What Are The Benefits Of Neuro Linguistic Programming?

July 13, 2011 by  

NLP, or neuro linguistic programming, is something that is very useful to many people- especially people in the business world. It is used to help people make better decisions in many aspects of their life. The techniques that are known to help people reach their goals, and also to help people to better handle the day to day things that life brings their way. There are lots of ways that NLP can benefit you, a few of which are covered below.

A big aspect of NLP is helping people to learn more about their various different strengths and weaknesses. This can actually be very beneficial to businesses especially, because it helps them to have better client relationships. This also helps people to improve their work ethic, and be able to better lead their teams. Business owners have caught onto this and have included some NLP techniques into their training for the new employees. Having a mentor that is familiar with the techniques is also helpful.

These techniques will not only help your business relations, but they can also help you with your personal relationships in life- including your dating relationships. You will be able to learn how to better connect with people and communicate with them. Relationships need communication to thrive, and using NLP can really help to improve your communication abilities. This is an area that many people find they need to work on improving. If NLP can help, then give it a try.

Another great way that NLP can help you is by giving you more motivation. Whether you are looking for the motivation to quit smoking or lose weight, or any other task, you can find the motivation by incorporating neuro linguistic programming techniques into your life. It helps you to learn the ways that you need to think in order to be successful in your endeavors. Many people have had success with reaching their goals with the help of NLP techniques.

NLP is a great motivator. It is also a great way to improve your overall life. When you think about it, the relationships that you have- whether business or personal- can really be affected in a positive way through the various techniques that are offered through NLP. You will find that your overall outlook on your life will change and that you will be able to use NLP to your own advantage to improve your life and reach your goals.

Now Try – NLP Techniques Or NLP Books

What Good Will Self Improvement Training Do You?

June 1, 2011 by  

The short answer to the question is “none!” – unless, of course, you’re prepared to put what you’ve learned into practice. And that’s where most people fall down. OK, they spent a day or two and it was a breath of fresh air, they felt renewed, uplifted, ready for action. Unfortunately, however, research shows that it takes about six weeks for the effects of the average training course to vanish – completely – and personal development training is no exception.

But how could this happen? Because it’s easier to stay the same – it’s easier to stay “not too bad” when everyone else around you is not too bad as well. It’s less hassle to not have your friends – or, as some of my personal development clients have told me, their nearest and dearest – looking at you as if you’re some kind of born-again weirdo! It’s always easier to fit in. And, it doesn’t matter what new skills we learn, sooner or later, to a greater or lesser extent, we revert to type, we re-set to default, we go back to being normal. But normal is crazy – there’s over seven decades of research that proves that. And not-too-bad is simply not good enough when you realize the life that you could have – effortless happiness, effortless success, peace of mind.

So, how will you change your life? Because, after all, if you want it to change, you’re the one who’s going to have to do something new, something different. Don’t listen to anybody who tells you that you can change your life in five minutes – they want to make a fast buck. Pay no attention to anybody who tells you that success is all about making loads of money – they’re the ones who want loads of money and some of it is yours! Don’t listen to people who keep recommending the latest wonderful book that they’ve just read to you – you won’t change your life by reading – you only change your life by doing.

Doing what? You change your life by doing things in your life differently. You start with little things – like try brushing your teeth with the hand that you don’t habitually use – then your mind gets used to the idea that, in every single thing that you do in your daily life and in every single situation in which you find yourself in your life – you have a choice. You have a choice – can choose to live automatically and mindlessly like all the other normal crazy morons that are content to be not-too-bad, or you can choose to focus on the present, feel the toothbrush’s bristles on your teeth, feel the awkward way you’re holding the brush, taste the toothpaste. It’s in the minute detail of everyday life that you will find reality. And when you discover reality, you will find that you can, indeed, achieve effortless happiness and success because, in reality, it simply happens.

Get Rid Of Self Help Books

June 1, 2011 by  

Are you a big reader of self help books? Because there are millions of people who are forever reading, forever learning, constantly searching, deepening their understanding not reading that changes your life, but doing.

