The Snowball Effect
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Everything Affects Everything Else’s…
The snowball effect is one of the concepts that have revolutionized my life. Once I understood this concept, I took a whole new perspective, a much more powerful and in-control position.
The Snowball Effect principles:
1. For every cause there’s an effect; for every effect there’s a cause.
2. If you change an effector in a system, the whole operation of that system could change.
3. Because of principles #1 and #2, if you change an early memory (an effector), it will change the meaning of all the related and inter-connected memories that comes after that one.
The illustration to the right shows the Snowball Effect in a very simple situation. It begins with the first event. As a reasonably simple example, let’s say, the memory is of the first time you were touching the hot stove. That original experience induced a reaction from you. Most likely, you pulled your hand back quite fast and started screaming “mommy”. This is an emotional and physiological reaction, so the event is quite memorable Now comes the tricky part – the “learning”.
A normal baby (i.e. A baby without any genetic disorders) would have this memory “imprinted” in his mind. Now, of course, it does not mean that he won’t touch the hot stove again tomorrow, but for the first few minutes of the event – the hot stove is the “no touch” zone and mommy is his saver.
Eventually, and hopefully quite fast, in your baby mind’s neurology there would be formed a firm link (in mine it’s quite a massive one, I never touched a hot stove again) between the visual stimulus of the stove (with the light on, most likely) and the “pull hand back” reaction. That link is called a “learning”.

But that’s ancient past, isn’t it?
The days go by, and you’re growing up. At about age 5 (give or take a few days), you smell the sweet and enticing smell of readily baked home made cookies. I know, there is no bakery in the world that can compete with your mom’s sweets. My wife, though, is quite close to it…
Anyway! You’re 5 years old, you smell the cookies and you are drawn to the kitchen by a mysterious force. You can only think about enjoying the sweets, savoring the taste of the hot cookie in your mouth… and ruin your appetite for dinner. But lord and behold! The cookies are still being cooked… in that “evil” hot stove!
Event number one was touching the stove when you were a baby. Event number two is your desire to eat a cookie, seeing the stove is still ON.
The reaction/learning from the time you were a baby causes a reaction when you’re 5 years old. That new reaction is simply “keep your hand away! Danger! Danger!”. The thought of eating the cookie is not that motivating for you to risk being burned. Even though you don’t remember that first event, when you did get burn from touching a hot stove, your mind reacts as if you did. You do not need consciously to remember a situation for it to affect you for the rest of your life.
Our simple example does not end there, though. Now you are equipped with 2 learnings, and as you grow older your mind will maintain that link (“hot stove” –> “pain, danger, stay away”) thicker and stronger. There were just about a million chances for you to touch a hot stove, but you didn’t…. All of these decisions were made out of one “bad” experience, that caused a snowball of reaction-learning throughout your life.
Now, touching a hot stove is nothing like being raped or mugged or humiliated in some other way. But that simple example shows you how one relatively small occurrence can affect your decisions for the long run.
What if we took that “baby touch stove, ouch” memory away? Would it change the linked events later on? Yes, it would. The bad news are, that if this memory is your only actual reference for not touching a hot stove – once you remove it, you remove your inhibition from touching hot stoves!
The good news are, that it is rarely the case with such important learnings. There are very few people who have been mugged more than once or twice… so once you remove the original reaction, they should have no problem interacting with strangers without fear. Is it useful? Well, it depends on the person and on the situation, but this is how it works eventually. You take out one original event memory, and meanings of the linked events are changed as well. That’s a snowball effect.
So, using your example… as a parent, what is the best way to teach a toddler not to touch the stove? I have two boys just about getting ready to crawl. I’m sure my parents did alot of “No!, don’t touch that.!”, etc. Is there some NLP approach that can be useful with teaching youing children to avoid experimenting with things that are harmful to them?
With babies I’d say it’s a problem, since the child is too young to remember such corrections. So the best approach with toddlers is to keep an eye on them at all time… with children around 3 or 4 years old you can teach “by example”. When they look at you pretend you’re about to check the hot oven and snap “ouch!”, shaking your hand up and down and pretending to feel pain… that’s a visual anchor for them, of course it needs to be repeated after a couple of days to reinforce the learning. That’s how I would approach it.
Is there any book or articles on implementing NLP in parenting? I would really love to spare my children all the limiting beliefs and confusion installing.
Also, how do you implement NLP in learning? I have a feeling that my 5 yr old has a different learning style that what is being used in the system. How do I figure out the easiest way for her to learn?
Does NLP have bad effects???? MY teacher told me that NLP was that of a hypnotherapy that he hated so much…. She said that some people having experimenting NLP to draw out his soul from their body had lost the way to return to their body…. It’s like something serious… Is that true???
nlp has the intension for helping people. nlp does not such things as you say. A hypnotherapyst should always respect the “free will” of people.
-btw:a out of body expirience exsists only in the brain, its a disorientation problem in the brain.
There are lessons that need to be learned, better the child has a small fall from the playground to experience gravity than a huge leap off a building later on. Sometimes we try to protect them too much. IMHO