NLP: How to Forget the Past

First Method: The NLP Photo Wall

Here’s an NLP technique to help you let go of the past. Imagine a wall covered with photos from different moments in your life. There you are going to school, experiencing your first love, earning your first dollar, and there’s that nightmare you wish you could forget. All the significant and even some ordinary moments of your life are on this wall.

Picture all the photos in color, except for the negative event, which is in black and white. Step back and look at your life’s wall from a distance. Notice how much color there is and how small that black-and-white photo is in comparison. Now, mentally shrink that photo down to 1 by 1.5 inches (3 by 4 cm).

Next, keep “adding” photos to your life’s wall. Add images of your future—your dreams, happy moments, vacations, your children going to school, times when you help others, and moments when people admire you. As you fill the wall with colorful images, the black-and-white photo becomes surrounded by vibrant photos that stretch far beyond it.

Looking at the wall, you realize that the event you want to forget is just a single occurrence. It has boundaries, it’s local, and now it takes up only a tiny part of your life’s wall. That black-and-white photo is not your life. Your life is colorful, bright, and full of desire.

As a result of this exercise, negative memories become localized, and life full of happiness and events surrounds them. You haven’t erased the past—you’ve contained it, and it no longer spreads into your present or future.

Second Method: The Comedy Movie Technique

Here’s another NLP technique. Don’t use this right after a shocking event; wait until some time has passed. This method is very effective.

Replay the distressing event from your past in your imagination—the one you want to forget. Yes, I’m asking you to revisit that terrible past you fear. But do it differently: imagine it as a black-and-white movie with funny music playing in the background. Take your seat in the back row of the theater and watch. Add laughter from the audience, even some hysterical laughter at times. Play some scenes in reverse to make the film even funnier. Keep replaying your movie until you’re no longer afraid of it.

By adding silly sounds and distorting the picture, playing it backward, you can “colorize” your black-and-white memories and change your attitude toward them. This technique helps you rewrite your memory. It’s like what you did in school when you erased a bad grade and wrote a better one in its place. After this exercise, the “diary” of your life will look great, and you can stop worrying about “bad grades” from the past.

Third Method: Bury the Past with Action

This method is very practical. It doesn’t involve mind games and not only helps you forget troubling memories but also changes your attitude toward what happened.

Let’s use a metaphor. Imagine your past, the one you want to forget, as a nuclear reactor. Even years later, it emits radiation and poisons everything around it. The lives of people living nearby—meaning you—are contaminated. You can’t enjoy the scent of flowers because everything smells off. The burnt smell from the destroyed power plant haunts you, even in your dreams. The radiation must be eliminated. The reactor needs to be encased in concrete and the event buried in the past. So go ahead—seal it up!

If your memories bother you and you sit in your kitchen thinking about how to forget them, you’re just stirring up the ashes and blowing on them. The memories keep poisoning your life. Or maybe you try to distract yourself by watching TV, but that’s like covering a radioactive site with plastic wrap—it doesn’t work.

Remember, to forget an unpleasant past, you need to encase it in concrete. How? By burying the explosion site under massive actions. Our memory is limited and can’t hold everything we’ve experienced. The more active things you do, the more layers of “concrete” will cover the event you want to forget.

In other words, massive actions that require your full attention become the concrete for your exploded reactor. Keep yourself busy with vivid activities. It’s hard to worry about the past when you’re racing down a mountain on skis. It’s unlikely you’ll remember your negative experiences when you’re speaking in front of a large audience.

Start laying down layers of concrete that keep your past from seeping into your present and future. Take bold, active steps, and your past will stay where it belongs—in the past.