Maybe I should say “give yourself a GOOD talking to”! What’s your inner voice saying to you most of the time? Is it saying: “I’m a truly wonderful human being” or “I am worthwhile” or “I’m always good enough”? I’m guessing that, most of the time, it’s more likely to be “Oh no, I failed again” or “Loser” or “What can I do/say/think in order to be accepted and loved?”
I’m a life coach, not a psychologist, so I can’t tell you why we do it, but as a member of the human race I can vouch for the fact that we definitely do it. Here in Ireland, maybe we even have an extreme habit of doing this. Our historically Catholic ethos does not promote our ability to be proud of ourselves, congratulate ourselves or speak confidently of our own achievements.
So with that sort of background and schooling, I’m guessing that most of you know the kind of self-talk that I’m getting at here. Fair enough. But what can we do about it? In my life coaching business, I regularly come across people who are very keen on positive thinking, affirmations, visualisations etc. Great. Great for about the 20 minutes that you are doing your affirmations/visualisations etc. What about the other 23hrs 40mins of the day? Hmmmm?
Here’s where I’ve got to so far. I started out doing yoga when I was about twenty. I thought it would change my life. I enjoyed doing it. I loved meeting other people who were interested in yoga. But it didn’t change my life.
Years later I trained in massage and aromatherapy. I thought “This is it! This will change my life.” I loved/love being a massage/aroma therapist. It’s very fulfilling. It’s part of who I am. Helping people is what I enjoy. It didn’t change my life.
I studied Life Coaching. Now - if ever there was something that would change my life - this would be it! I trained and practise now as a life coach, helping clients, blogging and writing an e-newsletter. I LOVE it. I get great feedback from readers and clients. It didn’t change my life.
When I started learning/studying NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) I began to see what was going on in my life. I read books by Richard Bandler, John Grinder, Michael Neill, Paul McKenna, Owen Fitzpatrick and Brian Colbert, among others and these writers helped me to make sense of my life so far. Things that fall into the “DO” category, do not change my life. They are actions I take in my life. I can use them to help me make positive changes. But they are not the changes, they are just the tools.
Things that fall into the “BEING” category, are the ones that change everything. When the things that I DO are in tune with the person that I AM, then my life starts to flow in a way that no amount of training can achieve. I am very proud of all that I have studied and achieved (although even being so proud of myself took years and lots of positive self-talk), but most of all I am proud of the person that I am. That is who I am 24hrs of the day. So, while I may spend time visualising, time meditating, time doing positive affirmations, the most useful thing I can do is to tell myself, 24/7 that I am loved, that I am worthwhile and that I am always good enough, just as I am.
Try telling yourself that, 24 hours a day for even a week, and see how you feel. You’ll sleep better, feel more relaxed and more positive about each new day.
Some schools are receiving the results of their “mocks” this week, so tread carefully around the teens in your family. You don’t need the advice of a Life Coach to know that!
How do we find the right balance of things to say? We want to encourage and support our kids, but we don’t want to be so soft on them that they don’t get to grips with the reality of facing the end of their school career and the beginning of the next phase of their development. We’re all afraid that, by being too gentle on them, we may fail to help them cope with the normal disappointments and knocks that every life is prone to.
I tend to err on the side of stepping back and looking at the fact that life continues after exams, one way or the other. The proof is that millions of people are doing it, and have done it for generations. I can point to my parents and to myself and husband as the most immediate examples that, for good or bad, the end of school - while significant - is not the end of life as we know it.
This post is not a “How to understand your teens” or a “10 steps to guiding your children to success” because I don’t have the answers for you. You have. I am busy working my way through it for myself. All I can suggest to you, from my own experience, is:
do a lot more listening than talking
assume the best about your kids - it gives them something positive to live up to
use the phrase “how do YOU feel about that?” in place of telling them exactly how you feel yourself
remind them that no exam changes how you feel about them
tell them you love them, don’t assume they “just know” it
tell them again
and again
and again
…
and remember - you, as the responsible adult, have seen many things come and go, so you can afford to be philosophical and know that - this too will pass!
… any road will get you there. This is a quotation often attributed to Lewis Carroll - mistakenly. But it sounds good.
