Your mind

Low self-esteem is a constant theme that runs through much of my client work.

By no means to do all potential clients come to me asking for help with this issue, of course, but it often comes up.

One person comes to me about his relationship challenges and through exploration we come to the conclusion that his partner is not able to respect him because he does not adequately respect himself.

Anxiety issues are among the most common topics that I discuss with my clients. Even if they come to see me about something else, anxiety and stress are themes in their lives. Reframing anxiety can help.

Anxiety can be triggered by various factors, such as work stress, relationship issues, financial problems, or health concerns. It can also become generalised to all aspects of life and appear to arise without any clear trigger.

Although it is a natural and necessary, human response, anxiety can become overwhelming and interfere with your daily activities.

Reframing is a process commonly used in NLP that involves changing the way we think about a situation or event. It can help us see things from a different angle and reframe our thoughts in a more positive light.

There are many kinds of confidence, and different people experience confidence differently. However there are certain situations that regularly crop up as challenges for people.

Public speaking and job interviews are typical examples. Many people experience feelings of self-doubt and anxiety in these high-pressure situations.

One approach is to use NLP for confidence in situations that may come up in the future.

NLP for confidence techniques

Try these four approaches for starters.

To stop procrastinating can be the hardest thing in the world – or the easiest.

Isn’t it funny how sometimes we can just get on and do the things that matter, and other times we seem to self-sabotage our own attempts to do the right thing? Whether it is from low self esteem or something else – why can’t you do the things you should?

‘Should’ according to whom?

Sometimes the reason we procrastinate is because we don’t really own the activity in the first place.

If there is a ‘should’ or an ‘ought to’ running through your mind, you are allowing outside pressures to control your outcomes. That can often lead to a feeling of anxiety, which limits your ability to act even further.

If you are doing something because your sister says so, or the government, or your religion, or the book you are reading, you may unconsciously resist doing it.

There are some very effective, but easy to use, NLP for anxiety techniques that can have an immediate effect in helping you to cope with worrying about a specific event that is coming up.

There are varying degrees of anxiety, it’s true, and worrying about an event in the future can be a very stressful experience.

You may have found yourself lying awake at night thinking about that meeting you have to go to, or that difficult conversation you know you are going to have.

There is an endless list of things to be anxious about.

In fact for some people, anxiety can take over their lives to such a degree that it prevents them doing the things most people take for granted.

Often, when they first see me, my clients have got to the point where they cannot travel, or leave a certain area, or go to public events.

Some of the approaches I use are quite complex, but here are a few ways you can use NLP for anxiety right now.

Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) has been around as a discipline since 1975. It has gone through a great deal of change and development since that time. The question many ask is ‘does NLP work’? Or is it just another an example of the placebo effect?

Placebo is an effect whereby a person’s condition, mental or physical, is improved even though the treatment is not ‘real’. The assumption is that the belief in the effectiveness of treatment is sufficient to make people well.

It strikes me that the placebo effect is, in itself an example of an NLP process at work. One of the core areas of work in NLP is on the way our beliefs affect our outcomes. If we believe something about ourselves, we tend to prove ourselves right. This is either because we tend to create the circumstances to support the belief, or we select the evidence to prove it.

Learning language skills can be so powerful. I can’t over-emphasise the importance of using the right word in the right situation. Asking the right questions, giving feedback, maintaining rapport – these are all incredibly valuable skills that will just make day-to-day interactions smoother, more amicable and more effective.

There is so much to learn and so many things to think about that nobody is ever going to be a perfect communicator. I am still learning new language skills myself, and just knowing them isn’t enough. You have to develop the habits to use them.

Take the question ‘why’, for example…

Social anxiety can be a subtle beast. There are a great many sufferers out there who may not even realise what is going on. When you are struggling with issues such as lack of confidence, low self-esteem, shyness and social awkwardness it is natural that you are going to be anxious in social situations. There can be various causes for this and there may often be several reasons why you are worried about interacting with others. But whatever your situation, there are things that you can do to help yourself deal with social situations better. Below, I suggest some specific social anxiety techniques that can help

It’s the start of Summer, right now and I’d love to go down to the beach. The temperature isn’t exactly balmy though, and down on the coast, with a stiff breeze, the wind chill factor will make it will feel even colder. I’m better off staying put in my back garden.

