Can changing your mental landscape change your life?

6th June 2023

From the moment we are born and throughout our life, our brains create and refine a model of the world from the information we gain from our experiences. Neuro-scientists call this “the internal model”. We then make our way in the world on the basis of our internal model. You can test this out by imagining a quick tour around your home in the middle of the night: I am quite sure that you know where the rooms are and what you would find in each of them!

Whilst it seems obvious that our brains create a model of the physical world around us so that we can get around in our environment, it is infinitely more sophisticated than a two dimensional ordnance survey map!  It is a constantly changing four dimensional map (ie including time) made up of all the information from our many senses (neurologists now believe that there are between 14 and 20) and it contains our memories, beliefs, values, emotions, hopes for the future, people we know, our internal experiences and sense of self, language and even abstract concepts like time, love and creativity.

We experience the contents as if projected in the space around us

Interestingly, although the model is created within our brains, we experience it as if the contents of the model are projected into the space around us. To get a sense of what I mean, close your eyes, and then point to where the sky is in relation to your body.  Whichever way you point, you are pointing to where the sky is in your internal model of the world.

It is not surprising that we evolved to create in our minds a map of our environment and the objects around us in this way:  if we didn’t, we would have to spend every moment of the day working out where we are and what the things around us are!

However, we also experience the other contents of our internal model as if they are located in the space around us too.

For example, many people think of the future as being in front of them, and the past behind, or the future to the right and the past to the left.  If asked where your future is in relation to your body, just trusting your instinct, in which direction would you point?

It goes further than that: if you think of a good friend, where do you feel your image of them is in relation to your body? Are they in front of you? to your side? behind you? are they looking towards you or in the same direction as you?  Is your image of them near you or far away? 

We can ask the same questions about anything else in our mental map of the world – even abstract concepts!

Your mental landscape

The developers of NLP created a whole set of techniques  for personal change based on these and similar distinctions.  Robert Fletcher, an early student of NLP, took them further and called the way our mind organises the contents of our mental map our “mental landscape”. He found that the spatial arrangement of the contents of our landscape has a huge impact on motivation, self-belief and resourcefulness and that, if you are experiencing a problem or difficulty, you can explore your mental landscape and consciously move its contents around to make things better.

Here are some rules of thumb:

• images we subjectively experience as being in front of us get more of our attention than images located behind us;
• the nearer the image, the greater the emotional impact, the further away the less the impact;
• bright, colourful images tend to have more positive emotions than dark, monochrome ones.

Here is an example of how I have used mental landscaping.  Before giving a presentation on “Playful Change – the use of humour in therapy” to an NLP practice group I didn’t know, I took a few minutes to get familiar with the room and then in my imagination I placed around the room images of smiling friends who had already enjoyed my presentation, and I knew would be supportive of what I was doing.  I felt more relaxed with those positive images around me, and the presentation went fine.

Some things to try out

Here are three suggestions of things you can explore using mental landscapes:

• Think of some achievements from the past which you feel proud of.  Where are they in your mental landscape relation to your body?  What happens if you move them nearer to you, perhaps in front of you, and make them bright and colourful?
  
• Think of some people who inspire you or are supportive of you.  Where are they in your mental landscape right now?  Experiment with moving them to a place where you can really experience their positive support – perhaps at your side, or just behind you.

• think of something you have been putting off doing – like tidying up, or calling a friend.  Where is the image of that task in your mental landscape? Is it in front of you or behind? to the left or right? Is it far away or near? it bright or dark? Make a bright, colourful image of yourself doing that thing.  Place the image in your future;  experiment moving it nearer and further away, and see if your motivation changes.

I hope that you have found this interesting and helpful. If you have, why not sign up to my free Suggestions newsletter which gives more information and tips about personal development and therapy. It comes out about every three weeks or so. To sign up, just click on the link below. You just need to give your name and email address – and needless to say, I won’t share your details with anyone else.