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How Important is Reality?

Just how important is reality or perhaps isn’t?

The reason why this question has come up on my agenda recently is that I recently went to see, in my humble opinion, a fantastic film – The Greatest Showman. A year or so ago I watched a film called ‘LaLa Land’, some of you may have seen it, it had loads of positive reviews that critics loved it, it won a ton of Oscars and when I watched it I was so bored. If you haven’t seen it let me give you the storyline because seriously I’m not ruining anything for you, two people meet, they fall in love, they break up, they meet other people after they’ve broken up, they see each other again across a crowded bar and that’s it, that’s the whole story.

LaLa Land kind of ruined musical films for me for a good long while however this week I was brave and I watched The Greatest Showman and I loved it as in I want to watch it again and again. It was so, so, so, so good and the music in it is, in my humble opinion, phenomenal so I posted on my facebook to share the joy with everybody else and probably nine out of ten people who had seen it also loved it, there were a couple of people who were less enthusiastic shall we say. One fellow hypnotherapist made some comments which I found really rather interesting and this is not a direct quote but it was something along the lines of:

“It was a good film and the music was good however the storyline was a million miles away from the truth of the story about PT Barnum”

The person that made the comment seemed a little bit aggravated by this it’s just something I picked up in the tone of how it was written obviously that may not be the case because there is no tonality in reading people’s words. I started to wonder well who cares, you know, it’s a great movie and it made me feel good and apparently it’s made quite a lot of other people feel good as well so does it really matter if the story that’s told later is different to this story that actually happened in reality?

From an NLP perspective and on on a moral level, I have a huge subscription to the idea of telling the truth as much as I possibly can even to the extent that sometimes it might be detrimental to some of my relationships but for the sake of a clear conscience and getting a good night’s sleep I really like the idea of being upfront and honest with people because it keeps my conscience clean but in the NLP world it seems like that is not necessarily the case and here’s why.

There are certain processes within NLP that we use which deliberately get people to think about old events in very different ways to the way in which they happened in real life, let me give you an example. If somebody has had a traumatic experience in their past and they’re still having problems with their old event years and years later then one of the processes that we could use with them could be a sub-modality intervention or fast phobia cure. When we do those interventions we

explicitly ask the client to begin to see the old event in a different way, perhaps we take the colour out of it or we shrink it down maybe even put some comedy voices in there, some overlaying of baby giggling, all sorts of different things in order to change the impact that that memory had. But now the memory isn’t true anymore, it’s not an accurate reflection of the real-life situation.

So is it really important that we subscribe so heavily to reality in our lives? For me, the things I’ve been able to achieve in my life have definitely come about as a result of a slightly bonkers imagination but I wouldn’t be without that because I wouldn’t have got to where I am now if I hadn’t have had the creativeness and ability to distort my situation in positive ways. in order to move it on to better things later on. From my perspective, if we are able to take something and make it better then why not! Why not almost like divorce ourselves from reality a little bit, I also tend to think that the human brain isn’t necessarily geared up for dealing with reality anyway.

As you know when we take information in through our brains we’re being bombarded with stuff which we cannot effectively process because there is quite simply too much of it, so some of the information just gets outright deleted and we never knew that it was there in the first place, not on a conscious level anyway. Some of it is distorted, so it gets changed in some ways, it might get over-exaggerated or minimised and some of it is generalised upon to link it up with a ton of other stuff that maybe it didn’t realistically link up with but that enables us to be able to process all of that information that’s coming in through our senses so that we can begin to make some form of sense of the world.

Often in NLP when we refer to that processing of information we talk about it in chunks of information or bits, which does make it sound like computers and actually that’s completely inaccurate because human beings are really nothing like computers, in fact, computers are dealing way more effectively with reality than human beings are.  If you complete a word document on your computer and then save it later on, when you go back to it, maybe six months later, a year later, three years later you’re still gonna get the same word document that you had created in the first place, unless you have some kind of fault with your computer but on the whole, your computer is going to stick up on the screen the exact piece of work that you had created way back in time.

