Resource states and submodalities

The starting idea

You have already been perfectly focused. Perhaps rarely, perhaps by accident, but it has happened: time disappeared, the task did itself.

Neuro-linguistic programming starts from an operational premise: that state is not an accident, it is a reproducible configuration, made of a posture, a way of breathing, an internal dialogue and a quality of mental representation. If you identify the configuration, you can call it back.

A word of honesty. NLP's theoretical framework is scientifically contested, and several of its claims, notably that eye movements reveal lying, have been disproven. What remains, and what you can check on yourself within three days, is the anchoring procedure: deliberate Pavlovian conditioning, whose mechanism is old and well understood.

Finding your reference state

Close your eyes and go back to a specific moment when you were completely absorbed. Not a general idea: a moment, with a date and a place.

Then take inventory, methodically.

Visual. What could you see? Was the field wide or narrow? Bright or dim? Were the edges sharp or blurred? How far away was the object of your attention?