There’s lots of talk about manipulating people, how bad it is & how we should never do it.

The problem is, the people that say this are often the worst offenders and manipulate all of the time without even knowing it!

You see we are born manipulators and by the time we reach adulthood we are expert at it.

A baby realises quite quickly that if it cries in a particular way it gets fed, or changed or put to bed.

As the baby turns into a toddler it begins to experiment with other ways to manipulate its parents to get what it wants. It tries the two-year-old tantrum lying on the floor screaming, if that doesn’t work, our darling toddler resorts to the doughey eyed “oooh mummy I love you” look, you know that look, the one that parents can’t resist!

As the toddler works out which strategy works best to manipulate its parent it begins to use those manipulation strategies more and more. The parent learns and the parent adapts… And so as the toddler grows and turns into a teenager the teenager adapts its manipulation strategies too.

In an attempt to get what the teenager wants the use of classic “It’s not fair, all of my friends have got one!” manipulation strategy gets used – and if you have kids I’m sure you can think of many others.

By the time our stroppy teenager has turned into adult it has become a master manipulator. Our adult can now manipulate without even thinking about it, and therein lay the problem!

The manipulation strategies we use as adults may be more subtle, but they are there:

• That knowing look you give your assistant over the top of your glasses when they ask you a dumb question.
• The obtuse reply you give someone when you want to tell them you disapprove.
• When you ignore a comment completely.

The problem is, we cannot not communicate.

It’s absolutely impossible to not communicate anything at all. Even the act of ignoring someone and not speaking or messaging, is still communicating (I’ll leave you to decide what it communicates) and is still manipulating.

The cleverer person amongst us realises that.

They realise that they accidentally manipulate situations all day long.

They become aware of how they communicate, they become tuned in to the other person, realising that they have accidentally manipulated the other person, they then adapt their communication strategy to communicate their true intention without manipulating at all.

So is this person manipulating? Well, yes… It’s inevitable, it’s what we all do, the difference is that they are manipulating the conversation with positive intention to allow the other person to understand the true intention, and to communicate in a way that makes sense to the other person. It’s a complete win/win.

It’s what the expert communicators do without even thinking. Some people have learned the knack of doing this implicitly, all we are doing is making their unconscious, conscious.

So which do you choose? Conscious Competence, where you are aware of how you communicate, the problems you can accidentally bring about and are actively working to make a difference to communicate better… or do you wish to stay completely in the dark, ignoring the fact you do it and remain unconsciously incompetent?

I’ve recently started to run the Park Run 5K, it’s quite incredible that I’m actually at this stage as just over one year ago I wouldn’t have been able to run to the bar for last orders!

I did the Couch to 5K program using the the BBC app and have managed to get my time down to about 31 minutes.

But I hate running. Oh yes, every step is pain!

So I as I’m running my first Park Run 5K I’m thinking, “This is so demoralising, there are people SO far ahead and I am SO sloooow”.

I’m beginning to wonder why I even bothered to run in Park Run, there’s no way I’m going to get a good time.

And yet, when I crossed the line I realise I’ve taken nearly 2 min off of my best ever time and I ran it in 28 minutes 10 seconds.

I’m absolutely astounded.

So now the question, where does our motivation come from?

In NLP we have a series of meta programs. These are programs or filters we all run in our mind e.g. big picture thinking vs detailed thinking… And one of those programs is called a “Frame of Reference Filter“.

An internally referenced person will draw motivation from themselves, they will know when they are doing well and don’t need other people to tell them. Many entrepreneurs are internally referenced, they go about doing what they do and stay motivated despite what others say.

An externally referenced person will draw motivation from others. They will seek affirmations from other people. They know they are doing a good job when they get confirmation from others.

I know that I have a tendency to be externally referenced. I know that I like to hear that I’m doing a good job from other people and I use the external world to tell me whether I’m doing okay or not.

