Alternative Viewpoints - April

Posted on 30 April 2008

Is that time of the month people where I get really lazy and link through to some other blogs for you to read.

I am trying to make this as impartial as I can. I know a lot of bloggers, some great, some good, some average and some er, let’s just say, enthusiastic. I don’t want to be influenced by friendships I want to offer content that I have read and think is worth sharing.

Having said all that I am still open to bribes. If you are a blogger $50 would have my complete attention and allow me to hurl my ethics out of the window. I am keeping away from the Mega-blogs that already get 10k+ visitors per day because they are well known and can be found easily. So here we go with another eyebrow raising, though provoking, motivation inspiring, self-developing plethora of blogs of indeterminate amount. Roughly speaking, I’ll stop when I run out of time.

By the way, if you have some favorites of your own that I should check out please let me know in the comments.

What The Super Successful You Knows – In My Heels

This was a tough one because I could have posted a couple of JEMi’s. One of my favorite new bloggers and a lady that writes with insight, compassion and intelligence. She analyses situations from mainly a female perspective (yeh, it’s a chick blog) but I’m in touch with my feminine side as my wife never tires of pointing out, so I get it! Having said that, her blog cuts across sexes, as long as you aren’t the kind of guy that thinks a women’s place is in the kitchen that is. If you are, you’d probably be better off shaving your palms and watching Jerry Springer rather than reading my blog, never mind hers.

Who Are The Villains Of The Kitchen Table – Dr Nicole

Another site that I have only stumbled on in the last month or so and already ranking in my top 10. Dr Nicole is a mine of brilliant information about alternative and also some mainstream medicine. If you aren’t convinced that putting copious amounts of toxic chemicals into your body is the way to get and then keep yourself fit, then this site is worth visiting. A couple of years ago I would have been skeptical about some of this, but then I read ‘The 5 Forces of Wellness by Mark Hyman and my opinion shifted rapidly.

The post I picked is a brilliant look at what we really are eating on a daily basis. Bear this in mind. Few food-manufacturing companies care if they are serving up products that are inherently unhealthy, even when the clever labeling leads us to think we may be choosing a healthier option. Chose wisely Grasshopper.

Why Does The Thunder Hide The Rain? – The Next 45 Years

I reviewed Alex’s excellent e-book a few days ago and he has trumped that with a beautifully written and moving post. It takes either guts or indifference to hang out your emotions for all of cyber space to see like this and Alex is definitely not indifferent. Go and read about his family problems and then if you are in a similar situation you can relate, if you’re not, be thankful.

Courage and Compassion: A Dedication To Yourself – Urban Monk

Albert at Urban Monk is right there on the edge of being a Super-Blog but I’m going to cover this one of because he deserves some attention. Let me start by saying that this guy is the real deal. There are some self-development ‘gurus’ out there that are only interested in developing the bank accounts and this guy isn’t one of them.

I never tire of beating my clients soundly over the head with the “You are the most important person in the world to you” stick. Albert uses a somewhat gentler technique to get over the same important message.

The Cult of Abundance, Goal Autoimmune Disorder, & Abundance 2.0 – The Growing Life

I hate Clay at TGL, I really do. He’s younger than me, better looking and a better writer. I was tempted to disqualify him from this list for all of those reasons and because I included one of his posts last month, but then I realized that wasn’t being fair to you loyal reader Anyway, he hasn’t got my wife, my dog or my ability to aim for the sympathy vote, so that gives me the edge.

A bit like JEMi I had a few to aim at her but decided to go for his attack on The Secret and the greed of abundance. I always preface my remarks about The Secret by saying I think it did a lot of good in opening up peoples mind to alternative ideas. I am truly grateful for that, but I am not grateful for the holes it leads in the entire Law of Attraction theory (and yes it is a theory and not a law of physics). Clay words it better than me and explains why this entire thing may have gone a tad too far.

What Works For Your Life – Craig Harper

I like to have fun when I’m posting and I hope that comes across. It sure comes across to me when I read Craig Harper’s blog. He may be an Aussie with the tact of a horny cockerel on vacation at a chicken farm, but he is funny, he gets to the point and he knows his stuff. This particular post helps explain why there isn’t a one-size fits all cure for life. If there was I’d be selling it on Ebay and posting this blog from The Seychelles.

Why Do I Procrastinate? – Verve Coaching

This is an interesting one because I actually don’t fully agree with the premise of this blog. However, it made ms stop and think about it and I can see where Erek is coming from. I’m not saying I have changed my mind, but I do think there are elements of truth and anyway it’s not always about agreement it’s about expansion. I may share my own opinion on procrastination one day but that could be an epic of a post.

Get More Things Done with Ultradian Sprint Life Optimizer

This is a great post and something that is close to my heart. Since reading the absolutely brilliant ‘Power of Full Engagement’ by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz I have been aware that managing energy is the key. I all too often slip back and stay with tasks too long getting diminishing returns. Donald at LO explains why you need to spring and take regular breaks if you are to be fully productive.

How To Get Instant Confidence – The Discomfort Zone

I know it’s a disgrace throwing my own stuff in here but I’m truly shameless and I’m doing it anyway. If you are new here and haven’t read any of my posts this will give you a good introduction. On the other hand I suppose you could just check out the Featured posts in the left hand tool bar.

This actually took me longer to compile than I though because I had to go scrolling back through blogs as I hadn’t book marked them like a truly sensible person would have done. It has also left me somewhat frustrated because I didn’t include a number that I intended to. So if you are insatiable and want more here is a lucky dip of excellent posts I have read this month:

5 Reasons You Should Treat Your Partner Like Your Dog – Jonathan Mead

Wicked Cool Gratitude With a Side of Grace – True Balance

5 Little Things - To Help The Environment - Brucisms

And finally, the biggest loon on the Internet, Monk Mojo (not for the easily offended!)

