How To Use The Swish Pattern To Change Any Unwanted Feelings

The Swish Pattern is an NLP Technique that enables you to change the way you feel in any situation. For instance, if you always feel nervous as you are about to stand up and make a presentation the Swish Pattern will enable you to feel excited and positive as you are about to stand up. Imagine the powerful effect that such feelings will have on your behaviour as you present!

Or if you find it difficult to make a start on writing reports the Swish Pattern will enable you to feel energetic and positive as you commence your report. Or you may suffer from a loss of confidence whenever you have to explain things to senior managers or clients. The Swish Pattern will enable you to feel completely confident the moment you see a senior person.

The Benefit of The Swish Pattern

Basically the Swish Pattern is a simple way of permanently replacing an unwanted emotional response with a positive and powerful emotional response. The benefit being that your behaviour will be highly impressive in situations where previously you have under-performed.

How To Make The Swish Pattern Work For You

Follow these 5 steps. Make absolutely certain that you do not miss out any stage of any step. You will then be able to change any unwanted feelings and behaviours whenever you whish.

Step 1 – decide what you want to change: Choose a single behavioural problem that you would like to change. Perhaps feeling nervous when making a presentation.

Step 2 – discover what sets you off: Locate the Trigger that automatically causes you to feel the unwanted feelings. You don’t choose to feel and act in this way in this situation, it just automatically happens.

A good way to identify the Trigger is to imagine yourself teaching someone else to feel and behave in the unwanted way. Help them to find a Trigger to spark off the unwanted feeling and behaviour. This will probably be a mental picture of some sort or perhaps it will be a sound or just the sudden appearance of a feeling.

What pictures, sounds and feelings do you have to experience in order to be absolutely certain that you will behave in the undesired way. This is your old response picture. Make sure that you have it clear in your mind.

Break State – do something different for a short while in order to stop yourself thinking, picturing and feeling about the issue that you are seeking to change. Stand up, sit down, wave your arms around, answer an e-mail – anything to take your mind off the subject for a short while.

Step 3 – decide how you would love to feel and behave: Choose the way you would like to feel and behave in the situation you are seeking to change. Your aim here is to create a self-image of you feeling and behaving in an outstanding way in the situation. The image you are looking for is compelling, larger than life.

For instance you might see yourself presenting to an audience of strangers all of whom are constantly  nodding their approval of your ideas and clapping spontaneously at regular intervals. Create an image that makes you feel wonderful!

Now ramp up the image. Make it much bigger. Add colour. Make it clearer. Make it brighter. Add sounds, fanfares, music, applause. Add more and more until you are feeling absolutely sensational.

Now double the size of the picture. Double the brightness of the colours. Double the loudness of the sounds. Double your feelings. Fill your mind with all the wonderful images, colours, sounds and feelings. This is your new response picture.

Break State – once again distract yourself from the task in which you have been engaged. Stroke the cat, make a cup of tea, look out of the window.

Step 4 – Swish to create your permanent new response: You are about to take your old response step 2 and replace it permanently with your new response step 3.

Imagine that you are in a 3D cinema. You are sitting in the front row.

Picture your old response picture filling the screen in front of you. Make the picture of your behaviour and feelings big and bright. Fill in all the details. Associate your feelings with this picture.

Now, introduce your new response picture. Make it postage stamp size. Place this small, yet exciting picture, in the bottom right hand corner of the picture of your old response on the imaginary cinema screen in front of you. Do not yet associate your feelings with this picture.

Get ready to Swish.

Start to move the small, postage stamp sized picture of your new response, away from you, far back into the horizon of the cinema screen. Keep moving it away until it is just a tiny speck in the far distance.

Now, as if you are using a powerful cannon, fire the small picture straight towards you in full 3D effect. As your new response picture grows larger and larger, nearer and nearer, so it passes the old picture that it receding into the distance. As the new picture envelops you and impacts you in full 3D, associate yourself with all the feelings and colours and sounds that are surrounding you.

Feel the power of all those feelings in all the fibres of your being. See all of the colours in full glorious technicolor, hear all the sounds in Dolby surround sound. Marvel at the wonderful feelings that the new you is experiencing. Revel in the joy of being that person. Know that this is how you will feel in this situation for the rest of your life.

Break State

Step 5 – make the new response permanent: Human beings are creatures of habit. Good habits save us from having to think what to do. When we have good habits we can carry out simple tasks, like driving our car, on auto-pilot. We learn habits by the process of repetition.

So the easy way to learn your new response pattern is by repeating the Swish Pattern  at least ten times. The more often you repeat this exercise the more quickly the new pattern will become automatic and permanent.

If you want help with this exercise in order to make permanent changes in your response patterns, please feel free to contact me for a brief session and I will make sure that you master it correctly.

To learn more about how to use NLP to improve the quality of your life please read the articles in the NLP techniques category.