A Word On Creating Your Own Reality

Written by Steve

I’m sure you’ve run into the idea of “creating your own reality” in The Secret or some other New Age book.

(Note now, I’m not being sarcastic or knocking down those books.)

Let’s look at that idea from a NLP angle.What would it mean to create your own reality?

In three words, altering your MOW (Model of the World). OK, OK, so I used an acronym…

Korzybsky coined the famous phrase “The map is not the territory,” suggesting that human beings actually don’t have access to the territory but experience it through the maps they create.

For our purposes, we’ll call these maps our model of the world.

So creating your own reality really means altering your map. When you alter your map or add new distinctions to it, you are in fact creating your own reality.

Sounds too simple? Think about it for a second…

Nothing has meaning except the meaning I give it. And that meaning creates reality. So when I change the meaning, I de facto change reality. If I create a new meaning, I create a new reality.

As usual, this is best understood by using an example.

Let’s say you see someone whispering to another person, looking at you. Then both of them start laughing.

What does that mean?

Well, it could mean that they think you look stupid and they’re laughing at you.

That’s reality #1.

Now you can ask yourself: “What else could this mean?”

I could mean that one of them thinks you’re really hot and would love for you to come over and meet them.