Finding it difficult to stay positive during these challenging times?

You’d be forgiven for wanting to throw in the towel at this point, but are you aware that along with the doom and gloom there is a radical change occurring in people’s consciousness?

This change is for the better! People are getting stronger and more resilient. People have reached threshold and when that happens change happens.

We are turning our backs on traditional leadership models and looking to ourselves for solutions.

One set of tools that serves this need and has become hugely popular as a result is NLP.

NLP is a feel good mind and mood management technology that helps you to build confidence, stay positive, face adversity, overcome challenge and persuade more easily.

NLP stands for Neuro Linguistic Programming. Neuro refers to your brain and how to run it better. Linguistic refers to language and this includes body language. Programming refers to your ability to learn how to program your own brain and other people’s brains for positive results.

NLP has become a global phenomenon. From its early roots as a therapeutic tool it has spread its wings across the world of business, politics, sports and comedy. Such notables as Bill Clinton, Andre Agassi, Tony Blair and Jimmy Carr are just a few that use NLP.

NLP originated in the early 1970’s when Richard Bandler, a student at University of California, Santa Cruz, was transcribing taped therapy sessions of the Gestalt therapist Fritz Perls .Richard recognized particular language patterns and behaviour structures that determined  Perls’success. He showed his findings to one of his lecturers, John Grinder, a linguist, and together they decided to model other successful Therapists, such as Milton Erickson and Virginia Satir .As a result NLP The science of success was born.

Nowadays NLP has become an essential tool for anyone in the helping professions. This is a far ranging from your local Life Coach to your GP and even your dentist.

The most amazing thing is that you can be trained in the core fundamentals of NLP in a matter of days and you can become a Licensed Practitioner of NLP is less than a week!

If time is not on your side but you still want to experience NLP or use it to take back control of your life ,then take yourself off to visit to an Mind Coach trained in NLP.

A life transforming session can take as little as two hours with the right professional.

(Just a word of caution not all NLP is the same, just as not all doctors are the same so be sure that you check for internationally recognized qualifications , accreditations, and recommendations).

A typical session of NLP is built around a few simple questions.

• Where are you now?
• What improvements do you want to make?
• What has to happen for that to happen?

The purpose is to get you moving in a Well Formed Direction.

Your Coach is not concerned with why you are the way you are. He/she is only concerned with how you can achieve the desired changes that you want in your life.

By accepting and recognising what stage you are at in the present a skilled Coach will create the appropriate interventions necessary to lead you to a more successful future.

Your Coach knows that success in any endeavour is down to three things.

• How you see things inside your mind .
• How you talk to yourself and others
• How you feel about what you are doing.

After a brief talk your Coach should be able to work out how you are processing and then design a program for you to get you to where you want to go in the fastest possible time.

The best Coaches will program in the changes through what is known as ‘conversational hypnosis’ .You won’t even be aware of what has happened until you find yourself seamlessly doing the things you thought you couldn’t do.

Those things can include anything up to from becoming more confident to losing weight, or from overcoming depression to becoming much more motivated.

Your Coach understands that people often handicap themselves by the very language that they use and the manner in which they talk to themselves.

As a linguist your Coach will work on the level of Syntax and as NLP recognises the power of language and its effect on our levels of motivation and the results we get in life.

For example, if you have ever found yourself saying stuff to yourself like ‘Never again ’ or’ I am not going to allow myself to be so stressed today’ or ‘I hope I don’t mess this relationship up like I did the last one’.

Your Coach recognises that the unconscious part of your brain or the habit forming part cannot process a negative and so reads those very statements much differently.

Let’s read this the way your habit mind reads it.

‘Never again’ without the negative becomes ‘again’

I am not going to allow myself to be so stressed today’ becomes I am going to allow myself to be so stressed today.

And finally

‘I hope I don’t mess this relationship up like I did the last one’. Becomes I hope I mess up this relationship like I did the last one.

You must tell your brain what you want not what you don’t want!

Never again needs to be something like…

This is how I want this to work out ….

I am not going to allow myself to be so stressed today needs to go like…

I want to enjoy feeling calm right throughout my day today.

I hope I don’t mess this relationship up like I did the last one, needs to go like…

I want this relationship to continue to go from strength to strength or words to that effect.

Another example of this is the way that we attempt to motivate ourselves.

How many times have you said to yourself?

You should go to the gym,

Or

You need to call in on your mum

Or

You must take care of your health more

Only to find that you just can’t find the motivation to do it.

This is because certain words create certain feelings inside of you and the way you feel determines whether or not certain things get done.

Now again everyone is different…so try this little exercise and think of something you want to do but just can’t find the motivation to do it.

Say to yourself

I want to…. (Insert your goal here) and notice whether this gives you a positive or negative feeling with it.

Now say the following and for each sentence, insert the same goal and check out your responses

I need …

I must…

I could…

I can…

I will…

I have …

I can…

I am…

I am going to…

You will notice some words feel good, some bad, some urgent, some have no impact.

If just one word can make a difference to your feelings, think how many words can have such an impact?

Once you have found a word that feels good and makes you do what you wanted to do, keep using that word as it is a word that motivates you.

Good Luck,

Brian