Goal Setting
The actual text of Alice’s conversation with the Cheshire cat, from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is:
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” asked Alice
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
This brought to mind, for me, how I deal (or don’t deal) with goal setting. We’ve talked about this before I know, but it’s an issue that comes up again and again for people. I’ve likened it to heading off in the direction of your destination, but without a map and just hoping that eventually you’ll end up where you want to go.
Listen, I have a very poor sense of direction and when I set off somewhere -even WITH a map - I often end up somewhere else! I dread to think where I’d be without one.
But when it comes to life goals, I’m in a dilemma. If I’m trying to live “in the now” how can I have long term goals? And - if I have goals, then how can I be living in the now?
As a mother I’ve become used to reacting to everyone elses’ needs, all day, everyday. That’s normal. You have to be able to respond to whatever situation crops up, often involving picking someone up unexpectedly, cleaning cuts and worse, and searching the household for something that can be used (always at the last minute) for a class project that you only find out about on the morning it has to be submitted!
So how can I turn this around? How can I set and achieve my own goals?
Well I’m proud to tell you I’ve started. As always, I’ve had to get to grips with goal setting in a small way first, before I can replicate it elsewhere. For me the key was firstly to acknowledge my previous successes. I had difficulty with that, I felt awkward and unworthy praising myself for things I expected to succeed at anyway. Perfectionist tendencies! But I’ve been working on that for more than a year now and I’ve made real progress.
The most useful change in my pattern was to start acknowledge my past successes, and beginning to feel proud of myself. Then I began to be able to look forward to setting new targets for myself, and praising myself for those successes. I suppose, up until that, there was no psychological “reward” for my achievements, so there was no joy in setting up new goals and targets.
This is an ongoing process, so - if I think about Alice (above) - I can see how I was always going somewhere, but without any direction there was a lot of energy spent getting places I wasn’t sure I wanted to go!
I came across this clip today, and I really like it. I would put it in under my “Feelgood Tasks” because I think it relates to a whole change of behaviour, which will bring long term benefits to your self and others.
Let me know what you think. I haven’t heard of this group before, so I’m promoting them. I just like the clip. I like what it says. It’s positive, affirming, motivational and it gets us out of ourselves and our own little world and gets us to focus on how we interact with others. Hopefully we can make that interaction a positive one.
Is it still self development if no one knows? Sounds a bit Zen-like, doesn’t it? Like - “If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?” If you’re working on your self development without telling anyone - will they notice?
Thing is - I think - once you are practising self-development sincerely, it won’t be possible for no one to know! If you are developing, of course people are going to know. On yesterdays teleseminar with Jack Canfield (Chicken Soup books, Success Principles etc.) his “homework” to us for the coming month is to do one simple thing, just choose one, and so it every day for the next 30 days, and see what the result.
Obviously he means do something good and positive for yourself and/or others. For instance he has committed to getting a full 8 hours sleep every night, come what may, for the 30 days. Other suggestions might be:
Show gratitude (verbally, e-mail, SMS etc.) to 10 people every day for 30 days
Phone someone you’ve lost touch with, or have been meaning to phone (just one person a day) for 30 days
Tell someone you love - that you love them. This is an obvious and easy one, but I know that lots of us assume that people know we love them. TELL them so, for 30 days
Congratulate/appreciate yourself in some way. Sometimes just pausing and telling ourselves we are worthwhile is enough. Treat yourself to a short walk in the fresh air, a chat with a friend, a 5-minute lie on in bed. Just pick something that means something to you. It doesn’t have to cost anything. It doesn’t have to take long.
Now - back to my original theme. Do you think that, if you were to implement any one of these for 30 days, there would be no noticeable difference in you? Would people notice a change in your behaviour? Might you appear more relaxed if you had had a month of appreciating yourself, your friends, your work colleagues, getting enough rest, any of these things?
I’m betting that everyone close to you, and probably people who didn’t even know you that well, would see a change in your attitude. Because that’s where it would show. You can’t remain lacking in confidence if you are telling yourself every day that you’re worthwhile, and showing that appreciation of yourself in some way. You’ll be seen as the chirpiest person in the office if you’re constantly thanking colleagues when appropriate. And just how much will relationships with all your loved ones improve, if you tell them that you love them, everyday for the next 30 days.
