Control - to be, or not to be?

There have been three excellent bits of writing which have stopped and made me think this week. It started with Super Coach's Michael Neill's Monday morning e-newsletter and continued with Chris Morris and Stephen Woolston. Each in their own way, talking about Life and the effect our perceptions have upon our experiences. I'd recommend you having a look to see what you think of their work. These are all men who are well experienced and qualified in their areas of expertise.

Me? I'm just throwing in my tuppence worth.

What is reality? How do you perceive it and Life around you? These are the big questions personal and spiritual development try to answer. I say 'try', because I believe there is no one answer, no one way which is right above all others. Ultimately, we all bring to our lives our experiences, hopes and dreams and for me learning is the key.

Being aware of where you are in The Moment, being able to recognise how you are feeling and thinking, is an incredibly powerful place to start. In this, I would follow Richard Bandler's thoughts on leaving out the 'why'. The 'why' can lead into so many justifications which can be a dead-end road. Sometimes we really don't know why. Why people choose to behave the way they do...it's a mystery - all we know is that they did it, and we live with the consequences.

As I wrote that last paragraph, I realised I'm bringing in learnings from Buddhism as well. A bit of detachment and acceptance is part of this process. Being able to let your thoughts be what they are, without judging them, buying into them or believing them gives you more room to manoeuvre. Meditation and trance is a great way to still the mind and to learn how to be. 

My mind is like a troop of chattering monkeys. Any meditation which starts: let your mind be still, go blank...that's a non-starter for me. Instead, I give my mind something else to do. I focus on repeated phrases and I particularly like the meditations from Jack Kornfield in A Path with Heart. 

How much control do you have in your life? This was Michael Neill's question. I think it's a valid one. I like the fact that the point he was raising is that it's okay not to feel or be in control. That giving up on the illusion of control, leaping into the chaos and being well, as you deal with all manner of situations is the authentic response.

Are we really in control? No. I'm with him on this one. I'm not in control of my government, the World, the economy, my family, my lover or my child. I sure as hell can't make them do what I want...believe me, I've tried. That is what Byron Katie calls arguing with reality. And yes, I did and I only lost 100% of the time. Do I control my thoughts? Do I control how I feel? Umm....I can. I've learnt to guide my thinking in certain circumstances, to boost my mood when I've got to do something to meet my responsibilities. But by in large, I'm not blessed with an over-abundance of energy. I've learnt, I don't have to. Things get done, or they don't. 

Mostly, I've learnt to work with my body, work with my thinking, moods and energy levels. It's created more of a flow. I realise now that NLP has given me flexibility and more options. This has been it's greatest gift to me. 

This has been a bit of a ramble. I suppose I don't really have a point, per se. If I do, it's simply this: be well.

Past, Present and Future - where are you?

You can't have a better tomorrow if you don't stop thinking about yesterday

from The Relationship Specialists

Anyone working in Personal Development is motivated by the belief that people can make their tomorrows better. How a person gets there...well that's where the arguments start. Freud began psychoanalysis and talking therapy which has had a major impact on counselling and therapies of different flavours. 

Hear Richard Bandler talking about talking therapies and you're going see a man on his soap box and hear a lot of swearing. Bandler believes that talking therapies involve taking clients through their most painful experiences and re-living every last detail. Don't get me wrong, he's scathing for a reason, he doesn't want his clients to suffer and he believes that all talking therapies do, is cause clients to suffer and suffer again.

I'm not sure I am with him 100% on this. I believe that a client can learn about why they made the choices they did, if indeed they had any part in the decision-making that caused their suffering. I do believe being self-aware and self-analysis are useful. Recognising your patterns of behaviour, triggers, people that don't bring out the best in you....these are things which can be incredibly useful in self-development.

However, I think he is absolutely right. There comes a point when a line has to be drawn under the past. After all it's done and dusted. We've all got our escalator moments; arguments in which we wish we would have been more clever, more cutting or would just rather not have indulged. We all have regrets. Situations in which a do-over would be a blessing.

Unfortunately, it's not going to happen. 

The Past is done. And that's a huge blessing. We don't have to live there. Every time we bring our pasts into our present, it brings poison. We punish the innocents in our lives, because someone else punished us. We don't trust other people or worse, ourselves. We exist in suffering.