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The Worlds Biggest Con

Posted on 28 April 2008

According to Verbal in ‘The Usual Suspects’ the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn’t exist. Well I beg to differ because if he pulled off that trick successfully then nobody would be able to say it, because by definition they wouldn’t know to say it because they’d think Lucifer didn’t exist and there would be no conversation to begin with.

Send me my trophy because I’m confident that wraps up the award for most confusing start to a post in blogging history. I wrote it and even I don’t know what I’m talking about, so you’ve no chance.

I’m prepared to wager there’s no pointy tailed, trident waving, red head running around pulling satanic tricks as we speak. However, if I’m wrong though and there is, the best that he has come up with to date by some considerable margin is to implant the belief into the minds of hundreds of millions of people that pessimists are realists.

Yes, that’s right, you heard me. The biggest con known to mankind is that pessimists believe they are realists.

About 2 weeks ago I was working with a client that wanted to change careers and start her own business. We were talking about various options and she had an absolutely brilliant reason why each one would fail. I pointed out that I thought she was being a tad pessimistic and I got back the response that I have now heard 13,228 times……this month.

“I’m just trying to be realistic”

Well thank the Lord for realism, where would we be without it? Probably still living in caves with sloping foreheads and wearing furry underwear. I’m ok with the furry underwear bit, but I like the front of my head as it is and I have no wish to give up TiVo.

Every single major breakthrough and invention known to man was considered unrealistic at some stage or other. I can guarantee you that every top scientist, athlete, author, musician, politician, artist, inventor, designer and entrepreneur that ever walked the planet will have been told by somebody that he or she were being unrealistic. Fortunately, these people don’t listen to that kind of comment because they know even though its often well meaning, it’s seldom useful and anyway as I frequently say; realism is for accountants.

Were the people that told Walt Disney he was being unrealistic trying to build the world’s biggest theme park on a swamp, right? No of course not, they were pessimists that got it wrong. Were the people that told the Wright Brothers to get real when they decided to build a flying machine being realistic? Nope, they were wrong as well. What about the people that told Paula Abdul she’d never get a job as a reality show panelist. Unfortunately, they were wrong too, more is the pity.

The people that hide being the badge of realism are also the people that tend to worry the most. They say with one breath they are realists and then spend all day worrying that their kids are going to be abducted, if they don’t clean handles of supermarket trolleys the bubonic plague will get them, that their headache is a tumor and fretting over a flight to Europe in case there is a terrorist attack.

That’s not being realistic, it’s being pessimistic with a dash of neurosis thrown in for good measure.

There is a time and a place for being realistic. As I say to clients when I’m helping them set goals. If you want to win a gold medal at basketball for the Chinese women’s team and you are an American male, then you probably need to be a bit more realistic. If however, you have any other goal that you strongly believe in and your physical attributes will conform to, then go for it, and decide for yourself what is realistic.

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened. – Mark Twain

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Stumbling Onto A Good Book Or Four

Posted on 26 April 2008

You know I have to confess that I don’t like writing book reviews. I’m not sure why not, because I like writing and I like reading, so putting the two together would appear to be a no-brainer. Then again I like cuddling my wife and I like eating spaghetti but I never combine the two, except for very special occasions that is.

I have read 4 books in the last month or so that I want to cover of in one fell swoop because I feel I owe it to you my adorable reader to let you know what’s going on out there. It also gives me an easy cop out because how much detail can a man cover in one post. Not much as you’re about to find out.

Every now and then I get somebody ask me “Why don’t you ever review bad books, are you in the pay of the evil publishing empire you charlatan?” I answer that I wouldn’t be saving up coins in a jar, eating Tilapia and driving a RAV4 if I was on the take and they nod their head in solemn agreement.

The real reason of course is because if I start reading a book and after 30 or 40 pages I’m not enjoying it, I stop reading it. It’s a dedvious plan I developed some years ago that seems to work for me. If I don’t enjoy something I’m doing or think I will get future enjoyment from it, I stop doing it. It can be watching a movie, eating a meal or having root canal work. If the end pay off doesn’t seem like it’s going to be better than any purgatory I may be putting myself through, I quit. I don’t think it’s fair for me to review a book that I don’t finish, do you? After all the ending could be as good in comparison to the rest of the book as it was bad in comparison to the rest of the movie with ‘No Country For Old Men’ and I’d have no way of knowing. So you can rest assured the following books got read/listened to and there were no unmissed twists in the tale.

Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert

This is without doubt the best book I have read in the last 2 years. It is like Blink with humor. That’s rare praise for me because Blink is up there as one of my favorite of all time. If you have read Blink and liked it, go and get this now. If you haven’t read Blink, go and get both books and prepare yourself for some greats nights in and some even greater nights out as you bore your friends to tears.

Gilbert takes a look at how the brain works for us and sometimes against us. The twist is that he presents the information in such a manner that even I understood what he was talking about. Not only that, but he had me laughing out loud on several occasions and smiling almost throughout.

The book has a downside though. It will make you realize that you really aren’t that unique. Heavens to Betsy, what am I saying, not unique? Well of course you’re unique, but you don’t really think that uniquely. You think you do, so that’s the bit that might niggle you when you finally have to accept that your brain does a great job of fooling you for much of the time.

You’ll learn why it’s almost impossible to predict how you’ll feel about things in the future, hence the reasons why we make so many bad choices. Why money has almost zero effect on your happiness levels and why it’s literally impossible to know how happy somebody else is, even if they tell you!

9 Essential Life Skills by Zorka Hereford

What an interesting book this is for the self-development newbie that wants a little bit more than an idiot’s guide to life.

A good starting point for anybody that has heard about stuff like Myers Briggs, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and the importance of values, but doesn’t really know what they are or how to use them. Hereford condenses a lot of information into a book that can be read in less than 2 hours by cunningly removing all the fluff that so many self-development authors use to pad out their publications.

