7 seconds to change your life: Alistair Horscroft at TEDxNoosa 2014 

Language = Positive Affirmations Imagination = Visualization of success This is what we do in coaching and self development sessions. My guess is that if you waited 7 seconds or more then your emotions will shift in the direction of your imagination or affirmations. Step one: Calm down and keep silent for 10 or 15 seconds. Step two: Start imagining the outcome you want in the situation at hand Step three: Go ahead and do what you have to do. meeting, speech, etc... I personally use and coach people to wait 20 seconds before reacting to an angry or agitated partner's threats. This proved successful over and over again.

Eagerly watched this video and it made a lot of sense right up until the end when there was no real explanation as to how to us the "space".

This is one of the best talks! Most people are so out of touch with themselves they assume they’re acting in the now when they’re really reacting from the past. We need to become more Present and Mindful in the Moment so we can fully witness ourselves! 💜 Thank You 😊

I had to watch it three times - I thought that I was missing the explanation. There isn't one!

The conclusion is very clear, as clear as you can vividly remember the spaces you were just put in as he 'hypnotized' you with unholy amount of film references for the seven second lead your sub-conscious has to choose the opposite decision. He was providing the conclusion with the explanation of it as you bounced from defining the space and demonstrating it by taking you there which controls the phobic( the thing he takes for seven second to 'space'' ). He told you he it can't be accepted by just telling you 'stop it' was put in our brain, he put it there when you were in the space. Your brain now has that tool. When Bill Hicks pointed out if your phobia was really true to you you woudn't be doing it in the erratic ways your conscience is running up buildings to prove it. Wow, this is why he had to do it like this. You cannot just tell the person but you must use functional programming. Bravo.

...the longest 7 seconds I've ever spent.

TED is lately abundant on the "happiness" topic. Depression, why people are unhappy, how to believe in yourself, etc. It's actually very simple: the peer pressure is making you a competitive animal to achieve and achieve non stop. Go simple, minimalist, and never aim higher. You will find your peace.

A great video. I remember that six years ago I started watching TED Talks because I wanted to improve my English. But over time I have fallen in love with them. I can easily say that I have learnt a lot from these videos than I have learnt from my parent or even teacher. I am not saying that I am a successful man but a huge portion of all I have owes its presence to these TED Talks

"Surely, surely if you really believed that you could fly, you would try taking off from the ground first!" +Makes REALLY good sense!

As a life coach, I love learning more about how our brains work. I focus on helping people create change so this is very interesting.

This was an infomercial for this man's services. How do you stop this? You punish TED (or TEDx, because TED is normally very solid). Do it. TED does not stand for "Teasers Eliciting Dollars."

Alistor, I appreciate your talk and I am surprised by the people that have expressed negative comments but I shouldn't be, and this why: I spend a lot of time on RU-vid looking for content to help me navigate life. like a lot of people I find myself feeling extremely empty after decades of work and difficult relationships. I went to a doctor for help and he suggested some types of therapy. I googled the suggestions and I was surprised to find a lot of negative comments about his suggestions. I went back to the doctor and told him of my findings. He chuckled and said that is typical in the internet self diagnosis culture. He explained that so many people today will go to professional for help, then go to the internet to find additional information and attempt to supersede the professional advice. People do this in everything from medical to spiritual advice trying to make themselves the ultimate expert on the universe. But the most important point he made was I failed to see the millions of people that were helped by the suggested therapy because the people that were better rarely take the time to acknowledge it since they were now busy with their lives due to the healing. Conversely, the people that complained about the therapy were the minority that for a number of reasons didn't get any better and probably never will. I was also looking for more solution out of what you talked about but the simple math is you gave way more than you were paid. Thank you and blessings! ps. I wrote this one my pillow with one eye peering out of my glasses so please excuse any typos or grammar errors all of you that are so hell bent on criticism that you have to pick on language skills over content:-)

I did not comprehend anything from this speech

This is one of the most insightful RU-vid videos I have ever watched. It is really a great work! Thank you very much for your efforts.

The "hidden gem" behind this video is that patience, perseverance and determination are all important and relative in making progress towards changing your life in the ways that you want to. I honestly expected to hear a 3 step system of some sort from the speaker, but I guess that's what many of us were expecting based on the other comments that I've read. Is it because that's what we're used to? It seems that we've been spoon fed a lot of the answers over the course of our lives, so much so that we cannot sit through a 14 minute video and accept that sometimes, people just don't make any sense. Good thing I've been meditating more or I wouldn't have been able to make it through.

This is a great talk to help you understand how your brain works and how you can utilize it to make CHANGE

This starts off ok, I was glad to see a Bill Hicks reference, loved the bit about how we need to create a space using our imagination to conquer and preceed our unconscious dread and then it ended.

