EP #96 The NLP Anatomy Of Illness And Recovery

We break down illness as a structured experience and show how NLP tools can help you move from diagnosis shock to a clear path toward health. We connect outcomes, beliefs, emotions, and self-efficacy so you can stay engaged through plateaus and make better decisions with your health team. 
• defining a well-formed outcome and desired state for health 
• using neurological levels to map where the problem lives 
• changing submodalities to shift state and motivation 
• understanding the Bandura Curve and why healing plateaus happen 
• building patience for slow feedback cycles like scans and blood work 
• choosing to move toward motivation instead of moving away
• using timeline work and redecisions to update old patterns 
• becoming an active participant through research and additional tests 
• using visualization and future pacing to stay oriented to recovery 
• treating optimism as a realistic expectation plus sustained effort 
• managing stress, emotions, and releasing resentment through forgiveness 
• strengthening self-efficacy to persist through setbacks 
Subscribe to our show on iTunes or your favorite listening platform to keep up with our newest episode. 
Be sure to visit our website, www.nlptraining concepts.com, and find us on Facebook,  LinkedIn, and TX by searching NLP Training Concepts to keep up with free resources, upcoming training, and fantastic content. 
Please check the website or send  an email to susan@ nlptrainingconcept.com, and I will be happy to put you on the list to let you know when it's scheduled.

Transcript

Welcome And The Illness Framework

SPEAKER_02 0:05

This is the brain podcast. This is the brain language podcast. This is the brain language podcast. This is the brain language podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Welcome to the Brain Language Podcast, where we discuss NLP concepts to help you in your business and your life. I'm Morgan Job.

SPEAKER_02 0:23

And I'm Susan Stageman. And today we're going to do an I think an interesting show on the anatomy of an illness. So in this episode, Morgan and I are going to talk about some of the things that NLP can help with in leading people to being significantly more healthy. And we've often talked about illness and how it can vary so much, and how the NLP model has been able to help both of us and a number of people that we know reach being more healthy. So, like all experiences, illnesses have a structure. And you can discern that structure from various processes. Remember that human beings understand things through comparison. So I like to think of using some of these processes in NLP not only to move towards something, but to understand the structure of where you are now. Because once you have that, then when you adjust the structure, you're on your way to a more healthy demeanor. So things like identifying the neurological levels of the environment, the behavior, the capabilities, the beliefs, values, the identity, and the spiritual level of your illness as well as where you're going. Obviously, one of the keys is your outcome. Your outcome in and of itself is going to do a comparison between where you are now and where you want to be. The other key thing, I think, is submodality structure. Remember that all experience has structure. And the smallest element of that structure is submodalities, the submodal structure of the V-A-K-O-G, the visual auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, and gussatory. So your illness, if you are in the process of healing something, or even if you've just been diagnosed with an illness, that submodality structure is going to be different than the one of perfect health. Of course, there's a lot of other things, visualization. Morgan's going to talk a little bit about blood work, Silva meditation, using a meta-active meditation to visualize yourself in a healthy way, and your meta outcome. What has to be there for you to be healed, for you to have a healthy body? You know, for what purpose? Also, Morgan's mentioned being an active participant in your healing process, having a future, which is going to be a meta program of through time, looking forward to the time when you're over this. And we're going to talk a little bit about emotions and health and the shame and guilt, how that plays a role in your healing process. And then what are you doing knowing that you have this issue? We're also going to put this into a system of optimism, self-efficacy, and managing your emotions so that you stay healthy. So, what will you come away with? Obviously, all the NLP processes will help you compare what you want versus what you have now. Identifying the structure of an illness is as important as the modality of healing it. You know, and even the healthiest person can be caught by surprise by an illness of some kind. So hopefully you'll never have to deal with that, such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, respiratory infections, Alzheimer's or dementia, obesity, kidney disease, and infectious diseases. These are the top 10 illnesses. I think NLP, and I think Morgan would agree that NLP can offer significantly effective ways to complement your healing process, a medicine, and other healing modalities. So let's get started.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

All

Set A Well Formed Health Outcome

SPEAKER_01 4:50

right. Well, where do you want to begin? What do you think is the first thing when you are confronted with an illness comes into your reality? What is the first thing that comes to mind that you would think people should do?

SPEAKER_02 5:02

I think obviously an outcome. Doing a well-formed outcome, following the steps, making sure that you are very clear about the purpose of where you're going. So that's one thing. And you're going to do a present state and desired state, making sure. And I'm going to suggest that if you don't have a lot of experience with NLP, that you have someone with experience of NLP take you through that outcome to make sure that it's well formed. The neurological levels you can use in two different ways. You can use the environment, behavior, capability, et cetera, to understand the structure and the neurological levels of your illness, you know, and including the beliefs that you're operating under and who you think you are in a lot of different areas, but certainly with the illness. And then you can use the neural levels then to redo that into what environments do I want to find myself in after I make this change? What's it going to be like? Submodality structure. I remember Morgan one time when I was working with someone, this is years and years and years ago. I mean, talking 30 years ago, and I didn't have as much experience with NLP as I do now. And I remember doing a submodality work with her and realizing that when I asked her to picture her illness, you know, in her mind's eye and give me a description. And I I would I just went through the questions, you know, is it bright, is it dim, etc., etc., it was so different

Neurological Levels And Submodalities

SPEAKER_02 6:55

than the experience she wanted. And taking it one step forward and then starting to shift those submodalities just like you would do in an exercise of compelling future. So meta outcomes was has to be there so that you can be free of where you are and in a healthy state again. Bandeura

