Reprogram Your Thinking with ‪@MiteshKhatriLOA‬

Introduction to NLP and the Guest

[00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of the Sid Warrior Podcast. Today we are back with Mr. Mitesh Khadri, the national bestselling author of Law of Attraction. He uses NLP in his courses and I have been very curious to learn what is NLP. So that's why I have him back on. Before I jump into the conversation, I want to tell you that there's a link in the

[00:20] description below. Use that to join one lesson of NLP for free and you also get to access 30 days of his magic course on NLP all for free. That being said, let's jump into the conversation with Mitesh. Hi Mitesh, thank you for coming back to the Sidwaria podcast. Thank you Sid and I'm so happy to coming back here with

What is NLP? Understanding the Basics

[00:40] with one of my absolute favourite topics and I am also I think nervous to talk about it to someone who is a neurologist since we are talking about NLP today but I hope I will be able to do justice to the topic. I am sure you will. So, NLP is a topic that has been kind of making me very curious since almost a year now. So, I have spent some time reading about it because A, it is partly

[01:00] science, but it is also a key component in behavior change. And behavior change has been traditionally considered to be one of the hardest things to do. So let us dive in. Tell me what is NLP? Okay, so to give you the full form, neuro-linguistic programming. Where the word neuro relates to neurons

[01:20] brain. And the linguistic is understanding the language of the programming of those neurons where NLP says that everything we do in our life is a habit. In NLP terms, the word habit is denoted as program. So it's like how a software runs on a program all the time, our brain runs on a program all the time.

[01:40] So either we are happy by program or we are sad by program or we are angry by program and being able to change that program, being able to understanding that program, the language of that and how your neurons communicate with each other is NLP. That's neuro-linguistic programming. But there's a beautiful definition that the founders of NLP have given it which is

[02:00] Richard Bandler and John Grinder, they give the definition of an LP saying this is the study of excellence. Okay, can you break that down further? So when they said study of excellence, what they really mean is normal psychology talks about, let's look at some people who've got bad habits, study them and help people to not have those bad habits.

[02:20] But they said it's all coming from a point of view of focusing on people who are already psychologically having some problem, but applying it on normal people. So they said, let's not do that. Let's do something different. That's where John Grinder and Richard Bandler decided to model people who are the best in the world. And that is why they say, let's work on STEM.

[02:40] study of excellence rather than study of sickness. So let's not study problems, let's not study schizophrenia, let's not study bad habits, let's not study depression. They said let's study happiness, let's study the most peaceful person in the world, let's study the most successful person in the world and let's convert that into a model.

[03:00] which we can then teach it to people in a much faster way so that people can replicate that success in their life and hence they said this is the study of excellence rather the study of if I may use the word bad habits or depression and of all those things. Understood. So in a way sort of taking the positive side of medicine, the positive

NLP and the Study of Excellence

[03:20] positive side of psychology, the positive side of intervention. So not just intervening when something goes wrong, but learning from those people who have done something right and then applying those lessons to other people. I also like to say that NLP is the superpower of law of attraction. As you know, that's my key passion.

[03:40] is to teach loft traction to as many people. But I saw a lot of people were not able to get long lasting results when they practice loft traction. For an example, they would use affirmations, but they would not remember to do it every day. Their consistency would not be there. Or people would have certain habits of sadness. And even if they did have affirmations, that sadness won't let them attract

[04:00] good things anyway. So I started using NLP as a superpower of law traction to boost people's ability to attract what they want in their life so that their affirmations would start working, their desires would start getting manifested. But for that, people need positive habits, people need positive feelings and to be able to program

[04:20] That is where I started mastering NLP with my mentor, Tony Robbins, and that's what I now use in my law of attraction workshops. That's a really interesting take because part of neurolinguistic programming is linguistic, which is language. Now, I'm very interested in knowing what is the role that language plays in our self-talk. I know we

[04:40] briefly touched upon this in law of attraction as well. But let's dive a little deeper into it. I'm somebody who does a lot of self talk. I wake up, I start talking to myself that okay, this is what I have to do. This is this are my to do lists. And I realized that a lot of this is productivity talk. And it's not really about how I feel. It's not really a

[05:00] emotional self-talk. So emotions are almost as an accidental byproduct. So recently I've started doing emotional self-talk, which is not just about what I want to do, but also, okay, this is how I'm going to feel today. And I've realized that there is a difference. I do feel a little bit more in

[05:20] control of that aspect of life. So that leads me to this question, which is how important are words or the choice of your words in self-talk? Very powerful question. It has all the role to play. So for an example, I'm glad you asked, you started practicing this because in my own course which you're giving free to people, as you said, the link is there.

[05:40] called daily magic practice. We practice emotional talk. And why I say emotional talk is because emotions is the glue that keeps thoughts together. For an example, if I ask you, what did your teacher say to you in 10 standard? You may not remember it. But if I ask you, what did your teacher make you feel?

[06:00] high chance of remembering. Yes, I definitely remember. So absolutely words make a big difference and when we start using emotionally charged words in our affirmations or in our self-talk, they have a much bigger impact compared to just normal affirmations. To give you a very simple example, if I say I have already achieved a

[06:20] my goal of being the best YouTuber on YouTube. But instead of that, if I say, I am so happy and satisfied now that my YouTube videos are doing great and they're helping so many people and I'm feeling so awesome about it. Now there are so many emotionally charged words in these that the impact on me is going to be 10 times

The Role of Language in Self-Talk and Behavior Change

[06:40] So to answer your question, yes, words have a huge power and being able to choose the right linguistics is what NLP is really about. I remember seeing this photograph of a Michael Jackson letter that he had written to himself when he was really young, I think 9 or 10 or something, where he said that he's going to be

[07:00] going to be the biggest pop star in the world. And I remember thinking that this is law of attraction or this is manifestation in a way. You could also think of it as positive thinking, whatever you call it. Ultimately, it is somebody signaling intent to themselves that this is who I'm going to be.

