One of their lead co-ordinators, Sam, had attended a two day course I delivered around 5 years ago in Blackburn, for the Careers service. In this, we spent 2 days exploring NLP, (Neurolinguistic Programming), self awareness and communication. Sam had not only remembered the session, but also said it had been a pivotal point for him in moving forwards with this own life and was keen to offer the same kind of opportunity to his teams.

He explained his teams were going through a challenging time, and although their company was experiencing huge growth and success, this was not without its challenges. This huge growth meant that the company was having to adapt its working practices at the same time as delivering them, which meant the systems to support them also having to adapt and change, and through this transition, lots of challenges were being faced.

Sam wanted to give his teams some tools to help them manage their expertise in what they do that recognised these challenges and gave them some practical approaches that can help them manage  in the most resourceful ways possible. Sam explained that their most precious resource was time, and that although he recognised he couldn’t give up two full days of his teams time, he could manage 4 hours within a planned team day he had coming up. With this in mind, we discussed what outcomes would be most important and realistically achievable, within a four hour time slot.

Challenging my usual working habits, I put together an electronic presentation and abandoned my trusty flip charts and pens. I wanted to be a able to begin with a clear context that put how important our perceptions and interactions really are in the context of organisations and organisational frameworks. It just so happened, thanks to Chris Grimsley’s MA in organisational studies, (thanks Chris, NLP in the Northwest :-)) I knew a model that could help me do just the thing.

Task‘s usually get the attention, the copy and the limelight. Most organisational identities produce mission, vision and values statements, policies, procedures, hierarchical structures, job descriptions, financial statements and strategies. These things aim to describe the ‘what’ and sometimes the ‘why’ of ‘what’ organisations do. However, as important as these things are they are not the whole story. In fact it’s very rare that these documents alone can describe the experience of working with or for an organisation. That’s because these are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to organisations. The fact is, it’s the very human processes underneath these tasks that keeps it moving, set’s direction and directly experiences the daily grind of the wheels of the organisation in motion.

That’s where I come in, recognising I don’t know anything about the job, the expertise or the experiences of any of the teams, I do know a fair bit about human interaction, perception and difference, and seem to have developed a ‘knack’ in sharing this with people over the years. To challenge ‘stuck thinking’, increase choice and opportunities and promote win/win outcomes.

Very few people aim to learn more about their psychology, and the way in which they make sense of the world around them. Yet it affects everything we do, your own experiences and the experiences of everyone you meet. One of the biggest challenges we all face in the world, workplace and at home is dealing with people, (non more so than dealing with ourselves!).

Imagine the possibilities of being able to manage yourself and others better more of the time, to make more sense to more people more of the time and to communicate with each other in ways that avoids drama and conflict. How would that improve the processes of your organisation? Your teams? Your Outcomes? Your Tasks?… For me, it’s not only important, it’s fundamental.

A Big ask in a small session, I know. If all I can do in four hours is give people a model of understanding themselves and others that promotes understanding rather than judgement, openness rather than defensiveness, and tools to promote self empowerment and understanding. I think there’s huge value in that.

One thing I’ve learned over the years is never underestimate the potential of planting a seed. In four hours, lots can be learned that challenge the fundamental basis of what we think we are, and what we’re capable of. A small change in perception can create a huge change in opportunity.

Love my job.

You’ve got to believe in yourself, or do you?

So many people place huge importance on holding onto positive beliefs about ourselves and the world in general. For me however, I can’t help feeling this not only misses the point of self-awareness, but also severely limits it.

Whilst on the surface it may appear obvious that believing ‘I can’ puts me in a better state than believing ‘I can’t’, it still fixes and limits my awareness. In some cases this can blind me to important feedback that lets me know I might need to reconsider my position. Isn’t this a part of the problems we all face today? Holding onto distorted, generalised and incomplete versions of the world?

Even if you find you’re holding onto limiting beliefs, changing them from a negative to a positive continues to limit the level of awareness you operate from. In some cases can leave us dependent on having to believe something to feel ‘enabled’, ‘ok’ or ‘good’ rather than simply just ‘being’ or ‘doing’ the thing we’re busy thinking (or procrastinating) about. This utilises precious energy and cognitive resources I could be employing in just getting stuff done. For me, the fact that I might need to ‘believe’ something in order for me to ‘feel good, complete, take part or have a go’ at something is an insight into a deeper strategy I am employing, which may not be the most useful thing i could be doing.

Where do beliefs come from?