The human brain doesn’t work like that, not only are we deleting, distorting and generalising on the information that we take in from one moment to the next but we also repeat that process each time we recall a memory or an experience that we’ve had in the past. Why? Well because our state gets in the way depending on what we’re doing at that moment and how we’re thinking and feeling at that moment of recalling, we could then end up having a very different experience of the memory.

I’ll give you another example, I have to confess I have seen The Greatest Showman twice so far and I’m planning a third watch. The first time around that I watched the film, I was in a bit more of a stress state and it was after work, I was running late and It was just a stressful situation. There was a scene in the film where the main character was speaking with his family having just got the sack from his job and I’m not spoiling anything here, by the way, his daughters were asking him about making wishes. Now there was a way in which I interpreted that particular portion of the storyline which made me think that he had forgotten his daughter’s birthday, the very first time I watched the film and heard that portion of the story. I was operating from the belief that he had forgotten his daughter’s birthday and this was accounting for the things that he said and how he was reacting but when I watched the film the second time around, it was a lot more chilled out and when I watched the film for a second time around, I realised that I’d completely got the wrong end of the stick the first time because he was actually toying with his daughter, he was messing about with her and pretending to have forgotten her birthday.

I like to think that I’m a fairly astute character, that I’m quite good at tuning into these things but apparently state affects even me! So this is why when we have a recall of a memory or experience from the past we might end up changing that memory or experience as we recall it based on our present state. This means that we could end up deleting, distorting and generalising upon our memories in different ways every single time we remember them. Computers are going to be much more reliable in terms of representing accurate information compared to a human being, human beings are not quite so accurate when doing that process.

I like to think that if you’re creative and you have a good imagination then good for you, just make sure you do find things with it. Very often people use their imaginations to trip themselves up in unhelpful ways, for example, people who have phobias have great imaginations, they’re really good at imagining worst-case scenarios but it’s not the best way for them to be able to use their imagination, it could be put to much better use however instead they use it for the purposes of

seeing man eating spiders sitting on their face and things like that. If you’re using your imagination for positive purposes and you know really who cares about the fact that it’s different to the reality of what’s really going on in life. Sometimes what’s going on in life, you might want some time out from there, ultimately it’s all about your intention if you have an imagination which you are using to harm yourself or

to mislead others then maybe being away from reality isn’t such a good thing but if your intentions are good, if you’re using your imagination to be creative, to help change the world in wonderful, powerful, meaningful ways or maybe just to change your own world in wonderful and powerful and meaningful ways then that is, in my humble opinion, a very good thing.

Imagination is an art form, so being able to utilise it and escape from reality for a little while can be a truly wonderful thing and if you can use it for the purposes of making yourself and/or others happy then that indeed is an even better thing to be using your imagination for. In the words of PT Barnum:

‘The noblest art is that of making others happy’.

By Gemma Bailey

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Lower your Expectations

The topic for today is all about lowering your expectations. I know that’s not very NLP of me because you know a lot of NLP is focus on the positives and it’s just really unrealistic because life does not serve us in that way.

Sometimes it’s helpful to be a bit more realistic about the serving that you’re going to get in this thing called life but in addition, it can actually be really helpful if you lower your expectations completely because when you do, you actually start to get impressed by everyday stuff, like a butterfly. If you have lowered your expectations of what a good day should be and you see a butterfly, it’s already a good day, happy times granted.

I went to my mum’s house and she lives in a council house in quite a suburban area right next to the main road and a massive pheasant showed up in the garden, she named him Fred the pheasant and he stayed in the garden for a good couple of hours and was absolutely beautiful, the chances of seeing a bird like that in her garden are slim to none and it’s never happened before.

We’ve got a hypnotherapy diploma training coming up in the next few weeks and the training is going to be taking place at a hotel that I used to use years and years ago and haven’t used in a very long time. The reason why we switched was because they kept putting their prices up but because they came to know me quite well and they knew that I knew my way around the place they became a little bit lazy in their service, so they would maybe neglected to refresh the halfway through the day and then as the trainer I was also empty in the bins and going off to fetch more teas and coffees for people.

