Methodology | SR® Institute : Counseling. Life Coaching.

D. Methodology

The SR® process is normally accomplished in seven steps over a four hour period with the most dramatic results achieved in two 2 hour sessions over two days. Follow-up sessions are normally one hour each. Following is an overview of this 7 Step Process.

Step 1: The Emotional Checklist and TBLC Definition

Administer CSRC - Client Agreement, and the Emotional Checklist to obtain a baseline of Warrior emotional, behavioral, and social states.

The Certified SR® Counselor uses Guidelines written in script form, so there is consistent implementation of the process across all Certified SR® Counselors. There are simply two designations in the guidelines and they are “CSRC” and “Note.” Any time you see “Note”, this is Kelly Burris speaking to the SR® Counselor and anytime you see “CSRC” this is the SR® Counselor speaking to the client. Before moving to Step 2, a series of 10 questions will immediately engage the subconscious of the Warrior and give a clear explanation of how the SR® process works and how it will empower them to take control.

CSRC

1) What runs your life? . . . What was running your life when you joined the Military? What will run your life when you are out of the Military? What runs your life in your relationships? What runs your life when it is working and what runs your life when it is not? What! . . . runs your life?

Note: If you are working with a group, ask for hands and get responses. Visually post responses without comment.

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What runs your life is...the power of your subconscious. If you are in control of your subconscious, you are running your life. If you are not in control of your subconscious, your subconscious is running you. This, of course, brings up the next question.

2) Do you know how your subconscious works?

Note: The answer here is going to be “sort of”, or “not really”. If someone you are working with indicates they do, indeed, know how the subconscious works, let them explain it to you. They will, of course, be guessing unless they have already gone through this program process.

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3) How can the subconscious possibly be running your life?

To give you an idea of the power of the subconscious, you can speak at a rate of about two to three hundred words per minute. Your subconscious runs at a rate of approximately one thousand to twelve hundred words per minute which is about four times faster than you can speak. This is why you can talk on the phone and perform other tasks like typing on the computer or driving a car, because the subconscious is already programmed to do the other tasks.

You can look at the conscious mind and the subconscious mind like a tug of war with a vat of mud in the middle for whomever loses. The conscious mind is one person on one side against the subconscious, which has four people on the other side.

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If you decide to move in a different direction, like scoring higher on something that is important to you, getting a good night's sleep, staying calm in a stressful situation, or changing any habit that may not work for you, it is usually a losing proposition because you are simply outgunned by your subconscious. The dilemma is that the subconscious is running four times faster than your conscious mind, and right now you have no idea what it is doing. This, of course, leads us to the next question.

4) How do you achieve excellence? . . . As a Warrior . . . How do you achieve excellence as a Warrior in combat . . . How do you achieve excellence as a Warrior in peace. How do you achieve excellence as a Warrior in your relationships with yourself and others. . . How do you achieve excellence?

Excellence is achieved by incorporating Best Practices. Best Practices are achieved by measuring, monitoring, and controlling critical behaviors designed to produce desired results. The SR® Process is a proven Best Practice for measuring, monitoring, controlling and restructuring the power of your subconscious, enabling you to excel.

5) How is taking control and restructuring your subconscious like taking control of the enemy?

Until you control and restructure your subconscious, it will control you. Taking control of and restructuring your subconscious presents strategic advantages, prevents unnecessary loss, and puts you in control. Just like controlling the enemy, taking control of, and restructuring, your subconscious is an absolute must in order to effectively run your life.

6) Can you take control of anything if you do not know how it works?

The answer to this is an emphatic, NO! It is like when your weapon misfeeds. Until the jam is cleared, no amount of banging on it will make it work. You must know and follow the process for clearing a jam if you want to be in control of your weapon system. In life, your subconscious is your most important tactical system and you must know how to control and restructure it, or it will run and may ruin your life.

The SR® Process will put you in control of your subconscious by providing a Best Practice for unjamming your life without guessing how to do it. It's like when the rec room radio or TV goes on the blink, but then starts working when you bang on the top of it. It's not really fixed permanently. You or someone else will continue banging on it until it fails completely. When that will happen is anybody's guess.

7) Does it make any sense to guess if you want to take control of your subconscious and run your life?

Absolutely not! And you are guessing if you cannot answer the most fundamental question for initiating changes you wish to make permanent in your life. That is…

8) What determines human behavior?

