually being with her husband.
So, how do you help her to change her neural association? What step one? Do you remember? Get leverage. So I had to help her get to the point where she believed that she must change this pattern. So I said, "Let me ask you a question." I didn't tell her she must change it, by the way. I got her to tell me. I said, "If you don't change this pattern, if you still don't commit to your husband, how will it affect your relationship over the next three, four, or five years?" Well, she thought for a moment or two, and she said, "Well, I think it would mean divorce." I said, "How come?" She said, "Well, if I'm not committed to him, if I don't love him 100%, he's got to feel that. If he doesn't feel loved at 100%, then he probably won't give me 100%. Then I won't feel loved, and then I'll make me mad, and that'll just generate all kinds of problems." I said, "Isn't that what's already happening?" And she said, "Yeah, it is." And so, what I got to do is begin to associate what pain to her present behavior, to her present pattern, so that she'd absolutely feel like it must change now. And we went more and more and more until she began to tell me she didn't do this, how what a lousy role model would be for children, and how even if she divorced him, no man would ever feel totally loved by her or would ever commit to her if she wasn't willing to commit. So pretty soon, there was so much pain associated not changing, she felt like she had to. And I said, "If you were to change, what would happen?" She said, "Well, gosh, you know, there's a good chance that if I did change, that he, in fact, would, you know, give all his love to me too, and our relationship would get better, and our home life would be better." And she went on and on and on with all the pleasure. I'd accomplished step one, without a doubt.
So now I had leverage with her. She knew she must change. But she still had that pattern, that fear, that said, "Yeah, if I don't change, it's gonna mean pain. But what if I commit and I give him a hundred percent, but he doesn't love me back? What if I commit, I still don't get the love? What if I commit and I still get pain?" And I said, "Well, let me help you out on this. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever driven a car?" She said, "What?" And it just instantly interrupted her pattern. Here she was, caught up in her fear that, God, if she commits, it would mean pain. I want to change that pattern. I want to interrupt it, and I want to create a new empowering pattern of association. So I said, "Have you ever driven a car?" She said, "Well, yeah." I said, "Have you driven a car down a two-lane highway that winds through the mountains where all that was separating you from the cars coming from the other direction was a little yellow line?" She said, "Yeah." I said, "Well, I got a question for you. Is it possible that even though you were committed to driving on your side of the line, that the people on the other side were not as committed? Is that possible?" She said, "Well, yeah." I said, "Do you have any guarantee that just by your being committed to stay on your side of the line, that they're going to stay on theirs too?" She said, "Well, no." I said, "In fact, is it possible that you could experience a lot of pain driving a car like that? That the cars that are coming the other way, 55 miles an hour, might accidentally, even without meaning to, hurt you, come on your side and crash and kill you instantly? Is that possible?" She said, "Well, of course." I said, "Then I got a question for you. How could you possibly drive on a road like that? How could you possibly drive through the mountains knowing there's cars of people you don't even know who are coming down the highway at the opposite side, when you don't even know they're committed?" And then I smiled. She just said, "She didn't know her husband was committed to her." I said, "How do you do that? How do you drive down a road and commit to your side, not knowing what they're going to do?" She said, "Well, you just got to trust." I said, "Oh. I said, "What happens if you don't trust?" She said, "Well, then you can't get from here to there. Then you're trapped." I said, "Oh." And what she began to do was create a new association that she was trapping herself. I said, "You mean you can't have what you want if you don't just trust and commit?" She said, "Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. That's true."
So, what did I do? I interrupted her old pattern, and I simultaneously helped her to create a new one. I said, "Let me ask you a question. What's the best way to receive love?" She said, "Well, to give love." I said, "Well, when you're being totally loving, do you usually receive love even without trying?" She said, "Oh, yeah." And I got her to associate that committing and giving love meant receiving tons of love. At the end of this point, I said, "Let me ask you a question. What if your husband doesn't commit to you? What if you give him 100% and he doesn't give back?" She said, "Well, look, some man will appreciate it. And if I'm always giving, I'm going to have a man in my life who appreciates it. There's no doubt about it." And I said, "So, what are you committed to doing?" She says, "I'm committed to go give him a thousand percent. Give him everything I got of myself. And that scares him. I'll give him even more. And that scares him. On giving me more. And if he disappears and runs off, and all that's his loss, but I'm going to really go for it 100%." And she did. Simply by changing her associations. Go through the three steps: Get leverage, get where you must change, to interrupt the pattern, three, create a new association that empowers you. Now, I could have gotten the same result using Gestalt therapy, Rational Emotive Therapy, virtually any form of therapy. But I'll tell you what the key is. The key is the distinctions about leverage and interrupting people's patterns. That's the key to making the change.
