Lance Armstrong motivates Vince Vaughn in the film Dodgeball by invoking negative emotions that Vince feels a compulsion to move away from. Or maybe it’s just silly and funny.

Now this is actually a technique that some people use to get themselves moving in the direction they want to. It seems that for many people the lure of something better isn’t actually enough to get them taking action. In this case really imagining what they don’t want (broadly defined as pain) can give them the initial spur to move towards what they do want (broadly defined as pleasure).

Be careful however as this way of motivation has two problems. The first is that you need something compelling to move towards otherwise you will only move forward until you are no longer feeling pain, then you fall back into your old habits and don’t take action again until you’re experiencing pain again. (This is the classic pattern of the yo-yo dieter. Diet until you are thin, no pain from being overweight, start eating again, feel pain, start diet again, etc.)

The second issue with this way of motivating yourself is that it’s not a good thing to focus on things you don’t want as that’s inevitably what you’ll end up with. So use this sparingly!

It’s that time of year when every blog and website about psychology starts giving you the top 10 tips for setting your New Years Resolutions and how to stick to them.

Well I’m going to do something different. Once you’ve set your outcomes, broken them down into short term goals and made a plan of action I want you to think about all the things you are going to start removing from your life.

For example, I sometimes visit a website that provides news and reviews of films, even though I haven’t been to the cinema in years and have never rented a DVD. For some reason I’m spending precious minutes of my life reading about movies I’ll never watch.

So from now on I vow to stop visiting that website.

The idea is that if I start removing all those useless activities from my life I’ll start spending more time doing the things I really want and need to do.

Now the trick of course is to make sure I don’t fill up the time I’ve won with other useless pursuits. I guess some of you watch television so you should consider cutting down on that (or stopping altogether, as I have). For me the main danger is aimless surfing on the internet. Although a bit of random surfing can be useful I think the best thing for me would be to put a time limit on it and enforce the time table I’ve set for my other interests.

The idea is that if I start removing all those useless activities from my life I’ll start spending more time doing the things I really want to do.

Ever feel like your thinking is going round in circles and you’re not really generating any new ideas? If you can’t even think of new ways of behaving how will you ever do things differently?

Here’s a quick exercise you can do when faced with situations where you need to generate new possibilities and think outside the box.

You take a problem statement, your outcome or a difficult situation and apply these four algorithms that play with the possibilities open to you. It’s best explained by giving examples.

Outcome: I want to give presentations with confidence.

Question: What would it be like if you did give presentations with confidence? (+/+)

Answers (Courses of action, useful states, new ideas, towards motivation): I would feel happy, proud, like I’ve achieved something, I’ll be able to do better at work, progress in my career more quickly.

Question: What wouldn’t it be like if you did give presentations with confidence? (-/+)

Answers (Away from motivation): I would not feel like I’m living up to my potential, I would not feel nervous before presentations.

Question: What would it be like if you didn’t give presentations with confidence? (+/-)

Answers: I would feel sad, uninspired, feel like I’m not progressing.

Question: What wouldn’t it be like if you didn’t give presentations with confidence? (-/-)

Answers: I would feel really good about myself, feel confident and in control, know what I have to do to progress.

The questions may seem a bit confusing so read them slowly. I find that they are helpful for putting me in that zen / no-mind state which is a really good creative state to be in. The last question especially makes me a bit dizzy!

You can apply the algorithms to a lot of things. Say you’re brainstorming around some ideas, you could ask: ‘What would we do if we were to build a new website to market this product?’ Or: ‘What would we do if we didn’t build a new website?’

Although hypnosis and trance have been in use for thousands of years, it still suffers from many misconceptions and misunderstandings that shroud it in mystery for the average person. But slowly mainstream science is starting to investigate it more thoroughly and you can read about the latest research at Mind Hacks

The editorial of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute discusses a recent study that found that hypnosis can be successfully used in breast cancer surgery to reduce pain, nausea, painkiller use, tiredness and emotional impact of the surgical procedure.