However every year they still put the prices up even though the service was decreasing so we switched to a different venue but unfortunately we’ve got to go back to the old venue for just one week as our new venue is currently booked up for the week where we have training taking place. We were going to be going back to the Holiday Inn instead of using The Boxmore trust where we usually use their facilities for training.

Going back to the Holiday Inn reminded me of an incident that happened there one day which, now I look back on and laugh but at the time left me somewhat perplexed. I had gone into the room that morning and discovered that whilst we had teas and coffees available for the delegates, we didn’t have any milk! So I went upstairs to the reception desk and there was a guy on reception who, you know how it is when your mind is really busy, perhaps doing something completely different and then somebody drops you out of that moment with a question, which you were not expecting. I think in hindsight that’s probably what happened to him that day, I approached the desk and said “Morning, would it be okay if we could have some milk?” and he looked up at me and said “what do you mean milk?” and then I was confused, I mean when I’ve asked for milk before no one has said what do you mean milk, so I said “like the kind from a cow” and he then looked a little bit irritated by this. He then said for “what purpose do you need the milk?” and I said for the tea.

At this point in time, I’m thinking to myself, this is fairly obvious no? so then he responds with “what do you want me to put it in?” and “I said I don’t know? a jug or the little plastic cups, something like that?” At which point he stormed off and he went and got the milk, so you know I got the job done but it was just a very bizarre conversation and it was just the perfect embodiment of what my experience of using that venue was actually like. The reason why I’m sharing this with you is because I had an expectation that we’re paying quite a lot of money for this venue now, therefore, I expect the service to be pristine, like on the money but that was not the experience that happened. In reality, what happened was that I was often dealing with confused people who didn’t really know what was going on and who was sometimes quite rude to us and now I have to go back to this venue again.

The point is that I’m not going in with an expectation of perfection because if I do then I will spend a week being disappointed instead I’m going in with an expectation of having a great time on the training and having some fun with my delegates and probably just kind of making our way through and making do with the venue that we have. If you can make your expectations of other people or life in general not just realistic but actually a little bit lower then you give yourself more opportunities for pleasant surprises and for discovering ways in which you can become satisfied that you didn’t even know that you could.

It can be helpful to be satisfied with the little things in life and although in NLP we encourage you to dream big, set big goals for yourself, to keep yourself occupied, I personally feel that sometimes that can take some of the smaller and actually quite fundamentally important things in life away from our attention. If you can be inspired or feel happy because you went outside in nature and you saw the first daffodil of spring or because you saw a bird that is quite rare and you haven’t seen it for a while or something like that if you can do those sorts of things and still

get a sense of satisfaction then that is a successful accomplishment, that means

that you’ve been able to find appreciation in the smaller things in life and have perhaps lowered your expectations of what having a good day looks like

The Pursuit of Change

Today I’m going to be discussing how it is that change is possible even when you think it isn’t my behavior and communications

It’s interesting because in my work I have people who come to see me, at my Hertfordshire therapy clinic, because they want to change and they obviously believe that change is possible, otherwise they probably wouldn’t bother coming to see me. There are other people that I work with, who are not clients and there are the people that I know socially, for example where I have noticed that some people develop an idea that the things that they dislike about themselves are not changeable.

Imagine being in a situation where you have resigned yourself to being stuck with the things that you dislike about yourself, you’ve decided that these things cannot be changed, that you cannot change them and that there is no point really finding another way of doing things, you’re just stuck with what you’ve got and that’s the end of it. Then imagine that those things about yourself actually really impact upon your relationships with other people, how well you are perceived to the rest of the world, how well you are able to form other relationships moving forward, imagine believing that those things about yourself, those qualities that you need to improve that there’s no point even trying because you’re just stuck with them doesn’t that sound a little bit crazy.

