NLP Is the Map—Here’s How to Actually Use It to Change Your Life

What if this year could feel completely different?

In this article, we go beyond the theory of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and dive into what really creates transformation: application. Knowing about NLP won’t change your life—but experiencing it will. By shifting your subconscious patterns from fear to love and embracing curiosity as your guide, you can finally rewrite the stories that are keeping you stuck. Learn how to align with life’s natural flow, let go of outdated beliefs, and create a whole new way of living. Ready to stop reading about change and start living it? Let’s dive in.✨ Because the biggest transformation happens when you stop knowing and start doing.

In my last article, “What NLP is Really About”, we explored how Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) isn’t just a theory—it’s a powerful, practical method for reprogramming the subconscious mind. But there’s something deeper we must address: knowing about NLP is not the same as applying it, which can only be fully understood through experience.

Discover how to apply NLP to experience life with greater flow, freedom, and joy. Reprogram your subconscious mind by adopting an attitude of curiosity in your everyday life. Identify and change your fear-based beliefs to those aligned with unconditional love to finally re-write your story in 2025 and beyond. 

How to Experience Another Way in 2025

The holidays and new year can be a challenging time for most people. Family dynamics, relationships, financial and business pressure, school holidays and more can bring up a LOT more stress, anxiety, fear and depression than average daily life. 

But what if this year—it was different?

Discover NLP as an applied practice to turn the tables on the new year to gift yourself a whole new experience this 2025 and beyond.

Knowing is theoretical. Applying is experiential. The difference is transformational.

Even at a Master NLP level, the concepts are essentially meaningless and deliver limited benefits in your life because NLP is something that can only be fully understood by experiencing it. 

It’s the difference between reading about swimming and diving into the deep end.

Let me show you how this works.

A Game of Perception

You know how you grew up saying you would never be like your parents? Like a workaholic who never had time for the children—and then one day you realise you do the exact same thing.

That’s a simple universal law, and it goes much deeper than just with your parents. 

Let’s dive into the deep end: 

• Think about 10 qualities in 10 people you like—write them down.
• Now, think about 10 qualities in 10 people you don’t like—write those down too.

Now take a closer look at both lists. Be honest as you ask yourself, 

“Have I ever done this before?”

If you were honest—the answer is always yes. 

Perhaps not literally—you may not have murdered anyone—but if you look at it symbolically—you’ve “murdered” a relationship, right?

This is a fundamental principle in NLP—what you see in others is a reflection of something within yourself.

This is not something that means too much conceptually—but the experience changes everything.

An Attitude of Curiosity 

At its core, NLP is an inner attitude of curiosity. 

It’s a way of looking at everything in your life and questioning it—especially your judgments and unconscious behaviours—to identify your fear-based agreements and shift them into new agreements aligned with love.

This is a method for bringing yourself vibrationally in alignment with life—and where the real transformation is experienced.

Everything is Energy

Did you know the magnetic field of your heart can be measured more than 200 metres away from your body?

Everything is energy, which is connected and moves all the time. It vibrates.

• Lower vibrational states feel like heavy emotions—anxiety, fear, guilt, shame.
• Higher vibrational states feel light—joy, love, curiosity.

Unresolved negative emotions vibrate at lower frequencies, keeping you stuck in patterns that drain your energy and create resistance that feels blocked and affects everything on an energetic level. Over time they can even make you physically ill.

But there’s good news: energy is always changing. 

You can bring yourself into vibrational alignment with this law by accepting what is, which creates the space to experience another way. This experience is the difference between knowing and applying NLP.

It’s how you swim to the other side.

The Universal Laws at Work

In this world of duality, there are two sides to everything, including your experiences.

Through an inner practice of curiosity, NLP shows you and helps you move from the side governed by fear (in your head) to the side governed by love (in your heart).

This practice helps you take responsibility for yourself by identifying which side you’re on (fear or love), so you can turn your inner resistance, which is simply outdated, fear-based programming—around. This raises your vibration to live on the side governed by love, not fear. 

This is how you manifest a whole new you. 