[07:20] Everything that I do is going to be in pursuit of this one goal. Perfect. And I realize that it takes a lot of bravery in order to do this. So one thing I wanted to ask was in your practice when you speak to people, do you find that people are struggling with being brave enough to just come out

[07:40] and say that this is what I want to do? To some extent yes, because we have this conditioning in our society, do not be too greedy. And depending on people's capacity to believe, some people would say you are thinking small, some people would say you are thinking too big, you are being too greedy. So that definitely stops people from

[08:00] declaring what they want to become. Like for an example, many times when I teach people law of traction and they practice NLP with me, they write down their affirmations, but they say, where can I keep it in my house so nobody sees it? Exactly. Because God forbid if somebody were to see it and make fun of me. What can they say about me?

[08:20] Have you heard of MrBeast? MrBeast is the biggest YouTuber in the world and there is a video of him which was I think his first YouTube video on his YouTube channel where he basically said that I'm going to be the biggest YouTuber in the world and that video is still up there. I'm going to go and watch it today.

[08:40] crazy. He said that I'm going to do whatever it takes to be the biggest YouTuber in the world. Now if somebody has the balls to just gum up and say something like that in front of the whole world and actually go out and do it. I have to say that that was very inspiring because I realized that we on the

[09:00] outside looking in, they have never declared anything like that. I have never declared anything to anybody that I'm going to be best at something because you set goals, you achieve that. But this feels different. This feels like an announcement and we don't do that enough. We don't do that enough. In fact, have you heard about this

[09:20] company called Mindvalley. So they have this philosophy of creating goals which are going to be 70% failable. Ah, interesting. Like if you're making goals which are going to be achieved 70% then you're not thinking big enough. Wow. So Elon Musk says if your goals are not 80% going to fail then you're not thinking big enough.

[09:40] And that is what we call audacious goals. Can I have the audacity? I remember for the first time I created a goal like this, I wouldn't call it a goal, but something like a mission because these things can't be called even a goal. Because for Mr. Beast to say, I'm going to be the biggest in the world is hardly a goal. It's much bigger than that. It's almost like a mission.

[10:00] For me, it was taking law of traction to every household of India, where my dream is that when people wake up in the morning, the way they brush their teeth, I want them to do their affirmations in the morning and then start their day. And I remember when I said this to myself, I said, that's crazy. That's like a really crazy audacious goal. But the more I got comfortable with saying that,

[10:20] Whether I achieve it or not, whether that goal gets fulfilled while I'm alive or not, the idea that I'm having the audacity to say that to myself is more important than anything else. So yeah, that's quite right. If we could go beyond fear into that audacity and that feeling of courage to say that, suddenly it's a game changer.

Overcoming Fear and Setting Audacious Goals

[10:40] I love how this flips the script around failure because in my classes I always tell people that you should aim to be learning at a rate of 80% success, 20% failure, thinking that even that 20% people don't accept. So 20% failure is the minimum that

[11:00] you should be failing because that means that you are not even stepping one foot out of your comfort zone. But now you are saying 70% failure. That is very audacious and very few people will have the mental resilience to be able to take that much failure. But that's what NLP is. If you say if you remember, I said NLP is the study of excellence.

[11:20] So when Richard Brandner and John Grinder started studying people, they also studied organizations. And they found this commonality that these were people who were willing to make goals which are 70 to 80% failable. Example is Google. We all know Google is one of the biggest companies in this world, being YouTube as the platform now. Now if you see they are five biggest companies.

[11:40] products or five biggest successes are Google Search, YouTube, we've got Gmail, we've got Google Drive and I think there's one more which I'm forgetting. But the point is these being their primary sources of income. Everybody sees Google as the biggest

[12:00] company in the world with these five products? One or two? Yes, plus minus. The fact is if you go to Wikipedia and you study the number of products that Google has launched, it's 200 plus failed products. Where are five successful and 200 plus failed products? So that's what NLP says.

[12:20] Have the audacity to go what you want to become. For an example, if you really want to become Google, then start thinking like Google. You want to become Elon Musk. Elon Musk says, fail 80%. Have the audacity to do that. And if you really think he did it, like he would think I'll create a rocket and that comes down to the earth. Absolutely audacious.

[12:40] It's even enough to say he's crazy. But if you're willing to do that, that's study of excellence from NLP. One of the things that I liked about NLP is that it seems to serve as a bridge between core neuroscience and abstract advice that

[13:00] One may give someone for example thinking telling somebody you should think positive feels abstract. Yeah neuroscience with its neural networks and neurochemistry and serotonin dopamine levels. This seems very real. Yes, right. It's measurable very true. Think positive is an abstract advice very abstract. I think

[13:20] NLP seems to be the bridge between them because language has a neuroscientific core, has a background, but the effect of language is subjective. So, NLP seems to be the bridge between objective and subjective. Now, NLP is about learning the language of neurons where if a

[13:40] person has learned guitar for 10 years, the old school of thought is, I don't know if you've heard about this book that says 10,000 hours. So the old school of thought says 10,000 hours gets you into excellence. Fair, that's true. But NLP says you can do that in a couple of months, what you can do in 10 years. If you understand the language of how neurons connect.

[14:00] You can either break those neural connections. Now where would you want to break neural connections? Bad habits. Like people have late waking up habits. People have habits of overeating. People want to be motivated, but they're not motivated. So this is where you might want to connect those neurons. Like I wake up in the morning and I want to exercise every morning. But if I don't

[14:20] have an out in the air or connections, my brain won't do it in the morning. So what will I do in the morning? Whatever is my brain connected to? And that may be waking up late, that may be waking up and just doing my breakfast or anything that I'm already doing is already a network of connection of neurons in my brain. And learning how to connect these neurons is the science of an LP.

