Friday, December 11, 2009

 

Flagellation Foibles - The 7 Biggest Lies About Success And How To Overcome Them

I was running a corporate training recently which was all about how to achieve more success in the workplace. It got me thinking. I started doing some general research on the trusted internet. I wanted to see what highly successful, well known business people had to say on the subject. I came across one of Donald Trump's websites. There was a list of things that he wanted to teach aspiring business people about becoming highly successful. One of them was "Dealing With Failure". I got to thinking, what is "failure" exactly and how do we deal with it - in a way that moves us forward?

Firstly, let me tell you how people don't deal with it well, and the patterns they get into as a result, and where these patterns came from. I am speaking from a professional experience from working with hundreds of clients, and from personal experience as well, as what I am about to share with you has taken me some time to change within myself and has been quite a journey let me tell you!

The 7 Biggest Lies About Success

1) There is a "right" and "correct" way of doing something. Someone else has the authority on this.
2) There is also by definition, a "wrong" way. You will be judged on getting it wrong.
3) Doing it "wrong" means failure. And failure is bad: very, very bad.
4) Perfectionism and getting things "perfect" equals success.
5) Having high expectations and high standards are the only way to succeed.
6) If you don't meet the above (either yours or someone else's) you have failed. Which is very bad.
7) If you fail you have to beat yourself royally, and this helps you succeed next time.

Surprised?

Am I saying that you should not high standards and goals for yourself? No! Indeed not. I am all for success and achievement of goals - it is what my life is based on! I am saying, that to be consistently and succeeding and achieving your goals in a fun enjoyable way, these lies need to be dispelled and the truth needs to be told right now.

To demonstrate, let me tell the story of Ingrid. Ingrid is a fictional character and if she bears any resemblance to you or anyone you know, that is because many people you know are like this, or indeed have been in the past. I am simplifying this story and leaving out the details. The purpose of telling the story is to demonstrate the patterns people get into when they base their success on the 7 Lies above:

Ingrid comes from a family of four siblings. She is the youngest of these four with a bit of an age gap between her and the other three. Her siblings are all fairly close in age. Her parents were hard working folk and believe that you have to work hard to be able to succeed. They expected a lot from Ingrid. Ingrid went to a school where they expected a lot from her. She did her best to meet these expectations: she worked hard and diligently, and always got reasonably high grades. As her father always said, she needed to work a lot harder though. She agreed with him: why was it that she only got 90% in some of her school assignments and not 100%? She knew she could be lazy sometimes and get distracted by her friends.

Her siblings, being close in age, could tease her and make her the subject of their jokes. She went a long with this with a smile outside. Inside, unconsciously, she never felt quite good enough for her parents or her brothers and sisters. It seemed like whatever she did was met with a joke and a criticism. She developed a pattern of having to prove herself and and her worth to them. She wasn't aware of this until much later though, when, successful in a high achieving important job, she wondered why she wasn't quite happy, and why, having achieved many of life's significant things (lovely husband, lovely kids, good job, lovely house and cars, able to go on holiday twice a year) she was having problems managing her life. She wondered why she wasn't quite happy yet?

She went through cycles of burn out: working frantically to achieve deadlines, and then collapsing in stress and spending all weekend in bed sometimes. She started having trouble sleeping: lying awake going over and over in her head what she needed to get done the next day and worrying about what it would be like if it went wrong. Sometimes she would wake up in a state of panic - heart rate going like mad, just with the anxiety and adrenaline of what will it be like tomorrow?

There were also things that happened that day - damn! She was embarrassed about them - how could she have forgotten to say that important point in her presentation? That totally threw the whole thing off course! They looked confused for a while, I know what they were thinking of me... how embarrassing! I really should know these things after all this time! How could I NOT? I really needed to get that right this time....I can't believe I missed such an opportunity! My boss must think I am a total idiot... ! It's OK, I can schedule a meeting with her tomorrow and just get a bit of feedback. In fact, I'll just get out of bed and write that down now, just in case I forget...Oh God..I hope it doesn't look too bad! I screwed up this time but my boss knows what I am capable of, surely? I can get it right next time, I know I can. Next time I will go through it in more detail, and then it will go more smoothly...yes, that is what I will do. I know my boss will understand. It was an important meeting though. It's OK, tomorrow will be fine. I have that report to do, and I will be able to impress her with that. Yes...so there was the review, and then I will put the paragraph in about innovative culture..and then.. What if I can't get it right, though? It needs to be perfect this time....

After taking two week's stress leave as signed off by her GP (her husband was worried about her), she was mortified. What a public display of incompetence! It's OK though, she will be able to prove her competence when she got back. In fact, perhaps she should try and clear some of those emails now? A couple of hours work won't hurt, and then she will be able relax. "No, I promise, let me just do this and then I will get out for that walk... Yes.. I do remember what the doctor said..I will be fine, I have a whole two weeks to rest..."

The Real Cost Of These Patterns And Where They Come From

These 7 Lies create patterns of thinking and feeling and behaving that don't sound like much fun, do they?

Who says there is a right and a wrong way? Who sets the standards? How many of them are real standards or perceived by ourselves? Are they realistic? What is realistic anyway? Are they a sustainable way of living? What do we do when we don't meet a standard? How do we cope when we get it wrong?

Great news. These kind of patterns are not even yours! So, you can give them back, if you like...!

Here's the real deal:
  • These standards and expectations and come from school and our parents and caregivers. Our early influencers. When we grow up, they become our own measure of the standards we "should' be meeting. They are often therefore, made up, and imposed upon ourselves.
  • At school we have an authority on what is right and wrong, and we get assessed continuously on whether our work was done in the right way. We get high marks for doing it right, and low marks for doing it wrong. We therefore believe there is a right and wrong and we will get judged for doing things "wrong".
  • We are perfectionists because we are trying to prove ourselves and our worth to the people that were around early in our life: teachers, parents, caregivers, siblings, school friends.
  • Not being able to meet a high standard means we have failed. We view "failure" as bad because we are trying to get it "right" - the right according to our teachers, parents, caregivers, siblings.
  • We beat ourselves up with the purpose of doing better next time. The actual internal voice we use in our head to do this beat up is very likely to come from our teachers, parents, caregivers, siblings. This causes negative cycles of thinking which make us depressed.
  • This causes an increase in stressful emotions that will damage your body and will make you physically sick later in life. These negative cycles also damage your confidence and self-esteem and self-image.
  • These patterns do provide a shorter term motivational drive and push to succeed, and can be very very effective in achieving. This does have more costs than rewards in the bigger picture (see above).
  • To be consistently achieving and moving forward in a way that is achieving success AND is fun and enjoyable at the same time - you need to change these patterns of thinking and behaving and DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT.

The Solution

It is fun in life to be pushing yourself and seeing what you're capable of - to be setting goals and achieving things consistently. It stretches your comfort zone, feeds into your confidence and self-esteem and a positive self-image. It expands your identity and your self-belief and makes you a well-rounded, interesting person. You will live a well-rounded life AND enjoy it.

So, how do we do it in a FUN way, in a way that creates ENERGY - not drains us of it?

From recent research, we know there are some very important differences in the way truly successful people view "failure" - or what I am now going to term "when things don't go as smoothly as you would have preferred".

Successful people are actually realistic optimists. When they achieve success i.e. "when things go well" they have a positive mindset and view it as:
  • Personal - they did something that caused their success
  • Permanent - because happened this time it will happen consistently
  • Pervasive - it happened in this situation and will therefore happen in all other situations
(The Three Ps).

When things don't go as smoothly as they would have preferred they have a positive mindset again and view it as:
  • Impersonal -it may not be solely down to them and other factors may be involved
  • Temporary - it happened this time and won't happen every time
  • Isolated to that one event - it was just this one time. Next time will be different
People who are not achieving consistently in a fun way, have a pessimistic mindset. When things go well they view it as:
  • Impersonal -it may not be solely down to them and other factors may be involved
  • Temporary - it happened this time and won't happen every time
  • Isolated to that one event - it was just this one time. Next time will be different
When things don't go as smoothly as they would have preferred they have a pessimistic mindset and view it as:
  • Personal - they did something that caused their failure
  • Permanent - because happened this time it will happen consistently
  • Pervasive - it happened in this situation and will therefore happen in all other situations
From this research we know that people who are consistently acheiving are realistic optimists - those who think positively and not so much so that they can't recognise "mistakes" or "where things went wrong". They are the ones that allow themselves to LEARN from these "mistakes" and therefore create something different next time. They do not see the value in spending time in self-flagellation, as that isn't learning and moving forward.

