Have you ever noticed that people react to the same situation much differently? One person can welcome a challenge with open arms and feel empowered while another will crumble with the pressure. These “states” of mind are built around your internal representation and physiology, defined by experiences. Experiences help us form our internal representation and how we perceive what is going on around us. The way we embrace new challenges can be changed by how we focus on things and what we focus on. Read on to find out how to take charge of our focusing ability.

Focusing Attention in a Situation

There are millions of stimuli thrown at the brain at any one second. The brain acts as a filter and sorts through these stimuli determining what is most urgent or needs attention. The brain works through a information process known as “chunking”, which is basically the ability to group certain memories together for ready recall. For example, it may be the memory of a high school play is associated with the musty smelling cologne of a history teacher and the way he twirled his mustache. Now there were several other behaviors, actions and environments happening at the time, but these are the pieces that the brain (memory) has chunked together.

Now think about it from a point of failure in your life. Most people recall this information and replay the “failing” moments over and over again. Instead of turning this information into feedback and learning they begin to feed negative thoughts into their heads. How successful do you think this makes the person? Not very, in fact it sets them up for failure. The question then becomes, “how do I change this state and look at experiences in a positive light”? The answer is a change in the way you focus on things. Instead of always picking off the negative or how you screwed something up, turn it and replay the situation with a more positive note. Imagine that the “screw up” was resolved and see yourself succeeding. What you are doing is changing how you focus on things.

After the years of a negative internal script you will have to remain constant in redirecting your focus to the positive, but stay with it. After programming a negative focus and internal script for years our brains goes on auto pilot and automatically begins feeding into the situation at hand. This take a little bit to change; the internal scripting has to become positive just as it became negative. After a while the mind will change to a positive auto pilot mode. It takes work, but it can be done.

Directing Our Focus

Our internal scripting is based on not only what we think, but also how we feel. It is possible to create a mental image to motivate and draw focus to a particular scenario. As we have already found in life, the intensity of a state of mind is based on the intensity of the situation or picture in our mind. Now that all sounds confusing, but you will see from this example; most people feel motivated to go shopping, but sometimes it is more intense than others, right? This is because of our mental images about the situation. Shopping may not be as much fun because there are issues such as money, time and finding the right piece of clothing. But, imagine yourself shopping for anything you want with a $50,000 gift certificate you just won. Does that change the scenario? Of course it does, it is a bigger, clearer and brighter picture in your mind. Visualization can change the state by the mere intensity of the pictures in the mind. This is because the mind is drawn to a bigger, more distinct set of pictures of circumstances. Many say that this could be considered excitement. The pictures in our mind oftentimes are automatically populated, leaving us with little control. This can however, be changed. The way to rectify this is to focus on positive pictures and images (of success) making a mental movie, eventually the mind will begin automatically populating with more positive images.

What is meant by more intense pictures is what you see in the movies, think about it. The colors, sounds, light and angles all add to the intensity and desire of the movie. If the picture is small, colors are dim and the angle is off, would it be as interesting? NO!

Auditory Anchors

The brain is often referred to as one large operating computer. The sub modalities or “keys” to the mind allows you to control actions, thoughts and perceptions. These sub modalities are classified into three categories: visual, auditory and kinesthetic. Let’s look at the three sub modalities and their input, because in order to understand our state, we must understand the coding system of the brain.

• The visual sub modalities are how your brain codes pictures or sights. Think about looking at a picture the same things that you notice in a picture is what your brain is coding about what you are physically looking at. Is the picture focused or out of focus, what is the location of the item in the picture is it framed or panoramic and is it disassociated or associated?
• The auditory sub modalities are the way the brain codes sounds. Just as if you hear a sound you can separate it into different categories. Is it loud or soft, slow or fast, in tune or out of tune?
• Kinesthetic sub modalities are the brains coding of internal feelings. This is one of the more difficult coding systems to understand, because it is not always as clear cut. Separations of things such as the location of the feeling, still or moving, light or heavy and the direction of movement are all taken into consideration in the coding process.

Coding and internal scripting is different for everyone. Finding the way that your brain codes and creates a particular situation is a discovery process and is a very important step towards success.

Disassociation & Association

There are two types of image coding of the brain; disassociation and association. To demonstrate the two types of coding a good example is the easiest way to understand. When you visualize a past event or situation in your life, do you see yourself at a distance or through your own eyes? If you are seeing the situation from a distance, this is disassociation. When you visualize the event from your own eyes this is association. We tend to visualize negative events from a distance or as a disassociation and positive events with association. The association or disassociation can have a great impact on ones state of mind and here is why.

Close your eyes and remember back to a positive event in your life, anything that you want it to be. Remember the location, smells, sounds and who is there with you. Visualize through your own eyes and walk through the experience once again. This inspires a good and positive feeling. Now take that same situation and visualize from a distance (disassociation). You are basically stepping out of your body and removing yourself from the events. Do you see how the mood and state changes? It has a great impact, because the more involved we are with a positive feeling the better “state” the person will be in.

Ability to Intensify any State

Speaking of a magic wand, wouldn’t it be great to be able to intensify or replicate a feeling or state immediately on cue. Unfortunately, no one has developed this wand so we have to come up with another way to intensify a positive state. Intensifying involves shifting the sub modalities and here is how:

• Imagine and visualize a goal that you want to achieve, but have not found the motivation to achieve.
• Close your eyes and visualize yourself achieving that goal. Take notes about all the sub modalities involved in the experience. Make mental notes of whether the situation is disassociated or associated, sounds, feelings, the shape of the feeling (light, heavy or movement)
• Rate the sub modalities on a scale of 1-10, with ten being the amount of motivation and intensity you felt as you stood in achievement of your goal.

Mapping Across Love to Disgust

Feeling differently about a situation can be done and it is a matter of shifting your sub modalities. There are steps to changing motivation to un-motivation or love to disgust. Of course it is great to be able to change an unmotivated goal to a motivated goal, but the reverse is sometimes necessary as well. Think about when you are motivated for that bowl of ice cream that is a whopping 500 calories. In order to achieve your dream weight, you must unmotivated quickly, here is the five steps to control motivation.

Step One: Elicit the sub modalities of a food you love

Imagine a food that is not the healthiest choice, but one you really want. Now make mental notes about the sub modalities. Most of them involve kin esthetics, because it is a substance. Imagine the smell, feel and most of all the taste. Rate all the things that you like about this type of food from 1-10, since you like this food it should be up toward 10.

Step Two: Elicit the sub modalities of food you hate

Now think of a food that you do not like at all. Imagine eating it as you smell and taste it, how it makes you feel. Are you sick? Probably so, now take note of all the sub modalities involved in disliking this food. Imagine what you would feel like chewing and swallowing the food.

Step Three: The difference between the like and disliked food

There are some definite differences here as there should be. One food you like and the other you despise. The differences in the two are called drivers. The steak is hot and smells good. Deviled eggs are cold and smell nasty. Steak is dark and pleasing to the eye while the deviled eggs are different colors with a much different texture.

Step Four: Replacing the likes with dislikes

Now imagine that hot and juicy steak, but replace it with those deviled eggs. Imagine yourself eating those deviled eggs, how they taste and what they feel like going down. Imagine that steak tastes like those eggs that you absolutely hate. Separate yourself from that steak by stepping out and making the visual smaller. How bad do you want that steak now?

Step Five: Test it

This replacement method is a great way to neutralize those cravings. This method can help individuals turn off those cravings and callings for things that they do not need or are bad for them. Granted, you would not always want to replace and never eat steak again, but this can be used as a tool to control the intensity and state of mind.

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