On becoming more than you already are

I'm learning more about the person-centred approach to counselling at the moment.  It's based broadly on Carl Rogers idea that our 'actualising tendency', despite any opposition, will ensure that people continue to grow towards their true potential throughout life. 

There can be things that trip us up along the way, however, and make us doubt our own judgement.  Sometimes we can end up trusting the views of others more than our own. Rogers believed in the resilience of the actualising tendency, though, and he felt that the desire of human beings to become more than we currently are is never extinguished, whatever happens to us.

Whatever a person's circumstances, there is a way of becoming the best that you can be - that might be in terms of compassion, kindness, having a balanced and rounded life which is a good role model for your family - all sorts of things.  Whatever situation we find ourselves in, we can always do something to feel that we are becoming more than we already are.

Hope you enjoy thinking about that one.  Any comments gratefully received.

If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got

I can't remember who this piece of wisdom is usually attributed to, but it's bandied around in the coaching world a great deal.  It's very true, and many of us spend a lot of time wondering why we're getting the same results even though we're working as hard as we can.  Is it because we keep on thinking in the same old ways, which means we end up doing the same old things without realising it?

For example, I'm trying at the moment to find a new avenue for using my coaching and NLP skills, but somehow I always end up looking at the same job adverts - none of which meet my needs.  Why is this?  I've realised it's because I'm using old ways of thinking, which have lead me down the same paths to the same actions I have used in the past, rather than approach this new challenge from a completely different angle.

If we have a limited amount of time we are often reluctant to do something extra to make a situation different.  I think it isn't really necessary to just keep taking on more and more in order to make a change.  You can create a big change by thinking about only one small thing in a different way.  Once you start to think about something differently, you usually start to feel differently too.  The change I've made is by looking again at an area of work which, on the surface, appeared a bit mundane and unstimulating. Then I thought creatively about how I could use my coaching and NLP skills within it and actually make it into something which would be fulfilling and provide a new challenge.  I'm really excited now about how far I could develop this area of work.

So I suppose a change to the title of this blog might be 'if you think what you've always thought, you'll get what you've always got'.  Any comments or further ideas?

What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?

I've just got back from my hols, and I guess like lots of people at this time of year, I've been thinking about where to go next with my work and life in general. 

When you're deciding on 'goals' or 'outcomes' or just 'plans' - whatever you feel most comfortable calling them - coaches have some great questions which we ask when we're trying to help people think of all the different ways in which they could achieve whatever it is they want.

 For example, my favourite - in the title - 'what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?'  What a fab question!  It really opens up all the possibilities before you decide what route you are going to take to your goal.

Other similarly helpful questions are: 'If you completely believed in yourself, what would you do?'  'If you had as much time and money as you needed, what would you do?' 'If there were no obstacles, what would you do?'

There are many more, but I'm not going to say anymore here!  If you'd like a bit of help with getting a different perspective on how to achieve what you want, get in touch.  I'm very happy to help.

                       

Say something nice to yourself today!

The things which we say to ourselves will affect our feelings, thoughts, behaviour, physical state and communication. We can learn new habits of challenging the old, unhelpful statements we make in our heads and over time we can learn to replace them with positive statements, which re-inforce the idea of the person we want to be and how we want to care for ourselves.

There is a multi-directional loop between self-talk, thoughts, feelings, behaviour, beliefs, external communication and physical state.  Any negativity in one area will affect the other areas.  Equally, a positive change in one area will have an impact over time on the other areas.  So if you say positive things to yourself it will have an impact on your behaviour and thoughts, and therefore, over time, will help change unhelpful beliefs which you may hold about yourself.

For example, if we say something kind to ourselves, it might make us smile, it is very likely to make us relax, it might make us stand more upright and look more confident. If we say positive things to ourselves, that will be communicated non-verbally to others, and will improve our communication with them. Positive self-talk implies that we accept ourselves as we are, with our own individual attributes and imperfections. It allows us to present our true selves to the world. Effective communication is based on accepting, compassionate honesty, both to ourselves and others. If we know that, generally speaking, our intention is to be kind and fair to others, why are we often not kind and fair to ourselves?

Negative self-talk is often linked to fear and the wish to protect ourselves from situations which we perceive as threatening. For example, if we fear being the centre of attention, we might tell ourselves that we're hopeless at speaking in public, regardless of whether we have evidence for that or not.  That way we avoid the underlying fear.  Because there is a positive intention in our brains which motivates the negative statements, we can thank these statements for trying to protect us, but remind them that they are getting in the way of us being the person we want to be, and therefore they need to move aside to allow more helpful self-talk to take place.