Recently, I heard on the late night on the news, there was an advertisement for a television program. And on this morning television program, they said they were going to have an expert who does five-minute phobia cures. Well, that's pretty much how I became famous. I got on television and basically eliminated people's phobias right there on camera. So I figured, "Hey, maybe it's one of my students, or maybe it's one of the psychiatrists or psychologists I've trained." The next morning, I tuned in on the show, and it wasn't one of my own students. This guy had a totally different technique for eliminating phobias. And here's what it was. First of all, he brought this man on. He was a psychologist. And they brought him on and they said, "Look, okay, he's going to eliminate this man's phobia." And the man came up and he said, "This man has a phobia to snakes. Sir, how do you feel about snakes?" The man said, "Not very good." I thought, "Major phobia." When I deal with people, the phobia I look for is somebody's out of control, you know, somebody's screaming, that stuff like that. He didn't exactly pick a real challenging subject, but okay, here we go. So then he's going to test it. So I figured, you know what I've done on a regular basis is go out and I grab a real snake and just scare the heck out of somebody and see that it really works, and then I test it afterwards to see if it works by handing them the snake and have them wrap it around their body. In fact, I did it with a giant boa constrictor on a couple of television shows that when I first saw the boa constrictor, I worked on my neuro-associations. But anyway, the bottom line is, this guy breaks out a plastic snake. And he brings a snake and he pushes it in front of the guy and goes, "The guy looks and goes, 'Oh, all right.'" Well, let's see what he's going to do. So sure enough, this is on national television. Sure enough, the guy reaches out and he goes, "What I'm going to do with this man is a technique called temporal tapping. What he does is he has the man stand there and he says, 'Okay, sir, I want you to think about snakes.'" He takes his fingers and he starts smacking this guy on the side of his head, on his temples. He goes, "Why am I wearing them? Think about snakes. Why am I wearing them? Think about snakes. Why am I wearing them? Think about snakes. Why am I wearing them?" Well, after doing this about five or six times, the guy goes, "Do you feel any different?" The man goes, "Yeah, my head hurts." He said, "But do you feel any different about snakes?" He goes, "Well, I don't think so." He goes, "All right. Think about snakes. Why am I wearing? Think about snakes." And what is this man doing? If it works, he's interrupting this man's pattern of association in his nervous system. Are you following me? In other words, this man used to think of snakes and get this unbelievable painful fear feeling in his gut. Now, instead, he's got this pain in his head. Now, that may not sound like much, but it is a change, and it will take him out of fear.
Well, the guy did it over and over again. It didn't work. All of a sudden, this psychologist breaks out into this massive sweat on national television. He's having a pain called failure on national TV. And also, my heart goes out to him. I thought, "Nobody wants to be in this situation." Right? They say, "All right, we're going to cut to a commercial, and then we'll come back." Meanwhile, he's still going, "Think about the snakes. Why am I wearing? Think about the snakes." Well, when they come back from the commercial, we don't see the man with the snake phobia, and there's no mention of what happened. Instead, there's a new woman here, and she has a phobia to ladders. And so he says, "Okay, now think about ladders. Why am I wearing? Think about ladders. Where am I wearing? Think about ladders. Why am I wearing?" And he keeps doing this over and over again. He says, "Do you feel any different?" She goes, "Well, yeah." He goes, "Now." And you could see she did feel different. She didn't look scared. "Think about ladders. Why am I wearing?" After three or four minutes or five minutes of this, maybe a little bit more, if they finally bring out this ladder and they ask her to climb up it. Well, she walks over, she goes, "Yeah, I think I can do it. I feel different." She takes a step on the first step, then the second step, then about the third step, she kind of gets a little scared, but she kind of stays on the third step, and then she comes on down. Well, the audience claps like crazy, and the host of the show comes over and says, "Hey, that was really great. Well, you must really be proud of yourself." She goes, "Yeah, I'm not only proud, I'm excited because, you know what? My husband said that if this therapist guy could help me and I could get up at least three stairs, that he'd give me a shopping spree and he would paint the whole house." Interesting. She walked in with leverage. It was a must for her because for her, being able to do this, man, she could have lots of pleasure and get out of some pain. Pretty hot deal. So no wonder step one was handled. So all this man to do is step two and step three fell into place. And the problem is, when you go to a therapist, and it doesn't happen, it's because they don't have leverage on you, or they haven't interrupted your pattern, or you haven't created a new pattern. So just go through those steps for yourself, and you probably don't need a therapist 99.9% of the time, and I think most therapists would agree with me on this.
What's interesting about this story, though, is the host turned back to this guy, and he had like three minutes left in the show. And he said, "Well, one out of two sure isn't bad. That's pretty good deal. But why don't you go here and work with John some more because we didn't get the result with him? Let's see if you can pull it off." And he goes, "No, no." He says, "Uh, I..."