Isn’t it interesting that during my first Park Run my external reference predisposition informed my internal dialogue to tell me I wasn’t actually doing such a good job.

It turned the whole 5K into a disappointing slog… Right up until the last minute when I realised that my internal dialogue was wrong and I’d actually run faster than ever before!

Wow, it was all in my head…

1. So are you internally or externally referenced?
2. Do you need other people to tell you you are doing a good job, or do you just know?
3. How does this then inform your internal dialogue?

The first stage in utilising and changing how we think is to recognise these patterns in ourselves.

Now that I recognise that my external referencing leads my internal dialogue to speak negatively to me… I can choose to ignore it.

Or I can choose a different external reference, rather than referencing myself against other people I can reference myself against my own timings, my own pace, my own personal best.

Every day is a new day to learn something new… And isn’t that amazing?

I talk more about meta programs on my NLP personal development membership program, it looks at how we can use these basic filters to improve success for ourselves and our teams.

Success for many people can seem elusive, some people seem to achieve their ultimate success criteria incredibly easy, Yet for others it’s a continuous struggle.

There’s also a large group of people that achieve success with relative ease, yet also seem to have the ability to have huge failures following quite rapidly afterwards. This yo-yo success/failure is incredibly common and many people know of others that have managed to build businesses only to watch them fall apart again… Often over and over.

Why is this? Why does success come so easily for some yet seem so difficult for others?

Why does this yo-yo effect exist and what’s the solution?

Let’s take a look…

How to define success for yourself

For many people they define success as being happy. And yet, happiness is a state and should never be a goal in itself. Think about a fabulous event in your lifetime, perhaps a wedding, a party or a holiday where you had an absolute blast. See what you saw, hear what you could hear when you were there and feel the emotions of that event.

Can you feel the happiness?

See what I mean? Happiness can be invoked at any time, all we need is the correct mental stimulus and we can feel happy.

Therefore, happiness should not be a goal or definition of success… What we need is something more.

Here are a few ways to define success for yourself.

• Growth and connection with people with similar mindsets.
• Being aware and living with my own values, not societal norms or cultural expectations.
• Achieving a defined work/life balance.
• Self-awareness and development of my potential.

Once you have defined success for yourself, look carefully at the words. For example, ” self-awareness and development of my potential”…

1. What does self-awareness mean specifically?
2. What does development mean? How quick, when, how will it be measured?
3. What does potential mean specifically?

And then, how will I know that I have reached full self-awareness and development of my potential?

This can be quite some process, but begin to think now about what success means for you, then have a dig around in the words you have used to come up with specific meanings for them.

How to write success criteria

The best way I can describe this is to set yourself a Chief Definite Aim, I use a 13 point sequence to ask a series of questions to gain my success criteria.

Those 13 questions to ask of yourself are:

1. What specifically do you want? And I mean SPECIFICALLY!
2. Where are you now?
3. What will you see, hear and feel when you have it? This makes it oh, so very real and attractive.
4. How will you know when you have it?
5. What will your goal/outcome get for you or allow you to do?
6. Is it only for you?
7. Where, when, how and with whom do you want it?
8. What do you have now and what do you need to get your goal/outcome?
9. For what purpose do you want it?
10. What will happen if you get it
11. What won’t happen if you get it?
12. What will happen if you don’t get it
13. What won’t happen if you don’t get it?

Listen to a pod cast about this topic.

The last 4 questions can be deliberately confusing, this uses a process called Cartesian logic and is deliberately designed to push you out of your comfort zone. This isn’t thinking outside the box, this is getting rid of the box completely!

