[Neurons] 2018 Neurons #35 GETTING OVER THE PAST #1

Mon Aug 20 01:54:20 EDT 2018

From: L. Michael Hall

2018 Neurons #35

August 20 2018

Getting Over the Past Series (#1) 

GETTING OVER THE PAST

When I first began teaching NLP, I divided the 120 hours of NLP material
into four areas- Communication Excellence, Getting Over the Past, Love
Workshop, and Guided Imagination for Resources.  In that way, over 40 weeks
(10 weeks for each, 3 hours each week) we covered all of the basic content
of the NLP Practitioner course.

           Communication Excellence: The first focused on the basic NLP
Communication Model (representations, sub-modalities, and the Meta-Model).
Many years later this became the book Communication Magic (1997/ 2001),
Executive Thinking (2018).

           Getting Over the Past: The second focused on many of the past
NLP patterns (Change Personal History, Decision Destroyer, Resourcing with
Time-Lines, Movie Rewind, etc.).

           Love Workshop: The third focused on the social dimension of NLP
(Meta-Programs, Embracing Differences, Conflict Resolution, Anchoring,
etc.).  Many years later this became the book Games Great Lovers Play
(2002).

           Guided Imagination for Resources: The fourth focused on hypnotic
language patterns and the use of the creative imagination for creating new
resources (the Milton Model, New Behavior Generator, etc.).

I ran the second section-getting over the past- because at the time I had a
therapy practice and I referred lots of my clients to that training as a way
to understand themselves and their personal development better.  I closed
that practice in 1996 and took to the road (well, to the skies) as I began
training NLP around the country and then around the world.

Now while my focus has shifted from psychotherapy to self-actualization
psychology and to applications in business, leadership, wealth creation,
expertise, coaching, etc., still "getting over the past" frequently comes up
for discussion.  And there's a reason for that. That's because even
psychologically healthy people often have a relationship to the past that
does not completely serve their best interests.  Sometimes it is because
they have not completely finished some past business, sometimes they allow
certain aspects of their past to overly influence them; and sometimes
because they simply do not know how to let the past go.  To that end I
thought I'd write a series of posts here on Neurons to address this subject.

Your Experience of Time and Living in the Past

Whenever I speak about the time dimension in the Matrix Model, there are
several questions that I like to begin with regarding the time dimensions:

"How much of your mental and emotional energy do you spend in the past?"

"If you were to divide up the past- the present- and the future into
percentages, how much do you devote to each temporal aspect?"  "What are
your numbers?"  

"Are you living too much in the past?  Are you missing a lot of the Now?" 

When I first became aware of this, I drew a circle and separated the three
areas in the circle: Past, Present, Future.  Then I estimated how much time
I had spent that day mentally and emotionally living in each area.  My
numbers were 40, 20, and 40 respectfully.  And, I did not like my numbers.
Consequently, I decided to change them.   I set a goal: I would reduce my
lived time in the past to 5 to 10% and the future to 10 to 15% - thereby
giving me 75 to 85% time in the present.

Then every evening I would review the time I had spent living in the past,
present, and future that day.  At first the numbers stayed pretty much the
same.  But as I drew the circle each evening and reflected on the time spent
in each area, the numbers began shifting- 30 - 35 - 35, then 20 -50 - 30,
then 15- 75 - 10.   Eventually I got to where I was spending 80 to 85% of my
mental-emotional time in the now, today, in the present!  And what an
incredible difference that made in many aspects of life.

What are your numbers?  Would you like to shift your numbers so that you are
more in the here and now?  You can if you so chose.  In fact, that is step
one-deciding.  As a temporal being, it is one of your great capacities,
although that capacity is not automatic.  You have to develop it.  And not
surprisingly, you develop your capacity to choose by increasing your
awareness- your mindfulness about yourself and your life.  Without that, you
will live as if blind to that possibility.  You'll not even be aware that
you could chose.  You might even question that ability.

Getting over the past begins then with a choice and with an awareness of
yourself as a temporal being who lives in "time."  Begin with the amount of
time (percentage of time) that you live in the three time zones.  From there
become aware of how you code your senses of time.  Where do you  put your
past, your present, and your future?

Take some simple activity that you always do (getting up, getting dressed,
eating breakfast, brushing your teeth) and think about that activity 10
years ago, 5 years ago, 1 year ago, last week, yesterday, today, tomorrow,
next week, next year, five years from now, 10 years from now, etc. 

Now step back from all of that, if you were to imagine floating up above
yourself and if you were to draw a line from 10 years ago to 10 years from
now, what does that line look like?  Where is it?  Does it go through you
(your body) or is it out in front of you? 

This is the basic elicitation question and process for discovering your
time-line in NLP.  It helps to identify if you have past "time" behind you,
to your left or right, where you put the future- to your right, or right in
front of you?  Those who have the line going through themselves are "in"
time and so they are frequently lost in time and therefore unaware of time.
Those whose line is outside of their body tend to know what time it is, tend
to be on time, tend to manage "time" well.  There's a whole dimension in NLP
about this called Time-Lines and it offers lots of insights.  Key among them
is having choice so that you have at least two time-lines.  In that way, you
can step in and fully experience the moment and you can step out and plan,
schedule, and manage yourself in time.

              For more information: Time-Line Therapy (1988) Woodsmall and
James.

              Adventures in Time (1997) Hall and Bodenhamer.

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D., Executive Director 

Neuro-Semantics 

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

               1 970-523-7877 

                    Dr. Hall's email:
<mailto:meta at acsol.net\hich\af31506\dbch\af31505\loch\f31506> meta at acsol.net

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Dr. L. Michael Hall writes a post on "Neurons" each Monday.  For a free
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