False Economy

I have a friend, John who really loves his cars. He's a real enthusiast, and could tell you the compression ration and design details of every bit of his old Mercedes although strangely he isn't at all mechanically adept. In fact I once watched him trying to do something fairly straightforward and it was a painful experience. As a result John doesn't attempt DIY servicing and entrusts his pride and joy to others to keep it running smoothly. The thing is that John is a bit short of cash at the moment so he hasn't been able to afford to have the car serviced professionally. As a result the dear old Merc hasn't quite got all of the attention that it needs to keep it running smoothly.

Last month the car developed a misfire, it was just a minor hic and so he decided to have the car serviced by a guy who he had recently met at a car show. The guy seemed to know what he was talking about, and best of all he was cheap and lived fairly close to John, the guy even offered to come and collect the car and drop it back after he had finished. True to his word the mechanic chap turned up on time and drove John's pride and joy away to service it.

The car came back 2 days late, at first glance it looked nice and shiny and it sounded fine and so cash changed hands and the 'mechanic' hopped into his lift and drove off.

John couldn't wait to take the car for a drive, he jumped in and set off up the road. Immediately he could tell that all was not well. The minor misfire was now much worse, and there was a distinctive smell of hot oil emanating from the vents on the dashboard. Naturally John wasn't best pleased and the squealing brakes only reinforced the fact that things were not as they should have been.

John phoned the 'mechanic' who was apologetic and said that he would sort things out. 3 visits later and the car was no better. John was beside himself, he just wanted the problems to go away.

Eventually John had no option other than to send the car to a professional, the list of faults that appeared when the new chap did his diagnosis was impressive to say the least, and a month later and a couple of thousand pounds worse off John finally had a fault free pristine Mercedes.

Why forgiving is good for your health.

When I'm carrying out personal coaching I quite often have people who are unwilling to say that they will forgive someone for what they have done. My reply is usually, what would stop you? I then have receive a whole raft of 'good reasons' (excuses) as to why they are unwilling to forgive whoever has transgressed. The thing is that until you are able to forgive and really mean it, then there will always be an unconscious connection to that person and they will remain in your life at some level. They will tend to always pop up in your life or even just appear in your head when you are having a quiet moment. An Hawaiian Kahuna once said, "You bind those you hate to you more closely than the ones you love".

Quite often the person that you won't forgive has no idea that there is this feeling towards them, and therefore the only person actually angry or suffering is the person who wont forgive! Holding on to anger can be very bad for the body both emotionally and physically; 'It's like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die'. Some scientists believe that chronic anger is more dangerous than smoking or obesity in producing early mortality. All this from a simple emotion.

Amazing things happen when you really are able to say that you forgive. The part of you that is the other person heals up and mysteriously the person tends to disappear out of your life. We have a specialist technique for healing up unresolved relationships and emotions of the past, these techniques are so powerful that they literally are life changing. 

If you have unresolved anger or other negative emotions, you would be wise to take action and resolve them. The good thing is that we can provide this service for you. all you have to do is get in touch. Call us and we can discuss your specific needs. It is time to move on, isn't it? 

Combating Assumptions

Much of this post is based around The Ladder of Inference (Argyris 1957), I am however going to take things a stage further and apply some basic principles from the world of NLP to further understand how assumptions are created and how they can be damaging in the context of interpersonal relationships. I guess what I'm talking about here is Emotional Intelligence (EQ). Being aware of yourself and how you are thinking and feeling and how you act upon those thoughts and feelings.

We used to have a saying in the military - never assume, because it makes an ASS out of U and ME. There are various other sayings surrounding assumptions but as they are expressed in slightly more 'colourful' language I am choosing to leave them out of this blog!

So what are assumptions? The Oxford Dictionary Online gives this definition:

noun

• 1a thing that is accepted as true or as certain to happen, without proof:they made certain assumptions about the market[with clause]:we’re working on the assumption that the time of death was after midnight
  

In NLP terms we label assumptions as beliefs. They are things that are held at an unconscious level and to some extent the determine how we process and filter information about the world around us and how we make decisions. They are held together by our values and a collection of beliefs and values can be described as an attitude. The thing is that they aren't based on evidence, beliefs are just that, something that is accepted as being true without proof. Our beliefs change all the time, the thing to be aware of is whether or not your beliefs are useful and empowering for you or not.

Let's consider a work based scenario:

You are working on a project that requires input from a team member, Jim who works from home. Since the planning meeting for the project you have heard nothing from Jim who actually disagreed with you about the project and made his feelings known at the meeting. You have attempted to call him several times and had no reply, additionally you have e-mailed him asking for the information that you need and even after a couple of days have had no reply. You now conclude that Jim is avoiding your calls and ignoring your emails.  The week rolls on and still nothing from Jim, you are now livid as your work is suffering because you can't progress with the project. You begin to believe that Jim may actually be doing this deliberately in order to hold you up, that he is in fact sabotaging you. You decide that you will do the same to Jim and email his boss requesting that they 'have a word' with Jim.