It’s also packed with great quotes and sources of further information should you want to push the boundaries a bit more. If you thought ‘Flow’ or ‘Spiral Dynamics’ was too low-brow for you, then this won’t cut it, but if you want a handy reference guide to being happier and more confident with yourself, it’s worth checking out.

I have one minor complaint and I wouldn’t be being genuine if I didn’t bring this up. Hereford has a section covering astrology and personally I don’t subscribe to the belief that your month of birth dictates anything other than the likelihood that you’ll get a lot of presents around that time each year.

That’s a minor gripe though because Hereford’s sincerity and obvious desire to help people improve the quality of the lives shines through. It’s a great little guide that I would have loved to have found when I started reading self-development books a few years ago. Unfortunately she hadn’t written it then, so I didn’t

How To Finish Strong In Life – Alex Blackwell (ebook)

Alex Blackwell is a relative newcomer to the Blogosphere and has shot onto the scene over the last few months with his great blog ‘The Next 45 Years’

This ebook is a mine of information the like of which you’d normally associate with Old Man Johnson that lives in the last house on your way out of town. You know the guy, he looks like he’s 108 and spends all day in his rocking chair on his front porch dispensing his undoubted wisdom to the locals, watching the world go by and occasionally cackling manically to himself.

There’s little new in self development and there’s little new in this book. There was little new in my last book either, or Tony Robbins or Wayne Dyers for that matter. The fact is that the knowledge of how to live a better more fulfilling and content life is out there. It’s just that most people don’t bother looking for it and those that do, don’t follow it.

Blackwell starts from the premise that it’s how we finish life that matters and he’s absolutely on the money, I love that concept. What’s happened has happened and we can’t influence it, but we can influence how we go forward and how we chose to spend the rest of our days and that is all we should be concerned with.

If you are a blog reader you will love his style because it’s written in a personal manner and a really easy read. You’ll find yourself nodding your head again and again and thinking, “Yep Old Man Johnson couldn’t have put it better himself” For less than 5 bucks it’s a no-brainer if you ask me.

Stop Procrastination Now (ebook) – Fruitful Time

The guys at Fruitful Time are into their time management a bit like David Hasselhoff is in to making a complete ass of himself. This free ebook is obviously a cunning plan to sell more of their excellent time management software, but good for them I say, and it’s no less valuable because of that.

Let me start by saying that English is their second language so there are one or two unusual uses of verbiage, but that just makes it feel more real in my opinion. There’s nothing in here that’s rocket science but you probably wouldn’t expect a free ebook on rocket science. There is however some really sensible advice on understanding what procrastination is, spotting whether you suffer from it and then how you deal with it. The first two parts of that are more important than you might imagine. Some people that suffer from procrastination issues aren’t even aware of them and as such take action. This book will help you appreciate whether you are a serial staler or you actually do have to have a lunar eclipse occurring before you can finish your thesis.

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How To Avoid a Mid (or quarter) Life Crisis

Posted on 23 April 2008

If you were to look at my client files in an attempt to ascertain the ages of the clients that I see, I‘d have to call the Police because it’s confidential information. I’d also want to know how you got past my security system, a slightly mental Doberman and a drawer that normally takes me 30 minutes to get open, but let’s suppose this is all above board and you’re undertaking some important humanitarian research with my blessings. What do you think you’d find?

A few days ago I couldn’t have given you an answer to that rather benign question, but recently curiosity got the better of me and I decided to check it out. The results did cause me to slightly raise one eyebrow and think “Hmmm, that’s mildly interesting.” Now that I have whipped you into a rabid frenzy of anticipation I will share my highly scientific findings so you too can raise an eyebrow, or maybe even gasp in horror.

15-24 6%
25-35 28%
36-45 52%
46+ 14%

What do those figures tell us other than I have way too much time on my hands? I think the huge spike that occurs with the group in their late 30’s and early to mid 40’s is indicative of people hitting what is frequently referred to as a mid-life crisis and looking for guidance. It’s a sobering thought when we get into our 40’s to suddenly realize we may have passed the halfway mark of our term here on Planet Earth. It’s not just reserved for people approaching or passing 40 either. The new phrase on the block is quarter-life crisis. Here we have similar symptoms being displayed by the older group but this time by people heading towards 30.

What are the symptoms I’m talking about you may be thinking? Well here’s a few to ponder whilst you kill some time before retirement:

• Wondering what the hell life is all about
• Apathy or even a sense of urgency for no apparent reason
• A sense of being stuck
• A desire to buy sports cars and cruise around the ‘hood playing loud music with the top down
• A feeling of wasted potential
• An inability to accept that you can’t dance all night and still get up for work bright eyed and bushy tailed
• Feeling out of place in Abercrombie & Fitch
• A strong urge to join a gym followed by an even stronger one to watch ‘Murder She Wrote’

Of course there are many more, they are just the ones I pondered one Saturday afternoon about 5 years ago.

Today dear reader, I’m going to give you the secret of avoiding a mid-life or even a quarter life crisis. If you follow this one piece of advice you’ll never need to worry about paying outrageous sums of money to life coaches with dubious credentials and you can relax in the knowledge that your life wil be one long walk in the park.

Follow Your Passion – I can almost hear the groans from here. I know it’s about as original as ‘My Way’ at a funeral, but what can I say? It’s the one thing that will almost guarantee that you never feel the need to go out and buy a Ferrari, wear dresses that are way too small or spend all your spare cash following the Chippendales on tour. Ladies, you’ll be ok too.

In all my years of coaching, I’ve never had somebody come to me suffering from a MLC or even a QLC that bounded into my office announcing they loved their job with a passion but just knew there was something missing in their life. That is either one helluva coincidence or we’re on to something significant people.