Other research that came out just five weeks ago demonstrates this strongly: quite simply, no mistakes, no learning. If you don't make a "mistake" or are not allowed to make a mistake, you simply don't learn anything. Simple as that. So, not only are things supposed to "not go as well as you preferred" AND you are designed to LEARN from them AND that this is where the BEST learning comes from! So, in this sense, everything is working PERFECTLY - in its imperfection.

Five Top Tips In How To Be Successful AND Have Fun!

1) Embrace "failure" and try to fail quickly

Not everything is going to go well every single time and that is awesome. It is not only a realistic way to live your life it is also a massive opportunity to learn. When things don't go as you would have preferred - ask yourself very earnestly "what can I really learn from this?". Failing quickly allows you to move on and get on with doing something better next time.

2) Recognise your internal self-talk is not even yours

Always remember - if you are telling yourself something negative you are slowing yourself down. You weren't born beating yourself up! That means you learnt it from someone in your life. It ain't even yours brothers and sisters! Keep a very close eye (or internal ear) on that negative self-talk and choose to turn it off. Please see earlier blogs for advice about how to do this!

3) Become good at Imperfectionism to succeed more quickly

If you are trying to get things right and be perfect at everything you do before you start you WILL DISABLE YOURSELF and you WILL NOT move forward. Well, you might, but it is going to take a bloody long time and be really, really stressful. If you are wanting to give life to stuff and move forward and have fun along the way - it is NOT USEFUL.

Instead:

Ask yourself: "what is the best I can do with the time and the resources I have available?".

Tell yourself: " It may not be quite as I want it right now AND I have permission to be learning along the way".

And just get on with it.

4) Be committed and consistent to move forward more quickly

Part of a tried and tested success pattern is being committed to what you are wanting to achieve and being consistent in your efforts in achieving it - NOT being perfect at it.

Think of an important project you are working on, personal or work related. Identify the goal (what it is I want to achieve at the end of this project?). Then, knowing why it is important to you, commit to spending some time on it each day - preferably first before anything else. Load up the files and resources needed for the project and ONLY these, and spend time on it BEFORE you open emails and other files which can distract you and drain your energy. Even if it is just 15 minutes one day instead of the preferred hour, you will still be moving it forward consistently and will prove your commitment to yourself this way.

5) Care very much about how you FEEL

Bottom line - if you are running out of steam and drained of energy, or even burning yourself out to the point of collapse - something is simply not right. You are labouring under a misapprehension (I love that phrase!). You are doing one of either two things, or both:
  • Putting your energy into something that is not right for you, and is not aligned with what is really important to you, or
  • Using your energy in the wrong way - i.e. running yourself ragged trying to prove yourself to others as oppose to doing something because you love it and see the worth and value in it.
When you are aligned with what is really important to you, and you use your energy in this purposeful way, you mobilise energy in your body. You feel energised by doing tasks, not drained by them. You find them fun and that increases your energy levels.

This last one is pretty significant, isn't it?. For some of you reading it you might be thinking - how do I find out what I love? Or, does that mean my job is not right for me? Or, how do I find out what is really important to me?

These are important questions this last tip may have raised for you. They can all be answered by my previous blogs or by contracting a coach or therapist for a re-evaluation of what is important in your life. For now, I will leave you with a beautiful quote:

"Whatever you love you are gifted at."
- Barbara Sher

Babara Sher is the famous author of I Could Do Anything If Only I knew What It Was: Discover What You Really Want And How To Get It.

How you feel is everything. Life is too short to feel bad. If you don't feel great every day, please, do something about it.

With love and positive thoughts,

Charlotte.

NB: I would like to acknowledge Lawrence Lewis Green in all his purpose wisdom, who, without knowing it at the time, significantly contributed to this blog post. Thank you LLG!

# posted by Charlotte Hinksman @ 11:47 AM 0 comments

Monday, August 24, 2009

 

How do you know when you're overloaded and how can you get yourself back into balance?

I work with a lot of people one to one, as you know. I have been working with a lot of clients recently for help with worry, anxiety, stress, disrupted sleep, burning out and a general not coping with the demands of the very busy life they have created for themselves. This causes a bit of a problem, as I am sure you can imagine.

Here's the bottom line: in this modern, western way of life, which we have chosen to live for the time being, there is more "input" going into our system than ever before in history; we have more methods of communication and more media choices than ever before and this "input" is continuously going into our heads, either consciously (of which we are aware) or unconsciously (of which we are not aware). We usually live and work with other people, and because of the lifestyle we have committed to, we have at least 1 million things to "get done" at any given moment. In short, there's a bloody hell of a lot for our brains to process, do you agree? And not only that, but we expect our system to just deal with it; and we get very cross with ourselves for getting overwhelmed and "not coping well enough". So much pressure and expectation - jeeez!

I have a plan to do a mountain run in March next year. I have climbed Mt Fuji in Japan, which was hard and rewarding, and I have done lots of flat runs. I have never run up a mountain before. I want to do it, just for fun. I have had the experience recently of training with some close friends of mine; one is a police officer now, and was in the army for a number of years. He has taken it upon himself to be our taskmaster. It is hard going. One thing he does do though, is he often says "stop for a moment and take a breather....". I got to thinking about that, "take a breather" and I started to wonder how often to do we give ourselves permission to "take a breather" in our day to day living? Something which, given the amount of input and the amount of pressure to "get things done" seems like a very useful thing to be able to do. If I don't take a breather at the top of a hill, before I attempt to run up the next one, I am not going to make it (or I might make it and make myself sick at the same time, which is a pretty horrible experience). Isn't it the same in our lives, then? If we don't take a breather, we aren't going to get up that next hill very successfully. I am not talking about letting ourselves off the hook - I am talking about the successful management of life. A life where we achieve our goals AND enjoy ourselves at the same time. Doesn't that sound desirable and awesome? Yes! And, it is possible too.

Think of your brain and your body like a food processor for moment (not literally, metaphorically!). When you are stressed (and we will talk about how you know when you are later on) it is a little bit like you have added ingredient after ingredient into the food processor, and you just keep adding, one on top of the other, and you expect it to be able to cope with all these extra ingredients. You haven't read the instruction manual properly; which does tell you how much you are allowed to put in. Keep adding and adding, and what happens? The thing will buckle, or the lid flies off and the food gets splattered all over the place. And then you take it back to the shop and want a refund - "it doesn't work, it didn't do what I asked it to do..." you say. If you read the instruction manual and you knew before you started adding the ingredients how much you were allowed to put in at any one time, the food processor would have done its job, you'd have something lovely to eat, and the shop assistant wouldn't have to deal with you complaining and would have a lovely day selling people other electrical goods with a smile on their face.

The problem with this metaphor is that you don't get an instruction book for your brain and your body, do you? No one has ever told you how much to put in, and when to stop adding stuff. Instead, conversely, you live in a society that is continuously recommending that you ADD MORE STUFF because it will make you happy. The solution? You have to develop your own instruction manual - and that's where I can help you. We don't get given one, so we have to learn it along the way, through trail and error. Once you have designed your very own instruction manual - the great news is that it WILL WORK for you, because you designed it and it's yours, for life! You can finally have a great relationship with your food processor so that it serves you fully and consistently provides you with yummy stuff that you can enjoy, for the rest of your life. So, let's get started now, shall we?

How do you know when you are overloaded/overwhelmed?

These are different words for the same experience - stress!

Get to know your early triggers, people! If you can start noticing the signs that your system is overloaded in the EARLY stages, then you can catch it and turn it around for yourself in no time at all. The first most important thing is awareness here, and more astute awareness will come with time and practice. So, start to pay attention to what your system is telling you, and make your own list of your "early signs". Some very typical signs that you have reached your limit, are stressed, and are about to go into overload/overwhelm are:

1) Racing / flitting thoughts - can't focus on any one thing
2) Difficulty falling asleep - thoughts going round and round
3) Waking up in the middle of the night (usually around 4am) with a busy mind
4) Heart rate increased - and may stay increased for long periods of time
5) Chest pains
6) Shallow, erratic breathing
7) Feeling like bursting / crying / screaming in desperation (this is usually a very clear sign....)
8) Feeling in a hasty / rushed state, again usually with increased heart rate
9) Not being able to sit still - always needing to be "doing" something
10) Tired and exhausted at the end of the day - feeling like you could sleep for a week

Some of these may seem pretty obvious, and you would also be amazed at how many people are great at just ignoring these signs, and just carrying on "inputting" and hoping for the best, just like the food processor. The desire to keep "doing" and "achieving" takes over and continues to take priority - even though several of these signs / triggers are there. Bottom line: this is not sustainable. Remember the food processor - the thing will buckle, of the lid will fly off and food will splatter everywhere. It's a very simple, cause and effect kind of thing, really, not rocket science.