It blights our Future.

So how do we get our brighter Future? Well, many coaches will give their clients exercises to set goals, aims and objectives. There are timelines and Plans. After all, if you don't know where you're going, how will you know when you get there?

Again, I'm not sure I'm with this 100%. Life can change between one breath and the next. There are a whole raft of things which can take your Life Plan, shake it up and spit it out. I can guarantee that however good and realistic your Plan, and all of the contingencies you may have in place, that you'll be hit, completely out of the blue by something you never could have foreseen. Just to clarify, I mean good things as well as bad, I'm not being negative here.

But a real issue that many people have by living in the Future, is when they get to their goal, they can be left scratching their heads. It's not what they expected. They can be left disappointed, deflated and confused. "I was supposed to be happy!"

What's the answer?

It's here in your Present.

You've survived your Past. The proof Ladies and Gentlemen is staring at you in the mirror. You're still breathing in and out. Therefore, stop a moment and pat yourselves on the back. You lived through it. Whatever it was, no matter how horrendous or painful; you're here now.

This is where you take control. 

First, listen to what you're saying to yourself. Look at the pictures you make in your head when you start re-playing the movie of the Past. An NLP Practitioner will tell you to play different movies, swish the Past away and that little nagging voice...well, stick a clown's nose on it, give it big shoes and a squeaky voice. These are useful techniques. If you want to learn how to do it for yourself, look up Get the Life you Want and Trance-formations, by Richard Bandler. Both books are packed full of useful tips and techniques to get yourself on a good path. Or find an NLP Practitioner near you to help you to do this for yourself.

Secondly, I've found The Work of Byron Katie to be incredibly useful. If you visit her website and have a good look around, she's got free downloads of the work sheets with instructions and there's also a useful iPad app, though you've got to pay for that. Her take on internal dialogue is slightly different. She says that thoughts are like rain, they just fall. The problems start when you believe them and give them power by making stories around them. Her approach is much like Buddhism, the cause of suffering is attachment. She believes that if you do The Work, you don't let go of your thoughts, they simply let go of you. They fall away of their own accord.

Making the promise to yourself, that you will do things differently is enough to get you started. How you continue, well that's your Path and you'll figure things out. You'll find out what works for you.

How do you make your Present better? Well, a great way to start is with gratitude. There are blessings all around you. A journal of gratitude or a book of blessings is a brilliant way to remind yourself that things might be difficult at the moment, but look at what you have got. Even if, at the end of a hard day, you say to yourself 'thank goodness, I never have to do today again,' it's a great way of re-inforcing that tomorrow is a new day, a new beginning...a chance to do things differently. 

If you are in the midst of a difficult or challenging situation, staying focused in the Present is the only sane strategy. Procrastinate the worry, there's nothing to be gained by dragging it into your Present. Tomorrow will take care of itself. Find the joy now. Keep putting one foot in front of the other.

And finally, you're not alone. Support for you is out there, wherever you are.

Be well my darlings.

The Adventurer

via Begin Within, Facebook

It never ceases to amaze me, how a different perspective can really change things. A different view on an old problem, can bring about resolution; and things shift from then on incredibly quickly.

A lot of the work I've been doing has been about bringing my focus into the Present. 

Taking it away from the Past, because that's been and done, and obsessing about it, doesn't resolve what actually happened. It happened. And the best thing about it is the fact that it's done! Because it's done, I don't have to relieve the situation, the feelings all over again. 

Bringing my focus away from the Future. It hasn't happened yet. My focus was full of fear: what ifs, disasters lurking in the bushes, people waiting to stomp all over me, a vision of me being a mad old woman with cats all by myself.

All of this fear from the Past, worry about the Future, really buggers up the Present. It's hard to enjoy your next breath if you're in such pain. It's hard to see the people trying to love you when you're busy being angry about the stuff that happened so long ago. It's hard to be hopeful when you believe that you're doomed to repeat the patterns of the past. There really is no point.