I’m not claiming credit for Jack Canfield’s suggestion, but I do think that it perfectly illustrates what I’ve been getting at here today. I believe that when you embark on any element of self-development, no matter how small an act it might be, the ripple effect can be very powerful.
This is my first blog entry from my new netbook. I know the tech-savvy among you are shaking your heads and probably thinking I’m sad to be so excited, but hey - get over it. I’m a kid with a new toy. I’m allowed to be excited! It’s so neat! It’s so tiny. I can take it everywhere I go!
The portability of this new computer makes me think of all the ways we limit our self development to a particular time and place. It’s easy to forget that we take ourselves wherever we go!!
Years ago, I did weekly yoga classes, but from one week to the next I did nothing. I simply limited my development in that area to one class once a week. It was as if Wednesday was Self-Development Day! As time went by I realised that, without even doing the yoga poses, I was becoming more aware of my posture, my thoughts, my diet - in fact all the things I was learning weekly at my class. This was happening all the time, not just on Wednesdays!
It seems naive now, but I never really thought about it at all. I just had in mind that yoga class was Wednesday, and didn’t pay attention to how pervasive our thoughts and learning are. Once we hear something, learn something, decide something - we’ve already made a slight change to our way of thinking.
Since that time, I accept that the learning never stops. And the implementing what I’ve learned never stops. That’s a good thing. If I’m always choosing self development books, seminars and classes - and if I’m regularly in the company of people for whom developing their full potential is important, then there will always be something self-improving going on in my head and in my life. What a boost!
So today - be aware of all the positive, self development elements that come your way. It may be a person you meet, an article you read (might even be this one!), a Tweet you receive, en e-mail, a blog, etc. Maybe in your own house, maybe at the railway station, someone you meet on the bus, at the cafe etc. And it’s just as important to remember that you are also that development contact for everyone you meet today. What you are giving out is being received by everyone who comes into contact with you today. It’s the ultimate give-and-take. Go Give! Go Take! Perfect balance.
What a fantastic day it is here in Dublin today! The sun is shining. It’s a beautiful autumn day. Makes me feel great.
When the sun is shining, like it is now, it’s so much easier to feel cheerful and positive. Has anything changed? Has the recession gone away? Have the people in charge suddenly started taking responsibility for themselves and the importance of the jobs they hold? No. It’s just that the good weather puts me in better humour.
How often do you say that the weather makes you feel good, or bad (if it rains)? How many times do you say someone, or something, made you feel a certain way? In relation to the weather, I do it all the time. At this time of year, when the days get shorter, I feel more melancholy and have to remind myself to change my mood, since I can’t change the time of year or the weather.
We even extend our power give-away to people:- “He made me really angry”. “She made me do it”. We give other people the chance to affect our mood. What a waste! What a loss for us.
One of the greatest powers we have is our ability to change our mood or our state. We can decide to remain upbeat when we meet a group of friends who do the whole moan-a-minute routine. We can choose to be positive about our health rather than assume, at the first sniffle, that we’ve got swine flu’. We can even choose not to respond angrily to someone who does something we don’t like.
We might like to give them the benefit of the doubt and believe that they are acting like that because of some sadness or upset in their lives. We could see it as feedback rather than criticism. We could even use it as a tool to encourage ourselves not to be like that.
But it is always a choice. We often rush into a comment, or a response that afterwards we might realise was less-than-useful. A pause for a quick assessment of the situation can often help us to put that little bit of distance between ourselves and the situation, give ourselves a moment’s breathing space. Time to choose a better option. Or - as I read in one of the personal development books I have - “think a better-feeling thought“.
So get out there and practise thinking a better-feeling thought. Your choice. Your response. You choose the outcome.
When I first set myself the task of reading Richard Bandler’s book “Guide to Trance-formation†I allowed myself a week to read it. Big mistake. This book is full of information, comment, case history and exercises in personal development. I mean FULL!
So I re-timetabled, and I’ve been reading for weeks. Now - maybe it’s a mistake to try to be doing the exercises as I go, but I would feel only half-hearted in my review if I hadn’t made an attempt to do at least some of the exercises too.
