Recall some pleasant experience from your past. Various things will pop into your mind, whatever pops up in your mind, allow yourself to go with that memory for now. If you don't seem to find such a memory, then allow yourself to simply imagine a pleasant experience. For some people, closing the eyes helps in this process. Once you have this pleasant experience, permit it to remain in your awareness.

Now that you have this pleasant thought in mind just notice its visual aspects. As you recall the experience, what specifically do you see? Notice the picture of the memory. If you do not visualize well, then imagine what the pleasant experience feels like. Or, allow yourself to just listen to some pleasant sounds words or music enjoy that kind of an internal pleasant experience.

Now that you have the picture of the memory, make the picture larger. Let it double in size... and then let that picture double... Notice what happens. When you make the picture bigger, what happens? Do the feelings intensify?

Now shrink the picture. Make it smaller and smaller. Allow it to become so small you can hardly see it... Stay with that a moment... Does the intensity of the feelings decrease? Experiment now with making the picture bigger and then smaller. When you make it smaller, do your feelings decrease? And when you make it larger, do your feelings increase? If so, then running the pictures (sounds, feelings) in your awareness in this way functions as it does for most people. However, you may have a different experience. Did you? No big deal. We all code our experiences in our minds uniquely and individually. Now, put your picture of that pleasant experience back in a format where you find it most comfortable and acceptable. Maintaining the same picture now, move the picture closer to you. Just imagine that the picture begins to move closer and closer to you, and notice that it will. What happens to your feelings as it does? ... Move the picture farther away. What happens when you move the picture farther away? Do your feelings intensify when you move the picture closer? Do your feelings decrease when you move the picture farther away? Most people find this true for the way their consciousness/neurology works. When you moved the picture farther away, the feeling probably decreased. Notice that as you change the mental representation in your mind of the experience, your feelings change. This, by the way, describes how we can "distance" ourselves from experiences, does it not?

Suppose you experiment with the color of the picture? As you look at your pictures, do you see them in color or black-and-white? If your pictures have color, make them black-and-white, and vice versa if you have them coded as black-and-white When you change the color, do your feelings change?

Consider the focus of your images: in focus or out of focus? Do you see an image of yourself in the picture or do you experience the scene as if looking out of your own eyes? What about the quality of your image: in three dimensional (3D) form or flat (2D)? Does it have a frame around it or do you experience it as panoramic? Experiment by changing how you represent the experience. Change the location of the picture. If you have it coded as on your right, then move it to your left.

Debriefing The Experience

Did it ever occur to you that you could change your feelings by changing how you internally represent an experience? The strength of NLP lies in these very kinds of processes of the mind. NLP works primarily with mental processes rather than with content. Here you have changed how you feel about an experience by changing the quality and structure of your images, not their content. Thus, you made the changes at the mental process level while leaving the content the same.