Here are some tips on how to create new self-talk habits:

Notice what you do well and congratulate yourself on it.  Anything and everything, no matter how big or small.

At the end of each day, list 2 things you did well today and 2 things you were grateful for.

If your values include treating people with kindness, consideration and compassion, decide to treat yourself in the same way.

Challenge the gremlin in your head who says unhelpful things to you. For example, if it tells you you're not as good at your job as you 'pretend' you are/people don't like you/you're no fun, etc, etc, ask it what it's evidence is for saying that.  Ask it what evidence there is for the opposite being true.  Remind the gremlin that although it is trying to protect you, it really isn't helping, and it needs to move over to let in a helpful, positive statement.  Alternatively, turn down the gremlin's voice, as if you were turning down the volume on a radio, or change it in some way. Some people give it a silly voice to take the power away from it.

When negative statements pop into your head, challenge them and think of an opposite, positive statement. Write down the positive statement and also the evidence you have which supports it.  Take the time to find evidence for these alternative, positive statements. By noting the evidence to support the positive statements, you will enable underlying negative beliefs to become unstuck and to change over time.

Watch out for statements including words like never, always, must, should and have to. (For example, 'I have to do better than this; I always get things wrong; I never sound confident'.) Challenge those words, and insert choice into statements, eg 'I could choose to approach this situation differently; sometimes I get things wrong, but often I don't'.  Including words like 'could, might, sometimes, want to' allows the choice about how to respond in any situation. Choice leads to a sense of control.

Practise saying positive statements to yourself frequently. Remember you have evidence for them. Remember also, that this is a new habit, and you are trying to replace an old, long-standing habit of saying negative things to yourself. It takes time to change a habit, so don't beat yourself up if the negative ones slip through sometimes; just challenge them and replace them with your positive statements.

When you say your positive statements to yourself, identify where your strong, positive internal voice is located in your body. What does it sound like? Make it louder and stronger when you use your positive self-talk. Notice the sense of confidence it gives you. Lift your head and smile.

Enjoy finding kind, realistic, valuing things to say to yourself. Be proud of who you are now and your ability to change yourself, if you choose to.

Choice

The idea of  'choice' can be a bit contentious in some areas of life.  We can spend a lot of time thinking we don't have choices about certain things we do.  If we let it, it can lead to a feeling of not being in control, of having decisions taken out of our hands.  It's all in the language:  we say 'I must clean the house'; I must get that information together'; 'I have to go and see my Mum'; 'I need to lose weight/earn more money/go out more/be more exciting' etc, etc, etc.

Really noticing the things you say to yourself, in your head, just for a few hours is very revealing.  How often do you give yourself a hard time with 'musts, need tos and have tos', filling your life with them so there's hardly any time left for the 'want tos'?

When you hear yourself saying those things, challenge them.  Next time you say 'I must clean the toilet/go to Sainsburys/lose 6 pounds/be more efficient at work.....say  'what would happen if I didn't? ...or even... 'if I don't do this, what's the worst that could happen?'....If you're still struggling with the gremlin in your head who likes 'musting' and 'shoulding', ask yourself whose voice it has?  Is it your own voice or someone else's?  If it's an imposter's voice, make it quiet and fade it away, like turning down the volume on a radio.  Replace it with your own clear, assertive voice, saying 'I can choose to do this if it is important to me at this time', or something similar, in your own words.  Then mentally check whether it's really a priority or not.

Sometimes you really do want to do the things you tell yourself you must do, and that's ok, because then you can say 'I want to clean the toilet/go Sainsburys/phone Great Aunt Edith', and your feelings will let you know if you truly mean it.  That allows choice back in and lets you feel in control again. 

Choice creates possibility, breeds opportunity and lets us express our true identity again.  That way, we have a really good chance of living in peace with ourselves with more energy, enthusiasm and vitality.  Hurray for choice!  The good choices you make for yourself benefit everyone in the end.

Enough or too much?

A coaching client set up a small business recently and set himself a timescale of 2 years to have the business up and running in the way he visualised it.  We talked a lot about the timescale and why he had decided it would take this long.  Eventually, he re-set the timescale, in fact, he reduced it by almost half.  What actually happened was that he achieved the goals he set for himself in even less time than that.