The realisation that the Past and Future are mere constructs. They don't really exist except in the recesses of the mind, is so liberating. Their power to limit and constrict diminishes, with the realisation that it's all about attitude. Byron Katie has been instrumental in adjusting my thinking about reality. Her Work has honed and refined what Richard Bandler started. Have a look what she says about arguing with reality: you only lose 100% of the time. And as for Bandler, he's all about blowing limiting beliefs out of the water. If your life is determined by your perspective (is your glass half-full, half-empty or are you getting a jug to fill it up with?), then why not choose the perspective where you have fun?

Allowing the fear, pain and disappointment of the Past and Future, gives you the freedom of the Present. Everything becomes possible.

If you accept the Freedom of your Life, doesn't that make you an adventurer? Every day has surprises, beauty, laughter in it because it unfolds without your expectation. Nothing is disappointing.

Being the adventurer doesn't mean Life becomes Easy. 

It's funny, but when I've talked to people about this, 'easy' tends to come up in the conversation.

"It's easy for you to say that, it's not so easy to do."

I do wonder about where this expectation came from. Who said it would be Easy? And since when is Easy better? Bluntly, the expectation that personal development work should be Easy, is lazy thinking. It's lazy thinking coming from a place of weariness and despair. Nothing grows out of weariness and despair; only more of the same. It's impossible to be an adventurer if you stay at home in the same old, same old. It requires action, a willingness to try, to experiment. And when you're exhausted by your Life and it's limitations, it all starts with inspiration.

What inspires you? What excites you? What pleasures you?

My Facebook friend Paul Boynton, has a fabulous framework for getting you moving, it's called Begin with Yes.

And if you're trying a new way of thinking, a new perspective, a new way of living, it's bound to be a bit clunky at first. It's called learning, which means unless you are a savant, you've got to practice, work hard to catch the old patterns of thought until the new stuff beds in and becomes second nature.

Think this isn't possible? When you were a small child and you had to tie your own shoe laces by yourself for the first time...didn't it take you a few goes before you get it right? Worst case scenario is you end up with loads of grannie knots to stop your shoes from falling off - as long as you can keep going, tie them up again if they become loose...it's all that counts.

Where is your adventure going to take you?

Embracing the Power of 'No'

It occurred to me as I was driving home today that in the personal development, we focus on the positive. During my training, it was drummed home to me that the unconscious does not hear the negative, to use positive language only during hypnosis. Even my recent book review 'Begin with Yes' was all about the positive.


Today, I am thinking about my experience and the Power of No.


NO.


In itself, it's a very simple word. Two letters only. But the stories it brings with it are immensely complicated...and painful.


I started hearing NO from my mother. No, don't touch. No, you can't have sweeties now. No, you can't go play with...you get the picture. But somewhere along the line it becomes No with additional subtext.


People say No and then a whole backstory is added, as if by magic. No, I don't want to go out with you, turns into No, you're boring, unloveable, undesirable and I don't like you. No, suddenly becomes a scary word. No, suddenly means I don't love you or I don't like you or I think you're a horrible person. And then it subtly changes, only other people are allowed to say No. After all, your parents said No to you, but you aren't allowed to say No to them. If you say No, you are a bad person and if you're a bad person, no one will love you, no one will want to be your friend.


Suddenly, No becomes all about rejection and powerlessness and helplessness. Hearing No and saying No are obviously two very different experiences. I would strongly argue that both are equally difficult, but for very different reasons.


Saying No is actually saying Yes, but to something else. For example No, I don't want to go to the pub with you; Yes I want to stay in my comfy clothes and watch crap on tv. 


Hearing No means that you have to adjust your plans, desires and behaviours. No, I don't want to go to the pub with you, becomes 'Damn. I have to either decide to stay in and watch tv with you, or go to the pub myself.' A frivolous example, but you see where I'm coming from?


Let's look at it using more serious examples:


No, I don't want to be with you as a lover, or friend because...[insert reasons here]


Ladies and Gentlemen, hold up your hands if you've never, ever had that experience. I don't care who you are, how enlightened you are...that experience of No, sucks. In fact, I'd go so far as to say: it totally sucks arse.


I will hold my hand up and say I have had my fair share of hearing No. I have heard No from people who should have loved and cherished me...and they didn't. I've had No from people who said they loved me and still said No. I have spent hours, days, weeks and months trying to get them to say Yes. And guess what, they never did. Even when they said Yes, it wasn't really a Yes. It was still No in the end.