[14:40] That sounds really interesting. So I'm going to push back on something you said right now, which is, say, 10,000 hours of guitar. Now I'm curious about that. 10,000 hours of guitar practice would allow me to move my fingers at a particular speed, at a particular accuracy. How is it possible that I can ever

[15:00] replace that 10,000 hours with anything, how can there be a shortcut to that? So it's not 100% replace, but it's definitely faster than that. So I may not become an Excel, you remember that one of those guitarists, one of the best ones? Yes, Guns and Roses. Guns and Roses. Yes, of course. I may not be an Excel in three months, but I'll play better than most people.

[15:20] One correlation that I make is how a good doctor is not just good because they have read a lot. A good doctor is usually good because they have worked with another doctor whose mannerisms, whose patient handling

[15:40] the patient technique is very good and they have subconsciously picked up on those details and these are things that you can't learn in a textbook. But just the way that how that senior doctor would smile at the patient will just tap the patient's shoulder, all of those things, those subconscious cues, when they pick those things up, the

[16:00] junior doctor also becomes good. It doesn't matter how long they spend in the library, it doesn't matter how good their knowledge is. So imagine what if this could become a study? Yes. That's an LP. It gives you the model of what to now see in that senior doctor and replicate it. Let's go a little deeper into body language. I have read some things about it and I find it very fascinating because our

[16:20] reacts to threats in ways that we might not even consciously process. But I have seen people when they're comfortable with me, they lean forward, they are smiling. But when I say something slightly mean, I see them leaning back, I see their arms coming in front, I see them crossing their arms. And I read about it. I read

[16:40] red, why does this happen? And it seems that it's almost like a defensive stance. You want your hands in front of your body to protect you. And when their arms or when their hands come to you, their face, when they rub their face, these are all subconscious cues that they are. And once I started noticing them, I couldn't unsee it. Are you saying that

Breaking Negative Patterns and Reprogramming the Mind

[17:00] Not only can you judge someone's emotions, they can reverse engineer their emotions using their body. Absolutely. Tell me more. How do you do that? Okay, so for an example, there's a beautiful concept in NLP that made NLP famous, two of them actually. One is called as Anchor. Okay, so it's called as emotional anchors, where we say all emotional

[17:20] emotions are memory programs or at least the consistent emotions are memory programs. See, if I feel bad right now and if I forget about it in the next moment, is it a big deal? No. Not really. The problem is when you feel bad and you cannot forget it. Yeah. Like let us say I say something to

[17:40] You can't take that out of your head. You're eating food and you're thinking what I said. Like you're sleeping in the night and you wake up out of fear saying, why did he say that about me? Which happens. That is an emotional program, which means it's running without even your permission. The person who is not in the room is not in the room.

[18:00] who said what said was only once. But the program is now running here. So what is more important to change? The other person or the program here? The program. So emotional anchors is understanding that human emotions, consistent human emotions, positive and negative are called as positive anchors and negative anchors. These

[18:20] can be reprogrammed, but first we have to understand that the program exists. Example, if, so what I was saying to you earlier before we started the session is when people come to me sometimes for marital coaching, I say, nobody has a bad marriage, it is just a marriage with too many negative anchors, which means you are constantly reminding

[18:40] each other of consistent negative emotions. How are they developed? Let us take a very simple example. Husband and wife talking to each other. Fighting. Common stuff. Conflicto hongi. When people are staying together, kuchto conflicto hongi. But now what happens is there are three kind of anchors now. Impositive and negative also. Visual anchors. Auditory

[19:00] Okay. Visual, auditory, kinesthetic. So visual is what we see. Yeah. Kinesthetic is, sorry, auditory is what we hear. Kinesthetic is what we feel. If a person touches you in a certain way, it can get programmed forever and it can have a long-lasting impact on you. Like for an example, while they are fighting, if the man touches the woman in

[19:20] inappropriately and maybe hits her a bit. It can be a kinesthetic anchor that she can be haunted by for many years. And now every new relationship she gets into, she is trying to avoid that emotion. But what if the new guy has nothing to do with that? Now, this poor girl is being programmed with that emotion and it is running her life.

[19:40] So those anchors can be physical. Yeah exactly they can be physical they can be visual. Another visual example can be I'm fighting with you I'm seeing your face I'm fighting with you I'm seeing your face I'm fighting with you see. So your face in my mind has become like an anchor like a memory of all those negative emotions we are talking about. Now here's what happens. We go to sleep, get up in the morning.

[20:00] The first five seconds, do you really think we remember a fight? No. We forget everything. It's like a clean slate. Now you get up in the morning and you're fine. And then you look at your wife and you're like, and the rush of that negative emotion comes back and you're like, oof. And you can see the changes on the person's face.

[20:20] That's an anchor. A person says a certain negative word. Example I'll give you is, and I think everybody will relate with this including you, I hope so. In my childhood, I was a very naughty guy. I was one of the naughty ones. I don't know if you were. We'll keep it to you. No, when there are naughty people, one of the things that happens

[20:40] with us is dad will come home and on the way he'll say, Mitesh, is there a Idarana? And I knew that tone. Ah, of course. Like if I knew my dad said, Mitesh, is there a Idarana? I'm dead. Like my brain is thinking, aaj ke a kia mein? Now the weird thing is, Sid, even though I know an

[21:00] It's been 20 years, 25 years to that. Even today, Indu, my wife, if she says, Mehtish, Itharana, my heartbeat goes off like an arse man. Many times I said, please, S.M. Advala kar. But that's an auditory anchor. So you were asking me, can we have programs of positive emotion?