To not want to bother improving and changing the things that you can change and improve about yourself but actually just living with it instead, that’s nuts! why would anybody ever do that? Here’s the thing, sometimes change is not seen, sometimes the tools that we need to be able to make those changes are not easy to come by and perhaps in the past you have given it your best, like a lot a lot of other times before, you’ve really gone at it all guns blazing, thinking that this thing, this new way of being, this methodology, this strategy, this therapeutic intervention, this is going to be the one that finally makes things change for you and then it doesn’t work.

It happens that sometimes the route that we want to take to create the changes that we wish to make are not the right ones for us, for our individual psychology, for our way of being, for our environment, for our way of life, sometimes you don’t hit upon the right route to take you to where you want to be first time around or second or third or a hundredth time. Sometimes change doesn’t come fast, sometimes it doesn’t come easy and sometimes it doesn’t come via the route that you think you need to take. Does that mean that you should just back off and you know just make do with what you’ve got in life?

Is it at all possible that this thing that you want to change about yourself is actually quite important? It could actually make a really big difference. Is it not even more important to continue? The pursuit of that change, in spite of the knocks and failures and errors that you’re going to make a long way, I believe and I’m not a particularly spiritual person, but I believe that even when we have these situations where it seems like we’d invested too much hope in finding the right source to help us to become the person that we want to be, even if that doesn’t work out and it turns out you have been completely going the wrong way forward. that there is still going to be a time in the future when you gain something from that experience and that thing might be wisdom, later that thing might just be a funny story about how once upon a time you tried rebirthing or age regression or some other new-age methodology to help you to overcome those anxieties that you had and it didn’t work and you felt like a woolly nose lady bashing cymbals in the background.

Even if all you get from it is a funny story that you end up telling somewhere and  for some people it works. Even if that’s all you’ll get, you’ll still get something out of it, there is still some reward to be had by keeping going and looking for a way that will work for you, to help you become the person that you want to be. We know that the human brain has the ability to rewire itself, things can change in there and you can change them but sometimes it’s as if our ego has got cemented into place and that ego says this is who I am and everyone else is gonna have to live with it and in fact, therefore, I have to live with it too, I have to stay this way.

Don’t let your ego in the way of you being able to recognise that past you doesn’t know everything, that perhaps other people have solutions that you haven’t discovered yet, that perhaps other people might have some quirky alternative ways that really work for helping you to be able to change who you are and how you are in life that would wreak, for you, very positive rewards and benefits. Don’t let your ego get in the way of you exploring another way of changing yourself, your habits by convincing yourself that you are the one person on the planet whose psychology is set in stone and doesn’t work on the same brain wavelength that every other human being does, don’t do that to yourself, that’s silly and it prevents you from moving forward and from having the life that you might like to have.

Sometimes we need to put aside our current thinking and get a bit curious all over again so that we can figure out, we can begin to take, to move in a different direction in life, maybe there are some learnings that you have yet to experience that will take me to where I need to be. Don’t be fooled into thinking that you’ve already learnt it all, that if it existed you would have already found it, that’s not going to wash around here, around here we keep searching, we’re curious, part of what we learn in NLP is an attitude of curiosity, we’re looking at developing within ourselves a way of being using our creative brain to find alternative ways forward when we are in stuck situations and when we cannot find them we accept that we haven’t got all the answers here but this doesn’t mean that they don’t exist, it just means that you haven’t found them for yourself yet.

If you cannot find them alone then find someone who’s a good researcher, who has a good brain for being able to find a way forward when they seem to be stuck in times of trouble because those people exist. I would like to think that on the most part, always for my own problems but certainly for other people’s, I am one of those people. we’re going to suck up the potential for disappointment because we know there is highly likely to be a lot of it around but we’re also not going to give up on ourselves quite so easily moving forward, we’re going to accept that we might not know how that change will occur but we’re also going to accept that change can occur and if it can then there is a way for us to evolve ourselves with that, there is a way for us to bring that forward into our awareness. The skills and knowledge of other people who might be able to look at things from a different angle to what we can could helps us to evolve, to achieve  that change. That may require that we reach out for and ask for help because sometimes we need to reach out to others in order to be able to cultivate that opportunity to find whatever it is we need to find in order to open up the possibility of change to ourselves and that’s the pursuit of change is what I want you to focus on.

