For a lot of people, the highway to personal change and self-improvement is a long and winding street filled with complicated barriers. Pharmaceutical companies in particular have capitalized on and created enormous fortunes because of the elusive search for the "Magic Pill" that will make all of your dreams come true. As it turns out, there is a secret formula for success, and it begins in the subconscious mind.

One of the laws of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) is that "there is a positive intention behind all behaviors." And based on that rule, when it comes to successfully eliminating negative behaviors, there is an equation that we should keep in mind. I'll let you in on the secret equation in a minute. But first, I have a riddle for you to solve.

Riddle: A minister made his child drink lye, which burned out his voice box. What was the positive intention behind his behavior?

If you are like most of the clients who have come into my office since 1978, you'll indignantly say something like: "There isn't any." But you would be 100% wrong. To answer this riddle, you have to disconnect the behavior from the positive intent of the behavior.

The minister's child was cursing. And the minister believes that if his son curses, his soul will be condemned to Hell. So the answer is that the minister was burning out his son's voice box so that he couldn't curse. By doing so, he was saving his son's soul from being condemned to suffer in Hell.

The secret formula for personal change works as follows:

We must always value the positive intent that motivates every behavior. If we have an urge to apply a behavior that we do not like, we can quickly get rid of the impulse to use that behavior. What we must do is to find a different behavior to substitute in its place. To be successful, the new behavior must be as available and efficient at accomplishing the same secondary gain, but be more consciously acceptable to you. This is called a REFRAME.

When clients come into my practice, one of the first things that I do is to take a careful case history. Let's say that they come to me and ask me to help them suppress their appetite. Conventional wisdom tells us that the two main reasons that people eat excessively are: (1) to reduce stress; (2) because eating can be a behavior triggered by other behaviors that it has been associated with (this is also known as a conditioned response). For example, if a person eats while they are working on a computer, they will develop a conditioned response, and thereafter, every time they work on a computer they will get a craving for food.

However, the above answer only takes into consideration the possible secondary gain received from the behavior of eating. What if they also have another behavior that is concerned in the equation? For instance: What if being chubby is also a behavior for this person? I can hear your mind working away right now as you think, "Being chubby isn't a behavior, what are you talking about?"

Sorry but you could be entirely off the mark. Here is one common textbook example that will illustrate the fact that being chubby can be a behavior. It can be a behavior because it can accomplish positive outcomes.

Example: A woman is deeply in love. Her boyfriend breaks up with her, and breaks her heart. Her subconscious mind wants to shield her emotionally and keep her from ever having her heart broken again. So it motivates her to get chubby to keep her out of relationships. By doing that she can't get her heart broken again.

Everyone is totally different. And sometimes there are elements at work causing uncontrollable behaviors. These are elements that are different for each person.

Here's another case: A woman comes into my practice complaining of an unmanageable urge to eat way too much at mealtime. During the case history, the woman tells me about how she was never able to satisfy her dad.

During an age regression, we learned that one of her earliest memories was of having a meal with her family. And dad was insisting in an angry voice that she finish all of the food on her plate, even though she was bursting. So she cleaned her plate because of fear, and dad praised her for finishing all of the food. It was one of the only times in her life that she could recall her father telling her that he was happy with her.

Shoot forward to the present. Her dad has been deceased for years, but the unconscious program he created is still working. She still has a powerful compulsion to clean her plate, even if she is feeling full, because by cleaning the plate, in her subconscious mind she is getting her dad's approval, and eliminating her fear!

So if you are finding it difficult to make personal changes, please remember that there is a positive intention that causes all behaviors. And the secret formula for successful change is to alternate a different behavior that will achieve the same secondary gain, but in a manner that is more consciously satisfactory to you, as an individual. The most efficient way to get your subconscious mind to assume the responsibility for making this kind of alteration for you is through a Neuro-Linguistic Programming 6-Step Reframe.