[21:20] that can be long lasting. Yes. So how do you reverse this? Okay, excellent Gautam. By learning how to re-anchor yourself to something positive, but there are two steps to it. One is to scramble the anchor. Second is to create a new anchor. Okay. Okay, so here's an example of that. I would ask any person, I don't know if they are what they

[21:40] If you are watching on this video right now, think of, and you can do this with me. Let's do it like a beautiful challenge. Not like a hardcore challenge. Think of a person that genuinely reminds you of a negative feeling. And all of you do that with me. A negative feeling. Where by habit you remember this person and you are like,

[22:00] He gives you some negative feeling or she and you can't help feeling anger or whatever you feel towards that person. Now when I do this in a group and I ask generally women, mother-in-law comes up. So something is there like there is either this friend who treated you in a certain way or a mother-in-law who said something

[22:20] Now the problem is not what they did. The problem is the program is still here. So when I asked you to think of this person, remotely you would still think of some person who made you feel some negativity. That's a program. Now let's reprogram you right now. You thought of that person? Okay, yeah. Sure. Okay. Tell me what negative emotion comes to you when you think of that person. Frustration. Frustration.

[22:40] Fair. You've been feeling frustration for this person or when you think of this person for how long? Around a month, couple of months. Okay. If you keep meeting this person and you keep feeling frustration as per the program, which is what you are feeling right now, would it hamper your relationship with this person? Absolutely. Would you be productive

[23:00] with this person? No. Would you be able to influence this person? So would it be useful to reprogram yourself? Absolutely. Okay, so here's how we do it. Close your eyes. Actually, don't close your eyes. Okay. Okay, because I usually would do this on screen by showing you something first. Okay. But let me make you visualize it first. Okay. So close your eyes. And if anybody's watching this right

[23:20] Now you close your eyes and I want you to imagine the time when you probably saw a circus. And in that circus you must have seen a joker. Imagine the face of the joker very vividly with a red nose and if you remember the lips were also red and the hair were colorful and the eyes had some makeup.

[23:40] Yes. And it had a significant smile on the lips. Even though the Joker was not smiling, it would look like it is smiling. Yes. And it would always wear which color clothes. Remind me. Bright, red, white, some blue. Red, yellow, you stripe pants. Yes. Right? Yes. Okay. You remember the Joker now? Yes.

[24:00] Great. And I want you to remember the person who frustrates you. And I want you to imagine this person in joker clothes. And imagine his nose is like a red nose. Imagine there's this beautiful lipstick red smile on his face even though he's not smiling. And imagine on his body is this colorful clothes. And now make him

[24:20] say in your head what he says to make you frustrated. Yeah, but now it sounds funny. But continue making him say the same thing as if in the sound of Donald Duck. Like, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack. Yeah, okay. And literally do it in your head, like make him say the same stuff in Donald Duck language. And if you remember in circus in

[24:40] end the joker would always do the act of dropping his pants. So I want you to imagine this guy just dropped his pants but he has no idea that he did that but you can see it. And now open your eyes and tell me what you had for dinner last night. Last night parathas. Okay the reason I did this in nlp this is called as a pattern interruption. Okay.

[25:00] We do this either for the purpose of taking a person away from an emotion or to pattern interrupt in a game like this or a technique like this to test whether what I did worked or not. So to test it now, think of this person and see if you get frustrated. Less so. It's more funny now. Yeah.

Generalization, Distortion, and Deletion in NLP

[25:20] And how useful could that be when you meet the person next time? Very useful. I would probably talk to them about this exercise. That's wonderful. So this way we can actually reprogram. So this is one example. But of course there's a much deeper learning into it about how NLP anchors work, in how many scenarios

[25:40] they are existing. Believe it or not, in a day, we go through at least 50 to 60 multiple anchors. Our entire day is full of anchors, which program you to remember either positive or negative emotions. I can understand why. Because sometimes anchors can be comforting. They give you a sense of

[26:00] Now I know where I am. Since you said that, I will give you a very simple example of an anchor. Wherever you live here, we do not want to give them the address right now, so I will not take the name of the society. But wherever you live here, there is a landmark near us. We all live at a certain place where there is a landmark. Let us say you are coming home and that landmark disappears. What will happen? I would.

[26:20] I might feel lost for a few seconds, you will be lost because suddenly that comfort of where I am is gone. So, an anchor is if I had to give you the exact definition, when one thing reminds you of another thing automatically it is called an anchor. So, there is a reaction, sorry, there is a stimulus and there is a reaction.

[26:40] stimulus is not an enhance. The reaction is programmed to that stimulus. So the stimulus could be that landmark and the reaction is, oh my house is here. The stimulus could be my wife said that and the reaction is how sweet. Now you could have positive anchors and negative anchors.

[27:00] Comedians know this best. Interesting. Comedians are masters of anchors. They'll say 3 brilliant jokes and make you laugh. And while you're laughing, they're doing a particular trigger, a particular stimulus without you knowing it. The fourth time, they'll say a very ordinary joke and you laugh.

[27:20] they're doing the same stimulus. An example of that is if you know one of those comedians who you take his hands like this and do this, I don't know if you know who I'm talking about, one of the comedy challenges, every time he would do this, people would already start laughing. So his joke has already got elevated to the next level. So it's become a visual trigger. Yes.

[27:40] That is so interesting. So for an example, think of Kapil Sharma, where he would have this very clear anchor. Let us say you are on a show and you say, Sid, you are a neurologist. How many years did you study for neurology? And you will give some answer. I would say some answer, yes.

[28:00] You see, it made you laugh because I can imagine it. You can imagine it and that's become a program. Now he reuses that program every single time and gets the same reaction every single time. So positive anchors and negative anchors. It gets amazing when we learn how to dissolve.

[28:20] solve the negative anchors and how to recreate positive anchors. So to answer one of the initial questions about how do I and why do I use this with law of traction, a lot of times when people practice law of traction, they are doing affirmations. But what if they are filled with negative anchors on the day? They will not be able to move forward. They will not be able to do that affirmation.

[28:40] In the first place, their brain says you are fake. Their brain says it is not true. Is that imposter syndrome? Could be because it can be a negative anchor again to feel that imposter syndrome. That am I really this or am I forcing this on myself? That also could be an anchor and that does not let them now take action.

