charlotte hinksman

Part 1: How much are YOU really worth?

It is a tough question to answer, isn’t it? I wonder how you would go about answering it, and where the answer really lies - i.e. who decides?

People don’t choose their careers accidentally. I became a coach because I struggled in my own life. I started learning how to overcome my own barriers to finally achieve what I wanted to achieve, did my professional training and changed my life. I knew that if I could do this, others could too, and I had the experience and the professional skills to teach them how.

The most significant work I have done on myself over the years and will continue to do is the relationship I have with the most important person in the world: ME.

I know, I know, it’s a cliché isn’t it? “The most important relationship you will ever have is with yourself..” blah blah blah – yes, we’ve all heard it, we’ve seen it used in advertising and soap operas and movies, we’ve all said it at some point. So, how true actually is it, and what, if anything, do we need to be doing about it?

In order to answer these important questions, I would like you to do something, if you would. I’d like you to consider the following words:

· Opinion

· Judgement

· Approval

· Acceptance

· Like

· Caring

· Love

· Perceived value

OK. Now, I want you to read them again, and repeat them to yourself in your head.

OK, got that. Now, read them again and repeat them in your head (there is a point to this, I promise....)

Ok, now we have oiled those neural circuits in your brain. Now, the next thing I would like you to do, is read the following question. Just relax, think about it once you’ve read it with your eyes closed, and be open to what comes in to your mind (there are no right or wrong answers):

How much time have you spent today thinking about one or more of these things?

Perhaps that is easy to answer, perhaps not. Don’t worry if it is not immediately easy. Just reflect on your day and consider it.

Now, consider the next question:

How much time today have you spent today thinking about these things in relation to another person (i.e. YOUR opinion or approval or love for THEM)?

Again, that may be immediately obvious for some of you, and for others you may have to close your eyes and spend a little bit of time remembering your day, the things that happened, how you felt, what you were thinking about and so on.

Now consider the next question:

How much time have you spent today thinking about these things in relation to another person (i.e. THEIR opinion or judgement or caring of YOU)?

Again, may be easy and obvious for some of you, and for others you may need a bit more time to do some active remembering and exploring.

Now consider the next question:

How much time have you spent trying to make a decision today? (if you have some big decisions to make, this will be easy to remember. If not, think about your decision about what to wear, what to buy for lunch, what to do tonight etc.)

And then:

How much influence did your consideration of other people have on making that decision?

OK. Now, let’s pause here.

Some of you may have uncovered some interesting information about your own thought processes. Some of you may be thinking “what the hell is she on about?”. Some of you may have not uncovered anything you didn’t already know. Some of you may have realised something I am not aware of yet!

And all of that is OK.

IF – through that little process – you are realising “wow, I spend a lot of time focussing on other people and what they might think!” then it would be useful for you to read on.

Let’s put it this way: as a species on this planet, we are born social. Babies who do not have interaction with other human beings when they are born do not develop well psychologically, physically or socially – they develop serious problems. Without that interaction and connection with other human beings, we simply don’t survive. We have mirror neurons in our brain that make us want to be like those around us. Babies smile and laugh when we smile and laugh to them, not because they find it funny, but because of these mirror neurons. Because of this, we are ALWAYS going to have a natural consideration of others and where we fit in with others around us.

To what degree is this useful and to what degree does it become imbalanced - making this awareness of others to our detriment?

It comes down to our own sense of self: our self-esteem, self-worth, self-perception, self-image, self-identity. This is about who we actually are: how we look physically, what we are about, what we stand for, what our values and beliefs are, our history, our current lives, our goals and aspirations, our friends, our families, our financial status, our choices; how we spend our time, what we eat and drink. And then, how we fundamentally and actually FEEL about who we are. This is our relationship to ourselves. How we feel about who we are and how we live. And how we feel about that determines our own sense of self and therefore how others relate to us.

