Prologue – I'm in a bad mood!

It's the beginning of April, winter changes to spring but it's still not really warm. In addition, it rains in one tour. Rain, cold and a cold contribute to the fact that I feel lousy. The interesting thing is: I don't even notice it at first! Only my wife's reaction directs the focus of my attention to the fact that I have tilted the world outside into my interior and that my mood is rather dark and rainy. I'm a grump! Now it's nice that I'm just realizing that I'm a grump, but how do I get out of this mood?

You don't need to fall back on the findings of effectiveness researcher Gerhard Roth to know that pure brooding does not help. To get out of a mental dead end, you can be creative. Stephen Gilligan, a world-renowned hypnotherapist, believes that creativity is a conversation between conscious reality and a creative unconscious quantum world. In order to have this conversation, I need an "observing self" as an important quality or ability. He goes on to explain that I create my conscious reality, i.e. my rational and logical consciousness, myself with the help of perceptual filters. Such filters are fed by various sources. There are biological, cultural, familial, social, personal and many other filters that have an influence on the shaping of my personal reality. Most of these filters can also be called "persuasion". Only if I am willing to change my filters can I influence the design of my reality, can I live and learn creativity.

Aha, I think to myself, my reality is: I'm in a bad mood! My wife grumbles about me. I don't want that, because I would like to live in harmony with her. So I have an interest in adjusting my perceptual filters with the help of a "creative unconscious". So now I need three things: Myself, how I'm in a bad mood (1st position), someone who is creative and enlightens me as a grump with his creativity (2nd position) and an observer who looks at me from the outside, how bad I am and reflects and evaluates the situation (3rd position).

Lo and behold, these are exactly the three perceptual positions that NLP has been teaching for decades. NLP also teaches that change only succeeds if you put so-called resources into a not so good state, because: Only feelings change feelings! To put it bluntly: I add a bad feeling to a bad feeling that fits the motivation to feel bad and thus turn the bad feeling into a good feeling.

However, very few people can lead themselves through such a change process, they need procedural guidance. There are coaches for this. Sounds logical and simple at first.

Variants of resource transfer

In NLP parlance, a feeling that is to be used to improve a problem situation is called a resource. I would now like to briefly discuss three variants of the transfer of feelings or resources.

As an executive coach, I use these variants to guide my clients so that something changes and "understanding" occurs. The prerequisite is that the client has identified a resource that he believes can improve the not-so-good condition. This resource can be used e.g. be a character trait capable of activating helpful abilities.

Variant 1 – Energy and symbol as a gift

I have developed this variant as part of my NLP training at Adrian Schweizer skilled. In this variant, the client first associates himself in his problem state and feels what he feels when he is in the problem. Here he checks whether the chosen resource could be helpful. Then he switches to an observer position, where he looks at his problem ego from the outside, thinks about what he has experienced in the problem ego, and reflects on whether the chosen resource could be helpful. If both the problem ME and the observer ME are of the opinion that the resource fits, then the client considers which person has this resource property. This can be him himself in a different life situation or a different person. Here it does not matter whether he knows the chosen person personally. It is important that he grants the person the desired quality. It can therefore be a well-known person (e.g. the girlfriend), an actor (e.g. John Wayne), a historical figure (e.g. Nelson Mandela) or a fantasy figure (e.g. Superman).

Now another location in the room is determined that represents the resource. You imagine the chosen person and go to this place in the room and now slip into this person, so to speak, and go into the state of the required character trait / ability and the feeling associated with it. This feeling is what we need. Now a symbol is defined that represents the feeling and a color that stands for this feeling. The client now sends the colour as a ray of light over to the problem self, while he takes the symbol in his imagination in both hands. While the colored light already transmits the feeling, the client now moves to the problem ego, steps directly in front of it and hands over the symbol to the problem ego as a gift. Then the client steps into the position of the problem-ego, accepts the symbol as a gift, puts the symbol in his imagination into the body of the problem-ego while perceiving that the colored light of the resource goes into his interior.

The problem feeling will now change.

Variant 2 – The energy metaphor

I derived this variant myself for my needs. It is initially identical to the previously described variant. If I have determined the resource person, placed myself in the space position of this person and built up the feeling of the desired quality, then the position of the feeling is located in the body. The feeling is then described as energy. This energy represents the desired character trait/ability. With Milton Erickson's resistance-free language, the client is now guided to let the energy flow through the body until in the end all parts of the body from head to feet are full of this energy. Then you can instruct the client that the energy flows out of the body and envelops the whole body like a cloud of energy. Then you determine the color of that energy and have the client send a beam of energy of that color toward the problem self. The energy flows to the problem-ego, penetrates, penetrates the problem-ego and fills it completely. While the energy continues to flow, the client is now allowed to enter the problem ego with the energy beam from the resource position and experience the change.

Variant 3 – Metaphorical decorating

I learned this variant from Gunther Schmidt, the developer of the hypnosystemic approach and head of the Milton Erickson Institute in Heidelberg. Here I only need the problem ego and the observer position. From the observer position, the client determines which trait / ability the problem part needs. Then the client is allowed to come up with a metaphorical figure that represents this trait / ability. Now he is supposed to imagine any number of these metaphorical figures (objects) and thus decorate the problem ego as he wishes. With the decorated elements, the attitude towards the problem ego will already change from the observer's perspective. Then switch to the problem self and let them find out what has changed.

Of course, there are other variants of transferring resources. A feeling present inside a person is connected to a context (a mainifestation in the Mental Space ) in which this feeling is not addressable. Metaphors are always used for this purpose.

Epilogue

It is a matter of transferring – with whatever variant – enough resources into the problem state until the feeling there is okay. The basic principle is always the same: the bad feeling (K–) is enriched with good feelings (K++) that match the motivation until the bad feeling becomes a good feeling (K+).

Since I want to experience something nice with my wife even on the gloomy November day and my grumpy mood prevents that, I just withdraw and will improve my mood with the variants described above. After that, I'll do something nice with her.

How good that I shape my reality myself! The gloomy weather no longer scratches me, spring will unfold in its splendor...