What can you do about it?

The question here, is now that you have applied your astute awareness of what is going on in your own system, and what it means, you are now in a fantastic position to start adjusting it, so that you can get yourself back into a healthy balanced state. Now, just to reiterate to all you perfectionists and high achievers out there - this does NOT mean you are letting yourself off the hook and being lazy. It really does NOT mean that. It means being able to balance yourself so that you CAN ACHIEVE IN AN ENJOYABLE AND SUSTAINABLE WAY. If you are feeling ANY of the above - you are not in a good state, and you are not enjoying your life. So, I know you want to achieve and get stuff done, and I support that, fully and completely. You need to do it in a way that is sustainable, and if you are hitting any of the above the fact of the day is that you are OUT OF BALANCE and you need to get back in balance - straight away. Remember, sometimes to get up the second hill, you need to "stop and take a breather..".

Make a list of all of your "dealbreakers": this means, all the things that you NEED in your life, to keep you in a healthy balanced state, among your busy-ness. This, to me, is kind of like building the foundations of a sustainable life. For the food processor to process the ingredients, it needs stuff: it needs a blade, a spinny thing, a bowl etc. This is kind of what you are doing here, as well as creating your own instruction manual. Make a list, write them down in a notebook, and have them there for a reference. So, next time you hit any of the above warning signs again, you can look at your list and ask yourself "right, what is it that I NEED right now?" and hey-presto! You have a pre-prepared list of all the options of things that can bring you back into balance again, how handy is that going to be?

Look back over at a time in your life when you were happy and balanced. Or, if you don't have one, look at someone else who is happy and balanced and ask them how they do it. There are certain things you may NEED in your life as the foundations to remain balanced among your busy-ness and you need to take into account the different kind of needs that you have, and cover the different areas of your life. Some examples of some dealbreakers in one's life could be:

Dealbreakers:
  • Strenuous exercise - 3-4 times a week - know the exercise that works for YOU
  • Gentle exercise (i.e. walking) - once a day
  • Time in hot water (spas, baths) - 3 times a week
  • Passive time- time to just "be" (i.e. watching crap TV, reading a magazine) - once a day
  • A hobby - something that takes you out of your head - 1-2 times a week
  • Sex - or some positive expression of your own sexual energy - 3-4 times a week
  • Social time with friends (dinner, movies, drinking, discussing)- 2-3 times a week
  • Laughter - every single day of your life
  • Time ALONE with no demands - 2 evenings a week at least
  • Time with animals - every day
  • Time outdoors - 4 times a week
  • Nutrition / diet - protein & fruit and vegetables - every day
  • Supplements - vitamin C in winter, omega 3 - every day
  • Meditation - time to quiet the mind - 8 times a week at least
Get used to making decisions that honour your balance

It's pretty simple. Your brain, your body (your system) needs certain things in place to be able to function optimally and sustainably. If it doesn't have them, part of the system will crash, and you will get sick - either mentally or physically. It is a very simple equation - give & take, cause & effect, A+B = C kind of equation. The more energy you can preserve in cunning ways, the more energy you will have available to put into your projects and your relationships. It's as simple as that. The bottom line: KNOW THE REAL CONSEQUENCES OF YOUR DECISIONS AND YOUR ACTIONS AND START MAKING BETTER DECISIONS.

So, get used to making decisions about what you do, when you do it, and how much you take on in your world based on your own well-being and your own balance. This is NOT selfish, it is wise. You will be a much better friend / parent / lover if you look after yourself and have lots of energy available to play with at your leisure, don't you agree? Have a real, proper think about the following:

  • How good are you at saying "no" to people? Why is this? Are you afraid of letting them down? What would happen if you talked to them on the phone tomorrow and not tonight?
  • Do you really need to see that friend for coffee again today, when you have seen them 3 times already this week?
  • Do you really need to have your cell phone attached to your hand or your ear for 16 hours a day? What would happen if you turned it off for an hour a day?
  • Would the world end if you didn't get xyz done TODAY?
  • What is most important right now? What do I need RIGHT NOW?
  • How will I feel tomorrow if I skip my yoga class tonight?
  • How will I feel tomorrow if I go to my yoga class tonight?
You get the idea, right?

If you were riding a bike, you achieve balance (so long as you have taken off your stabilisers). You wouldn't think "hey - I am balanced now, I think I will stop peddling!" would you? No. Because you know that to keep a bicycle balanced, you will need to keep peddling. You will never achieve a perfect balance, simply because life ain't perfect, so you'd better get used to it. As soon as you think everything is perfect, something will come along and challenge you, and tip the balance back the other way again. SO - it will be a continuous job of balancING, and with a bit of practice and patience and awareness, you WILL get better at it. And before you know it, you will be achieving more and it will all feel like you are taking it in your stride and even ENJOYING yourself a long the way - which will be awesome for you.

Comments, as always, are welcome.

With love and positive thoughts, Charlotte

www.charlottehinksman.com for coaching and training services in Wellington, NZ.


















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# posted by Charlotte Hinksman @ 2:54 PM 0 comments

Monday, July 13, 2009

 

Utilising that visual part of your brain

The term "visualising" gets banded about a lot in less than useful ways. People are confused about what it actually means and why it is useful. The purpose of this article is to explain what it is and why it is useful to utilise that function of the brain - what positive results it can get you in your life.

The first thing to clear up, is that you CAN use the visual part of your brain. So many of my clients say "I can't visualise" or "I am not very good at visualising". I wonder what it means to be "good" at visualising? How would you know if you were "good"? Would there be some kind of reward perhaps? The fact of the matter is, if you are not blind, then your visual cortex is operating perfectly! You don't "see" through your eyes - your eyes are there to perceive and take in light from the outside world - you "see" in your visual cortex. We know this from research done on people that have become brain damaged, where a part of their brain is no longer working properly. There is a famous case of a man who damaged his visual cortex and his "vision" was impaired - he literally saw everything in half colour and half black and white! Every single thing he perceived through his eyes had a line down the middle and half was in normal colour, and half in black and white, some one's face, a vase, would all be half and half. Fascinating! So if that's not happening for you AND you can find your way home every night - your visual cortex is working and can be utilised for your advantage.

What does "visualising" mean? It means, simply, making a picture in your head. It could be a memory, it could be an imagined picture, it could be remembering what the outside of your house looks like if someone asks, it can be creative (i.e. an artist would be good at "creating" an image in their head before it appears on the canvas) it can be a quick flash of a picture to try and make sense of something, it could be crystal clear and vivid like it is real, or it could be kind of murky and difficult to grasp. We all have the natural ability to dream, that is usually done by the visual part of your brain. Quite simply it is just one of your brain's ways of "thinking" - as is your ability to do sounds, smells, tastes, feelings and words inside your head. The visual part of the brain is one of the six "languages" of the brain, how it takes in information from the outside world, stores and codes it in your inside world - the "programming" of the brain and body - which ultimately leads to the results you get in your life. Good or bad.

So why is the visual part of the brain so powerful and how can you begin to utilise it for your advantage right now?

Five Great reasons to "visualise":

1) Make your goals achievable and attainable
2) Effectively mentally rehearse new strategies for future events (i.e. sports, a performance)
3) Relieve anxiety and worry
4) Feel good inside
5) Positively influence the Law of Attraction to get what you want

Let's explore why "visualising" achieves the above:

Your brain does NOT know the difference between what's real and what's imagined - it just responds to the images that go through your mind.

You have a conscious mind and you have an unconscious mind. The conscious mind is rational, analytical, and likes to find reasons for stuff and make sense of stuff. Your unconscious mind is the less rational part of you AND the most powerful part of your mind-body-spirit system.

When you "create" picture in your head you connect the same neural circuits to do that whether it is: (a) really happening right now
(b) a remembered memory from the past or
(c) an imagined picture (made up by you).

