has their own way of thinking. When you understand the nature
of these representations, you begin to influence your thinking,
your emotions, and consequently your experience. What you
think is what you are.
You take in information through all the senses of sight,
hearing, touch, taste, and smell. You represent this information
in your mind as a combination of sensory systems and inner
feelings. These thinking patterns are a part of how you “code”
your experience. By learning to manage your thoughts you learn
how to create the life and career you want for yourself. Life is
literally what you make it.
Let's explore some differences in thinking patterns. Think of
“coffee.” What comes to mind?
A picture? Maybe you imagined coffee cups and a coffee
maker.
Or maybe you heard the hiss of the coffee machine. Or the
noise of the coffee being poured into the cup.
Then again, maybe it was more of a feeling. The feel of the
coffee cup perhaps. Or the taste or aroma of the coffee.
Possibly it was a combination of some or all of these
different ways of thinking.
These different ways of thinking are:
❏ VisualYou think in pictures. You represent ideas, memory,
and imagination as mental images, e.g. a picture of a cup of
coffee.
❏ AuditoryYou think in sounds. These sounds could be
voices or noises, e.g. the sound of a coffee machine.
❏ FeelingsYou represent thoughts as feelings, either internal
emotions or the thought of a physical touch. We will include
taste and smell in this category of feelings, the taste of the
coffee for example, or the aroma.
You will find that you probably have a preference for some
systems over others, both in the way you think and in the way
you communicate.
THINKING PATTERNS 17Pictures, sounds, and feelings