Continuously reading self help books is much like collecting loads of holiday brochures and travel books about some beautiful place that you long to visit. You’ve poured over photographs, read all the recommendations, imagined yourself relaxing on that beautiful white sandy beach, immersed yourself in the idea of being there. However, you’ll never pluck up the courage to buy the ticket. What’s my point? Reading about how to achieve the life that you really want and actually doing what you’ve learned are two completely different things. Reading all those feel-good stories about how others have changed their minds and, as a consequence, changed their lives, may well give you that warm feeling inside. But tomorrow morning, when you drag yourself out of bed for another normal day, what has changed? Precious little! When you face another day of hassle, anxiety, financial shortage or battered self-esteem, what good will all your reading have done you? If anything, it will have made you even more restless and more dissatisfied than you were in the first place.

Reading, intellectualizing and understanding what’s required for you to change your life will make no difference to your life until you put what you’ve learned into daily practice. And therein lies the problem for so-called normal people – they’re afraid to take what they perceive as some risk-laden leap of faith.

If you’ve been lucky enough to come across a self improvement book that has step-by-step exercises on how to change your life (and they’re few and far between – most of them are ‘feel-good books’) then you must know by now that you don’t have to leap into the great unknown. All you need to take is take effortless daily steps that will awaken you from the self-induced hypnosis in which most normal people are just about existing.

If you want to change your life, you must change the way you’re living the life that you have at present. Change can start small – even by simply changing your morning routine – because small things startle your subconscious mind out of its comfort zone. Once out you will begin to realize that absolutely everything in your life can be done differently. When this realization hits you, you’ll find yourself in a completely different place – where things that were otherwise unconscionable suddenly become the logical thing to do – and effortlessly doable.

In other words, it’s you who has to start doing the things that will change your life, to stop reading and start doing.

Personal Success: Mining Your Inspiration

May 29, 2011 by  

It could be a myth – but many myths are basic facts lost in the passage of time – that, having sought for many years to find the meaning of life, the Buddha became enlightened when he was simply sitting under a tree. Again, it may be legend, but legend has it that Sir Isaac Newton made is most important scientific discovery, once again, whilst sitting under a tree. And although it was an apple that reputedly dropped for Newton, you’ve got to find your own tree to allow your very own pennies to drop for you – your personal development depends upon it.

Only a clear and uncluttered mind can be inspired. And the normal mind is anything but clear and uncluttered. Psychology explains that the normal mind is overwhelmed by random thought – some fifty thousand random thoughts zip through our heads every single day. The majority of those thoughts are innocuous but, on the basis of research, some of those thoughts are self-destructive – I was going to say positively self-destructive but that would be an oxymoron – these thoughts are both negative and toxic. I’m speaking of the thoughts that create the false perceptions of damaged self-esteem, worry, anxiety, stress and depression. Left to itself, the adult mind simply cannot experience inspiration.

And is life worth enduring without the excitement of inspiration? Surely life is nothing more than going through the motions if you’re not excited and delighted by the exhilaration of the out-of-the-ordinary? Sadly, the out-of-the-ordinary is all too rare an event for the normal mind that merely exists in the comfort of the routine. However, if you don’t shock yourself out of the slumber of the mundane you will simply not have experience real living. Not only that, you’ll be a negative influence on those around you – in particular those who you claim to love.
Everybody is capable of being inspired and inspiring. You are capable of leaping out of the norm and living your very best life. But you’re going to have to make space for inspiration, you’ve got to give yourself the clear, uncluttered time to let the inner you out. Our next-door neighbour in the Alps has often asked me what I do for a living. And, even though I’ve explained it to him many times, he still persists in asking – in his own words “It seems to myself and my wife that you waste a lot of time doing nothing!”

Doing nothing is not a waste of time. Doing nothing can often be the time most fruitfully spent. The clarity and peace of mind that comes with spending time doing nothing is the fertile ground in which inspirational ideas simply spring to life. Thomas Edison found that he only became inspired in his mind’s quiet moments to the extent that he set about creating quiet moments for his mind every day. A prolific inventor, he had had over four hundred inventions patented to his name. Pablo Picasso is reputed to have said that he wasn’t sure when inspiration would strike so he made sure that he cultivated a prepared mind.

Are you prepared to be inspired? How often do you simply let your mind go off on flights of fancy? I’m not talking about entertaining negative thought – I’m talking about simply letting your mind wander onto what normal people would find unachievable or undoable. Such things are only undoable to a normal mind constrained by preconceived negative notions. De-program yourself – let yourself go, let yourself off the hook of normal ‘living inside the box’. Find your tree, sit under it and devote quality time doing nothing.

Personal Development: Who’s The Next Most Important Stranger?