The wind-chill factor is the bane of my life sometimes. On a recent trip to Mallorca, even though the temperature was around 20 degrees. I would normally be sunbathing on the beach at that temperature but the wind chill meant that I was actually too cold. I couldn’t stay on the sand for any length of time.

Why does it feel colder when it’s windy?

Apparently, when there is no wind, our bodies create a protective layer of warmth around the skin. When the wind blows across our skin, this protective layer is stripped away and we feel cooler than it actually is. The greater the difference in temperature between the wind and the air around us, the greater the loss of heat.

Reading this fact put me in mind of a similar effect. When something unexpected happens – a negative event, it naturally knocks us back. It may take time to recover, but if other aspects of life are going okay we can often regain our balance, take action where possible, and recover.

When you have been living your life in the same way, sometimes you need an epiphany to overcome it. An epiphany is defined in the dictionary as ‘a moment of sudden and great revelation or realization’. It is a moment in time when one incident – a thought, an experience – changes everything for good.

There are many stories in history of people who have made sudden realisations that changed everything. The classic epiphany would be the story of Archimedes, leaping from his bath, shouting ‘Eureka’ as he came to understand water displacement. Sir Isaac Newton is said to have had an epiphany when an apple fell on his head – illustrating gravity.

These events, if true, were significant enough to change the course of science and mathematics. An epiphany can also be experienced at the personal level too. Any experience that results in a major shift in thinking or a new way of experiencing the world is an epiphany. In his classic book The Dubliners, James Joyce explored personal epiphanies through his short stories.

In this second ‘Inpiring Success‘ interview with Hereward Kaye, composer and musician, we talk about the elusive nature of success. Hereward explains how, in his modest opinion, the success he has had as a ‘jobbing musician’ is more manageable than that found by the young stars who shoot to fame. He talks about his love of the work he does and the joy he has from the fact that his passion is his job.

We also get to hear about Hereward’s experience at a Beatles concert and learn about his current projects.

Hereward is a past member of the Flying Pickets. He wrote a West End Musical, called ‘Moby Dick’ and founded Rok Skool Sussex.

Hereward has met and worked with some of the greatest names in music. Names such as Rick Wakeman, Tom Robinson and Cameron Mackintosh. He currently runs Rok Skool Sussex where he teaches bands and individuals to develop their skills and experience in performance.

In the previous exerpt Hereward talked about dealing with big personalities, and preparing to perform. Part three will be a delightful story about launching a Westend Musical.

For further information on Hereward and his work, visit these sites.

www.herewardkaye.co.uk

www.rokskool.co.uk

If Hereward’s story has piqued your interest then why not get involved in his crowdfunding project to publish the full lockdown memoir – ‘The Ship Hits the Fans’, which gives the full inside story of the Moby Dick musical, along with stories of his time working with Rick Wakeman, the Flying Pickets and many others.

Hereward’s campaign, which offers incentives of first editions and invites to the book launch, can be accessed on his crowdfunding page.

Some time ago I wrote a blog on metaprograms and the value of ‘chunking’. In a nutshell, when dealing with issues it can be useful to change ‘chunk size’. You can look at things in more detail – chunk down – or you can consider the bigger picture. Both approaches have their value, and there are multiple levels of thinking.

As I write this, the world’s attention is on the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) and although I am not following it in detail, I definitely think this is a time for chunking up.

At all levels of society there is attention on what we can do to save the planet and our environment. From recycling waste to buying electric cars, many of us are trying to ‘do our bit’. There is plenty of evidence, sadly, that ‘our bit’ is not enough. Every little helps, but a lot helps more, and to do a lot, we are going to have to look at a bigger picture.

Whether in a relationship, your career, financially or personally, bad thinking habits can really slow your progress, create conflict or knock your confidence. So, I thought I would present a list of my top 7 deadly thinking styles. I’ll explain a little about each, and give some suggestions to help avoid them.

Thinking styles

1: Think the worst

When making decisions or wondering about an event in the future. Many people naturally worry that things won’t turn out well. Focusing on bad outcomes, however, is a recipe for increasing your anxiety.

You have to wonder if a little NLP might help with Ed Sheeran’s bad habits. In his latest hit song, the singer, songwriter focusses on the bad habits he has later in the day. Some might interpret this as a reference to drink and drugs, and others to partying and one-night stands. As with all songs, the interpretation lies with the listener to a certain extent.

What is a bad habit?