If you live to be 65 and have a standard working life you are probably going to spend about 85,000 hours doing something that you may either hate, or are at best, are ambivalent about. Why would you ever even consider that as an acceptable option? That was a rhetorical question by the way, because the last thing I want you to do now is start searching your brain for reasons to justify this state of affairs. There is never any justification, but while you think there is, you’ll always find it, So stop looking now!

How do you know if you’re in the wrong job? Worry not; I’m on hand again with yet another bullet list to bail you out. Some of these may seem obvious, but trust me, I‘ve had clients say stuff like this and then when I replayed it back to them , they’ve looked at me like I just told explained the Theory Of Everything. In actual fact, the Theory Of Everything comes in session 2, and only for clients that have booked 6 sessions or more.

• You tell everybody you hate your job
• You wish it were Friday at 5.00pm when you head off for your Monday morning coffee break
• You look forward to contracting rare tropical diseases that will keep you in bed for weeks on end
• You stick pins in your eyes to keep you awake
• You feel drained all the time
• You argue at home about stuff at work
• You argue at work about stuff at home
• You visualize your boss being skewered alive and then slow roasted over and open fire
• Monster is your home page
• You say things like “Sorry, they don’t pay me enough to do that” “At 4.55? Are you nuts? I’m off home?” or even “Let’s kill the VP of sales and march on company headquarters with his head on a spike”

None of that is good, is it?

You can join in the pity party and reconcile yourself to the fact that everybody else you know dislikes their job. I find that’s always a great reason to stay miserable. Or you could even blame the fact that you have a huge mortgage, a family to keep and the Universe hates you and has been conspiring against you since your unfortunate birth.

Alternatively, you could decide that no way no how are you going to look back on a life of wasted potential. That you’re going to do something about it right here and right now! That way, when you finally shuffle off this mortal coil they can play My Way at your funeral and there won’t be people at the back rolling their eyes and smirking to one and other.

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Reducing Physical Trauma

Posted on 22 April 2008

If you have popped in today for a light-hearted chat about NLP and to witness another one of my brutal attacks on the English language, you’re going to be disappointed. Today I am running an absolutely brilliant article written by a personal NLP hero of mine, Steve Andreas. Along with his wife Connirae, Steve has been on the NLP scene since the very early days and has written several books on the subject and is a highly respected trainer and developer. He also started the brilliant NLP Comprehensive (formerly NLP Colorado) and Real People Press. It’s a longish article, but it is well worth checking out because it offers some amazing stuff.

First there was psychoanalysis, analyzing the mind. Then there was psychotherapy, in which one person treats or “therapizes” another. NLP can also be used in this way, but primarily NLP is about psycho- education, teaching someone how to use their mind, so that people can use it with themselves, as more of a personal practice, rather than a therapy, and in this piece I’ll offer you an example.

We have a private well, with a pressure tank to maintain pressure. Our water pressure had been somewhat low, so on the last day of November I adjusted the pressure switch, turned on the pump, and happily watched the pressure climb up past the 30# or so it had been. As it climbed past 50#, suddenly the back of the tank exploded-BLAM!!–and by Newton’s second law, the tank flew (no exaggeration) into me, giving me a number of bruises and a nasty Y-shaped gash just over my left eye. If I were an inch taller-or the trajectory of the tank had been an inch lower-I might have lost an eye.

On my way to the house and then to the doctor, whenever I thought of the explosion I re-experienced a bright white flash, and the impact and the pain. The rusty scale from the inside of the corroded tank had a very unique oily smell that had gotten on my clothes, and each time I smelled it, that also triggered the white flash and impact. My immediate concern was to get medical help, but as soon as I was in the clinic getting the gash pulled together and stitched up (two dozen stitches, both cutaneous and sub-), I did several processes to promote healing.

The first thing I did is something I learned from Tim Hallbom, called the “physical trauma process.” I imagined that I was a stunt man hired for a movie of my explosion. Well prepared with padded clothing and other tricks of the trade, I re-experienced all the events of the explosion without injury, and repeated this sequence from before the explosion to after it ten times. This added ten movies of being unhurt to the one of being hurt, and the result was an internal experience of going through the explosion and coming out fine-just as when you sometimes stumble or bump into something without any injury. I have no proof that this process works, but I have several examples where it certainly seemed to make a difference. In one case, a woman in a seminar turned her ankle when she stood up and lost her balance, and she was absolutely sure that she would be limping for some time. I had her do this process immediately, and about 15 minutes later she stood up and walked completely normally, without any pain. The process takes only a few minutes to do, and could only be harmful if someone had such a loose grasp on reality that they then did things that made a real injury worse.

The next thing I did was to separate myself from the event by watching a movie of the exact same sequence of events from about 20 feet away. From that distance I saw myself watching the pressure switch, the tank exploding and hitting me, and then me walking to the house and calling the medical clinic. From this perspective, I could see him feeling the impact and pain, but I was only a detached observer of those events. After this, whenever I smelled the smell of that peculiar rusty scale or thought of the explosion, it triggered this detached movie of seeing myself (instead of the white flash and blow to my head). This is an example of the NLP “visual/kinesthetic dissociation” process that can be used to resolve most phobias quickly, as well as most traumas and PTSD. (Heart of the Mind, Chapter 7)

Then I used a process to support healing developed by my wife, Connirae. I compared my image of the gash in my forehead to an image of something that I know will heal quickly, like an ordinary cut that I might get while cutting vegetables. When I did this, the gash was black and bright red, while my image of an ordinary cut was surrounded by a bright white light (Different people will have very different color codings). Then I transformed the bright red and black of the gash to the white light. This gave my new injury the same coding, indicating nonverbally that it would heal quickly. This is far more impactful than any verbal message or affirmation, because any time I thought of the gash I automatically saw this white light that indicated healing.