May 29, 2011 by  

Think about it – the people who are currently most important in your life were once complete strangers to you. Whether by chance or what I might view as synchronicity – or, indeed, what a quantum physicist might view as a derivation of quantum entanglement – you are where you now are as a result of apparently random events at the core of which are people who were, when you met them first, complete and utter strangers.

When we were young we were told, as many children were and still are, not to talk to strangers. There may well be some sense in that from the perspective of protecting little children from the undoubted presence of some very strange people in this world. However, unfortunately, the subliminal message that stays with us into later life is that we should avoid getting involved with people whose path we might casually cross in the course of everyday life.

Indeed, as we go about our normal daily adult lives, the fact is that we’d never really notice a stranger anyway – because, in childhood, we developed a self-preservational psychological facility to categorize new people that we meet without paying any attention to who they actually are or the importance of the role that they migh play in our lives. As a consequence of our pre-programming and our ability for categorization, we pay no attention to people that we don’t know. The next time you’re on a tube, subway, train or bus or in an elevator, notice how carefully people avoid making eye contact.

What are these people missing? Potentially the next most important complete stranger in their lives. You haven’t the first clue who might totally change your career, who might be your next mega-customer in your business, who might become a life-long friend and mentor. You have no idea who might be the next person to change your life. And you won’t find out if you can’t take of your blinkers.

Wake up. Opportunity abounds – but is completely missed by the automatic normal mind that’s too closed and blind to see anything. Psychology asserts that the normal person only perceives what they expect to perceive and only experience what they expect to experience. What a death sentence we all are given – by our programming and by our own inaction and unwillingness to take the small leap of faith that making personal contact with a total stranger requires.

You need to open your eyes, you have to smell the roses, tune into life’s opportunities and go with the flow of a synchronous universe that is just waiting to respond to you. I’m not suggesting that you start behaving irrationally and outrageously in public places! I’m suggesting that you put up your antennae, start tuning into the here and now, let yourself off the hook of the normal outlook. Because, until you do, you normal life will never be anything but mundanely, repetitively and boringly normal – and it will be your own fault.

Goal Setting: How To Get Your Objectives

May 29, 2011 by  

Ongoing work in the fields of psychology and personal development has indicated that the subconscious mind is cybernetic – like a heat-seeking missile, point at a target and it will hit it. In simple terms, give it a goal in which it believes and it will, by its own devices, bring about the achievement of that goal. Your subconscious mind is working like this already. Unfortunately, however, the outcomes in which the normal subconscious mind believes are a random mish-mash of the programs we learned during our formative years in relation to how the world works and our place in it.

In addition, psychology has concluded that the latent state of the normal adult mind is negative. As a result, if you’re normal, your subconscious heat-seeking capability is targeted at, at the very best, a life that’s not too bad – and that is the kind of life that you get. The directional programs which the normal mind uses as its guidance system were installed during our childhood years. We learned by watching others’ lives and by being impressed by things that were done for us or to us. Having grown up in a normal world our onboard computer is set on “normal”. And, because psychology indicates that normal people don’t control their own mind, our cybernetic minds are out of control, bringing us to places that we don’t want.

But, as I’ve said, focus your mind to a goal in which it believes and its cybernetic capability will hit that new target. So, you need to know how to reprogram your coordinates! When it comes down to it, belief is not wishing, hoping or wanting. The subconscious mind processes sensory data – so believing is seeing, feeling, hearing, smelling and tasting what you want as if you have it already, as if it’s taken as given. Uploading your new coordinates is simply done by handwriting what you want, in those sensory terms, as if you’ve already experienced it. Handwriting impresses the subconscious mind and, once done, the subconscious mind will go about its work – the only thing that will stop it in its tracks is if you start worrying about when what you want will happen (that’s the kind of useless thinking that sends your mind off its plotted course).

I’ve worked with plenty of clients who have got their desired outcome – and I’ve known a few who, having achieved it, realized that it was not what they really wanted. So, you need to be careful how you set your mind! Consequently, as I suggest to my clients, your actual goal setting should be non-specific in terms of the life you want or how you got there but very specific in terms of what it looks, feels, sounds, smells and tastes like to have arrived. In other words, set your mind on success and happiness, without any preconceived notions, and you’re about to set off on the adventure of a lifetime.

