Dr Richard Bandler’s unique approach to thinking and life has made a massive mark on modernday life. Here are some of his deeply inspiring quotes, to give you a whole new way of encountering the world.
1) Do you want to know a good way to fall in love? Just associate with all your pleasant experiences with someone, and disassociate from all the unpleasant ones.
Bandler’s view of NLP includes association – that is – experiencing emotions feelings and internal thoughts more closely and with more intensity, and disassociation – a means of distancing yourself from thoughts. By learning to do this, you can get hold of your emotions, rather than be a victim of them.
2) The greatest personal limitation is to be found not in the things you want to do and can’t, but in the things you’ve never considered doing.
Richard Bandler is always looking to see what’s missing from a person’s model of the world. Very often, it’s in what’s missing that the tools needed to change and overcome limitations can be found.
3) The best thing about the past is that it’s over. The best thing about the future is that it’s yet to come. The best thing about the present is that it’s here now.
Richard loves to remind us we are living in the now, and don’t have to be controlled by our pasts. This quote is great fun, because it plays with the word present. After all, life is a gift.
4) If you say to yourself ‘It’s difficult to get up in the morning’, ‘It’s hard to cease smoking’, then you are already using hypnotic suggestions on yourself…
Hypnosis is one of the key tools in Richard Bandler’s approach to personal change. Rather than being a mysterious process, Richard believes we’re continually shifting through different emotional and trance states. Some of our deepestheld beliefs are deeply held because we’ve already associated a particular trance – one of certainty and fixedness – to the things we tell ourselves. Reality, however, is different to what we think!
5) You know what ? Certain people think they will feel good if certain things happen… The trick is : you have to feel good for no reason…
Taking charge of your emotions by keeping good feelings available as a resource at any time is great fun. Richard Bandler teaches how to do that, so you too can “feel good for no reason…”
6) Remember, it’s your own body, your own brain. You’re not a victim of the universe, you are the universe.
A central part of NLP is the notion that you are in charge of your mind. Richard loves to remind you that “you’re driving the bus”. Even more, because your whole experience of the universe is processed only through your subjective experience, in many ways, actually, you are the universe!
7) If you can’t enjoy what you have, you can’t enjoy more of it.
The mindset of suffering in some people means they have no idea how to get the good things in life. If they had success, or money, or all the other things they crave, they just wouldn’t know what to do with them. The secret is to learn to live skilfully with what you’ve got – and to move on from there.
Aren’t they great quotes?
