Persuasion: The Incredible Modifying Force of Becoming
By Vincenzo Fanelli
Man has always been looking for the secret to self-realization, to happiness and to the materialization of his desires.The obstacles he meets are many and of various nature: his environment, his fellow human beings and his self-imposed limits. This last point is fundamental, since our deepest convinctions represent both a strength and a weakness.
(...) In the past, psychologists were convinced it was impossible to change one’s mind: if our character is established in a certain way, we shall die with that type of mind. But, as we are going to see, research has shown the contrary to be true: it is possible to change and to push beyond one’s limits. Let’s try and understand our mind’s functioning in the light of the latest discoveries.
For instance, when we grab a pen from our desk we set in motion a series of movements, contracting our muscles without a precise will. In other words: we choose an objective (getting the pen) and our brain transforms into action what we have desired.
When a child learns how to grab an object for the first time his/her hand is uncertain and forced to make a series of corrections. Later on, through experience, that uncertainty disappears, also thanks to the corrections which have been learnt on the way.
To build a mechanism similar to the human mind, English neurophysicist W. Grey Walter maintains that ten billion electronic cells occupying one million and a half cubic feet of space would be necessary, and that their functioning would require an energy equal to one billion watts.
This wonderful mechanism levers also on the deep convictions to be found within every individual. These are real pillars on which he/she bases his/her existence: they are the ones “telling” us what we can do and what lies outside our potential. What we believe in the mental films we create for ourselves have a fundamental importance in our existence since they influence our behaviour and our perception of the reality surrounding us.
The expectations which every day we create in our minds “program” our encounters, our arguments, our discussions with certain persons and even the outcome of certain events. Psychologist William Multon Masterson advised his patients “to simulate” mentally work meetings or important situations they were supposed to face seeing themselves as successful persons. In other words, he suggested to create mentally a film incident to specific events in which we are both directors and main characters.
An example of what I’m saying consists of the so-called “morning expectations:” have you ever realized that in the morning, as soon as we wake up, we formulate some mental films or thoughts on events we are going to face in the course of the day? And have you ever realized that these expectations become a reality? Clearly, I am not referring to intentional thoughts, but to those “little thoughts” of fear and doubt surfacing without our consent. If, for instance, as soon as we wake up we think about a a colleague of ours criticizing us or with whom we are going to argue, punctually, this self-fulfilling prophecy will come true.
This represents an unconscious and wrong use of our power of imagination. Imagination is a system recommended also to artists and to sportsmen. Alex Morrison, one of the most famous golf instructors, stated that ninety percent of one’s training takes place at a mental level, sitting and relaxing on a comfortable armchair and imagining in detail what one wants to obtain. In the same way, famous pianist Arthur Schnabel dedicated little time to practising on the piano favouring rather mental practice.
Research in this field has given extraordinary results. Dr. Harry M. Grayson and Dr. Leonard B. Olinger led a very interesting experiment at the American Psychological Association on forty-five patients admitted to a neuro-psychiatric ward. In the first phase, they subjected them to a personality test; later on, they re-proposed the test inviting them to answer as individuals “perfectly at ease with the external world.” Seventy-five percent of the subjects introduced some improvements when answering the test and some of the changes took place in their behaviour too. The patients, in order to answer the tests as a healthy individual would have done, were forced to imagine themselves as balanced persons. This mental exercise helped to start off, in some of them, a process inducing a healthy behaviour.
Actually, researchers go beyond: changing our convinction system can lead us to overcome those limits in our daily perception of reality which we generally regard as unsurmountable.
Dr. Theodore Xenophon Barber, member of the Psychology Department at the American University in Washington and of the Laboratory of Social Relations at Harvard, maintains that those subjects who are in an hypnotic state are able to do amazing things once they are convinced about the veridicity of the words used by those who have hypnotized them. If the hypnotist convinces the subjects that his words are true, his beliefs and his behaviour change as a consequence. This explains how it is possible using hypnosis as an alternative system to induce analgesia in subjects who are allergic to anaesthesia.
The facts which have been enounced above show how it is possible to change one’s way of thinking and those convinctions governing it. Surprisingly, some of these changes can lead us to surmount those limits which very often we impose on ourselves.
Inside our minds there is what is roughly defined as “mental programming.” It is made of a series of thoughts and of static neural configurations created during the first years of our life. When we come to the world we are like a “virgin disk” recorded by our parents, by the environment, by the mass media, by the school and by the social group we belong to. This programming mechanism is intense from 0 to 3 years of age; it continues in a lighter way until 12 to then settle in definitely at around 18/20. Therefore, the importance of programming is fundamental because it will influence us for the rest of our life. For instance, if some parents often tell their child “You are good for nothing!”, inside the child’s mind this mental scheme starts taking form; through a constant repetition of such statement, the neurons definitely settle in the configuration responsible of “You are a good for nothing!” If then an emotional charge (being scolded or getting beaten) is added, the conviction is created much more rapidly. This mechanism tends to influence us heavily during our life. If an individual convinces himself that he will never be “well off,” this conviction will become a concrete reality and all his efforts will be of no use to modify it: the first step should be directed to oneself instead.
Modifying our limiting convictions represents the keystone to start a positive change in our life. Unfortunately, this does not happen: we limit ourselves and live safely behind the barriers of our convictions, we do not expect anything any longer from life convinced as we are to know everything, denying to ourselves even the wonder usually stimulated by the unknown. All this transforms itself into neural rigidity: we are not able any more to activate new schemes of thought in so far as we follow those which were formed during our growth. We are closed to novelty and reject all what lies outside our way of seeing the world.
