The Art of Unning

Can you Un? Say it like running but without the ‘r.’

I’ve discovered a new verb – to un! You read that right – to un. No I haven’t missed anything at the end of un – yet! The Art of Unning came to me the other day when I was working with a client. For most of us the leap from a negative feeling to a positive one can be simply too big. For many clients it is simply impossible. That is where the Art of Unning can help.

When we do opposites of words in school many words are paired together. Success – failure. Tall – short. Easy – difficult. Fast – slow. Happy – sad. Active – lazy. Stuck – unstuck. It was this last one that got me into thinking about the Art of Unning so I tried it – and it worked!

Imagine if you were feeling sad. What if instead of thinking you had to be happy you thought about being unsad?

What if instead of thinking about being active you thought about being unlazy?

How about instead of thinking you had to be a success you thought about unfailing?

How about you thought of something challenging being undifficult?

You see it confuses the brain long enough to start making shifts. The Art of Unning can make such unusual words that our conscious mind is so busy trying to come to terms with what unsad means that the unconscious mind gets to work on those blocks without you going ‘Yes but …’.

Have fun with it too!

For organised – disorganised use undisorganised.

For tidy – untidy use ununtidy.

For years we’ve unned positive words – so how about unning some of those negative words and see what happens? As a mathematician might say ‘two negatives make a positive’ so unning negative words kind of makes sense to me – I hope it does to you too!

Why not give it a try and see how the Art of Unning works for you and your clients?

Let me know how you get on!

Soo Matthews

NLP4Kids West Yorkshire

www.westyorkshirechildtherapy.nlp4kids.org

PS Dictionary definition of ‘Un-‘ is a prefix meaning ‘not’ freely used as an English formative giving negative or opposite force in adjectives and their derivative adverbs and nouns.