During our discussions, we talked a lot about goals in the comfort zone, stretch zone and panic zone.  The timescale he initially set for himself was in his comfort zone, and seemed so far away there was a real danger it wouldn't be achieved at all.  After talking about a timescale that really set him panicking, he decided on something which put him into his stretch zone: he could still sleep at night, but the goal was exciting and motivating enough to also get him out of bed in the morning.

Really getting the right goal is essential to achievement, as is having the right timescale, and then being able to break it down into manageable steps which keep you motivated and having a sense of moving forwards.  Getting the balance between making your goals truly achievable, but also exciting enough to keep feeling challenged is the key.  That's where the objective input from a coach will make the difference.

It doesn't always feel easy to do something new, or to tackle an old issue in a different way, so having support to keep going and stay on track is great:

'I'm always doing things I can't do - that's how I get to do them' - Picasso.

As if

OK, so who thinks they are not confident?  Many of us feel like that sometimes, perhaps even a lot of the time (if we were prepared to admit it).  Who would like to feel confident more of the time?  I guess most of us would.

Well, here's a little adapted NLP/coaching trick, based broadly, with a bit of poetic licence and a few other NLP concepts thrown in, on Milton Erickson's idea, 'you can pretend anything and master it'.

To start with, remember a specific time when you have really felt and acted confidently.  Yes, you have been confident at some point in your life, even if it was when you were 10 and organising your friends in the playground to play your favourite game at break time. Or what about when you are cooking a meal you know you do really well?  Or when you are telling a funny story to your best, best friend/sister/mother (ie anyone who doesn't judge you)?

If any of you are telling yourself that you are never confident, think of someone you know or someone famous who is really confident and imagine that you are them for a minute.

Right, now pause for a moment and really remember (or imagine) how it felt to be confident - see what you saw, hear what you heard, and really feel those feelings of confidence that you felt then.  Bring them back to mind and make the picture bigger and brighter, louder and clearer, and really feel those lovely feelings of confidence.  Imagine yourself putting on a confidence coat, with all of those good feelings and memories of confidence woven in to the fabric, surrounding you, making you feel secure; sure that your confidence is all around you.  Decide what colour it's going to be, and exactly what shape and style. Make sure you know exactly what this coat looks like and how it feels to wear it. Every time you put on this confidence coat now, the feeling of brilliant, uplifting confidence you have just re-created will come flooding back.

Go through the sequence again, re-creating the sounds, images and feelings of that time when you were really confident, and feel that great feeling even more intensely this time.  Put on your confidence coat, look at  yourself in a mirror if you have one nearby while you are wearing your confidence coat and see yourself smiling, standing upright, taller. Notice how you stand, how you look, giving off messages of cool, calm, confidence.

Now practice it - think of a specific time you want to be confident.  Don't try to do it all the time at first; make it easy for yourself to succeed.  Now you've thought of your moment when you want to be confident, imagine youself being in that situation wearing your lovely confidence coat.  Notice in detail how you act, how you look and how you feel.

(By the way, it doesn't have to be a coat if that image doesn't work for you - it could be a confidence bracelet, confidence socks, whatever you like, as long as you know exactly what it looks like and how it feels to wear it.)

Next step: go and actually do it in the situation you've chosen!  You have nothing to lose, and, trust me - it really works.  Please let me know how it goes.  Have fun!

Same or different?

I was chatting to my friend Jane last week.  She's really interested in personal development but hasn't got much spare thinking time at the moment because she's recently separated and has got 2 children the same age as mine.  During the taxiing to football, tennis, cricket, athletics, and every other sport it's possible for a 10 and 12 year old to do, she spends precious time sitting in her car in traffic (thank God for traffic jams for a few peaceful moments), thinking about how she thinks she'd like her life to be different.

'I just haven't got the time to change what I do', she said, 'I can't find a way to free up time to really have a look at doing something different'.

'What would you like to be different?' I asked. 'Hmm, I don't know' she said.

When we talked a bit more, she decided that she actually likes a lot of what she has, and that she just wants to think differently, for the moment, anyway.  She says she loves the conversations she has with her kids (in the car, of course) - 'Mum, what's for dinner? Jack cut his leg open really badly today.  He tripped over a javelin.  Megan said it looked like sausage, can we have sausages for tea?' - etc, etc.