Finally, I added an additional piece that I thought of some time ago. One of the first and most dependable signs of healing is itching, as the nerve endings regenerate into the healing tissue. The experience of itching is also one of easiest things to induce hypnotically simply by focusing your attention. So I attended to the gash waiting for the first itches to occur, which happened almost right away (probably far too soon to actually be the result of healing). Besides being another nonverbal indication of healing, this did something else very important. Focusing on the itching implied not attending to other sensations like heat, soreness, or pain that could indicate that the wound was not healing.

Another example of this kind of redirection of attention is what nurses are trained to do when patients begin to come out of general anesthetic after an operation, something that we learned from Sandra Aspromonte. The nurse needs to know if the patient is nauseous, in order to be prepared if they vomit, because in their semi- conscious state they might aspirate the vomit into their lungs, which would be very serious. However, in their semi-conscious state, the patient is extremely suggestible. If the nurse asks, “Are you nauseous?” they may create the very response that they don’t want-vomiting. So instead, at the first sign of consciousness in the patient, the nurse asks, “Are you hungry?” This question is also very hypnotic, and since hunger is incompatible with vomiting, directing the patient’s attention in this way tends to preclude vomiting-without ever mentioning it.

In one of Milton Erickson’s cases, a woman would gasp uncontrollably just before bedtime, which interfered with her sex life. Erickson instructed her to do something that naturally elicited giggling, which prevented her gasping. A more general example of this principle of eliciting an incompatible response is useful in dealing with fear. Curiosity is a state that is incompatible with fear. In fear, you run away from something, while in curiosity, you go toward something in order to learn more about it. If you can elicit a strong state of curiosity about something that someone has been avoiding, that will preclude fear. Typically after curing a phobia, clients will be very interested and curious about what they had previously been avoiding, indicating that the curiosity was already present, but the fear was so strong that the curiosity was overwhelmed, and wasn’t noticed.

Back to my gash. The doctor wanted to schedule my stitch removal 7 days later. However, I had to get on an early airplane 6 days later to go present at a conference, so I had the stitches out the previous day (less than 5 days after the injury). I had wondered if I would look a bit like Frankenstein, but when the stitches were removed, there wasn’t even a thin pink line where the skin had healed. I looked up common times for stitch removal and found 3-5 days for face, and 7-10 days for scalp (Is forehead included in face or more like scalp?) so maybe it wasn’t so miraculous. However, it certainly did heal up very nicely, and no one at the conference noticed the scar unless I pointed it out. A couple of months later, it blended in completely with my other wrinkles-one of the advantages of getting older!

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I Know You Better Than You Think

Posted on 21 April 2008

You’re an open-minded and genuine person. You’ve had difficulties in your life but on the whole you’re a fighter and you always get through them. You’re intrinsically honest and you try to be a good friend to those people that you value highly. When you have strong gut instincts they are nearly always right, although occasionally you do override them and wish you hadn’t afterwards. That can lead you to being tough on yourself which is something that you tend to do anyway. In fact, you say things to yourself that you’d never dream of saying to your loved ones and justify it because you want to have high personal standards. All in all you’re a good person even if from time to time you can forget that and get down on yourself.

Does that sound like you? I’m betting it does. If not all of it, the vast majority. Why do you think that is? Am I a mind reader, did I get lucky or have I just been stalking you for the last couple of months?  Well I’m definitely not a mind reader because if I was, I’d have known the repercussions of telling my wife to pull herself together at the wrong time of the month. I’m not particularly lucky either as anybody that has been in any lottery syndicate with me will testify, and I stopped stalking years ago when that new law came out.  So it must be something else.

There is a language model used in NLP called the Milton Model of language. It was developed by Bandler and Grinder after spending hundreds of hours modeling Milton H Erickson the brilliant psychotherapist and clinical hypnotherapist. Prior to Erickson most hypnotherapists used a command approach that involved an induction followed by an instruction to the subject  in trance to stop smoking, lose weight or get a grip on themselves, depending on their particular circumstances. This approach could work, but it was hit and miss at best. 

Erickson’s approach differed substantially in so much as he seldom told clients to do anything directly connected with their issue. He would talk in metaphor a lot of the time, bypassing the conscious critical faculty and allowing his clients unconscious mind to extrapolate its own meaning at leisure. On top of that, he would be artfully vague with his use of words. He would construct sentences that literally meant little, but could be construed to mean whatever the recipient wanted them to mean. You know, a bit like a politician might.

You may possibly have smiled at that last bit about politicians thinking I was being flippant, but I wasn’t, because that is EXACTLY what politicians do a lot of the time. They, or more likely their speech writers, are often masters of artfully vague language as well as every other advanced language pattern known to man. They can knock out a 20 minute speech that says 100 different things to 100 different people. It’s a highly crafted skill that can earn you vast wads of cash if you get really good at it.

People who write horoscopes use the same language patterns too.  I’m not going to get into the relative merits of astrology, because quite honestly I don’t know enough about it, but make no mistake; they use tricks of writing to get their message over. You can decide for yourself the motive for that.

What is the value in knowing this you may be wondering? Other than for stopping conniving politicians from pulling copious amount of wool over your eyes, I guess like a lot of things, it’s as useful or useless as you want to make it. My advice for what it’s worth, would be to not always take words at face value. It’s easy to jump to conclusions and put meaning on to things that may not be there and it’s easy to allow others to do the same to us by being vague and unspecific, even about things that are important to us. 

Look past the obvious and ask yourself from time to time “Am I seeing what I want/expect to see, or am I seeing what is actually there?”

There is much more to the Milton Model than artfully vague language and if you want to know more about advanced language patterns check out NLP Comprehensive the best resource for NLP information on the net in my opinion.