Beliefs are not ‘things’ in themselves but internal processes.
In order to believe something, I employ a strategy of conviction about the possibility of something happening and even generate a degree of dependence and rules around it. Whilst in some cases this can be useful, this can also become a dogma of habitual self delusion. Even stopping us accessing parts of our awareness that could help create real and lasting change. Namely, our strategies for ‘doing’ and ‘being’, rather than just thinking about doing or being!

If I find i have to continually believe positively in a ‘self’ or an ‘ability’ to take part in things or feel good, I might begin to question where my attention is and if the strategy I’m employing in that moment is in fact the most useful and appropriate. “Am I in the moment? Am I engaging with what I’m actually or about to do? Or am I lost in my thoughts rather than here right now?” or “do I really want to do it?”Sometimes a reluctance to do or be something is an important message in itself, not just a limiting belief.

The point is, beliefs are a part of the doors of perception, our deletions, generalisations and distortions about our experiences, not the reality we share with each other. Maybe if we were all a bit more present with each other and the world in general, beliefs wouldn’t cause as much hassle as they do!Awareness on a level above beliefs requires an open mind, an openness to possibility and an active and associative attention, within the thing I am ‘doing’ or ‘being’.For me, if I’m busy believing, I’m not fully present to what I need to do or open to the infinite possibilities right in front of me.

Do I believe I can do something? I don’t know, let’s have a go and start learning…

To explore it takes a sense of courage and curiosity rather than certainty, and to ignore it takes a sense of continued self delusion, ignorance and apathy.

The challenge is that to become aware of what we aren’t aware of, we have to be aware that we aren’t aware of it. 

This is the paradox. 

We only know what we know, because to know what we don’t, we have to know about it first. 

This can be both an empowering and uncomfortable place to inhabit in a world that values answers more than it values questions. This is the human predicament. We’re too caught up in what we think we know, we don’t notice that which we don’t know.

Some may experience this ‘non-awareness’ as a vacuum. A void containing nothingness, not visible or audible, hardly worth paying any attention to in the day to day in the land of mundane awareness. 

“If I can’t see it, or hear it, or touch it, or smell it, or taste it, it’s doesn’t exist”. 

But you will experience it.

Some may experience it as an emptiness or hunger. An intuition that there’s more to living than what we’re currently experiencing and a thirst that can’t quite be quenched by the material experiences in life.

When things do appear in this space of ‘nothingness’ they can at first seem ridiculous, frightening or even mundane and uninteresting. 

We quickly scrabble around our current paradigm to see what this ‘new thing’ relates to and what we can use to identify and label it within what we know already.

We’re taught very early in our lives to focus our attention outside of ourselves on systems, processes, facts and figures. Yet inside all of us are whole worlds of experience we haven’t really explored.

Worlds we know profoundly affect us all on a daily basis, yet somehow we don’t recognise their potency or give credit to their reality and impact on our everyday lives.

It seems our fickle obsession with the physical experiences in life have trained us well to search outside ourselves for answers to many of the challenges we face. 

Much like swallowing a spider to catch a fly we can impose solution after solution until we’ve become so detached from our individual and unique experiences we are no longer aware of our connection to them and often too short sighted to see the effects.

Some may think of it as a place for mystics, mental patients and drug users to inhabit, whilst the rest of the ‘normal’ people carry on with the ‘sensible’ stuff in life like paying bills and going to work.

The fact is everyone of us experience the world around us from our own understanding of what we know and what we don’t.

I think if the world needs anything right now, it’s an openness to knowing we don’t know everything and a willingness to collaborate with others to explore the pieces of the bigger picture.

After all wisdom comes from multiple perspectives.

Mindset for Strength and Performance

Last weekend saw Eddie at Strength and Performance Oldham, delivering a 3 hour ‘taster’ session to their members on understanding our Mindset.

I’d like to say a special thanks to Lynsey & Mark for making this happen and for taking the initiative to offer their members an opportunity to discover the power of learning more about what makes us human beings tick. #NLP

Chatting to the members of the Gym it’s clear that Lynsey and Mark are creating something special here. The commitment to supporting  their members with the whole journey of becoming healthier, fitter, stronger and happier is clear and the environment they’ve created at Adelaide Mill in Oldham is a warm, welcoming and supportive one.

It’s definitely #notjustagym

If your looking for a place to start to challenge yourself physically, learn more about diet and nutrition and meet up with supportive, friendly like minded people you won’t find much better than Strength & Performance Oldham. Connect with them on Facebook here or get in touch on 07477 677529. They’re based at Adelaide Mill in Oldham.

The Session – What is a ‘Mindset’ and Why is it important?

The session started with the usual introductions and to begin to explore what were the challenges people faced in terms of reaching their goals, both inside and outside the Gym and what they wanted from the session.