Developing Your Leadership Potential – The Truth About Leaderhip

May 29, 2011 by  

We’re all called upon to be leaders – if you have children, direct reports in work, friends who confide in you – Leadership is required of you. You mightn’t call it that, but that is what it is. Above all, we’re required to lead our own lives. Yes, we must take up the mantle of leadership and few wish to shoulder the responsibility. The normal person will look to someone else – if not for leadership, then for blame. It’s the bankers’ fault that my business is suffering – it’s politicians’ fault that my standard of living has deteriorated – it’s the system’s fault that I didn’t get promoted. Pull yourself together – start promoting yourself! Surely you’re meant to take the lead in what is, after all, a lifetime for which you can write your own screenplay.

However, what does it take to be a leader? How will you write your own script for the life that you want? Well, oddly enough, the answer to these two questions is the same! All it takes presence – the hallmark of super- successful people, the very essence of leadership. And the wonderful news is that we can all develop our presence no matter how ineffective you think that you might be – if you’re suffering from a lack of self-confidence, low self-esteem or poor self-image, get real, all these notions are just figments of the normal mind’s obsession with paying attention to everywhere except where life is really lived – the present!

And that’s how you develop what people call presence – there’s no magic formula, no big secret. Psychological research has concluded that your ability to be happy and successful – and your ability to be impressive – is down to how you pay attention! Yeah, it really is that simple – focus on what’s actually going on and you’ll excite parts of your brain that are only ever otherwise activated when you get a natural high. In other words, turn yourself on – tune in to the only place where life can be lived – the here and now – because tuning in tunes out all the baggage in your head that has conned you into believing in your own inadequacy.

Tuning in means actually seeing what’s going on now for what it is – it means coming to your senses – it means seeing, feeling, hearing, smelling and tasting the reality of the here and now – not peering through the crud-covered window of your own sick mind (no offense meant and, I hope, none taken, all normal minds are sick). And, guess what, if you go to the trouble to turn up to the present moment, you’ll be head and shoulders above all the normal people on this planet. You will be present – and, if you are present, you will have presence – and the rest is up to you.

Success And Happiness: The Meaning Of Awareness

May 28, 2011 by  

I receive these strange comments to some of my articles. I recently wrote an article on the importance of paying attention to the here and now, which made the point that it’s the only time and place that you can be – and if you couldn’t be bothered to turn up to the reality of the moment, how can you possibly expect to get anything decent out of life. One of the comments – from someone who signed themselves as a “personal development expert” said that, OK, the here and now is all very well – but really personal development is about awareness and choice.

So, here’s the key question: What is Awareness? Let’s make it even easier – what can you be aware of at any particular point in time? For starters, you could be aware of what you’re thinking – most people aren’t because, as decades of research prove, most people are aware of pretty much nothing at all. You could be aware that you’re feeling annoyed or stressed – but these so-called emotions are merely the product of the thoughts that you’re not aware of in the first place. You could be aware of how you feel about yourself – your own self-image – but that’s not awareness, that’s getting involved in the ongoing internal power struggle between you and your personality (remember, personality derives from the Latin word, “persona”, meaning a mask and your personality is nothing more than the amalgamation of all the personal “snapshots” you took as a child).

Real awareness is being aware of the present. To paraphrase the Buddha, when I am walking, I am aware that I am putting one foot in front of the other. Only in the present moment is reality to be found. In fact – scientific fact as explored by quantum physics – only in the present moment does anything exist and all that exists is changing from one moment to the next.

And what of the choice we must make? We have a stark choice that has a fundamental impact on our lives – we can choose to be aware or we can (and this is the automatic choice made by the average person) choose to live in a make-believe world created by our own, predominantly negative, thoughts. This is a choice that we must make time and again, in each moment because nobody becomes aware and stays aware – it is an ongoing process in exactly the same way that the reality of our world is an ongoing process.

The life you are living is how it is as a result of your action, reaction or inaction in the present moment. The normal person reacts to their own thoughts and perceptions. The extraordinarily successful person acts on the basis of the current moment facts and, thereby, creates a life that is exciting, spontaneous, adventurous, fulfilled and successful. Now, how about that for a choice?

Personal Development: Knowing What Would Excite You

May 26, 2011 by  

I come across so many people who want more out of life. I talk to many people who know they need something different but have no idea what that ‘different’ is. Many people are simply unhappy where they are – maybe their stuck in a loveless relationship, they hate the job they’re doing or, perhaps, they’ve just been doing the same job for so long that they get nothing out of it anymore. And often, those who take the route of personal development, want more from life but they don’t know what that ‘more’ is.