Your unconscious mind doesn't really mind which, it just goes ahead and lights up neural pathways in your brain. What that means is that your brain doesn't care whether it is real or just imagined, it still lights up, which means that the unconscious part of you doesn't know the difference between what's real and what's imagined it just responds as if it is real.

We know this from every day living and from research. For example, I do a lot of work with people to overcome phobias. Using NLP to overcome phobias means you can help someone eliminate a very real and frightening phobia in just one or two hours. This is because in NLP, unlike traditional psychology, we are much less interested in "what went wrong" and the "whys" of how someone became phobic, we are interested only in what works.

There are certain neural connections that have to occur in some one's brain and body to successfully run a phobia. We find out what are they doing - how do they do it, what do they have to do in their mind to create that irrational fear? When Richard Bandler, the co-creator of NLP developed his famous NLP Phobia Cure - which is now taught around the world in psychiatry and psychology - he did so by studying over 100 people who had successfully overcome their phobia by themselves (without outside "therapy"). He interviewed them and researched how they did it - what did they do in their brain to change their experience? By understand this the 20 minute Phobia Cure was developed. Now we can teach these skills to others so that anyone can eliminate an irrational fear in less than an hour.

In a nutshell, to successfully run a phobia you make big, vivid, scary pictures in your head about the thing you are afraid of, or you revisit the past event that happened that caused the fear (trauma). Typically to run a fear of flying you need make pictures in your head of the plane crashing, and your brain, connecting neural circuits just like you asked it to, goes ahead and responds by producing adrenaline which we experience as anxiety. Why does it do this? Because it did what you asked it to! If I made a picture on a plane crashing in my head, sooner or later I will feel anxious. It's what your brain is designed to do! Your unconscious mind doesn't know or doesn't care whether that's real or not, it just goes ahead and responds in the appropriate way and gives you what you asked for. Fear, as an emotion, was evolutionarily designed to protect us from something bad happening again. It is the brain's natural function to produce fear when we imagine or remember something associated to a bad experience.

Guess what happens when you teach people how to use their brain, and stop making big scary pictures in their head? It becomes very difficult to run the phobia as well as they had been, and the fear dissipates.

In short, your brain is magnificent and it does what it's designed to do, it gives you what you ask it to give you. Imagining something bad happening in the future, or re-visiting something traumatic from the past your brain will produce fear and anxiety, that's what it's supposed to do to protect you. A "phobic" response is your brain going into overdrive and producing too much fear, more than is really needed to protect you, and that's when the fear becomes irrational. The pictures that you run through your brain are interpreted as REAL by your emotions and your body. So to feel anxious about something you HAVE TO imagine a future time and something undesirable happening i.e. choking on your words whilst making a speech, seeing your bank balance as $0.00. If you are going to go to the trouble of using energy to connect neural circuits in your brain - which WILL get you some kind of result, good or bad - then you may as well make pictures that feel good. Don't you agree?

Here's how you do it.

1) Practise. If you really don't believe you can use your visual cortex like the rest of the normally sighted population, I challenge that belief. How do you know which house is yours if you can't remember the picture of the outside of your house? How do you find your way home if you haven't got pictures stored in there somewhere of the route? To give yourself more confidence, practice making a picture of a flower. First start with looking at a real flower, then close your eyes and look at the flower in your head. Experiment with changing the colours of the petals, one by one, taking petals away, adding petals etc. You can play around by creating a "scene" on the ceiling, see an empty green field, then add a tree, then see the sky and the sun, then a big house with colourful window frames and a front door, and build it up slowly. It is like a muscle that needs to be exercised to build strength and confidence in your ability to use that muscle. You may never be an "expert" visualiser - it doesn't matter, it's just important to exercise your ability, no matter how small you start. I never used to believe I could make pictures in my head at all until I learned NLP, and now it feels very natural to me.

2) Decide on a future goal. This could be having fun at your evening class tonight, sleeping through the night, dealing with a long journey successfully or becoming a world-famous best-selling author! Whatever it is, big or small, make a picture of the END point of that goal. See yourself at the end of the evening class, walking out refreshed and energised. See yourself 15 minutes after you've woken up and got out of bed, looking energised. See yourself at your book signing in the best-sellers section. Remember your brain doesn't know that this isn't "real" yet - it will simply respond as if it's already happened. When you create future memories like this it is a little like creating a "mould" in which you later step into, like creating a destination and a map of how to get there.

2) Rehearsing a new skill. If you play a sport or are about to do perform something you haven't done before, or you want to make sure a future "performance" goes well, then play a movie of it in your mind before the event, as many times as you can, and picture it all going perfectly well. Dr Denis Waitley PHD, psychologist, has conducted numerous research studies on the affect of this kind of visualising on actual performance outcomes. One of the well known studies of his was with professional basketball players. The were divided into two groups. One group had to practise shooting hoops on the basket ball court every single day for two weeks. The other group sat down and visualised shooting the perfect hoop over and over again whilst their brains were wired up to various monitoring machines. There were two outcomes: (1) When their performance was tested and compared two weeks later, the group that had sat around and visualised were of exact equal competence with the group that had physically practised every day and (2) The group that were just visualising actually had physiological activity during their visualising exercise as well as mental activity - there were muscles and neurons firing in their body even though they were physically still.

As a general rule for performance if you can imagine actually doing it, as if you were doing it now, imagine going through it and seeing everything through your own eyes (associated) it is more powerful for your brain than seeing yourself doing it from a 3rd person perspective (dissociated).

4) Stop worry and anxiety and feel good inside. It is the same rule. To worry and feel anxious is always imagining a future event- and imagining something undesirable and bad happening, be it your pet getting run over, a plane crashing, an empty bank balance, your child running into danger, a car or a plane crashing. People that do not use their brain in this way, do not get the same anxious feelings. Sometimes people are so good at worry and anxiety they don't realise what they are doing inside to create the result - it seems like it "just happens" to them. One minute they are fine and the next minute they are freaking out. You are doing something though, it's a simple cause and effect - make bad pictures, get bad feelings. I encourage you to challenge yourself. If you are feeling nervous about something in the future, check, what was I doing in my head just then? and if you can, change it to an outcome picture (imagine something positive occurring as in "goal setting"). Seeing as you are making it up, you may as well make something that feels good and gives positive instructions to your brain and body, right? It may take some practise and effort and it's totally worth it.

5) Positively affect the Law of Attraction. There are lots of myths and misconceptions about the Law of Attraction, and movies like The Secret, although gives us very useful information and strategies, only provides us with half the story. In short it is the belief that what you think about you bring about. So if you visualise becoming a world-famous author, the Universe will pull energy and direct energy around you so that these opportunities materialise into your life and you therefore achieve your goal. If you think about all the rubbish relationships you've had in the past, the Universe will bring about more rubbish relationships in your life, because that's what your thinking about.

Visualising is very useful from a brain perspective and generally what you think about you tend to get (i.e. think negatively, get bad feelings, have negative experiences - think positively, get good feelings, have positive experiences). You also MUST TAKE ACTION on your goals. No one ever got anywhere in their lives by sitting around staring at a $100,000 note without getting out of bed and taking action steps towards it!

I haven't completely made up my mind yet as to the science of Quantum Physics and the Law of Attraction. I have played with it a lot in my own life and believe that our thoughts certainly do influence our lives - what you do in your head makes a difference to how you feel, which makes a difference to your life and what opportunities you allow yourself to take notice of. I do believe that our inner-thoughts create energy and that this vibration has an affect on other people, mostly unconsciously, for example what might've been termed as "he's sending out weird vibes.." or "I don't know what it is about her, it just doesn't feel right...". Whatever our relationship is to the energy pull of the Universe it is certainly worth bearing in mind and worth keeping your mental imagery positive and towards what you want so that if you do influence, you do so positively.

All of these skills and exercises are simple, and enjoyable. It simply starts with having more of an inner-awareness than you had before, and the courage and tenacity to do something different in that head of yours. Experiment and have fun. More information can be found on my website - www.charlottehinksman.com.

With love, Charlotte.






# posted by Charlotte Hinksman @ 3:41 PM 0 comments

Sunday, May 24, 2009

 

"The Tyranny of Shoulds" and how to release yourself from it

www.charlottehinksman.com for therapy, coaching and training services in Wellington.

I have been wanting to write this blog for a long time.  A client of mine came in one day and in the first session were discussing the things that she wanted to change about herself and her life, and she said "I want to stop using the word SHOULD - you know, it's like my life is a tyranny of "shoulds.." and we laughed about it because I knew exactly what she meant - from my own personal experience and from my experience working with a great deal of clients.
  