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Work From Your Strengths

Posted on 17 April 2008

I’ve decided to run occasional posts from bloggers who I admire and who I think can add value to you, my lovely reader. It’s also a great way for me to put my feet up and take it easy whilst apperaing to have done loads of work. So it’s a win/win/win. First up is Jonathan Mead with his excellent post about using your strengths.

In these days our societies love to applaud the person who overcame great odds. We marvel at men that were born with great disadvantages but overcome them despite their considerable weakness.

I think we can achieve much greater success and fulfillment when we do what we love, while working from our strengths.

A Story About a Dancer

I’d like to tell you a story about a lady by the name of Gillian Lynne.

As a young girl growing up in the 1930’s, Gillian was absolutely hopeless in her studies. She just couldn’t sit still. Her parents were distraught, they tried everything they could to find out what was wrong with her. Eventually, they took her to see a specialist. They interviewed her in the room with her parents and then the doctor announced he’d like to speak with the parents alone. As they left the room the doctor turned on the radio and said “Gillian, I want you to wait her for a moment, I need you to sit still. We’ll be right back.”

So the parents went out in the hall and begin talking when the doctor interrupted “look at your daughter.” She was on her feet, moving and dancing to the music. After a moment the doctor said “Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn’t sick, she’s a dancer. Take her to dance school.”

Her mother did exactly that, she took her daughter to the Royal Ballet School. Gillian was delighted, she was finally around people that had to move to think.

Gillian went on to do modern, tap, jazz, ballet and contemporary dance. She became a soloist in the Royal Ballet and is responsible for some of the greatest choreography of the century. She founded the Gillian Lynne Dance company, met Andrew Lloyd Weber and went on to choreograph some of the most famous productions, including Cats and Phantom of the Opera.

Everyone have different strengths, some people have to move to think.

My Story

Everyone has their own unique talents. One of my greatest strengths is finding the underlying meaning behind things and their interconnection to seemingly unrelated things. For example, I was able to see the underlying meaning behind Shiva and Vishnu very easily. They are Hindu God/Goddesses representing the sexual energy of the universe. Their constant lovemaking represents the coalescing of two halves, or opposites in the creation of existence. It’s opposites that create the difference we see in life, these opposites are not two, but one. Explicitly they are two, but implicitly they are one.

I’ve always had a curious and philosophical mind. But this curiosity used to drive me crazy. I would often spend countless nights lying in bed wondering what the meaning of life was. What the meaning behind relationships, parenthood, careers, birth, death, love, hate, beauty, and the list goes on and on.

Constantly questioning the meaning and reason of life used to make me think I was going to lose my mind. I wanted to “be normal” and just “live life” like everyone else. Quietly accepting things as they are, not causing any trouble. I simply wanted peace, I wanted to be able to accept life as it is. One day after going to my class on biological anthropology I was so distressed about the answers to the meaning of life, I got a fever and stayed in bed for several days. I realized I couldn’t silence my insatiable curiosity and I eventually surrendered and embraced it.

I searched everywhere for the answers that I wanted to find. I took classes on anthropology, listened to Alan Watts, red countless books on Zen, Taoism, Buddhism and Vedanta. I studied psychology, psychedelics, and philosophy. After much searching I turned inward and began to find the answers that I was looking for.

This journey has been a struggle for me, no doubt. In the beginning I fought my curiosity and philosophical hunger. But after I began to embrace it, I realized the great strength it has provided me. It’s allowed me to see patterns where others see chaos. I can see the deeper meaning and energy behind events where most only glimpse the surface.

Since embracing this strength I’ve learned that I can be more effective building on my born talents rather than fighting them. I can help show others the meaning of the symbolism in their lives. I can help other people find their path and bringer a deeper level of spiritual, mental and emotional meaning to their lives.

Find your strengths and apply them in your life. Focus on what is right with you, instead of trying to overcome your shortcomings. You’ll have much greater success when you invest your energy in developing your strengths, rather than overcoming weaknesses.

You’ll have much greater effectiveness then you ever will trying to work on your weaknesses, chasing money or security.

Maybe you’re afraid to go after what you love, where your true talents lie, because it’s not socially acceptable. Forget society, forget what your parents think, forget even what you think. Do what you love, work from your strengths and the money will follow.

Don’t compromise yourself and don’t die with your music still in you.

Jonathan is the author of the blog JonathanMead.com, focused on finding Authenticity, Clarity and Balance in all aspects of living. His articles include 6 Keys to Develop the Action Habit, Positivity Demystified, and 33 of Life’s Most Powerful Lessons.

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Phobias Removed In 15 Minutes Or Your Money Back

Posted on 16 April 2008

Before I crack on with today’s thrilling installment of NLP Demystified, I feel I should add a caveat to Sundays post on Instant Confidence. There is a common misconception that confident people don’t get nervous. Yes they do, they can even get just as nervous as anybody else. The difference is they push through and don’t let it show. If you are expecting anchoring to give you confidence and all your nerves will just dissolve, you may be disappointed. That could happen, but it most likely won’t, it’s more likely that you will retain a few nerves but just be more accepting of them. Anyway, we need some nerves in certain situations; they help us to perform more effectively so embrace them for all your worth.

Today I’m going to tell you how to remove any phobia you may have in about 15 minutes.  I know, I know, it sounds like yet another ludicrous Brownson claim, but I’m on a roll now on the ludicrous claim front.  If you have been in therapy for 9 years with a phobia of snakes, spiders or salesmen, I can help you. I have to be careful living in such a litigious society as the US, so a caveat before we continue. If you try this, make a complete pigs ear of it and your fear gets worse, then it’s either your fault, Richard Bandler’s (the guy that developed it), or the Governments, are we in agreement? If not you can leave now, but watch out for the spider lurking in your bedroom, it’s got hairy legs, big fangs and a baseball bat.

There are a few ways to deal with phobias and here are 3.