Before you can resolve a problem, you need to be aware that it exists. Often we find ourselves experiencing repeating patterns in our careers, personal life and relationships that we find difficult to explain. Maybe we typically begin a relationship with passion and commitment and then start to develop jealous behaviours or possesiveness that destroys what we have. In a career we might start by loving the job but then get into a loop of complaining and politicising and end up leaving.

Sometimes a person will reach a point in life where they come to a devastating realisation. ‘It’s all my fault’. In any aspect of our lives we may spend a considerable amount of time feeling that we are the victim and blaming others for our bad experiences, and then suddenly we reach a certain breaking point and it hits us that we are the cause of everything we are experiencing.

It often happens after things have been piling up over a long period of time. You gradually become overwhelmed with all the choices you have made and the path you have found yourself going down.

As I write this I’m stuck in a prison – the prison of the mind. A lot of people run aground in their lives and stay in that place most of the time. I am determined to break free and live a life of freedom. Sure, things, or should I say, circumstances, happen in one’s life but the most important emotion is our reactions to these. We can be negative and feel sorry for ourselves or get into a positive state of mind and ‘tighten our belts’ and move on to the next chapter. The most important piont in your life is to not compare yourself with others.

You have been given a blank canvas and it’s up to you what you’re going to paint on it. My own life has had its ups and downs and most of my life I’ve let the downs keep me from experiencing the joys that life has to offer: low in confidence; feeling worthless; lack of self-esteem and hiding away. My aim is to break free and break these chains, start a new journey and use every part of the canvas to paint my picture.

Controlling anger isn’t something tigers have to think about. These are incredibly beautiful creatures. They represent concepts of pure wildness, untamed beauty, strength and power. Tigers have a reputation for being unpredictable and incredibly dangerous. Keeping a tiger as a pet is definitely inadvisable. It is their wildness that we admire most. A tiger doesn’t need to apologise for being a tiger.

Unlike tigers, we sometimes need to be able to control our anger. Anger is sometimes a perfectly natural response to a situation. Like all emotions it is a signal that something needs to change, and there is something new to learn.

I grew up with Hugh Grant. Not literally of course. To be fair he only really came to my attention in my early twenties, as Clive in the Film ‘Maurice‘. His role in the E.M. Forster classic was very different from his roles in most films. The film was ahead of it’s time and I remember finding it quite challenging when I first saw it.

These days if you think about Hugh Grant, you are far more likely to think of him in his blockbusting comedy successes such as ‘About a Boy’, ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’, ‘Notting Hill’, ‘Bridget Jones’ Diary’ and, well, ‘Love Actually’, actually. I don’t know how Hugh Grant feels about that, but I’m fine with it. I love, Love Actually, actually.

Self-esteem is defined on Wikipedia as ‘an individual’s subjective evaluation of their own worth’. Valuing yourself, knowing your core identity and believing in who you are is a key issue that underpins many problems in life. I have written on this subject before.

There are many ways in which we can work on our self-esteem. There are habits we can cultivate. We can change our self-talk – the way we tend to talk about ourselves to others and in our own minds. There are journaling exercises, and many Neurolinguistic Programming inventions. We can see a hypnotherapist or a Timeline Therapist and we can get some coaching.

One of the questions I get asked in the early stages of working with clients, is ‘How long will it take to get better?’ When you are suffering from anxiety and depression, coping with a phobia or dealing with stressful situations, you want to get better as quickly as possible.

The traditional view of psychiatry is that you go and see your ‘shrink’ every Tuesday afternoon over a period of 2, maybe 3 years. You lie on her coach and tell her everything. How your mother didn’t love you. You father dropped you on the head when you were 6. All the traumatic experiences you endured, and of course every sexual encounter you have ever had. Through this the therapist has you come to some realisation that immediately makes you see the world differently. However once you often have that realisation you still need to work with it and come to terms with it.

“Why am I different?” – It’s a question I get asked a lot by my clients about themselves. They say things like:

“‘I try to be like everyone else. I try to fit in.

I wear the kind of clothes that other people my age wear.

I join in with the conversations that go on and try to look like I am totally on their wavelength.

I pretend to be interested in all the things they like to do, and I take part in the socials.

I turn up for the charity events and I even turn a blind eye to the things that make me uncomfortable.

“I don’t agree with some of the things people say, and some of it is just so wrong, on so many levels. I daren’t say anything though, so I just smile politely.

That makes me feel really bad inside. It just emphasises even more that I am different, and I don’t think people would like me if they knew what I am really like.”