The thrust of the book is the power of hypnosis, both of ourselves and others, to help create change for the better. Before you say you don’t like hypnosis, or you don’t trust it, or you once saw a show where the guy made people squawk like a chicken - don’t kid yourself - you’re being hypnotised all the time. Don’t look around to see who’s doing it. Look in the mirror.
We are hypnotising ourselves and others all the time, with our repeating patterns of words, actions and beliefs. In effect we “programme†ourselves. As Bandler says “We are the only machine that can program itself. We can set deliberately designed, automated programs that work by themselves to take care of boring, mundane tasks, thus freeing up our minds to do other, more interesting and creative, things.â€
“Guide to Trance-formation†is both a textbook and a workbook for self development. The first section of the book “Patterns of Process and Elicitation†deals with how to discover the way in which we (and others) map our world, i.e. how we represent the world to ourselves through our senses. This is how we have set up all the programmes we run in our lives, the ones that work and - just as importantly - the ones that don’t. Bandler‘s book is seasoned with references to Milton Erickson, Gregory Bateson, Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir - all renowned therapists with whom Bandler worked to discover how they achieved the successful results they did.
In Bandler’s opinion there are three steps to “making enduring change: (i) People must become so sick of having the problem that they decide they really want to change (ii) They have to somehow see their problem from a new perspective or in a new light (iii) New and appealing options must be found or created, and pursued.â€
The text will be equally intriguing for those who have studied Bandler previously and those who are new to him. It sparked my curiosity, so that I felt like finding out more and reading books Bandler referenced in “Guide to Trance-formationâ€. Even though I have no formal training in hypnosis, the exercises are simple and straightforward and I found myself wondering whether it was possible to be hypnotised just by reading it! I’m guessing Yes, since we are often influenced by what we read, so why not in this instance?
The exercises in this (first) sectionof the book are:
· Changing Feelings by Dissociation
· Identifying Your Sensory Preferences
· 2 exercises each on the Meta Model and the Milton Model
· Stealing a Skill
· The Visual Squash
· Foolproof Planning
· The NLP Spelling Strategy
· Getting Things Done
· 2 exercises in Submodality Change
· Swish Pattern
· Belief-Change Pattern
The second section of the book “Patterns of Induction†is about developing and improving the skills of hypnosis. It gives examples, stories and exercises on how to use language very specifically, how to use the voice - tone, depth, rhythm etc. , stories-within-stories and other skills to induce an altered state in the subject (yourself or someone else), a state in which you (or they) are more open to change. In Bandler’s words “Whenever you are communicating with other people, be aware that words are power, and the way in which you use words has to be as precise as the results you desire.â€
The exercises in the second section are very specific to inducing, deepening and maintaining trances or altered states.
· Using signs of developing trance
· Creating Inductions
· Toning Inflection
· Using Truisms to Induce Hypnosis
· Overlapping to Increase Skills
· Overlapping to Induce Trance
· Previous Trance Induction
· The Handshake Interrupt
· Stacking Realities
· Nested Loops
· Hot Button/Cool Button
· Advanced Synesthesia Change Pattern
In section three “Patterns of Utilization†covers the uses of the skills learned in the book, to create a better way of thinking and being in our lives, in short - to make us feel better. According to Bandler “you just need to know how to get good feelings to replace the old ones - or, even better, to drop them in to what happens just before you feel bad, so you start to go down a new pathway.†The chapters of this section deal with creating a better reaction now, to events that caused us trauma in the past. If we are still suffering from issues in our past, it is not because the problem keeps happening, but because we have formed a response to it that keeps us stuck in that negativity. Using the exercises in this section can help us change the way we feel about past traumas, overcome our phobias, stop blocking ourselves and start taking positive action.
Exercises in section three:
· How Much Pleasure Can You Stand?
· Fast Phobia Cure
· Putting a New Spin on the Past
· Overcoming Hesitation
· Going over Threshold
· Installing Positive Memories
Section four is a set of transcripts of client sessions with Richard Bandler. The text of the session is printed on the left hand side of the page and the analysis of the language patterns is printed on the right. I found it too confusing to try to read both together on my first reading of this format. So I read through the transcript of just the dialogue, as it would have flowed in speech. I found it was worth reading the script through first, before reading the analysis, partly to see what patterns I could identify myself and partly to let the script flow as it would have done in the live session.