It is early on Monday of the following week, you have just got to work and Jim is in the office, you immediately feel your blood boil and you go to confront him. Before you get the chance Jim smiles, and says morning, how are you doing, fancy a cuppa? You still challenge him about his lack of contact and Jim calmly explains he was busy with a family crisis last week, his father had been rushed into hospital and he spent most of the week by his fathers side in a hospital ward.

I'm wondering how many of you recognise this type of event?

Looking at the graphic below you will see that there are 7 stages to getting to the point where you take action based on your beliefs. The reality is that this can happen in the blink of an eye, unless you are aware of what is going on.

Let's examine some of the rungs of the ladder.

• Observable data and experiences.

This is the information that is taken into our neurology by our 6 senses. In any second there are at least 2 million bits of information being absorbed by our bodies. The interesting thing is that we can only be consciously aware of 7Mbs +/- 1 or 2  The rest is either Deleted, because it isn't important, Distorted to make it fit with previous experiences, or Generalised because you have already learned it. 

• Select data.

This is an unconscious process, you may select data and not even be aware of it!

• Add meaning.

This is where our beliefs and values system comes into play, we filter and code the data according to our life experiences. This is a key thing to understand; the way you are interpreting the data will not be the same as Jim or anyone else for that matter. You can only ever produce an internal representation of the external event and it bears no semblance to anyone else's perception of the same event. Everyone has their own model of the world and it is only a perception, it isn't real.

• Make assumptions & Draw conclusions. 

If we believe Senge's model then these are set out as seperate parts of the ladder. The reality is that at an unconscious level this happened instantaneously as the data was being filtered and coded. This is where you then...

• Adopt beliefs about the world and
• Take actions based on our beliefs.

This process is in practice a never ending reflexive loop, because as soon as you adopt a new belief you change your internal filters, so that the way you process data the data at the bottom of the ladder changes. Imagine for a second that Jim didn't tell you his father was ill and offered no explanation, what would you then believe about him? Lazy, uncooperative, selfish? 

So what's the point? It is human nature to form beliefs and opinions, the thing is to be able to work out which ones are useful and empowering and which ones are dis-empowering or even become limiting beliefs. Once you can do this you will be able to really be self aware. I suggest that you practice the following until they become second nature for you.

• Pay attention to your own thinking and reasoning, take a moment to reflect on things.
• Allow others to have insight into how you are thinking and forming conclusions. This will allow others to really understand you and prevent them from racing up the ladder. They may not agree with you but  they will understand why you are doing something.
• Ask others to explain their reasoning and thinking so that you are able to understand what is going on for them, that way you can keep your feet firmly on the ground. For me as a coach and therapist this is a skill that has become second nature. 

Apply these simple principles to your practice and before long you will find that you stop forming false assumptions, have increased your flexibility of thinking and reasoning and your further developed your EQ.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this post, if it has been useful for you please feel free to share it elsewhere. Just reference it to Mark Minary.

Remember that The Transformational Changes Team can provide you with all of your NLP and Corporate training, as well as life changing personal coaching and therapies. You can contact us here.

Chunk for Success

I want to share with you a technique that I sometimes use when I'm running. I don't know if you have ever experienced the sensation of only being halfway round a run and knowing that you still have a massive distance to go to the finish? It is usually about this time that your legs suddenly start to feel heavy and your internal chatter pipes up with useful phrases such as, 'why on earth am I doing this', or 'I'll just have a little walk' or I can't do this....Have you ever experienced that? 

Here's the solution, if you find yourself struggling to continue, just look ahead and pick a fixed target (goal) to head towards. It could be a tree 50 metres away, or a post box, or a road junction. Just something that you know you can get to even though it might be a challenge.  All you then have to do is get to that point and you have achieved your goal. Give yourself a pat on the back for having achieved it, and keep going. The trick is that just before you get to your goal set yourself another one, so that you have constant momentum towards the end goal. Using this method you will find that you finish before you know it. 

This method of chunking a task down into manageable pieces can be applied to lots of areas of your life, whether it be at work when you've been given a seemingly overwhelming task, planning life at home or even stopping smoking or losing weight. 

Ignore the little voices telling you that things are too difficult, chunk tasks into bite size pieces and rejoice in your success.

Go well, 

Mark :-)

When the pain carries on....