Anybody who uses Facebook will be familiar with the insidious way in which it manages your daily experience. Click on a picture of a dog, and you’ll get flooded with pictures of dogs. You’ll get doggy treat adverts, dog adoption groups and cute videos of dogs cooking paella. In fact you don’t even need to have clicked. Such is the subtlety of the Facebook ‘algorithm’.

You only have to slow down or stop scrolling on your device to inform the social media site that this is something you are interested in and you’ll get more of it. It is almost impossible not to do that if something catches your eye.

I don’t know with certainty if you can have too much of a good thing, but it’s definitely true that you can have too much of a bad thing. This is, without doubt, the most testing of times. Coping with coronavirus is unlike coping with anything we have ever experienced before and it is a massive ‘reframe’.

A reframe is when something comes along – an experience, a therapy, a different way of looking at things, that causes you to suddenly completely change your way of living and being.

Past hurt is inevitable. It is almost impossible to go through life without conflict. There are always going to be people in our lives with whom we don’t see eye to eye.

Marriage break-ups cause more rifts than just those between spouses. Children are swept up in drama, families take sides and friends are forced into awkward situations.

Sometimes there are feuds over money issues, and some people can even bare a grudge for years over a misplaced word or a throwaway sentence.

In an ideal world, perhaps, we would confront these people in our lives. We might sit down and talk it out with them. There might be a row to clear the air. We could seek forgiveness or agree to put the past behind us. These are mature ways to deal with conflict that can and do work for many.

Some of you may know that as part of my involvement in the Vinings Natural Health team, I help run a Holistic Book Club. The club explores a wide range of alternative non-fiction from personal beliefs to spiritual beliefs and everything in between.

With all the reading and studying I do personally, it can sometimes be a bit of a chore to read something prescribed by a book club, and when the chosen title this time was ‘Proof of Heaven: a Neurosurgeon’s Guide to the Afterlife’ by Eben Alexander, I’m afraid I baulked.

One of the prime directives of our unconscious mind is to maintain our habits. An article in the New Scientist in 2018 suggests that ‘As much as 40 per cent of our daily behaviour is habitual’. No wonder changing habits is so difficult.

I highly recommend the excellent book ‘The Power of Habit’ by Charles Durigg. One of his fascinating stories tells of Eugene Pauly, a man who suffered severe brain damage, but was still able to function incredibly well, largely due to the fact that the part of his brain that dealt with habits and routine, was relatively unharmed.

When we talk about habits we are generally thinking of ‘bad’ habits such as smoking, drinking or biting our nails. Or we may be thinking about the ‘good’ habits that include things like regular exercise or eating healthily.

When you hear professionals, such as hypnotherapists and Neurolingistic Programming (NLP) experts talk about your unconscious mind, you can be forgiven for glazing over a little. What exactly is the unconscious mind? What’s the difference between that and the subconscious? What does it do and why does it do it?

Therapists and the like may naturally put great emphasis on the importance of understanding why we do things and understanding our unconscious. For many though, the bigger question could be ‘what is the point of an unconscious mind in the first place? If it creates so many problems for us, through creating phobias, anxiety, OCD and so forth, wouldn’t we be better off without it?’

How can you improve your mood? How do you feel today? Do you feel motivated? Driven? Excited? Glad to be alive? Or do you feel apathetic, bored, lazy or just plain down?

As a Life Coach and NLP expert, part of my job is to help people feel better. This might be a short term boost to motivation or positivity, or it might be a long term plan to improve your mood by changing your life.

Have you ever tripped over a wet floor sign? I know I have. I guess I need to pay more attention to where I am going. I do think I have tripped over more wet floor signs than I have ever slipped on wet floors.

Really, there ought to be a sign – to warn you about the sign. A ‘caution wet floor sign’ sign!

Now there’s an idea for a new product.

There are times in everyone’s lives when they feel deeply sad. There are great overwhelming moments of grief and loss. There is the dark, seemingly endless tunnel of depression.

These are the times when it feels that there is no bright side. (more…)

Dealing with guilt, regret or shame using NLP or Timeline Therapy can be very helpful in enabling you to move on in life.

All of us, at one time or another, have had moments where we have made choices that we have later had cause to regret. Guilt for doing something, or failing to do something seems inevitable and can cause us great unhappiness and pain.