I’m still incredibly fascinated by the fact that someone speaking to you in a certain way can affect your mind by literally changing where blood flows to in your brain.

To be honest, on my more paranoid days I wonder if certain groups of people have been using hypnosis on an unsuspecting public for a while. Just listen to the ‘unspeak’ of politicians or the mesmerising phrases used in advertising. Maybe they just spread a meme that ridiculed the idea to keep people from taking it too seriously?

If you want to learn this powerful skill (drug-free pain control / powerful sales techniques / protection from unwanted influence / engaging copy-writing) then I suggest you check out probably the best course by the best Hypnotist around:

Igor Ledochowski’s Conversational Hypnosis

I had been interested in NLP and Hypnosis for a few years when my friend Magnus invited me to go on a two day Mentalism course by Igor Ledochowski. (Mentalism is the blend of Psychology and magic that performers like Derren Brown and David Blaine practice). Although I have only a passing interest in practising magic I know that many effects make use of the way human psychology works and that’s what interested me most. So we drove down to London for the weekend to see if there was anything for us to learn.

Now Igor is amongst other things an NLP Practitioner and Hypnotherapist and it turned out that some of what he would be teaching would involve using some of the skills from these disciplines. I felt quite a lot anticipation when I sat down in the room with 40 or so other people because I had heard that Igor was good at putting people into deep trances. Well it turns out he is phenomenal at it.

He started off by telling us a story about how Milton Erickson discovered his particular method of hypnosis.. But this wasn’t an ordinary story. Because as I was sitting there, listening to the words, allowing them to run through my mind, I started to feel my arms getting heavy. This feeling started to creep around my body and I found my attention completely transfixed on Igor. I was going into trance and so where the other 39 people in the room. I couldn’t believe what was happening and fought to regain control over my body. But the only part that I could still move was my left big toe, everything else felt warm and good. Yet I couldn’t move a muscle. Out of the corner of my eyes I even saw people’s heads drop towards their chests as they nodded off, and all he was doing was telling us a story about how some other guy discovered how to put people into trance.

That was the first time I had really experienced deep trance and it was one of my first ‘Seeing the Matrix’ moments. When you have an experience like that it makes you realise the power of the mind and how little most people know about it. I wonder why hypnosis still has such a pseudo-scientific image as it’s obviously very powerful and is being used increasingly in the context of mainstream medicine for things like pain control. If I were paranoid I’d think that the powers that be don’t want us to have these kinds of skills and knowledge.

So what where the three things I learned?

1. Go into the state you want to induce in others.

People naturally follow each other into various states; energetic, relaxed etc. So if you want other people around you to start feeling relaxed and at ease you have to feel that way yourself first. Once you do that you’ll find that your voice and body language will reflect this and the people around you will start to feel the same.

2. Pace and Lead.

Hypnotism is nothing more than leading someone through different states, and in order to do that you need to first describe what the other person is experiencing in that moment. For example: ‘You are sitting, reading this sentence, saying the words in your mind’.

Then you lead them into a new thought or feeling; ‘and as you’re sitting there reading this sentence your mind might wander off and start to think about in what ways learning this skill could be useful’.

3. The hypnotic state is something you do to yourself.

This literally blew my mind, though now it seems obvious. A hypnotist isn’t sending out magical brain-waves to put other people into trance. They only help us find that state within ourselves. We are the ones that are creating the bodily sensations and thoughts. That’s why the more you trance you experience the better you get at it.

Remember those people that were nodding off during Igor’s story? Those were actually the people that have been practising hypnosis the most. They’ve built up the skill that allows them to go in to trance very quickly.

Those three points raise many interesting questions. First and foremost: Are people putting themselves in and out of trance all the time naturally? What do you guys think?

Anyway, if you want to find out more about Igor Ledochowski and how you can learn these ‘Jedi-level skills’ yourself, check out his site: Conversational Hypnosis.

