Tag Archives: life coaching

Are You Fulfilling Your Purpose?

With our hectic schedules, it’s easy to lose sight of our true selves and desires while focusing on daily tasks. Our brains can only process a limited amount of sensory data at once, yet we are constantly bombarded with stimuli.

How is it possible to have any room left for creativity?
For exploration?
For connections?

Your existence isn’t meant to be robotic. If you sense a purpose within you, it’s essential to strive towards fulfilling it as effectively as possible. Otherwise, life has a knack for presenting you with obstacles until you do. Fulfilling your purpose can be viewed as a form of problem-solving. The distinction lies in whether it’s a pursuit that excites and motivates you. Conversely, if it’s a problem imposed by life to keep you on track, it’s unlikely to bring a sense of fulfilment.

Another challenge is when someone doesn’t actually really know what their “purpose” is. Do you remember meeting with your careers advisor at school (if you were lucky enough to have one!). It’s a little sad that they tended to advise you based on your predicted grades and other people’s expectation of your abilities. These well-meaning misdirections can set people on the wrong path for years maybe until they feel worn down and do not know why.

In NLP, there is a set of questions called ‘Milton Model questions’, that we use sometimes to help develop more abstract ideas or bigger-picture thinking. The questions come from observations of Milton Erickson who was the foremost hypnotist of our time. He was largely responsible for bringing hypnosis into the clinical world.

The questions are used in several ways within NLP and Hypnotherapy, not least for creating trance-like states and helping to chunk information together at differing levels of abstraction.

The questions we use to chunk up towards more global, bigger-picture ideas are:

For what purpose?
What is your (higher) intention?
And you could also ask: Above and beyond that, what does it do for you?

It’s useful to use these questions therapeutically to understand what more positive intentions might be driving a seemingly negative or unwanted behaviour. For example:

Smoking
(for what purpose): Relieve stress
(what is your higher intention in that?): To relax
(above and beyond relaxation, what does it do for you?): Peace

If someone wants to quit smoking, it’s not just about stopping that habit, it’s also about addressing their need for peace in a more healthy way (if indeed peace is what smoking does for them. The responses would differ for different people.)

So what happens if we chunk up on you?

If you use those same questions on you what is your higher purpose?
Is what you are doing in life now in alignment with that purpose? If not, what would be?

A process like this is just the first step that The Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire can offer you to help you find yourself once again and reclaim your true identity.

By Gemma Bailey
www.HypnotherapyandNLP.co.uk

Using NLP to Improve Confidence

As the cost of living has increased, the pressures to work harder smarter and faster have increased. It is rarely a surprise to me to have clients who are struggling with their levels of confidence despite having what could be perceived as very successful lives. Solicitors, CEO’s and managing directors have regularly graced my doorstep, feeling that they are unable to measure up to the aggressive demands placed upon them.

Many who are in powerful roles find that they are simply crumbling under the strain, I see this quite a lot in my therapy clinic in Hemel Hempstead. They have been educated at the very best universities and colleges, obtaining firsts in their degrees, withstood enormous pressure during exams and completing coursework, and then later discover that they have never learnt how to be confident or how to assert themselves. The negative self-defeating thoughts begin and slowly but surely the problem begins to spiral.

The steps I take with a client with confidence problems are generally similar- there is information they can all benefit from knowing about. The NLP communication model is always a great starting point as I usually find that there are some negative self-talk or disempowering “movies” that the client runs in their mind.

I also talk to them about creating and building rapport, so that in situations where they need to be confident, they are first comfortable that they have a connection with those that they are communicating with. Confidence tends to be less of an issue with those who do not have to communicate with others; it is generally the communication itself that shows up the confidence issues. I always have them guess the most powerful way in which they communicate – is it in the words they use, their tone of voice or their physiology?

Many of them are startled by the results of how people communicate in congruence with each other. At this point, the mind and body links become apparent. They begin to realise what signals others have been picking up from them and how their thoughts have harmed the way that they are feeling. I might give some information about sensory predicates and how we live in sensory systems. This can be beneficial to know because again, the client will feel more comfortable and confident if they know how to communicate with others by “speaking in the language” that the listener likes to hear.

During the consultation, I asked lots of questions, and during this time, I have a great opportunity to observe how a person who lacks confidence is using their body. If I find that they are slumped in the chair, shallow breathing, looking down, then later, I will point this out to them. I will begin to shape their physiology into that of someone confident. Then I will introduce them to the Satir categories- a set of “personality types” identified by family therapist Virginia Satir, and have them try out the different physiologies that go with these.

What they will notice is that by trying out the physiology, their energy shifts into the emotions and feelings associated with that physiology. They can then begin to practice communicating in the more powerful physiologies to get their bodies and mind better aligned to powerful and confident feelings. I often notice that people, who are not in a confident zone, have their bodies in a “placator” physiology. This gives off signals such as “I don’t know” or “I’m sorry” and “I can’t help it.”And their energy will be here too.

These are the basics that I always cover, and there are many other NLP techniques to advance the client’s confidence further. A Swish Pattern, for example, will deal with confidence issues that occur in a specific context, a New Orleans flexibility Drill can help overcome anxieties related to a particular person and a resource anchor can give a much-needed boost of positive emotions that can be triggered whenever the client wants to tap into them.

“I have found myself getting less worked up and am therefore more confident.”

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

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Take My Advice

Here is a format for giving good advice. I found this advice on a friend’s Facebook feed and I want to share some of it with you because it’s clever, creative and funny advice. When you give advice to somebody, use modal verbs or in NLP terms, we refer to those as modal operators. These are words such as can, can’t, should, shouldn’t, would, wouldn’t, have and/or haven’t.

