In Core Transformations, Andreas and Andreas identify five core values: Being, Inner Peace, Love, OK-ness, and Oneness. Values are inherently hierarchial, with some things being of greater value than others.
Values can be either positive (something desired) or negative (something to be avoided). Your being more effective in motivating patients and clients is often based on your ability to elicit and appeal to a more important value than the one that had been previously in operation around a behavior or habit.
When people talk, they usually indicate the value or importance of items either with the language they use (want, need, must have) or by tonal marking, putting increased emphasis on certain words and phrases. They may also indicate relative importance with gestures, showing that the higher value is also higher in their visual plane. (Healing with Language, p. 132 ff)
Eliciting values is easy for you to do when you ask your patient or client the question, “What does that do for you?” For example, asking the question of a person who smokes may produce responses about relaxation. Asking the question again about the benefit or relaxation, “What does that do for you?” will provide additional insight into the values that shaped the behavior. You might hear something like, “It keeps me from killing my boss.”
Health may be valued over money, but money is sometimes valued over health. This is seen when a patient or client will stay with a treatment that is not working because it is covered by insurance.
Conflicting values produce a loss of congruence, in our individual lives, in our organizations, and even in our culture. The lack of congruence typically leads to internal conflict.
A woman in a Buddhist nation was involved in a law suit against an extremely popular religious leader. When she was asked by a news reporter if her filing the law suit was a violation of the spiritual principle of letting go, she responded with, “I am letting go. I am letting go of fear and intimidation. I am letting go of embarrassment and humiliation.” Values become clear in the responses to the questions. Awareness of core values opens the door to greater possibilities for health and well-being.
Send your questions about how other-than-conscious communication skills can hurt or help your patients and clients to Joel P. Bowman (Joel@SCS-Matters.com) or Debra Basham (Debra@SCS-Matters.com), co-developers of Subtle Communication Systems. We will provide answers to those for you. For more information about Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), Hypnosis or Hypnotherapy, or about the Imagine Healing Process, visit:http://ImagineHealing.info or http://SurgicalSupport.info.
Healing with Language: Your Key to Effective Mind-Body Communication is available for a limited time for $10 plus $5 shipping within the U.S. For volume orders and overseas shipping, check with Debra. See the Table of Contents and List of Exercises in PDF format for more information about this comprehensive text and training manual.