Learning Hypnosis

We know of course that hypnosis is great for inducing a deep state of relaxation because it gives the brain an opportunity to relax, to maybe put some things in better order, so that you can then focus on them better once you are out of that trance experience.

We want to train the brain that flits very easily from one thing to another to focus and hypnosis is a very deep state of focus. However, for some people hypnosis isn’t the best way forward because going from a very intense state of a flitting, jumping around the brain to very deep relaxation they’re kind of at opposite poles. They’re at opposite ends of the scale so some basic visualisation could be useful.

Close your eyes and all I want you to do is to call to mind the colour red. So I just want you to see on the backs of your eyelids or to focus in your mind on the colour red. So, all you’re going to see there right now is red, red, red, red, red red, all around – it will be a red object that you see a red door or just a great big screen covered in red and that’s all I want you to think about and focus on is red.

Now change that to orange. So that all you see is the colour orange, all around all over the backs of your eyes filling the screen on your mind, nothing but orange. And orange moves to yellow. So, your entire focus now is on that bright yellow, yellow all over the backs of your eyelids and on the screen in your mind, all that you see is yellow.

Think now in your mind of green and just see green so that your whole mind is filled with green. Everything is awash with green and now blue. I want you to focus completely and entirely on a deep shade of blue. And see everything covered in blue. Blue is filling your entire mind. A great big sheet of blue and now I want you to focus on purple. A very deep purple. And I want you to watch that shade of purple turning darker and darker until it turns black. A dark heavy velvety black and it gets darker and heavier.

And just notice how your other thoughts have slowed down completely. Perhaps you hadn’t even thought about them and if you’re enjoying the black then you can stay there. However, you could go to white if you’re already bored. And that white can get lighter and brighter. A higher and brighter white than it was before. And you can hold on to that for just a few seconds now that bright light whiteness like a healing white light just hold that there for a few seconds.

And notice as you did that, that your thoughts were entirely on that one thing. Now that took us what twenty seconds and it was easy. You can break your day up just by doing simple things like that. It just has to take twenty seconds and if you get good at that then you can start thinking about using deeper levels of trance and hypnosis. Remember that the problem isn’t so much that you have all this stuff going on in your head, it’s that you’ve given a greater degree of importance to the things that are going around in your head than you have to your own wellbeing.

Now you have a choice. Now you can choose stuff in my head or my own wellbeing. You know relaxation isn’t the same for everyone. For me, it’s about watching an episode of an old episode of Spooks, by myself, or having a lay-in but for you, relaxation might be about taking a walk or driving your car.

Some people feel that they have to be doing something to be able to be relaxed and some feel that they have to do nothing in order to feel relaxed. Now you just have to do the thing that works best for you, that helps you to calm down those thoughts in your mind.

The Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic provides Hypnotherapists and NLP coaches in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex and Coventry to help with the management of stress, anxiety and depression.

For more information about our free consultations and sessions, contact us on 0203 6677294

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Using Matching and Mirroring When Meeting New People

From an NLP perspective, when you meet someone new, think about the matching and mirroring of your body language. If you want to create a good first impression, rapport is absolutely essential. Now rapport is all about us liking people that are like ourselves. We connect with them much more easily and more naturally and because you don’t necessarily know this person’s history, you don’t know about their hobbies and interests, there’s a better way of being able to get rapport with them. On the basis that the majority of our communication, fifty five percent comes through our body language, our body language is the best way to gain that rapport and the way we do this in NLP is using a tool called matching and mirroring.

