NLP timeline techniques are among the most powerful NLP approaches for creating and planning a great future, developing resources for our journey and removing ‘time traps’ from the past that influence our present and future.
Create a timeline by starting in the future and working back.
A helpful rule of thumb is that to create significant change; we should start our plans from the future we want and work backwards to the present. Then, when we’ve created our plan, check that it also works moving forward from the present.
Starting from the future, we want will help us access better states, which in turn gives us better internal resources and thus help us create better plans.
If we start from the present and plan forwards, we usually end up with an incremental or ‘small chunk’ plan. We’re likely to be less creative and ambitious, and this approach works better for management rather than leadership. However, it may be the best approach if we need to solve an immediate problem.
Everything from the past can be a resource
We can learn from all and any experiences.
- Good memories give us functional states that we can use in the future.
- Bad experiences teach us important lessons and are often critical for our development.
The trick with bad experiences is discarding the emotional baggage whilst extracting their lessons. Sometimes it’s worth impartially looking at our past actions and asking what we’ve gained from that experience. We can focus on how we will use what we’ve learnt rather than on the experience itself.
NLP Timeline Exercises
We find three particular types of timeline exercises beneficial. 1) Milestone and end goal timeline 2) Timeline to bring empowering resources from the past to the present and future 3) Timeline to heal time-traps
Milestone and end goal timeline
- Think about what you want to achieve long-term and identify two milestones along the route
- Imagine your future as a line in front of you.
- Imagine moving forward in time until you’ve well reached the first milestone. What does it feel like to have achieved it?
- Imagine moving forward in time until you’ve well achieved your second milestone. What does it feel like to have achieved it?
- Imagine continuing to move forward until you’ve well achieved your end goal. What does it feel like to have achieved it?
- Imagine continuing to move forward until you’ve started to get real value from having achieved your end goal and know that you can maintain having achieved it. What does that feel like?
- Imagine taking your time to come to the present and, as you do, noticing what you did to enable you to achieve your milestones and end goal.
- Only come back to the present when you’ve learnt something genuinely useful from this exercise.
- When you’ve come back to the present, open your eyes (if closed), and say, with total honesty, what you’re feeling and what you’re thinking.
Timeline to bring empowering resources from the past to the present and future
- Think about what you want to achieve long-term and some emotional resources that will help you achieve whatever it is more quickly and easily.
- Imagine your past is on a line 45 degrees behind you.
- Travel back into your past until you find three experiences where you succeeded in complex challenges (particularly when you didn’t think you would succeed). Create a representation of how you felt as you succeeded in each case. These representations will become resources for the future.
- Bring yourself back to the present, and remember the resources you’ve acquired.
- Imagine you’re moving forward in the future towards your end goal. When you come to any challenge, use any of the resources you’ve uncovered to help you resolve the challenge.
- Imagine continuing to move forward until you’ve well achieved your end goal. What does it feel like to have achieved it?
- Imagine continuing to move forward until you’ve started to get real value from having achieved your end goal and know that you can maintain having achieved it. What does that feel like?
- Imagine taking your time to come to the present and, as you do, noticing what you did to enable you to achieve your milestones and end goal.
- Only come back to the present when you’ve learnt something genuinely useful from this exercise.
- When you’ve come back to the present, open your eyes (if closed), and say, with total honesty, what you’re feeling and what you’re thinking.
Timeline to heal time-traps
What is a time trap?
“A lifetrap is a pattern that starts in childhood and reverberates throughout life. It began with something done to us by our families or other children. We were abandoned, criticized, overprotected, abused, excluded, or deprived—we were damaged in some way.
Eventually, the lifetrap becomes part of us. Long after we leave the home we grew up in, we continue to create situations in which we are mistreated, ignored, put down, or controlled and in which we fail to reach our most desired goals. Lifetraps determine how we think, feel, act, and relate to others. They trigger intense feelings such as anger, sadness, and anxiety.
Even when we appear to have everything—social status, an ideal marriage, the respect of people close to us, career success—we are often unable to savour life or believe in our accomplishments.”
E. Young, Jeffrey; S. Klosko, Janet. Reinventing Your Life (pp. 1-2). Scribe Publications Pty Ltd. Kindle Edition.
We have a timeline approach that is very powerful for ‘time-traps’ however this appproach needs at least a minimum level of experience, as it can release a significant of emotion. Only use this technique if you’re competent working with clients while they experience very powerful emotions.
It can be useful to develop your own ‘process language scripts’ such as:
“You’re experiencing very powerful emotions; however, you would only experience this if you’re ready to let go of something significant that has been holding you back in the past. As that emotional wave rises and falls, you’ll begin to notice that you’re starting to heal at a fundamental level, and this will continue over the next few days.”
“And you’ll begin to become to be surprised and delighted as you begin to find your body seems to relax more naturally, and at the time, your energy levels increase.”
Timetrap exercise
- Explore situations in the past that you want to heal, and choose a specific example and the characters involved.
- Anchor a positive state for the session, and anchor it, so you can access it any time during the session.
- Create two lines, one going straight back, the other going back at 45 degrees. You’re going to explore your past and associated, using the 45-degree line as a guide to access all your current resources easily. On the straight back line, a dissociated version of you gets younger as you travel back into the past.
- From the associated position, watch yourself getting younger and go back to just before the example you want to explore.
- The associated you develops a set of words of encouragement and a positive energy stream to the younger you.
- Associate with the younger you and choose to accept the advice and energy from the more experienced you. How are you feeling with those additional resources?
- The (newly) associated you, being aware that the disassociated you is always available for advice, energy and support,
- Move forward to the present, at whatever speed works, with your extra resources and clear up any time traps on the route.
- Fully integrate into the present, taking any new learning and letting go of less-than-useful emotions. Focus on what you’ve learnt that will be useful to you.
- When you’ve come back to the present, open your eyes (if closed), and say, with total honesty, what you’re feeling and what you’re thinking.
Full NLP Techniques List
See our international 1:1 NLP training. (including NLP timeline training) We offer 3 free discovery sessions with all our accredited programmes
Key NLP Techniques Section Index
1: NLP Techniques
2: Affirmations
3: Amplify feelings
4: Bad memories (Dissolving)
5: Bad memories (Exploding)
6: Belief change
7: NLP Coaching
8: Perceptual positions
9: Fast phobia cure
10: Hypnosis and meditation and separately Free Hypnosis MP3s
11: Luck
12: Mental Rehearsal
13: Metaprogrammes, Profiles and Preferences
14: Modelling
15: Progressive dissociation
16: Rapport
17: Self Compassion
18: Submodalities
19. Six step re-framing
20: Storytelling
21: States and anchors
22: Strategies
23. Swish
24: Timeline therapy
25: Visual Squash
26: Values
27: Summary
