watch tHe skies

“I you do the things that you are afraid of, the fear goes away” says Brian Tracy. I love this idea, and yet it is so hard to do because it’s outside of what we believe is possible, isn’t it?

I was coaching someone the other day and she was telling me about the things that hold her back. We explored this some more and got to the root cause… that she was afraid to do them. So I asked her a question:

“Have you ever been chased by Lions or some other creature intent on rending you limb from limb?”

“No” came the answer, with an odd expression that I expected meant that she wondered where I was going with this questioning.

“So I wonder, if you’ve not experienced very real danger, where fear is a given, how do you know what you feel in those other situations is actually fear?”

That’s a tough question to answer. The truth is, emotions aren’t digital… we have an analogue set of feelings that we code, or generalise in to words. The words aren’t the feelings.

And even if they were, what is fear? Fear is a very real and practical emotion if you are in physical danger. Fear fires off adrenaline, which primes our bodies for fight or flight, handy in the jungle, annoying and fairly pointless if you are only anticipating stating your name and occupation at the beginning of a Health and Safety workshop. Thus, for most of us in our everyday lives, fear is redundant, and actually annoying.

And yet I said it doesn’t exist, didn’t I? That’s right. It’s just a name that we give to something, so if we aren’t really feeling fear in those moments where we get butterflies and the blood is pumping in our ears, what is it?

I wonder, is it excitement, anticipation, and a load of other “emotions” that are positive?

It could be, after all you name your emotions, it’s up to you.

So the next time you feel the fear, check that you aren’t in a jungle or similar, and feel something more productive instead! (more…)

I’ve had a lot of emails over time regarding which is the best book to read to start learning about NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming). For those of you that haven’t emailed, me, have you ever wanted to:

• Communicate with others more effectively?
• Be more persuasive?
• Overcome challenges at work and at home?
• Increase your confidence?
• Get rid of obsessions, compulsions or phobias?
• Break bad habits?

Well all of these are caused in part by how we experience the world, and NLP offers amazing insights in to those perceptions that open up fascinating doors in to how we work, and how we can change. So if any of the above are of interest to you, it is probably worth asking me what the best way to learn a little more about how you can change for the better, isn’t it?

Tough question to answer. Still, just for you I’m going to answer it.

Bear in mind, I’m no expert. And so the books I’m going to recommend are those that I think are the easiest to get in to. I would like to point out though that the best way to introduce yourself to NLP is to do it. Find yourself an introductory course and attend. NLP is at its core about how we experience the world, and the easiest way to learn it is to experience that experiencing, if you know what I mean. You should be able to get a mind-blowing experience from a decent 1 day course, such as Salad’s NLP in a Nutshell, so you don’t need to splash out two grand to decide whether it is for you.

And so on to the books. (more…)

So those of you that know me know that I’m a big fan of Adam Eason. His podcasts are full of interesting and entertaining information, his self-hypnosis products are excellently produced and very useful, and now he is doing a one-off Self-Hypnosis Masterclass in London on 8th & 9th September 2007. And for a knock-down price of less than £100, because it’s being filmed for DVD!

And I’m signed up and ready to go. So if you want to meet Adam and learn self-hypnosis, and even meet me, then head over to this page and follow the instructions for signing up.

Adam is the author of the book “Secrets of Self-Hypnosis - harnessing the power of your unconscious mind“, and a foremost expert on the subject. If you want to get an instruction manual for your own brain, then this might just be the event you are waiting for.

I was coaching a guy the other day who came to me with a belief that he had a terrible lack of confidence. This was really affecting his ability to live the life he wanted to live, so of course I wanted to help him.

Now confidence, or lack of, is a gross generalisation… There have to be things that we are confident about or we would soon cease to exist, we wouldn’t have the confidence to eat something, or breathe.

And that’s why I love generalisations, when I hear them in conversation I look forward to challenging, because they just don’t stand up to even light scrutiny.