The Bandura Curve And Plateaus

SPEAKER_02 7:20

curve. Let's talk about the Bandura Curve. In the Bandura Curve, and I think we've done an episode on the Bandura Curve. The first part of the curve, this is Albert Bandura, and you and you have some information about this also, right? Albert Bandura did some a lot of other research. But in the Bandura Curve, when you start out in the healing process, for instance, you don't really know you're going to get better. You're doing the things that you've been told to do or that seem intuitive to you by your own research that is moving you in a direction of healing. In that first part of the curve, you're building beliefs of capability. So you start to believe that you can do this. But what you are doing will only take you so far. And then you reach a plateau, and people start to question whether this is actually going to work. The strategy that they're using to get to the next level, the next level of the healing process has to change. And in that trial and error period, sometimes people can have relapses. And then the question becomes wow, you know, am I really going to survive this? And what if I don't? And I don't think what I'm doing is working. So all kinds of negative thoughts can occur. And then as the new strategy takes effect, people start to see some positive results again. And at that point, you're developing a belief of identity. I'm a healthy person. So I can be healthy, I can do things to make myself healthy. But at the higher end of the curve now, as you start to go up and reach the alignment with your idea of where you should be, your beliefs about who you are will take over and be developed. Do you have anything about that? Because I know you've used the Bandura curve in a number of areas.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

I think this is really one of the most important aspects of dealing with an illness that's chronic in nature, that's going to take some time. You know, it's not like a cold that you just get over it, right? You take some antibiotics or something, but something really significantly serious that's going to be a process that you have to go through to get to your desired state, being healthy. It's just being aware of this concept that you're going to do things, and at some point you'll plateau, like you says, and things are not working, and you'll need to make some type of adjustment.

SPEAKER_03 10:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

I also the feedback cycle in when you're dealing with an illness is often slow, is that you'll do something and you'll not know immediately whether it's working or not.

SPEAKER_02 10:22

Right. That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

So having that patience to just give yourself time to go through the process experience and wait for the feedback. This feedback can come in many. It could be in like a some kind of medical scan, like an MRI or CT, it could be some you know other evaluation, maybe blood work. It could it could be just like how you feel too, right? What your capabilities are, how they change. But knowing that that this is a process and that you're going to do things, and it's some things are going to work, some things might not work, but if they work, they won't necessarily continue to work. It's being flexible enough to change.

SPEAKER_02 11:05

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

And do something different. If what you're doing is not working, but also being patient enough with the feedback that you're getting, realizing that it won't necessarily be immediate.

SPEAKER_02 11:18

Yeah. I think that's difficult for a lot of people because we live in a society of immediate results. And when when it comes to healing the body, well, think about when you get a cut on on your skin, it doesn't mean you you wash it, you apply, you know, some ointment, you put a bandage on it, but the skin takes a while to heal. Those cells have to come in and form a new layer of cells and heal that wound. It doesn't happen overnight. And healing the inside of the body isn't any different. And I know that it can be quite unnerving when you're living in a no man's land, not really knowing if you're moving forward, moving back, or standing still. And that's where a lot of trust comes from the people that are helping you, I think has it just absolutely has to be there. In fact, I think rapport with a person's physician is as healing or more healing than the medicine that they apply. I mean, I know that there are very skilled doctors out there, but if you don't really align with the person that you're working with, it can either help you or not. And sometimes not. That's just one more layer of stress that a person has to deal with, including and above the health issue that they're dealing with. So I think that's extremely important that you have the faith and the trust in the people that you're working with, that they're going to help you through this. And I also think that forming forming a team, you know what I'm saying, Morgan, that you're part of a team of healers. Yes, you're being healed, but you know, you're you're an active participant in that. And I think that's extremely important.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Yeah. Yes, and some people, I think that's where they run into some problems, is they aren't an active participant in their process. They're along for the ride.

SPEAKER_02 13:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

They rely a hundred percent on what they're being told. This is what we're gonna do, this is how we're gonna do it. And they they almost like release some degree of like control or agency that they have. And it's not that they're controlling the entire process, you know. Obviously, your healing team, they have their roles, things they're gonna do, but realizing that you are involved in it. Yes, you're not just along for the ride.

SPEAKER_02 14:02

Yeah. And of course, that's where your own intuition can come in. People don't really understand intuition. However, it is spontaneous right action. There's no fear in it, there's no emotion. It's just that you know that you know that you know. And I think that is an important part of, especially when you're going through the Bandura curve, that you pay attention to those messages that you're getting to at least make your wishes known and give feedback to the doctors who are taking care of you. So that's a little bit of side trip on the Bandura curve, but just recognize that in your healing process, you're going to have to have patience, as Morgan says, that it's important to know that at some point you may have to switch gears and do a different treatment in order to get you through that lull, through the flat line, you know, the plateau, in order to get you into the healing process again. Anyway, so that's the Bandura curve. And I think you were saying something about Albert Bandura, also did a lot of work on self-efficacy, which we're going to talk about. That's your belief in your capability that you can perform at a certain level. And I think this is extremely important. And I'm when Morgan and I were putting together this show, he was the one that brought it up. I thought it was brilliant. All right.

