Internal Representations

For years people thought that our positive thinking, our affirmations will greatly influence our internal state and our results. I agree that they do, or to say the least, they have a great potential to influence our Subconscious Mind. I also believe that affirmations as a standalone technique, is obsolete today. Yes, you heard me right, affirmations are obsolete. Not many people can make such statement today. In fact, most Guru’s today that you could see for personal development will teach you the wrong and the right ways to do affirmations. I would know, as I used to be one of them. 

I used to teach affirmations and visualizations because they do help cause change and because I didn’t know any better at that point in time. I used to teach a system that really worked but hard effort and persistence was required. Today, I can teach you the skills that will cause instant changes, without doing endless affirmations.

So far you learned about our 5 Senses: Visual (what you see), Auditory (sound), Kinesthetic (feelings), Olfactory (smell) and Gustatory (taste) = (VAKOG). They supply the information from the outside world directly to our Subconscious Mind for processing/filtering. This information, combined with our Self Talk (Ad) creates your Internal Representation.

Visual + Auditory + Kinesthetic + Olfactory + Gustatory + Self Talk = VAKOGAd IR Internal Representation

Your Subconscious Mind is symbolic and it thinks and communicates using Pictures (V), Sounds (A), Feelings (K), Smells (O), Tastes (G) and Self Talk (Ad). It is very common to say "Be a positive person", just be a positive thinker, but when people say be a positive thinker, they usually mean just words, just Self Talk (Ad). Not many people are aware that there is more than just our Self Talk and they can’t teach you about the pictures that we make in our mind, the sounds that we hear, the feelings that we feel, the smells or tastes which are all part of our 5 Senses. Being a positive thinker in a way that will truly count would mean using not only words, but also the other 5 Senses that your mind is using to create your Internal Representation.

Because this is so important, we ought to use our Internal Representations with volition and aligning them with what we want. Let me give you an example of a positive internal dialog, let’s say you want to work out and you wanted to lift more weight than you ever lifted before. So you say to yourself, I can do it, I can do it, I can do it. All the while, holding a picture in your mind of not being able to do it! Or maybe you saw somebody not being able to do it, and then you have that picture in your mind. Or you were fussing too much about what your friends will say or do if you fail and you were busy with that kind of images, related negative emotions of embarrassment, etc... Now that’s counterproductive, is it not?

Or, my personal favourites - signs for caution or warning signs. I wish someone would educate people who approve these signs and give them an update of our mind and its workings. What do you think, what kind of an internal representation you create when looking at a sign where a little drawn man is falling on his back due to slippery floor. In our society it became normal to tell people what NOT to do, instead of telling them what to do.

What they don’t understand is that your Subconscious Mind doesn’t process negatives directly and that in order to process negation, it has to think of it first. Don’t: slip! You would have to process slipping first in order to even think of not slipping. And in order to understand that information, your mind will have to process it through your VAKOG, which means that it will have to assign information to each of the modalities. Our mind thinks and process information through VAKOG all the time. There is always a sound assigned to the pictures that we create in our mind and there is always a feeling with it, and so on...

We got a saying in NLP and in Coaching; always say it the way you want it.

What kind of feelings do you think you’d have with a picture of you slipping due to wet floor? What kind of Internal Representation would that create? And since that leads to focusing on it... we tend to produce the necessary behaviour to manifest it in our lives. This is the basis for creating effective change.

Notice that it’s impossible to hold in consciousness negative directly. If I was to say: "Don’t think of an elephant." What are you thinking about? Unless you were semantically trained, you would have to think of an elephant first, in order to not think about it. Think about that for a moment and realize that you can’t think about what you don’t want to think about without thinking about it.

So, each one of these 5 Senses and our Self Talk together, comprises our Internal Representation. Now when you understand this, you can consciously ask yourself: "What am I focusing on? Is my focus positive?" and from now that includes ALL of these six things that we can do in our mind. Including all of these things, is my focus toward what I want, or is my focus toward what I don’t want? Are all systems supportive toward the successful achievement of my goal? This is a difference that will make a huge difference in your life when creating your Internal Representation.

"YOU ARE WHAT YOU BELIEVE YOU ARE."

In the image above, we have certain Events happening in our life. These events, that information from the outside world will come in through our 5 Senses (VAKOG) plus our Self Talk (Ad). And our Reticular Activation System (RAS) will according to our Filters; Delete, Distort and Generalize all that information.

This process creates our Internal Representation. It sorts that data in chunks of 7 to ± 2, totalling not more than 2000 bits per second. You may have noticed that most people can’t remember more than 7 of top brand names in any specific category and this is the reasoning behind that. Our mind sorts information in 7 plus—minus 2 chunks of information. Our Internal Representation, constantly combined with our Physiology creates our State. State dictates our Behaviour and we create certain Results in our lives.

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Isobel Esterhuyse

Master Life Coach, Neuro Linguistic Programming Master Coach, Neuro Linguistic Programming Master Practitioner, Dynamic Quantum Time Line Master Practitioner.

Burk Esterhuyse

Certefied NLP Trainer (ANLP), Master Life Coach, Neuro Linguistic Programming Master Practitioner, Dynamic Quantum Time Line Master Practitioner.

Mobile: +27 83 225 0597
E-mail: burk@dqc.co.za