Important Features of NLP Time Lining

You can find out if time appears flowing or moving, or is standstill. You can try to see if you are moving along with time and through life, or watching it go by.

The order in which our memories are stored is a very important aspect in Time Lining. When people have their past in front of them, they keep living in the past memories, and try to change the things that have already happened, also leading to regret and depression. On the other hand, when people have their future behind them, the unconscious mind thinks that the event has already happened and does not give any significance to it. This leads to a loss of self-motivation, since there is nothing to look forward to; the future has little relevance for the mind.

However, if the future is kept ahead of you and the past behind you, you can let go, forgive and forget the events of the past, and the future will appear big, bright and clear. If these visual submodalities are relevant for you, you will be highly motivated to achieve your goals. As per Neuro-linguistic training, Time-Lining makes us understand that a clear vision of the future can help us achieve definite goals.

In the Neuro-linguistic book “Time-Line Therapy and the basis of personality”, the Neuro-linguistic Programming author Tad James talks about two types of Time-Lines, Anglo-European and Arabic time. The Anglo-European time is derived from the Industrial age where assembly line work made it essential to be on a linear time structure. Therefore, Anglo-European time is the time where one event occurs after another, in a linear fashion. The events in time are placed linearly as if on an assembly line.

As per Neuro-linguistic courses, the Arabic time indicates that every event occurs at the same time. People in this time line live for the moment, since there is no real difference between today and tomorrow. If Anglo-European time based people stick to a particular time, Arabic time based people are not so particular. They can handle several matters simultaneously, but might not follow a strict time schedule.

For example, in a marriage, the wife could be based on Anglo-European time while the husband could be operating on Arabic time. That means the wife will plan ahead for the future, think of spending and savings for the future, whereas the husband will do things at the spur of the moment, and will indulge in present expenses than worry about the future. This difference in opinion is due to their neurology and concept of time.

In order to find your personal time line, you need to find out how your mind arranges the different memories. This is dependent on your internal submodality coding of time. You can imagine multiple memories of the past, present and future and arrange them in space. Note the difference in direction, location and placement of these images. When you join all these individual memories in order, you will have your personal Time-Line of Neuro-linguistic programming.

For some people it is not easy to determine the direction of a memory to be in the past, present or future. In this case, it is important to see a visual image of the memory using Neuro-linguistic training. You will need to create an image of each memory and use your finger to point to the direction of the past and then the direction of the future. You can then place this image on the Time-Line created with the help of direction indicated by the finger. The key idea is to compel a person into using the visual submodality since this is the best way to understand the difference in past, present and future.

Conclusion

As per Neuro-linguistic training, another important aspect of Time-Lining is that a person should be able to dissociate himself from the Time-Line. This way he can get rid of any unpleasant or hurtful feelings from a bad memory or event. In addition, it is important to pay more attention to the image of the memory rather than its content. That means the process of remembering a memory is more important that the actual description of the memory. By focusing on the image of the memory, it becomes easy to find the location of the recalled image.

Another differentiation of a person is how he visualizes the memory. If the memory appears as an image in front of him, the person is a “Through Time” person, or a “Judger”. Such a person usually operates in the Anglo-European Time. On the other hand, if the person’s Time line goes through or behind him, the person is an “In Time” person or “Perceiver” and usually operates in the Arabic Time. These concepts can be learnt in Neuro-linguistic courses.

By understanding our personal Time Line using Neuro-linguistic training, we can gather important aspects of our personality, and try to mend them in order to achieve greater success.

First Page: NLP Time Lining