Omg, brilliant, where has this video been. Why isn’t this a widespread practice- because it would actual solve problems , issues, behavior change. Amazing , simply amazing

I took time out of my busy day to watch this. Very good.

Behavioural therapists are like Magicians, they do not give out their secrets. This guy just increased his hourly rate and client numbers with this show. Interesting, but a bit mean.

Awareness is everything!

I'll save you 15 min and summarize this brilliant talk "Practice!". Yep, fear is your brain doing what it did the last time this (whatever you are afraid of) happened - which for most people quite often is never!

After listening to 100s of TED talks, this is the first talk I felt in which the speaker actually did not want to share his knowledge. Weird indeed!

The 5 second rule is best so far. As soon as you want something or think of something or anything you would like, you have 5 seconds to act. I started using this method and now my unconscious mind automatically counts down 5sec, as soon as I get a thought. In these 5 secons I have 3 choises. -Do it! -HandBRAKE! (and put in on the future shelf, where most people have alot of stuff) -Or just decide that its a bad idea, eg hurting someone else or it's just simply stupid. The trick of this is to FORCE yourself off your ass and actually do what you love. Still using it for small actions, but I'm working on getting this done for bigger decitions as well, guess some handbraks are still used.

That was a great talk. I liked your presence and giving clear examples. As to people who are dissatisfied because they didn't get the answer to solving their problems for free - or were somehow taken advantage of by this - come on. Really ask yourselves when have you given away the essence of your profession for free? Or could you even do so in 20 minutes even if you wanted to? Get real. This guy gave good info and you can follow up on it with him or a book or whatever. If this was a waste of your time then that result is on you.

People are trying to find out the gist of this speech. So, let me say. The speaker mainly wanted to say we're much more driven by our unconscious mind than we think. He said whenever you're about to take a decision in our conscious mind the decision is already made by our unconscious mind 7 second earlier. That's why the speaker urged to give value on that unconscious mind if anyone want to change his life from one state to another. And, all sorts of professionals who work with human psychology should also emphasize on that unconscious mind of their patient. Thank you.

You refer to a second video many times. I have not searched for it but I will. I have just started my degree classes and I am majoring in psychology with a focus on behavior changes. I love to learn and discover new behaviors based on my hidden mind. I can't wait to learn more. It would be helpful if maybe you could post where to find your second video. But for now, the search is on. I think it is great that you comment on all your comments. It shows great dedication.

Hey guys, so just before the thirteenth minute he mentions his solution which is a new term he has coined ''functional awareness... neutralising the amygdala bypassing association of the critical faculty so that we can think about what we need to think about.'' I think he is talking about activating Gamma brainwave frequencies in the mind? as this frequency becomes present through meditation and hypnosis. Great talk!

I thought it was a great insight and explanation into how the mind processes thoughts in certain situations. What to do with it or how to change it is up to you to figure out and find a method that works best for you! Thank you Alistair , i really enjoyed it !

Nice talk. Well presented. Yes, thats what I initally thought too: 'wheres the solution?' Actually it dawned upom me later that its the lazy side of the brain that seeks immediate solutions without having to make any exertion. The talk stimulates the active side of the brain which has now, for me at least, begun to seriously seek some solutions to the problems. Thanks a ton!!

The best thing about TED talks is that there are so many good ones which when your combine them with background reading makes up for the gaps in knowledge. Alistair provided an interesting potted alternative to Daniel Kahneman's system 1 and system 2 brain theory. The problem that still exists and which still remains a bit of a mystery is whether sustained present moment awareness is sufficient. Can we observe our 'experiencing brain' making the same mistakes or do we need to anticipate situations with a learned pre-cognition 'Do'. At the moment I am inclined to fall in favour of Brian Fletcher's and Karen Pine's 'Do Something Different' approach. Eckhart Tolle's certainly seems to have taken this route though his default position seems to rely on the 'observing' self. B.J. Fogg behavioural change approach gives us a clue at what Alistair is intimating but it would have been better had he illustrated this more clearly.

When healing patients, I help them to expect and to visualize their healing. In the end, God is the healer.

Step one : Accept your reality Step two : Feed you brain step three : Functional awareness I GUESS IM CLOSE ENOUGH

Believe that you can overcome, latch on to it, and focus on it. He said it in a round a bout way, but that is the overarching message I saw. I will have to re watch it with the sound on at some point.

Inspiring speech and insightful creation of the terminology, "functional awareness". Liked the metaphor of the two buttons on the game show as the conscious and unconscious mind. It is great that through neuroscience we are understanding much more about how the brain processes our experiences and how this evidence shows us that real change will only come by changing our unconscious minds.

All these people complaining page after page. I too, was a bit confused at the end but I took the time to read a comment or two. Guess what I found Mr Horscroft answering some comments. He actually gives an explanation.

very nice explanation , thank you very much,Mitiku from Ethiopia

Read the comments first and saved my time.