Timeline Work And Belief Shifts

SPEAKER_02 15:34

So timeline, timeline therapy, timeline, going back on your timeline, redeciding things that may have led you to end up where you are now. I think is very, very important to take into consideration. Notice the submodalities of your timeline. There was a years ago, Tim and Chris Halbum did a program called the Money Clinic. And it had a belief change in there where you would look ahead on your timeline and notice, you know, the behaviors you were doing after the belief was changed. I think this is so valuable. It's a great future pace to look forward. I think you mentioned look forward to the time when you're over this, through this, you're back on track, you're healed, you're living your life again. So, so important. And I think by doing that, you can then ask yourself, well, what do you have to believe? Because your beliefs right now at this point may be different. And so using that time orientation, you can go back on your timeline, redecide, bring resources from the present back into the past and bring it forward, all kinds of things that you can do with that to help heal the timeline and some of the decisions you made that led you to end up where you were. You know, when it comes to illnesses or anything when things aren't working, we develop beliefs about, you know, where it was this our fault? Was it somebody else's fault? Was it something we did? Was did it just happen? Is it something our parents did? But but the truth is, wherever you look for the reason, you're gonna find information. Is that the only reason? Probably not. I mean, I remember Michael Landon, many of you probably don't even know of. He was a famous TV actor here in the US, and back gosh, in the 70s, 60s and 70s, I think, and he got cancer, and he thought it was his diet. And so he changed his diet and it still didn't work, you know, and he, you know, died. Of course, today with cancer, the probability of a person surviving it and healing from it is a lot greater than it was 30, 40, 50 years ago. So we've got time on our side now. However, Bruce Lipton, who talks a lot about this in the biology of the belief, which I'm a big, big supporter of, he says a microbiotic diet, it doesn't work because it's a microbiotic diet, but it works because it's a microbiotic diet, and the person using it believes without a doubt that it can work for them. But if a person doubts for any, even the smallest doubt can cause healing to stop and the person not to move forward. The other thing I want to say a little bit, maybe you have some things to say about this too, is just meta programs in general, move away from move towards. Where are you moving? Are you moving away from being unhealthy? Are you moving away from the illness? Are you moving towards health? Are you being proactive and an initiator in your healing process? Or are you wait and analyze, consider, wait, wait, wait, maybe do something, maybe not? So there's a number of meta programs, especially when it comes to the in the lab profile, the motivation scope that can be significant in what direction you're going, your motivation reason are you procedural or are you options? This is another key thing. You know, developing a procedure. A lot of things happen through procedure, exercise, diet and exercise, maintaining a certain weight, maintaining health, maintaining a certain income level, all procedural. If you're bouncing back and forth, this week you're doing this, the next week you're doing something else. As Morgan says, you don't really get to see it work. And I think this is really important.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

The the move forward and move away, I really resonates with me. I think that you know, when if you get some kind of illness that's diagnosed, it's really serious, you tend to focus on it.

SPEAKER_02 20:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

And like you said, I want to get rid of this, which is like a move away from. And so, okay, well, understandably, you want to be rid of it. You you don't want to have this anymore, but that's not defining what you have instead, right? It's it's like right, I it's like saying, I don't want to be sick. Okay, well, what do you want?

SPEAKER_02 20:38

Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

Well, I want to be healthy. Okay, so that's what you move towards, right? You have a clarity around what is health? What do I want instead of this?

SPEAKER_03 20:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

But that that initial thing, the diagnosis, if that's what it is, kind of holds our attention on the what we want to get away from, avoid, not experience. And I think people can sometimes get stuck in that focus.

SPEAKER_02 21:03

Right. I agree with you, Morgan. And I think that's why the you know, I started with the outcome. Do an outcome. If you need help with it, find somebody who's good at doing outcomes and help them work through it. I'll be happy to help somebody work through it. I just think that it's so important that you're focused on the right thing because if you're focused on being ill, you're gonna create more of that. If you're focused on being healthy, you'll create more of that. You just have to remember it's not, as I call it, a one-call close. It's gonna take time, and you have to believe that what you're doing is gonna get you the direction you want to go. What also is interesting, I'm thinking about so many things in this whole area that oftentimes we get really antsy about what we're doing and why isn't this working, and maybe I should do something else. And I think that it's really believing in the core. Course that you're taking, that using a number of modalities. It may not be one thing that supports your healing, but it's all of the things that support your healing. You may not know that it was any one thing, but it was all of them put together that supported you in the healing process. When I have a problem, I throw everything at it. I don't really know what works. I just know I have a number of, you know, things in my arsenal. I just start working with it and I start to see results. Is it any one thing? I don't think so. I think it's a combination of things. And I think people slow their progress by just choosing one thing and saying, well, this has got to be it. Because, you know, there's just too many things out there that people can choose from. I don't think you have to choose. I think you have to use what you think is going to work, but use it in a complementary way with other things. So, in other words, you may be doing medical treatment, but you may be using some other energy healing modalities. You may use acupuncture. You know, there's all kinds of things out there, and it's available to you. Why not use it? So instead of limiting yourself to something like a diet, which may or may not work. And I I remember, of course, I'm old enough to remember this, Morgan. Most probably our audience does not, but there used to, there was this big push. I don't know when this was, 70s, 80s, for what was it called? Laotrill.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

It was from peach piss.

SPEAKER_02 23:49

It was a form of cancer treatment. And of course, United States, they poo-pooed it. So people went overseas to do it without great results, I might add. But there were people that got better. Well, of course, because they really believed that it would work. Beliefs, they're very powerful in your healing process, as of course, Bruce Lipton says also. All right.

