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Personal Power II - Day 4 - Meaning - Neuro-Associative Conditioning

January 5, 2009 – 10:22 pm

<-Day 3

Anthony Robbins: Personal Power II

Day 5->

Day 4 - Meaning - Neuro-Associative Conditioning:

The results (friends, possessions, feelings, wealth, love, etc) people have in their life is a direct result of the decisions they make. People’s decisions are driven by the meaning they give to a situation. Meaning is created by how people feel. Or we could say, feelings create meaning that drive decisions that shape the results people have in their lives.

Similar things have different meaning for different people. Cute little kittens give me a warm fuzzy feeling. Cats mean fun little pets, so I decided to get one of my own — Rocko. However, not everybody feels the same way. A lady from my bank came to my home one evening, so I could sign a few papers. Rocko was hiding when she came in, but after a few minutes, he came out to see what was happening. The woman leaped from the couch and trembled as she begged me to take him away. She felt terrified. To her, cats meant severe allergic reactions, and she decides to avoid them.

Tony’s explanation of Viktor E. Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, helped me gain a new perspective on what the book was saying. Dr. Frankl found that about one in twenty-five concentration camp prisoners survived. This minority of prisoners associated something different to the camp than the others. If the camp meant pain for no reason or instant death, the prisoner would give up; they would last long after that. Yet, those who developed a reason for their suffering (see family again, touch the future, make sure this didn’t happen again), they were much more resilient. They changed the meaning of their suffering into something that would make a difference. It gave them a will to live.

A piano tuning metaphor was used to explain Neuro-Associative Conditioning. Once a piano is tuned it doesn’t stay in tune forever. It must be re-tuned on an ongoing basis. For a piano that has been out of tune, it has to be done the next week, in a month, and then every six months to keep it sounding good. Neuro-Associative Conditioning also has to be performed continuously to keep associations strong. Conditioning yourself for success is a way of life.

Three elements must be present to create lasting change:

1. Get leverage on yourself. You have to be at the point where change is the only option, and it must be done now. Discover why not changing would be painful. Find the pleasure that exists within change. This is obvious, but change doesn’t happen if you don’t want it that bad. Should, could, might, probably, maybe. . . will not improve your life.
2. Interrupt the present pattern. Humans are stimulus and response beings. Do something unexpected when you find yourself responding in an undesirable way. Shake yourself up to break the pattern of behavior. Doing this repeatedly will make it difficult return to the old behavior because the feeling associated to the stimulus will be weakened.
3. Create a new empowering association. Remember the lesson from Day 3, get yourself feeling the way you want. Strong associations are created while in strong emotional states. Expose yourself to the stimulus so the feelings get anchored. Next time the stimulus happens, the feeling you want will be the response. This will drive your decisions and shape your results.

Exercises:

Work with the four things that were listed in Day 2’s exercise.
Part 1: Create leverage. For each item, write 10 reasons why these must be done. Include the costs of not doing them and benefits of having them completed.
Part 2: Find ways to interrupt the pattern. Write four or five ways to get out of the limiting pattern.
Part 3: Create a new association. Feel and think about all of the things that a new association will bring.

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Personal Power II - Day 3 - Neuro-Associations

January 3, 2009 – 6:41 pm

<-Day 2

Anthony Robbins: Personal Power II

Day 4->

Day 3 - Neuro-Associations:

What is a neuro-association? Tony Robbin’s describes it as, “the meaning that we associate to a given situation.” We connect feelings (specifically pain and pleasure) to situations, actions, people, locations . . . everything. These associated feelings give meaning to the world around us, and meaning determines how we behave in different situations. Neuro-Associative Conditioning is the process of making these connections, and the connection of a feeling to something is called an anchor.

Raw cookie dough created a strong neuro-association for me. I used to love getting a tube of cookie dough at the store, and I’d eat a spoonful every once in a while. I knew there was risk, but nothing bad ever happened until recently. I had my usual spoonful; within a few hours, I was practically living in the bathroom. The ordeal lasted three weeks, and I had to cancel a trip to see family over Thanksgiving. The physical pain of food poisoning and disappointment of missing a holiday with my family is now anchored to raw cookie dough. I will not eat it again.

From a young age, Tony had two neuro-associations that shaped a major part of his future:

1. Learning ideas that could help him change the way he, along with others, felt and behaved was an ultimate pleasure.
2. Sharing theses ideas so other people could change their lives could make him feel even better.

Negative Associations
Our brains create associations all of the time, and sometimes they can be destructive. During World War Two, Japan negatively conditioned Kamikaze pilots to run suicide missions. Going to heaven, family honor, and honor of their country had been anchored to crashing their plane into the enemy.

It’s common for advertisers to anchor products to pleasure. Think of how cool the people in cigarette advertisements look. Think of how sexy actors in beer commercials are. With repetition, advertisers link positive feelings to products that can be harmful. When looking at your own associations, ask where they came from? Becoming aware of how negative associations were formed can help destroy them.

Changing Associations
Whatever happens around us consistently gets anchored in our minds. Our emotional state provides the glue that sticks a feeling to a situation (stronger emotion = stronger association), and repetition strengthens that anchor. These are four simplistic steps to forming new associations.

1. Get yourself to feel a certain way.
2. Make that feeling as strong as possible.
3. While feeling the emotion, expose yourself to what you want the feeling anchored to.
4. Repeat.

Creating positive and removing negative associations improves people’s lives. What would your life be like if you had an insatiable appetite for learning? What would it feel like if you were energized about taking on new challenges, like starting a business? How would that improve your life?

The Sports Health 4 U website has a good explanation of Neuro-Associative Conditioning.

Exercise:

List three positive and three negative neuro-associations.

Positive: 1) Smoking is anchored to a sick feeling. 2) Computers are anchored to fun, challenge, and learning. 3) School is anchored to growth and nurturing.

Negative: 1) Writing is anchored to labor and frustration. 2) Unfamiliar people are linked to distrust. 3) Investing is becoming linked to financial pain and loss.

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