Are NLP and mindfulness compatible?

Can they work together?

The answer is yes, and in this post I will show you how…

Mindfulness is a wonderful state of being to be in. being very much in the present moment allows you to be keenly present and aware. 

There is something about conscious awareness that brings immediate calming and healing effects.
This is of course something that has been known for thousands of years.

Mindfulness can be achieved in a number of ways, meditation, observant practice, music and chanting and dance are all gateways to the ‘moment’. Hypnosis is also worth mentioning as a great tool, trance states are really the ultimate in being ‘here and now’.

How does NLP fit into this?

NLP is the study of the structure of subjective experience and knowing NLP opens up an understanding of how your inner life works.

When we understand the principles of how our inner life is structured, we can then of course start to change things to make them even more effective.

What happens when you combine NLP and mindfulness?

With the precision awareness that NLP provides, your conscious attention can find its way into so much more of your inner world. This means that you can extend healing to areas of your psyche that have always been outside of your awareness.

How NLP and Mindfulness Can Work Together

NLP provides an excellent structure for mindful awareness.
When using NLP a state of mindful awareness is generated, which focusses the attention.

More specifically…

1. NLP teaches that we all process information in modalities. In other words our information is represented in visual, auditory and kinesthetic (see, hear, feel) terms. (You can read more about modalities in our article Primary Representational Systems)
Being aware of this allows you to focus in on a particular internal image, sound or feeling for keener awareness.

2. NLP language patterns, such as the NLP meta model, provide a deepening opportunity for mindfulness practitioners. For example, when you become mindful of your self-talk, you can use NLP inspired questions to deepen your self-knowledge and insight.

3. NLP Submodalities provide an amazing way to capture the unique details of your inner world. When you apply NLP submodality distinctions to your awareness, you will realize details of your experience that you have never considered before, which greatly expands your mindfulness potential.

These three points represent tremendous healing opportunity – and more potential to explore mindfulness than you’ve ever had – or could ever have – without NLP training tools at your disposal.

Want to know how to increase your willpower?

The great news is it doesn’t require years of study in the mystic arts for you to increase your willpower. If you apply the following 3 NLP tips to increase your willpower consistently, you will find your motivation and willpower increasing a little more each day.

First, what is willpower?

Willpower refers to your level of motivation to make the conscious choices that serve you best. It’s that simple.

Willpower is the motivation to make healthy, conscious choices for yourself.

The opposite of willpower is to just follow whatever whims you may dream up as you go along, which can quite often be a source of self-sabotage. We need to know how to increase willpower to make course corrections manually.

Following these three NLP tips will increase your willpower, making you more effective in getting the results you want. 

1. Start by identifying something small that you’d like to achieve every day.

Keep it simple, such as write for five minutes in your diary, or meditate for 10 minutes, or exercise for 20 minutes. Make it easy to do.

If you bite off more than you can chew, you might activate resistance to making the right choice. Once you get going, you can always choose to increase the effort. For now, you just want to make it easy to get started. 

2. Reward yourself on the inside when you do it.

It’s important to feel good when you make good choices. Develop a simple system to congratulate yourself and feel positive when you succeed. For example, when you succeed, you might recite a simple affirmation:

My willpower is increasing and it feels great!

You don’t need to use these exact words, but making sure you recognize the effort you have put in and allowing yourself a feeling of being rewarded is an important part of the process.

If you don’t allow yourself to feel good after exercising your willpower, then you are less likely to exercise it in the future.

This sort of overlaps with the general principle of “be nice to yourself”. Develop a healthy and affirmative inner voice and treat yourself well, which includes congratulating yourself on a job well done.

On a slight side note, I once worked with a client who told me he never managed to get anything done. I questioned the “anything” part of the statement. (Which is called a universal quantifier in NLP terminology, see our article on the meta model for more information.).

I invited him to notice something that he was doing well, no matter how small, and to consciously congratulate himself on the achievement he had made. we set a target of just one thing a day. Before he knew it his inner voice, his self-talk, had become so much more positive and he started noticing all the other things that he was doing well.

Rather than focussing on a vague sense of not getting ‘anything’ done at all his life started to become much more positive. 

3. When you fail, be honest with yourself, without self-criticism.

Failure is part of the process. Don’t be afraid to fail. And never criticize yourself for failing. Just be honest.
(See The Presuppositions of NLP)

For example, you might say to yourself.

I failed today. It’s part of the process. I’ll begin anew tomorrow.

Self-criticism for failing will motivate you away from willpower. It attaches negative feelings to the effort.

It’s all about using your conscious intention – that’s what willpower is!

And remember – there is no failure – only feedback.

If for some reason you didn’t manage to achieve what you wanted then figure out why. That’s where the learning is, learning how not to do it is sometimes just as important as learning how to.

Bonus tip: Begin by choosing a limited time period within which you will work on your willpower. This simplifies the effort. For example, choose to work on a specific new behaviour for a period of just five days. Short time frames reduce the potential overwhelm that can come with really large goals. (For more about goals see our article goal setting)  When your five days are up, celebrate and renew the effort! 

Give these NLP tips a go!

With these 3 NLP tips to increase your willpower, you will start to see positive change happening and your results in life improving.