The first thing you need to do is create the spacetime for programming. You need twenty or more minutes set aside on a regular basis where you can allow yourself to enter a light trance state, alpha brainwaves or deeper.

I’ve set aside an hour ever weekday morning. I listen to the first levels of holosync which purport to guide you through several deep brainwaves and sound like rainfall, very relaxing at the very least. When I’m done I listen to Happy Up Here by Royksopp. I listen to these while doing some simple repetitive tasks. I spent close to a month doing this before moving on to the programming just to set this up as a habit.

Now what you need to do is create the programs. These are a combination of affirmation and imagined practice, like professional athletes use. These need to be positively stated, verb or process focused, and small chunks. An action you take.

For example, the first one I used was, “I hold eye contact with ease and comfort.” Now for the hour I say this affirmation and then imagine myself doing it. You want the imagined practice to be full sensory: see, feel and hear. You just say and imagine and repeat until the time is up.

It is a good idea to vary the imagined practice. Vary how you do it, where you imagine doing it, and who you do it with. I imagine myself doing the behaviour I’m programming in situations where it would have been useful in my past and in future scenarios that I dream up.

The next part of this game is to review your progress briefly at the end of your day. Ask yourself, “how has this behaviour improved?” And then think of a few successes from your day. Even if there have been no successes yet, this question sets up the expectation of success. Next ask, “Where else could I have used this?” And then briefly imagine doing the programmed behaviour in any situations that come to mind. If the separate review phase doesn’t work for you, you could always do it at the beginning of each metaprogramming session.

It is a good idea to stick with a given program longer than you might first think to. At some point you will realize that you have begun behaving how you are training yourself to. Stick with it further and it will feel like second nature to you. I suggest you keep doing it a little longer than that so it really sets as a habit.

Once a month or so you could run through a review of the behaviours you’ve used this method for to see how they are sustaining. Simply run through the review questions for each. If any have faded, simply do another round of programming with it. You may also benefit from fine tuning the wording of the affirmation.

Visioning and Review is, in my opinion, one of the most useful habit structures you could make for yourself. It takes ideas from what is called Well-Formed Outcomes in NLP and from The Law of Attraction. The idea is to habitually create a vision of what you want out of life situations and to review your progress towards that vision. This habit has additional benefits to learning.

Building a Vision

What do you want? What would you see, hear, feel, taste and smell if you had it? What would it look like if you were watching yourself now that you’ve achieved it? What would it look like if you were looking out your own eyes having achieved this for yourself? Who would be there with you? Where would you be? What does this feeling of enjoying what you have already achieved, feel like? What would happen if you made the sounds louder, the vision bigger and brighter and the feelings more intense?

Having built this vision, having been there, is this still what you want? If not make any necessary changes and repeat the above. Stop when you have it perfect. Give this vision a name, and make a gesture to go with the name. This grounds it in a real-time visual, auditory and kinesthetic anchor.

Motivational Structure

So… this is what you want. Now, why do you want it? What does getting this get you? What does getting that get you? What does moving towards the vision above move you away from? Why do you want to move away from that? Repeat these questions as far as you can. Can you see the reasons that you are moving toward pulling you forward and the things you are moving away from pushing you forward? Can you feel both of these forces helping you move in the direction of you vision? What does it sound like to be moved like this?

Actioning

Thinking back on your vision, how does the version of you who achieved what you want to achieve differ in their behaviour from what you have been doing until now? How are their habits different? How do they look at the world differently than how you have been? If you were the you that achieved what you want, what would they decide needed to be done next? What the smallest, easiest, simplest thing that could start your path towards being that you? Now… dive in! Start doing those things.

Review and Re-Vision

Time has past. You’ve been acting on your vision, working towards it. Maybe it’s been a day, maybe a week, maybe a whole month. Time to review your progress. What has happened in relation to your vision? What has gone well? What hasn’t gone as well? What kinds of actions and styles of action on your part lead to things going well? What lead to things not going as well? Knowing what you know now, how would you change your behaviour? Where and when are you likely to be in a situation where this new understanding is going to be useful? What would happen if you applied this there?

Given your new life experiences, do you need to make any changes to your vision?

Building Habits

There are a variety of ways to build habits. One is to build the strategy of the action and then anchor it to the context where it will be useful. Another way to build a habit is simply… to do simple actions consistently and slowly add more parts later. I’d like you to do both of those with the Visioning and Review Process.

What would happen if every day when you get up you remembered and tweaked your vision? What would happen if every night before you go to bed you did a quick review of your progress? Try it for two weeks and find out.