Anger issues are among the most common themes that come up when working with neurolinguistic programming (NLP) clients.  Often when I meet someone for the first time, clients will be concerned that they are having angry outbursts or feel pent-up feelings of anger. They can’t understand why this is happening. Small things, which you would not normally find more than slightly  irritating, take on an inappropriate level of emotion.  The tendency to lose your temper can lead to difficulties in your relationships, social life, and also at work. Clients have found themselves (more…)

In the last blog I visited the concept of ‘metaprograms’ – the general approaches to life that influence our view of the world and affect the success of our choices and outcomes, both positively and negatively. There are no ‘wrong’ metaprograms, and they are preferences rather than hard and fast rules. So in the last example, having a preference for a ‘toward’ metaprogram, or an ‘away from’ metaprogram each has their own benefits and disadvantages.

Another metaprogram that can have a significant effect on your world view is ‘chunk-size’. (more…)

Is your map of the world (see my blog “I finally get getting there”) a generally positive one, or typically erring on the side of negativity?

How we respond to our world, as I’ve said many times before, can totally colour our view of life. Two people viewing the same event can have completely different experiences and interpretations, based on how they filter the information they receive through their senses. There are a range of these filters available to us. For instance we may filter our experience to favour certain senses – focusing on the visual, or on the sounds that are present. We may filter through our values – we may judge easy going people more harshly, for example if one of our highest values is consistency, or achievement. (more…)

Here`s the scenario.  You are on your way to a meeting.  Perhaps it is work related, or a club committee, or simply catching up with a friend.  You’re about to head into the cafe, or the office and you suddenly realise that you haven’t got a pen.  You’re going to look a bit silly if you need to take some notes or jot down some figures, or even just put a date in your diary.

Just down the road from the venue for the meeting is a local supermarket – a pretty big one. They will definitely be selling pens. (more…)

As we go through life, stuff just happens. It can feel like we are being carried on a wave and there just isn’t time to properly focus on what is happening and what we are feeling. But moods and states change constantly through the day as we all know.

Even the most depressed people have moments of feeling calmer and more positive. Even the most anxious people can forget to worry in a particular moment.  The best state of all can often be the one we haven’t even noticed. That state of being in ‘The Zone’, so focused that you have forgotten where you are, all sounds become a background buzz and your attention is solely on the task in hand. (more…)

Stage-fright on some level, is pretty much a given with many of the performers and speakers that I work with.

On one level it is completely understandable. Few of us like the idea of standing up there in front of an audience of hundreds, maybe even thousands and singing, dancing or even just speaking.

At the same time, many of my clients are hugely talented people.As one successful client put it ‘I beat myself up over being so nervous. I should be used to it by now.’

The thing that frustrates many performers is that they know that having this fear over performing can mean that they actually perform less well. (more…)

There can be many ways in which we can be uncomfortable about our bodies. The most common, perhaps, is when we become aware that we are not that particular size, or weight that we ‘should’ be.

That ‘should be’ can come from lots of sources. It may be a standard we believe is set by our society, our friends, the media. It could be a measure our parents have handed down to us, unintentionally or intentionally, by trying to manage our food intake – ‘don’t eat too many cakes or you’ll get fat’.

You may be someone who has experienced those patterns of putting on the pounds and then intensively dieting and exercising to lose them again, only to find that a few months later you are back where you started or worse! Alternatively you may have just always been ‘big’ in comparison to others and feel that there is nothing you can do about it.

(more…)

Most people have heard of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), the condition that is believed to occur during the months of short days, when we are less exposed to vitamin D and this, in consequence, results in low mood or even depression in the Winter months. It’s a definite thing and there are various ways you can help yourself if you have this condition – daylight lamps, vitamin supplements, or just going away to somewhere sunny (I personally would advocate the last of these if you can afford it!).

There are lots of reasons why we can feel more down and less motivated in the Winter however, and while I wouldn’t rule out SAD, I do think that the awareness of this condition can steal some of our power. There are several very common influences on our mood that tend to occur more commonly at this time of year: (more…)

Mean memes seem to be the thing of the moment as I write this blog. The disgusting practice of posting pictures of supposedly unattractive people on social media and encouraging ‘tagging’ others as some sort of joke or insult, has thankfully come under fire.

Stories of people such as Lizzie Velasquez, a motivational speaker and author, with a rare congenital disease that prevents her from accumulating body fat, have been covered in the Metro and other papers, have helped to shame some of these bullies. It may be that the practice will decline, or, such is the perversity of our society, it may increase them.

