Alicia Eaton’s Fix Your Life with NLP offers a concise yet simple explanation on the concepts and techniques used in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP).
Marketed as a first aid kit for the mind, this book has real-life scenarios of how you can use NLP techniques in a practical way to help overcome life challenges. Trained by Richard Bandler (co-creator of NLP) and having worked with other greats in the field of NLP, such as Paul McKenna and Michael Neill, Eaton is a qualified Clinical Hypnotherapist and Licensed Master Practitioner of NLP. Alicia Eaton has practised and helped clients through the use of NLP tools for more than a decade.
This book explains the concepts taught to NLP practitioners and, in addition, all the NLP tools and techniques that can be used to overcome everyday challenges.
While I’ve outlined the summary of my learnings from the book, the golden nugget is the exercises that Eaton outlines in each chapter, as well as a concise list of NLP techniques that can be used for various situations to help us better manage our thoughts and create a positive outcome.
Book Summary.
Our brain “downloads” unwanted patterns of behaviours like how computers download viruses.
If we service our computers to make them work efficiently, we should do the same for our brains. NLP is about understanding how our mind works, absorbs and processes information and how this affects our actions. NLP techniques can help to reprogram our mind and turn it into successful behaviour patterns.
"Just as you’d download an app for your phone or your computer, it really is now possible to download an “app” for your mind.”
There are three sections to this book:
- The first section features insights into how the mind works; how information is absorbed and processed into thoughts or behaviours.
- In the second section, Eaton focuses on five common problem areas and shares NLP techniques to overcome them.
- The third is a list of NLP techniques or “Apps for the Mind” that one can refer to quickly and practice as and when needed depending on the situation.
Key Lessons From Fix Your Life With NLP.
#1: Understanding Our Mind.
Our nervous system receives millions of information per second about what is happening around us. We filter and condense this information to make it more manageable by using deletions, distortions, and generalizations.
We download information we receive through our five senses; visual, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. These senses are known as modalities. For each of these sensory modalities, there are finer distinctions or qualities known as submodalities.
#2: Gaining Control of Our Mind.
We can gain control over the way we receive and absorb information by changing our submodalities.
This will change our internal representation (or pictures), which can affect our feelings or state.
We also need to be mindful of the language we use with ourselves. Our words will create a picture in our mind, and our body will automatically spring into action and turn it into a reality. Give our mind positive instructions to create positive pictures to achieve good results.
"Always focus on what you want to happen, rather than on what you don’t”
#3: Stretch Your Mind
"What we see depends mainly on what we look for” Sir John Lubbock
The more we pay attention, the greater the ability to discriminate the finer details we gather in our minds. Some methods to exercise stretching our mind includes:
- Learn to see things from a different perspective based on the concept that each individual has their own “map of the world” built based on their unique background, culture, and experiences.
- Use the “reframing” technique to view life events differently and put ourselves in a resourceful state that can help to solve problems.
- Refining communication skills to build rapport.
- Modelling successful behaviour to achieve excellence.
- Use Anchoring, enabling us to change our feelings from an undesired state to a desired one.
To achieve success, one also has to correct their beliefs and set clear outcomes using The Well-Informed Outcomes Model, a list of questions to help clarify the goals one wants to achieve.
The next couple of chapters cover the following common challenges, and each chapter outlines techniques that could help overcome each problem:
- Fix Your Habit and Motivation
- Fix Your Weight
- Fix Your confidence
- Fix Your Fears and Phobias
- Fix Your Health and Well-being
Readers can refer to the specific chapters on the various techniques outlined to overcome each challenge.