The imbalance occurs when our own sense of self relies too heavily on OTHER’S:

· Opinion

· Judgement

· Approval

· Acceptance

· Like

· Caring

· Love

· Perceived value

......of US.

We start to rely too heavily on this because of a lack of our own sense of self. This can be due to simply not knowing ourselves very well (lack of experience, lack of awareness, young in age) or, a lack of a favourable sense of self; we don’t actually like who we are and how we live. We have a low opinion or ourselves, judge ourselves harshly, don’t approve of ourselves, beat ourselves up, don’t value our own skills, treat ourselves badly with non-caring behaviours.

Therefore we seek the acceptance and love and value from others, so that WE can feel a little better about ourselves. “If they can approve of me, then I can approve of me” kind of mentality. It’s not conscious by the way, it’s not like you do it on purpose – in fact it’s largely your unconscious mind doing it for you so you can feel better.

Sounds kind of logical and sensible really doesn’t it?!

Except that it doesn’t really work so well. Not in the long term anyway.

Putting our sense of self in the hands of others like this is high risk. Because:

1) Why should we expect someone else to love and approve of us if we don’t love and approve of us? I wouldn’t sell a car if I didn’t believe in it – would you?

2) What happens when someone doesn’t like you or approve of you? You fall to pieces with no substance of your own to fall back on. This makes your self-esteem very delicate and is like a “they don’t like me so I can’t like me” kind of mentality.

3) Decision making is a struggle. Making your decisions based on what others may approve of makes it very difficult for you. You can get paralysed for fear of getting it wrong and angst over small things for hours or avoid making big decisions and stay stuck where you are.

4) You run the risk of behaving only in ways you think will “please people”. You become a people-pleaser. If this is motivating your actions you are likely to be ignoring your real needs and will burn out.

5) We feel like we need to “prove” ourselves to others to get their seal of approval. We can work too hard for this and the motivation is wrong. We may also, never get it, which means all that hard work for no reward.

6) The big flaw in your mind’s plan to “self-worth through others” is this: how are you going to know whether people are pleased with you, or whether they have a favourable opinion of you? The only way you’ll know is by actually asking them, and mostly, unless we are in a situation where we are receiving structured feedback (i.e. a performance review) we won’t ask and we won’t know. Their opinion of you therefore remains an imagined one that you make up in your head. And how reliable is that? Not reliable enough to base your whole self-esteem on, that’s for sure!

The most important steps in personal-development are: become the person you really are, decide to keep developing yourself – always, then decide that that’s good enough for YOU. Real self-worth is about deciding “I am who I am, imperfections and all, and I love and approve of myself” regardless of what others may or may not think.

The balance lies in considering and maintaining:

How can I be considerate and respectful of other’s needs, act with good intentions towards others AND be considerate and respectful of my own self: my needs, wants, desires, comforts and who I really am?

There are no easy and hard and fast answers and rules. However, consider that every day and see what changes for you.

Coming up: Part 2: How to develop your own sense of self in a useful and sustainable way.

With love and positive thoughts as always,

Charlotte.

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

When a relationship ends, energy that has remained stagnant for time suddenly mobilises. For this reason, it is one of life’s amazing opportunities to learn, grow and expand yourself and therefore your life.

I am currently seeing a lot of clients in my practice for relationship issues and dealing with break- ups. When someone has ended a relationship for you that you were emotionally committed to, it’s easy to start doing some very dodgy thinking and believing about yourself and about life. This needs to be addressed and turned around into a positive as soon as possible, before you do yourself an injustice and damage your own, precious, self-esteem. I want to show you how to deal with your break-up in way that turns it into an incredible opportunity for YOU. The focus is on when someone makes the decision for you – because this is the place that can feel the most disempowering and I want to show you how to steer it into an empowering place that will help set you up positively for the rest of your life. Sound interesting? Read on...