Alistair Horscroft, I suggest that you read carefully the comments to your video. Then, if they move something inside you, try and create a different video, same subject, but remade after your listners critiques. I'm sure many listeners will be very grateful.

He is to the point but its subtle. He's saying: Understand subconscious dominance, use language and imagination for 7 minutes, accept and understand changes imagined and felt in our brains are more likely cause the desired change.

It's just too simple for most people to get because we have been conditioned to believe it's complicated. 1. Language 2. Imagination. 1st, become aware of what you are saying. 2nd, imagine the life you want and what you have to say in order to have the life you want. 3rd, Change your language, your self-talk. That's it. Stop trying to make it complicated. It's very simple.

God bless everyone everbody be safe be blessed let jesus be with u everywhere you go

The Tibetan book of living and dying has helped me a lot.

HE never actually comes to a conclusion?! He says "how do we do this" and then doesn't actually say how to do it. I would guess that he wanted to say more but then ran out of time and had to cut out the actual solution! As it happens the solution is exactly what I talk about in my workshops and simply put it's to get someone else to ask you questions about why you have the belief you have that is influencing your subconscious mind to generate these thoughts and feelings so fast that your conscious brain has no chance to step in and frankly say "stop it". A good NLP practitioner can ask you questions to elicit the subconscious beliefs and so that your conscious brain can understand what's going on and start to rewire your brain, so that we can get the subconscious brain to start working FOR us rather than AGAINST us. A really basic way to do this is to get someone else to ask you "why do you think that" until you have dug down to the real answer, sometimes you will find young children are the best at this and they just say "why"... and if you start saying "just because" then you have not yet dug far enough down to understand the problem.... and/or you are unwilling to change your beliefs

It is hard to change the channel. What we have to do first is to interrupt it by turning off the TV channel that is on the Basil Ganglia, the channel in you brain for routine behaviours or “habits” and turn your brain back on with the Prefrontal Cortex channels running.

Excellent commentary on functional awareness and self-control

Thank you very much indeed.

Lots of people on here talking about a follow-up video. I searched 7 seconds to change your life - continuing the conversation and it just brings me back to this video what's going on man?

Space/Functional Awareness is... Making change you need to soothe the amygdala. So it has a neutral emotional response and then give information and suggestions in such a way that it is not critiqued - it is just accepted as the new behavior. He compares this to hypnosis and meditative where the mind is the passive observer. Basically, use your seven seconds to accept a new suggestion without judgment or criticism, then act in a way that accepts the neutral suggestion.

i can say in one word the secret of being happy for ever which make u sucessful lovely good worker or good student

"So, how do we do it? We use language and imagination. Thanks a lot, you've been great!"

It like the 5 second rule by Mel Robin so if you want to understand check out her explanation of 5 second rule

I felt frustrated at the end of the talk. Reading the comments confirmed that it was a feeling shared by many. Other comments confirmed that indeed, there were useful information given in this talk. At the end, it is our task to keep digging and reflecting (reading the comments and exchanging points of view are good examples) to get the most of it. I will be eternally grateful to TED and the community to create the space for that. What I will remember from this talk is : The power of meditation, language and imagination ... and this sneaky unconscious imAGiin

It's common knowledge that it is our sub-conscious which determines our behavior. To change one's behaviors one has to change one's sub-conscious beliefs; this can be achieved via hypnotherapy or neuro-linguistic programming. Hypnosis is a natural state which everybody enters several times each day without being aware of it. There are several books available which teach purposeful self-hypnosis to achieve change of mind and behavior. FYI - the state of hypnosis and being in a meditative state are NOT the same.

Great energy but, like others have said, the conclusion was lacking... It was like a tease.

Yours speech excellent conversation

To me, the number one talk on TED would be "How to Defuse FEAR!" or "Take the FEAR out of FEAR and Replace It With.....??????"

I see that I need to take a look at the comments before I listen to a TED talk twice--yeah, twice. I thought I had missed the point the first time around. I get the dumbo of the day award for that.

wtf.. all that talking about it, and it just ends? HELLO!!!!

12 minutes in he finally finally gets to the damn point....

This ted talks comes with an interesting observation, decision of the conscious mind are first made in the unconscious or sub conscious mind. So if you clear the cuttler or work on improving your sub consciousn beliefs, it will automatically translate into better decisions taken conciously.

Psycho-cybernetics is one of my favourite books....literally falling apart at the seams as I read and re-read it......when my signal gets better will watch the video too.