Think John's problem is that he's sick and you know it's probably got a virus. So that when I'm doing this, it's affecting his way, his body is processing this. And John says, "I don't got a virus." And he says, "Well, you know, he may not know it, but he probably has one." John says, "No, no, no." The host says, "Well, come on over. Why don't you go ahead and work on him anyway?" The guy goes, "Oh, all right." He gets up there. "Where am I, man? Think about snakes. Why am I thinking about snakes? Nothing works right."
Finally, at the end, right? The guy's sweating like crazy. And he said, "You know, I think I could help him in private. I think he's just uncomfortable because all these people are watching him." And the guy goes, "I'm not uncomfortable about this. Poor therapist, he's getting beat up here, right? He's going to have a phobia going on TV shows after this."
But the bottom line is, finally, right? The show's about to end. And this gentleman of the phobia says, "You know, I think the only reason I'm not changing is I don't really want to." I thought, what better example that leverage was missing? So those are the three keys to neuro-associative conditioning. Use them well, and you can make any change you want in your life because you understand the key elements that will make the change happen now, not six months from now or a year from now. And I want you to know, I know there's a lot to absorb here, so you might want to listen to it again. And each of these three steps will be using over and over again over the 30-day period here, so you'll get used to them. And you'll get a lot more examples, for example, on how to interrupt people's patterns, how to interrupt your own patterns, fear patterns, if you will, sabotage patterns.
So take heart. For right now, though, let's start to use this. At least let's begin to get some leverage on ourselves, interrupt our patterns, and create some new associations. Let's start with an assignment. Please pull out your journal right now. And let's start out by taking those four things you wanted to change, four things that you should be doing but you weren't following through on. And let's make sure that you really make these things happen. How? Let's get some major leverage on ourselves right now. I want you to write down ten reasons for each one of these four. Ten reasons why you absolutely must make this happen now. And make sure that the must include what it'll cost you if you don't, and all the great stuff you'll get by doing them. And we kind of started this process, but let's really hone it in so you feel major leverage that this is something that must change, you must change it, and you can change it, and will. Right now, write down why you know you absolutely can change this. In other words, make sure that that first step of leverage is absolutely handled.
Second assignment. I want you to make sure that you interrupt your own pattern. And the way you're going to do that is I want you to write four or five ways then you can interrupt your negative patterns. So for example, if you overeat, I want you to make one of your assignments to go to a gathering and not eat anything. Go to lunch with someone, have a social meeting, have a conversation, and experience the pleasure of being in a meal without having to eat to get the pleasure. Or let's say you're in the middle of an argument. And right in the middle of the argument, you have a pattern up now you've designed for yourself which says you're going to grab your nose and make a silly noise like something totally absurd. Now, when you're in the middle of it, the way you're going to get yourself out, you're going to reach up and go, "Ooh-la-la!" And you've got a way to interrupt that pattern massively. It'll also interrupt the pattern of the people around you. In the middle of your arguing like this, "Awesome reader, you know, whoa!" That will definitely change their state. They'll be wondering what's wrong with you, but they also begin to laugh. And you'll get caught out of the pattern. You won't get stuck. For example, you've been so caught up in a pattern of arguing, for example, you forgot what you're arguing for, but you knew you had to win. Well, this is the way to get out of it. Interrupt the pattern. Do something hysterical. Do something weird. Do something funny. But specifically right now, make a list of four or five pattern reps you could do. You might want to create some of these for your relationships. The more you can do that, interrupt your own patterns, the more power you have over yourself.
Here's the third assignment on this exercise. Create a new association to the change you want. In other words, whatever change you want to make happen, make sure you link tons of pleasure. And one way to do that is just think about all the things you're going to gain in your life and feel the gains. All the things are going to be more pleasurable. Things will be better while you're making these change. And do it over and over again by repetition. So whenever you think of it, you think of all the great things you're going to get as a result. That new association will stay, and things will change.
So the assignment is: First, get leverage on yourself. Write down 10 reasons why you absolutely must change this behavior or action. Also, write all the reasons why you know absolutely that you can do it. Number two, design four or five ways to interrupt your patterns, four or five ways to get yourself out of a limiting association. And then thirdly, over and over again, condition yourself. Think about things over and over again, feel them, and think about them until you have a new association that gets you to follow through and it's effortless, where you want to do it consistently. Will you feel compelled and driven?
Have some fun with this. I know it's new. So is riding a bicycle at one time. And you may have fallen off in the beginning, but you didn't go over failure. You just got up and did it again. So if this feels a little awkward at first, that's okay. Just go for it. As we do it over and over again, you're going to get good at it. We don't have to think about it. You can just produce the result. Go to work or to play, if you will. I'll see you tomorrow. Live with passion.