The last time a long term meaningful relationship was ended for me, it was the beginning of an incredible journey that changed the course of my life forever. It turned out to be an embedded gift – or at least I decided to make it into one. I was deeply in love and deeply convinced that I would spend the rest of my life with this person, only to have the rug ripped out from underneath me at an extraordinary speed! Needless to say, I was heartbroken. I had just arrived in New Zealand where I had left my life in London, moved to the other side of the world and only knew a couple of people in Wellington (vaguely, from my travelling days). I found myself heartbroken without my support system. I thought to myself: Something positive has to come out of this! And I made it so it did.

I addressed myself and my issues for the first time in my life, trained in a professional discipline and started a very successful business. A private therapy and coaching practice was something which had been my dream since I was a teenager. It became full time and fully sustainable very quickly, and is one of the most consistent therapy practices in the country. I train newly qualified NLP master practitioners in how to market their own practices and have been very influential in the practice of professional NLP in New Zealand. I started to make a difference in the world – finally! It’s not so much a rags to riches story as a journey from disempowerment to empowerment. I hope to help you on your own journey:

1) Accept that they were not “The One”: If the relationship ended, then they were not The One for you. They just can’t be – the math does not add up does it?! Please avoid pointless regretful thinking like “I’ve lost the one love of my life and will never be loved again” as this is unfair on you and untrue. If they’ve ended things then the relationship had issues that you definitely knew about and didn’t want to face because you wanted it to work. And forgive yourself for that - we all just want to love and be loved at the end of the day. This one just didn’t fulfil that for you. Realise then, that they have done you a huge favour by being brave enough to be the one that made the decision and be thankful for that.

2) Continuing contact and dialogue: Break ups can be tough. You go through so many emotions (below). If we allow ourselves to be reactive to each of these emotions, we may do something we are not so proud of later, or something that could damage the other person. You will probably want to seek revenge and hurt them back – you may want to text them and tell them you faked all your orgasms anyway, leave angry messages on their phone, tell all their friends they were bad in bed, post a flyer around town publically declaring all their shortcomings (e.g. Samantha Jones, Sex and the City). You may feel like writing an angry letter setting the record straight. Here is where you need to be demonstrably self-possessed; ask yourself: In six months time, how do I want to be looking back on myself and my behaviours in a way that I can be totally proud of myself?” If you don’t yet fully trust yourself not to be reactive - recruit support. Text a friend (who agrees to this) every time you get the urge to text your ex. Delete their number from your phone. De-friend them on Facebook. Write that angry letter (a good way of purging bad feelings from your system) but wait a week and see if you still want to send it (you won’t).

3) Allow yourself to go through the Break-up Stages: You will go through; hurt, disbelief, anger, revenge, wanting to set the record straight, blaming yourself, rejection, disappointment, frustration, sadness. Please avoid trying to “fight” these stages, just accept them and let yourself feel them. You might cycle back on them a few times before you fully move through them. Seek support from friends or family that you really trust to go to and be your authentic self; whether this is crying, shouting, being angry, or just talking it through. It’s important you can be with people that you trust who accept you and what you’re going through, and can just be there to support you in your process. Eventually you will move on to the more positive stages; acceptance and then moving on. I have noticed in my practice that some of these stages are stickier and harder for people to move through, so I would like to focus on some of the main ones and what to do to move through them:

a) Blaming yourself: When the decision wasn’t yours, it feels very disempowering at first. You were perhaps willing to sort things through and they were not. You may experience all kinds of feelings, the common one is starting to believe it was all your fault. Recognise you are doing this first; and then get realistic! It is inconceivable for one person to take 100% of the blame for the relationship ending. Relationships are of 50 / 50 input, always, which means you both brought things to the table that affected the harmony of the relationship. They are a unique individual that has come to a decision in their own neurology, which is out of your control, and in a greater sense, nothing to do with you. If you are stuck in the cycle of blaming yourself – pull yourself out of it, now! Here are some exercises that will help move through this stage (and, it’s important to note here, that some of them seem a little negative at first ...... they are simply to help your mind process things whilst at this stage, and will help you move through the stage into a more positive stage. I am NOT advising you to wallow here for too long – these are just processing exercises that help you move on to more positive stages):

Write down all the things you didn’t like about them: did you really enjoy the way they were rude to shop assistants? Or the way they asked to borrow money from you? This helps you realise that you knew things weren’t right for you either, and it was not really the relationship you thought it was or wanted it to be.