Let’s look at how this principle is applied to three basic universal laws:

1. Cause and Effect

The law of cause and effect says every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Nothing is by chance. 

This means everything that happens in your life is a result of your thoughts, actions, and choices. 

You choose whether to:

—Be on the effect side: where life is happening to you

OR 

—Be on the cause side: where life is happening for you

Remember your subconscious mind? Your experience is filtered through your unique model of the world. In other words, the experiences you were programmed with determine which side of the equation you subconsciously choose to experience—by default.

Applying NLP brings your awareness to this fear-based programming, allowing you to identify and shift your default experience of the duality coin from the effect side to the cause side of life. 

This perception empowers you to transform how you view challenges and relationships, shifting obstacles into opportunities for growth, and empowering you to raise your vibration to experience life another way.

2. Perception is Projection

This law states that everything you see outside of yourself is a projection caused by your mind.

Go back to the list of 20 qualities you wrote down.

If you were honest, you noticed that at some point in your life, you’ve exhibited all those traits—both the ones you like and the ones you don’t like.

Being on the ‘cause side’ of this universal law means you let go of your resistance to life, by taking full responsibility for your perception—especially your judgements, grievances and fears. 

Instead of being on the effect side of life asking self-sabotaging questions like, “Why is this happening to me?” you ask more empowering questions like:

• “Have I ever done this before?”
• “What can I learn from this?”

Remember: Your subconscious mind loves you and wants to serve you. If something upsets you, your subconscious mind is showing you an outdated fear-based program ready to be rewritten—if you listen.

3. The Power of Belief

Your beliefs shape how you see, filter and experience life. What you believe holds your current reality in place. 

When you question yourself you allow in the opportunity to rewrite outdated, fear-based beliefs and open the door for the abundant flow of life to surprise you with new and exciting experiences beyond your limited control.

Applying NLP in this way helps you to practice shifting your thinking from fear to love, from resistance to flow, from the small details to the big picture.

We All Have That Voice

We were all born with an internal guidance system—that sense of “right” or “wrong” within ourselves that is always guiding us. However, mostly we were conditioned to not listen to it, and not to trust ourselves. 

Rather we were conditioned to: 

• listen to our elders
• do what we’re told 
• be like everyone else

This conditioning means we’ve forgotten how to listen to and be ourselves. We’ve drowned out our inner knowing by not trusting it and have become disconnected from this internal guidance system as a result. We’ve lost our natural curiosity for life.

But the truth is you can never totally lose it—just drown it out. 

Applying NLP helps you to remember— 

• Your natural curiosity for life
• To listen to your inner knowing
• Trust your internal guidance system
• Practice healthy boundaries

Healthy Boundaries

Healthy boundaries are the result of listening to your internal guidance system. Because everything changes all the time, nobody can truly know what you need at any given moment—but you. 

Instead of blindly following society’s ‘rules’ and ‘expectations’ of what you should be, do or have—boundaries mean you accept responsibility to listen to your heart and awaken your natural curiosity for life—by trusting it.

It’s an experience. 

Back To Yourself

At its core, NLP is a journey back to yourself—not your ego self, but your higher Self—the one that is one with unconditional love.

By listening to your internal guidance system you reawaken your natural curiosity for life by trusting it.

NLP gives you the tools to do this—to see your fear-based agreements and un-do them, aligning yourself vibrationally with life—unconditional love. 

This allows you the experience of letting go of your ego’s attachment to what it thinks it wants (your fear-based programming), and to trust life by aligning yourself vibrationally with how it is, in each moment. 

The Power of Intention

Every intention has an outcome or a result. Because everything changes all the time, intention is like an agreement you make with yourself to guide how you respond to this change, rather than attempting to control it. 

Contrary to your ego’s popular belief, you have no power to control anything outside yourself, ever. Attempting to do so cuts you off from the abundant flow of life and invariably gets you bumped around by people in different environments at different times—like your family during the holidays.

Intention-setting is a practice that allows you a greater level of acceptance (vibrational alignment) that helps keep your mind clear to breathe through the ever-changing flow of life, trusting your intention to deliver you a different result. 