Avoidance – Make sure that you never ever come into contact whatever it is you’re phobic about. Not a problem if it’s White Rhino’s, Moon dust or brilliant ad libs by George Bush, but more problematical if its spiders, needles or cheese. This is not recommended because fear will often intensify if you use the avoidance strategy.

De-sensitization – I have to say I’m not a psychologist or psychotherapist so I am giving you a layman’s take on this process and the one below. Imagine you have a fear of snakes and you go to see your therapist. She may suddenly wander off to the other side of the room and open a book. From 25 feet away she then shows you a picture of a snake for s second or two. Your heart may skip a beat but you’ll probably be ok. The next time you go to see her she brings the book a bit nearer and shows it to you for 10 seconds. The time after that it’s on the couch and the next time she’s waving a plastic snake at you from behind her desk. Get the picture? She is slowly getting you used to the idea of snakes by lowering your sensitivity to them. This may work or it may not, but it will cost you a bucket load of cash.

Flooding – Your therapist decides that that the desensitization isn’t working too well and a change of tack is called for. Next time you enter her office she pulls a lever as you walk in and trap door opens up beneath you. You plummet 10 feet to the floor below, but land ok on a handily placed mattress. No harm done you think, until you notice there are 3,000 snakes taking a nap on said mattress.  You then realize that you can’t get out of the room and you either have to make friends with the snakes or have a massive heart attack. This may work with some people and it may cause severe trauma in others. If you’re thinking of trying this out I would advise non-poisonous snakes or a large insurance policy.

Relaxation techniques – It is what it is. You teach yourself some deep breathing and other assorted ways of staying relaxed and hope to hell you can remember what to do when snake drops on your head whilst on vacation in Australia.

Now let’s take a look at the NLP method. Be aware if you have a severe phobia you may feel some mild agitation doing this, but isn’t that worth it to get rid of it for good?

1. Imagine you’re in a cinema with a friend for company. You sit some way back and wait for the movie to start. You are very relaxed and looking forward to the show. 
2. The movie starts to roll and you notice that it’s in black and white and that you can see yourself on the screen. The self you can see is the one you would have seen just prior to your original phobic response started. If you can’t remember what kicked all this off, don’t worry, just remember any severe episode, but be sure to start the movie before you would have known there was a problem.
3. Before the movie starts you can imagine floating out of your body back into the projection room. You can still see yourself looking chilled and waiting for the movie but now you’re in control of the equipment and safely behind a glass panel.
4. Run the grainy, jerky, black and white movie until well after the end of the phobic incident. When you get to the end and noticing that the you on the screen is ok, freeze the film.
5. Float back down into the you watching the movie and then run the movie very quickly backwards to the beginning in no more than 2 seconds.  Now watch the movie again and once more stop well past the event.
6. Float (a lot of floating I know, so I hope you’re a good floater) into the you on the screen and make the scenery 3D. Re-wind from the end to the beginning really quickly and make it almost comical. Now add color and repeat the process by running forward quickly and then backwards. You can even add a silly sound track and make things seem completely ridiculous in any way you see fit. Go backwards and forwards several times making sure you are completely at ease with it.
7. Try and recreate the phobic response and you’ll find you can’t, or at least nothing like as intensely. You can run this a number of times until your phobia has been downgraded to point where it is no longer really an issue.

You may be wondering how this works. Tony Robbins description (that he may or may not have borrowed from somebody else) is my favorite. It’s like scratching a record, when you do that enough times it will never be the same again. We are scratching the memory you have associated to whatever you stimulus is and once you do that enough times you cannot access it again.

If you have a genuine phobia (it doesn’t work so well on vague fears) I recommend you ask for help in doing this and probably that you get somebody that has an understanding of NLP. The process does need to be followed carefully to avoid making it worse, but it can have genuine life changing effects on people that are severely phobic.

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How To Get Instant Confidence

Posted on 14 April 2008

Imagine you’re walking down the street and as you walk past a bakery you get hit by the smell of fresh bread. Within moments you are transported to a different time and a different place without the aid of hallucinogenics, a time that you remember with fondness, a time when you were blissfully happy and content. Without anything else happening your step becomes lighter and you’re thinking to yourself “Aint it great to be alive?” Alternatively, you’re driving down the highway when a certain record comes on the radio. It’s the record that you and your ex-partner thought of as being written just for you two. You’d get all dewy eyed and weak-kneed when you heard it together and you’d probably stare into each other’s eyes for days on end or until you keeled over from severe dehydration. Unfortunately, he or she ran off with your insanely wealthy former best friend to live in bliss on a Caribbean Island, and now it just makes you want to sob your little eyes out.

The reality is that nothing really happened in either of the above events. You were still in exactly the same situation on the same day with the same clothes on and the same amount of cash in the bank, yet your state shifted in an instant. That ladies and gentlemen is what we call an anchor and you have thousands of them whether you know about them or not. Some are beneficial like the former example but a lot aren’t.

When I was about 12 I was traveling home from school on the bus eating a scotch egg. For the uninitiated, a scotch egg is a disgusting concoction of a hard-boiled egg covered in sausage meat. I have no idea why it’s called a Scotch egg unless it’s because you need to have drunk half a bottle of scotch to find them appealing, but I digress. I ate this thing at a time when I knew I was coming down with flu or something similar. I spent the next 2 weeks in bed feeling awful and the Scotch egg wasn’t even to blame. However, afterwards the thought of eating one of those things was anathema to me. I would have rather eaten my own spleen such was my level of revulsion.

That is a negative (actually it could be said it was positive) anchor going into overdrive. My unconscious mind was linking egg to sickness and said “No way kiddo, you aint eating one of those nasty things ever again” People can have a similar reaction after becoming ill though excessive alcohol intake. The thought of drinking afterwards can cause their unconscious mind to recreate the same feelings in an attempt to stop them. Some people actually do say never again and stick to it.

