About Steven Aitchison
I would like to introduce you to something called Redesigning Your Reality and it’s all about changing how you perceive the world. This is something that I have learned with NLP and changed it slightly to come up with this concept.
Reality
Your reality is totally different from my reality, and my reality is totally different from 6 billion other peoples reality – Why is that?
Without going too much into the neuro-biology of how external information from our five senses are processed, sufficed to say that the electrical signals are passed to various areas of the brain to give us feedback on how we should interpret the world around us.
So, we can therefore break it down like this
- Reality is the world in which we live
- The world in which we live is interpreted by our five senses
- Our five senses are essentially the same as every other human being in the world
- If all humans have the same five senses (some have lost some of their senses, but we mostly have the same 5 senses) then it stands to reason that there is another factor, which differentiates us, between the processing of our five senses and the feedback of that processing.
That factor is:
Past experience
Past experience
Our past experience, beliefs, emotions, and thoughts are what makes every one of our realities totally different from one another. So our perception of the world, or our reality, is shaped by our past experiences.
Since the past is the past, and we can’t go back and change it ,is it possible to change our reality and our perception of the world?
I think there is a way with a 3 step process called Redesigning Your Reality.
Redesgning Your Reality
Step 1 – Grouping
Using the example that you often feel intimated by certain people whilst in their company. I’d like you to, on a piece of paper write down all the names of the people you have felt or feel intimated by. Try and get a list of ten people if you can. Now write down roughly when and what your situation was when you felt intimidated and why you feel intimidated.
So for example:
Name: Ann Hartley (just a name that sprung to mind)
Situation: At work
Date: Every day
Why: She is much more intelligent than me and makes me feel stupid
Step 2 – Re-Label
Now what I’d like you to do is to put a label on how you would like to feel around these people – e.g. You might want to label yourself as ‘Intelligent’ when you are around these people.
Re-Interpreting
Now imagine you are in a movie theatre and it’s just you sitting in the middle. Now for each person you have on your list go back to the past in the movie theatre of your mind, and talk to the people involved and imagine yourself having intelligent conversation, it doesn’t matter what you say it’s all very intelligent and the people are really interested in what you have to say because you are really intelligent. Make the movie extremely vivid with colours, sound, smells, use all five senses here.
Do this with every person on your list and do it as often as you can, possibly daily for the next few weeks until you start seeing the difference it makes in your life.
Now whenever you have a thought or a picture in your mind of feeling intimidated, shrink that image, to its smallest size, make it black and white and make it disappear from the movie screen in your mind and replace it with the movie of you feeling confident, having intelligent conversation with the person and make it as vivid and use all the five senses.
I think this concept is a powerful one as it gives us the ability to change our interpretations of past events in our lives and assign new ways of thinking. Since we are re-labelling the past, the brain will assume that our re-labelling of the past is our actual past, so our past experience has been given a new look, so to speak.
I think this exercise has the potential to change a lot of aspects of our lives which we feel we want to rid ourselves of such as old beliefs, negative thinking patterns, unwanted emotions etc.
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Hi Steve,
It is indeed quite interesting that how we are interpreting the past plays such a huge role in our lives. And often this is really holding us back.
I really like the idea of using visualization to change negative thoughts that we are having about certain situations. I think a very important point that you mentioned was to really feel the situation that you are visualizing. I have found that this is much more effective than just positive thinking with little or no feeling behind it.
.-= Greg Blencoe´s last blog ..30-day money challenge: Day 1 – Deciding what you want, vision boards, and law of attraction journals =-.
Hi Greg. I think visualization is a great tool for many things in our life and ‘feeling’ as well as seeing is extremely important. thanks for your comment s Greg
Steven,
Thanks for the reminder. I read a book on NLP 15 years ago and need to take another look. Great content!
John
.-= John Stone´s last blog ..Why Your Small Business Needs SEO =-.
Hi John, thanks for your comments and I am glad I reminded you of the NLP stuff
Hi Steven,
That is a great and pragmatic exercise you came up with. Our ‘conditioned’ mind consists of old recordings of voices and opinions from our past. When we listen to these recordings all we can do is react. The conditioned mind tells us what to think, say and do. As you point out, we can erase over these recordings and eliminate those reactive tendencies.
The conditioned mind can only imitate, it cannot create. This a great way to erase those recordings and be free to create.
Hi Rob, glad we got the commenting sorted out
I like you you use the analogy of recordings to look at how our mind interprets the world and takes in the information.
It’s so interesting that we can use the same senses that we choose to bring ourselves down, to reinterpret reality and to shape it into something that gives us much better results. I look forward to sharing this with my clients and practicing it for myself!
.-= Steve-Prospering With Aspergers´s last blog ..Give Up On Living? =-.
Hi Steve, it totally fascinates me why we think what we think and why we react to our life the way we do when we all have the same tools in life. Glad you liked this.