I thought the solution was to create spaces in your mind where you actually start making change subconsciously, he may not himself fully be aware of them but he did urge people who are in the position to do so and look at it from the subconscious perspective. He mentioned meditating and hypnosis as being somewhat capable , share knowledge doesn’t mean having the answer but even if his provided 20% it’s still progress in better understanding our behavior

Your unconcious is timeless but knowledge creates a probable statement in the now, witch I would call the conscious. The conscious is the sickness of the unconscious because it is all knowing watching itself make a decsion!!!! Confidence!??

Very enjoyable and valuable, indeed very very thank you

I played this around 5 times thinking I missed the point, but then I read the comments.

What I learned here is that almost all our behavior, is made on felling emotion, we need learn and practice SELF CONTROL 😕 THINK BEFORE talk or do something, and try very hard to do it.

Looking forward to part 2 obviously.

Well that was great! I've learn't something from watching this video - read the comments first.

Thank you sir! I appreciate you for doing this ted Talk.

Brilliant talk

Alistair it is important to share your ideas. Keep exploring the human psyche. The subconscious mind is a powerful tool. I know that for a lot of people in first world countries, space can be hard to find. Maybe because crazy phat cats are pushing them to buy useless shit all day. Human beings are complicated beautiful machines. Love ya man. Keep up the good work.

I will never click on sth that has "will change your life" in the title again. Just a stupid waste of time

Interesting talk that leads me to look further. Also interesting is that people want a person's lifetime of study, exploration and experience condensed into 20 minutes that lead to an easy solution to a life problem. If you look into it, the author does give more information freely. You can also get his books from the library or watch the TV series. Most people do have a pecuniary interest in their expertise-- does the baker give away all the bread? Does the surgeon do all work for free? Did the EatPrayLove author give away all her books? Did you have to pay to see the movie? I didn't see anyone have this criticism for her in the comments for her presentation. Maybe we can become aware of those preceding seven seconds arriving at a judgment before we start typing.

it was actually 14 minutes and absolutely no info on what actually " change your life in 7 seconds" meant. sounds like a comedian and entertaining and thats it.

A space is created by not being full with other things allowing the possibility of anything

I didn't understand this talk perfectly and that's the point!

This was good knowledge. However, I felt that he never got to the punchline! I was waiting for a success story or a practical example of his technique. Oh well, I will now go back to observing my unconscious mind make decisions 7 seconds before I am aware of it.

After all this blurb there was no solid explanation on how to overcome the anxiety.

very good speech...

Here's a tip of how to Increase your confidence, just take a deep breath. that's it

Stop trying to change your life and go change someone else's. Our problem is we are consumer whores. Its not so complicated. Go connect. Go play. Go learn. Go share. Go Give your time to a community that doesn't just work to make a few people rich. Create art. Destroy it. Don't get attached. Attachment is suffering. Love and remember who you are. Human.

Guys... Oh my god. The conclusion is that once you are AWARE and understand how your subconscious tricks you, it is far easier to tackle this problems.

This was a very good talk but I was expecting something more specific at the end... Use your mind and imagination and language? Is he referring to NLP to create "functional awareness" or is he still working on how to implement functional awareness. Abrupt ending but still very good. Thanks to Mr Horsceoft. :)

He just described what EMDR and Accelerated Resolution Therapies do, without naming them.

Thank you. good work

I had to listen to it again to really grasp the solution the speaker was attempting to convey. I'm still unsure of what that was. I wish the focus was more on methods of achieving the peace required to make changes than continually talking about the problems. Thank you though!

Interesting with a touch of an entertainment factor .... well done

Glad to see I am not the only one who's disappointed by this Ted talk. Although I have to say it was funny and he's kinda handsome, so I don't regret having watched it. Just a different approach, more funny and less clear in a way

Sir, that was amazingly well done. Transitionless, flowed like a stream.

Want the conclusion Tedtalk Mel Robbins 5 second rule. She is awesome willing to share and engaging throughout.

12:13 hypnosis, meditation 12:54 functional awareness , think about what we want to think about 13:06 how do we do it? --- tips are here , use the power of language and imagination to create space , but how exactly??? by finishing his the Government-accredited vocational Diploma of Modern Psychology ?????

Mindfulness

So useful information

Real knowledge is experience.

He should play in the next James Bond movie!

If you think this in interesting than you should read "Psycho cybernetics" it was written in the 1960's and it talks about this in greater detail with solutions to the problem

A great book ,to read and learn how our body and brain related whit each other, is Mind Character and Personally by EG White.

Alister u made great point on d end, so true.

I did like the way he puts the idea of the unconscious mind taking decisions prior the conscious mind, but where are the tools that a Ted talk normally provide? Anyway, I did look again and, he talks about language imagination. That's actually true when the purpose is to program your own unconscious mind. For some people (like me) it works making a story of how my future self achieved what I want in life. Normally it doesn't happen the same, but the purpose is to program your mind to respond as the person you want to be.