You are not your behaviour

Let’s be totally honest. It is so easy for us to tell a child they are bad or naughty for doing a something wrong. It is so easy for us to say to another person they are useless or lazy because they don’t do what we expected of them. We have all done this in the past at some point. It may that our parents or teachers said these things to us and up to now it has been the only way that we have known to behave ourselves. Or maybe we were stressed at that particular point in time. One of the presuppositions we work from in NLP is that people are not their behaviour. People can change their behaviours, which is great news for us. You are not your behaviour. You can learn new strategies.

Often when we say things to somebody, that person could develop a limiting belief about them self, which can affect them their whole life. Think of a small child who has done something the parent disapproves of. Then the parent says to that child, “you will never amount to anything, you are useless and lazy. You are stupid.” These and so many other statements have caused children to start believing these things about themselves and as they get older, they are too afraid to strive for better or doing something different because they remember those words. They may have been spoken in anger or frustration and not meant, but the damage is already done. This is exactly the same if you were speaking to your spouse, staff or anybody else.

Help them change their behaviour.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe it is important to be honest and explain to somebody if their actions were not what you had expected. Of course it depends on what you believe and I am not going to go into that in this post. What I am saying though is that there is a way in which to do it. Leave the person empowered to know how to and want to change.

Let’s say the child has done something dangerous or not acted as the perfect little creatures they are. Of course as a parent you want to tell your child it was wrong and show them the right way. We all want to protect our children. Instead of telling the child that they were stupid for doing that thing, rather talk about the behaviour being not the best. That way the child will not take it personally as you are talking about a behaviour and not the child.

So as an example, you may tell them a story about a little boy or girl who did something similar and the problems it caused. How maybe they got injured or something bad happened. You can then proceed to tell them how the boy or girl discovered they had made a mistake and realized how to act or behave instead. That way your child can make the decision to change the behaviour without having been told they are stupid. Again this is also useful for adults and it will greatly enhance your communication with others as well as leave them empowered to change.

You are not your behaviour and can change.

Even if you have only known the ways of shouting and cursing, the fact that people are not their behaviours means you can change your behaviour. It also means you can be the person you want to be. So you can empower yourself by breaking free from the chains that bound you to your previous behaviour and be the person you want to be. In fact the more you empower other people, the better you will also feel about yourself and the better you feel about yourself the more you will do that for others.

You are more than your current behaviour. You are capable of so much more if you choose to be.

For more information please contact us to see how we may be able to assist.

If you can believe, then you can achieve it.