Build A Complementary Healing System

SPEAKER_02 24:15

So outcomes, the neurological levels, submodalities. Gosh, this is almost everything I can think of. And NLP are your purpose, your meta outcome, your Bandura curve, your timeline, the meta programs, the time orientation, and future pacing and making sure that you're looking forward to the time when you're over this. Notice the difference in the structure of the picture. This is submodalities, back into submodalities again. All right. So let's talk about some additional ways that you can support your healing. Morgan, what are some of the things that you've brought up as a part of being an active participant in the healing process?

Become An Active Participant In Care

SPEAKER_01 24:59

Yeah, this could come out in a variety of ways. For example, when I was dealing with an illness, I got a lot of extra blood work based on information that I had found through my research. And that was part of being an active participant. I wasn't just relying on what other people told me. Fortunately, we live in a world where it's pretty easy to get information. I mean, I was on PubMed, I was looking at research papers, I was pulling up things, and I found things that actually helped me that weren't shared by my doctor or doctors at that time. I got blood work and found out that I at that time had a high level of mycotoxins, which is comes from like uh mold or fungus. And one of them was actually off the charts in terms of the amount that was in my system. And one of the things that that does is it suppresses your immune system. And so A, I was aware of it. This was not a standard test that my main medical team was running on me. It's not even on their radar at all. Because they weren't really dealing with the question of like, what causes this? They were just saying, how do we treat this?

SPEAKER_03 26:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

And I was also focused on not on how we treat this, but what's the reason that I have this? Why am I experiencing this? Is it one thing? Is it multiple things? But this is one thing that I did. So being active and educating yourself and choosing to get additional tests that provide you some sort of information that you believe you need. And that may not be in the standard uh model that one of your doctors is using.

SPEAKER_02 26:45

Yeah. I was I'm gonna ask you with that information, did you share that with them? Or did you um what did you do with that? And if you shared it with them, which I would thought you would have, what did they do about it?

SPEAKER_01 26:59

Um, I didn't share it with them.

SPEAKER_02 27:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 27:02

Because it was outside of their model.

SPEAKER_02 27:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

They couldn't really, there's nothing that they could do about that because it wasn't within their, yeah, I mean, you could even say belief system about how do we deal with this. A lot of times they're following a protocol. Not always, but oftentimes they're, and there's some, depending on what they're dealing with, there's a little, there might not be a lot of leeway in in what they can do. And so finding out, well, is this affecting me? And then what can I do? It's so I didn't share it. I took my own actions in terms of what uh one can do to help resolve that.

SPEAKER_02 27:40

Okay. All right, very good.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

Which is another aspect of active participation, right?

SPEAKER_02 27:46

Yeah, that's that's interesting. And that's very true that a lot of medical profession, and I'm not this isn't a criticism by any means, they do, they work off a protocol, they have very definite ideas oftentimes of what what is supposed to be done to heal the person, and things outside of that don't apply. I do remember one time though, I had a dog. This is pet land. I had a dog. In fact, she was my first dog, and she had lupus for crying out loud. And how that happened, we don't know, but she just did. So I took her to a regular vet, and they were going to treat her with corticosteroids or steroids. And I at the time I thought that there might be other treatments that would help her. So I took her to a vet that was more holistic, and it was really interesting because I knew and he admitted, he said, I've never I've never dealt with this. He said, I'm gonna see what I can do to help you. And we were kind of just pushing buttons to see what light came on, you know, kind of poking around in the dark because he really didn't know. And he thought I should cook for her. And at the time I just wasn't into cooking for my dog, so we didn't align there, that was obvious. But during the time that she was in his care, she just got worse and worse and worse. Okay, point. If what you're doing's not working, you have a higher probability of getting what you want if you do anything different. So I remember she was very ill, took her in, and we're sitting on the floor. She can hardly lift her head. And of course, half of her body is raw because she kept scratching it. And he took one look at her and said, I'm gonna refer her. And he referred me to a doctor, internal medicine, animal internal medicine, an older guy. And I this is so funny, and I want people to know this that medicine has some great outcomes and not to ignore it, you know, at the expense of using something as you call alternative. It's complementary, it can be used with medicine, and it can actually work towards your healing and make the medicine work faster and better. So I took her because I was about ready to lose my dog. And I remember he just took control. He said, I want you to give her vitamin C and niacinamide. I didn't know what niacinamide was, but I had this immediate reaction. And because I didn't know what it was, I thought it was some kind of medication. I happen to know what niacinamine is now, it's really good for the skin. And you can get it on all kinds of supplements now, and you can put it, you can actually get it so that you can apply it on your skin. It's really good for your skin. Well, anyway, I remember saying to him, is that really good for her? And he turned around, he looked at me right and straight in the eye and said, Susan, the disease isn't good for her. And I got it. And she healed under his care and lived another seven years. She died an old dog, but I learned my lesson through that, Morgan, that you use what's available. And you know, even though I didn't really like the guy at first, but he took control of the situation, which is what the other doctor couldn't do. And I don't blame him for that. He just didn't know. And he probably should have referred her earlier, but but it's fine. We had a good outcome. So I just want to I want people to know that that sometimes you just have to pay attention to the direction you're going and uh listen to the people around you if you're gonna be stubborn. But I I've learned a lot since those years, many, many years have gone by, 30 years. So now I use a variety of things. I I don't have a serious illness and have never really had a serious illness. So I've had some structural things. That's another thing. If you have structural things, the structural people are the best things for it. If you're trying to do all these other things and you don't want to change the structure of it, then guess what? You're gonna continue to have problems, and that's a whole nother story. I'm not gonna go into, but just know that you have to go to where the person has the ability to fix something. You know, a heart doctor can't fix a broken bone, those types of things. And yet, people with structural issues like osteoarthritis in the joints and that sort of thing, your internist probably isn't going to be able to help you. You know, part of that is gonna be diet, part of it may be orthopedic person that can help you with that. So there's a lot of different ways to look at something and to pick and choose what will give you the best outcome. What are some of the other things, Morgan, that you think have been useful?

