Okay, do this honestly.    Take a look around the room you are in and look for everything that is ‘blue’.   Give yourself about a minute to take it all in.  Stop reading this blog  until you’ve done this and then come back and continue reading it.

Okay without looking around any more,   I’m sure most of you could list a large amount of things that are blue but how many reflective surfaces can you list?  Close your eyes for a minute and recall them now.    Now look around for those reflective items.  Chances are if you did this correctly there are MANY more reflective objects then you first thought.

So why didn’t you see them the first time.  The simple answer was you were ‘filtering’ for blue.  That’s right your blinders were ’set’ for blue.

In NLP and Hypnosis we call this ‘filtering, matrixing or deletion and distortion of irrelevant information’.   Now there is A LOT of dynamics going on whilst this is happening and  I could spend a great deal of the day writting about this.  However the intent of this article is to provide some useful and easy to understand  information while at the same time providing a bit of education about ‘what’s going on’

So what does this simple little exercise demonstrate and more importantly how does it apply to you?

Quite simply it shows that when you are focused on something, that becomes your focus and alot of other things become ‘invisible-like’  Your mind is taking in massive amounts of information all the time.  What you see, hear (externally and internally), smell, taste and feel (both textile and emotions). And this little mechanism can be and is our friend, most of the time.  It stops us from going into ‘overload’.  Unfortunately this same process can also be what our nightmares are made out of too.

Have you ever caught yourself saying ‘This always happens to me’ or ‘This is my life!’ when describing some not so positive event that has just transpired to you.  Well this is your filtering attempting to wreak havoc on your life.  Your friend turned foe.  It is also one of those things in life that can create some very limiting beliefs, that given enough time will get hard wired into your brain and limit your potential.

Simply stated ‘the seeds that you water will grow’  meaning if you focus on something it will come to be.  And before you know it, it will become an almost invisible pattern in your life.  Good or Bad is completely irrelevant. 

Our brains LOVE patterns and are always seeking them out to help us verify our own existence and to prove that we are correct in our assumptions.  We humans are programmed to always be right even when we aren’t.  Once a pattern is established, they can be difficult to locate.  For this reason alone many people will fall into the same ‘traps’. 

Take for example a woman who has been in a series of bad abusive relationships.  Is she looking to get into an abusive relationship?  NO!  Not conciously anyway!  Unconciously she may be looking for a guy that she ‘feels’ good about and that particular trait might very well be the same thing that could be a tell tale  sign of an abuser.  The woman in our example sees a ’special something’ in her next potential guy that she mistakingly labels as a ‘good feeling’ when actually it’s her brain saying I know this pattern and am comfortable with it.  The pattern is not good or healthy for her but it is familiar and thus comfortable to her.

So what do we do with this?  How do we begin to understand our own filters?

1.  Be aware that we all filters of some sort.  Most are good and some are not.  Just being aware that they exist is a good start.

2.  Review your own believes.  As we grow in life, we also can outgrow some believes.  Believes that once served us well may no longer usefully serve us.  (an example of this might be when Mom lovingly told you to eat all of your dinner off your plate because their are children in the world  that were starving.  Unfortunately there are children in the world that are starving but it’s no longer healthy for you to act on this belief if you are packing on the pounds and bordering into obsecity.)

3. Pay attention to your ‘pet peeves’ and ‘buttons’  You know the buttons!  The ones when someone says something to you and it burns your biscuits sort to speak? If you find yourself getting steamed up about something, it might be time to review why it ‘gets you in a tiff and then figure out if that belief is still useful.  It might be or it might not be.  Either way is there a better way to deal with them?  

4. Change your beliefs.  In the example at step 2,  it’s far healthier for you to realize that it’s okay to have a little waist and that the little waste is better left on your plate. Or even better yet,  to only put on your plate what you need to achieve your ideal weight.  (BTW an easy way to do that is to find out the calorie intake of the weight you want to be and only eat that much.  It might be slow going doing just that but eventually you’ll be that weight and that wait would be worth it wouldn’t it?

5.  Monitor your thoughts.   We all have negative and positive thoughts (yes even me!).  The trick here is to catch and guide your thoughts to what it is that you really want to be thinking. Doing this activity will eventually imprint a pattern into your mind and form  a strategy for matrixing the ‘good things ‘ in life, and you’ll be able to almost always see the ‘Silver Lining’, smell the roses and feel good.  After doing this for a while, you won’t even have to consciously catch your thoughts, you’ll be doing it unconsciously with little to no effort.  You’ll be to busy appreciating all the positive things occuring in your life and accepting the not so good things much easier then before.

 It is good and healthy to have boundries and limits, but it is also good and healthy to review them every so often too.  By being aware and mindful of the ‘walls’ we put up and the ones that we need to take down, we are essentially assuring that we are living the happiest life we can.   It is also important when looking at these boundries, be it for change or not that we consider how it will effect our lives in the long run.

Until next time stay healthy and don’t let your blinders blind you

Welcome to YR Mind InSite new blog.  It is my intent to help provide people with accurate information about Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and Hypnosis.   I am a Licensed Trainer of NLP through the Society of NLP and an Instructor of Hypnosis through the National Guild of Hypnosis (NGH).  I plan to post a new topic once every week or two and would like to invite your questions or comments.  The official beginning of this Blog will be on Sunday  March 15th and my topic will be from one of the most asked questions I get ‘How do I choose the right hypnotist for me?’

I look forward to hearing from you