What this means is that you copy some of the gestures and some of the physical observations that you make about the person you’re communicating with. So, if you notice, for example, that they tap their finger gently on their knee whilst they’re talking and then pause when it’s your turn to talk, you could perhaps be tapping your finger or tapping your foot whilst you’re talking and then pause when it’s their turn to talk. If you notice that they, for example, lean over on one side then you too can move yourself into a posture where you are leaning over to one side.

Remember you need to be subtle about this. You don’t want to come across as weird and just outright copying them but it is a great way to be able to get rapport. The more subtle you can be the better, so if you can match and mirror things like breathing and blinking rates, that’s much more effective than some of the bigger gestures.

However most of us perhaps cross our legs when we sit down so if you notice that their legs crossed then you do the same. If they uncross legs, you can leave a few seconds and then you can uncross legs too. So, the difference between matching and mirroring isn’t all that great. Mirroring simply means that you are copying as if you were looking in the mirror so if they are right hand raised then if you are facing them you would be left hand raised, because that would be like a mirror image.

Matching means if they were sitting opposite you and they had their right hand raised, you would have your right hand raised, so you would be opposites to each other as you were looking at each other. However, they both appear to be just as effective as each other.

These skills are taught at our Hertfordshire and North London Clinic by our trained therapists.

I remember when I was working as a Nursery Manager for a large private day nursery corporation and I interviewed a nursery nurse. It makes me laugh thinking about it now – I interviewed a nursery nurse who wanted to work in our baby room. One of the things that we did in the baby room was something called ‘floor play’ which is when you have lots of different activities, but they’re all set out on the floor because they are for babies.

And this nursery nurse that came to see me was very keen on making a good first impression. She was neat and tidy. She had revised her C.V. really well she knew all about the technical stuff in terms of looking after babies and she was coming across as very confident. In fact, if I remember correctly she was coming for a supervisor’s job so I think she was trying extra hard.

Now this was one of those situations where I really had to kind of bite my lip for the rest of the interview because I was very close to laughing my head off. The question I asked her was “which particular activity do you most like to do with the babies in the baby room” and her answer was “I really like to do foreplay”. Instead of floor play.

So, she went bright red and I just bit my lip and pretended that I hadn’t noticed. Here’s the thing if you get your words in a muddle, apologise and carry on. If it’s something like that then I think as long as the person that you are trying to make a good impression with has got a sense of humour, it would be okay to have a giggle about it, but watch out for their reaction before you decide how to address it.

The Hypnotherapy and NLP clinic in Hertfordshire and North London can help you to learn the skills of effective rapport building just a few sessions. Just give us a call to find out more.

 

 

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Overcoming a relationship break up

Have a think about the experiences that you’ve had with that person. You’re probably doing a lot of this already, but remember that every time you replay an experience that you had with someone you delete, distort and generalise on the experience that you had which could mean that if you’re replaying all the good times that will no longer have together and that you’re deleting what maybe wasn’t quite so good about those times, distorting what was good about them to make them seem even better than they really are perhaps even generalizing that this was the best relationship you’ve ever had. When you think about stuff too much it really becomes quite different to the truth of what the situation was.

There are certain people that I can recall and when I think about them, I make it seem as if it was a really great relationship and that we had a really great time. Actually, if I look at the bigger picture I can see that the reasons why things ended were good reasons because there were definitely issues there at the same time. Remember that being dumped, being left or having to end a relationship does lead to some negative feelings but those temporary feelings are better than being treated very badly in the future. At the very least you wouldn’t want to be with someone who didn’t really want to be with you because you like yourself more than that, don’t you?

Get busy. Have fun with life, have more fun do more fun stuff. Remember that we only ever really learn through experience and later on there will come a time when you look back and go ‘ah that’s why I needed to have that happen.’

It might not make sense right now but just know it’s okay to feel bad when a relationship ends for a period of time and that over time you will automatically and quite naturally start to feel better. They’ll be in your thoughts less and you’ll start to pick yourself up and move on. And the when you do you’ll look back on the experience and it will all make perfect sense as to why things had to end the way that they did.