Great advice Steven,
I totally agree. While everyone has the same five senses the way we process the information we receive from those senses are totally different. Sometimes we do have to go back and redesign our reality.
Great stuff!! Thanks for sharing!!
Thanks for your comment Jarrod, I always appreciate them
Steve,
I love the ideas in this exercise. I would add one thing to this. People should not expect to do this once and create dramatic change. However, if they did this consistently for a period of about 30-35 days, to the point where it’s a habit rather than a task, then I think the power of it will increase exponentially. I love the simplicity of this concept and plan to take into my visualization practice.
Hi Srinivas, you’re totally correct and I should have put that in the article, thanks for pointing it out. We’ve taken a lifetime to get to where we are today and it can’t be undone in 1 half hour sitting.
Dear Steven, this is very powerful. I’ve done this with people who have died when I had “unfinished business” with them. Oddly, I find this works whether the person is living or dead, near or far. And the other thing is that I have become who I wanted to be when the incident initially happened. To the point that with the people who were living when I was next around them I saw them, myself and the situation in a whole new, non threatening light. In fact, the shift in my was so huge that I could hardly believe why I’d been so intimidated in the first place.
Another aspect to this is that when I was next around them, because I was so different and confident they acted totally different (often just crumble – it had been a lot of hot air that deflated) and in most they cases were forced to respond in a new way. I don’t mean forced by me, but rather I was no longer fitting into their expected response and so things in them had to shift. Kind like when a member of a family is an alcoholic and then stops drinking and cleans up their act, it often forces the rest of the family to have change and grow. All the unspoken rules and agreements no longer work.
There is SO much communication and so many silent agreements that takes place on a deeper unspoken level, in fact most of it takes place on this “seemingly” silent level. And if we can be aware of what silent agreements we are making with other person it can really help with the exercise you are suggesting here. I hope to at some point do a post on “Silent Agreements” and how we can bring them out of the dark and into the visible light so that they lose their power over us.
Very exciting “stuff” here!! You really inspired me today, but then you always do!! Hugs, Robin
.-= Robin Easton´s last blog ..You-Shaped Hole =-.
Hi Robin, I am so glad to hear that you have used this as I believe it is such a powerful technique to use in our lives. I have used it to speak with my Gran when she passed away years ago and to speak with my future self as well and that is another powerful visualization.
You make a great point in things having to shift in the other person as they are no longer controlling your responses and the alcoholic changing his ways is a great example.
I love that phrase ‘silent agreements’ and can’t wait until you write that article.
Thank you Robin for your kind words and as ever you are inspiring me and many others every single day.
Hey Steven! Always good reading your stuff, I have a very nice post to you I’m going to send in less than two days.
About your post, I like it. It’s amazing how our past can shape who we are, to the point of actually witnessing things we thought could never be because of our past circumstances. I have a saying, and it’s called “breaking your reality.” When I show my clients things they never thought could be, like scoring the girl of their dreams without saying a word…something they never thought was possible–breaking their reality.
A great concept this post. I enjoyed the affirmation.
Parker!
.-= Parker Lee´s last blog ..What Your Father Never Taught you–About Fitting In.. .. =-.
Hey Parker, looking forward to your post, I know it’ll be a good one and know the readers of CYT will love it.
Scoring the girl of their dreams, I remember when I used to speak like that ‘When I was a lad”
Thanks for the feedback Parker.
Very helpful advice, Steven! And really interesting method. I’ve just imagined what you said here and it must help indeed.
Thanks for such an interesting info!
.-= Roman Soluk´s last blog ..Simple guide to a healthy weight loss =-.
Hi Roman, thanks for your comments, always appreciated.
Interesting and I must admit I am skeptical so I have to give it a try – I do believe our minds are our most powerful organ and we can change our thoughts to change our life – your great tag line itself
Hi Farnoosh, would love to hear how you get on if you do try it.
Dear Steve
Thanks for this positive message , I have been strugling with this issue for a long while now. I now know what to do .
Thanks
Emmanuel
Thanks for your comments on this Emmanuel.
Love this post, Steven. Thank you so much for this tool, and I will definitely put it to use. It’s so funny how we can get so caught up in our minds…yet that’s the very power that can help us create who we really want to be as well.
Love your content and look forward to reading more.
.-= Sue Vittner´s last blog ..What Does Judging Really Do To Us? =-.
Hi Sue, welcome to CYT, it’s nice to see new faces around here.
Thanks for your comments as well and I hope you have success with using this tool and hope to see you around more.
Wonderful post! Memory is a funny thing…the simple act of recalling the memory changes the memory. So really how much of our memory is true? There is a great article in Discover Magazine that examines this in more detail. The link is:
http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jul-aug/03-how-much-of-your-memory-is-true
Hi Gregg, thanks for the link on this one, it was a really interesting article to read and kind of supports what I am saying here. The memory can be changed purely by recalling it, however we can make it worse than what it actually was, which is what happens a lot of the time.