One of the things that strikes me about some of the pictures that I have seen used for this purpose, is that many of those depicted are actually looking pretty happy!  The people who post (more…)

Fear is a necessary part of our existence.  That may seem strange.

Think for a minute about the birds in your garden, or in a park. When you walk through the park you often will see birds in the near distance, pecking away at the ground. It may seem that they are oblivious to their surroundings, and I can guarantee that they will be gone long before you reach them. Animals, (more…)

One of the core principles of NLP is the idea that we view the world through a range of filters. 

The thing is that there is just so much information in our day to day experience that it is impossible to take it all in. The human brain is only consciously able to process around 7 pieces of information simultaneously. It stands to reason that we are subject to a great deal more than this every minute of every day.

For instance if you are sitting in a coffee shop talking to a friend you are listening to her words, looking at the expressions on her face, thinking about what she is saying, or about what you are going to say next. You may be aware of the taste of your coffee and a general awareness of people around you. You cannot possibly, in the same moment, also be conscious of the feel of the chair on your legs, the words of the music that is playing, the colour of that lady’s handbag or the words on the sign in the window.  (more…)

When you first enter my office in Haywards Heath I always ask you two important questions.

Whether you are seeing me for a free appointment, or an intensive one-day breakthrough session, or even if you have begun a series of regular sessions, the first is:

‘Why are you here?’.

It’s not a surprising question in itself, and probably likely to glean more useful information to me as a therapist and coach than ‘What’s your shoe size?’

Usually, though not always, my client will tell me (more…)

I’ve done quite a lot of spouting my thoughts and telling my story over the last few blogs, so this time I thought I would hand over to some more worthy characters from the past and present and share some great quotes about confidence.  Some of them are serious, some inspiring, one or two are just witty and help us not to take ourselves too seriously. (more…)

Few things recharge your batteries more than a holiday There are many wonderful places to visit in the UK, but the sometimes unreliable weather means that many of us choose to spend some time abroad.  It can be wonderful to relax by the sea in a sunny location, or take part in exotic and thrilling activities such as water sports, climbing, ski-ing or just exploring the culture and traditions of a new place.

For many though, the attraction of the holiday is jaded by the prospect of the journey there. So many people suffer to a greater or lesser extend with fears and phobias around travel, and probably a fear of flying is the most common. (more…)

I experienced a powerful period of growth, success and self-development during my late thirties and early forties.  As I said in my last blog, this was largely due to putting into action the practices and philosophy of Steven Covey’s ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’.  It’s an excellent work and I refer back to it often, along with Covey’s other masterpieces – particularly ‘First Things First’. which is his book on time management.

Something went seriously wrong in my 40s. (more…)

I was looking out of my window the other day watching the Summer rain when my neighbour came out.  She was wrapped up well against some very blustery weather with her wellies on, ready to brave a walk with her two dogs. She has a beautiful, elegant Deerhound and an energetic and loveable Spaniel.

Watching the two dogs with their owner, they could not have been more different from each other,

The Spaniel is a bundle of energy and (more…)

Do you carry a mirror wherever you go?

The truth is that in reality we all do, without realising it. When we judge others we are often just looking at a reflection of ourselves.

I was ‘innocently minding my business’ the other day in a local coffee shop when I overheard a snippet of a conversation a couple were having at the next table.

“That Mary is such a gossip! Did you hear the other day how she was slamming the woman at the green-grocers about her daughter running off with a painter? I mean heaven knows that is shocking, but why does Mary have to go round telling everybody about it? She’s one to talk isn’t she when she’s on her third husband and one in the fire if you know what I mean. It’s shameful.

I wouldn’t speak to her at all, but I like to know what mischief she’s up to. She’s such a trouble maker…”

The gentleman opposite the speaker nodded wisely and said, “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s people spreading rumours. There’s a chap in my office who’s just as bad. I’m pretty sure he’s having an affair with his boss too. The hypocrisy of the man.’

How easy it is to see in others the things that are deepest in ourselves. (more…)

I have to confess that I am an avid watcher of ‘I’m a celebrity, get me out of here.’ I have tired of most reality TV and in fact most television, but I do enjoy this programne. It’s partly the witty chat of Ant and Dec but it’s also my general fascination with people and the way they think and behave.
As usual the ‘celebrities’ are mostly relatively unknown to all but a few of us, but certainly many of a certain generation will remember Edwina Currie the politician. Not so well known is her erstwhile arch rival Kendra Wilkinson. The two could not be more different. Edwina is a 68 year-old woman, highly educated and respected by many, with high moral standards and a razor-sharp mind. Kendra is 29, an ex-resident of the Playboy Mansion, with a high-school education and a modelling and television career.
In the show the two crossed swords over Kendra’s apparent ‘only think of yourself’ philosophy. (more…)

Susie had finally put the kids to bed and tidied up the living room. X-factor would be starting in twenty minutes. Another quiet evening watching TV.  Good to have a rest but a bit dull.  Just enough time to grab a quick shower.

