PDF Summary:NLP: The Essential Guide to Neuro-Linguistic Programming, by Tom Hoobyar, Tom Dotz, and Susan Sanders

Your thoughts play a crucial role in shaping your experiences: They influence how you perceive, interpret, and respond to your environment. It follows then, that if you want to change something in your life—such as your mindset, habits, career, or relationship status—you first need to change your thoughts.

In NLP: The Essential Guide to Neuro-Linguistic Programming, NLP Master Practitioners Tom Hoobyar, Tom Dotz, and Susan Sanders explain what thoughts are, how they influence you, and what steps you can take to align them with what you want out of life.

In this guide, we’ll explain:

• How thoughts form and impact you—which will clarify why you tend to think, feel, and behave in certain ways
• How to intentionally change your thoughts—and, subsequently, your feelings and behaviors—to enhance all your experiences

Additionally, we’ll build on Hoobyar, Dotz, and Sanders’s ideas with research, advice, and actionable methods from psychologists and self-improvement practitioners.

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As we’ve established, all thoughts express themselves through your senses. Hoobyar, Dotz, and Sanders suggest that sensory nuances play a critical role in this process. These nuances are the subtle variations in how your senses engage when you think about something.

They explain that sensory nuances can manifest in various ways for each sense:

• Visual: Variations in color, contrast, or size. When thinking about a past event, some details might appear vivid or large while others seem blurry or small.
• Auditory: Variations in volume or clarity. When recalling a conversation, you might hear loud, clear voices in your mind, or the voices might sound muffled and distant.
• Olfactory: Variations in intensity or complexity. When you think about freshly baked bread, you might smell a strong, rich aroma or just a faint whiff that barely registers.
• Tactile: Variations in pressure, temperature, or texture. When thinking about shaking someone's hand, you might feel a light touch or the warmth of skin.
• Gustatory: Variations in flavor intensity or complexity. Thinking about what you plan to eat for dinner might evoke a strong, mouth-watering taste, or just a hint of flavor.

How Sensory Impairments Influence Perception and Thought

According to the authors, sensory nuances influence all your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. But what happens when sensory impairments like blindness, deafness, anosmia (reduced sense of smell), hypoesthesia (numbness), or ageusia (reduced sense of taste) come into play? According to research, if you can't use a sense when perceiving an experience, you won't use its associated sensory nuances to think about that experience.

Researchers explain that people with sensory impairments often depend on their remaining senses to perceive their environment—for example, someone with a visual impairment might rely heavily on the sounds and voices in a room to perceive the number of people present. This strategy then determines what sensory nuances they use when thinking about their experiences. For example, instead of visualizing faces in the crowded room, they might instead hear the rising cacophony of multiple people talking at once.

Sensory Nuances Shape Your Emotional Responses and Behaviors

The authors explain that sensory nuances influence your emotional response to your thoughts, which then influences your subsequent thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. For example, if you vividly imagine the texture and taste of a snack you're trying to avoid, you'll likely experience a stronger craving than if you only vaguely recall its flavor—making you more likely to give in to temptation and eat the snack.

Since sensory nuances play a key role in how you think, feel, and respond to your experiences, they determine the types of experiences you move toward or away from. According to the authors, this is because they affect every phase of thinking about an experience:

• Before the experience, when you're anticipating it: For example, thinking about an upcoming job interview, you visualize crystal-clear images of stern interviewers and hear their critical voices loudly in your mind. These nuances make you feel anxious, leading you to cancel the interview.
• During the experience, when you're living it: For example, during a conversation, you focus intensely on the other person’s furrowed brow and slightly raised voice. These sensory nuances lead you to interpret their tone as confrontational, causing you to feel defensive and argumentative.
• After the experience, when you're recollecting it: For example, thinking about a recent vacation, you see the vibrant colors of a sunset and hear the soothing sound of waves. These sensory nuances evoke feelings of relaxation and joy, encouraging you to plan similar trips in the future.

Your Brain Constructs Your Emotional Responses to Sensory Nuances

Lisa Feldman Barrett's constructed emotion theory adds insight into how sensory nuances influence your emotions, determining what types of experiences you seek out.