Visualization And Internal Dialogue

SPEAKER_01 33:19

Yeah, I think visualization is important where you imagine what the result is that you want, you're you're healing in some way. This could be uh the process, you could be imagining seeing improvement, or you could imagine also visualize the actual outcome. One of the things that I did in terms of visualization, I guess you could call this also a sort of future pacing as well, is so I looked at something I couldn't do at that moment because of the condition. And in my case, it was I couldn't walk very well without extreme pain and I could only go very short distances. And so if I visualize what would I be doing if I was healed? And one of the things that came down my mind was I'd be walking my dog. And so I visualized walking my dog, like what it would feel like, like I was deeply associated in it. I was looking through my eyes, I was like, what part of the neighborhood am I seeing? Because that really wasn't available to me. And doing that was a surefire indication that that I had recovered. And so I held on to that visualization as a way of something to look forward to. And like when I heal, I'll be able to take my dog for a walk.

SPEAKER_02 34:38

Yeah, yeah, that's good. Also, I've heard of people using visualization and you know, meditation to visualize, say, say, for instance, I think it's helpful for people to see the pictures if they have a tumor because they can start visualizing that getting smaller and smaller and smaller. So it's more of an incremental visualization rather than skipping up to the future where everything's fine. And I think that that is helpful. I also think that in the Silva method, and of course, in my mind training course, uh, which I'm probably going to be doing in the fall, there's processes in there that you can use to detox and that sort of thing, just on a mental level. And I think that can be very helpful to people. So, what are you focused on? Are you focused on being sick, being well, that sort of thing, which we've mentioned before? And then, of course, what are you saying to yourself? You know, your internal dialogue can be so powerful in the healing process, or it can be very powerful in preventing it. So be aware of the chatter. And I think it's important, and you we're going to talk about this here in just a minute. You had mentioned self-efficacy, that you surround yourself with people who support you in the healing process. Um, you don't need people around you talking about all of their illnesses and and their family and how so-and-so died and blah, blah, blah, and all that. You don't need that. You need to surround yourself with people who are supporting you in a positive way. So let's go ahead and just talk about all of this as a

Optimism As A Realistic Strategy

SPEAKER_02 36:30

system. And I think Morgan came up with three things, and now I'll come through and just interject some of the NLP things. That the keys to all of this is being optimistic. And when I say optimistic, I mean realistic. You know, Dills does the critic, the dreamer, and the realist. You want to be in that realist category. Dreamers don't pay attention to the feedback that they're getting that something may be going wrong. The critic is always saying this won't work, this won't work, this won't work. The realist is the in-between that realistically takes a look at something. So I'm I'm going to let you talk a little bit about that, Morgan. And then just overall emotions and health, because your emotions affect your immune system. And if you are in a situation where you are focused on being sick and having emotions that are panicky, depression, all that, it's going to affect your immune system and your ability to heal something. And then finally, self-efficacy, which is your ability to perform at a certain level. And Albert Bandura, the Bandura Curb person, also found that self-efficacy is probably one of the most powerful predictors of health and disease and progression and recovery. So let's come back here to optimism. I noticed there's a science direct, there are 25 studies. So why don't you talk about that?

SPEAKER_01 38:10

Yeah. So it's like this clearly defined like what is optimism, you know, but it's this mental attitude, uh, this orientation that's characterized as a sort of general expectation that things are going to work out well for me in the future, or things will come out in some favorable way. So an optimist really anticipates positive results or expects it. And they approach challenges with confidence that things are going to work out, or somehow I can find a way to manage this successfully. And, you know, cultivating and maintaining optimism regarding your health challenges is really strongly associated with better outcomes. And this was found in a number of studies, but one of the ones that I found was a systematic review that was published in uh something called Science Direct. It's like a journal or and they looked at 25 studies that involved 217,000 participants. And what they found was that optimism was associated with a lower mortality risk and better health outcomes in 11 out of 18 of the studies. And they also found that pessimism, which is kind of the opposite of that, it was linked to a much higher risk of mortality or poor health outcomes in seven out of eight of those studies. Overall, they showed 15% lower mortality risk among participants who had an optimistic attitude or outlook. And it really significantly predicted a positive health outcome. You know, the I think you mentioned this earlier is that it's important to be realistic in your there's such a thing as an unrealistic optimism. And this can actually have a negative health impact. And the reason is it causes a person to believe that a positive outcome can be achieved with minimal effort or that they're somehow immune to some threat or some potential problem. And so they develop sort of this optimistic bias that's not really realistic. So if you have some kind of significant disease or cancer or some other serious illness, keep in mind you're not likely going to recover in a few days or in a couple of weeks. So an unrealistic optimism might expect a rapid or an extraordinarily rapid recovery. Not to say that that's not impossible, but you have to really look at it and say, you know, what's possible for me? What do I believe is possible for me? But cultivating optimism is been shown to be very helpful in increasing the odds that you're going to have a better outcome.

