Congruence and Incongruence
Understanding and learning to recognize when you are congruent about an outcome and when you are not will likely do as much as anything to move you in the direction you want to go. When you are really congruent about an outcome, motivation is a given. Like the famous W. H. Murray quote about committment, “All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.”
Basically, when you are congruent about an outcome you have set your perception to recognize and navigate you towards “all manner of…assistance” that you might have easily overlooked. In fact, if you think back for just a few moments you'll probably remember times when you just plain overlooked an opportunity that was right in front of you.
Being congruent about your outcomes (and values, and evidence) is like already having your umbrella upside down when it starts raining money.
Here's a little bit about recognizing congruence within yourself.
Modalities and Sub modalities
Modalities, or our representational systems, are simply fancy words for our five senses. The special words refer to the special ways we use them to better understand how we form our thoughts and feelings, and with our thoughts and feelings, our internal or subjective worlds. Recognizing the modalities you prefer in different contexts and situations can go a long way to help you feel more comfortable in a variety of environments. Likewise recognizing those in others can help them feel more comfortable with you, and vice versa, something we will go into a lot more in Section 2.
Submodalities are the qualities our modalities possess. How they are arranged reflects and influences our feelings and our responses. They are like the molecules of emotion. Perhaps more NLP processes have been created using Submodalities than any other NLP Model. For instance, examples are the submodalities of taste: sweet, sour, bitter, salt, and umami. In NLP we most frequently use and refer to the sub-modalities of Vision, Hearing, and Feeling.
Introducing Submodalities with Steve Andreas
3 Key Modalities and Sub-modalities Quick Reference Guide
To experiment with changing your state and experience, refer to the Bonus Activities for this Chapter (in part 2-10).
|Sense||Processing Involved||Sub-modalities To Experiment With|
|Seeing||Visual (V)||• Brightness||• Contrast|
|• Clarity||• 3-D vs. Flat|
|• Color vs. Black & White||• Movie vs. Still|
|• Associated vs. Disassociated||• Frame vs. Panorama|
|Hearing||Auditory (A)||• Pitch||• Volume|
|• Tonality||• Rhythm|
|• Distance||• Clarity|
|Feeling||Kinesthetic (K)||• Location||• Pressure|
|• Intensity||• Temperature|
|• Duration||• Movement|
|• Shape||• Texture|
And when you have an undesirable behavior that you want to change, you can experiment with the Godiva Chocolate Pattern to reduce its power.
The Godiva Chocolate Pattern
This pattern demonstrates the power of sub-modalities and it’s especially useful for changing your feelings about getting and staying motivated to do tasks that you have congruently decided you want/need to accomplish, but don't presently enjoy doing – like cleaning out the garage, balancing your checkbook or exercising regularly. Carefully choose what you wish for and be mindful of ecology. You don't want to install an intense desire to do random or silly things.
Get Ready: Establish a benchmark of your current state.
- Think about the task you want to do, but are struggling with.
- On a scale of 1-10 (10 being you feel really resistant to doing this), rate your resistance.
Step 1: Create a compulsion picture.
- Get an associated picture of something you're wildly compulsed to enjoy, for instance, chocolate. Remember, viewing the picture in an associated way means you are in the picture seeing the object of desire.
Break this state by reciting your phone number backwards.
Step 2: Create a task picture.
- Get a disassociated picture of yourself doing something you have congruently decided you need/want to do (so you may as well enjoy it!). When viewing the disassociated image, you are outside the picture seeing yourself doing the task over there.
Step 3: Conduct an ecology check.
- Is there any part of you that objects to your enjoying doing this task (that you have decided you need to do)? If so, reframe objections by contextualizing or just choose a different task for the exercise.
Step 4. Godiva! (Go for it):
- Hold picture #2 (Task) in your mind, with picture #1 (Pleasure) right behind it.
- Quickly open up a small hole in the center of picture #2, so that you can see picture #1 through this hole.
- Rapidly make the hole as big as you need to in order to get a full kinesthetic response to picture #1.
- Now shrink that hole down fast, but only as fast as you can maintain that feeling response to picture #1.
- Repeat each of the actions in Step 4 three to five more times.
The desired outcome is to attach the positive feelings of picture #1 to picture #2. How do you feel now?
Choosing What Your Day Will Be Like
Remember these five questions to frame your day with?
- What am I looking forward to today?
- Longer term, what am I looking forward to?
- Am I doing things that lead me directly to my outcome?
- Am I being my best friend and supporter right now?
- Am I present in my body here and now, feeling what I feel, seeing what I see, hearing what I hear, and enjoying the gift of being alive?
At first I found it easier to remember to check in with these when I had them on an index card next to my alarm clock, so they literally were the first frames I set for myself in the morning. After a while I found having them propped in front of my monitor worked better. Maybe you check in with your laptop first, or your phone is your alarm. Put them in a document or note that opens when you wake it in the morning. Try it for a week and see what a difference it makes for you. Then you might enjoy coming up with your own versions – and feel free to share them with us!