Mind Over Matter

There are some things that you discover and just go, “That really exists?!”. The following is one of such, for me.

While working, I came across a term in one of the training programme notes organized by the company, NLP. After Googling it, I realised that it was really quite a fancy acronym for something that basically meant Hypnosis. Yes, the power of unlocking minds and using the hidden potential. I don’t know about you, but it seems scary to me.

NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming. From it’s quite scientific, technical sounding name, you would have hardly thought it could mean something as dubious as hypnotherapy. From what I’ve read, its methods are even used in sales. As if the methods they use aren’t sneaky enough.

Here’s a bit of what I read that I couldn’t get out of my mind.

It was describing a method in which salespeople can use to garner positive response from the customer. When the salesperson has made the customer laugh at something, he/she can put his/her finger lightly on the arm of the customer, for 2 seconds. Why 2 seconds? Because that’s typically how long the laughter would last, any longer and the customer may be disturbed. (See? They have even got this down to a science.)
After repeating the process effectively for some time, when the salesperson just touches his/her finger lightly on the customer’s arm, it is said to invoke the same positive response and the customer would laugh, regardless of whether what the salesperson said is really that amazingly funny.

This method involves the using of what is called in psychology, “Anchoring”. I’ll quote from Wikipedia..

Anchoring is a neuro-linguistic programming term for the process by which memory recall, state change or other responses become associated with (anchored to) some stimulus, in such a way that perception of the stimulus (the anchor) leads by reflex to the anchored response occurring.

So what now? Are you telling me that the power of sub-conscious is so strong that I can be affected without even being aware of it? That’s a very scary thought.

What if the leaders of the world became masters at this methods of “hypnosis”, could they effectively brainwash an entire population? What if people could be suckered into buying a car they couldn’t afford through this? What if someone who meant to harm could drive another person into depression which led to suicide?

It all sounds a little vague here, but there’s actually a lot of “mind programming” going on in our lives, whether or not we are aware of it. The mass media, advertisements, propaganda. I need not say more.

Well, there are some benefits if you can properly apply NLP and put it to good, ethical use. It seems quite extensive, and the methods basically relate to psychology. Like mind over matter, “telling yourself you can do it, then you can do it”, all those.

I admit that I do not fully understand this topic yet, and if there are any factual errors in my post, I'm terribly sorry. However, I still would take anything I hear about like this with a pinch of salt. It’s a dangerous world out there, watch your back.