Write down all things that you were dissatisfied about in the relationship and all the reasons you knew the relationship wasn’t going to work: didn’t you argue about unnecessary things? Did they really match your key values (financial, spiritual, health, relationships, goals), did you really have the same aspirations and goals in life?

b) Revenge: Revenge is a dish best served cold (please refer to no. 2!). The best revenge you can get is to bounce back quickly and genuinely, and move forward to create a happy life for yourself. This way, you will not only be a good role model for others, you will demonstrate to them the person you really are and can be, which will hopefully influence good self development for them too. However, their journey is their journey and what is important now is YOU.

c) Sadness: Once you have moved through the more active stages like anger and hurt, you will feel sad at the loss of a relationship, which, if you were involved in it, was bound to have many good points too that you will miss. This is a natural stage, and again, need not be “fought” but “felt”. We do feel sad when we have “lost” something. When I made the decision to end my last significant relationship three years ago, I felt sad for a little while. I thought about using NLP to adjust the intensity of the emotion, and then I thought: actually, it is appropriate to feel sad right now, it is sad this relationship has ended. I let it come and go, and it passed within a few months. My advice here is to feel it, understand it for what it is, and let it pass. If you stay there too long, then you may need a bit of professional help to move through it, and that’s OK too.

4) Getting your ex back or becoming friends: There is so much literature on the internet about "Get Back Your Ex And Keep Them Forever!" Ignore it! It wasn’t the right relationship for you - if it was right and you were meant to be together, then you would be. They made a decision that makes sense to them in their model of the world at that time and you need to be graceful about accepting it and be thankful for it. Unless there are children involved, don’t attempt to become friends. You can’t really do this until you have dealt with your own emotions anyway – and by then, you will realise that you probably do not need them in your life after all.

5) They will hurt too: I have ended relationships and had relationships ended for me, and it hurts both ways. It is easier to have the decision made for you, as you won’t go through that regret and doubt stage that they will go through. If they were in a relationship with you then they definitely cared for you on some level, and will therefore feel disappointed about it ending too. In time, you will be able to realise this and will be able to feel some empathy for them soon.

6) What you can control and what you can’t: You can’t control their decision. You can’t control what they say about you to your friends. You can’t control other people’s perceptions or opinions of you. You can’t control what they do next. You CAN control what YOU do next. Notice how much energy you are spending focussing on what you can’t control, and see if you can make a shift. Ask yourself: What do I need to be focussing on for ME right now? And put all your attention there.

7) Moving on: This can only really happen genuinely, when you have passed through the previous, more stressful, stages. Again, I want to advise to allow yourself those initial stages. Don’t fight – feel! If you allow yourself to feel them fully you will pass through them very quickly – trust me. And then, you can focus on moving forward positively:

a) Deluded thinking: “I will never find anyone like them, no one will ever love me and I will be single forever”. This is delusional thinking. It’s not true. You create your own life and your own opportunities and you need to start realising that! Nothing useful can be created by that kind of thinking. Snap yourself out of it by telling yourself: I can’t predict the future and therefore I am just making this up right now. I am in charge of my life and I am making way for my better relationship to come next.

b) Avoid rebound relationships: Be careful about jumping into bed with someone else or diving into your next relationship. If you rebound you are likely to have not dealt with your own stuff and run the risk of hurting the person you rebound to. Bottom line – you DO NOT want to take your past baggage straight into your next relationship, because you will just repeat the same patterns! I always advise, for a significant relationship break up, to have a period of time on your own, to work on yourself and the issues you brought to the table so that you leave them behind you and move forward.

