Have you ever done something that you later regretted, or at the very least wish you would have done things differently? Ok, stupid question. We all have. I usually do stuff on a daily basis that I later regret, or at least wish I had done differently. Said thank you a little bit more loudly, smiled at some cute girl you see instead of just making passive eye contact, said something to that rude person that cut in front of you in line at the supermarket. I’m sure you can think of many things like this, maybe not so important things, but things that maybe you wish you could have done differently. 20/20 hindsight, and all that.

Well, luckily there is a process from NLP that can help you to reprogram your daily life on a regular basis to slowly change how you habitually and automatically behave in certain situations. This is perfect if you are aware of some kind of situation you’d rather behave differently than you normally do, but you usually don’t think about it until it’s too late.

For example, let’s say there is a girl you see at the supermarket that you stop by on your way home from work. You don’t know much about her except hat you think she is cute, and you might want to get to know her a little bit better. So you wish you could think of some clever thing to say, not a super mack pick up line, just a comment about something to peak her interest a little bit.

But every time you see her, you are either busy, or there are people around, or you just can’t think of anything to say in the moment. Then twenty minutes later, after you get home, you think of saying something about some button or something she had pinned on her uniform. Let’s say she had a “get out the vote” button, and you thought about mentioning that you volunteered for a local politicians campaign recently. Of course it’s to late, and next time you see her, she may or may not be wearing that button.

What you do is re-imagine the interaction, re-imagine your experience from that particular day. Only don’t remember it the way it happened, remember it the way you would like it to have happened. Something simple like “Oh you think voting is important? I do to. I actually volunteered for Mr. X’s campaign last spring.” That’s it. It’s important to only remember your part of the changed memory, because you can’t control other people reactions.

Do this a few times until the “re-recorded” memory seems as real as the real memory. What this does is program your subconscious with what you want to happen, rather than what actually happened. Your brain is like a computer, and you can program it like a computer. Only with your brain, you have to program it with images and feelings, (since your brain can’t really speak Fortran or C++).

What this does is give your brain the directive to say something interesting based on the environment when you see that girl, instead of just passively paying our money and collecting your receipt.

This may take a few tries, but when you do this on a regular basis, you will see some profound changes in your daily life. And the strange thing is, they will come almost naturally. You’ll have to really pay attention to notice them.

Rewriting your daily history is a great and powerful way to reprogram your automatic behavior so you can experience more pleasure in life and give more pleasure to others. And when you can do that, you’re doing pretty good.