HYDERABAD: You’ve been staring into your laptop’s soul for hours but task after task besieges your peace of mind. Innumerable late nights and gazillion work calls later, the pressure only seems to get heavier and heavier. You pop a couple of pills, never mind the side effects that come with it. And you keep chugging, chugging, chugging…until you meet NLP.
What is NLP?
Born in the ’70s, Neuro-linguistic Programming is simple: it is all about rewiring your unconscious, unfruitful patterns and behaviours into more conscious and fruitful ones so you can live your best life. “With guidance from an NLP coach, you learn ‘patterns’ to help yourself in such a way that your brain gets wired to release endorphins (happy hormone) instead of cortisol (stress hormone). Pills may artificially do this but NLP is the natural way,” said Rafi, a Hyderabad-based NLP coach. Apart from conducting programmes across the country, his expertise has helped Agniveers and naval officers too.
What are patterns?
Patterns are essentially simple mind exercises to rewire your thought process. Your NLP coach will ask you a couple of questions to decipher the root of your problem, say, stress. He or she will then guide you with a pattern that will specifically solve your problem.
“Though Hyderabad is becoming an IT hub now, it has always been fuelled by trade and business. So, many local clients often come to me with problems such as stress over losses, stocks, and whatnot,” said Rafi.
Stress, stress everywhere
25-year-old Rajesh has an all-too-familiar problem. “Running a business is not easy. I am my own boss but managing employees, attritions and budgets is stressful. My heart beats very fast and I struggle to sleep at night sometimes. Sometimes, this happens even when everything is fine and I just don’t know why,” he lamented.
Rafi said the ‘Figure of Eight’ is a charming pattern. “Let’s say someone is severely stressed due to work or the loss of a job. After the initial questioning session, we move the finger in front of your eyes in the shape of a horizontal eight, like infinity. Your eyes start to follow it and after a couple of times, the painful image you have will fade away. You essentially dissociate from that root cause and make better decisions as a result,” he explained, going on to say that another common problem among his local clients is bingeing.
Jyothi, a 49-year-old teacher, said she always used to eat right. “But for the past year, I eat all sorts of sweets late at night. I feel happy while eating but feel guilty afterwards. I’ve heard of NLP and will get help,” she added.
The Map Across pattern is perfect for this, said Rafi. “For example, someone is addicted to sweets and chocolates. We tell them to close their eyes and describe the image. They will always give it an attractive description, like ‘big, bright and closer to me’. Now we ask them to describe a food they don’t like, and they say something like ‘small, dull and far away’. We then ask them to map the second description onto the sweets and voila — within a session or two the addiction is gone!” expressed the coach.
An ocean of patterns
Fifty years on, NLP has over 200 patterns to help you hit peak performance. A simple mind-switch is all it is. You’re at loggerheads with a relative. NLP teaches you the Swish-Swish pattern and no more sour moments. You have trouble with your goals so NLP teaches you the Walt Disney pattern. You’re…what do you want to help yourself in, my dear Hyderabadi reader? NLP is your answer!