Information

Regardless of the behavior, habit, or emotional state you want to take control of, or permanently restructure and change, the subconscious must be properly informed of that desire or it will continue to run your life as it always has.

The SR® Process provides a structure for informing and controlling the subconscious daily. It also provides a process for measuring, monitoring, and controlling your results. There is no guessing involved.
The next question then would be:

CSRC

9) What are the components of this information?

Words and Pictures. The next question is: “How do you Recognize, Access and Change this information so you can permanently change the way you feel and take control of your life?”
Are you with me so far?

Note:
This is a good time to give a sample of an emotionally driven behavior. One of my personal favorites is a time when I was explaining my program to a gentleman who responded: “I am doing a technique that is based on pure logic. I am training myself to respond to every situation in a purely logical manner with no emotion involved. I find that it has worked better for me than anything else I have ever tried.”

As he was explaining this to me, his voice was monotone and his face was almost expressionless. When he completed his explanation, I asked him how he felt about this method, and his eyes got real big. He smiled, and said “GREAT.”

If you do not know how to take control of and restructure your subconscious, which, in turn, allows you to take control of your emotional state and behavior, it can be like riding in the back seat of a car with some maniac driving all over the road.

The SR® Program will guide you through the process of how to get rid of the maniac who is currently driving, and get you behind the wheel of your emotional state and your behavior. When you identify something that does not work for you such as fear, guilt, anger, hopelessness, etc., you simply unlearn it and replace it with something that works better. Of course, this is known as Subconscious Restructuring®.

How are you going to do this, you might ask? In the second Step of the program, you will put your subconscious map or structure on paper. You will then use that information to begin to restructure what simply does not work, which, in turn, will change your emotional state and behaviors that do not work for you. The reason you must write everything down is because if you do not, how are you going to know where you have started, where you are going, or where you have ended? It is also the only way you can track your progress.

The way you feel about things in your life is determined by your individual perception, so I would like to start out by making a change in your perception.

10) Have you ever felt that you have failed at anything?

Within the context of the SR® Process, there is no such thing as failure, there are only results. If you do not like the results you are getting, you simply change what you are doing. With the Burris SR™ Process, you continue to bend, shape, rearrange, and restructure the programming in the subconscious until you achieve the external results you want.

Until now, you have been programmed to attack the body to try to change your mind. You were made to believe that someone else will take control of your behavior by simply telling you what to do while you passively sit back. This is part of the subconscious restructuring you need to accomplish in order to take control of your subconscious restructuring. Permanent positive change can only occur if you are willing to find out how the subconscious works and then use that information to restructure your subconscious.

The SR® Program is a 7 Step process and you have already completed the first step, which is the data basing and baseline measurement of the Emotional Checklist, Behavior Control Checklist, and Relationship Satisfaction Scale. Please keep in mind that the information you write down in your notebook is for your eyes only, unless you choose to share something.

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Step 2: Subconscious Perspective & Empowering Questions

Step 2 addresses the first component of what determines an emotional state and behavior - your words

(1). Write one goal that you ABSOLUTELY MUST accomplish for:

Love
Health
Wealth (prosperity)
Self-Image

(2). Write down the reasons why you ABSOLUTELY MUST accomplish your goals.
(3). Write down what you feel you ABSOLUTELY MUST do to accomplish your goals.
(4). Write down all of the excuses that keep you from attaining your goals.
(5). Do you feel confident you can accomplish your goals? If not, what questions do you ask about them?

Empowering Questions Defined

Before we get started on Empowering Questions, you need to understand why questions are the primary component for taking control of your subconscious restructuring. Now that you know you ask yourself questions, the next questions is: Does your subconscious work on questions when you are not consciously involved? Yes! If you have ever asked yourself the question: “What is that person’s name?”; you may not get an answer right away, but maybe in an hour or two, or maybe even the next day while you are doing something completely unrelated, the answer comes popping into your head as clear as day.

Your subconscious will generate a response to absolutely every question you ask yourself even if it has to make one up. False memories are created by someone continually asking you for an answer to a question that the subconscious does not have stored. This can be a tremendous benefit if you are the one who has control over the questions. If you do not have control over your internal dialogue, especially your internal questions, anyone can use this process to take control of your subconscious.

