Getting started in NLP

As a musician/composer, writer/publisher, I've always found the creative process to be almost to easy. It has provided me with an amazing ability to pull ideas from my imagination and to find the tools, either physical or mental to make it all come to life..
 
My personal issue has always been in the area of pushing myself to the fore and believing in my own creations. As a working musician, I have thousands of hours of live work behind me, and have absolutely no concerns about playing in front of an audience. Yet behind this aura of confidence is an underlying lack of self belief which has been hindering me in the most important areas of life. Knowing the issue is somewhere inside my head. but understanding why it's there and how to deal with it are what led me to NLP.
 
Initially I'd heard about NLP through the works of Tony Robins, so I looked at videos on Youtube. by a wide array of different practitioners, visited many websites. What I found was a training structure, that requires days and weeks being spent on location. At excessive cost, and the end result being students enrolling on the next level course. All of which I had nether, the time, finances or inclination to become involved with.. Even so I looked for ways where I could get the best information and basically teach myself.  
A: to see if I actually could change my life.
B: To become even more productive and richer than it is currently.
 
 
What has become only to apparent in beginning this search, is that it starts as an interest, then rapidly moves to a way of living. The depths you can take it to, are not to clear to me as of the time of writing. However I'm actually beginning to feel some serious change in my way of approach to many things.
 
The changes are gradual, and barely noticeable from normal behaviour. However the fact I'm sitting down at a computer writing a thesis is something I've never dreamed of doing before I commenced this course. I'll start with what i am looking to achieve at the personal level, then in later blogs I will go through how I've used it up to this point. Then move onto how I have already helped people with issues, just because I've been there myself, and been able to either advice or assist. The rapport generated through a shared experience was my first awareness of using some of the NLP tools.
 
Changes within myself.
 
As previously stated in my brief introduction, I had a serious self confidence issue, in that I will not push myself beyond certain limits. When these limits have been challenged, there has been a strong tendency to self sabatage. After which there is the usual element of self contempt. I can find no real subjective experience which brings it on, or even a strategy I may be using to bring it out.
 
In order to find an answer, I started with representational systems, by finding out how I see and code my world internally. In attempting to recreate the conditions which bring on both the positive and negative states. I have found, that my preferred representational systems seem to be audio and kinesthaetic. Probably because as a musician I listen to learn, and practice to perform. The result of my experiments more or less confirmed what I more or less suspected,  
 
I have a very lazy streak, which I can over ride when I really want to do something. An activity where I have full congruence, say music etc. But something that falls outside of my interest becomes a chore. I have a short attention span for things which don't interest me, and I use excuses to avoid starting these tasks. I basically push aside what I see as the inconvenient and practice only the convenient.
 
This is the main personal project at the time of writing. The initial task has been to identify the patterns and processes employed which give that sense of motivation and fullfillment when I'm working with music. What I intend to do is discover the full process, model it and then I will anchor it on my past timeline at a point I have already selected. The idea being to walk into that state of empowerment when I need it.
 
Task two will be doing the same with the process and patterns which form the negative side of the behaviour. Once recognized I intend to chnage the submodalities of the process and make it into a process which supports instead of one that hinders.
 
This then is my first introduction to NLP and the first task which I have decided to tackle.
 
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