Making effective decisions

Here are my 3 top tips to making effective decisions:

• Understand your decision-making strategy. Do you have an internal locus of evaluation or an external locus of evaluation? This is about knowing you are making a right decision (internal) yourself… You just know. The alternative is constantly seeking other people’s input and seeing their point of view to the degree that stifles your ability to make the decision (external). Simply being aware where your locus of evaluation is can really help if you find decision-making difficult.
• Be aware of your modal operators. Do you use words like could, would, should or ought? This can help you understand your incentive for making the decision. Are you deciding something because you think you should? Are you deciding something because you think you ought to? As your coach I would then say to you “Who says you should or ought?”. If it’s someone else then perhaps this is why you find making decisions difficult. Bring the choice about making a decision back to you, give yourself total authority over the motivation for making the decision. If someone else says you should or ought, then perhaps it’s their decision to make and not yours!
• Don’t try. Never try to make decisions. In fact, never try anything. Our brains cannot cope with the word try. You either do or do not. If someone says to you they will try to come to your party, are they going to be there? Let’s not try… Let’s decide right now that we WILL.

Here’s what to do next

I’m proud to say I have a whole course catalogue of communication, mindset courses which include lots of information about making effective decisions. Take a look at the whole course catalogue here, or sign up for a free trial and take the first course absolutely free.

FREE COURSE >>

As an extra bonus, you will also get a CPD certificate for 2 hours after completing the 1st free course.

A team based University College London found that when they performed a meta analysis of 13 existing European studies covering nearly 200,000 people they found “job strain” was linked to a 23% increased risk of heart attacks and deaths from coronary heart disease.

So if we were to think about that for ourselves, how many people have said to themselves ” I am stressed”?

In NLP we call this a complex equivalence, it is where a person is saying that one thing is the same as something else… In this case “I” is the same as “stressed”. I AM STRESSED

This is clearly not true, ‘stressed’ is a state, and is separate to the person doing that state. To say ‘I am stressed’ is to suggest that the person is the same as the state . All a person is doing is choosing to do the activity of being stressed, and this activity is separate to themselves as an individual.

The first thing anyone needs to do in order to change, and to decide not to be stressed is to realise that ‘stressed’ and themselves as a unique individual are not the same thing, saying ‘I am stressed’ is factually not correct. Once an individual is able to separate themselves from the stressed state/activity then that person has moved into a place of taking control, and once in control change can happen.

All the time that an individual believes that they are the same as a ‘stressed’ state, and does not understand that they are separate to the activity of being stressed then change will never happen.

I am a man – this is factually correct.

I am English – this is factually correct.

I am stressed – is not factually correct, I can choose to do the activity of being stressed but it is impossible for me to actually BE the activity of stressed… It is always something separate to me.

This is about being in control of our mind, when we are in control of our mind we can be in control of our results, a fundamental principle of NLP.

No I’m not suggesting that simply accepting this fact solves the problem of stress, but what I am suggesting is when we get into the right mindset then resolving the issues and dealing with the problem becomes a reality.

I’ve used this technique personally so many times. When I was sadly bereaved 7 years ago I could say ” I am sad”, however this is again actually not correct. I may be very good at doing the activity of being sad, but sad is a ‘state’, not something physical. So it’s impossible for me to actually BE sad.

Recognising this allowed me to sometimes be overwhelmed by the emotion of sadness, then recognise that what I was doing was the activity of being sad incredibly well.

As soon as I had the recognition that what I was doing was an activity, rather than an actual state of being, I could regain control of my mind and decide not to do the state of being sad for another hour… Often until my mind became overwhelmed and I accidentally slipped back into that state.

And so the cycle repeated!

The words we say every day have a profound impact upon our lives, and saying things like ‘I am stressed’ or ‘I am sad’ sends a very strong message to our unconscious mind. In order to make changes we need to bring it into the conscious and then make a conscious decision not to draw the equivalence between ourselves and the activity of stress or sadness.

It’s OK to do the activity of stressed.

It’s OK to do the activity of sadness.

That is very different from actually BEING the activity of stressed or sad. This is factually not correct!

Profound? Yes, but also true, and when you begin to adopt this thought process you can find that it also allows you to make the changes you need and begin to live longer without the associated heart conditions!

