By: Shlomo Vaknin, C.Ht

Let’s actually imagine something and see if you get the same thing; the same sense of properly placed senses as you did in real life. Let’s see if, in a visualization, you are the center of properly placed senses.

First, pick a situation that is challenging for you, and involves another person, like having an argument with someone… Imagine yourself in that challenging situation. First, consider what you are seeing. Is your vision 100% exactly where it would be if you were really there, or would you say it is placed a little off from where it should be? Or do you find yourself looking at yourself. That kind of thing is not aligned with the first per-ceptual position is it? If vision is not coming from the right place, then it is not coming to you in the way that you experience vision in real life.

Let’s try this with hearing. In the imaginary and challenging situation, imagine the sounds you might hear in the situation or add some appropriate sounds… Do they feel that they are coming to you in the same position for real hearing does?

Imagine what the person might say to you… If they are saying what you are thinking, or saying things that are really how YOU feel about yourself, or what YOU feel insecure about, then you are hearing your own thoughts from a different perceptual position. But in the first position, your thoughts should come from where they normally would, not from someone else.

But this can be tricky, especially if you tend to project, that is, if you tend to feel like other people are think-ing things ABOUT you that actually come FROM you. If you are very self-conscious, that’s probably what’s happening, but without you knowing it; it’s a subconscious habit.

When people discover this, NLP has just given them a huge gift; the gift of regaining their power in rela-tionships; power that comes from owning their own thoughts. When you are fully aligned, your internal auditory digital, that is, your verbal thoughts, will be placed so that they very much belong to you and help you feel connected and grounded. You can’t feel shy or self-conscious in that state; a fully aligned state.

You can do the same thing with feelings. Do you have emotions in this challenging situation? Tension? Any other feelings? If you are aligned, they are coming from the part of your body that they should come from. But if your kinesthetic rep system is not aligned, then your feelings may seem to be coming from elsewhere. They might be a little off, or way off, like when you project feelings onto someone else.

A more common problem, though, is when people pick up other people’s feelings as their own. This makes a person too easy to manipulate. Con artists, addicts, and other destructive people are drawn to these overly empathic individuals. Codependence involves this problem of being at the mercy of other people’s feelings.

To sum up, when all your rep systems are in the same perceptual position, you see, hear, and feel your senses in the right physical location. If you are imagining yourself in the first perceptual position, then it is like you are actually in your own body, looking through your own eyes. You feel grounded or connected, even more powerful as an individual.