Richard Bandler's Guide to Trance-formation: Make Your Life Great. Richard Bandler

so we’re moving toward pleasure rather than away from pain, we’re walking toward something we want, and we know in which direction we’re going.

      Many Neuro-Linguistic Programmers talk about getting good outcomes. I talk about setting good directions. It’s an important distinction. I want people to have a direction so they keep going. I want them to become involved in the process of living. Whenever people come to me and say, “I want to be happy,” I always say, “I’m sorry all the Seven Dwarf jobs are gone. You’re going to have to be a little more specific than that.”

      You can’t just be happy, but you can learn to do things happily. Living happily entails paying attention to and enjoying the process of doing whatever it is you happen to be doing. It’s not just that something goes bing! and suddenly you’re happy. You learn to be happy by following the old adage about stopping to smell the roses, but you have to enjoy looking at them, and touching them, and walking by them, and everything else about them. You can learn to enjoy everything. You can learn to enjoy sleeping, and waking up, and making breakfast, and going to work. The more things you make pleasant, the happier life will be.

      One of my approaches to help people improve their lives is to get them into a light trance, create good feelings for them, and then aim them in a direction where they can see themselves behaving differently. Everyone can learn to behave differently to some degree or other. And everyone can learn to create good feelings. They first have to know what this will be like; then and only then can they go about planning how to do it for themselves.