Changing Inner Dialogue

As small children, our minds are like sponges and during the time between birth and 7 or 8 years old, we spend most of our time exploring, learning, and absorbing the information of the world around us.  

Science tells us during this 7 to 8 year period, that we are in the brain wave state of Theta and in that state, our subconscious becomes a repository for memories, emotions, sensations. 

For example, a child raised with a Mother or Father who uses words and phrases such as “you don’t deserve” “who do you think you are” “don’t be stupid”, “life sucks”, that child will likely grow up with inner dialogues such as, “I’m not worthy”, “I don’t deserve to be successful”, “I’ll  never be happy”, or worse.

If your client has repeatedly attempted and failed at, for example, starting a business, completing college, or developing meaningful relationships, there is more than likely an inner dialogue playing over and over in their mind.  Sometimes they still hear their parents voices and other times it becomes their own.

If that’s all it did, it wouldn’t be such a problem, but what that inner dialogue ultimately does is it creates an “internal saboteur” that causes them to make decisions and act in ways that aren’t congruent with or supporting their goals.  

You have an awesome opportunity to assist them in changing that inner dialogue to something more useful, opening the way for them to create a new way of being.

Another great advantage of your Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) training is that any technique or process you can use with a client, you can use to heal yourself.  In fact, if you have an internal saboteur blocking any area of your life, I recommend you first eliminate yours.  

Here is a very simple and effective way to do that.

Changing Inner Dialogue

  1. Get in touch with the inner dialogue
  2. Name the emotion it creates that you want to replace
  3. Rate the intensity of that feeling on a scale of 0 being “no problem” and 10 “I’m ready to scream”
  4. Identify the dialogue, e.g., “I screw up everything”, “I’m not worthy of a good marriage”
  5. Change the speed and the pitch of the voice
  6. Make the inner dialogue high (like Mickey Mouse) and super-fast
  7. Slow the inner dialogue down and low (like James Earl Jones) out loud or mentally and then,
  8. Slow it down even more and make the spaces between the words even longer 
  9. You will begin to notice that your inner dialogue doesn’t elicit the same emotion when repeated slowly
  10. Check in with the feeling that you wanted to replace

If it is at zero, replace it with a new positive statement in a voice that you just can’t help but listen to, and as you listen to your voice, put a big smile on your face and enjoy this new way of being.