This is how we stay on the cause side of the universal laws at OAM.

OAM—The Open Acceptance Method

The Open Acceptance Method comes from my personal (and professional) practice of applying NLP to be curious and accept responsibility for everything to live on the cause side of life, in vibrational alignment with what is.

It is a way of applying NLP like a map to identify your fear-based agreements (your inner resistance) and accept responsibility for your energy, which empowers you to navigate life another way. 

During my 16-year career as a Master NLP Practitioner, I became super frustrated with how people run to different methods, coaches, courses and workshops to ‘fix’ themselves, without taking responsibility to apply what they learned in their everyday lives.  

They’re looking for a magic pill, which doesn’t exist.

OAM is how I share my transformational experience of applying NLP in my everyday life—identifying, questioning and accepting my inner resistance to trust, listen and truly love my Self. 

This is my method that essentially gives you a map to turn everything around—back to your Self—aligning your inner vibration with the abundant flow of life. 

The Story of Separation

We’ve all grown up programmed by this world of fear, with beliefs, dogmas and stories that convince us we’re separate from one another, from love, and from being enough as we are.

These beliefs which are rooted in fear, reinforce your experience of separation which keeps you stuck in self-sabotaging patterns of judgement, grievances and inner resistance that cause you to suffer, become ill and make life seem hard.

A New Agreement

How about another way in 2025? 

In a world that changes all the time, the only control you have is over your internal world. 

With an inner attitude of curiosity, guided by intention setting and open acceptance, you will begin to shift your inner focus from what you don’t want (your unconscious fear-based agreements), to what you do want (your new love-based agreements). 

The result is an experience that empowers you to bring yourself more into vibrational alignment with what is, rather than attempting to control, fix or change anything outside yourself. 

The experience is authentic self-love. It’s where you dive into the water—and swim.

Warning: don’t fall into a common new age, personal development or spiritual woo-woo misperception. 

This subtle change of agreement doesn’t mean you sit back and do nothing while you manifest all the dreams on your vision board by thinking positively. 

On the contrary, it is a very active, intentional practice that involves radical self-honesty, and surrender: the acceptance of life. 

This practice has nothing to do with changing anything outside yourself. Rather, it has everything to do with accepting responsibility to listen to and change the resistance from within you. 

The Result: Another Way

When you apply NLP by practising the Open Acceptance Method—you stop chasing love, happiness, and abundance outside yourself. The experience shows you that, not only is it already within you—it is you.

This method isn’t about learning anything new, but rather it’s about un-learning (through experience), the fear-based agreements keeping you locked in patterns where you and what you do are ‘not enough’.

Applying this method in your everyday life will help you begin the process of rewriting your story from one of fear and separation to one of wholeness, flow, and unconditional love.

Why OAM Matters

Knowing about NLP is just the beginning—applying it is where transformation happens.

Each time you accept responsibility for your perceptions, question your beliefs and align with unconditional love to live on the cause side of life, you reprogram your subconscious agreements and rewrite your story.

The more you practise, the more natural it becomes—and the more your experience of life begins to flow—effortlessly and easily.

Are You Ready To Apply NLP in Your Everyday Life?

Ignite your natural curiosity for life with an empowering question:

• What’s one story I’m ready to rewrite today?
• What can I learn from this experience?

Opening yourself to be curious about the answers will help you begin the process of accepting responsibility to live in alignment with the joy, love and freedom that is already you. 

If you’d like to go deeper, join my upcoming intention-setting group and experience transformation from the inside out.

***

Much love, 

Renier Jooste

Open Acceptance Method (OAM) Founder, Certified Master NLP & Hypnotherapy Practitioner, Firewalking & Breathwork Instructor, Strategic Intervention Specialist, Body Language & Micro-Expression Expert, Human Behaviour Specialist, Core Human Needs Therapy Practitioner and Reiki Level 2 Practitioner

👉 Join the OAM Method Self-Love Email List for weekly tips, tools and stories on living in open acceptance.  

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👉 Download my free guide, How To Be Free From Your (Overthinking) Mind. It’s a practical guide on how to open your heart to unconditional love.