It's one short word, just seven little letters long.  It doesn't seem that bad on face value really.  So, what's the big deal about the word SHOULD?

It's an auxiliary verb i.e. a "helping" verb ( a verb used in conjunction with another verb i.e. I should (aux. verb) run (verb) faster).  It is defined by the dictionary as follows:

aux.v.   Past tense of shall
  1. Used to express obligation or duty: You should send her a note.
  2. Used to express probability or expectation: They should arrive at noon.
  3. Used to express conditionality or contingency: If she should fall, then so would I.
  4. Used to moderate the directness or bluntness of a statement:I should think he would like to go.

In NLP terms it is what we call a Modal Operator.  This means a word that kind of drives our experience.  There are Modal Operators of necessity (should, shouldn't) and of possibility or impossibility (can, can't).  It may seem like pointless analytics of semantics but when communicating with ourselves inside our heads or listening to our client's language when they come to a session, changing these "semantics" can actually make a huge difference to our experience inside our heads and consequently the results we get in our lives.  

Not all uses of the word little word "should" cause a problem.  For example commenting on someone's arrival "they should arrive at noon" is pretty benign.   However when we are continuously "shoulding" all over OURSELVES it causes US problems (it is also useful also to be aware of how we use the word should when communicating to others in our lives although that won't be explicitly discussed here).   Let me explain more:

Consider the following statements / comments we might (hypothetically speaking) say to ourselves:

"I should know better"
"I shouldn't be feeling like this"
"I should be asleep by now"
"I should be able to sort this out by myself"
"I should be able to do it like them"
"I should understand it by now"
"I shouldn't be struggling with this"

Do any of these press a button for you?  Any of us having been through the western education system the way that it is (with a huge focus on "doing well" and high achievement) will undoubtedly have grown up "shoulding" on ourslves like this.  Growing up with parents wanting us to achieve simply fires the drive to prove ourselves and the shoulding continues.  Then enter higher education, our first job, a new country, training in a new field or discipline, anything that challenges us and drives our desire to DO or BE something MORE than we are right now will cause us to should on ourselves.

The very nature of using the word in this kind of context is:

a) a judgment 
b) non-acceptance of the way things currently are
c) results in a conflict within you
d) holds you in the problem (i.e. not solution focussed)

The general underlying theme is therefore: 

what is right now is not acceptable therefore something different (usually something BETTER) is much more acceptable thank you very much.

It is either more acceptable to YOU or more acceptable to the PERSON or PEOPLE whose expectations you want to meet (so that they have a favourable opinion of you) or indeed wanting to measure up to the various expectations of the SOCIETY you are part of (you should be more successful, earning more money, a better father, you should be more relaxed after all those years of yoga etc.).  Even it it feels like you are interested only in living up to your own expectations, these are likely to have come from someone else's expectations of you.  Yes I know, that's a very "therapist" like thing to say, and I stand by it!  We are usually not born with such expectations of ourselves that we "should" live up to every minute of every day for the rest of our lives.  It doesn't mean they are bad, it is just worth noticing where those expectations come from.

The thing about having these expectations that we SHOULD be living up to is that, in any given moment, life is NOT perfect all the time and they therefore might be quite unrealistic expectations.  And, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you are NOT perfect and neither am I!  Not in the way the "expectations" want you to be to be "perfect" i.e. perfect job, perfect house, perfect family, perfect ability to cope with life's challenges at any given moment, perfect ability to "do well" at anything new, perfect ability to relax at will, perfect weight and body shape, a perfect new mother, father, perfect children who never make mistakes, perfect.....need I go on?

These expectations of perfection ARE impossible to live up to and sustain over any reasonable period of time.  And as long as you are expecting to, you are going to experience negative feelings about yourself and about life.  Life will never stay static - there will always be changes.  Just when you think it's all going "perfectly" a change will occur and it could be challenging.  That's life.  It's the same for all of us.  If you have expectations that are different, it will be hard to meet them over any reasonable period of time.  Learning how to respond to life's challenges in a useful way is what this article is really about.

Of course, life is perfect in its imperfection - but we are not brought up in western societies celebrating life's imperfections are we?  A successful life should be a a certain way and therefore so should we.  And when we start to fall short of that, we SHOULD all over ourselves and start to panic and that's when people stop sleeping well, get lower self-esteem and come to see someone like me so I can help them love and accept themselves more and move through the rest of their lives being peaceful and happy whilst responding to challenges usefully and achieving new things.

The good news is, you are not alone, and it can all change for the better.

Some of you may have detected what may seem initially like a contradiction in what I am saying.  You might be thinking that when we notice something is NOT as we desire it in our lives and we want it to be better, that surely that's a good thing, and surely that it what people hire me for - as a therapist and a coach - to help people CHANGE for the better? And if the word SHOULD helps us realise this then why is she disputing the validity of it?  What's going on here?!

So, to answer you; YES - experiencing the CONTRAST in life that offers us the opportunity to identify what we do not want so we can start identifying what we do want is VERY useful indeed.  AND as a human being, you will always be growing and expanding if you allow yourselves to (for that is what I believe you are on this planet to do) and you realise then, that you will never stop PREFERRING.  You will always want something to be better than now - because that IS growth!  So, great - no problem there.

However, it is the nature in which you NOTICE and THINK ABOUT what it is you do not want that I am challenging here.  And whether the things you think you want are actually YOUR own preferences or come from the EXPECTATIONS from others or society and whether they are (a) realistic or (b) useful. 

Consider this.  You notice there's something going on in your life which you don't want.  You start thinking:

"hey I am not very relaxed and after these years in yoga I should really know better by now"

which is VERY different from thinking;

"I am not very relaxed in my life right now, I would like to get better at relaxing while I go about my work"

Or consider the contrast between:

"I am struggling with this new information, after all those years of education I should know this by now!"

and;

"I am struggling with all this new information, I would like to find ways of learning more easily"

And let's have one more example, because I know that our brains like to do things in threes:

"I often get asked questions in my job that I don't immediately know the answer to and I should be able to answer them straight away"

and;

"I often get asked questions in my job that I don't immediately know the answer to and I'd like to get better at handling those tricky situations to help people more effectively".

Are you realising the difference now?  Well you SHOULD be (just kidding - sorry, I couldn't resist the humour in that one..).  One is a self-judgement and creates an internal conflict (what is happening right now is NOT as good as I want it to be) and holds you in the problem pattern and just feeling bad about it (i.e. not solution focussed at all).  You could easiy just go about your day judging yourself for the problems you are having and feeling really bad about the conflct you've created between what IS and what SHOULD BE and then NOT finding any kind of WORKABLE solutions for them.  That's exactly what SHOULDING on YOURSELF does to you!

OR, you can enjoy noticing the CONTRAST between what currently IS going on right now and what you would PREFER.  Whatever currently IS, IS!  So you may as well ACCEPT it.  You won't change it by being harsh with yourself about it.  However you CAN identify that you PREFER something DIFFERENT or BETTER and then you can start enjoying the many opportunities that life will offer you to notice this contrast which is the natural scope for GROWTH and begin to set REALISTIC and VIABLE outcomes for yourself that actually ALLOW you to GROW and EXPAND in a SOLUTION FOCUSSED way and you may even, in the process perhps ADJUST the expectations you have of yourself to be more in line with what YOU prefer, and NOT what OTHERS or SOCIETY would prefer OF you.  Then you can MOVE FORWARD in your life enjoying GROWTH and EXPANSION in a KIND TO YOURSELF way that helps you practice ACCEPTANCE of SELF and ACCEPTANCE OF WHAT IS and allows HAPPINESS and PEACE and CONTENTMENT with yourself and your life AS IT IS whilst PREFERRING and GROWING AND EXPANDING because you are PREFFERING something different from now and can now ACHEIVE much more from this preferable way of thinking about "problems" and solutions. 