Ask yourself this question: How much more pain would you have had to have had before you knew it was time to move on?

I don’t think you would really want to have to do that to yourself, would you? So, be pleased that you have much more control over yourself than being run like a big bag of chemicals. Know that those chemicals do play a vital and important role in your life in determining how you feel in any given situation.

But then once you’ve recognised those chemical feelings exist it is wholly and completely possible for you to take greater responsibility and greater control over the way that you are feeling. You don’t have to be run by your emotions and that you can choose to be feeling exactly how you want to feel in any given moment.

You don’t have to depend on other people to be feeling a certain way. All of those feelings exist within you. They are your feelings and that you can have them whenever you choose to do so.

A good hypnotherapist will have the skills to help you overcome the pain of a relationship breakup and hypnotherapy can be incredibly helpful in this area. Contact the Hypnotherapy and NLP clinic to arrange a free consultation.

 

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

No More Resentment or Eating Burnt Chop

Not eating burnt chop is a metaphor about getting rid of resentment. It’s a type of martyrdom where we put what others want ahead of what we want. Often not even voicing what it is that we want so the other person doesn’t even know that they’re putting us out. It’s a combination of a conflict avoidance technique, self-talk that tells us we don’t deserve to get what we want and a belief that asking for what you want is rude.

One of the by-products of ‘eating the burnt chop’ is that we resent the person who we are constantly giving in to. Mostly this is a partner or close friend or family. This can make us snappy for no apparent reason (as far as they’re concerned) and unhappy. In addition it doesn’t have a good impact on our health. Although I am learning to eat less burnt chop going forward, I still have built up resentment towards people from past burnt chops!

There are times when you do stuff for other people, that you don’t necessarily want to do and for some strange reason you forget to say ‘no’ and then you do it and then you’re miffed, because you’ve ended up putting your time and effort doing something for somebody else, that you didn’t actually want to do in the first place. A good hypnotherapist and NLP Practitioner can help you to understand and move beyond resentment. Find a practitioner in Hertfordshire or North London to help you move forward.

I figure that you’ve got two options. When somebody says to you “Can you do X for me and in your head?” and you think ‘I really don’t want to’.

Option number one is to help them anyway and love yourself for the fact that you are doing it.

Option two is that you say ‘no’. What stops you from saying no when somebody asks you to do something for them or somebody leans on you in in a particular way? Is it avoiding conflict? That could be part of it but I think if we pick this apart even more, maybe it’s more to do with a fear of being unloved. If we were to chunk this up to a higher level, we would go above and beyond avoiding conflict and if we were to think of it in a more positive sense, I think it has more to do with wanting to be loved or a fear that you’ll be unloved if you don’t do the things that other people want you to do.

So, the question you have to ask yourself is: is that really true? Is it really true that by doing this thing for somebody else you are going to avoid conflict? You’re creating a conflict within yourself and in the long term if it makes you feel grotty around them, then you’re probably going to end up with conflict with them too. Is it really true that if you don’t do this thing for this person that you will be unloved? Ultimately not doing something for someone might leave them a bit miffed for a while but in the long run they’re going to respect you much more for having the self-respect to be able to set yourself some boundaries.

They might even start to consider your thoughts and feelings more too. Maybe you need to stop being so selfish by always helping other people and give them a chance to learn to be capable for themselves or to even help you. What if saying ‘no’ to them means that they’ll love you more? If that’s the case then you can say no, without having to experience the guilt whilst you say it.

But if you say yes and you’re miserable about it, you only have the right to be miserable with yourself, not really with the other people, because you decided it, you decided to do it so you have to own it. You have to take responsibility for it. Who said yes? You did. Who took the action? You did. Who’s miserable? You are. Whose fault is it? It’s yours.

Consider more about what you are giving and not so much about what you’re not getting as a result of doing this thing for these other people.

When you work with a professional NLP practitioner and Hypnotherapist in North London, Hertfordshire you’ll begin to develop the skills to challenge your thinking in new and empowering ways.

 

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk