What to Questions to ask when you TALK to YOURSELF

Welcome back to this newsletter and an in depth exploration of what questions you should ask when you talk to yourself.

Everyone talks to themselves all the time.  We all have self talk or dialogue that goes on in our minds throughout the day and often that self taught takes the form of punishment or abuse that we give ourselves. We yell and scream asking ourselves why we did not do this or that - we in essence become our own blaming parent.

Here we explore things that can be very useful when you decide to speak to yourself, by asking questions that loosen the tightly wound presuppositions or negative self programming in such a way that change or improvement become possible. Many of these questions are based on what NLP calls “sleight of mouth.”  The idea of sleight of mouth, that with conversation only we can bring about change in another person therapeutically or persuasively implies that simply by asking the right questions we can see our way to change. If we carry this process out with ourselves we can create the same kind of changes in limiting thinking beliefs or attitudes.

Although there are hundreds of Mind Line Patterns, we will be reviewing a few of them here that may prove very useful.  For argument sake let’s assume that you find yourself stuck in some problem which you have boiled down to a statement or some kind of self talk/ blame. Ie- “I (he, she, they, you) keep doing (thinking, feeling) X, and every time (whoever) do(es) it makes me so angry.“

Of course you can put any contents into that sentence- for instance it could be “I over eat….”  Or, “She ignores me….”  The content really is unimportant and not related to understanding how the questions can change the way you think about the problem.

One questions that you can ask yourself is:  “Where could this behavior, X, be useful in any other context. Is there ever a time where doing X would be something that could be good?”  It might be difficult to find a positive use for this negative behavior, but it’s important that you answer the question in a way that you actually open yourself up to the possibility that it COULD be useful. For instance: if the behavior you want to change is over eating, where could overheating possibly be useful?  Well, it might be useful if you’re getting ready to go on a long journey and you knew you would have no food and have to live off your own body fat.  You might wonder what’s the point in finding a useful location for that kind of negative behavior?  In that specific example, it would be to force a person to examine whether or not the context in which they’re currently engaged in the negative behavior is in any way shape or form related to the context in which bad behavior could be useful.  On an unconscious level it forces the person to realize that currently, as they are not preparing for some long journey with no food, the behavior is NOT functioning. 

If we include an attitude for ‘X’, rather than the behavior, we can really see the value of this technique.  “When someone takes advantage of me I get SO angry”   Ask yourself  if that could be useful? Could anger or the behavior be useful?  Certainly there are  places in which getting angry might be useful thing, especially if you need to defend yourself. If you’re needing to motivate yourself to make a change in your lives. However, if the person you’re communicating is someone you love, it will not be useful to be angry at them.

If you’re analyzing one of your own negative behaviors, ask yourself what is the intent of the behavior. What is it trying to do for you that is good? The question to ask is:  “What am I trying to really achieve from this negative behavior?”  The next level is to ask yourself what that gets for you, and to keep going.  For example, you say to yourself: “I am entirely too shy, and that really makes me unhappy.”  So you ask: “What is being shy achieving for me that is positive?” The answer might be that “it protects me.”  Well, protection is a valuable thing. Protection is something that is wonderful, it teaches, it allows you to have an enjoyable long life.  So, when asking this question, you can open yourself up to realizing that although the things that behavior might have done were not what you wanted, it was trying to achieve something good for you.  The follow-up question to ask yourself is: “ How else is it possible for me to achieve that positive intention?”

To use the example from above: “How else is it possible for you to protect yourself and be less shy and more outgoing?”  Certainly one can be more outgoing and still allow your unconscious mind or your conscience or your little voice warn you.  

Another question that is valuable to ask yourself whenever you find yourself mired in a problem is: “What is the opposite of this problem and where have I experienced that?  For example: If the statement that you’re making his “ I never aggressive enough what people walk on me.”  Then ask: “Where have I had an experience of being aggressive or being too aggressive?” Then, think to yourself, isn’t it nice to know that you can be not aggressive enough and at the same have a part of yourself that is aggressive. Isn’t it nice to and know that you can be both of those things at the same time. 

Whenever you find yourself making statements in absolutes like “always” and  “never,” it’s valuable to pose the same thing you just said back to yourself, doing so as if it were question- for instance: “Nobody ever loves me!”  Could easily become: “Nobody ever Loves me?”  Or, “Nobody ever Loves me?” Or,  “Nobody ever Loves me?” 

What happens neurologically when you try those things on for size? Can you not already notice with some interest that there has been a change INSIDE your mind and inside your thinking is such a way that the statement you started with has much less power than it once did?

These are just a very few examples of the kind of questions that can be useful to ask when you talk to yourself…. For more information check out the book Mind-Lines Lines for changing lines by Michael Hall…..  It will keep you boggling yourself for DAYS or DAZE!