After a brief introduction to what Neuro Linguistic Programming is we then explored just how we make sense of the world around us. In terms of Perception, Thinking and Behaviour. This practical understanding of “How” we do what we do begins to lay the foundations of understanding what makes us tick, what makes us all unique and how our experience has a structure.

All Performance is State dependent

We explored our ‘State’. And began to understand how our state of mind effects everything we do in life. Developing our awareness of ‘how’ we do it means we can begin to have more choice and control in the kind of ‘states’ we want to be in. This included practical tips of how we can change influence and change our state at will.

After some reflections and exercises, we then went on to explore the power of mental rehearsal. Most people are really good at mental rehearsal, the only difference is we tend to use it for things like worry.

The sounds of ‘wow’ in the room never get old, as people realised and understood the power of mental rehearsal in the practical demonstration, and then went on to witness someone achieve a personal best after a short demonstration and then have a go themselves.

and then time beat us… for now

I’d like to say a big thanks to everyone who came and made the session really easy to deliver. I hope you all found the session as enjoyable as I did and more importantly, useful and relevant to what you hoped to get from it.

Please do feel free to connect with us on facebook here. We’re always happy to hear from people and about how they’ve used what they’ve learned. That’s when the magic starts to happen.

So what now?

You never know how far a change will go.

Lynsey and Mark are keen to introduce part 2 of this to the members at some point in the near future. Lynsey herself has recently completed the INLPTA NLP Foundation Diploma with us.  I know Lynsey has more plans to integrate what she’s learned into the Gym to benefit the members. It’s great to see the ripple effect of this kind of learning, and imagine the possibilities it can create.

If you’re interested in learning more about NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) or would like to book a course or taster session please do get in touch with us. We can offer a range of bespoke Applied and Accredited training and development experiences.

Check our our Events page for upcoming courses or get in touch to have a chat about what you may need.

We also offer 1-1 sessions designed to help you develop more choice and control in your life through Psycho-education, Hypnosis and NLP. It’s not all about problems and it can help Stress & Anxiety, Depression and low mood and Personal Change & Development – for more information click here

Thanks again and we hope to see you again soon

In this series of blogs I’d like to share with you some of the models and experiences that can demonstrate how I’ve come to understand and utilise the ideas and techniques that are taught in Hypnosis. Within this I’ll also explore some of the contexts in which these approaches are used. At home in our relationships, at work with our colleagues and bosses, in education, in the media and in politics, it’s in these wider contexts that occupy our daily attention we can probably learn the most about what ‘Hypnosis’ may actually be.

Why learn about Hypnosis?

As human beings we tend to focus more time, attention and resources on mastering technology than we do learning about how we work as human beings. Everything we do in life is dependent on our state of mind yet we spend more time learning about tasks and systems than we do about how we think. Studying Hypnosis and understanding more about how we think can be powerful ways to look after our own mental and physical health, create more choice and control and get clearer about what we want in life. None of us are alone here and the way we interact, communicate and work with others is a key part of everything we do. This is often led and influenced by our state of mind – Our Perceptions, Our feelings and emotions. Our behaviour towards each other from families to nations is a reflection of the way we perceive and feel about the world. Although we all live in the world together, the version of the world each of us operates from is our own unique experience of it. We only know what we know, and what we don’t know we don’t know.

Science & Technology have given us lots of solutions for lots of things. The things human beings are capable of astounding, in many ways. However the problems we face in the world today aren’t ones that science and technology will resolve. I’ve heard it said that we have ‘space age’ technology currently being used by ‘stone age’ minds. We have enough technology and resources in the world today to be able to support every living thing on this planet. The problem is we don’t.

Fear, greed, ignorance and apathy aren’t ‘things’ that technology or science can fix.  These are the kind of problems that live inside of us. Inside our thinking and our feeling and that we express daily in our behaviour. The trouble is we are never taught how to understand or how to get the best from our own psychology or recognise and work positively with difference in others.

Do you Work with People?

Wherever people work with people, individual perceptions, interpretations, feelings and emotions play an important role. Whenever we’re communicating with anyone, including ourselves we are directing attention and we do this both consciously and unconsciously.  All communication is ‘hypnotic’ when we think about communication in these terms. Understanding hypnosis in this way helps us become more aware of the the influence we both direct into the world and take from it. It takes a great deal of self awareness to work well with other people. It can give us the tools and skills to understand ourselves and others better and communicate our experiences, thoughts and wishes in a way that makes more sense, to more people more of the time.

Where I’m coming from..

I’ve been studying Hypnosis actively for the last 10 years since discovering NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming). Some of the earliest models in NLP came from how Milton Erickson (the grandfather of hypnosis) approached change and therapy. Throughout this series I’ll no doubt refer to NLP on several occasions (NLP training itself contains much of Milton Erickson’s approaches in terms of language. meaning and underpinning concepts).