You’ll often hear people say that if you really want to get the best results for yourself you need to do more than just change your behaviours or even your beliefs. You need to start changing the core aspects that make up your identity.

For the moment we’ll leave aside questions of whether there is such a thing as an identity and whether or not it is made up of different aspects; Id, ego, conscious, sub-conscious etc. For our purposes ‘identity’ is all the ways in which you can finish the sentence ‘I am…’.

 

The first experience I had of the power of my identity was when I was 16 or 17. I had made some new friends that played in a band and for some reason I just knew that I was a great song-writer. I had never written any lyrics and had only ever played the xylophone in music class.

So I bought myself a guitar, set about teaching myself to play, and am still playing ten years later. Now whether or not I’m a good song-writer or guitar-player is subjective. But the point is that I did not and will not stop writing songs and practising the guitar until my outward experiences match those I believe to be that of a great song-writer and guitar-player. For me personally that is pride in my own work and abilities, recognition from other musicians, and people enjoying my music. I chose an identity and from that all kinds of beliefs and behaviours that were needed to get me to the end state started to flow.

Looking around I see a lot of people choosing identities for themselves, consciously or not. Unconsciously people often resort to certain stereotypes. For example if I asked you to think of a stock-market trader you’ll instantly recall a certain stereotype. You’ll have an idea of his personality, how he behaves, his interests and hobbies. Now of course everyone is an individual but stereo-types don’t come out of nowhere. Certain people are attracted to that job. Then it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle as young people that want to become traders, will start to dress, talk and act the way they think traders do. They take on the identity and the beliefs and behaviours follow.

Because I was really interested in making music I often spent time at gigs and around other musicians. The popular conception of musicians, at least those that make music like rock or hip-hop, is that alcohol and drugs are a normal part of their life-style. Now I’m not against alcohol and drugs but it’s funny to me how ingrained the idea is that drugs and alcohol fuel creativity. I don’t believe it’s at all necessary and think that the majority are just living up to some idea of what they think musicians and rock-stars ought to be.

Now that your aware of this maybe you can think about what kind of identity you’ve taken on. What beliefs and behaviours are attached to this identity. I’m talking about everything from whether or not this identity encourages you to jump out of bed in the morning, get drunk on a Friday night or keep your promises. All your beliefs and behaviours point to an identity.

So write down the phrase ‘I am…’ and finish the sentence in as many ways as you can. Then decide if the identity they describe is one that you’re happy with. Would you like to trade it, or just augment it somehow? Getting your identity right will allow all the right beliefs and behaviours to flow naturally.

I’ve worked with some people for whom public speaking or approaching a stranger brings on intense negative emotions and physical feelings. It can be debilitating and cause a large amount of stress. It’s a lot more common than you would think and you’d be surprised who suffers from it. When I went travelling in Australia I met a man who used to be in the special-forces branch of the army. He was in his 30’s but already retired. This man, who has probably done night time parachute jumps and could survive in the jungle with a pen-knife, was scared to death of going up to a strange woman in order to talk to her.

It was a text-book case of someone talking themselves into a negative state. Amongst other things he described it as ‘nerve-racking’. And spoke in universals as if it were true for everyone. Just talking about it created very negative physical feelings in his body. His hands cramped up, his face was grimacing, all the muscles in his body were becoming tight.

Now when I want to help someone for whom anxiety in a social setting is a problem I like to take two approaches. The first is remedial change work which is working on the immediate behaviour that is the problem. If someone goes into a negative state every time they have to do public speaking or want to approach someone then there is a specific way they do this. They will speak to themselves in a certain way, describe their feelings, thoughts and the outside world in a specific way. They’ll make particular images in their mind, play sounds to themselves and create feelings in their bodies. That’s stuff you can easily work on with NLP and EFT.

But a problem which people often have is that using the above methods they’ll initially get some good results but then snap back to their old way of being after a couple of days or weeks.