According to Barrett, your emotions are not fixed reactions to stimuli—meaning that you don’t always have the same emotional response to specific sensory nuances. This is because your brain actively constructs your emotions each moment. It does this by analyzing both your past experiences and the present context to determine a sensory nuance's emotional significance. To illustrate, let’s continue with the job interview example, explaining the process that triggers anxiety:

• You visualize stern interviewers.

• Your brain sifts through your past experiences and analyzes your current circumstances to determine your emotional response to this sensory nuance.

• Because you've had stressful interviews in the past and you currently need this job due to financial pressures, your brain decides that anxiety is a suitable emotional response.

Next, Barrett explains that this emotional response determines your physiological state and behavioral impulses, influencing your decisions and responses. For example, if your brain decides that anxiety is a suitable emotional response, it might trigger a racing heart and induce a panic response, leading you to cancel the interview.

This construction process explains why the same sensory nuance can evoke different emotional responses from you at different times. For example, imagining stern interviewers might cause intense anxiety if you're currently unemployed, but only mild nervousness if you're securely employed and exploring new options.

Why It’s Difficult to Change Thoughts, Feelings, and Behaviors

Hoobyar, Dotz, and Sanders explain that, because this sensory-driven thought process typically occurs without your conscious involvement, you only notice the experience and your resulting emotion. This leads you to form unconscious associations between experiences and emotions, and these associations lead you to believe that you have no choice in how you think, feel, and respond to certain situations.

For example, when thinking about an upcoming interview, you don’t realize that the way you're visualizing stern interviewers makes you feel anxious, which in turn makes you want to cancel your interview. Instead, you believe that job interviews are inherently stressful and intimidating, so you avoid them whenever possible.

Feedback Loops Reinforce Unconscious Associations

Maxwell Maltz (Psycho-Cybernetics) expands on how unconscious associations impact you, clarifying why it’s often difficult to change your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. According to him, once your brain has created an association, it influences you to automatically think and behave in ways that reflect and reinforce that association. It does this by creating feedback loops: It triggers your emotions, which colors your perceptions and interpretations of your environment, which leads you to react in specific ways to stimuli.

The feedback loop continually reinforces the association: The way your brain processes your environment justifies your habitual thoughts, feelings, and behaviors—and your habitual thoughts, feelings, and behaviors reinforce the way your brain processes your environment. For example, whenever you think about job interviews, your brain triggers a reaction that reinforces your anxiety—such as by inducing panic or urging you to avoid them. And, because you always feel anxious when you think about interviews, your brain automatically classifies them as anxiety-inducing situations.

Part 2: Take Control of Your Thoughts, Feelings, and Behaviors

We’ve just explained the processes underlying your thoughts, covering where thoughts come from and how sensory nuances influence how you feel about and respond to your experiences. Though these processes typically occur beneath your conscious awareness, Hoobyar, Dotz, and Sanders argue that you can take conscious control of them and choose how to think, feel, and behave—and this will enable you to enhance all your experiences.

(Shortform note: Joseph Murphy (The Power of Your Subconscious Mind) explains the interplay between your subconscious and conscious minds, clarifying how it's possible to consciously control processes that usually happen unconsciously. Your subconscious mind, the part of your brain that manages your automatic responses to stimuli, relies upon your habitual conscious thoughts to form your mental associations and memory networks. According to Murphy, your subconscious mind is malleable and reflects your habitual conscious thoughts. This means that by regularly and intentionally changing the sensory nuances you focus on, you can change the way your subconscious mind responds to incoming sensory information.)

The authors offer techniques for aligning your thoughts with three overarching goals:

1. Maintain a positive attitude.
2. Enhance your self-esteem.
3. Achieve success.

Goal #1: Maintain a Positive Attitude

According to the authors, negative sensory nuances such as visualizing potential failures in vivid detail, hearing critical voices with harsh tones, or feeling anxiety-related sensations can make it challenging to maintain a positive attitude. They recommend a two-part process for cultivating a more optimistic mindset: Immerse yourself in positive sensory experiences and distance yourself from negative ones.

1) Immerse Yourself in Positive Sensory Experiences

Practice recalling positive memories as vividly as possible, emphasizing as many sensory nuances as possible—for example, by increasing brightness, size, volume, or intensity. Hoobyar, Dotz, and Sanders explain that this will create a more immersive experience, heightening the positive emotions you feel during recall.

(Shortform note: Virtual reality design research supports the idea that vivid sensory nuances create a more immersive experience, heightening emotions associated with that experience. In one virtual environment study, researchers manipulated sensory inputs—such as visual sharpness and acoustic richness—varying their intensity and complexity. They found that the more vivid the sensory inputs, the more participants reported an increased sense of really being there and stronger emotional responses.)

Next, the authors recommend establishing a tactile link to this positive memory by touching your thumb to a specific knuckle while you recall it. According to the authors, this creates a mental association between the action and the positive emotion (the authors refer to this as an “anchor”). You can then repeat the action later to trigger the positive feeling on demand.

(Shortform note: In the field of neuroplasticity research, Hebb's theory adds insight into how establishing a tactile link helps trigger positive feelings. According to this theory, your brain continuously forms new neural pathways in response to your habitual behaviors—a neural pathway is like a well-worn trail in your brain that allows you to perform actions or recall information without conscious effort. When you consistently pair two behaviors, you strengthen the neural connection between them, forging an automatic association. As a result, engaging in one part of the paired behavior effortlessly triggers the other.)

2) Distance Yourself From Negative Sensory Experiences

Pay attention to the sensory nuances that precede your negative emotions so that you can identify their underlying causes. For example, you might notice that you visualize yourself looking uncomfortable, hear a harsh inner critic, or feel a knot in your stomach before you begin to feel anxious about public speaking.

Once you’ve identified these nuances, mentally diminish them to reduce their impact on you. For example, decrease the size or brightness of a troubling image, change the tone of a critical voice to a humorous one, or imagine any physical tension you feel being washed away by waves. The authors explain that this creates psychological distance between yourself and the sensory nuances, which lessens their influence on your emotions.

(Shortform note: In contrast to the authors’ advice, researcher Daniel Siegel (Mindsight) recommends that you observe sensory nuances without trying to change them. According to Siegel, observing these nuances disrupts your habitual emotional reactions, allowing you to respond more intentionally. On the other hand, attempting to manipulate these sensations promotes the misconception that certain sensations are inherently problematic, rather than a result of the associations you've formed. This misconception may inadvertently intensify the negative emotions you're trying to avoid. For example, manipulating the tone of a critical voice can reinforce your negative response to that voice, heightening anxiety instead of reducing it.)

Goal #2: Enhance Your Self-Esteem

Hoobyar, Dotz, and Sanders explain that you’re more likely to suffer from low self-esteem when you vividly recall past failures or embarrassments. To counter this, they recommend diminishing the sensory nuances of these painful memories (as described in Goal #1). Additionally, they suggest a two-step process for focusing attention on your positive traits and for developing new ones:

1) Reflect on what you like about yourself and identify the sensory nuances you focus on when you think about these traits. For example, if you pride yourself on your kindness, you might visualize a bright, colorful image of yourself helping others, or hear a warm, approving inner voice praising your actions. (Shortform note: If you find it difficult to identify what you like about yourself, you might find it useful to consider past achievements that you’re proud of, notice any compliments you receive, or ask friends and family members what they appreciate about you.)

2) Consider new traits you’d like to adopt and use the same sensory nuances you focus on when you think about your existing positive traits. This will leverage your brain’s positive associations, making it easier to integrate these new traits into your self-image. For example, if you want to be more confident, imagine yourself being confident using the same bright, colorful imagery you associate with your kindness.

(Shortform note: Can you reshape your personality just by focusing on sensory nuances linked to positive traits? According to research, the only way to effectively change your personality is to align your habitual behaviors with the traits you aspire to adopt. For example, to be more confident, you need to regularly engage in confident behaviors, such as sharing your thoughts more openly or going to events on your own. This suggests that you might need to combine the authors’ visualization technique with tangible actions that will reinforce the new traits.)