c) Use it as an OPPORTUNITY for YOU: This is not longer about them and why they did what they did. This is now about YOU and only YOU (the most important part of the equation!). When a relationship ends, you can’t blame yourself. And you can’t blame the other person either. It is a 50 / 50 input. What is likely is that you brought a number of issues to the table that disrupted the harmony of that relationship (as did they). If you can be honest with yourself about what these were for YOU, and make a plan to deal with them, you will go into your next relationship a significantly better and more developed person, significantly more whole inside, attract someone else developed and whole inside and therefore have a relationship that is much more likely to work long term. Have a close and honest look at:

What behaviours did I demonstrate that I didn’t enjoy about myself?

If I were to know/guess, where did these come from? A place of: Insecurity? Vulnerability? Neediness? Fear of getting hurt? Fear of rejection? A need to be the rescuer? A doormat – difficulty saying no? A need to please the other? Approval?

If I were to know / guess, where does that place within me (i.e. insecurity etc) come from? When have I felt this before? How old is this feeling? Does this feeling serve me now?

What would it be like if I were free of this feeling now? What I be like? What would my next relationship be like?

How good is my self-esteem, really? Did I fish for compliments? Did I get jealous? Did I place unrealistic demands on this person? Did I criticise them? Did I try and control them and their feelings? Did I try to manipulate them to feel good about myself? Did I get defensive? Did I need to prove myself right and them wrong?

Can I honestly look in the mirror and say “I love you and you are totally and utterly worthy and deserving of a great relationship?”

There are no hard and fast answers to these questions AND a bit of honesty with yourself goes a long way in self-development. Remember – awareness is the key to change and you can’t change what you don’t acknowledge. The best relationships are when both people are whole and love and appreciate themselves, and can therefore fully love and appreciate that other person freely. Working on your own past baggage and issues can be challenging, and I would recommend lots of focussed reading and / or professional guidance. Your friends love you and some of this they simply aren’t qualified to help you with. So, seek guidance if you know you have some of the meatier stuff to work on.

d) Your Next Relationship: If you take time to recognise what you brought to the table, work on yourself and your self-esteem and release your past relationship baggage, you WILL go into your next relationship a better person, and therefore start a new relationship pattern, which will be better than the last one. You WILL attract someone equally like you: whole inside and self-loving. If you don’t attract the right person straight away, at least you WILL be a step in the right direction! And every relationship is progress as long as you’re learning. Take some time to work out and understand what didn’t work in your last relationship and what it is you actually want your life-long relationship to be like. Think about:

What do you want the person to be like? What values or qualities do you admire? What characteristics do you love in a person? What are the essentials?

Write down everything you know you like / love about yourself to realise your own self-worth and the value you can add to your next relationship.

Who do YOU want to be in your relationship? What kind of person? What kind of behaviours do you want to demonstrate?

What do you want the relationship to be like? Think about shared values, goals and aspirations, lifestyle.

e) Feeling good: What do YOU need to do for YOU to feel GOOD right now? Have you been meaning to start yoga? Take that dance class? Clarify your life direction? Have you had the same haircut since 1992? Is it time for a new winter coat? Now is the time to use that energy to get some positive movement in your life. Don’t sit around thinking – go for it! It’s all about you now.

Positive parting note: Remember, not every relationship in your life is SUPPOSED to last forever! As long as YOU learn from it positively it WAS NOT a mistake or a waste of time. You have been given a huge GIFT to learn about yourself and decide what you really want your life to be like, and what role you want your life-partner to play in that life. If you get clear now, you will attract the right person for you – please have hope and trust in yourself and in life. You are the creator of your own life, and I know it doesn’t always feel like that, and it is the truth. Remember: People come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime. Put this person and this relationship in perspective and allow your own personal movement and power to mobilise. Have fun and enjoy the incredible gift you have been given.

As always, with love and positive thoughts. I welcome your comments and feedback as always.

Charlotte.

www.charlottehinksman.com for NLP services and products.