SPEAKER_02 40:45

Yeah, that's great. When I teach my weekends on beliefs, there's a story that I tell it was also a study where they found that people who these were older people, 65 plus, but they actually found that people, even if they were in, they asked people to rate their health, right? From excellent to poor. And people who rated, even if they were in poor health but rated and believed their health was better, actually survived longer than people whose health was good but believed it was poor. So, you know, having that that more optimistic look, it doesn't mean, as you say, that it's not the rose-colored glasses, you know, which you call optimistic bias. You know, there's not going to be a quick recovery. It's going to, it's going to take a while. And that you just have to maintain, especially through that Bandura curve, to maintain the optimism that you're going in the right direction is what's going to get you through that trial and error period before things start moving again in the right direction. And in fact, a lot of times people in the Bandura curve, they'll start looking at statistics because they no longer have their own faith that maybe they can get through it. And so now they're going to play the odds. So that's one thing. So optimism. And there's all kinds of ways to do that. Obviously, optimism versus pessimism has a structure, submodal structure. There are the meta programs being more move towards than move away from. And stacking anchors that where times when you were more optimistic can help you maintain your optimism, you know, bringing in other situations in your life and experiences and when you were optimistic. And even some of those experiences that you thought, gosh, you know, this isn't going to work out, and it worked out anyway. Guess what? Those can be valuable reference experiences that they're teaching you that even though sometimes things look bleak, you can have happy endings. And the more you can find of those, those are excellent reference experiences for stacking anchors. So, and then there's emotions and health. And of course, alignment of neurological levels is great. And the submodalities in the submodality compelling future, the timeline, anchoring, all of these can keep your emotions in check. What were some of the things that you were going to say about that, Morgan?

Emotions Stress And The Immune System

SPEAKER_01 43:35

I think, yeah, emotions are a significant component in, if you call it like a disease process or health challenge. Because the mind and body are connected, newsflash, um, our physical health can, you know, certainly affect our emotions. But also our emotional state can affect our physical state.

SPEAKER_02 43:55

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 43:56

These are, I mean, there's an entire field, I think it's called psychodest. Neuroendocrine immunology. Incredibly, I can't spell that. But it basically deals with the relationship between someone's psychological orientation, what they're feeling and thinking, and how that affects their immune system. And it does.

SPEAKER_02 44:15

It does.

SPEAKER_01 44:16

Yeah. I mean, you absolutely it triggers the stress response if you have a stressful emotion in that stress response, if it continues, can interfere with your healing or it can exacerbate a problem or even cause a problem if it goes on for long enough.

SPEAKER_03 44:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:29

So, you know, I think be willing to look at the emotional aspect. Okay, I have this particular health challenge. How do I feel about it? What am I thinking? What am I feeling about it? And are those emotions supporting me?

SPEAKER_04 44:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:42

Or what maybe what emotions did I have that I've been experiencing chronically that maybe contributed to being chronically stressed, which deteriorated my health? Um, one of the more powerful things I think I did was I looked at a feeling of resentment and anger that I had. And so one of the first things I did was I started letting that go. I started forgiving people that I held resentments or anger towards because I realized that holding on to that motion and thinking about those things was not conducive to healing. And you know, I don't know that resolving that was going to somehow instantly heal me, but I knew it was going to interfere with the process.

SPEAKER_02 45:24

Right. Yeah. And see, that's what I was saying earlier is that it's not, and I tell clients that I work with, it's not one process, it's a threshold that you build. And that's what I'm saying about using all of this as a system. You're building a threshold. You're building a threshold of healing, after which you're not going to go back, you're going to be moving rapidly towards being healed, being healthy again. But it's not one thing, it's a threshold of a lot of things. I notice also that, and I agree with you that chronic stress, chronic thought processes, there's a lot of information out there, even research, the connection between our thoughts and our body. And I remember years ago, a woman that I had just briefly in class, I mean, all she ever talked about was how afraid she was. She was afraid of this, afraid of that. I mean, it was so pervasive in her language and in her behavior. And later on, she had to have a kidney transplant. Well, kidneys, according to some people, are about fear. And so I thought, wow, that was interesting. So our emotions can affect our body in some very negative ways and or positive ways. So be aware, as Morgan says, to be aware of what are some of the emotions that you are experiencing and you know, towards what I know when I took the health certification training way back when in um Salt Lake City, one of the processes in that experience, it was all belief identity work. And one of the processes, though, was giving forgiveness, because if you are holding on to blaming others, or, you know, you mentioned shame and guilt, that will also affect the functioning of your body and your immune system. So those are things, if you have anger, resentment, sadness, depression, anxiety, all of those can undermine our health and our immune system and potentially cause illnesses or lead to illnesses. And those NLP processes are so great at resolving stressful emotions.

Self Efficacy And Persistence Decisions

SPEAKER_02 47:59

Okay. And then I think the last one is self-efficacy. And I want to just say a couple of things about that. That self-efficacy is your, as I've mentioned before, your ability to perform at a certain level. They've done all kinds of studies on this. Albert Bender, as Morgan has mentioned, has done some also. But basically, beliefs are all about self-efficacy, who we are. And they're connected. It's connected to our goals and expectations. It's our belief about our capability to produce certain levels of performance that we exercise over events that affect our lives. So they determine how we think, how we feel, how we motivate ourselves, and how we behave. And they include cognitive, motivational, effective, and selective process. If a person has strong self-efficacy, they have a high self-assurance in their capability. Difficult tasks are to be challenged and mastered. There's an intrinsic interest and deeply engrossed. They're in flow. They set challenging goals and strong commitments, and they heighten and sustain effort through difficulty and setback. So this is what we're talking about when we talk about self-efficacy. Weak self-efficacy is doubting our capabilities, avoiding difficult tasks, low aspiration. It's resignment. There's a weak commitment to goals. And they fall easily prey to being a victim and experiencing stress and depression. So these are some of the things. So why don't you tell us a little bit about the self-efficacy that you found that's so important in the healing process?