She went into the bathroom, set the shower going, undressed, and stepped in. The water and the lightly scented soap relaxed and invigorated her.  After a few minutes she turned the shower off and reached for her towel, when she saw – a few feet away on the bathroom floor, the most enormous house spider she had ever seen.  In her eyes it seemed about 6 inches across and it glared at her with its 8 eyes, ready to pounce.  Ready to run up her legs and maybe bite her or just crawl all over her.  She let out an involuntary scream, quickly stifled when she remembered the children in bed asleep.  She hated them to see her like this. Sarah, her eldest was already starting to show signs of the same irrational panic.

Do you ever get up in the morning and think ‘It’s going to be one of those days? Maybe you put the toast in the toaster, pressed it down and the fuse blows.  Or you are about to leave for work and suddenly realise you have put your top on inside out.  You think ‘Everything is going wrong.  Maybe I should just go back to bed before things get worse.’

But you decide to stick it out and you set off for work.  You find a good parking space and so have time to pop to the coffee shop before you go in to the office.  Bonus! The staff in the coffee shop are slow though and you get more and more anxious that you are going to be late.  You order a filter coffee in the end because it’s quick and then you have to dash to the office and in the process splash coffee over yourself. (more…)

When there are just a few weeks at best before the exams for GCSEs, A levels and University Degrees, it can be very worrying. The exam season is stressful for everyone and exam anxiety can really making the whole process more painful.

A small amount of exam anxiety may actually contribute to better results. In a recent session I did with 15-16 year-olds some were blasé about their upcoming exams. Would these pupils really give their best on the day with that attitude?

During the run-up to the exam day it helps to have that little bit of fear, telling you to make the best of the remaining time. If you were completely laid back about your results you would be inclined to work less hard. You might revise less and therefore perform poorly and get lower marks.

Stress and worry are there for a reason, they are among the body’s natural warning systems and they can help us perform better.

One of the things I love about working as a life coach and therapist is the wonderful variety of people I meet. A key presupposition in my work is that ‘everybody is doing the best they can with the resources they have available’.

From this perspective it becomes so much easier to relate and sympathise with clients whatever their problem.

Take a case I dealt with a few years ago. Naturally I have given the client a fictitious name to protect his identity:

Case Study: Stephen Nicklaus – Father

When Stephen came to me, he was in a rut.

As part of the process of performing NLP, Hypnotherapy, and indeed any kind of treatment, there is one very important check that always takes place. It’s the ecology check.

Clients can come to a therapist for an incredible range of issues. In fact I would say that every client has a unique situation, that is supported by his or her own personal history. So a good therapist will always seek some further information before performing an ‘intervention’, rather than assume that one technique will always work.

For example a client may come to a therapist with a fear of dogs, and there are several excellent and powerful techniques for dealing with such phobias which are fairly general. However the therapist will want to be sure that the phobia is not in fact an ‘example’ of something else. Removing a phobia without some deeper understanding of the issues may result in a less successful outcome, or it may be successful but leave the client with the bigger issue unresolved, which may mean he or she will develop new ‘symptoms’. (more…)

I have a passion for NLP, hypnotherapy and timeline therapy. I do not have a passion for cats.
They know this.
Cats have an ability to calm, to give perspective, to make a sometimes spiritual relationship with their owners – when they’re not vomiting over the bed or dragging a half-dead and bloody rodent around the kitchen.
I have two cats – (Yes… I know… why?) and when there is a need to use my home with clients, I am always careful to remove them to a place where they can’t bring their influence to bear on the proceedings. They seem to strongly disapprove of hypnotherapy. I suspect that this is because they know something far more effective than that – some sort of distant mind-control, and don’t want me stealing their thunder. In the early days my innocence assumed that the cats would merely give character and personality to the sessions. Maybe even, a cat-loving client might feel happier to share with little ‘Damian’ the ginger tom, purring in his or her lap. (more…)