5 NLP Techniques That Will Transform Your Life

A lot of people who want to learn NLP have no clue where to start. Some of them hit the books like grade-A students. Others attend week-long workshops somewhere. And some would purchase NLP home study courses online.

To each his own, I always say. After all, what matters most is that you have the drive and the desire to learn NLP. That alone is enough to get you through pretty much anything.

However, if you're not completely certain of how much you want to commit to NLP, then perhaps a little bit of enlightenment is in order.

Here are five of the most impactful NLP techniques when it comes to changing your behavior and helping you manifest a better future.

Top 5 NLP Techniques That Will Transform Your Life

1. Dissociation

Have you ever been in a situation that gave you a bad feeling? Maybe you have experienced something that gets you down every time you experience it. Or perhaps you get nervous in certain work situations where you have to speak publicly. Maybe you get shy when you want to approach that “special someone” you’ve had your eye on. While these feelings of sadness, nervousness or shyness seem to be automatic or unstoppable, NLP techniques of dissociation can help immensely.

1. Identify the emotion (e.g. fear, rage, discomfort, dislike of a situation) that you want to get rid of
2. Imagine that you can float out of your body and look back at yourself, encountering the entire circumstance from an observer’s perspective
3. Notice that the feeling changes dramatically
4. For an extra boost, imagine that you can float out of your body looking at yourself, then, float out of this body again, so you’re looking at yourself, looking at yourself. This double dissociation should take the negative emotion off almost any minor situation

2. Content Reframing

Try this technique when you feel that a situation is negative or helpless. Reframing will take any negative situation and empower you by changing the meaning of the experience into something positive.

For example, let’s say that your relationship ends. That may seem awful on the surface, but let’s reframe it. What are the possible benefits of being single? For example, you’re now open to other potential relationships. You also have the freedom to do what you want, when you want. And you’ve learned valuable lessons from this relationship that will allow you to have even better relationships in the future.

These are all examples of reframing a situation. By reframing the meaning of the breakup, you give yourself a different experience of it.

In expected situations, it’s natural to panic or focus on fear, but this just leads to more problems. In contrast, shifting your focus in the way just described helps you to clear your head and make responsible, even-handed decisions.

3. Anchoring Yourself

Anchoring originates with Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov who experimented with dogs by ringing a bell repeatedly while the dogs were eating. After repeated rings of the bell, he found he could get the dogs to salivate by ringing the bell anytime, even if there was no food present.

This created a neurological association between the bell and the behavior of salivating called a conditioned response.

You can use these types of stimulus-response “anchors” yourself!

Anchoring yourself helps you to associate any desired positive emotional response with a particular phrase or sensation. When you choose a positive emotion or thought and deliberately connect it to a simple gesture, you can trigger this anchor any time you’re feeling low, and your feelings will immediately change.

1. Identify what you want to feel (e.g. confidence, happiness, calmness, etc.)
2. Decide on where you would like to place this anchor on your body, such as pulling your earlobe, touching your knuckle or squeezing a fingernail. This physical touch will allow you to trigger the positive feeling at will. It doesn’t matter where you choose, as long as it is a unique touch that you don’t touch for anything else.
3. Think of a time in the past when you felt that state (e.g., confidence). Mentally go back to that time and float into your body, looking through your own eyes and reliving that memory. Adjust your body language to match the memory and the state. See what you saw, hear what you heard and feel the feeling as you remember that memory. You will begin to feel that state. This is similar to telling a friend a funny story from the past, and as you “get into” the story, you start to laugh again, because you “associate” to the story and “relive” it.
4. As you go back to the memory, touch/pull/squeeze the area on your body that you chose. You will feel the feeling swell while you relive the memory. Release the touch the moment the emotional state peaks and begins to wear off.
5. This will create a neurological stimulus-response that will trigger the state whenever you make that touch again. To feel that state (e.g., Confidence), just touch yourself the same way again.
6. To make the response even stronger, think of another memory where you felt that state, go back and relive it through your own eyes, and anchor the state on the same spot as before. Each time you add another memory, the anchor becomes more potent and will trigger a stronger response.

4. Getting Other People to Like You (Rapport)

This is an easy set of NLP techniques, but they have the power to help you get along with virtually anyone. There are lots of ways to build rapport with another person. One of the quickest and effective ways comes from NLP. This technique involves subtly mirroring another person’s body language, tone of voice, and words.

People like people who are like themselves. By subtly mirroring the other person, the brain fires off “mirror neurons,” pleasure sensors in the brain, which make people feel a sense of liking for anyone mirroring them.

The technique is simple: Stand or sit the way the other person is sitting. Tilt your head the same way. Smile when they smile. Mirror their facial expression. Cross your legs when they cross theirs. Mirror their voice, etc.

The key to creating an unconscious rapport is subtlety.  If you are too overt, the other person may notice consciously, which would most likely break rapport. So keep your mirroring natural and calm.

5. Influence and Persuasion

While much of the work of NLP is dedicated to helping people eliminate negative emotions, limiting beliefs, bad habits, conflict and more, another part of NLP is dedicated to how to ethically influence and persuade others.

One of the mentors in the field was a man named, Milton H. Erickson. Erickson was a psychiatrist who also studied the subconscious mind through hypnotherapy (the real, scientific stuff… not the silly entertainment hypnosis you see in stage shows).

Erickson was so adept at hypnosis, he developed a way to speak to the subconscious minds of other people without needing hypnosis. He could literally hypnotize people anytime, anywhere in everyday conversations. This Ericksonian method of hypnosis became known as “Conversational Hypnosis.”

This is a very powerful tool that can be used to not only influence and persuade others but also to help other people overcome fears, limiting beliefs, conflict and more without their conscious awareness. This is especially useful when getting across to people who might otherwise be resistant if they know (think teenage children who don’t want to listen).

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Even though your conscious brain is very good at processing human languages, your subconscious brain doesn’t respond to that language the way you might expect it to.

For example, if you simply tell yourself to “lose weight” or “make more money,” your subconscious brain doesn’t translate that information into a useful transformation in your mind.

After all, how many times have you told yourself you were going to make a big change in your life, only to go back to the same old habits?

Your subconscious simply can’t be tricked by normal language.

NLP uses scientific studies of the brain to effectively “rewrite” the subconscious mind.

We use the words, phrases, and ideas that are scientifically proven to trigger real changes in your brain’s chemistry and structure.

For example, when you’re dealing with a negative emotion, imagine yourself floating outside of your body, looking at yourself from a third-person perspective.

Suddenly, your anxiety, self-doubt, or your desire to eat an entire pizza seems to fade away.

The subconscious brain doesn’t understand the words “don’t eat that pizza,” but it does understand the concept of separating yourself from a specific emotion.

But there are some sounds that do trigger changes in your brain… just not the sounds you’ve heard before.