“No confidence? Not even when you are deciding what to eat?” stuff like that usually gets a response, because people don’t think of stuff like that as things that they are confident about. And this is the way, because what ever you do that you think is easy and doesn’t require any confidence, I guarantee that there are people out there wishing that they had as much confidence as you in making that decision.

So back to this guy. We identified some particular areas that were really limiting him, and I asked him a really simple question.

“Imagine you could go back in time to a time when you felt like that, and give yourself resources, that would have really helped you.”

Hindsight is 20:20, the cool thing is, if you know how, you can actually use hindsight to go back to the experience and modify it. The brain gets this really quick, and it will integrate the change in to future situations. (more…)

One of the things that has blown me away in my studies of NLP is the sheer quality of information that people give away in their words. Putting aside the information on how people perceive their world that is given away in body language, and the information there to process in their eye movements, the content of their language is fascinating.

Now I can’t possibly tell you everything I’ve learnt in a blog post. However I am going to tell you a little, and for most of you out there with the exception of you cunning linguists, this is going to be a shock. A surprise. And, hopefully something to think about and play about.

Most people listen fairly passively. And then only to the content. The what. So if I’m telling you about something that happened to me, you are listening to the detail of that account and reconstructing it based on your own map of the world.

And you miss the how. Consequently you miss a whole bunch of stuff about how I represent and perceive the world, which is priceless information if you want to communicate with me, because with every sentence I am giving away clues about the type of person that I am, and therefore, how best to deal with me and persuade me to get you a drink. And the interesting thing is, if you listened to how I say things, and used my language back to me, I would have to be really listening too to recognise what you are doing and ignore it. So influential is the how.

Now I’m sure many of you have taken personality tests. Sure, most people have done one nowadays. Systems such as MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) attempt to categorise our behaviours in to archetypes, programs if you will, and I for one read my profiles on such tests with amazement - how can a bunch of questions define me so well?

Well they can’t. They generalise. Behaviour is all about context, so whilst personality tests are interesting indicators, they can’t possibly predict our behaviour in a given circumstance because we humans are real-time, we do things in any given situation because it’s the best decision at that time given the data we have. Underneath circumstance you could say that these meta-programs do affect our behaviour, we have preferred ways of behaving, and this is the information that we give out in our language.

There are many, many books detailing many, many metaprograms and how to spot them and connect to them in people. I live “Words That Change Minds” by Shelle Rose Charvet and suggest you get hold of it if this subject interests you. Here, I am going to talk about a group of metaprograms that you can easily spot in people and use to motivate them… these are so much fun you may find yourself laughing out loud when you start controlling your friends like robots! (more…)

So Giles, a friend of mine from my NLP Practitioner course, has set up his website offering his coaching and NLP skills to you, the general public.

So if you think any of these apply to you:

• I just can’t get motivated
• This experience \ memory \ phobia is holding me back
• I feel a little lost
• I don’t know what I want

Or anything similar, then perhaps you should head over to www.emotion-magic.com and get in touch with Giles, because the fact that you’re aware of those feelings means that Giles can help you feel better and move on.

Stuck in a hotel in Swindon last night, I watched the Director’s Cut of Payback, starring Mel Gibson. I remember hiring this movie when it first came out, and I thought it was terrible. However I read that the original director (Brian Helgeland) had walked out following creative differences with Mel Gibson and the studio, had been allowed to piece together his version of the movie from the  original footage, returning his vision to us.

Central to the story is Mel Gibson’s Porter, a guy looking to get $70,000 that was stolen from him by Val, his partner-in crime, some time before. Tracking Val down, he is double-crossed, blackmailed by the cops, beaten up and loses his wife to heroin. Yet he keeps after his money, leaving a bloody trail of organised crime bodies in his wake. As he climbs up the mob ladder, he is surprised to find that they even laugh off his paltry demand, and even forget how much he wants. Yet he never wavers, asking only for his $70,000, unconcerned about the carnage that he has to cause to get it.

