Table of Contents
“Devils can be driven out of the heart by the touch
of a hand on a hand or a mouth.”
-Tennessee Williams
If you walked in the door at the right moment, you would come upon perhaps three hundred people jumping up and down, roaring like lions, waving their arms, shaking their fists like Rocky, clapping their hands, puffing up their chests, giving the thumbs-up sign, and otherwise acting as if they had so much personal power they could light up a city if they wanted to.
What the heck is going on?
What’s going on is one of the cybernetic loop: physiology. That chaos is about one thing—acting as if you felt more resourceful, more powerful, happier than you ever felt before, acting as if you knew you were going to succeed. Acting as if you were totally energized as well. One way to get yourself into a state that supports your achieving any outcome is to act “as if you were already there. Acting “as if” is most effective when you put your physiology in the state you’d be in if you were already effective.
Physiology is the most powerful tool we have for instantly changing states, for instantly producing dynamic results. There’s an old saying: “If you would be powerful, pretend to be powerful.” Truer words were never spoken. The biggest leverage we have in any situation is physiology—because it works so fast, and it works without fail. Physiology and internal representations are totally linked. If you change one, you instantly change the other. I like to say, “There is no mind, there is only body,” and “there is no body, there is only mind.” If you change your physiology—that is, your posture, your breathing patterns, your muscle tension, your tonality—you instantly change your internal representations and your state.
If you start to grow tired, there are certain specific things you can do with your physiology to continue to communicate this to yourself: a slump in shoulder position, relaxation of many major muscle groups, and the like. You can become tired simply by changing your internal representations so that they give your nervous system a message that you are tired. If you change your physiology to the way it is when you feel strong, it will change your internal representations and how you feel at that moment. If you keep telling yourself that you’re tired, you’re forming the internal representation that keeps you tired. If you say you have the resources to be alert and on top of things, if you consciously adopt that physiology, your body will make it so. Change your physiology and you change your state.
The exciting thing is that you can just as easily create the result called happiness by changing your physiology in certain specific ways. After all, what are emotions? They’re a complex association, a complex configuration of physiological states. Without changing any of his internal representations, I can change the state of any depressed person in seconds. You don’t have to look and see what pictures a depressed person is making in his mind. Just change his physiology, and Zap, you change his state.
If you stand up straight, if you throw your shoulders back, if you breathe deeply from your chest, if you look upward- if you put yourself in a resourceful physiology- you can’t be depressed. Try it yourself. Stand up tall, throw your shoulders back, breathe deeply, look up, move your body. See if you can feel depressed in that posture. You’ll find that it’s almost impossible. Instead, your brain is getting a message from your physiology to be alert and vital and resourceful. And that’s what it becomes.
When people come to me and say they can’t do something, I say, “Act as if you could do it.” They usually reply, “Well, I don’t know how.” So I say, “Act as if you did know how. Stand the way you would be standing if you did know how to do it. Breathe the way you’d be breathing if you did know how to do it right now. Make your face look as if you could do it right now.” As soon as they stand that way, breathe that way, and put their physiology in that state, they instantly feel they can do it. It works without fail because of the amazing leverage of being able to adapt and change physiology. Over and over again, simply by changing physiology, you can make people do things they could never do before—because the second they change their physiology, they change their state.
The same thing happens in the firewalk. When some people face the bed of coals, they’re in a state of total confidence and readiness because of the combination of their internal representations and physiology. Therefore, they can stride confidently and healthfully across the hot coals. Some people, however, begin to panic at the last moment. They may have changed their internal representations of what is going to happen, so they now imagine the worst-possible scenario. Or the searing heat may take them out of their confident state as they approach the edge of the bed of coals. As a result, their bodies may be shaking with fear or they may be crying or they may freeze up, all their muscles locked, or they may have any number of other major physiological reactions. To help them break through their fear in a moment and take action in spite of seemingly impossible odds, I need to do only one thing—change their state. Remember, all human behavior is the result of the state we’re in. When we feel strong and resourceful, we will attempt things we never would if we felt scared, weak, and tired. So the firewalk doesn’t just teach people intellectually, it gives them an experience of changing their state and behavior in a moment to support their goals, regardless of what they had thought or felt previously.
“Our bodies are our gardens … our wills are gardeners.”
-William Shakespear
Being attentive to physiology creates choices. Why do people take drugs, drink alcohol, smoke
cigarettes, overeat? Aren’t these all indirect attempts to change state by changing physiology? This
chapter has provided you with the direct approach to quickly changing states. By breathing or moving
body or facial muscles in a new pattern, you imediately change your state. It will produce the same
results as food, alcohol, or drugs without harmful side effects to either your body or your psyche.
The next time you see someone who is extremely successful, someone you admire and respect,
copy gestures, feel the difference, and enjoy the change in thought patterns. Play. Experience it. New
choices await you!