[29:00] What if I could dissolve those anchors for them and make them feel happy while doing affirmations? Emotionally, not logically. That's what we do in DMP, daily magic practice. An example of that is when we start our DMP, we tell people, okay, close your eyes and I want you to think of a moment where your father gave you your favorite talk.

[29:20] and how you felt. Or I want you to now think about the one moment of your life where you felt extremely proud of yourself. The one moment when you had the first infatuation of your life where you felt that kuchikuchi feeling of a person and like with that song of Pehelan Mehsah. You see that song got that smile? That song is an anchor of a romantic feeling.

[29:40] So I use these anchors to make people feel good first and say okay now read your definitions. I know people who do this. They are not NLP coaches, they are not law of attraction practitioners, they are just I feel there are some people who have figured out how to make people feel good. You got

[30:00] And now I'm thinking about what you're saying, I realize this is what they do. In their everyday conversations, they will just put in these words, they'll just throw in these images that will make you think of things that are beautiful. That's what NLP is. What I loved about authenticity of John Grinder and Richard Bandler is they said, NLP is not a creation

[30:20] of anything new. It is a study of something already is working. So if you already study excellent people who can make people feel happy, model their language because at some level, both sadness and happiness are reactions of our brain to how you perceive reality. So books like

[30:40] man searched for freedom, for example. Yeah, absolutely. And his whole concept of logotherapy, which is signs of how words can be used in certain ways, tells us that people can be unhappy in the quote unquote best of situations and they could find happiness in the worst of situations.

[31:00] of life. I don't know if people have read this book. It's the classic example of proving what you're saying, of really being unhappy in a times which are the best and being happy in a times of crisis. I mean, can't get a better example than this. Absolutely. So if you are in a concentration camp and people are actually finding happiness there, there is a lot to be

[31:20] said about how our brain can reprogram reality to make it work for us. So, NLP says there are three ways in which we communicate and receive communication. We call it GDD, generalization, distortion and deletion. Okay. So, which means what is a generalization? A generalization is everything seems

[31:40] the same. So you'll see people who generalize a lot, they'll say, you never listen to me. GDD is how you perceive information. Information. Experiences of life. How do you interpret experiences of life? Understood. Okay, so GDD, generalization. Distortion. Distortion. And deletion. And deletion.

[32:00] A generalization is and people have preferences in this. Some people would generalize first, then distort, then delete. Some people would delete first, then distort, then generalize. In my case, I am a generalizer, then distort, then delete. In case of my wife, she's a deleter first, then generalizer, then distort. Now if I know this, how useful

[32:20] can it be? Let's say a person who's talking to me is looking in their past and I'm combining this with I accessing queues, imagine I'm an NLP expert and the person says you know what, things never come easy to me. Is it interesting? Really? When was the last time you got something easily?

[32:40] Now guess where will they look? In their past. Obviously. Now I want to make sure they look in their past. So I am going to ask them a past related question. So okay, tell me when was the last thing you got easy? I do not know. So just look for it. It can be a small thing, does not have to be a big thing. So I do not know. I said, did you put in your shoes easily today?

[33:00] Of course. So, did you open the door easily? Oh, come on. That's too much. Did you drive easily? Did you walk easily? Did you breathe easily? Did you eat easily? So, today since morning, how many things did you do easily versus not easily? And they're like, that's actually true. So, I said, today, how many difficult things

[33:20] happened. Nothing happened. I said, okay, in the last three days, one, I had a difficult conversation with my wife. Okay, in the last one week, two. So if you compare that with the number of instances, which are easy versus not easy in the last one week. So now what I'm doing is in NLP we say,

[33:40] break down their generalizations which are negative. Because somebody who generalizes will tend to pick up on only the things that confirm their bias. So is this also confirmation bias? Confirmation bias but expanding it, multiplying it 10 times. Even though it is seen once, they will see it 10 times. It's almost like a

Gratitude, Emotional Anchors, and Changing Perception

[34:00] Ravan's head. There is one, but we see 10. The moment I say the word Ravan, it is an anchor. Similarly, a person who is a generalizer would, whether positive or negative, they will generalize. An example which I say is, my wife asks, am I looking beautiful? She says, yes, you always look beautiful. No matter what you wear, you always look beautiful. Some generalization

[34:20] Exactly. Some generalizations are useful. Not just that. Here's another example. You enter your house. How do you open the door, show me, in your case? Now that's a generalization. What if your brain forgot that? I would struggle. I mean, it would be so much of an effort for a person every day to think, slide or push or

[34:40] Yeah, but imagine 25 such decisions to make in a day. Yeah, like generalization. I try and recollect how to tie a shoelace. Exactly. How do you open your shoes? Do you open your first shoe left or first right? What if you had each of these instances are decision making and not a generalization? That would be difficult. So generalization is not necessarily

[35:00] a bad thing. In NLP we say be aware of your GDD so that you can know how to regulate that. Why? Because our generalizations are creating our emotions, our beliefs. And if you don't take control of those emotions and beliefs, you don't control what you're attracting because you're not controlling what you're acting.

[35:20] So you look at the word acting and attracting. My actions create my results, my results create my attractions. A lot of times, loft action is seen as focus-focus. But it has a lot to do with positive action. But how do I take positive action if I have negative beliefs and negative feelings? But it is very difficult to say that to a person who's used to having negative generalizations.

[35:40] So, help them regulate those generalizations. If they do, suddenly now they know, okay, here I can generalize, here I do not need to generalize. Similarly, distortion. A person can see, what is the distortion? Let me explain that first. Have you ever had a situation where somebody said something to you and you misunderstood them?