Now some people would think it’s daft. “Why wouldn’t he take the $130,000 they gave him?”, “why is that so important to him?” and people asking those questions are right. Of course they are, if Porter’s motivation seems odd to them then it is because it isn’t their motivation. To you or me it might seem a little daft but I guarantee there are people out there that would watch the movie and nod in agreement with everything Porter says regarding the debt he owes, without necessarily being sociopaths.

Because it just means that their values are aligned with Porter’s in that respect.

My guess on Porter’s motivation is that his world rotated around the validity of a promise, an agreement between two people. When that word was broken by Val it invalidated the very foundations of his view of reality, with the effect that until that money was regained, nothing else held any sense or value. To the point where death was a viable option if balance couldn’t be restored. And you will find that the most supremely motivated people are those that have made a direct line of sight connection between actions that need to be taken and the achieving or maintenance of a fundamental belief. “Singlemindedness” is the term that comes to mind. I’m sure you can think of someone that is singleminded, not about everything, about certain things, and those things are closely aligned with their values.

Now Porter’s values aren’t mine. However I do sympathise with him… being let down by a broken promise would certainly wreck my foundations of belief. And I do find that actions that best align with what is important to me motivate me most.

So I wonder, have you ever considered what’s important to you, in life, love, work and play? Think about the things you simply love doing and ask yourself “what does that give me?”, and keep asking that question (chunking up) until you can go no further… those criteria that you get are your hot buttons… and if you can connect whatever you need to do to one or more of those criteria by line of site, then your motivation will be off the scale.

So as Porter drives off in to the sunset with Rosie, I smiled, and agreed with myself that the Director’s cut was a far better movie. Very cool in fact, and very re-watchable. I was glad that having gotten his money back, Porter could find time to notice what new directions his heart would take him in.

Another night in Swindon, I wonder what philosophical nonsense I will extract from old movies this evening?

There’s a very interesting article over at OneKindAct, considering the impact of making judgements on others. My view of judgement is that it’s near impossible to prevent making judgements on people (a lot of it is unconscious), and so I like to go with the flow of my neuro-physiology and make positive judgements, such as “I bet this person has lots of interesting stories to tell” or “I wonder what I can learn from this person today”, or even, if the ‘first impression’ (ie that unconscious dislike) is bad “I wonder how this person is going to prove to me that my first impression wasn’t quite right”.

Because I’m looking for the silver lining, I’m amazed how they become clear to me with alarming regularity.

Enjoy the article over at:

http://www.onekindact.com/2007/06/09/what-we-see-judging-others/

Saturday saw me take a trip to my local Supermarket. I was after standard fare - bread, cheese, milk, you know the sort of thing. Anyway I wandered in there to get my stuff and was left speechless when I arrived at the milk isle only to find that it now offered cheese.

“So what?” you ask “cheese was on your list”. And yes indeed it was, and you are right and yet this location change was echoed throughout the whole supermarket. Everything had been moved, and it meant I had to wander down every isle to find everything I wanted. Consequently shopping took a lot longer than I had hoped.

The shifting of product within a shop is common practice. It is designed to shake the customer up so that they do indeed have to traverse every isle searching for their purchases, which means that they have to cast an active eye over every product the shop has to offer.

You see our mind is an incredible learning machine, and most of the learning is done unconsciously. Whenever you are doing a new activity, your unconscious mind is paying close attention, and once you have done the activity enough times, it tells your conscious mind “it’s okay, I can do this for you!”, autopilot is engaged and your unconscious mind will do your shopping for you, leaving your conscious mind to think about other things. (more…)

Recently I’ve been reading a book by Robert Dilts about belief systems. Beliefs are interesting for many reasons, the main one that interests me is how they constrain our actions.

The funny thing about beliefs is that they aren’t fact. In fact what is fact… when does belief become fact? Before Sir Isaac Newton “discovered” gravity, did people wantonly jump off tall buildings? I would suggest no for the most part. So those people pre-Newton believed that jumping out of buildings was dangerous, even though they did not know why. And the fact that jumping out of buildings has been hazardous in the past does not mean it will be so for you, as banks often say, past performance is no indication of future situations. (more…)