The way we use language represents how we view the world around us, and how we use the world around us influences what we do, and ultimately our success in life and business!

These are some of the core principles of mindset management which are included in the courses in The Performance Academy. The Academy is a series of mindset and communication courses designed to help those working in health and wellness achieve success in business and life.

Membership to the Academy includes free access to all courses, pod casts, webinars and earn verifiable CPD for everything – All for £25 per month.

What is neurolinguistic programming and how does it work?

Let’s get one thing straight, there isn’t actually anyone definitive thing which is neurolinguistic programming (NLP). The term NLP was coined by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in the 1970s and is made up of 3 words:

• Neuro – to do with the brain
• Linguistic – to do with language
• Programming – to do with making change in our brains using language

NLP follows a process that is driven by adopting an attitude of curiosity, this attitude leads to a methodology which leaves behind a trial of techniques.

So NLP is really changing the way we think using words, coupled with an attitude of curiosity.

How does NLP work?

NLP works because a skilled practitioner will remain constantly resourceful, continuously looking at problems from a different angle and being infinitely flexible. This infinite flexibility is the real key to making NLP work.

The core principle of NLP is to ensure we are all thinking at ’cause’. Being at ’cause’ means we accept full responsibility for our actions, the way we think and our behaviours.

The complete opposite of this is being at ‘effect’. This means that we blame the effects of what what the one around us for the way we think, our actions and our behaviours.

A person at ‘effect’ would say “I behave like this because of an external influence, the way I behave and think is therefore out of my control“.

A person at ’cause’ would say ” I choose the way I behave even though there are external influences, the way I behave and think is completely within my control.”

Being at ’cause’ is very empowering, it means we have choices, it gives us freedom and ultimately leads to a more successful life.

NLP techniques

All NLP techniques are designed to ultimately take someone from ‘effect’ through to ’cause’, to give them choices, to empower them, to build them up and to help them solve their own problems.

Many NLP techniques work by using sub modalities.

Everyone construct internal representations of what is going on around them. We might think that we perceive and remember everything, but our perception and memory is flawed. We delete, we distort and we generalise information and throughout this process the encoding of what is happening around us creates an internal representation.

We very often create a picture in our mind and it is to this picture which sub modalities relate.

Try this little experiment:

Picture in your mind something which you really enjoy going, it must be something you REALLY enjoy doing. Make the picture as big as it needs to be in order to be the most compelling picture. Is the picture moving? If it would make it more compelling, then make the picture the a video picture. Does the picture have sound? Give that picture enough sound to make it really compelling and really enjoyable, you may need to turn the volume up and make it very sharp sound. Is the picture colour? Adjust the colours to make it really compelling. How close is that picture? Try moving the picture closer in your mind to make it more compelling.

Feels good right?

What we’ve adjusted are the sub modalities of the picture, typically:

• size
• moving or still
• sound, volume and sharpness
• colour or black and white
• distant or close

What’s really bizarre is that we can adjust sub modalities, without thinking about it we always create pictures when we create internal representations.

If I said to you think about the most amazing food that you absolutely love, you will create a picture in your mind. You may even be able to smell it, you may be able to see you soon on your plate, that picture will be the correct brightness for you, it will be moving if that makes it the best picture.

Now, if I said you think about something which ABSOLUTELY disgusts you! Something like a dog poop. Imagine that on a plate in front of you.

let’s adjust the sub modalities of the poop picture. Make the picture smaller and move it further away, remove any smell, make the picture black-and-white, remove any sound, make the picture still, make the picture the focused. Notice how your internal representation changes.

This is NLP in action, adjusting the sub modalities can help us view things in a different way.

We can even swap them.

This is how a ‘like to dislike‘ is done. A like to dislike technique is used if we wanted to help a client give something up, nailbiting, chocolate or eating biscuits are classic ones.