[36:00] Yes. And you felt bad. Yes. And later you realize you were wrong. Yes. Now that's a distortion. Yeah. And usually that distortion happens because you have some preconceived notion of what that person feels about you or… Fair. Perception about that person. Yes. But if I'm not a distorter first,

[36:20] I'll generalize it more negative than distort more negative. So people who misunderstand a lot are distortions in the sequence first. What if I could teach them how to identify their distortions and reduce that? Suddenly there could be less misunderstandings between a body

[36:40] boss and a subordinate. Certainly there could be less misunderstandings between husband and wife. For an example, one of the most common things between a husband and wife is the wife says something and he says, why are you saying that about me? And she's like, I didn't mean that. And he's like, no, you meant it. She's like, no, but I didn't

[37:00] Now this guy is insisting. You insulted me. You meant it. But what if it's just a distortion of our brain? Then that poor wife has nothing to do with it because she's just barely playing the role of a stimulus. But my program is to distort it negatively so I feel bad feeling humiliated.

[37:20] Similarly, there is deletion. So we can delete information. For an example, right now, as some of you are listening to our podcast, if you're listening with a lot of intent, you've already deleted the information of the air conditioning sound. Correct. You've deleted the information of some background noise coming from the traffic. You've deleted the information of your own breathing noise, your own heartbeat feeling.

[37:40] Feeling is also something we delete, but it is necessary if you look at it from the positive distortions in order to deletion, in order to survive. Like what if all this information could be present all the time? In neurology, there is a term if I am not wrong of patients who are not able to control their senses. So we talked about GDD and we talked about generalized

[38:00] Deletion is what? So when we delete information which we don't need or we should. Like imagine a person who would think of all their past memories and misunderstand a lot of them. A lot of distortion. And then multiply that by doing generalization that nobody loves me, nobody supports me, nothing works in life.

[38:20] I have always worked hard, nothing really works for me. So much of generalization which is negative. And now they would imagine deleting all the good memories of their life. What if they deleted every blessing they've had? What if they deleted every good thing that happened to them? Life would feel meaningless. No wonder they would go into depression. So being able to regulate that deletion module

[38:40] is about understanding how I can stop deleting good information from my past and highlight positive information. So in NLP, one of the things we practice is we make a person close their eyes, try this at home, it's a beautiful exercise, of closing your eyes and starting from your childhood, think of the first good memory.

[39:00] Earlier you can go. And to make it better, use your body language. Like take your hand like this and imagine you are holding that memory with your eyes closed and the moment you remember the memory, you bring it in your heart. It's just a metaphorical way of feeling it. And then you go a little above that age and you bring the second best memory. Then the third best memory.

[39:20] memory than the fourth best memory than the fifth. So we actually do this with people with music like a crescendo effect or a kind of an orchestra effect and people keep bringing in beautiful memories and beautiful memories and beautiful memories and beautiful memories. I said remember the time when your father gave you your first gift, remember the time when you got your first kiss, remember the

[39:40] Remember the time when you proposed to someone. Remember the time when you got your first job. Remember the time when you got your first promotion. Remember the time when you dealt with something so powerfully that you couldn't believe how amazing you are. Remember the time when you got the best gift of your life. Remember the time when you felt your intuitions were so powerful that you couldn't believe it. Remember the first time you fell in love. And I keep making them remember.

[40:00] remember and remember and remember, but in a beautiful way where they would really feel it and imagine it by activating their VAKs. And interestingly, when I look at them and their eyes are closed, their eyes are going to as they're passed. So if they fake it, I would know it. And they kept feeling it. And in just about three minutes of this exercise, try it at home with some beautiful music, you'll have tears of gratitude.

[40:20] like wow my life is so amazing. So what did I do? All the stuff that you had deleted, I brought it back. So what if we could bring back a lot of beautiful memories and delete a lot of not so beautiful memories. What would that do to me and how useful could that be? Yeah this is very interesting because when you

[40:40] are in a negative spiral. Neuroscientifically what is happening is that you are under a sense of threat. Yes, you are convinced that something is wrong, something is going wrong with you and whenever you are threatened it is very difficult to spot good news. True. Because it is biologically more important to spot bad

[41:00] news. So you will only think of the negative things. You'll only spot the bad people. You'll only think of things that make you feel angry or threatened or sad. Also called as the amygdala hijack. The amygdala hijack. So that's pretty much what it is. So your amygdala is more sensitive to spotting threatening patterns and

[41:20] In order to get out of it, I now realize that gratitude practices are great because you are in a way convincing your own negative patterns that things are not as bad as they think, as you think they are. So, gratitude practice is a great way to do it and this technique

[41:40] technique that you're explaining is a very in your face graduate practice. It's not just write it down somewhere. You're visualizing it, you're going back to that moment. You're even physically, metaphorically bringing it back to you. Yes. I think that would work. That's a really good technique.

Using NLP to Overcome Phobias, Anxiety, and Social Fears

[42:00] I want to talk about the opposite side of gratitude practice, which is, say somebody is really afraid. I know people who suffer from anxiety, some people who suffer from phobias. So they're just afraid of a specific thing. At some level, it's a pattern

[42:20] turn that they're formed in their brains, that snakes are scary, spiders are scary, being alone at home is scary, being in a crowded lift is scary. What can NLP do to help these people reorient these thought processes? What we do with phobia cure is the way that memory is installed in a person's brain is a certain

[42:40] set of visuals, auditory and kinesthetic. Like as you gave an example of a snake, people are not really scared of the bite of the snake. Guess how harsh can be the sting of a snake as much as a pin. That's it. Everybody knows that probably. Why are we so scared of it? It's the visual images

[43:00] of a movie where we saw somebody bit us, some snake bit a person in the movie and he started having jhag coming out of his mouth and he died and he's gone. That memory plays a role. But what if you didn't have that memory or what if I could take that memory and do what I did with you in the joker's face in the beginning? So if I make it into comic

[43:20] Exactly. So I did this with a person of snake where I made a person and this was someone who's a good friend of mine. I made him I said close your eyes and imagine a stone snake in a Shiva temple. I said okay. I said are you scared right now? I said no. Interesting. Not scared

[43:40] of a stone snake. So the visual memory has changed. So the fear is not yet coming back. So I said, okay, now I made a story out of it. I said, and just close your eyes, imagine that stone snake and imagine that the eyes of the snake are having water and it's literally crying. And now imagine you're going close to the snake and you're curious about why

[44:00] Why is a stone crying? That's crazy. And you're asking why is the stone crying? And the pandit behind you is saying, so I just made up a story on the spot. And he's visualizing all this. And I said, imagine the stone is crying because the pandit is telling you that the stone is saying that I'm crying because you're scared of me, because you think I'm black.

