How to Avoid the Uncertainty Principle (changing Outcome by Measuring It) when Practicing NLP?

Hi all,

I've been hit with a bit of a dilemma here. I was reading Richard Bandler's new book, and it was going through an exercise about beliefs, which involves visualizing a sunrise. The book goes on to ask where the image was (was it to the left? to the right? up at the top? etc.) Now, here's the thing... And this is just an example... but when I visualize something, it's basically "just there" (as if I were looking straight at it). I don't think I visualize things at different locations (as if I were channel surfing and watching another channel on some corner of the TV), it's always as if I'm watching.

In fact, I've seen exercises where they tell you to think about someone you care about, and someone you can't stand, and then notice the different locations, and how difficult it is to squeeze the two images together into the same location. I was never able to reproduce any of those things.

And it eventually hit me... could it be that I'm changing my actual perceptions by reading about them? When the book asked, "is the sun at the top? to the left?....." in that sort of language, I started visualizing it in all those positions, and it kinda crossed my wires.

Or, another example: While reading about eye accessing cues, I was trying to see if by thinking of a sound, or an image, my eyes would naturally feel like moving in some direction, and again... nothing.

I have a feeling that by consciously focusing on what my internal representations are like, I might be hiding them by mixing in some noise, so to speak. Does anyone have advice on how to learn this stuff without having Heisenberg stuff up my plans?

thanks!

You're thinking about it too much. Use whatever locations you think you have (and "straight ahead" is a location, too). Play around with it. Experiment with different locations. They are your perceptions, you decide how you want to relate to them. You are kind of thinking in the right direction, tho... these exercises rely, in a sense, on (metaphorically speaking) collapsing the state vector. Your delineation of submodality data, in a sense, makes it so.

Thanks for the reply!

You lost me on the state vector part, though.

In quantum physics it is considered that a subatomic particle (or wave) exists as probability until you measure it, at which time you "collapse the state vector" and it then appears to have a definite state. (In extremely simplified terms.) The same seems to hold true for our perceptions and submodalities - an image has no location until you perceive that it does.


What you choose, imagine, or notice the location of your representations to be - is what it "becomes."

Ah, you were still on the analogy, nice. OK, so assuming that working with any collapsed state is effective, I suppose it should be fine!