All we do is elicit the sub modalities of something which is disgusting (think about that dog poop) and place the exact same sub modalities over the top of what the client wants to dislike. If they wanted to stop eating chocolate and we made the internal representation of chocolate the same as dog poop it would make eating chocolate virtually impossible.

The client now NEVER wants to eat chocolate again!

There is a specific technique for making this happen however this should only ever be done by NLP qualified practitioners.

How NLP changed my life

My own story of NLP began in 2004 when I was first introduced to it during my Masters in business degree at the Open University. One of my lecturers was an NLP master practitioner and used NLP principles whilst teaching. It left such an impression on me that I decided to investigate further.

7 years later I qualified as a master practitioner in NLP myself. NLP has changed my life enormously, I feel empowered, I feel motivated, I feel able to choose my own definition of success and live by that choice.

NLP also helped me through one of the most difficult times of my life when my wife died. I knew I was in control of my mind (I was at ’cause’) and I would not be at the effect of what was happening around me. This gave me the strength to face my own emotions head-on, knowing that I would come through.

On a business level, NLP has helped me with communication with clients and team members, as well as help to write content for websites (like this). It’s helped with goalsetting as well as making sure I stay positive, the techniques I learnt have enabled me to lead a successful and highly performing life!

Summary

So, can NLP change your life? You bet it can!

If you work in the healthcare sector, possibly a doctor, dentist, chiropractor or physiotherapist then you may like to find out more about The Performance Academy, this is a lot online learning platform dedicated to helping you improve success, performance and client communication.

Well actually no.

SALES is about you, it’s about you making a sale, it’s about you selling something, it’s about you developing your business, it’s about you making more commission… It’s all about you.

Every sales technique I have ever seen is all about the salesman using techniques to build rapport, sell the features and benefits, overcome objections and close that goddam sale. Well why not begin to think of it from a different point of view, rather than selling why don’t you help people buy?

We all enjoy buying right, we all enjoy going to the shops and spending money on things that we want… Unlike the ‘hard sell’ which we hate, we enjoy the ‘hard buy’! And we all know that you want to be more than just the person that sells – don’t you. So let’s think about buying…

Buying is fun, buying is enjoyable so just forget about selling.

If you step out of your frame of reference for just one moment and consider the other person, if you consider the world from their point of view, what they want & what motivates them you enter a whole new world of ‘assisted buying’.

Try this perceptual positions exercise.

1. Imagine yourself selling whatever it is that you sell, imagine yourself standing in front of the other person and looking through your own eyes at that person. As you go through your spiel notice what the other person is doing and looking like.
2. Now switch, become the other person looking through their own eyes, looking at you. Now what do you see? What do you notice in the person that is doing the selling? Are they congruent, in fact are you enjoying it as the person being sold to?
3. Now step out of the other person and become a third person. Become a third person and see yourself and the person you are selling to standing opposite each other, notice what each of you are doing, notice when the person selling (you) says something, what is the reaction of the other person. Notice the facial expressions, notice the change in breathing as you try to sell something, and get ready for it… Notice the reaction of the other person as you go for the close!

Did you notice anything new?

Did you notice how uncomfortable the other person was when you got to the close?

If you step out of yourself for one moment and into the mind of the other person, you can see that the person you are selling to often knows that you are selling. They know you are not being genuine and they know you are using techniques. We truly enter into the mind of the other person when you understand exactly what it is that they want, the classic NLP question is “For what purpose…”

For what purpose would they want to buy this from you?

What would this get for them?

What would this enabled them to do?

NLP is content free, we are not bothered about what ‘it’ is, we just want to know what ‘it’ would get you, for what purpose and what would it enable you to do. It’s the same with sales, forget about what ‘it’ is and focus on what it can do for the other person.

Here are some examples:

• People don’t want the new telephone, they want to be able to communicate better with their friends. So help them do that.
• People don’t want a dental implant, they want to be able to eat and chew improperly once more.
• People don’t want a new car, they want freedom to travel wherever they want whenever they want in the luxury that they want.

