Have you heard someone say, “I know how they are” or “I know what will happen”? This is the “knowing” we’re talking about. In NLP, we call it “Mind Reading” and in the extreme it is actually a subtle clue in the language of insane people. It’s absolutely not possible to know the future in any way. At least not yet. You can see how knowing is a problem!

If you find yourself feeling stuck, check out if you are “knowing” what the future holds. Especially if you feel stuck in a particular relationship. Does your ego-mind think it knows how the other person is and that they won’t ever change? Well, that means YOUR ego-mind won’t let them change, you won’t see it, because then you’d wrong, and wrong means dead to the monkey mind.

I’ve been teaching people for years to practice holding a space for being joyfully surprised. Instead of thinking you know your spouse, hold out the possibility they might catch you off guard and surprise you in a great way. Maybe your husband will give you a complement even though your mind “knows” (past) he hasn’t in years. It’s NOT expectation. It’s just saying “no” to the insanity of the monkey mind “knowing” the future.

I’ve seen magic happen! People have had money come in when they dropped “knowing” that no money was coming in. I’ve heard of spouses surprised with a night out on the town or just a peck on the cheek for no reason. It’s not only an example of Law of Attraction but really a deep embrace of the fact that life is a complete mystery, and so is everything around us. When your mind start looking for the good in life, you will actually be able to see it when it shows up.

Back in 1975, the first book on NLP was published exploring the magic of assisting people to notice how their language distorts their model of the world and causes challenges. Insane patients could quickly start to become healthy just by fixing their language! This discovery profoundly changed the world of therapy and it’s now common place in any great personal development work.

There are about a dozen different problems with language that get our minds stuck. Three of them are the real source of the deepest trouble:

1. Cause-effect – “You make me mad.” (One thing causes another, but not possible in reality.)
2. Mind Reading – “I know what you’re going to say.” (Claiming that one knows what another’s thoughts or feelings are.)
3. Nominalization – “The communication [from ‘communicate’] in this company is poor." (Turning a verb into an abstract noun. You can’t point to a “communication” so it’s tough to change.)

Notice yourself when you talk or think. Do you speak like this at all? Share this with your friends and help each other banish this kind of language. It’s like magic how people wake up when you GENTLY guide them to stop using this language.

Parents, your children’s life-long happiness depends on you learning to correct your own language! They learn English from you and also these mistakes of English which distort reality. Wonder why your kid has trouble? Did you teach them odd language?

Watch politicians and political media and you’ll see this language more than we’ve seen in years. For example, saying that one person could “destroy America” is cause-effect and nominalization. America is a vast & complex global organism with checks and balances that will exist over hundreds of years. It’s not a tiny thing one can point to and “destroying” it next to impossible. Using language like this unfortunately works because it drives a certain amount of distortion leading to insanity. This is why we see more people becoming angry and irrational. Insane people are typically taught to be insane.

You can click the post comment link and share some examples we can all learn from.