So, here's my strategy for helping you do the above (if that is what you choose to pefer):

1)  Acknowledge the "problem" - what it is that could be better and say to yourself:

"I acknowledge that I am not relaxed right now"

2)  Set your outcome in a positive and solution focussed way:

"I would like to be more relaxed in my day to day life"

3)  Find solutions to help you meet your own outcome.  You can brainstorm a list:

Sign up to that mediation class
Listen to that relaxation CD
Listen to that music I like
Take the time to unwind after my working day
Give myself permission to relax in the evening
Read that inspiring book that reminds me to chill out
Go and see xxxx who always makes me feel better

You may wish to keep a notebook or a diary for just these POSITIVE outcomes, so you can refer back to your identifyed solutions at a later time if necessary.  Your unconscious mind wil resond so much more positively and favourable when you communicate with yourself in this way as opppse to the self-judgement, conflict creating, feel bad, no solutions way.  You can begin to eliminate that little damaging word from your vocabluary and release yourself from "The Tyranny of the Shoulds".  Life will be much more enjoyable as you enjoy your expansion in this more positive way- you can really trust me on that one.

A beautuful quote I found recently is fitting here:

"When you realise how perfect 
everything is
you will tilt your head back
and laugh at the sky".

- Siddhārtha Gautama (Buddha)

Comments as always, are welcome.


































# posted by Charlotte Hinksman @ 2:36 PM 0 comments

Sunday, February 08, 2009

 

What does it really mean to be trusting ourselves?

It is a really interesting word - TRUST.   What does it mean, really?  How do we do it and what are the benefits in our lives if we are more trusting?  And how many of us actually trust OURSELVES? How many of us trust ourselves to be: doing our best at any given moment, sleeping well enough, performing tasks and living up to expectations, achieving our goals, doing what we said we were going to do....?   So many problems arise when we are not trusting ourselves.  I am not talking about trusting others, as that deserves a whole new article to itself - I am talking about trusting ourselves - you, trusting you. 

I have been doing some interesting personal work on this topic recently and although we have talked about the topic of trust in other newsletters - it deserves to be discussed again as it is such a fundamentally important part of our lives and when we learn to be trusting ourselves, can make life a lot more enjoyable and successful. 

In answer to the above questions, you trust yourself every single day.  I know - a radical thing to say. You also know this to be true - if you look a little more closely:
  • Did you have to remind yourself to breathe today?  No, of course you did not.
  • Did you remind your brain how to walk today?  How to put one foot in front of the other and stride forward, like you've been doing since you were a tiny child?  Unless you've had some kind of accident where you would've had to re-learn walking, again, of course you did not remind yourself.
  • How about your food digesting?  Did you tell your body exactly which nutrients to keep hold of and absorb, and exactly which ones to excrete?  How many inches to grow your hair?  No, of course not!
  • And for those of us that drive a car, or ride a bike, did you remind yourselves how you do it, or did it seem almost natural to you, as if you were almost doing it without quite being aware how?  Do you even forget you're doing it sometimes, where you can be casually chatting away, and before you know it you're at your destination, and can't even remember how you got there!
  • Did you mentally rehearse everything that came out of your mouth today, before it came out?  Or did you just seem to magically open your mouth and speak something perfectly viable and sensible?  Of course you did - and you do it every single day.
These are all examples of you, without being consciously aware, are trusting yourselves and your unconscious mind.  It operates these deeply ingrained functional skills and abilities which are integrated on such a significantly deep level and large scale and we take it all for granted!   Yet, they are highly skillful, dynamic operations that take a myriad of specific and complex neurotransmitter connections to fire successfully in sequence in less than a micro-second to achieve them!

The truth is, to have any of these things operating without you being aware consciously, means that you ARE trusting yourself, all the time, every single second of every single day of your whole lives. You are trusting your brain and your body to know what it's doing.  And it likes to be trusted!  Look what it does for you every day in return for being trusted by you!  Imagine if you tried consciously to breathe, walk, speak, drive; imagine you tried to be consciously aware and consciously controlling each and every action, telling yourself "right, place your hand on the steering wheel at a right angle, and then, when you slow down, place your right foot (or is it the left?) on the break pedal...not too much, just about 20% pressure......"  You'd be completely worn out and you wouldn't  have time for anything else!

With this amazing unconsciously ability to we have and trust every day, when and why do we learn to doubt ourselves and our abilities?  Why do we question whether we can do something or not, whether we will be successful at something or not, or whether our body can or can't do something for us (like sleep for example)?  Who knows, and I am not about to try and analyse it, as that could take approximately 10 years or so and we still wouldn't know how to change it.

What's even more important and impactful, is just to work out how to change it and do something different.  Because you can trust yourself, much more than you may have realised. 

The first thing we need to do, is throw a bucket of water over the Wicked Witch of the East and get her to melt!   We need to stop referring to trust as a "thing" that has a shape and a form.  Why? Because it DOESN'T have a shape and a form.  "Trust" DOES NOT EXIST!  You will never have it, and you will never not have it, you can't see it, you can't lose it, and you can't forget to take it out with you or put it in in the mornings!

We do this with lots of words in the English language (this is not true of all languages however) - we talk about what's actually a process as a "thing"  that exists inside of you somewhere, e.g. anxiety, depression, pain, confidence, self-esteem, insomnia, happiness.  It is called a nominalisation.   It creates the illusion that these things have a solid shape and form, like an object i.e. a glass.  If that was true, you could show me where they are and I can take them out for you, polish them up and put them back in; show me where your "depression" is, and let's take it out!

These nominalisations are misleading, as they are not things you will ever have, not have, lose, forget, put in your bag and take to work with you, leave them behind at your friend's place or forget to put them in in the morning, because they simply DO NOT EXIST that way.   You do not have insomnia, you do it.  You do not have happiness, you do it.  You do not have trust inside of you somewhere, you do it. And what that means is, if you haven't had the experience of sleep or happiness or trust recently, it just means you have forgotten how to do it, or just haven't done it in a while.  I know it sounds radical, especially when we are talking about serious things like depression and insomnia, and what I am saying is true.  Like all nominalisations, we don't have these "things" like the word implies, we DO the process of them.  If we don't like what we are doing and the result we are getting, we can do something different, then. 

We need to de-nominalise these nominalisations and turn them back into what they really are - a PROCESS.  Trust = trustING.  Please do note the capital, illatic ___ING on the end, it is intentional. So we need to start the process and start practising trusting.  

My suggestions about how to do this:

1)  Choose an area you have had difficulty trusting yourself in in the past.  For example, sleep (will I be able to sleep tonight?),  your current role at work (can I really do this, am I any good?), a goal, or a new challenge coming up i.e. a presentation at work, a sporting event, or any event that you had felt uncomfortable in (will I really be able to do this?  Can I do it?  What if xyz happens...?) or any other area where you notice you are not trusting yourself, and doubting yourself or worrying instead. You will know when you are worrying and doubting because you will likely get anxious feelings of when you think of it.

2)  Set yourself an outcome; firstly a positve statement.  Think about how you WANT to feel about this area (specifically in regards to trust) i.e. "I want to be trusting myself to deliver a well thought-out presentation" or "I want to be trusting myself to sleep appropriately tonight"  Make sure the word trusting is in your outcome, not "trust"!

3)  Think very closely about how you would know if you were TRUSTING yourself.  We are going to get detailed here, and let me say now, it's hard work to do this next part, and also totally worth it. Try as much as possible to be thinking about what it WILL be like, as oppose to what it has been like (i.e. solution as opposed to problem).  We are going to add as many ____INGs as we can:

Where would the feeling of trusting be in the body?  Chest, heart, head etc?
If you were to guess, what temperature would it have?  Warm, cool, hot, cold?
What colour would it be?
What shape would it be?
Would it be a still feeling or a moving feeling?
Are there any other ways in which you would know you were having this feeling of trusting?

What kind of thinking, in any given moment, would support a feeling of trusting like that?  I.e. what would be the actual words you would be saying to yourself when you're trusting yourself like that?
It will usually be something like:  I can do this, I've done this before and it was fine, I am doing the best I can, I will do it, I can trust myself.

What will you be doing differently when you are trusting yourself like that - i.e. what are the actual actions or behaviours that will change when you are trusting yourself in this area? 

What are you focusing on, or paying attention to, when you are trusting yourself like that?  I.e. you certainly won't be focusing on worrying or creating anxiety, so what WILL you be paying attention to, when you are trusting yourself in the way you have in mind?

Write this all down.  Make a picture of yourself doing all the things you have described.  Remind yourself to focus on this trusting of yourself at least once a day, if you can do it more (really, whenever you think of it!) then that would be super-useful.  Remember, you can't forget it or lose it, you just need to practise DOING it.  So, whenever you notice yourself not trusting, come back to what you have written here and start doing it again.

And notice the difference it makes.

Happy trusting; we are all practising it with you!