[44:20] Because you think I'm ugly. But what have I done to hurt you? And I have decided to be a stone all my life so that I never hurt you. Or at least I don't make you feel like I'm going to hurt you. And I said, now, as your eyes are closed and you're imagining this conversation, tell me what would you like to do?

[44:40] Now what do you think was a natural reaction for somebody who really got emotional about this conversation if I did it well? They would say things like what? Like, oh, I didn't want to hurt you. I didn't want to make you. I elicited an emotion of guilt, not fear. Right. Wow.

[45:00] Imagine apologizing to a snake that says, I'm really sorry, but I didn't mean to. And now I take it to the next level. I said, imagine the snake is saying, no, I know if I come to life, you'll hate me for the rest of my life and you'll probably even try to kill me and you'll probably try to cage me and give it to a zoo. Instead of that, I'd rather be a stone. Yeah.

[45:20] What would you like to say? Full guilt trip. And now he's saying, no, I will not be scared of you. Are you sure? I'll not be scared. Can I come back to life? He said, yes, you can. He said, imagine slowly the eyes of the snake is looking exactly like the size of your mother, bringing in beautiful emotions and memories of an anchor which is already tying up to good images of loving eyes. Right.

[45:40] And as I imagine now slowly the snake is coming back to life but it is not coming back in the black colour but it is coming back in a beautiful rainbow colour. So I am changing the whole perception of how a snake looks. Now you would say, Mitesh, you are coming up with stories but isn't that what our head is doing anyway? When you are imagining you are scared of the snake and the snake is biting you and you go into a frenzy, it is a story anyway. So out of 100 people who are

[46:00] scared of snakes maybe one of them would have actually experienced or no less less yeah actually like how many people do you know say I have one person would have it's just a fear in the mind it's a story yes so you change the story by changing the sequence of the visual modalities auditory and kinesthetic and you do it by recognizing is the person kinesthetic more

[46:20] Visual more order and play on those modalities right experiment. I also wonder if we can use this for lesser fears like fear of judgment fear of social rejection yes fear of stepping out in front of people going on stage absolutely we do this for stage for me all the time.

[46:40] Amazing. This is really interesting. People who say I have never been on the stage and I'm scared. I remember this guy, his name is Anand, who worked with a company called Agbarelis Travels in Pune, one of my students. And he said, I'm getting an award today evening, but I've decided not to go because I can't go on the stage. Wow. I said, OK, just come on the phone for 10 minutes. He was chatting with me, came on the phone.

[47:00] for 10 minutes, did a phobia cure. He went and took the award like he was a pro. And he called me saying, I felt amazing. Every emotion is a stored program of a certain sequence of visual auditory and kind aesthetic. I'm sure you must have heard about that classic example of imagine there is a lemon on the table.

[47:20] And you take your hands and you cut that lemon with a knife and you cut it in half. And then you take. So we do this in our workshops. You say close your eyes and hold that lemon and imagine it's coming close to your eyes and see every piece of that lemon. Take it to your ears and feel it. Squeeze it a little bit. Take it to your nose and smell it a little bit. Now put it between your teeth and chew it when I tell you. Yeah. One, two, three.

[47:40] 90% of the audience goes like, oh, I fell sorry. But where is the lemon? Lemon is not there. The lemon is in the VAK, the visual auditory and kind aesthetic. So what if I change the VAK? So you can bring back memories from your mind and memories are coded in the VAK language and using that

[48:00] You can make somebody feel an emotion that you want. This almost sounds like hypnosis. To some extent. But the difference is by choice. Ah, you can do this to yourself. You can do this to yourself. You can do this to others with a choice, with a conversation. I'm very keen on trying this out in conversations. I think everyone should.

[48:20] The next time they're sitting with friends, just see if you can shift the mood in the room just by changing the words that you're using or conversational points. Start putting in more beautiful, happy, positive words. Like if you find a person who's more visual, use the words like, what a sunny morning.

[48:40] What a bright morning. Like you're looking so bright and glowy today. Like there's a glow on your face. Use these words with a visual person, they'll go away. Yeah and if somebody's auditory, you can say, oh I can hear the birds chirping, the sound of the rain outside and ah interesting. There are people right now going into a trance

Applying NLP for Motivation, Influence, and Habit Formation

[49:00] of a holiday as you are saying this. Yeah, this is very interesting. But what if a person was kinesthetic? Kinesthetic. So the feel of the wind, the crunch of, you can feel the crunch of grass under you. Okay, I get the hang of it. You can keep practicing and get better at it. You can keep practicing this. This is very, very interesting. And being able to master this for two reasons. One is

[49:20] to how do you communicate with yourself effectively. 99% are communicating with ourselves not with others. People don't realize that. So what if we could productively, effectively communicate with yourself in such a way that you could motivate yourself to do what you want and demotivate yourself to not do what you don't want to do. Think of it, demotivation has been really

[49:40] criticized. But I think it's a great emotion. Yeah. I want to demotivate myself to do the wrong to stop doing the wrong stuff. Correct. But maybe I don't know how to demotivate myself as an emotion. Yeah. But what if I knew it? There's a bag of chips in the kitchen. There you go. I want to demotivate myself from eating it. Yep. I can do it to you right now. How can I do it?

