Here’s how it’s possible to use techniques to change people’s state, behaviour and the results they’re getting in their life.

The problem is never the external event. It’s the internal representation of that event. If you have a phobia of lifts, is it the lift that’s causing the phobia? No, if the lift was a problem everyone would have a phobia. So it’s the representation we need to change.

If someone says I have a problem because of something that happened when I was seven, it’s not true, because they’re an adult not a seven-year-old. And even when they were seven, the problem was not the external event, it was the internal representation.

We can’t change what happened, but we can change our internal memory. Memories are fragile. Police forces know it. They know they’ll get 30 different witness reports of an event because each of those people filter the event differently. They also know when they go back 6 months later, those same witnesses will all give a different report – and will swear the one they give today is the right one! You can’t remember something as a seven-year-old because you’re remembering it as an adult. Just your memory alone changes the way you feel, which changes the memory.

The exciting thing about NLP is it doesn’t matter where you are or what you’ve been. It matters where you want to go. We can’t change what’s happened, but where you are in your life is due to internal representation. We change it all the time naturally – all we learn with these techniques is how we can change those memories in a way that empowers us.