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Modeling & Roles
When we were little, we learned to walk, talk, and behave in relation to others because we modeled our parents or those around us.
Our human brains are designed to imitate and mimic people’s behaviors.
How could we use this to our advantage?
For starters, you could bust limiting beliefs by modeling yourself after a successful person.
Imagine a situation where your limiting beliefs prevent you from achieving a desired outcome.
Let’s say that you have trouble doing your physics homework because you have a belief that you are not good at physics.
Visualize a person who knows how to solve physics problems with ease.
Play out the situation as vividly as possible, taking in all the details.
Step into that person’s mind. Take note of how your limiting beliefs are gone and you feel relaxed doing your physics homework.
Visualize the situation again, but this time you are the one performing the action.
Repeat the visualization again from another angle in another setting. You have to soak up the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of your model.
Step out of your model, and notice how your confidence has increased, and that you now have a new ability to handle physics homework.
You can model yourself after your own personal hero. Visualize yourself acting like your hero. Feel the determination that your hero has.
After going through this, take note of how the virtues of your hero can help you to achieve your goals.
Realize that the most successful people in this world are the most flexible people. Entrepreneurs, for instance, can perform a number of tasks that most people cannot do.
As such, for each role that you have to perform in life (student, husband, wife, father, mother, businessman, sportsman, etc), pick a role model and imagine yourself acting like him/her.
Aversion/Attraction
It is clear from our lives that we have aversion towards some objects/peoples/foods and attraction towards some objects/peoples/foods.
But the problem is that many times we have aversion and attraction for the wrong things.
Take the issue of weight loss, for instance. Most people I know have an attraction for fattening foods, while an aversion for healthy ones, or at least very little interest.
Put a salad and an apple pie right besides each other, and most people will go for the apple pie without hesitation.
So it would be great if there was a way to change our aversions and attractions.
You can do this again through the power of visualization.
Let’s say that you like a certain type of ice cream that you know is making you fat. You like it so much that if it somewhere near you, you will eat it without thinking about the consequences.
Now picture that ice cream on a table. Visualize it in complete detail, including
the smell of the ice cream.
Once you do this, transform the ice cream into something disgusting. This will depend on the person, of course.
Take note of the transition and smell both the ice cream and the thing that induces disgust within you. By the way, the more disgusting the better.
Another option is to picture yourself eating the ice cream, and then having a horrible taste in your mouth while getting a terrible stomachache.
The more you repeat these visualizations, the more successful you will be in reducing your cravings for the fattening ice cream. If you are very persistent, you may eventually find it really disgusting!
Alright, enough with disgusting things!
Let’s say that instead of disgust, we want to create attraction for a certain object or person.
A good example is a married couple. Marriage takes a toll on attraction for most people. When people are young and know very little about each other, attraction is at its peak, but as the years pass, some of that youthful ardor is lost.
A possible solution to re-kindle that youthful flame is to turn your wife/husband into something or someone intriguing and exciting.
As before, it is up to the individual to find out what is intriguing and exciting for him/her.
For example, let’s say that you find a certain Greek statue of.
Instead of ending up having an affair, which will only hurt both parties, turn your wife into that woman you find so attractive.
Visualize your wife morphing into that woman of your dreams.
This will trigger a neurochemical response of attraction towards your wife. Now, every time you see your wife, certain chemicals will be released that will make her extremely attractive to you, just like when you were young.
Of course, it is recommended that if you have trouble feeling attracted to your wife, you seek a marriage counselor to improve the communication aspect of your marriage.
To solve attraction problems towards a certain person, one needs to work on both chemistry and communication.
Visualization will at least take care of the chemical part.
Your Mental Movie Projector
Your mind is like a cinema: you have all sorts of “movies” stores inside your head.
As such, instead of being the spectator, you can be the director or editor that changes these movies in accordance with his goals.
Adding Soundtrack
Pick out a specific situation. This could either be a bad memory, a future event, or a phobia. Play the situation as if it were a movie, and take note of the emotions you feel when the movie rungs through your head.
Replay the situation again, but this time add a soundtrack that reflects the way you want to react to this situation. If you are imagining a sad moment in your life, add an upbeat soundtrack to give the scene a happy tone.
Make sure that your reaction to the situation has changed. Replay the movie with the new soundtrack as much as you can to make sure that your reaction has changed.
Rewinding
Pick an unpleasant memory or object and play it in your mental movie theater. Play the scene up until the point where you transition from being confident to being fearful. You want to hold that image in your mind of you being confident.
Now put yourself in the seat of an spectator who has seen the movie so many times that he/she feels desensitized when watching the movie. Once you do this, play the movie to the end in black and white.
