You’re driving to work in the morning. If you’re like me, you always take the same route from home to your office. We’re like monkeys: totally conditioned to repeat tasks in the same way, every time.

The cool thing about this is how economical it is. You don’t really have to think. You put yourself on auto-pilot, head off to Bermuda in your mind, and your unconscious mind takes care of everything for you.

And so you’re cruising along on the way, daydreaming of sun and waves, and snapping your fingers to call the waiter who instantly brings you a…

KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!

Right in front of you, a giant sequoia collapses onto the road, completely obstructing your path. You feel yourself slamming on the brakes and the car comes to a screeching halt as the tires try to grasp to the road.

And for a few minutes, you have absolutely no clue as to what happened or what you’re doing.

Now, your unconscious doesn’t know how to respond. It’s awaiting instructions either from your conscious mind or from someone who’s conscious.

The Power Interrupt NLP Technique

Our unconscious excels at running patterns or programs automatically. This frees our conscious resources to ponder other matters while we perform certain activities unconsciously.

This sometimes can present a problem when trying to change your own or someone else’s habitual patterns of thought, emotion or behavior. You want to change but your unconscious keeps doing the same thing over and over and over.

What the heck do you do?

Here’s the key principle that allows you to make changes in your behavior:

The unconscious mind sucks at making a decision. That skill belongs to the conscious mind.

And herein lies the power of the pattern interrupt. And this is your opportunity to leverage the Pattern Interrupt NLP Technique.

To force the unconscious mind into “decision-awaiting mode,” you have to send it into a tailspin.

You have to break the habitual flow of how things happen, and force it to get into “what now?” mode.

It’s at the time of the pattern interrupt that you can insert changes into the unconscious’s programming.

When the unconscious is saying to you “Ok, what do you want me to do now?

At that point, there’s space for you to insert new instructions.

Now, let’s practice

Drill 1 – Interrupt your own pattern

1. Choose a behavior you’d like to change that you normally perform automatically, without thinking.
2. Observe how the pattern runs, what is its route.
3. Create a pattern interrupt that has nothing to do with the behavior. If you bite your nails, the pattern interrupt might be to jump up and down, or rub your nose intensely. If you eat every time you watch TV, the pattern interrupt might be to think of cow poop every time you open the fridge. Come up with a pattern interrupt that will jolt you like a tree falling in front of your car.
4. When you notice the pattern running, use your pattern interrupt repeatedly.
5. Observe what happens to the pattern.

Drill 2 – Interrupt someone else’s pattern

1. Observe someone who has a habitual pattern that you’d like to play with.
2. Create a neat pattern interrupt. For instance, if your mother or wife eats butter every morning, without thinking about it, use blue food coloring to change the butter’s color. If your child has been curious about playing with electrical outlets, have some balloons ready at hand; pop them anytime (s)he approaches an outlet.
3. Observe what happens to the pattern.

Tagged as: NLP Persuasion, NLP Techniques, NLP Training, pattern interrupt nlp