Triggers Part 1
TRANSCRIPT:
(it’s an AI transcript some there may be some typos and double words)
Triggers
Today’s video is going to be about triggers. And it seems to be a really popular word. In the ’80s. When I was learning NLP, triggers were called anchors really are really all they are is conditioned emotional responses that we have to certain sounds, certain things that we see or certain things that we feel
And what I wanted to talk about today is how we manage those emotions, we’re in really close proximity with other people. And I’m hoping that your desire is the same as mine, which that our closeness with other people are in close proximity with other people,
Or brings us to a deeper level of communication, rather than further away. So over the next couple of days, I’m going to talk about several ways to manage the way that these triggers work.
I had an experience last night I was talking to someone on zoom. And I noticed that they said something, and then I saw a facial expression and then I heard them laugh.
My reaction was, that I no longer talking to that person I kind of like flashed back to several experiences that I had when I was a kid. And this is the perfect textbook explanation for what triggers are, it’s something happens or somebody says something or you hear a song, or you look at a picture, and you’re immediately teleported back to where you were when that event happened.
And the reason that this works so well is that all of our conditioning or all of our responses are actually emotionally based. And this is called state-dependent learning. So if you were in a good mood when you were in school, you know You’re happy you can remember all the things that you learned in school. And you know, if you’re like some of my friends who, you know smoked weed every day. They probably don’t remember school all that much because they were high all the time. But my guess is that every time they’re high, or if they still do that sort of thing that they can remember every single solitary experience that they had.
So today we’re going to talk about triggers from the aspect of three ways
Number one is lengthening your movie.
Which is what I’m talking about for the rest of this video
Number two is going to be a process that I learned in NLP about taking an event and literally wearing the memory out so that you can make a new choice or just get rid of it because it no longer serves you.
And then the third is going to be a technique that’s based on a book that I recently read called the power of TED.
But I’m going to start with “lengthening your movie”.
Lengthening Your Movie
And this comes from a story. Richard Bandler (co-founder of NLP) likes to tell during his seminars about an event. And you know, it doesn’t really matter if it’s true or not. It’s a great story. He’s saying that he’s staying in a hotel room and he hears a really big ruckus in the room next door or down the hall and he goes down the hall and knocks on the door and the door is cracked open this guy looks so looks out and you know he looks really freaked out and Bandler says can I come in?
and the guy lets him in, This in this hotel room is just completely wrecked. And in a real, calm voice, Bandler says, you know the police are coming.
And if you calm down and act reasonably, you’re probably or only going to go to jail for a little while. And if you don’t calm down, you’re probably going to go to prison for a long while.
So he’s talking to this guy and what he’s trying to do is to get him to think about his actions. And, you know, I’m pretty sure that this guy was on some kind of drug or whatever. But you don’t have to be on drugs to have this type of powerful response.
But he was telling him to imagine the worst possible scenario. You know, where he goes to jail, and his wife divorces him and he’s not allowed to see his kids… ever
This story just continues on and on and on, you know, he loses his job, he doesn’t have a place to live. He lives on the street. And his health begins to fail. And it just keeps on going getting worse and worse, all the way to the point of, he’s lying in the gutter.
And he’s just about to pass away.
And just at that moment, a dog comes up and pees in his face
And, you know, I know that sounds kind of crazy, but basically what he’s done and what I’ve done while you were listening, is I’ve lengthened this movie to a point where it’s a worst-case scenario.
And in general, I don’t do worst-case scenarios, but in this particular example, doing worst-case scenarios are a very effective way to go to a threshold.
Because going to a threshold is a very effective way of getting the mind to interrupt this pattern that you’re doing. Most people, when they are triggered. They have the experience of whatever it is that they’re feeling or seeing or hearing. But it kind of stays in a loop right in that space.
And by lengthening your movie.
You can see some of the possible consequences of continuing this behavior in this loop.
But people don’t think about that.
They just do whatever it is that they do without, you know, checking outside, to see what other people are doing how they’re reacting how their experience is.
So, let’s do this again, think about something that gets you all wound up, makes you sad makes you angry, whatever. And this time, I’d like you to think about this behavior. Going to its worst-case scenario,
you lose your job or your spouse files for divorce or your adult or teenage children make a decision never to speak it to again.
How would that feel? What would be your response?
And just think about that for a moment or two. And then, let’s rewind the movie
and do it again. So you have a response. And it goes to the worst-case scenario, and your spouse files for divorce or your adult children or teenagers, never speak to you again.
And if you’ll play this movie over and over a couple of times. Notice how you feel.
And hopefully your responses. No, I don’t want to do that. Okay, so let’s have you step out of the movie and rewind it and go all the way to the beginning of the movie in which it’s just one second.
Before you have this response and I want you to have a visceral response to this trigger so basically what we’re doing is we’re conditioning, a trigger to stop you from doing this other trigger. That’s one way of doing it.
Another way of doing it is where you run this movie over and over and over and over until it until, it’s so conditioned, that you know what’s going to happen. If you ever do this behavior. Again, and I’m going to stop for now.
And let you think about that, so we’ll go through the steps, one last time before I say goodbye.
And, you know, think about something that really gets you going. You know and think about what the conditions are about that somebody says something, or they have a certain expression on their face that means something to you.
And then take a few minutes to lengthen your movie.
And then go through it, you know, most people, they just need to go through it, you know, a couple of times. For me, it’s like three times, but the average is somewhere between two and five times of running this movie, in a way that reminds you that you have a choice that you can choose to be happy, you can choose to be sad. You can choose to be angry. Or you can choose to be completely neutral. I’ve used this technique, Several times, and it seems to work pretty well.
Occasionally you might get surprised by an unexpected context and stuff. But, you know, we all get angry and we all get sad and we all get surprised and everything, but I think that one of the things that you will begin to notice, if you’ll take the time to do this process is that when you find an anchor or a trigger.
The person that is, you know, unintentionally firing that trigger off.
You should thank them.
Because you didn’t know it was there and now you do.
And the really fun part about hypnosis and NLP or coaching, whichever you prefer, is that once you know about something, you can change it.
And you’ll notice that I didn’t say “fix it” because you’re not broken. You just have a strategy that’s been conditioned in a certain way to a predetermined response. And now you can choose what type of response that you’d like to have instead.
Conclusion
So, take some time with this thing, you may have to listen to this video a time or two to get the steps. I’ll post the steps in the, in the YouTube in the comments, or not comments in the description. So it’s one.
Think about a common response that you have. That’s negative, based on something somebody says, or something that they do, or something that you see.
Think about what that response is the implications of that. And then take it to the worst-case scenario. And when you’re finished making this movie. Run yourself through this movie, a couple of times and give yourself an opportunity to really feel what these consequences might feel like.
And once you’ve run yourself through these consequences several times. You can make a new choice.
So please like and share this video if you found it to be valuable, or send it to somebody who really needs to hear this.
And I’ll talk to you tomorrow.
Michael