SPEAKER_01 50:00

Yeah, so a lot of this research was done by Albert Bandura of the Banduraker, which we reference frequently. But he did a he had a very long career. He did a lot of interesting research. And one of the most powerful things he found was that self-efficacy was a significant predictor of health, disease progression, and recovery. He found that it really shapes what we do, how long we persist in that effort, and how our bodies ultimately respond to illness. So, you know, healing or managing an illness is a process. It happens over time. And self-efficacy really supports this in a number of key ways. Number one, it determines whether we actually start something or not, like think in case of therapy or treatment. Some people don't start a therapy or they delay it. And that can have a negative impact. And there can be a variety of reasons why they decide not to. How much effort are they going to put into the process itself? Is it minimal effort, or are they, you know, this is a person that's not only going to their treatments, but they're also maybe looking at, well, what can I change in my diet or my activities, or what supplements, or how much research can I do on this? Um, what else can I learn about my situation ultimately so that I can influence it in some way? How long we persist in that particular process? Because it's a process. And in order to get the results, the further along you you follow it, the better those results are. This is one that I remember really encountering when I was dealing with uh with health challenges with cancer. There was a point where I came to maybe you might call the persistence crisis, where I sat down, I remember clearly sitting on my back patio and asking myself, do I want to keep fighting this? And the answer was yes, but it wasn't an immediate yes because I've been through a lot. I was really tired. I was just very tired of the whole process. So I made that decision, yes, I'm going to persist in this process, even though it's uncomfortable. And then ultimately, how do we respond to failures or setbacks? You know, if you're in involved in a process, you're going to experience a setback or you're going to try something and it's not going to work. Do you determine that that means that everything is hopeless? Or do you say, okay, what can I do different, or how can I adjust this? Is my perceived failure actually just a temporary setback and I can somehow change this? So one of the things he also found is that overall self-efficacy really lowers stress and that improves our hormonal response and then helps us effectively cope with any kind of challenges we we encounter. On the other hand, low self-efficacy increases stress. It increases stress hormones and it creates, you know, a lot more inflammation risk, which is strongly associated with health challenges, disease process. So, you know, ultimately, this person that has high self-efficacy believes that they can influence the outcome. And a person with low self-efficacy thinks that nothing I do really matters. Um, so this obviously impacts motivation, resilience, our own decision-making process. I had a client that he really spelled this out for me pretty well. He had a difficult uh situation. He had kidney cancer, I think is what it was, which he overcame, he healed from. But one of the things he mentioned to me was that he remembered that his aunt and his uncle, I believe, were both diagnosed with cancer. And his uncle said, Okay, I'm gonna fight this. How do I overcome this? I got this essentially. And his aunt went into the mindset, well, I'm done. There's nothing I can do. And that's exactly what happened. His uncle recovered and his aunt didn't because she decided that she was done, that there was nothing that she could do. And so that's a good example of like a contrast between low self-efficacy and high self-advocacy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:47

Well, I think that Morgan, and it is a choice that people make. I think one of the things that can help people with using NLP when it comes down to that type of thing is the conflict of identity process that Robert Dills developed. It's just a brilliant process that integrates two identities that are opposed to each other. That one, I want this, this is the way I want to be. But some part of me in my past stops or prevents me. So that can be a great process to help people resolve that conflict. That I think oftentimes when you're dealing with a huge, and I don't care what it is, it can be an illness, it could be the end of a marriage or a loss of something or change company process or problems, that sort of thing, can hugely affect the strength that we bring to the table in creating an outcome.

SPEAKER_01 54:49

So you know, one of the most, I think, significant things I did to help with self-afficacy was I found a book and it was written by a doctor, and it was entirely about people who had miraculous recoveries from conditions or diseases which did pretty much were written off as terminal, and that they turned it around. It was these studies where they just here's a situation and what they did and how they recovered from something that many people thought was not possible to recover from.

SPEAKER_04 55:21

Right.

SPEAKER_01 55:22

And that book helped build that belief system that you know what, it's possible.

SPEAKER_03 55:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:28

So I think finding people, other people who've done what you've done, in a sense, like modeling, right? From is find other people who have been successful with whatever it is that you might be dealing with and figure out what did they do. And if you can't even determine that, but just be aware that that they won, that they overcame that it's possible.

