Movie / Still Picture

Is the thought represented by a still picture, such as a photograph, or by a moving picture, such as a mental movie?

The majority of people I’ve worked with say that a photograph is less emotional than a mental movie.In a mental movie, you can see the event happening again, whether you’re in it or not (watching from the side); you can hear the words being said and feel the tension in the event.

A mental still picture is most often used to understand a concept or to remember a visual object, such as a face, a name, or a date.

Color / Black and White

Is the thought being represented as a black and white still picture or movie, or is it in color? The continuum here, obviously, would be how strong the colors are, for example, or if it’s black and white imagery, are there shades of grey or a complete distinction between the 2 colors?

Location: Above or Below

When you think inside your head, there’s always a location where you can point out the image you’re making up. If you keep your head straight and consider your field of vision to be the “screen,” where is that picture or movie located on the screen? Is it above your eye level, forcing you to look up? Is it below your eye level? Is it exactly at that point?

Left/Right Position

The same as with Above/Below, where on that continuum stands your picture/movie. Normally, the image or movie itself, as a whole, won’t be running around – it works quite the same as with your TV. It would be hard for you to watch it if someone were to move it left and right constantly. So in your field of vision, on the screen, where is that picture or movie? How far to the left, how far to the right?

Light Intensity - A Driving Submodality

For most, if not all, the people I worked with, this specific sub-modality proved itself to be one of the strongest. When one specific sub-modality drives so much change in an emotional response, we call it a “driving sub-modality.”

It means that when you change that sub-modality (yes, you can change them, I’ll show you how), and move it on its continuum, it creates a new emotional response to that image you’re working with.

Light intensity means how dark or bright the image or movie is. Is it dim? Is it brighter than “reality”? Is it too dark to notice some important details?

It works the same as in the film industry. You will notice that in order to grab your attention to a specific item, the director will distort or dim the background and sharpen the image of that item. Yes, you know it already! They do that in advertising all the time.

Perhaps because it IS a driving sub-modality, which “drives” us to drive our cars and take their products for a test-drive… OK, enough word-games with the word “drive.” Let’s drive forward…

Size – A Driving Submodality

Size in terms of visual modality is measured in relation to your field of vision. Is that picture or movie “bigger than life” size?

Is it small and compact?

Can you look above it, below it, around it?

Is it “in your face,” preventing you from noticing actual sensations from the outside world? Is it too small to realize what’s going on exactly?

Quality of Focus

It could have been a part of the intensity modality, but it also has an effect of its own. If your actual physical vision is blurry, you get anxious. You might even become a bit paranoid. It works the same with your mental images or movies.

If you think of something important and it becomes blurry, you will experience the same emotions as if it were your eyes that got blurry.

A change of focus also changes the way you pay attention to that specific scenario. You might suddenly ignore it completely just to deal with that “vision issue.” Or you may become really obsessed with making it clearer. And that can cost you in energy, time and relationships.

For example, you might find yourself upset with someone you care about just because they “drew” an unclear mental picture for you. When people speak in words that only they understand, they paint a hazy picture.And that unclear image drives you crazy, because you want to understand, you want to be able to solve it, you want to be a good friend, father, lover, etc.

Thought Speed

The rate of images is also important. A movie is nothing more than slightly changed images, presented at light speed to create the illusion of movement. Of course, this sub-modality only refers to the internal movie and not to a picture that does not present any action.

Speed has action potential. It is also quite a strong sub-modality, although it works much better when the size of the movie is also large. Small, fast movies are not so effective.

We use speeding up for motivation and slowing down for relaxation or analysis. For example, if you imagine yourself riding on a roller coaster (remember that distinction?) as if you are there in that moment, the only difference is that it is all in slow motion. You see the movie “Turn Pages,” the picture running slowly, like in the old movies (with the black and white strip in between them)… That’s not so scary suddenly. It’s even boring! How could a roller coaster, a first-person experience, be so emotionless and boring? If it’s too slow to drive your emotions,

We call this sub-modality “Speed of Thought” because there are so many useful ways you can use it to benefit your life instantly. In our seminars, we teach our students to do it automatically (since most of our thinking is in patterns, anyway), and their results are amazing. All the way from creativity sparks to motivational boosts, anger management, addiction busting, and so much more. Again, if you feel you want to grab this set of tools and own it for real, give us a call or drop us an email; we’ll make it happen for you too.

Discrimination By Changing Focus

We will talk about the master operative filters soon, but for now, this specific sub-modality is quite a strong one. By discriminating details in your mental picture or movie, you actually create a whole new meaning.