Helicopter Operations 1992

I joined the armed forces back in the mid 80's and spent the best part of 25 years keeping myself fit enough to fight. In fact I would go so far as to say I was extremely fit, I had to be in the job I was doing. Eventually though all good things come to an end, and I left the forces around 5 years ago. Shortly after leaving I suffered a series of fairly serious horse riding accidents, resulting in (not all at once) a fractured spine, pelvis, ribs, arm, wrist, collar bone to name just a few! Naturally my ability to be able to run and keep fit was somewhat curtailed for a while. However, as soon as I was able to, I started getting back into running again, but I soon discovered that my back just wasn't playing ball. Even just going for a short run was painful the next day. I had MRI's, various cortisone injections, and physiotherapy, all to no avail. The surgeon simply couldn't find out what was causing the problem as all of my fractures had healed up correctly. In the end the hospital stopped contacting me for pain clinic appointments, and although nobody said anything to me about them having done all they could, that seems to be the case as they simply haven't been in touch.

Eventing.

Being a trainer of NLP & Hypnotherapy and a Master Practitioner of Time Line Therapy®, I of knew deep inside, that because the fractures had healed the problem was no longer physical. I knew that this thing that felt like a bad back (and my riding accidents), were in fact linked to the death of my father who had died shortly after I left the forces. I realised that I needed help. Luckily I have a large network of friends and associates who have carried out exactly the same training as me and therefore it was fairly simple to find someone who could stay Meta on the problem and help me solve it. Einstein once said "You can't solve a problem with the same mind that created it". So even though I applied a lot of my techniques to self, in this case it needed someone else to coach the coach! 

It only took a couple of sessions of Time Time Line Therapy® to get to the root cause of the problem and to get rid of the pain. Metaphorically speaking backs are all about support, and in reality if you think about it they support our whole bodies in one way or another. I discovered the pain I had been experiencing was around a lack of support issue that my unconscious mind wanted me to resolve. 3 years of back pain disappeared after just 2 hours with one of our coaches. I know it probably sounds slightly far fetched but think about it, who was creating the pain? I was!....once you resolve the problem of the pain it no longer has any purpose and goes away. There has been a lot of research carried out, in particular by a chap called Sarno, however Dr's Hamer and Chopra have also carried out extensive research into physical symptomatology caused by emotional trauma. 

I'm back running again and loving it. In fact I will be running my first 10 Km run for over 5 years in April 2013.

Whilst I realise how powerful the techniques that I have available are, I have to be careful that I'm not treading on the toes of traditional medicine. For sure, there are people that are ill and have physical problems that are fixed every day using modern medicine and if you are unwell go and see your GP, please don't call us, (We will however take referrals from your doctor!) What I am suggesting is that there is another dimension to this. If we are able to make up our mind to accept that we are creating the problem, we can almost certainly fix it.

If you have been down the conventional medical route, and are still having problems, just ask yourself this question and take the first answer you get. What significant emotional event happened in your life shortly before this problem appeared? I think you may be surprised by the answer. Once you have that answer you are literally just minutes away from getting rid of negative emotions that surround the event, and any limiting decisions you may have made as a result of your past. If you are having 'problems' and want to get rid of them, and you are based in the UK or Europe, then  request a callback via our website or send us an e-mail  We have a number of options to suit every budget, so feel free to get in touch. 

Kind Words?

I work with many adults and children around some of the issues that are preventing them from getting the results they want in their lives. Call the process whatever you like, coaching, therapy, life coaching. Some of my clients are already very successful and on the flip side some of them are really struggling with life. The common theme with pretty much all of my clients is that at some stage they have had an experience of being told something unhelpful at an early age, before they were 7 years old. 

If we believe Morris Massey and his widely accepted theory surrounding human development, up until ~age 7 a child is simply a little sponge like, unconscious mind which is wandering around absorbing and accepting everything around them. This is of course without any of the filters that form once we develop a sense of consciousness post Imprint Period. The interesting thing is that even in adulthood our unconscious minds are still child like and process information in the way a 5, 6 or 7 year old would. 

How many times have you told your child or heard  people telling their children 'white lies' to keep them quiet. You know the type of thing; 'Don't open the cupboard because there is a monster in there'.....'You'll never be able to do X,Y,Z'....  'You're so naughty'. What about during team sports and games at school....You play in goal because you're not good at football, or during music lessons, your really can't sing...you're not good enough.....These are what we could term hypnotic suggestions because at that early age they are going straight into the deeply unconscious where they begin to form and mould personality and behaviour. Many of these suggestions are simply forgotten as a person grows up, or at least a person isn't consciously aware that the suggestion is still there and running at an unconscious level affecting a persons confidence or other abilities. 

Clients can take a long time to get rid of some of this 'stuff' and that is only the ones that ever ask for help. Wouldn't it be better simply to choose to use supportive behaviours and language with children and vulnerable adults to save having to undo things in the future?

Remember everything you say to an infant is accepted uncritically as a suggestion. Choose your words wisely!