I would like to dedicate this article to my supervisor and trusted (!) mentor, Lynn Timpany, for all of her expert help and support, and whom I am very grateful for having in my career and my life.  Thank you Lynn!  Go to www.lynntimpany.co.nz for more. 

With love and positive, trusting thoughts, Charlotte.

www.charlottehinksman.com for NLP services in Wellington.










# posted by Charlotte Hinksman @ 5:30 PM 0 comments

Thursday, November 20, 2008

 

How can we be loving, accepting and forgiving of OURSELVES unconditionally?


To be able to treat ourselves with love, the kind of unconditional love you have for your children or pet, and to accept and forgive ourselves when we make a mistake is hard for most of us.  I remember when I was just starting out my NLP training and I read Louise L Hay's well known book You Can Heal Your Life.  Louise L Hay has been a huge influence in the self-help, mind-body healing world.  She healed herself of cancer completely naturally using her mind, and firmly believes that physically ailments are a result of unresolved emotional stuff which manifests as 'dis-ease' in the body.  In the first few pages of her book she claims that the reason that clients come to her for help, no matter what the 'presenting' problem is, comes down to the fundamental limiting belief of "I'm not good enough".  

When I first read that I truly thought "yeah right, she obviously hasn't trained in NLP she doesn't know what she's on about!"  and now, having had several years experience working with clients one on one, I am beginning to partially agree with her theory; and I can relate to it personally as well.  I have done significant self-development work on myself over the years and it seems that a lot of it comes down to me being able to love myself unconditionally.  This is not meant in a vain way, or a narcissistic way, it simply means providing myself with love and approval, the kind of love I give those closest to me in my life.  This means: forgiving myself when I f*%k up (a technical term) and accepting myself for who I am; this means that I support and encourage myself with my own internal voice (as oppose to judge and criticising myself), I do those behaviours which are self-nurturing and self-preserving, I have clear boundaries in my professional and personal relationships, I give myself permission to be a good state of mind; happy, content, peaceful, and I provide financially for myself and continue to create a life of abundance (and not just financial abundance), I believe in myself and my abilities and set goals and enjoy challenging myself and support myself moving forward, I trust myself to be learning, continually, and I give myself feedback for improvement and make sure I notice all the bits I am doing WELL, as well as those things worthy of attention for improvement.  I praise myself for all I have achieved in my life and the difference I continue to make in the world.  I feel worthy of self-acknowledgement self-praise.  I have a positive self-image and practise good self-esteem through the messages I give myself and the way I talk to myself.  

Is this always natural, effortless and easy?  

The simple answer is no, it takes awareness and work.  I believe that loving oneself where we can give ourselves love, accept love from others, accept ourselves for exactly who we are and forgive ourselves when we f*%k up (technical term) is one of the highest human achievements, it is quite spiritually evolved in my view, and when we can practise this as a way of life, life flows easily and comfortably and true inner-happiness ensues.  It is, in my personal opinion, a continual process and therefore takes  awareness and dedication to keep practising (that's where I am at personally right now anyway, I know that the more and more I have this as an intention and continuous practice in my life, it will of course over time, become easy and simply a way of being in the world).  

Prime opportunities to practise of this process of loving and accepting and forgiving oneself unconditionally,  comes in those times when we (technical term coming up) f*% up, i.e. something goes wrong, we make a mistake, a blunder, things didn't turn out as we had planned, we ate something we planned not to, we accidentally offend someone, we make a decision that didn't turn out as expected, etc. 

I had an interesting experience of this quite recently, and I learnt an incredible amount form the whole experience - let me tell you!  I had, without knowing it at the time, offended a friend by making an off-hand, flippant comment one evening (I am an expressive person and this was an example of me saying something that had obviously not been well thought out!)   I had no idea at the time that my comment had quite significantly, offended my good friend, and I discovered so a few days later when talking on the phone to another friend.   This came as a surprise to me and I knew I had to remedy the situation straight away and did so by sincerely apologising.  I was, friends being friends, forgiven straight away by this person and then arranged for them to come over for dinner so I could make it up to them.  This happened a few weeks later and needless to say, everything is totally fine and dandy between us. 

Did I forget about it and move on straight away?  I wish I could say yes; and to be honest it took effort to get it clear in my own head.  I went straight into self-judgement, guilt, and beating my self up for being so 'thoughtless" and wondered what other people must think about it all.  Now, if I hadn't been a skilled NLP master practitioner, I imagine I could have easily tortured myself for weeks on end!  Fortunately for me,  I instead decided to interrupt this process and ask myself 'what can I learn from this?' thus turning it all around for myself. 

I remember sitting on the sofa, immediately after the telephone call where I had cleared things up with my friend, and feeling pleased the situation had been remedied.  However I was still doing some self-judgment and some less than useful thinking in my head.  My very affectionate cat at this point jumped up and sat on my lap and started purring loudly like a little tractor.  I remember thinking "at least she still loves me!"  and then I realised: that's what I had to do for myself!  I had to love me, and forgive me, and accept me, and to do so in the face of a f*%k up (technical term) meant that it was unconditional!  

With a little more focus and work I was able to do this for myself.  And wow - what an amazing learning experience and an opportunity to learn about self-love, self-acceptance and self-forgiveness.  And I knew it would be a great learning experience for others reading my blog too.

We've all had this experience at some point in our lives when we've perceived that we've done something "wrong" (and I say perceived  - as often, what we think we have done that's so terrible, turns out the other people that we were so worried about didn't even notice!) and we've looked upon the experience and cringed, judged ourselves harshly, felt guilty, beat ourselves up black and blue and laid awake worrying about the implications of our mistake. 

I went through this with a client recently and we came up with what I think is a very cool strategy to prevent wasted negative thought energy.  The thing to know first of all, is that these bad feelings we get is because we are doing them - guilt and disapproval don't just fall from the sky, we do them with the thoughts we are generate in our head.   It is undoubtedly an old pattern which got set up long ago, probably resulting from an internalisation of judgement and disapproval from another (usually care-giver, parent, teacher, someone else significant).  If we wish to get a different result, be easier and more forgiving of ourselves, treat ourselves the way we treat a loved one, a friend, we need to do something different now; and in any given moment we can choose to do that, even if it takes a little effort.  After all, why should we continue to talk to ourselves disapprovingly, just because someone did it to us when were young?  We are adults now, and we can make choices about how to respond to events in our lives!  Choices that allow us to balance social responsibility and politeness with being good and kind to ourselves too.  

Here's a simple strategy which will save you heaps of time and energy;

Staying in Reality

(1)  Check reality

As yourself:  what has actually happened?  What is actually the problem? Has anything actually happened here?

(2)  Do I need to do anything to remedy it?

If NO:  go straight to (4)

If YES: go straight to (3)

(3) Do whatever needs to be done; apologising, finding out more, making a phone call to follow up etc.

Then ask yourself:  Have I done everything I need to?

If NO:  Do whatever needs to be done next!  Or plan to do it, and then go to (4)

IF YES:  go straight to (4)

(4)  When nothing further can be done - tell yourself "it's OK to let go of this now"  and let it go.  If it comes back into your mind again, go through this strategy again so you can really convince yourself that nothing else can be done.  If it is still difficult, focus on "what can I learn from this?"

(5) Focus on a future goal

This is effective when it's repeated again and again, just like any new skill, so it becomes a new habit.  It is also effective when you realise can come back to it at any given 'now' moment.  That means, that if you forget to do it and accidentaly remember to spend time worrying instead, don't beat yourselves up for that, just make that choice in the now to do something differentt, and then come back to it, no problem!  You can make any choice in the 'now' moment.

Have fun practising and praise yourselves for giving it a go.

Wishing you a lot of love in your lives (and lots of it coming from you).  Before you go to sleep at night, say to yourselves:

I love me, I forgive me, I accept me.  

Love from, 

Charlotte.

www.charlottehinksman.com for NLP services in Wellington, New Zealand. 








# posted by Charlotte Hinksman @ 12:12 PM 0 comments

Thursday, September 11, 2008

 

When are we too emotionally involved to help someone we really care about?

It's a good question to ask in my view, for two reasons; from a practitioner perspective helping people change and from a personal perspective; dealing with my own family and friends and loved ones.

We have a saying in NLP when we are considering our roles as "helpers" (people with a bunch of skills and abilities that can help people) which is to "get hired". It is metaphorical of course and therefore doesn't always mean you need to get paid, but it does mean that there needs to be some degree of the person having asked for your help, or a contract you have with them that you will play the helping role for them, or of course a formal arrangement like coming to see someone like me as a paying client.

