Using Sensory Systems to Amplify Emotions
Today, we are talking about more ways to amplify emotions. In earlier videos, we discussed how important it is that emotions be powerful inside of your hypnotic suggestions and also in your NLP work. Today, we are going to talk about yet another way to make sure those emotions are maximally powerful, (if maximally is even a word).
This will involve all the sensory systems. It can really increase the power of an experience, to make sure it is running in all sensory systems. And by sensory systems I mean your senses–your vision, your feelings, your touch, your smell, your taste.
Get Your Rep Systems Going…
So, if you step somebody into an experience of, let’s say, confidence, we want to make sure they’ve got all of the sensory systems running. So, you check in and say:
“OK. Now, inside of that confident feeling:
- Where do you feel that in your body?
- What sounds go along with that confidence? What things do you hear inside your mind when you are feeling confident?
- What do you see?
- What do you smell or taste?”
OK? So, we make sure there are feelings, sounds, images, smells and even tastes that go along with confidence.
The more senses we get involved, the more powerful that feeling of confidence is going to grow. And so, once again, you step somebody into an experience to get a feeling and make sure it is running in all sensory systems.
Building a 4-tuple
Now, what do you do if you run into a person who doesn’t have a reference experience for what they want? In other words, they want to feel confident and they have never felt confident in their life. Now, I find that hard to imagine.
But, we can build in NLP what’s called the “four-tuple” to help them and that is, simply say, “What image in your mind goes along with confidence?” And they say, “Well, an image of a guy running across the finish line, in first place.”
Make that image in your mind. How does that feel? “OK. I feel confident.” What sound goes with that? What feeling goes with that in your body? What smell and taste go with confidence?
So, we build an experience, even if the client doesn’t have a reference for that emotion in their list of experiences. Essentially what we do is, we make sure the client’s thoughts are up and running in all sensory systems and we can build those sensory systems if we don’t have them.
Enjoy,
Keith Livingston
