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How external events influence our state and ultimately our behavious?
The following image illustrates the NLP communication process. In other words how something that happens outside of us affects our behavious and how our behavious affects the events outside.
Sure, it does sound logical when you think about it. But let me explain it step by step…
(image 1)
It starts with an external event made up of pictures, sounds, feelings, tastes, smells and “self-talk”. Basically, something happens outside of ourselves and our filters of the world will help us absorb part of the information that is happening outside of us. We might delete, distort or generalise the reality based on our preferences, language, decisions, attitudes, values and believes and experiences from the past… Eventually whatever information is left, it influences our internal representation. Our internal representation is a fancy way of saying “our thoughts” and self talk in NLP.
Then those thoughts (or internal representation) will affect our state. States are our emotions. Those emotions will undoubtably affect our physiology in conscious and unconscious ways. And that state and physiology will lead to a behaviour.
And it works the other way around too. Our behaviour affecting our physiology, physiology influencing the state, state leading to internal representations, internal representation impacting our filters and those filters interacting with the external event.
In the previous image (image 1) we can assume the journey is the same for resourceful and unresourceful behaviours.
What that image doesn’t show is how easy is to fall on the vicious cicle of low mood. For a better illustration on that topic check the image below (image 2).
(image 2)
So once we hold a state or a mood, for example lets play with the idea of a low mood. Imagine how you have routine to exercise 3 times a week, eat relatively healthy, drink water and at least sleep 6 good hours per day. But the night before your neighbour had a party. And the noise kept you awake until 4am.
The next morning, a Sunday you felt tired and stayed in bed trying to recover some sleep. On Sundays you also prep some of the food you eat during the week and while trying to get more sleep you also missed the outdoor market where you get most of your fresh produce to cook for the week. So you end up going to a smaller chain super market where you can’t find everything you wanted and in addition to that you buy some crisps, ice cream and sugary ginger beer to give you some sugar rush and energy to help you get some energy to clean the house before cooking for the week. But after you eat all that food you don’t normally eat and after the sugar rush, you feel more tired before finishing cleaning the house. And you decide you can cook tomorrow Monday after work.
The next day you have to wake up early for work, still tired from the night before and now with a headache because you didn’t drink enough water yesterday. Monday in the office is generally busier than usual and by the end of the day you don’t have enough energy to go to the gym, but when you get home your food is still waiting to be cooked and you decide to get a takeaway. You accidentally fall asleep on the couch and slept even worse than the night before… and the cycle of tiredness, avoiding what might help you continues until you decide to break it.
Now, clearly that was a rough week. The problem is sometimes we get stuck in rough weeks that turn into months and years without doing something about it until it’s late. And here is the thing, life will always have it challenges, nobody feels happy or in control all the time.
Sometimes life is a roller coaster or a wavvy ocean we are trying to navigate taking us through ups and downs. And these low moments might lead us to low moods. Even if you are aware of these ups and does you are still a human being going through the human experience. You are not broken. In fact this low mooda might be a sign that you are needing something.
When I am teaching yoga I remind my students that if they feel any sharp localised pain, to stop and evaluate… Is this dangerous? Is this a sign that I need a break? Do I need a variation on this asana?
Sharp localised pain and our low moods might have in common something: they are one way our body and mind is trying to communicate with us.
So what to do about it?
Like I’ve said it before, the key is not getting a clear answer but to ask ourselves the right question.
So if you are experiencing low mood (no matter where you are) try asking yourself and answering yourself these questions:
What was happening in the lead up to the moment you are thinking about?
What was happening just before you noticed the low mood?
What thoughts were around at the time of the low mood?
What were you focusing on?
Where did you feel that feeling in your body?
What other physical sensations did you notice?
What urges were present?
How did you act on those urges?
How did your actions/inactions influences the emotions?
How did your actions/inactions influenced your thoughts and beliefs about the situation?
Remember, even though breaking cycles of any kind can feel challenging, but it is also possible to get to a better place. There’s always hope.
There’s always hope.
If my words resonate with you and you feel the calling to seek for additional help to create resourceful habits, cultivate a healthier relationship with yourself and gain more balance in both your personal and professional life, send me a message via instagram / carlacarolinacoach@gmail.com, or book a free exploration call. I am happy to help :)