I’m writing these posts not as an ‘expert’ but as a student of both NLP and Hypnosis. The main thing I’ve learned throughout my experiences is that we really do not know a great deal about the way we make sense of the world.  If we think we do, it’s usually only ‘how’ it seems to work for us. In the words of Robert Anton Wilson;

 “Is, is, is, the idiocy of the word haunts me. I don’t know what anything is, I only know how it appears to me”.

That’s probably the most important lesson I’ve learned so far. We all indeed have our own unique ‘Reality tunnel’ in which we experience the world around us.

What works for us and might be familiar to us is likely to be unfamiliar and ill fitting for others. What we think sounds fair and just can sound completely unreasonable to others. What we see as our perspective will look completely different from the point of view of someone else.

That being said, I do also recognise that there are people in the world that are ‘experts at doing certain things’. That is in context. I’ve met many inspirational people who have helped me a great deal over the years and continue to do so. The thing they all seem to have in common is a sense of curiosity rather than a sense of certainty.

So with a sense of curiosity and openness, I’d like to invite you into exploring the world of not only ‘Hypnosis’ but the way we make sense of the world around us. Then I’d like to invite you ask yourself the question; Is Hypnosis real?

Part one:

What is Hypnosis?

Probably like most people, my previous experience of hypnosis included only occasionally seeing stage and screen hypnotists. Now this usually included some dodgy looking fellow encouraging others to somehow humiliate themselves. At the other end of the spectrum I’ve also seen the ‘evil hypnotist’ executing some evil dastardly plot through the use of mind control and influence.

I’m not going to go into the history and various definitions of hypnosis here. I think it’s safe to say that Hypnosis has been described as many things. For the purposes of this blog I’d like to introduce it as a tool we can use to increase our awareness of how we make sense and function in the world.

Hypnosis as I’ve come to understand it describes the process of accessing an altered state of consciousness where we can become more aware of the unconscious processes we operate from. As we go through the concepts and principles involve this definition will become richer and more detailed. I think it’s important for us to separate the ‘What’ it is, from ‘How’ it can be used.

To understand the differences between our conscious and unconscious it’s helpful to look at the way we make sense of the world around us. For this first section I’d like to define what I mean with the terms conscious and unconscious and get clearer about the difference and relationship of  the inside world and outside world.

How we make sense of the world around us…

At birth we’re gifted with this amazing ‘Bio-chemical computer’ thats capable of processing information at lightening speed. Indeed just in the first couple of years of our life we are learning machines capable of accomplishing the two most complex things humans ever do; and that’s how to walk and how to talk. As we enter the school system learning then becomes a much more conscious activity with mixed and confusing information, judgment and rules.

Limits on perception

It is the nature of our perception that we can only be aware of so much. In fact, I don’t think any of us realise just how limited we are. Not only of the world around us, but also the world within us.Human perception is not only limited in what our sensory organs can process from the ‘Outside world’, It is also limited in terms of the amount of this information we can be consciously aware of.

Its probably impossible to put a number on, but research suggests that the human body is processing approximately 2.3 million sense receptors every second. Thats information coming from your eyes, ears, skin, nose and mouth. Every second your body is processing massive amounts of information from the world around you. If we didn’t have our senses we would have no way of communicating or even being aware of the ‘Outside World‘. Our body is processing more sensory information than the even the most powerful technological computers can track still now. The good news is, most of this is done out of your awareness.

You see, even as you’re sat or stood reading this now, you’re only aware of a very small amount of the sensory stimulation your body is experiencing; If you’ve a watch on your wrist, a ring on your finger, glasses on your face or shoes on your feet; unless they’re uncomfortable in some way the chances are you’re not conscious of them (Well at least until I brought them to your attention). The noises in the area around you, the shapes and colours on the screen, or in the room etc etc.. We are only ever consciously aware of a very small part of our sensory experience.

Hopefully most of your conscious attention will be on the ‘meanings’ of these words on this screen. In fact these are only pixels arranged in a uniformed order, creating symbols that in and of themselves don’t contain any meaning. That processing doesn’t happen in the ‘Outside world’ Its happening inside you right now, as you read this.

What we call ‘conscious awareness’

In the 1960’s a Psychologist by the name of George Miller conducted some research on the limits of our ‘working memory’. His experiments where looking at how much information we could be aware of and track at any one time. In Hypnosis and NLP this ‘working memory’ is also referred to our ‘Conscious Awareness’.