Some modal verbs carry more influence than others. For example, ‘should’ sounds quite flexible, doesn’t it? Whereas, the words ‘have to’ is more forceful ‘you have to do this’. I would suggest with modal verbs whilst that’s good advice to use those because they do give flexibility, actually be cautious about which ones you choose because some of them really imply kind of like ‘here’s something you might want to consider’ whereas others are much more directive and ‘you need to do this’.

In my experience of giving advice, there are times when being forceful is appropriate but it’s probably not where you want to start because if you start by giving people forceful advice and the rapport isn’t there, you’re likely to get some resistance. Whereas if you are putting the idea out there with a softer approach, you’re less likely to get resistance but you’re also potentially more likely for them to not follow through because they’re not taking the suggestion as seriously. I would start with a light approach in dealing with them and if they don’t follow through you can then go in all guns blazing!

Making your advice into a question displaces resistance because the person listening to the advice (the receiver of the advice) has an opportunity to either respond or not because it’s a question.

When we give advice at the hypnotherapy and NLP clinic in Hertfordshire, there may be times when the instruction is more like a command and this needs to be delivered very carefully. If we are being forceful it’s possible to get resistance and lose our rapport and then we don’t have the leverage thereafter. If we start with a question then it’s softer, the person who is receiving the advice feels like they have an opportunity to either take it or not take it but if they don’t take it then we may want to repeat the suggestion with more of a command around the advice that we’re giving and with a more commanding tonality.

When we are advising people we can use questions, statements or commands. The difference between the three lies in your tone of voice. When we ask a question our intonation at the end of the sentence tends to pitch up. Whereas if we’re making a statement then our tone tends to stay on the same melody – our tone doesn’t tend to go up or down at the end our tone stays on the same path. When our pitch goes down at the end of the sentence, this implies that we are being more commanding. One of the best syntaxes that you can use is to combine a question with a commanding tonality. The conscious mind knows not to get offended because it was structured as a question whereas on an unconscious level the command intonation is what’s picked up on recognised and reacted too.

Next ‘put yourself in the other person’s position’. If someone is asking for your advice it’s useful to imagine yourself being in that person’s position. This is a good way to explain your advice.

In NLP, we have a process called the ‘perceptual positions process’ which does precisely that. You associate into the perspective of somebody else. It’s kind of a role-play exercise and it’s really beneficial for being able to see a problematic situation through the eyes of the person that you’re in the problematic situation with, sometimes when we give advice we do it from our own perspective because that’s easy to do. We know what it’s like to be in our skin and how we might feel or react to a certain situation but it’s less easy to think about it from someone else’s perspective because they’ve got all of their values, their history and their own considerations so just throwing the advice at them actually it might not resonate with them.

Sometimes when we give advice that they may take or leave you can deliver it as ‘I recommend, I would suggest’. This gives them the opportunity to react in the right way – the way that I want them to! If they don’t then the feedback becomes stronger and more commanding and I then take the opportunity to switch it from ‘you could/I would suggest’ to ‘this needs to happen this way’.

Before I leave you some funny and creative advice I also found on my friend’s Facebook:

Don’t date anyone whose personality you have to explain to others.
Never date someone if they don’t have many friends there’s probably a good reason.
When taking the rubbish out use that time to eat your secret sweets or chocolate that you hide away from your kids!
If you have teens listen more than you talk.
Always put the toilet seat down when finished.
When you’re scrubbing the toilet keep your mouth closed.

I hope that has been amusing and useful for you!

Gemma Bailey
www.hypntherapyandnlp.co.uk

Making a Good First Impression 

Make sure you’re on time. For many people, lateness is a real annoyance. If somebody shows up late for particularly something like an interview, then it causes a question about how badly they want to be there. It plants a seed of doubt about whether they’re going to be motivated enough to bother showing up to work on time.

You must be at ease with yourself. You need to come across as confident within yourself but not a smart arse with it. You don’t want to come across as being arrogant in any way but you do want to come across as somebody who is comfortable within your own skin.

If you are somebody who comes across as being not happy within your own skin, then that could be seen as a negative quality and that perhaps you might have some underlying issues that could get in the way of the relationship that you’re trying to create.

Remember to smile and show off your skillset. The reason why you’ve been asked there is because they think that your qualified to do something that they want you to do or that they need someone to do. You have to really present yourself as somebody who can fill that gap that they have. You have to be completely at ease with showing off a little bit.

Be presentable. It relates to your self-worth. Make sure you iron your shirt. Somebody once told me to make sure that your shoes are always clean and shiny. You can’t make a good first impression with muddy manky old shoes.

So be confident and chatty and have some kind of uniqueness about you. It could be something that you wear that is slightly unusual that will help to stick in their mind. It could be something to do with a special hobby that you have that’s a bit unusual that you managed to bring up into the conversation. Something that will help you stand out in making that first impression.

There are lots of people that make good first impressions but are still forgettable and you don’t want to be forgettable. You want to be memorable. So, remember to be positive and have a good attitude. Now when you do that you have to know if you’re going to be funny that a). it’s in the right context for you to be funny and that b). it really is funny.

If you say something that doesn’t quite fit in with the other person’s humour then you could end up just really miffing them off a bit. So, if you’re going to make an effort to be jovial in some way, make sure that it’s the right context for you to do that and be very certain that the other person is going to find humour in it.

You can work with an NLP coach to get yourself interview and dating ready. We have practitioners based in Hertfordshire and North London who are highly specialised in this area of work and will help you to always make a good first impression.

By Gemma Bailey
www.peoplebuilding.co.uk