Do you want more from your life? Because, if you do, you’re going to have to get some idea of what that more might be. There’s little point in longing for something else when you’ve no idea what that something else might look like and feel like. In other words, you’ve got to have some idea of what turns you on.

In chatting recently with a client who has been doing the same job for the last ten years, I was taken by the extent to which she hadn’t the first idea whatsoever of what she wanted to do in life. She was looking at her options from the normal narrow-minded perspective of her perceived strengths and weaknesses, her past work experience and, most chillingly, her perceived need to pay the bills. You may consider those last few words to be rather strange – bills are real, they must be paid. But unless you’re an absolute idiot, you won’t do something that would leave you unable to look after the necessities of life.

The problem is that our commitments always seem to be uppermost in our minds. Recent research that suggests that the normal people are obsessed with money and afraid that they will not have enough of it (whatever enough might be). Forget about your financial commitments – they will simply look after themselves if you put your heart’s desire first. I’m not suggesting that you be silly about deciding how you want to change your life, I’m merely suggesting that You have to get your priorities right.

To set your priorities, you need to know what would really – and I mean really, really – excite you. What would make you leap out of bed each and every morning? What would turn you on so much that you wouldn’t have to work, it would be a labour of love? Ask yourself: What is my ideal life? And, most importantly from the point of view of your all-important subconscious mind (the part of your mind that creates your reality), what would your ideal life look like, feel like, sound like, smell like and taste like?

A strange question? Not at all – the subconscious mind believes in the snapshots that it holds dearly within its depths. These snapshots are five-sensory – no surprise, you make sense of the world by using your five senses and it is through using your five senses that you were programmed to live the mundane life that has you so disillusioned right now. If you turn on your subconscious, a really exciting life will follow effortlessly – oh and by the way, your financial commitments will be more than adequately catered for.

Self Help And The Oneness Of Mind, Body And Spirit

May 23, 2011 by  

Very often I find it hard to explore some of the main ideas in what I might call personal development or self improvement given that everyday language and words are far from adequate. By way of example, do the words ‘universal energy’ adequately explain the reality that you and I are energy, we live in a world and universe made of vibrating energy and that energy responds to our input? Does the sobriquet ‘Law of Attraction’ have the same meaning for different people? And where are the boundaries between mind, body and spirit?

Of course, in fact, there are no boundaries between mind, body and spirit in the same way that there are no limits between us as individuals and the universe of which we each comprise an integral and indispensable part. Not only are we part of a whole, when it comes to us individually, there is just one – mind, body and spirit are simply artificially imagined aspects of the one. This is important because, when one looks at the facts in this way, it is clear that what we’re thinking has an immediate effect on how we feel physically and mentally. By way of example, when one examines the problem of stress and its all too real physical results, we find that our thoughts directly generate movements in body temperature and heart rate, changes in the creation and distribution of a all manner of chemicals all of which, if unchecked, lead to serious illnesses – such as heart attack and stroke – and, if seriously out of control, will lead to early death.

What is my point? . Our state of mind has a direct impact on the mental state of others around us – this has been proven many times by research in the field of psychology. How much more does our state of mind affect us, ourselves? Your health, fitness and wellness are all directly related to your state of mind. Even your weight – your ability to gain too much of it or a whole range of dietary disorders from bulimia to anorexia – is a direct consequence of what is going on in your head.

And what you’re thinking is directly within your own control – or will be if you take the trouble to make the simplest and, ultimately, most liberating decision that any one of us can make as responsible adults – choosing your own thoughts. The ordinary mind is tortured by toxic thoughts, most of which rise from the subconscious. Research confirms that the average subconscious is focused on the events of our formative years and is predisposed to focus on the more negative events. This is our default mental state. That is not to say that we cannot control what we’ll pay attention to, however.

You are your own master. Your life, every part of it, is created by what you’re paying attention to – whether you know it or not. This ultimate and powerful choice that I just mentioned can be taken, each day, moment to moment, by deciding to pay attention to the actual reality of the present moment. That’s the only cast-iron way of stopping your own subconscious dwelling on self-sabotaging thoughts. No other mechanism is as effective, no other way gives you the power to absolutely transform your health, your fitness, your wellbeing, your personal effectiveness and, ultimately, your ability to live a life of happiness, peace and incredible success.

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