This is truly enabling the other person to buy from you, you have entered into their own world and you have stopped being a salesperson… Congratulations, now enjoy what happens next…

This school of thought led the athletes of the time to believe that a sub four-minute mile was impossible.

This school of thought placed a mental and physical restriction on the human body.

They said that the goal of running a mile in less than 4 min was completely unachievable and unrealistic.

Apart, that is, from one person – Roger Bannister.

He refused to accept this physical and mental restriction.

He refused to accept that the goal of running a mile in less than 4 min was unachievable or unrealistic. So after planning, training and refusing to listen to what the world said on 6th May 1954, with his heart pounding furiously in his chest, he set out on the track to prove them all wrong.

On that day Roger Bannister ran the mile in 3 min 59.4 seconds, the first man alive to run a sub four-minute mile.

Suddenly the goal was achievable, it was realistic and your heart wouldn’t explode in your chest if you put it through his torture. And with these limiting belief removed, two months later during the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games  John Landy and Roger Bannister ran a mile in less than 4 min again.

The sub four-minute mile is now a standard amongst world-class athletes with the current record held by Hicham El Guerrouj, who ran a time of 3:43.13 in Rome in 1999.

So what happened? Did the physiology of all human beings change after that date?

I suggest not, but what did change was the limiting belief!

SMART Goals

So let’s look at Smart goals then:

• Specific.
• Measurable.
• Achievable.
• Realistic.
• Time bound.

Specific and measurable – these are both admirable qualities in a goal, these should absolutely be in any goal that you set yourself. You need to be absolutely specific about what you want to achieve and you need to know a way of measuring your success. In my role as a coach I often work with clients who want more confidence. When asked the question ” How will you specifically know you are as confident as you want to be, what will you be doing?” they often have no way of answering! This is then part of the problem, they simply don’t know when they are confident, and so it becomes a goal with constantly moving goalposts and they will spend their lives feeling that they are not confident.

Achievable and Realistic – OK, so now the problems start. Roger Bannister was told that running a sub 4 minute mile was neither achievable or realistic. If he had decided to listen to the prevailing wisdom and set himself a SMART goal then his target would probably to have run the mile on that day in 1954 in about 4 min and 10 seconds.

He didn’t do this, he set an unachievable and unrealistic goal.

This pushed him to a place that he’d never been before, in fact it pushed a human being to a place that we have never been before-only to find that it actually was both achievable and realistic!

Setting goals which are achievable and realistic places into your unconscious mind a limiting belief. If we have a limiting belief that we can only run a mile in 4 min and 10 seconds, then that is exactly what we’ll do. If we have a limiting belief that we can only generate £X of turnover in year one then that is what we’ll do. If we have a limiting belief that we can only lose 1lb of weight on a weight loss program in a week then that is what we’ll do.

Our beliefs about ourselves not true, however we act as if they are true. If those beliefs are positive and are affirmations then it is fine that we act as if they are true. However if those beliefs about ourselves are  negative, then we will act as if they are true until they become our own reality.

I’ll say that again. Our beliefs about ourselves are not true, however we act as if they are true and so they become our own reality.

Time bound – yep, I’m good with that part two is all goals need to have a specific time when you will achieve them.

Each time we set ourselves a goal which is achievable and realistic with create a boundary around that goal in order to make sense of it. We could even then define that goal as ‘the problem’

Once we have created a limiting belief about what we can achieve in our goal we have created a problem with the boundary. And guess where the solution to the problem lie? Yet, it’s outside the boundary.

If you really truly want to excel, if you really and truly want to become the most excellent human being that you know you are then never set SMART goals!

For further advice on how to set proper goals that will remove any of these limiting beliefs and allow you to reach your full potential please take a look at my goalsetting page. 

The first point I want to raise is that losing weight is really simple, all you need to do is to expend more energy than you eat. Simple is in it.