Jane said she falls into the trap of thinking about what she hasn't got, instead of what she has got.  We talked about how the Barefoot Doctor (our hero!) often mentions that we have the life we have chosen right now - our unconscious mind has drawn to us the things it wants, often without us knowing much about it. 

Jane seemed very cheerful when she went off to pick the children up for the next round of fetching and carrying.  She said 'I'm going to think about how I'm actually doing what's important to me right now.  When the time comes to make some changes, I'll know.  For the moment, I'm going to make sure I get a sense of achievement and confidence from the juggling, multi-tasking and all the other things that make women fab.'

As Buddha said, 'it's your mind that creates this world'.

Pony food and NLP

"Mum?"
"Yes?"
"Do you know what I'd feed my pony on?"
"But you haven't got one"
"Yes, but if I did have one..." I don't know how many conversations I've had with my beloved daughter on the way to school (and on the way home from school, and on the way to riding....and on the way back... you get the picture) about this one.  I was trying to listen to an interview on radio 4 about tomorrow's election, but the combination of hypothetical pony food, a broken radio aerial and visions of a hung parliament involving various MPs about to dangle from the rafters of the Houses of Parliament - I won't say which MPs for the sake of diplomacy, but it was quite enjoyable - rudely interrupted my ability to concentrate.
"Mum!"
"What?"
"Do you think we'd get bran or oats?"
"I've just bought you the Coco Pops Rocks you asked for".
"No! Not for me!  Anyway, what does congregational mean?"

The point of all this is to comment on my children's amazing focus on what they want.  My daughter thinks incessantly about ponies; my son thinks incessantly about the next piece of ultra expensive sports equipment he 'needs' (at the moment it's a wildly overpriced tennis racquet).  They talk about their focus of interest ALL THE TIME; I'm guessing they think about it all the time; and, actually, they seem to get us to spend a lot of our spare family time helping them to follow these interests.

What do we spend time thinking about as adults?  I think we often think about the things we don't want, the things we want to stop doing.  It's like the election - certain parties tell us we need change, but what to?  They aren't very specific about what exactly they would do differently, or perhaps more importantly how.

Children are so great at knowing what they want - and often how to get it.  As we become adults our thoughts get confused with what we think we ought to do, instead of what we'd really like to do.  Obviously we have to learn to think about how our actions affect others, but we can get so worried about other people we forget to just do what we want - for some of the time, at least.

I'm going to have a different conversation with my daughter on the way home from school this afternoon.  It'll still be about ponies, but this time I'm going to enjoy her total absorption in her interest and learn from her how I can re-create that overwhelming enthusiasm in my own interests again, which I'm sure I also had as a child. 

NLP is all about modelling excellence - being able to bring back into adult life that fantastically blinkered child's focus on what you are striving for is definitely worth having a go at.  Remember the idea that you get what you focus on?  See the nearest child for details....

When the wrong time is the right time

Lots of people are feeling the pinch of the recession at the moment.  Fewer jobs, high prices, having to think more carefully about what we spend our money on.  It would be fairly logical to think, therefore, that it's not a good time to make changes at the moment.  Sit tight and wait for things to get better....
From an economic perspective, I think better things are going to be a long time coming, so are we prepared to sit and wait for someone else to take action?  I'm not advocating a revolution - well, not at the moment anyway - but we can often tell ourselves that difficult times are not the right time to think about change in our lives.
When times are difficult, we can sometimes sit nursing our wounds until the immediate pain passes, but what about using the negative feelings of things not being as we want them to be, and turning them into positive energy, which we can then use to give us focus and make things better, even if it's only in small steps to start with?
An obvious example might be where you want to change job, but there aren't many around.  You could just sit at your desk everyday getting more and more frustrated with doing 'the wrong thing'.  Alternatively, you could spend time finding out what work you would really like to do - perhaps do a training course in it, to give you a taste of what your new work might be like.  If money is an issue, spend time on free e-learning and research - there's lots of free information around if you have a look.
A good starting place is the 'What Colour is your Parachute' workbook.  It's good because it starts by helping you to identify your best skills.  This will raise your awareness of them and encourage you to feel good about them.  The likely outcome is that you'll use those skills even more in your current work, simply because you are thinking about them more, making your present job more satisfying while you're planning your escape!  You can also use your current work situation to refine your best skills even further, to make them even better for your new venture when it emerges. 
If you don't want to get the book, just write down a list of 10 things you do really well, either in your current job, your home life, or anywhere and have a think about how you will use those skills in your new work, however different that work might appear to be on the surface.
All coaches and NLP practitioners will tell you that we get what we think about, so while you're noticing the great skills you already have, which you are improving even further for your new work venture, life will seem more positive, and that new opportunity could present itself even quicker than you're expecting, just by virtue of the fact that you are focussing positively on what you are planning to do in the future (and are actually doing a bit of now).
I think it was Anthony Robbins (apologies if it was someone else!) who said that if you write 10 goals down, put the piece of paper in a drawer and don't look at it again for years, you'll find, when you do finally look at it again, that you have achieved about 8 of them.  He probably said it more elegantly than that, but you get the idea - it's your intention that counts, and once the intention is there, the energy flows along that path.
Have a think about what you can do today to bring the future a bit closer.