In this case you need to get some generative change happening. That means changing things so that you automatically start displaying more useful behaviours. You start looking at what underlying beliefs are creating these negative states. Beliefs like ‘Talking to strangers in unnatural’ and ‘People get bored when I speak to them’. Working on these kinds of beliefs will get you better results by making a more fundamental change.

But there’s a deeper level that you can work on that in my opinion leads to a more profound change. That is working on the fundamental beliefs that govern your identity and how it can change. Once you start working on this all other change work will happen much easier and you won’t get that bounce back to your old behaviours.

You need to investigate questions like: ‘Do I believe people can actually change? Do I believe I can change? How long do I believe change needs to take?’ etc. For me this is like ensuring that the plants and flowers you wish to grow have fertile soil to live in.

This will really loosen up your ideas about your identity and what you are capable of. Your whole behaviour will automatically adjust to whatever you consider your identity to be, because anything else just isn’t you.

Stress Management Tips and Techniques: Changing your strategy

In my first article on stress management tips and techniques I asked you to start noticing the strategy you employ to get into that stressed state. You’re going about your business as usual and then something in your environment triggers a response in you. You might say something to yourself, see something, hear the voice of someone in your ears, or get a particular feeling in your body.

If you keep notes on these responses as they come up during your week you’ll start to become more aware of your particular way of getting stressed, your strategy. You’ll notice a pattern. Maybe you say to yourself ‘I’ll never get this done on time’ then you see a mental image of yourself working till late and then you’ll get a dizzy feeling in your head and a pain in your stomach.

Now pay attention to the particular qualities of each part of the strategy. In NLP we call these qualities the sub-modalities. For example, if you say something to yourself notice how loud the voice seems to you, where in your body does it come from, or is it outside your body? What is the pitch, tone and emotion of the voice like?

Once you know what these sub-modalities are you can change them in order to scramble the strategy. That means that in your mind, imagine changing particular qualities of each part of the strategy. For now just stick to the first part of your strategy. For example if you are telling yourself ‘I’ll never get this done’ in an angry voice, change it to a light hearted laughing voice. If it seems loud, adjust the volume, if the pitch is low, try making it sound high like a cartoon character.

Finally run through you strategy from start to finish making sure that you use the new sub-modalities. Practice this a few times. Next time you encounter a situation that brought about the old stressful response consciously choose the new strategy. Practising it enough times will make it happen automatically and you’ll find your response is a much more productive.

Stress Management Tips and Techniques: How do we do it?

In this series of articles I’m going to be showing you some stress management tips and techniques. I was inspired to do so when reading an article a Times Online Article: Coping with Stress

which says that half a million people in the UK are being made physically ill by their stress. Not a good thing.

My approach is going to be a bit different in that I’ll be helping you to use NLP techniques to manage and reduce your stress.

A lot of people will say that their workload, partner or circumstances. But if we look closely we’ll see that isn’t really the case. Does your work magically climb into your brain and trigger stressful feelings and emotions? The fact is that your response to the outside world is something you can have total control over. You might not be used to it, but it’s certainly something you can learn to do.

Back to the questions; ‘How do you make yourself stressed?’

Imagine yourself, sitting at your desk, or walking along, all of a sudden something happens and you start making that ‘stressed’ feeling in your body. What is the chain of events that leads to this happening. For example do you, say something to yourself like ‘I’ll never get it done in time’, make an image in your mind of you working till late in the evening, feel tension in your neck, shoulders and stomach.

Your task for today is just to notice what your strategy is for putting yourself in the ‘stressed’ physiology. Make a note of what you say to yourself, what you see in your minds eye and what you feel in your body. Maybe you can make these notes over the next week every time you get these feelings. Once you’re able to observe what your strategy is you’ll be able to change it.

In upcoming articles about stress management techniques I’ll explain what we can do with this information, but for now you might find that observing the strategy that you follow will already lead you to feeling more detached from the immediate emotions.