Some mystics love to say it is better being a green apple than a ripe one because the former is destined to ripen while the latter is destined to rot. They maintain that it is very important to reactivate within us the spirit we had as children when we were amazed by novelty: seeing a bird, a fall or a dog for the first time. Now that we have labelled instead all the world we know, we are not filled with wonder at hearing a bird singing or at a dog jumping up and down on its master barking a welcome.
In the universe there is an infinite variety of possibilities which we shall be never able to see if we do not change our way of thinking. During maritime explorations, for instance, some natives did not see the explorers’ ship sails because they did not know such objects. I can give you another much more practical example that may be easily found in our daily life: if someone moves our car keys away from their usual place, we cannot find them anymore even if they are right under our nose. This happens because we have the tendency to follow some determinate mental schemes which fail in front of reality.
Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), a discipline born in the USA during the 1970s, elaborated by Richard Bandler and John Grinder and based on cognitive psychology, has been studying how individuals perceive external reality.
Let’s analyze briefly what NLP asserts. Man perceives reality through his five senses; through this mechanism the interior representation of external episodes is formed. Individuals tend to favour a particular sense, called “preferential channel,” vì-à-vìs the other four ones. Basing themselves on their preferential channel, individuals will concentrate their attention on some elements without perceiving the others.
NLP has classified three individual tipologies in relation to their preferential channel: Visual (V) Auditive (A) Coenaesthetic (K) (this last group includes touch, smelling and taste). A Visual subject, for instance, when meeting someone, will concentrate on details connected to images (colour and shape of clothing, aesthetic care and general image of his/her interlocutor) at the expense of other elements; an Auditive subject will pay attention to words instead (change of tone during conversation, logic and reasoning of his/her interlocutor) dedicating less attention to visual details. From this phenomenon one can derive different internal representations of the same individual under examination. Man cannot let all the information go through since his mind is able, on the average, to concentrate on seven concepts; this is the “7 + 2” law: in other words individuals are able to let go through a minimum of five and a maximum of nine pieces of information. Once this limit is overcome, the mind puts into action a series of unconscious processes distorting, generalizing and deforming reality by paying attention only to those elements which it finds most stimulating.
The above mentioned phenomena are:
1) Generalization
2) Cancellation
3) Deformation
1) Generalization. A procedure through which some elements are detached from the original experience and end up representing the whole experience. This is one of our innate and essential abilities. In fact, when we scald a hand on a burning stove, we generalize and think that all burning stoves scald our hands. Or, we generalize that doors are opened by turning their handles downwards. But, if we generalize to the point of perceiving all stoves as dangerous and end up being afraid of remaining in a room with a stove, or if we insist in opening doors only in a certain way, we actually limit our choices.
The Metaprograms are filters which we use in order to choose what to pay attention to. This way we eliminate some objective parts of reality and create a subjective map. These filters can change through time and because of different emotional states. My experience tells me that in new contexts individuals tend not to utilize the usual unconscious patterns of behaviour; they go back to utilize them only when they have conformed to a new circumstance.
2) Cancellation. It is a phenomenon through which we concentrate on some aspects of our experience while excluding others. In a room full of people, for example, we are inclined to pay attention to the voices of our interlocutors excluding those other persons who are present as well as the background music, should it be there. This procedure might exclude possible signals of liking and esteem coming from our family members or from our direct superiors.
3) Deformation. This is a process of alteration of perceived reality. Imagination can help us to prepare ourselves for events we have not faced yet. This phenomenon called “Deformation” has been favouring all man’s artistic realizations throughout time. Yet, through this identical procedure we can limit our reality. For instance, let’s suppose a person is unhappy with a collaborator of his because he never listens to him. Should we make him notice instead that sometimes he has been listening to him, he might answer that he did it only when he needed something. This is a system allowing us not to contradict the model of reality we have created for ourselves.
Every day, in every moment of our life, our mental programming unconsciously works and organizes our existence. Researchers have been showing that it is indeed possible to change our way of thinking and, as a consequence, our own existence.
Some schools of thought, such as “Positive Thinking” are right in asserting that we can transform our negative thoughts into affirmative ones, ignoring the images connected with our doubts or fears.
Personally though, I am against all extremisms in so far as negative thoughts are a kind of “alarm bell” signaling to us possible interferences. In other words, our unconscious elaborates a lot of information and when something does not seem to fit, it sends us signals in the form of emotions, images or negative thoughts. Besides, our emotional side is directly connected to the “Universal Energy” and, as a consequence, if we ignore these alarm bells we risk becoming blind and insensitive to the various shades of this energy.
These indications should be taken into consideration, analyzed and, later on, be focused on a positive solution. Quite often, we linger upon a negative thought instead, to the point of transforming it into a concrete reality.
There are some persons who, instead of an alarm clock, have next to them an enormous stick with which they hit themselves. This stick is clearly a symbol of negative thoughts. The secret lies in the fideistic conviction about what we think. If we create negative thoughts, but we are not convinced about them, clearly we create nothing!
In the famous film Matrix, during the protagonist’s martial arts training, his instructor tells him: “Do not think being faster, convince yourself you are so!”
And you do not have to convince yourself tomorrow to be happy, but Here and Now! If you think closely, the future and the past do not exist: the past is something which does not exist any longer, and, concretely speaking, the future does not exist in so far as it is something which has not materialized yet. What really exists is the “Here and Now.” For this reason it is important to start off changes in the present and not in an hypothetical future. Otherwise, we would let ourselves be conditioned by past events, thus allowing the wake to lead the ship!
vincenzofanelli@libero.it