When I first did my practitioner training I was so enthusiastic having left this training with all these life-changing skills and wanting to take them out into the world as soon as possible. I tried to do a lot of "helping" without actually "getting hired"! I was going around offering my skills left right and centre and seeing opportunities to help everywhere and anywhere I went. Was is effective? No! Seeing as at that time no one had actually asked me for my good ideas and help. I learnt a valuable lesson back then - wait until you get hired and have a clear understanding of boundaries between your professional and personal life. A balance I feel I practise relatively well these days.

So, how easy is it for most of us to blur those boundaries and automatically play a helping role to someone in our lives? And I am not just talking about those of us that work in the health system - it happens to us all. Someone we love is having an issue, a problem, is upset, confused, depressed, worried. It is very easy because we care about and love that person, to jump in and try and "fix" their problem for them - to take their pain away and make it all better again. The questions are:

How good is it for our personal well-being?
And how empowering is it actually for them?

Let me give you a personal example. My mother, whom I obviously care about deeply and love with all my heart and always will. She is also the one person on this planet who can initiate an emotion in me that I don't feel very often - frustration! Way back when I was lost teenager and attempting to forge my path in life I decided to study A-level psychology when I left school - having absolutely no idea what it was - it just seemed like an obvious choice when I had lived with my mum's depression for a number of years - feeling helpless and ill-equipped to deal with it and her. My mum got really good at doing her depressive episodes when my grandmother (her mum) died and then even better at it when she divorced my father. By the time I was studying psychology at University, she was still a huge worry to me and I was still desperately trying to understand the human mind and find some answers for her. I know now that she was my main motivating factor back then, something which we can joke about now.

Mostly these days she does OK - she has been able to reach a level of satisfaction with her life most of the time and has developed a more well-rounded lifestyle. I wouldn't say she was happy - far from it - she is still very good at doing depressive thoughts and feelings. Most of the time she's OK I think, I hope. Or up until recently when she has got herself really depressed again - a result of some current circumstances in her life which are not entirely satisfactory to her. I talk to my mum (who is in England) often, 2 or 3 times a week sometimes, and we had a conversation recently which upset me so.

You may be surprised to read this - that a professional therapist like myself (a) still gets upset about things and (b) has a depressed mother. To me it is part of being a human-being and part of what I am going to explain next. We are also always learning in life and will continue to do so:

Problem Ownership & "Getting Hired"

The reason I think I was able to get upset when we were talking the other day when she was describing her depressed feelings to me, was that I immediately wanted to jump in and "fix" her problems for her - desperately I did. I felt frustrated that I can help so many people successfully every week, and I can't even help my own flesh and blood! I was taking on her feelings and feeling them, feeling her pain, and wanting to fix it all for her. I was thinking "why is this woman so bloody stubborn? Why can't she just see things the way I see them?!" The result - I got emotional, she got emotional, and I hung up the phone with a feeling that if my supervisor had been a witness to that conversation, she would wanted to give me a stern word! The real problem was, that I momentarily got confused about problem ownership. Something which I am teaching to more and more of my clients these days, especially couples. In a nutshell, understanding problem ownership is about asking - in this given moment, who is it that is not feeling OK? If it is me, effectively, I own that problem. That is a piece of jargon by the way. It doesn't mean it's my fault, or I am to blame, or even that the other person needn't change, it simply means that if I am looking through my window of life and not feeling OK a that given moment, it is me who owns that problem.

If it is the other person in my life who is not OK in that given moment, effectively they own that problem. It doesn't mean it needn't change, or even that it's their fault, or my fault or that I don't need to do anything, it just means that they can take ownership of that problem and stand up and say - "I own a problem right now - it is me who is not feeling OK".

The key difference in understanding this distinction is knowing which communication skills to use at that time. This will make all the difference. If I own a problem about something, I can use my assertiveness and problem solving skills to do something about it. That might be communicating it to someone who is involved, or choosing to solve it myself, or maybe if necessary engage in some useful conflict resolution skills.

If the other person owns that problem - I can help by using my helping skills. This could include good listening skills, and generally offering to help them solve their OWN problem. It means I may just listen in a constructive way, or offer suggestions.

If I use my helping skills in this way - I need to know of course that they are welcome at that given moment. Here is where "get hired" comes into it. If my mum phones me from England to talk about a problem, it is a fairly safe assumption that she wants my help in some way, and I can assume for that point in time, I have been "hired" to offer help.

If I phone her and start offering all my good ideas about how she needs to change her life and solve her problems - it is high risk - and anything I may say will probably not be heard if she doesn't want to hear it. So, not very empowering for either of us and a waste of time and energy. There really is little point trying to help if you are not "hired".

What I actually did in this particular conversation however, was take her problem and bring it over to myself and make it MY problem - and effectively I ended up owning her problem for her. And then I tried to fix it! And then I got frustrated that I couldn't fix it! I wonder why - where is she in all of this while I busy myself with hiring myself to fix her problem? It's hardly helping her practise her own problem solving skills is it?!

It is an easy trap for us to fall into when we love someone and care about their well-being and future. The fact is, it felt terrible for me, and probably not that pleasant for her either.

I realised later that probably all she needed at that time was someone to listen sympathetically, and help her know that someone understands where she's coming from. If I had reminded myself of good problem ownership boundaries at that time, I think I would have hung up the phone and felt OK about our conversation. It was only much later on when I acknowledged how bad I was feeling that I realised what had happened and had to remind myself that in actual fact, I did not need to own her problem. I felt OK at the time - I didn't own any problems of my own, and I could do the best I could to offer my helping skills to her to assist her in solving her own problem - and the reality is that my role stops there. No matter what kind of relationship it is whether personal or professional, it's all you can do. A harsh reality sometimes and true.

The difficulty is the emotional side. It's hard when you are so emotionally involved with someone to stand back and take that objective perspective. We all think sometimes we know best for someone else and sometimes when we take this role of the helper without "getting hired" it simply puts pressure on the relationship and the boundaries become blurred. It is up to us to decide in any relationship, whether we WANT to play the role of the "helper" within that relationship, or whether it is more appropriate for someone else to play that role in that person's life.

Our Loved Ones

They are usually the ones we want to help the most - because we care about them the most. Sometimes this innate need we have creates pressure on ourselves that need not be there. I was mentoring an NLP practitioner recently and in our session she was describing an issue she'd faced recently. Her child had had a minor accident and was in pain. This practitioner wanted to use her NLP skills to help her child manage the pain, and when attempted to had what she described as a "block" - she wanted to help using her skills but couldn't find a way of doing so. And later she began to judge herself and gave herself a really hard time - something in the realm of "what's the point of having these skills if I can't even help my family?". The result? She felt bad and her child hadn't even noticed! He was too absorbed in his mother helping him feel relaxed and soothing him as mothers do to notice she wasn't using her fancy NLP skills!

I get a lot of women phoning me up wanting to make appointments for their husbands. I will always suggest that the husband calls me himself if he wants to come and see me. Often I don't hear from them at all (I don't wish to generalise gender stereotypes here - it is just a very common pattern). It is our want and need to seek help for those we care about - and to a certain extent believing that WE know what's best for them that can get us in to trouble. If that person's issues are creating a problem for us personally and our own well-being, effectively it is us that owns the problem and therefore our responsibility to seek help for our problem. This may of course involve making the decision to not share our lives with that person any more.

One thing I have learnt through my relationship with my mum over the years is to accept her the way she is and the choices she makes in her life. Yes, I have a lot of bright ideas about what's better for her, and being a professional therapist myself I can see quite clearly what her issues are and what a little professional help could do for her. I have learnt however, over time, that forcing these ideas on her has made her quite resistant to them overall. I feel helpless sometimes, and as I have written about, frustrated, that I cannot do more for her and her situation. Where my peace of mind comes from however is knowing that I can only offer so much; the way she lives is not really my responsibility and that ultimately she will make her own choices. All I can do is be a friend and offer support when "hired" to do so - and as I have learnt the hard way, listen and assist her to find solutions for her own problems. It is out of love for her and myself that I can have peace of mind with that now. I hope you can find that peace in your relationships too.

NB: The Problem Ownership Model comes from a communication skills training - Transforming Communication - which Charlotte is a certified instructor of. To find out more about these courses go to http://www.charlottehinksman.com/






# posted by Charlotte Hinksman @ 3:45 PM 0 comments

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