Mind Freedom Exercise (3): Flexible Thinking

Mind Freedom Exercises
Exercises To Do On Your Own
by Al Link and Pala Copeland

Flexible Thinking

You have the power over what you think about. You also have the power over how you think about what you think about.

Your brain performs various functions, such as recalling, thinking, and imagining, in particular ways. Each of your five senses includes a number of subcategories of information—submodalities. When you experience or remember something joyful, painful, or frightening, you do so in a unique way, using particular senses and their submodalities. By consciously changing the submodalities you use to remember experiences, you actually change your memories and assign them different meanings.

Time for Exercise: 30 minutes to one hour

Properties Required: pen and paper

Steps:

1. Recall an extraordinary experience in which you felt joyous, happy, and full of wonder. This can be any experience, anywhere, anytime.
2. Identify your key submodalities for this type of experience. For example, if you are primarily visual, is the picture up close or far away? What color is the background? Is the picture bright or dim? Is the picture black and white or in color? Is the picture moving or still? Where in your consciousness is the picture located, for example, front and center, front lower right, behind your head, high up or low? Is the picture associated (as if you were right in the scene re-experiencing it) or disassociated (as if you were watching a movie)?

   If you are primarily auditory, is the sound loud or soft? Is it slow or fast? Is it continuous or interrupted? Which direction is the sound coming from? Is the sound stereo or monaural? Is it close or far away? Is it rhythmical or discordant? Do you hear music and/or talking? Is the experience associated or disassociated? Is the sound inside or outside you?

   If you are primarily kinesthetic, do you notice weight, pressure, temperature, and/or movement? Does your skin feel tactile sensations? Do your muscles and internal organs feel sensations? Where are these located? Do they fade in and out, or are they continuous? How long do they last? Where do they start and end if they move around?

3. Recall any ordinary sexual experience. Don’t pick one that was extraordinary (either great or awful). Identify your key submodalities for this experience as you did above—visual, auditory, and kinesthetic details.
4. In your imagination, deliberately change on sub-modality (visual, auditory, kinesthetic) at a time so that your inner experience for the ordinary sexual encounter is perceived in the same way as the joyous experience. For example, if the ordinary experience is primarily visual with the picture fuzzy, far away, off to one side, fading in and out, black and white, but the joyous experience is clear, close up, centered in your field of vision, and in color, deliberately change how you see the ordinary experience. Make it clear, close up, centered, colorful and so on. Notice how this changes your remembrance of the sexual experience and your feelings about it.

   Comments:

   You can use this process to change your perceptions of not just sexual experiences but of any situation.