What is an NLP Technique for silencing your critic? The person who stands in the way of you achieving your happiness? Our mind works in a straightforward way. There are two choices, if you think of your mind as if it were a bus, you are either driving it or you are a passenger. What NLP training is mostly about is learning techniques, tools, and methods to get in charge of your bus, and with that your life and happiness.
There are two types of crictics
When it comes to critics, people often think there are two kinds of people putting limitations on your pursuit of happiness.
- Ourselves
- Other people
NLP technique: silencing your critic
The NLP technique that I have created this week addresses this way of thinking. Is it true that our critic is always someone else? Sure, some people when in the room with us in the present moment can make our lives a living hell, and they make us unhappy at that moment. However, when this person is not in the room, your thoughts about the past or the future put a limitation on yourself.
The things we want others to do for us
Also, we often want other people to do, be, give, stop, or become things in order for us to be happy. We require them to do something for us to become happy, and we can wait a long time. Yes, the bank may indeed not give you a loan to start your new business, but you could also get an extra job to finance this new business, or start it part-time on the weekends and the evenings while you keep your regular day job. There may not be an NLP technique that makes you happy today, but there may be one with which you can motivate yourself to take control and stop procrastinating. The person who you are in a relationship with may make you unhappy, and should they change? Or could you improve your attitude about them, fix the relationship, or leave? In essence, we are often holding our breath, becoming inactive, less creative, and flat out lazy in regards to achieving our happiness. If you are not willing to do what it takes to become happy, why would someone else? In our thoughts about others, we place more limitations on ourselves.
NLP technique: silencing your critic – essential steps
The essential steps to the NLP technique are as follows:
- Consider it from the viewpoint looking through your own eyes
- Consider it from the viewpoint of an observer, what is factually happening
- Consider it from the viewpoint of the other person
What are other considerations and things you can do with this NLP technique?
Critics and limitations
Tip 1
You could call what we call in NLP training future pace. Imagine yourself in the future, as seen looking through your own eyes, what it is like to already have taken the control. A situation where the other person has become entirely irrelevant. Who you would be three months from now, having taken control? What would you see, hear, and feel?
Tip 2
Often what people are doing is ruminating on what other people should be doing for us, or how they are limiting us. What would happen if you brainstormed with someone else, or on your own, for each thing that you require others to do something for? Could you figuring out the solution show that you could do something yourself instead? You can pair each obstacle you have, or each critic you get, with an action you are going to take.
Tip 3
When someone else is a critic of your pursuit of happiness, consider the following questions:
1. What, specifically, is the positive intent they have? What is the good thing they are trying to achieve for you, by being a critic of your pursuit of happiness?
2. Who, specifically, is genuinely responsible for you to become happy?
3. What would happen if you took control? If you assumed that you had all of the control?
4. Who would you be without the thoughts about what other people should be saying or doing?
Tip 4
For those of you doing the Global NLP Training Happiness series, this would be an excellent time to re-visit your goal setting exercises or even PERMA and the life wheel, to go over with a fine-toothed comb where you have limitations in your map, and given away the control to someone else.
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