The deaths of my parents taught me many valuable lessons. One of which was 'what's the worst thing that can happen?'


So someone says No, I don't want to be with you. I have learnt to think 'okay, I'll go spend time with the people who do want to be with me.' I stopped filling in the back-story for the other person, hearing No, reminds me there are other options. I feel hurt. What I do with it, well that's up to me. I can invite the Self-Pity Gnome in and we can have a great party together. I can choose to do something else. And there is always something else to do, other people to go and hang out with, other choices to be made, if I'm feeling up for it.


I have found in my experience, that the biggest, most unpleasant and hurtful Nos, have been blessings. It might have taken awhile to pick myself up off the floor, grab my self-esteem and head for the other options, but looking back on those people...if they'd have said Yes, it would have been a complete nightmare. A disaster. And I wouldn't be sitting here contemplating the Power of No.

Chatting to The English Sisters

A couple of weeks ago, the lovely English Sisters asked whether I'd 'meet' them for a Chat-View. I was so pleased to be asked. And excited! It was the first time I've been interviewed for this work.


I came away from this energised and inspired!


Here's the link:

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Who Would you be Without your Story - Byron Katie

"An unquestioned mind is the world of suffering." Byron Katie

Last Saturday, I went down to London with my friend and NLP Mentor Stephen Woolston. I hadn't realised it, but he is a big fan of Byron Katie, and when he saw I was interested, he suggested we travel together. It meant there were two 5 o'clocks in my day, something I'm not altogether very keen on, but needs must. It was either that or pay an exorbitant amount for a hotel in Central London.


While we were queuing to get in three people approached us and parted us to go straight through. It was Byron Katie herself! She paused and greeted another attendee and off she went. She was not even quite my height, but when she was on stage...my goodness, she seemed six feet tall. She really does exude the aura of calmness and determination that you sense in the YouTube clips and in her books.


We met up with some of Stephen's NLP friends, they were all trainers and very experienced in their fields, and frankly, they were just brilliant fun. Open minded, great sense of humour and they welcomed me into their midst without a second thought. By some lateral thinking we managed to bag some brilliant front row seats on the balcony, so for once I was not trying to peer over the back of some tall person's head. We were given copies of the Judge-Your-Neighbour worksheet in some very nice folders. 


Byron Katie came up on stage, talked a bit about herself and how The Work came to be and then we were all invited to fill out a work-sheet. The rest of the day was spent with Byron Katie inviting people to come up on stage and do the Work. There is nothing complicated or mystical about Katie's approach, though, I would make the argument that there are very, very strong parallels between The Work and Buddhism. The cause of suffering is attachment. She says that thoughts are like rain, they fall unbidden; our problems start with believing our thoughts. We see The World through our filters, therefore we create our realities and act as though they are true. If we take a step back and using inquiry, we see that it is our thoughts and reactions to situations and people that cause our pain and suffering. By doing The Work, we free ourselves from these attachments.


I cherish the abundance of her concept of Love. It is truly generous. The Work is all about Love, it is knowing that we are Love and her job is to awaken our minds and hearts to the reality of this. She did The Work with quite a few people, through inquiry they questioned their thinking and actions and came to see there was another way of living. She was relentless. It was amazing to see. The people she invited to come up on stage were suffering, by the time they hugged and thanked her and returned to their seats, they were lifted. They stood straighter, held themselves more firmly, the tenseness left their shoulders. And it was great to see how open they were with the other attendees afterwards.


The thing that amazes me is how simple and effective The Work is. And how similar to NLP. The Work has absolutely nothing to do with the content of a person's suffering. It addresses how suffering is manifested, challenges the thinking behind it and invites an end to it. The Work places responsibility squarely in the head of the person suffering; everything is a learning opportunity and it is through our relationships we have with other people that we learn about ourselves. She also teaches that we should thank the people who have taught us. 


I have found The Work incredibly powerful and moving. It has certainly enriched my thinking considerably. I am very tempted to do the facilitators' training. It would certainly add to what I can offer my clients. However, at the moment, I am content to sit with my learning and take things slowly. What I would say, is if you have the opportunity, the means and the inclination, visit her website, do The Work and if you can, see her live. It will be worth it.