How is this information useful you may be wondering? It’s very useful if you work in advertising and/or marketing because they are constantly trying to create positive anchors to their products, but that’s another post for another day because I’m more concerned what it can do for you.

Imagine having an anchor for confidence or focus or even self-control. Would that be a cool thing to have? Well why not? Anchors can be set intentionally just as easily as they can occur by chance. If you ever watch a big event like the Oscars where there are numerous speakers, look to see if you can spot a speaker that’s coming to the stage doing something a little out of place. It may be something as subtle as pulling on their ear lobe or placing their index finger and thumb together. There’s a good chance they’ve anchored that action to a feeling of confidence.

What are you waiting for? Instant confidence beckons so let’s get to it!

1. Firstly, find a time when you can close your eyes and you’re not going to be disturbed for 15 or 20 minutes so it’s probably not wise to try this in a busy office or whilst operating heavy machinery.

2. Take a deep breath, exhale slowly and as you do allow your eyes to close and a wave of relaxation to flow down your body. Do this three or four times with your eyes remaining closed and just allow yourself to become completely relaxed.

3. When you are at a stage that we professional life coaches officially call ‘chilled to da bone mon’, start to re-create the feelings that you are looking to anchor and have on tap. If it’s confidence, think of a time when you were full of confidence. I’ve had clients tell me that they have never felt that way. I then ask them if they could find their way to their car parked outside. “Of course” They reply. “Are you sure” I go on. “Of course I’m sure” “So you’re confident are you?” I then look very smug for demonstrating that they do have confidence and they punch me in the face.

To create what ever state you want you need to see what you would have seen when you previously experienced it, hear what you would have heard and feel what you felt. If there are any tastes or smells associated with the experience, then allow them to be present too. When you are in the moment let the feelings double, then double again and then continue to intensify.

4. When you get to a point when you just know they are about to peak, set the anchor. This simply involves touching a place on your body that you can replicate easily at any time in the future. Common places are the forearm, knuckles, pulling ear lobe, index finger onto thumb but nowhere that might get you arrested. Try to avoid a motion that you already use regularly as we don’t want you firing this anchor by mistake all the time. The only absolute requisite is that you can replicate exactly whatever it is you decide to do. So if you use fingers on forearms you need to use the same amount of fingers and the same amount of pressure each time.

5. When you have done this break your state by thinking about something completely different for a few moments, like what happens to the millions of birds that die each week. I mean c’mon, where the hell do they all go to and how come you don’t know anybody that’s been hit on the head by one?

6. Now fire the anchor by repeating whatever action you decided on. When you do this allow the feelings to flow, do not fight them, just know they will be there.

7. If they are not as intense as you would like, no problem, do the process again and reinforce it. You can do this as often as you like and each time you’ll increase the intensity, so stick with it because it always works although it take different length of times for different people.

That’s all there is to it. It’s not rocket science, brain surgery or even needlecraft, but it is very effective and used by a lot more people that you probably realize so give it a go. You can even check demos out on YouTube, simply enter NLP Anchoring and there’s always stuff there.

If you want to know more about NLP and what it can do for you, check out this link, and yes, I do get paid vast amounts of cash if you buy something. It’s still good stuff though!

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Obliterate Fears In 30 Minutes

Posted on 13 April 2008

I said I was going to cover off the NLP technique of anchoring today but I’ve changed my mind and I’m going to look at submodalities instead. It’s my wedding anniversary today and if I want to make it to the next one I’d better not spend 2 hours writing a post. Instead, I’m replicating part of an e-book I recently wrote called ‘Know Yourself – Change Yourself’ You can download the book for free here (scroll down and it’s the 3rd product).

 If I asked you to tell me about a fabulous vacation you had recently taken there are certain internal processes that you would go through before you responded. These usually happen incredibly quickly, in fact so quickly that it’s doubtful you’d even notice them at a conscious level. Here’s what would happen. You would form a picture in your mind, hear a voice or maybe even voices in your head and then get a lovely feeling associated with whatever it was you had been up to. You may also recreate any tastes and smells that you had associated with your great time. You’d probably be answering me before the feelings had arrived because feelings take longer to generate than pictures and sounds but there’s no real hard and fast rule.

If I then got bored with seeing you so happy and wanted to bring you down a peg or two and said something like “Yeh, yeh, yeh, that’s great, but tell me again about how your hamster got run over by that garbage truck just after fighting back from major paw surgery.”

Your state would change at a lightening rate and you’d probably come crashing down to earth faster than the guy that went parachuting with his buddies back pack on.

In a split second you’d probably visualize Hammy splattered on the tarmac with his little paw still bandaged up, hear your own tearful voice inside your head and feel that knot of anger in your stomach aimed toward the truck driver that hasn’t even noticed the hamster carnage he has just caused.

The reality is that nothing really happened in either of those events, they were both just memories but your unconscious was fooled easier than a blind man on Candid Camera/Punk’d/Trigger Happy TV* (delete where applicable depending on your age and country you live in).

Here is the really brilliant and useful bit with this. If you checked in to see what your pictures looked like and hear the voices and felt the feelings etc you would see some fundamental differences. I don’t mean the obvious ones like warm beach and a beer versus dead hamster and soothing voice saying “Ahh this is the life” versus hysterical rant and screaming “Get out of your truck you ****** rodent murdering ******* cuz I’m going to ****** kill you” I mean stuff much better than that.

This article is a huge tease because I’m going to kill it here and now, other than to say I regularly use submodalities with people to help them remove fears and also to build confidence very quickly. If you’d like to know how in more detail and use them on yourself or a friend, then download the e-book and get the whole enchilada. Not only that, but it will also show you how to check out your values and get an understanding of why they are critically important and help you change any self-limiting beliefs that may be holding you back in life. Not bad for free, huh?

Next Up: Anchoring - no honestly it will be.

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