SPEAKER_03 55:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:51

So yeah, improving self-efficacy is starting with small outcomes and building successful steps that builds confidence, just like in the John now peak performance of high achievers. Anyway, he talks about you know, large goals are reached by achieving progressively a progressive step of smaller goals. So that's one thing. And then you've mentioned vicarious learning, hearing and seeing about other people in similar situations that have succeeded. And then, of course, verbal reinforcements where you're surrounding your people. I mentioned this earlier, who encourage and support you. So control your social environment. You don't want to be in situations where people are going to look down on you or tell you all the bad stories of things that have happened to them. That's not what you need right now. And, you know, be aware of that, have strong enough boundaries to extricate yourself out of them and into situations that support you. And then finally, again, managing your emotional and physical states and you know, reframing. We haven't even mentioned reframing, of course, a very powerful process, managing your emotional states, visualization, using submodalities, all of these things will help you. And I want to say in closing, Martin, because I know this has been going a while. However, I think this is really important. Even if right now you may not be dealing with a serious illness, andor you may not know anybody, but at some point you will. And I trust that this podcast, and I know we've done illness before, but probably not to the depth that we have done today, that there are so many things in NLP that can facilitate your healing, that can keep you on track, that can help you change the beliefs that you need in order to be a healthy person, to heal your body and your mind. All of the neurolinguistic programming processes that we've mentioned, the meta-outcomes, the meta programs, the neurological levels, the submodalities, reframing, but using those timelines, using all of those as a system to help you maintain your optimism, maintain high self-efficacy, and manage your emotions, keeping them in a positive vein, being realistic about and patient, you know, with yourself as you go through this process, you'll have a good outcome, I think. And I've known other people that have. So there's no reason why employing all of what we've talked about, uh being an active participant, I think Morgan would say is probably the most important one of all is to take control, you know, be a partner with your doctor, not a child and not a victim, but actually being a participant in your, you know, in your healing process. I I can't say enough about Bruce Lipton. And I remember looking at one of his early videos, and one of the people that sponsored them, they had this handout, right? And he said, he goes to the doctor, he has this illness, and he says to him, I'm gonna spend the next few minutes interviewing you, you know, to see if you want to be part and can be part of my health team. So the whole direction of the attitude towards this person was, you know, I'm interviewing the doctor to see if the doctor can help me, not the other way around. And so, and I think that's an important attitude to have when when you're putting your health team together, and it is a health team and you want to be an active participant. So, anything else you want to say, Morgan, before we we close here?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:01

Yeah, you know, when you're dealing with a physical illness, I have found that much of the to equate it to a war, I guess, much of the battle is in the body for sure. Yeah, but the war is actually one in the mind. Yeah. I think if you approach the mental aspect of it with like the things that we talked about and using those tools, you're going to have a much better outcome.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:24

Yeah. And I will say this: you can apply what we just talked about to anything you want. Anything. You want to start a business, you want to go back to school, you want to get married, have kids. All of this, all of it, you can apply these amazing tools. You probably don't need to have blood work, but maybe I don't know. It depends on what you're gonna where you're gonna go. But all of these tools, NLP processes, as I tell people, you may get there. NLP is just gonna help you get there faster. And I think that that's one of the beauties of it is that it does deal with the structure of experience and not the experience of the experience. So that structure, once you know that, change can happen a lot faster and you're more aware of the process that you're going through, and you can make better choices. After all, you're in the unified field, which is the field of all possibilities, and everything is possible there. So think about it

Resources Training And How To Connect

SPEAKER_02 1:01:30

like that. I do want to say in closing, thank you all very much for listening. You'll notice now that there are in BuzzSprout, which is the platform that I loaded up. I don't know whether you get this in Apple or Spotify, but if you go to BuzzSprout, there are transcripts of these now that you can have as well as the listening podcast. So if you need transcripts, that can help you as well as just a little recap. The other thing I want to mention is a couple of things that are coming up probably in the fall in the first of the year. I know, can you believe it? The year is almost half over. It just amazes me how time just is speeding by. And one of them is I am going to start another mastery in NLP course. The mastery in NLP course is a combined practitioner and masters that when you finish, you can be eligible for a master's certification through the Society of Neurolinguistic Programming. And I will either start it in the fall. I don't, I haven't made the decision yet. I do want to say something. I know that many of you overseas have taken my training and you know have stayed up, some people all night taking it. But I do want to let people know it is a live training and it's not recorded. So it's one of the reasons you just can't take it whenever you want to. There is definite interaction between me and the students yourself and other students. So it's like being in a classroom, it's just that you can see everybody instead of sitting behind someone. So that's one thing I want to encourage people because sometimes people think, oh, live training is better. No, it's just different. Uh, I mean, in-person training, but this training is live, it's not recorded. Do you take modules? Each weekend, we're going to cover part of the system of NLP so that when you finish, you'll have NLP as a system. You'll be NLP. You won't be doing NLP. And that to me is the most important part of the NLP model is that it's natural that you're not doing it on somebody that's just who you are. You're just naturally a good communicator. You naturally ask questions, and you have a set of tools with which you can help speed things along when things don't work. The other thing that I have a request for is a program called The Mind Masters. Now, I'm changing it because it's really about a mental, it's a mental training course, and it is training your mind to do all kinds of things that you don't even think is possible. I learned this, I've combined a lot of NLP in it so that you can use NLP. A lot of NLP is not self-applied. You have to have a partner or a facilitator. In this case, I've developed a course where you will learn at an alpha state how to apply some of these NLP processes to help you get the changes that you want. So it gives you a lot more power than you ever thought was possible. And I know because I've been through it and I practice these things every day. And I went from a person that thought that's impossible to what's possible. So I will be offering that. Please check the website or send me an email at Susan at nlptrainingconcept.com, and I will be happy to uh put you on the list to let you know when it's scheduled. The meditation mind development control, whatever you want to call it, course, is going to be a weekend. So it's two days. Anyway, thank you all very much. Thank you, Morgan, for participating today and giving us your great insight into this. And just remember that I believe that we're all in this together and nobody's gonna get out alive, so we might as well just help each other as much as we are able. And I I believe that with all my heart. So thank you so much for listening.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:44

Thank you for listening to the Brain Language Podcast. Subscribe to our show on iTunes or your favorite listening platform to keep up with our newest episode. Be sure to visit our website, www.nlptraining concepts.com, and find us on Facebook, Instagram. LinkedIn and Twitter by searching NLP Training Concepts to keep up with free resources, upcoming training, and fantastic content. Thank you for joining us and taking our minds to the next level. We'll see you next time.