Using Your Brain--For a Change

This book opens a doorway to a practical new way of understanding how your mind works. More important, this book teaches specific simple principles that you can use to "run your own brain."
It teaches you how to change your own experience when you're not pleased with it, and to further enhance your enjoyment when your life is going well.
Many of us have the ability to take known principles and make useful adaptations of those principles, or make a small innovation now and then. Richard Bandler's special genius is his unparalleled ability to repeatedly delineate new principles, and to make them available to the rest of us. His sense of humor may sometimes sound caustic and arrogant, particularly when it is directed toward the professions of psychology and psychiatry (although other "experts" get their share!).

One of the basic principles of NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) is that the order or sequence of experiences, like the order of words in a sentence, affects their meaning. The order of the chapters in this book has been carefully thought out. Since much of the material in later chapters presupposes that you have the information and experiences presented in earlier chapters, you will have a much fuller understanding if you read them in order.

Close your eyes, picture a pleasant future event in your own life, and notice how the picture makes you feel. Now, brighten the picture and notice how your feelings change. Most people respond more strongly to a brighter picture. Expand your use of "submodalities" - such as bright/dim, loud/quiet, and hard/soft to achieve greater understanding of others' thought processes. You can also employ submodalities to create personal change and to assist others in achieving change. Experience Bandler's witty style while learning a variety of techniques for shifting unwanted states into desired results.

Review

Written by one of the co-originators of NLP, this is a well explained, very practical resource on how to manage your brain, rather than be at the mercy of inappropriate or unwanted reactions. I found the techniques easy to use and very effective, but I think a little background knowledge of NLP is useful before reading this book, though not essential.