A great example is one that I also give in my seminars: two people go to the same Christmas party but have two different opinions on how good it was. The first person was focusing on the happy faces of people around him, while the other person was focusing on the tiny red wine stain on his white shirt… The first had a great time, while the second spent the same time thinking about the red stain.

Even though the party was going on around them in the same manner, since they shared the same time, location and social interactions, the only difference was the discrimination each of them used by focusing on a specific detail of the experience.

Later on, if you ask them both how they enjoyed the party (considering you aren’t the host, so they don’t have to lie to you), how do you think each of them will react?

Changing your focus by discriminating details and zoning in on one specific, even if it’s only “in your mind,” changes your experience.

Panoramic Frame

This sub-modality represents a continuum between a picture and a movie that resides in a frame, just as if you were watching a movie on your television screen (which must have a frame) or glancing at a picture on your wall, which might also have a (wooden?) frame.

For most people I’ve met, the difference in the experience is that they consider the panoramic type (the movie or picture stretched across your field of vision without a distinct border) to be more “realistic” and the framed type to be more metaphoric. In addition, I did notice that many people use the framed mental picture or movie for planning the future and the panoramic for most of their memories.

If you do that differently, though, there is nothing wrong with that! I will be happy to hear your discoveries on this subject of sub-modalities.

Dimensions

Another very distinctive feature of a mental image is the number of dimensions it occupies. I like to compare this to the cartoons I watched when I was a child (Ok, I’m still watching some, but so do you!).

The continuum of the dimensions This sub-modality lies between a two-dimensional and a three-dimensional picture or movie. Disney’s cartoons from the 50’s, such as the older Micky Mouse, were made in a 2D world. They were flat on the page, and while watching the movie, you could tell there was only one flat dimension they lived in. They didn’t seem to have depth inside the picture, even if they used different sizes to create that illusion.

The three-dimensional cartoon, however, did have a whole lot of depth. You get the illusion that there’s not only one stretched canvas from left to right, but as if there’s a world going inwards and outwards towards you as the viewer. 3D graphic artists and mathematicians call this the z-axis.

This sub-modality is usually flat when you explore subjects you are bored with and feel no excitement what-so-ever. You might find that you think of “math” or “history” or “your wife’s make-up routine” as being black and white, a still picture in a frame… and in 2D! Well, that’s one boring thought right there! If it has depth, the depth tends to move out into fog, darkness, or downward like a funnel.

You could do this to the dimension of sub-modality of an exciting memory in order to make it boring. Perhaps you have a memory that is too exciting and this would be good. This would be a lot like the fast phobia cure, where a troubling memory or a fearful future scenario would be manipulated so that they don’t trigger a negative state.

Perspective

Let’s look at it from another angle, shall we?

You need to take a more global view on this one.

“If you saw this from MY side…”

We use perspectives all the time, numerous times a day. You can’t really get through your day without using a whole lot of different perspectives.

And here’s a clue: the perspective you use to think and visualize a situation might be crucial for the understanding and conclusions you draw. Perspectives, in many cases, are the ones you use to make decisions.

You change your mind when you change your perspective. We have all had those arguments when we finally were brave enough to look at the situation from our rival’s point of view… and we felt they were right. We were wrong because we took a certain perspective which was not congruent with reality.

There are many useful ways for you to explore the visual sub-modalities. You could choose, for example, to take the global view, as if you’re a bird flying up there and seeing it all from above… You could get out of your own body (mentally, of course) and go around your mate’s shoulders and see the interaction from that perspective.

You might decide to take a more distant point of view, a closer one, a higher one, a lower one, etc. Whatever creative perspective you can come up with, the more angels you use to look at a serious situation, the more choices and information you get.

Visual Triggers

This is not a specific sub-modality, but it is an inner visual stimulation that is very important for our memory management topic.Visual triggers are what we call “anchors.” It could be anything from your experience – it could be a face or the features of a face, for example.

I had a client who was attacked in her childhood, and ever since she has had a very strong reaction towards people who share the same facial characteristics as her attacker.

A complete stranger who had nothing to do with her past could be getting some hateful (and disturbing) looks from her just because he had the same type of nose, same facial hair arrangement, same eye patterns, etc.

Anchors are very important for two reasons: one, you have registered in your mind numerous anchors (literally, millions); and second, many of those anchors trigger unconscious processes that can change your emotions, your thoughts, and your decisions without any conscious awareness.