The NLP Swish Pattern

Tony Robbin’s Personal Power II helped me a lot to re-program myself and my life. One technique that particularly got my attention is the Swish Pattern. Here is an example from this post about anchoring in PPII.

Finally, how about another great way to change a pattern? This is called a Swish Pattern.

1).   First,  identify the behavior you wish to change and then see the undesirable behavior in your mind’s eye. Let’s say you want to change biting your nails.

2).    Next, create a picture of yourself performing the new behavior. (Not biting your nails and letting them grow).

3).    “Swish” the two pictures so that the undesirable behavior automatically triggers the resourceful one. To do this, make a clear, big bright picture of the undesirable behavior, then in the bottom right-hand corner of THAT picture, make a small dark picture of the new way you want to be. Now, take that small picture, and in less than a second, expand it in size and brightness and burst it through the first picture of the behavior you no longer desire. As you do this, say the word whoosh! with all the passion and enthusiasm you can.

4).    Speed and repetition are the keys to this process. Now, as quickly as you can, do this five or six times  – and have fun doing it. The message to your brain is, “See this? Whoosh! Do this. See this?  Whoosh! Do this, etc.” until the old picture automatically actually triggers the new picture; the new states and thus the new behavior becomes a natural part of your life.

Now, learning this was exciting. It doesn’t take years of therapy to fix some of these things, unless you want to go that direction.  Why would you? It does take attention and conscious effort.

Here is another great post about the Swish Pattern: NLP Swish Pattern ~ What Makes it Work and Why it Fails.

Personally, I’m using a similar technique from the meditation thought in the Silva Method. It works so well I feel completely changed after practice. I’ll make another post about it soon