Goal #3: Achieve Success

Success means different things to different people—it may involve adopting new habits, communicating more effectively, achieving career goals, or reaching financial milestones. Hoobyar, Dotz, and Sanders suggest that to achieve success, you first need to be clear about what success means to you.

They explain that a lack of clarity about what you want to achieve creates vague or conflicting sensory representations that prevent you from taking decisive action. And, without a clear target to aim for, you’re more likely to focus on obstacles in your way, creating negative mental associations that hold you back. For example, with a vague goal like "get in shape," you might hold conflicting images of how you want to look, feel uncertain about which exercises to do, and focus on obstacles like lack of time or energy.

(Shortform note: Tony Robbins (Awaken the Giant Within) echoes the authors’ advice to be clear about what you want. He adds that the more specific you are, the easier it is to imagine the benefits of achieving it—these positive expectations increase your motivation to take proactive steps. Additionally, this clarity helps you devise a detailed plan to prepare for and overcome potential obstacles—allowing you to maintain momentum toward what you want.)

Hoobyar, Dotz, and Sanders suggest three techniques for clarifying and moving toward what you want:

1. Set clearly defined goals that align with your values and desires.
2. Create vivid, detailed mental images of what you want to achieve.
3. Recall previous achievements, linking the sensory details to your current goal.

Technique 1: Set Clearly Defined Goals That Align With Your Values and Desires

The authors explain that setting clear goals that align with your values and desires ensures that achieving them will be genuinely fulfilling, increasing your motivation and commitment. For example, if you value your health and enjoy challenges, you might refine the goal to “get in shape” as follows: Run a 5K race in under 30 minutes within the next six months.

(Shortform note: In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey suggests a method for aligning your goals with your values and desires: Picture yourself at the end of your life, looking back at your proudest moments—focus on what you want to achieve in your various roles (parent, spouse, friend, colleague, and so on). This process helps clearly define who you want to be and what you want to achieve in each area of your life, and it encourages you to imagine how life would look after successfully achieving all your goals.)

Technique 2: Create Vivid, Detailed Mental Images of What You Want to Achieve

According to Hoobyar, Dotz, and Sanders, engaging all your senses when envisioning your goal makes it feel more tangible and achievable. They suggest paying particular attention to how good you'll feel once you've achieved your goal, as this will help your brain form positive mental associations that make it easier for you to take action toward your goal. For example, you might imagine the sense of accomplishment and joy you'll feel as you cross the finish line in a 5K race, the sounds of the cheering crowd, and the sight of your time on the clock.

(Shortform note: While vivid, detailed mental images may make you feel more positive about achieving your goal, research suggests that this practice may also drain the physical energy required to achieve your goals. According to one study, imagining success lowers systolic blood pressure—the force exerted on artery walls when the heart contracts and pushes out blood. Elevated systolic pressure often signifies increased levels of alertness and energy. On the other hand, a drop in systolic blood pressure can lead to lethargy, decreased alertness, and reduced energy, hindering your ability to actively work toward your goals.)

Technique 3) Recall Previous Achievements, Linking the Sensory Details to Your Current Goal

When thinking about your current goal, use the same sensory nuances you focus on when remembering past successes—to achieve this, apply the same method for adopting positive traits (Goal #2). The authors explain that this will encourage your brain to associate the positive sensations from past successes with your current goal, boosting your confidence in your ability to achieve it. For example, recall passing an exam, identifying the feeling of joy when you saw your passing grade, and the sound of your family congratulating you. Then, imagine experiencing these same sensory details—feeling joy and hearing your family cheer you on—as you cross the finish line of your 5K race.

(Shortform note: While recalling previous achievements can boost your confidence, it’s worth noting that your feelings about the past will fluctuate depending on your current mood, due to a phenomenon known as “mood-congruency.” Psychologists explain that you rely on your imagination to construct your memories. However, your emotions and imagination are inextricably linked—meaning that your current emotions determine the emotional content of your recollections. Therefore, ensuring you’re in a good mood before you recall your achievements will help you maximize the benefits of this method.)