When I ask you a question, what part of your consciousness usually gives you a response? You have to retrieve an answer from your subconscious. If I ask you a question about questions that you ask yourself, you have now gained access to the deepest level of the subconscious. This is the very beginning of the process that brings about an emotional state, which, in turn, determines your behavior. This is why it is important to turn every response in The Subconscious Perspective into an Empowering Question. This will immediately engage the subconscious and force it to move in the direction you have predetermined.

Now that you know the subconscious works on questions when you are not consciously involved, how important, then, does the structure of the questions you ask yourself become? It becomes very important, because if you are now asking yourself questions like…“Why can’t I maintain a consistent exercise program?” or “Why can’t I stop eating unhealthy foods?” or “Why can’t I accomplish my goals?” What do you think the results of these questions will be? They will give you more excuses or keep you anchored to what you do not want.

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Most Empowering Questions will begin with: “How can I…?” or “What actions do I need to take to…?” or “What do I need to do to…?”For example: If one of your goals is to lose 25 pounds and maintaina more consistent fitness program, an Empowering Question mightbe: “How can I permanently lose 25 pounds and have more fun withmy fitness plan?”You do not have to agonize over a question. All you have to do isto continue asking, and eventually the subconscious will come upwith an answer. You do need to make sure you continue coming backand ask your Empowering Questions until they are answered.

Onceall of your questions are answered, ask yourself…“Am I completelyhappy with this answer?”, or “Is this the answer that is going to work the best for me?”

You will start the process of Empowering Questions with yourgoals.

Empowering Questions

Turn all goals, statements and questions into positive Empowering Questions.
Empowering Questions will begin with “How can I __________”?, or “What actions do I need to take to __________”?, or “What do I need to do to __________”?
Write Empowering Questions for your love, health, wealth and self-image goals, reasons, actions, and excuses.
The questions you ask your subconscious are the beginning of an emotional state, which leads to a behavior.
Listen to your self talk and change every negative question you ask yourself into a positive Empowering Question.
There are five Key Questions that you must ask yourself every day:

(1) Does this work for me?
(2) How do I feel, and will I benefit from the results of this?
(3) What can I replace this with, that I will benefit from?

Instead of reprimanding yourself, instead ask:
(4) What can I learn from this? and
(5) How can I use this experience to move myself more quickly toward my goals?

Step 3: Subconscious Self-Image

Statement 1: Describe in detail how you see yourself after you have attained your goals.
It is imperative that you establish the mental image of the person you would like to be.
It is also important to check the image you have of yourself from time to time to make sure that you are maintaining your new self-image.
The most important image you will ever change is the image you have of yourself right now.

Statement 2: Describe the activities you see yourself participating in after attaining your goals.
It is imperative that you learn to associate activities you know you will enjoy with your new self-image, because becoming more active is an essential factor in attaining and maintaining a positive self-image.

Statement 3: Write down the feelings you experience from your new self-image.
The subconscious will always move towards pleasure and away from pain.
Writer, Producer, and Director: You are now the writer, producer, and director of your new subconscious self-image.
You can create the exact image you wish.

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If you have a difficult time maintaining a new perception of yourself, ask questions like:
How can I maintain the image of this positive perception every second, every minute, every hour of every day?
Should you run out of questions to ask yourself, ask the following question:
What questions can I ask myself that will help me maintain this new positive empowering image?

Let’s take a look at the structure of your subconscious pictures.

We determine positive from negative experiences by the way an image is stored, or by the structure of that image.
You must learn to store the visual information that creates a positive emotional state for you. Then, use that information to help you maintain focus and motivation towards your goals.
You must learn to Associate and Dissociate.
Right now, association and dissociation happen automatically.
Right now you may be associating with negative images, and dissociating from the positive images.
To control how you feel, association and dissociation must become intentional.
Think about being able to look at it from a distance.
Motivation Picture
Goal Picture
Restructure the Goal picture to match the Motivation picture.