These limits became known as the magic number 7 +/- 2.  This is referred to as the limits of our conscious awareness (or working memory). This means that we are only able to track between 5-9 pieces or chunks of information at any time.

I’m sure you’ve all had the experience of managing a busy work load or range of responsibilities but then if one more thing is added we can loose track of everything else. Like a juggler going one ball too many, usually they all or at least a few come crashing back down.

Throughout my NLP training with Chris Grimsley he used the metaphor of our conscious awareness being like a torch beam in a darkened room. Whatever we shine our attention on can only ever illuminate a tiny amount of everything that is going on.

Consciousness and stress

Even the most resilient of people have ‘off’ days. Our ability to consciously focus on anything can be greatly effected by stress. This magic number 7 +/-2 can decrease rapidly when we’re in fear or high states of stress. The term ‘tunnel vision’ in descriptions of fear, rage and anger and the inability to focus and communicate. It’s then when our ‘automatic’ ‘unconscious’ programmes and responses seem to ‘kick in’ . This is also usually when bad, sometimes violent, reactive and aggressive things can happen.

Consciousness is also selective…

Our Mind & Bodies work perfectly, for us. They take all this information in and seamlessly create an ‘internal reality‘ we operate from. We don’t experience the world around us as it is, we experience it as we are.

The ‘internal maps’ we create are very complex, they both put in and leave out information and they do this in a way that is unique to us. Our interests, our beliefs, our culture, our past experiences all serve to ‘filter’ the information we take from the ‘outside world‘.  These ‘internal maps’ direct our attention ‘consciously’ and ‘unconsciously’.

‘The Map is not the territory”  – Korzybski 1933

This ‘internal reality‘ isn’t a part of the ‘outside world’. It’s our own unique version of the ‘outside world’ and it lives ‘inside us’. Whenever we are thinking about anything, the past, the future, the meanings we make; we are not using ‘Sensory information’ from the outside world. We are using our own unique ‘Map of reality’. Most of the time we don’t even notice this, it’s seamless integration with our everyday lives.

Even in times when this ‘internal reality’ completely differs from the way others experience the world, we are more likely to cling on to our own perceptions and meanings.

Times in our lives where we feel stuck or limited in some way is usually is a result of an impoverished ‘internal map’. The truth is we always have a choice, usually of infinite things. However our beliefs, perceptions and thinking strategies can limit our awareness of what’s possible in the world for us.

So not only is our Conscious awareness very small in comparison to what’s going on, it’s also selective in what it puts it, leaves out and the ‘meanings’ it makes. Aren’t we amazing things!

Where is my mind?

One of the biggest assumptions made today is that what we call our ‘minds’ are a result of and inhabit our Brains. We experience the world around us though our bodies and we think, feel and behave with our bodies. The mind and body are a system and what we do with one will affect the other.

Latest research in Neuroscience have found that we also have complex neuronal networks in our hearts, gut and head brain. We use all of them to process and think about the world. You might have had the experience of having a gut or intuitive feeling about something, and your heart and your logical head telling you something completely different. Its a common experience. Mbraining and Mbit have researched this phenomena extensively. and have come up with techniques and patterns that can help the intelligences of the Head, Heart and Gut work together congruently. Google mBraining for more details. Interesting stuff.

Most of what we do is unconscious..

The things we do well, naturally and without effort are usually strategies we process ‘Unconsciously‘. Our ‘Unconscious Mind‘ is able to operate independently of conscious thought and at speeds we cannot process consciously.

A useful metaphor shared by Brian Watson that helped me get clearer about the differences between our conscious and unconscious;

Imagine you walk into a room with a book or piece of paper in one hand and a lovely hot cup of coffee in the other. Now as you walk into the room you drop the piece of paper. Consciously you know you can wait for the piece of paper to fall to the floor and then bend down to pick it up. No problem. This is because your conscious mind is intelligent. It can process how events are connected and predict outcomes and consequences.

However, your Unconscious is so clever and processes things so quickly that in the same situation, even before the piece of paper has gotten halfway towards the floor, your Unconscious can work out the speed, direction and angle. Guide your arm, spread your fingers and time the catch in a split second, without even thinking about it.

You can then stand victoriously basking in the glory of the power of your unconscious mind and then get a cloth to mop up your coffee!…

In Part 2 we will be looking in greater detail about the way we create these ‘internal maps’, and how we all do it differently. We will also begin to look more closely at The Internal Process of Thinking, Feeling and its impact on our behaviour.

For more information about the upcoming courses we’re running  visit our events page.

If you’d like to take advantage of our free initial consultation for 1-1 sessions then please do get in touch. Either via our Contact form or email info@roots2realty.co.uk.