How To Do Swish Pattern Properly
Author
Damon Cart
Date
Jan 25, 2016
Tags
General tips
Content
Author
Two common mistakes with the Swish Pattern students make either because the Swish Pattern is taught incorrectly or it's practiced incorrectly is exchanging one behavior for another and the yo yo effect.
When you're swishing an unwanted behavior to a preferred state you want to choose a positive image that is free of context or behavior. Your positive image should be a disassociated image of an ideal you who has already resolved the dysfunctional behavior. Why do we do it this way? A positive image of yourself without context and without a behavior is more general and will likely generalize to more areas, if not all, of your life. For example, if you want to quit smoking your negative image that you're going to swish away and make small will be an image of you smoking (most likely, but not necessarily, associated). Say you want to replace that behavior with exercise. If you swish the image with you smoking with an image of you exercising you will most likely feel compelled to exercise instead of smoke when you think of smoking. This sounds like a good thing. However, you can't exercise 24 hours a day. So when you're not exercising or after you've exercised it will be easy for you to continue smoking. If you instead swish the smoking image with a disassociated image of your ideal self who no longer smokes without a context and without engaging in a different behavior then you are using a more general image that conveys a compelling message that you are no longer a smoker in any context and you don't have to perform another behavior in order not to smoke. Also, when you're swishing, it's a common mistake to swish back and forth. Because the swish needs to be done about seven times to be really effective, many people swish the negative image back up while swishing the positive image down when they reset the images to swish again. This creates the yo yo effect where you're swishing negative and positive back and forth, which can create confusion and cause an ambiguous response. You want to swish the negative image away or smaller while bringing up and enlarging the ideal image of yourself who has already resolved this issue. In reseting the pictures you want to break from the last swish and make the negative image appear on top and the positive one at the bottom in order to swish again. Be careful not swish them back and forth.
Damon Cart
Author
Damon Cart is considered to be a natural talent by some of the best NLP trainers in the world. His approach to guiding and teaching students brings to their awareness that they've been doing NLP all of their lives without realizing it and he empowers them with skills and resources to thrive and reach their full potential. With the understanding of how Neuro Linguistic Programs create oneβs experience a person can then take charge of those programs and create the experience and the life they want. By taking this approach into his own rigorous, daily NLP practice Damon has been able to rapidly accelerate his progress in learning, coaching clients and teaching workshops.