Overall I found the book a very useful combination of textbook and workbook. It is something worth reading once for interest, a second time to try out any/all of the exercises and, after that, any time you want to reference Bandler’s work on trances, their analysis, uses and effects.
… is that you get away from everything that is usual and “normal” in your life. It’s the most fantastic chance we have for self development. It gives us the opportunity to change our outlook on things in our lives.
I always find when I come from holidays (in fact even before I get home I find) I’m planning new things. I might think of a new layout for the furniture in my office or home. I might develop a new way to approach a certain client, or situation. I might decide to repaint the living room to get a whole new perspective on things. And that’s really what holidays do for me - in terms of my personal growth, they give me a change of perspective.
This year, when we came home from holidays, my husband said it had been like having “time off from the recession”. Because the recession is one thing - and it’s effects are very real. But the media “moan-fest” that goes on about it is entirely another thing. It’s like a big bandwagon all of its own. It’s a huge “ain’t it awful” circus that feeds itself on people’s misery. It’s a way of looking at it.
So time off from that was a real treat. And y’know what? The world still turned while we were away; the economists still wrung their hands; the unemployed were still unemployed; those in difficulty were still in difficulty - but the ones reporting it seemed to be having the time of their lives picking over the troubles of everyone else. That’s just their way of looking at it.
I’m very thankful that I had the opportunity to get away from it all for a few weeks. The situation didn’t change, but my view of it did. And that’s the point. When we look at some event in our lives that is causing us difficulty, it can be hard to separate the event from our reaction to it. What’s really happening is that a certain event takes place - then - we have a reaction to it. If we get to take a step back, a pause, a holiday - and choose a different reaction, then we have power over the outcome.
For example, if someone loses their job, that is a very real event. It has effects and consequences. But whether you deal with it as (i) a disaster from which you will never recover, or (ii) an unexpected event which may force you to look at things in a new way - is up to you. One will give you a miserable, self-defeating attitude, the other will give you a chance for personal development (albeit not looked for), to look at where your strengths lie and present yourself in a new way. Losing your job is the fact. How you deal with it is where your power lies.
It brings me back to the benefit of holidays. It gives us that break, that pause, in which to look at things in a new way. Happy holidays!
Do you ever look in the mirror? Not to fix your make-up, or to check how gorgeous you still are. But do you ever look yourself in the eye in order to know yourself better, the way you would look into the eyes of someone you were trying to know better?
It can be difficult for us to look at ourselves beyond the superficial, hair and make-up level. We are used to checking our appearance first of all when we look at ourselves. We rarely look long enough to make a connection.
When you meet someone new, if you want to get to know them better, what do you do? Look at the floor when they speak to you? Look up at the sky in the hope of finding a divine answer? No. You look into their eyes while they speak. You attend to what they are saying. You watch their eyes for the truth in what they are saying. You look for the confirmation of the words they are saying.
We all know when someone lies to us. As children we were used to the impossibility of telling a lie when someone was looking us straight in the eye. And how do we demonstrate early signs of falling in love with someone? We love to spend time looking deeply into their eyes.
So why not do it for ourselves? Probably for both the reasons above.
Firstly, if we look ourselves in the eyes and say “I love and accept you” - we will immediately know if we are telling the truth or not. If we are finding it difficult to say this to ourselves, why? What are the feelings that come up for you if you say “I love and accept you” to yourself in the mirror? Do you hear a critical parent or friend telling you you’re not worth it? Maybe you feel that you are not perfect enough to be loved? It could be that, in place of judgemental others, you have come to be your own harshest critic.
Secondly, looking deeply into our own eyes would mean taking on that critic, or judge or negative voice that we have inside us. It would mean learning to, or being willing to love and accept ourselves. That is often very difficult to do. If we have a (so-far) lifetime of being a certain way (e.g. judged or criticised) it can be scary to change that way of being. We’re used to it.
What would it be like to fall in love with yourself? How would it be to have that warm, deeply contented glow inside? And know that we are the reason for it ourselves? How wonderful would that be?