This post is so right-on, Steve! It’s so true that we create our current reality based on the past, which is really sad because, as you said, the past is OVER. A long time ago I realized that my reality was being tainted by experiences I had in the past. For example, for my 10th birthday party, I invited 20 people, and only 2 showed up. Devastating for me. And from that moment on I told myself, “I have no friends.” So all throughout middle and high school, I had no friends. And I would always go back and talk about my 10th birthday and how I must not be a good person because no one liked me or wanted to be my friend. Totally not the case thou. I was the one causing people not to be my friend. Now that I’ve let that “reality” go, I have lots of friends!
Hi Jennifer, thanks for sharing that story, I always dreaded birthday parties in case that very same thing happened to me (probably why I never had any
)
Thanks Jennifer.
Hello Stephen,
Excellent article on your blog ~I think all comments done
and not much left to say from my point of view.
Always enjoy your posts…Thank you!
Zuzanna
.-= ZuzannaM´s last blog ..NOSTALGIA =-.
Hi Zuzanna, thanks for your comments, I always appreciate your support and the wonderful links you send.
Hello Steven,
Always find your posts relevant and interesting. This is a very helpful tool (isn’t it akin to the NLP “swish” technique?). What I find is that when used with regularity, especially if infused with the desired feeling, it can really powerful.
Reality is that we are constantly framing and reframing the past and future in our thinking – why not apply it in this really useful and targeted way!
Good stuff!
Thx, Louise
Hi Louise, I haven’t heard of the Swish technique, I remember reading about a similar technique to this from one of Richard Bandlers books.
I think it is extremely powerful when used every day and can compound results we already see with the technique.
I would love to learn a lot more about NLP and will do in the future and learn much more about it, it’s good to get your input on this from an NLP perspective.
Hi Steven, this was a terrific post that’s going to help a lot of people. I’ve used this technique and can attest that it works! I learned about it in the Silva Method – a creative visualization and self-development course. I was skeptical at the time, but to my amazement after I began working with it I noticed, just as Robin mentioned in her post, that the people I focused upon changed how they interacted to me. I became a believer~!
You know it really is true that when you change – people change around you.
Thanks again for the fantastic post.
.-= Angela Artemis´s last blog ..A Thank You Note And a Letter To My Readers - =-.
Hi Angela, the Silva Method was a book I read over 15 years ago and found it totally fascinating and it was one of those books that turned my thinking.
I think you’re right people do change around you because of something you have changed internally and that’s noticeable on an unconscious level to other people.
Thanks Angela, I appreciate your comments.
Essentially, being aware of your thought life is key here. Often times, we allow our thought life to go un-checked with results in a false reality.
.-= Colleen´s last blog ..North Richland Washington Homes For Sale and Real Estate =-.
Hi Colleen, that’s a good way of looking at it. Thanks for your comments, always appreciated.
Thanks Steve,
I like how you mentioned that if we get intimidated, then we should shrink that image. Then focus on something that makes us more confident.
Thanks for sharing
.-= Dia´s last blog ..How to overcome shyness? =-.
hi Dia, thanks for your comments I appreciate it and glad you liked it.
Steven: Very good and interesting post. I totally agree that everyone’s reality really is different and people can literally experience the same thing and have a different perspective on what occurred. It really is fascinating. I think once you really understand and believe in this, you can change your reality and that is a very powerful thing.
Hi Steven. Many thanks for this. You are providing a wonderful service to your world.
I was thinking of my Dad and the way I experienced life with him, particularly in the last 10 or 20 years of his life. (He lived to 95, a long, indomitable life). But along with his many wonderful qualities he also was subject at times to an explosive temper which caused a great rift between us such that as soon as I could I left home and basically saw verty little of my family from then on.
In thinking of your words I see this: the opportunity to experience feeling true love and understanding and appreciation for him and not being fazed in any way by his occasional outbursts of anger…
We really are creators aren’t we?
We can indeed as you suggest re-create our lives and our relationships and perhaps most of all — we can heal the way we see our life so that we begin to see its potential for real grandeur and fun and happiness, and also…inner peace…
With you in this extraordinary journey we are all on.
All the very best
I honestly thought at first that this technique would take a lot of time and I doubted if it would work for me.
Reading your post again, I realize that it may have good potential. I will schedule doing it some time over the coming weekend.
.-= Julius´s last blog ..Can Blind People See? =-.
I think daily reminding myself that I create my reality has been a very simple yet powerful tool to make me more aware of how I react to daily situations that I find myself in. I find that looking to the past to find where my issue started only keeps me focused on the past. What matters most is the present, and if you can change your reaction then you have broke thru your past without having to source it.