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Step 4: The Stop & Replace System

Two key elements must exist in order to activate an emotional state, which then determines your

It is from this subconscious picture that your emotional state is determined, and, in turn, determines your behavior. The Stop & Replace System is where you make a full assault on the subconscious programs that do not work for you.
- Let’s begin by working on the three biggest subconscious programs that do not work for people:
- These three most limiting emotional states are the motivation for a wide spectrum of other limiting behaviors.
- Begin with Fear
- Describe your “fear” replacement picture—Associated
- Empowering Question: What can I use to replace this habit, behavior, or emotional state that will benefit me?
- You cannot just quit something and leave a blank place in the mind; you must replace it with something that you derive tremendous pleasure from before you quit.
- Write a description of the old picture and remember to stay dissociated from this negative picture.
- Look at the old picture and back it up, frame by frame, until you see the Cue right before you enter this emotional state.
- Now, you are ready for the Switch Pattern.
- Now, begin your Stop & Replace work with Guilt, then Anger. Over time, and, as applicable, work the Stop and Replace System with:
- Negative Self Talk,
- Procrastination.
- Drugs and Alcohol,
- Over (Under) Eating,
- Smoking,
- Coffee,
- Sugar, and
- Any additional replacement behaviors and or emotional states applicable to each individual.
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Step 5: The Heart SR®
- The Heart of TBLC consists of your Love, Health, Wealth, and Self-Image.
- Once you have learned to take control of your emotional state, it is imperative that you use these skills on a daily basis.
- The way you process information can be changed in a dramatically short period of time, simply by implementing the Heart of TBLC.
- It is imperative you ask yourself a minimum of one question per category every night before you go to bed, and every morning after you get up.
The first three Key Questions you will ask yourself throughout the course of the day are:
The two Key Questions to use instead of reprimanding yourself are:
- Use the TBLC Workbook, Step 5, to expand on your Love, Health, Wealth, and Self-Image.
- When you have gone through all 20 examples for Love, Health, Wealth, and Self-Image, add Empowering Questions that are important in your life.
Step 6: Food and Fitness Planner
- Getting consistent control of your emotional state includes consistent control of what you eat, drink, the amount you exercise, and the amount of sleep you get each night.
- Planning your Food & Fitness Schedule is a big part of reprogramming unwanted behaviors such as overeating, using alcohol or drugs, emotionally driven food, not sleeping enough, and not exercising.
- Use the Food & Fitness Schedule, one day ahead, for at least the first 30 days.
Step 7: The Trance-Formation (Guided Imagery)
- This is an SR® tool that you can use at least once a day for the rest of your life.
- In the first part of the name of this step, “Trance”, or deep subconscious state, you will have a greater level and effectiveness, of communication with your subconscious.
- The last half of the name of this step, “Formation”, refers to the formation of information during your trance or the structure of your self-talk and pictures.
- What you say to yourself is more important than anything anyone will ever say to you or about you.
- First, establish a clear vision of your Motivation Picture and the New Self. Make sure that this picture is of the exact dimensions you wish you are and that you are with people you love and in a location that makes you feel fantastic.
- Once you have a clear vision of your Motivation Picture and your New Self, set it aside for a moment.
- With your palms face up on your thighs, place two swirling white lights in the center of your palms.
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- Every night as you go to bed, you can call upon this loving white light to enter your trance, walk down the thousands of steps, and see, and get back into, your Motivation Picture.
  - Empowering Questions about your Love, health, Wealth and Self-Image are working in your subconscious.
  - As you finish working your Empowering Questions, you begin to climb back up the stairs; your motivation picture comes clearly into view.
Maintenance and Follow Up
- Recognize that you now have the tools to Recognize, Access, and Change (restructure) your subconscious programming.
- It is up to you to consistently implement these tools until you are completely satisfied that you have successfully restructured your subconscious.
- The purpose of the SR® Program is to establish a solid foundation through which you can intervene on, and restructure, your emotional state and behavior.
- You must continue to use the principles of the SR® Program every day if you expect and want to have control over your emotional state and behavior.
- Remember to turn your excuses into Empowering Questions as soon as they arise.
Integration and Ramifications

After successfully addressing the most urgent needs of the US Army with regard to successfully treating PTSD and implementing a successful suicide prevention program, a wider systemic integration of the SR® program throughout all US Army commands will have far reaching ramifications. As has already been proven over the 25 year SR® Program history, this program intervention is highly successful, both as a PTSD/suicide intervention tool, and as a mental health wellness process applicable to virtually all US Army personnel. As an example, implementation of the SR® process at the very beginning, during basic training will act as a powerful preventative measure.

There is a consistent process that everyone must go through in order to act out any behavior. Because the SR® program approaches emotional and behavioral issues from the very beginning of this process, it has proven to work exceptionally well with virtually all disorders. The far reaching ramifications of using the SR® Program Army-wide, from personnel entry to exit, will transform the US Army into a much more efficient and synergistic wellness entity overall.

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D. Methodology

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