[50:00] that. You sure you want me to try? Yes. You sure? Yes. Let this be the finale of the conversation. So I want you to think of that chip right now and tell me on a level of 1 to 10 what is the level of temptation to have that chip right now? So here see here's the thing it's aloo goo jia. Really?

[50:20] said alubuja, like you're honest about it. Like you're not playing a game with me, you're like you're really alubuja guy. The packet is there. I love this. Now, alubuja has a very specific taste. Okay, so it's a little lemony, it's a little, it's got that bite. I'm making some people run for it right now. Yeah, exactly. And I know that it

[50:40] Everyone can just imagine putting a spoon in and taking it in your mouth and you feel that crunchiness in your mouth. Did you notice what part you spoke first? You didn't speak about the spoon and then eat. You first spoke about the taste. Your kinesthetic first. Okay, understood. Then visual. So that's your sequence.

[51:00] Amazing. I love it and I love that I know that now. So if you want to ever tempt yourself, do that. Think of the kinesthetic feeling first, then go to visual, then go to auditory. So I can change it for you right now. What I want you to do is think of the bhudjia. But think of only the package of the bhudjia.

[51:20] don't think of the crunch, don't think of the taste and tell me the taste, the temptation of the bhujya right now and only you would know the truth. Is it the same or is it lesser? If I only think of the packet. That's it. It's slightly lesser. Now I'm going to install some new submodalities. Submodalities are smaller babies

[51:40] of the primary modalities of VAK which means, let me not get into technicality, I'll just do it with you. So, I want you to imagine that the maid in your house had kept that bhudya there. So, close your eyes. And she had just come from the toilet and she didn't wash her hands and she kept that bhudya packet there.

[52:00] But you don't know it, but now you know it. And before she kept it there, she took a small bite out of that bhujya with the hands that she had gone to the toilet with which she didn't wash. Think of the bhujya. Why? Why would we do this? I asked you like, do you really want to do it?

[52:20] I've done this to people who've had 1 year of addiction of pizza and they come to me begging saying can I please eat a pizza again. We had a good run Alivudya. So I did this with myself for quitting smoking many years ago. If you do this detailed systematically it takes

[52:40] half an hour with extreme topics like smoking and drinking, but you can. You can quit smoking, you can quit drinking. I made one of my friends quit drugs, doing that. Well, I'm not hungry anymore. Well, you'll be surprised that every time you think of the bhudjaya, you're going to think of our hands and the messy experience.

[53:00] I actually love it. I love that this is empowering. I love that everyone can do this to themselves. They can just figure out, I feel like this is self-talk done professionally. Not just winging it, not just like, there is a structure to

[53:20] to it and if you practice it you can actually change the way that you behave. You can master this. Insane and you're saying that everyone can be an NLP master for themselves. So yes people can be NLP practitioners, people can be NLP masters and people can be trainers also. So if somebody wants to be an NLP practitioner they start with us.

[53:40] There's a link below. There's a link below and if I had to say what would you use an LP for like why should you do an LP? I would say there are so many things that you can change in your life just by mastering how you communicate with yourself and study of excellence. For the first thing being able to take the action that I want whether it's exercising, whether it's loving a person, whether

[54:00] Whether it's doing my business plans, whether it's creating my videos, whether it's doing my editing, a lot of things we want to do we are not able to do. What if you could control that? That's one reason to do NLP. Lot of things we don't want to do. What if you could stop doing it by choice with a structure? I'm saying there's a structure. You do step 1, 2, 3 and in NLP there's a manual that says,

[54:20] There is a technique called swish pattern. I use it for simply changing small habits like nail biting. People would have 10 years of nail biting and I can make them quit it in 10 minutes. Not me. It is NLP doing it. I am not doing it. I am not the hero here. NLP is the real thing which is the science that needs it work. How do you know it? Practitioners who learned NLP can do it as fast as I do. Then you know it is the

[54:40] technique, it is not me. So, the variable is not me, the variable is always an LPR and how well the person uses it. Now, phobia cure, talk about being able to influence somebody when you are talking to somebody. Talk about being able to conversationally, being able to hypnotize to a person in an ethical way when you are talking to your wife and you

[55:00] want her to feel your love but she's not feeling it. What if you could master the model of communication that she understands in her VAK model and then communicate love to her in the language that she understands? This could be ethical influence. What if you could have less misunderstandings and more understandings? What if you could program yourself to feel motivated?

[55:20] it at 5 o'clock in the morning to get up every day. That's anchors. So there are so many modalities that I could talk about, but I would say if you really want to take control of your life, if it's a matter of learning two days of an LP, why not? The worst that can happen is you'll learn something new and maybe it will not be as grand as I say it, but it couldn't be

[55:40] as a bigger lie because if I'm here with Sid, there must be some truth to it. No, I really enjoyed this conversation. I feel there is a lot to it. Like you said, at the start of the conversation, it's already something that people are kind of doing. They have already figured out some bits of it. But I think this is the

[56:00] difference between say just learning to swim by ourselves versus learning to swim by a coach. So that you know that your head should not be above the water, there's a certain style. So it just makes it more efficient. You are trying to streamline your swimming so that you don't get tired. Here you are trying to streamline yourself, talk so that you're more efficient.

[56:20] Absolutely. I think that makes a lot of sense. Absolutely. Mitesh, thank you so much for coming in. Thank you. I really enjoyed this conversation. I learned a lot. I hope you guys learned a lot too. You guys can try this out at home. A lot of things to try out now. So go have fun. Re-watch this episode. I'll put timestamps so you can go check it out. Check out the link in the description.

[56:40] description below. You can attend a course with him and I'm sure you'll learn a lot. And if you're someone like me who's not like when I learned NLP for the first time I was like, it's too much hard work. Come and attend the 30 days course free. I'll do NLP on you instead of you doing it on yourself and figure it out whether it works. Find out for yourself. Try it out. All the best guys.

[57:00] I will see you guys in the next episode. Bye. Thank you, Sid. Cheers. Cheers.