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Human Resource Development (HRM-627)
VU
Lesson 13
CREATE YOUR OWN BLUEPRINT
Discovering your sub modalities is a fun process. You may want to do this on your own, although you may find
it more fun to do with someone else. This will help with the accuracy, and if they're also reading this, you'll
have a lot to talk about and a partner in your commitment to personal mastery. So very quickly now, think of a
time in your life when you had a very enjoyable experience, and do the following: Rate your enjoyment on a
scale from 0 ­ 100, where 0 is no enjoyment at all and 100 is the peak level of enjoyment you could possibly
experience. Let's say you came up with 80 on this emotional intensity scale. Now, go to the Checklist of
Possible Sub modalities (PPT Slide), and let's discover which elements are apt to create more enjoyment in
your life than others, more pleasure feelings than pain feelings.
Begin to evaluate each of the questions contained in the checklist against your experience. So, for example, as
you remember this experience and focus on the visual sub modalities, ask yourself,' is it a movie or a still
frame?' If it's a movie, notice how it feels. Does it feel good? Now change it to its opposite. Make it a still
frame and see what happens. Does your level enjoyment drop? Does it drop significantly? By what percentage?
As you made it a still frame, did it drop from 80 to 50, for example? Write down the impact that this change
has made so you'll be able to utilize this distinction in the future.
Then, return the imagery to its initial form; that is, make it a movie again if that's what it was, so you feel like
you're back at 80 again. Then go to the next question on your checklist (PPT Slide). Is it in color or in black
and white? If it was in black and white, notice how it feels. Now, again, do the opposite to it. Add color and see
what happens. Does it raise your emotional intensity higher than 80? Write down the impact this has upon you
emotionally. If it brings you to a 95, this might be a valuable thing to remember in the future. For example,
when thinking about a task you usually avoid, if you add color to your image of it, you'll find that your positive
emotional intensity grows immediately. Now drop the image back down to black and white, and again, notice
what happens to your emotional intensity and what a big difference this makes. Remember to always finish by
restoring the original state before going on to the next question. Put the color back into it; make it brighter
than it was before, until you're virtually awash in vivid color.
In fact, brightness is an important sub modality for most people; brightening things intensifies their emotion. If
you think about the pleasurable experience right now, and make the image brighter and brighter, you probably
feel better, don't you? (Of course, there are exceptions. If you're savoring the memory of a romantic moment,
and suddenly turn all the lights on full blast, that may not be entirely appropriate.) What if you were to make
the image dim, dark, and defocused? For most people, that makes it almost depressing. So make it brighter
again; make it brilliant!
Continue down your list, nothing which of these visual sub modalities changes your motional intensity the
most. Then focus on the auditory sub modalities. As you re-create the experience inside your head, how does
it sound to you? What does raising the volume do to the level of pleasure you feel? How does increasing the
tempo affect the enjoyment? By how much? Write it down, and shift as many other elements as you can think
of. If what you're imagining is the sound of someone's voice, experiment with different inflections and accents,
and notice what that does to the level of enjoyment you experience. If you change the quality of the sound
from smooth to silky to rough and gravelly, what happens? Remember, finish by restoring the sounds to their
original auditory form so that all the qualities continue to create pleasure for you.
Finally, focus on kinesthetic sub modalities. As you remember this pleasurable experience, how does changing
the various kinesthetic elements intensify or decrease your pleasure? Does raising the temperature make you
feel more comfortable, or does it drive you up the wall? Focus on your breathing. Where are you breathing
from? If you change the quality of your breaths from rapid and shallow to long and deep, how does this affect
the quality of your experience? Notice what a difference this makes, and write it down. What about the texture
of the image? Play around with it; change it from soft and fluffy, to wet and slimy, to gooey and sticky.
As you go through each of these changes, how does your blood feel? Write it down. When you're done
experimenting with the whole checklist of sub modalities, go back and adjust until the most pleasurable image
re ­ emerges; make it real enough so you can get your hands around it and squeeze the juice from it!
As you go through these exercises, you will quickly see that some of these sub modalities are much more
powerful for you than others. We're all made differently and have are own preferred ways of representing our
experience to ourselves. What you've just done was to create a blueprint that maps out how your brain is wired.
Keep it and use it; it will come in handy some day ­ may be today! By knowing which modalities trigger you,
you'll know how to increase your positive emotions and decrease your negative emotions.
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Human Resource Development (HRM-627)
VU
For example, if you know that making something big and bright and bringing it close can tremendously
intensify your emotion, you can get yourself motivated to do something by changing its imagery to match these
criteria. You'll also know not to make your problems big, bright and close or you'll intensify your negative
emotions as well! You'll know how to instantly shake yourself out of limiting state and into an energizing,
empowering one. And you can be better equipped to continue your pathway to personal power.
Knowing the large part that sub modalities play in your experience of reality is crucial in meeting challenges.
For example, whether you feel confused or on track is a matter of sub modalities. If you think about a time
when you felt confused, remember whether you were representing the experience as a picture or a movie. Then
compare it to a time when you felt that you understood something. Often when people feel confused, it's
because they have a series of images in their heads that are piled up too closely together in a chaotic jumble
because someone as been talking too rapidly or loudly. For other people, they get confused if things are taught
to them too slowly. These individuals need to see images in a movie form, to see how things related to each
other; otherwise the process is too disassociated. Do you see how understanding someone's sub modalities can
help you to teach them much more effectively?
The challenge is that most of us take our limiting patterns and make them big, bright, close, loud, or heavy ­
whichever sub modalities we're most attuned to ­ and then wonder why we feel overwhelmed! If you've ever
pulled yourself out of that state, it's probably because you or somebody else took that image and changed it,
redirecting your focus. You finally said,' oh, it's not that big a deal.' Or you worked on one aspect of it, and by
doing so; it didn't seem like such a big project to tackle. These are simple strategies.
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