Limiting beliefs and what they do for us

Sometimes it can be easier to think we can't do things.  If we believe, for example, that we're just not confident enough to introduce ourselves to that new person in the office who seems really interesting, or that we just can't stand up in front of an audience to make a presentation, it can be quite handy.  If we don't try to challenge ourselves, we can carry on doing the things we find easy to do, and stay safely within our comfort zone.  Which is fine as long as you're happy doing that.  Truly happy, I mean.  Not just resigned to doing the same old things, day in, day out, and having a good moan about it.

In coaching, when people look at what they think is a limiting belief, we have to have a think about what holding that belief is doing for them, as well as what it's costing them.

A while ago I held the belief that I couldn't run my own business.  'I'm just not a business woman' I told myself.  There came a point where I had to look at that belief properly to see what was going on.  I found out that what was really happening was that other things were a greater priority at that time which needed my energy and attention.  Holding that particular limiting belief allowed me to delay the decision to start my business.  It was the right decision at the time, but I wasn't brave enough back then to say it. However, because I found out what was behind the belief, when the right time came to start up the business, I was no longer held back by some dodgy belief which wasn't based on anything factual at all.

Try challenging a belief today, just a little one, like 'my teenage daughter is going to be really difficult when I get home'.  Try holding the opposite belief just for a while.  Imagine yourself noticing the nice things she does, even if it's only one or two. What does it mean to hold a different belief?  What would it be like?  What would it allow to happen?  Just try it out, and I guarantee you'll notice different things going on.  Your brain will be primed to look out for different information.  You might not immediately completely swap an old belief for the opposite, but at least you've made a small movement in the right direction, and proved to yourself that a different choice is possible.  Just give it a try.

I have to quote Henry Ford, even though I'm sure you've heard it before: 'whether you believe you can or you can't, you're right'.  How true.

Work, children and shoes

I sent some of my friends an e-mail yesterday forwarded from Schuh about their new season shoes.  I couldn't think of anything better to send them on a Monday morning, with the first of the spring weather. Work doesn't compete with shoes on a Monday morning.

I also listened to two psychologists on radio 4 today, while I was driving home from the school run, telling me how to bring up my children (actually, it was almost sensible, for once) and it got me thinking about the constant juggle of family - the tennis matches, netball, swimming, sleepovers, massive pile of PE kit thrown in front of the washing machine, blocking the cat flap with imminent consequences - and wanting to have a professional life...and more shoes.

I saw a friend at the weekend who had also invested in some new shoes for summer.  She was very keen to explain what they meant.  They weren't necessarily practical, but the pleasure they give her, and how they make her feel about herself when she wears them is much more important than that.  Shoes are a mirror of our soul (!) - and I'm going to add them to my list of NLP non-verbal communication...
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So why am I telling you all this?  Because these are some of the most important things in my life (there are a few others too, thankfully) and I'm just a typical woman, living a life similar to many others, and I'm still making my introductions in blog world.

I love the ideas of self-fulfilment and self-determination behind coaching and NLP, and I'm constantly striving to achieve that for myself and my family and everyone I work with, but sometimes the juggling goes a bit haywire, until I reset and get back on track by using my NLP and re-focussing (and unblocking the cat flap).

Spring is a good time to re-think things - we've stopped hibernating in our winter inertia, making excuses about why we can't change anything, and now the sunshine is bringing us out of our shells.  I'm happy to work with anyone who is ready to make a change or review where they are in life, but if you're a woman with a life like mine, I think we'd work really well together.  Especially if you want to come and admire my new shoes.

Welcome to my New Blog

Welcome to my new blog in which I will be posting my thoughts and news about Life Coaching in Cornwall and in general.