Sometimes I find myself in a state of mind I don't like, or I see it coming and realize I really want to avoid it.

Do any of you know anything about NLP? That's Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Essentially, it's a practical system for being able to read people and for eliciting a desired response from them. It's a crazy powerful thing. Some people are good at it naturally; I know that to an extent, I've been doing it since I didn't have a name for it.

It can be used for good, and it can be used for evil. Like, psychologists sometimes use NLP to help a person open up, teachers can use NLP to understand how different students learn and how better to reach them as a whole. Also, corporations, such as McDonald's and GAP(they really do), use NLP in their training and in their manuals to inspire loyalty and efficiency. You could say--you could say--that it can be used as a mild, less malignant form of brainwashing.

But that's only a negative aspect. What it does, what it is, is it shows you how people work their internal processes, and then applies that information to work those processes to greatest advantage. Your advantage, their advantage, that's entirely up to those using NLP.

So yes, a crazy powerful thing. It's not actually brainwashing. You don't have to know a thing about NLP to know when it's being used on you. If you know yourself well, if you know about your own processes and cues, you recognize more of what's going on with other people. NLP is just one model of self-awareness, except the twist is that NLP is specifically geared toward using that self-awareness to achieve ends.

Anyways, that's a long preamble to what I really wanted to write about, which is about the aforementioned undesirable states of mind. When I notice myself in one, or I see one approaching, I break it by using a different, pre-programmed state of mind to counteract the effects of the one I don't want. What I find is NLP-ish about this is that it used to take effort. A lot. Like, I'd go through varying degrees of mental anguish before I could break myself out of it. And then I'd find something that worked. And so when these states came along, I'd find it easier and easier to call up it's antidote (that's a good word. antidote. those negative states are very much like poison.), until it's nearly automatic now. That's one of the chief NLP maneuvers: find the recurring problem, analyze it (or go through it), find a solution (per se) that works, and then associate the problem with the solution in such a way that calling up the latter is an automatic reaction, or prevention, to the former. Sounds obvious, but when you're in the middle of your issue, it may not be.

So here are some of mine:

poison: when I am cripplingly shy
antidote: I look at things in the conscious framework of multiple lives. My interactions with strangers, our attitudes toward each other, are based on our long previous history. Strangers who are immediately friendly are old friends, and we treat each other accordingly. Unfriendly strangers are victims of my past snubs, and are bitterly returning the favor, and I take it in stride as fair play. Seeming strangers approach each other with previous knowledge of the other�s significance. People who are familiar with each other, positive or negative, know immediately. And so whatever happens with strangers has this undertone of familiarity.

poison: when things are dangerously, dangerously close to not mattering
antidote: Someone is on an indefinite leave of absence, and she has left me, an identityless wanderer, to take care of her affairs and keep things in running order so that they are ready when she gets back. In exchange I use all her stuff and live in her apartment. She has given me leave to toss unnecessary things if they get in my way. I continue her projects, I answer her mail, and keep her things organized so that she can resume her life at a moment�s notice. I am really only invested in the present exchange, and everything is just a matter of doing the job for what I earn.

And it's not about whether the antidote is true or not--it's about whether it works when you need it to. I guess what's important, is that when it's got to the point where it's automatic, you need to remember that it's a construct, otherwise you have a whole new problem to deal with.

9:48 p.m. 2003-08-22