Yet we go on diets over and over again, we may think that the diet has worked but can it really have worked if we have to keep doing them over and over?

So why don’t these diets work? Well, you know it’s all in your mind. All you need to do is exercise more and eat less and the weight will fall off, yet there is something in our mindset that prevents us doing that, and we all know that if we could actually change our mindset losing weight would be easy and we would be able to stay as slim as we wanted to over an extended period.

So now you know that losing weight is all in your mind I’m going to break this down into stages which will be simple and easy to follow, don’t forget that the option of getting a mummy makeover Sydney is also an option.

Step one.

Identify what the real problem is. Oh yes, you know THAT problem! You see unless we deal with past negative emotions and totally put them to rest it can be difficult to move on. Let’s take sadness for example. The problem with ‘sadness’  is that it is a label, people say ‘I am sad’. This is not true, they may be doing a very good job of showing all the signs of sadness, but they are not ‘sad’ itself – they have simply become very good at ‘doing’ sadness.

This is the same for ‘angry’, ‘fearful’ and any other emotion. No-one is fearful, they are simply very good at ‘doing’ fear!

This is a fundamental shift in thinking but once understood is extremely liberating. It allows a person to realise they can change.

It’s not always easy and may take time, but once a person realises that they do have control, and can learn to do other emotions, states and behaviours just as well as they do sadness or depression… then magic happens.

I’ve had clients say ‘I am afraid’ and have felt that way for 40 years, yet after 2 hours they have realised that they are just very good at ‘doing’ fear and are then easily able to let it go. 40 years of raging fear gone in 2 hours, no drugs just the power of the mind!

But the number of gullible clients I get who use drugs to tackle obesity is disconcerting. These clients are credulous and are desperate to lose weight, ending up in substance abuse. The only thing I do is direct them to a drug rehab treatment.

Step two.

What will losing weight get for you? The question you specifically need to answer is what will you BE, DO or HAVE once you have lost the weight?

Answering this question and writing down your answer will help you to completely visualise exactly what losing weight means to you. Once you have a clear idea of what it means to you the whole process is much more tangible and real. Doing this gives your unconscious mind a goal to focus on which is very powerful

Step three.

Focus on size and measurements not on weight. The more you exercise, the more muscle you will put on, as this weighs more than fat using weight is not a great way to decide how good your program has been.

Step four.

Focus on the big picture. Many people focus on the tiny details of not being able to eat what they want or having to exercise when they don’t want to. So what is the big picture? Well, it could be that if you were able to be the size that you wanted to be perhaps you could have more energy to play with the kids?

If you were the size you wanted to be perhaps you have more sex appeal or be more manly or more masculine, for this there are resources at sites like www.kryolifehealth.com which specialize in this.

Focus on what the changing your size will get you, what would it help you achieve, what would it help you do and what will it help you to have?

Step five.

Honestly identify the excuses. This can be really difficult however you need to tackle this honestly. This is definitely not the case the you, but many people out there may want to stay the way they are as it allows them to sit on the sofa all day and not do anything. If those people wanted to lose weight they would have two get up and do something! This is what we call secondary gain and identifying it is really important.

What we have to stop doing that you like doing if you reach your ideal size?

What will you have to start doing that you don’t like doing if you reach your ideal size?

My suggestion is to take some time to write down your answers to these specific questions, this can be a difficult exercise bike you will find that once you really tackle it that it identifies areas in your life where you can really make some improvements.

Summary

The changes that are required in the way you think are very extensive but are actually pretty simple to achieve with the help of a coach. One of the issues of dealing with this yourself is that the temptation can be to let yourself off the hook! Working with a coach will allow you to deal with past negative emotions in a gentle, relaxed and even enjoyable way.

Timeline therapy® can be used to simply and easily remove past negative emotions, this allows you to focus on the now and the future without the emotional baggage.

We can then use NLP to highlight any of the areas of secondary gain and to set your goal of exactly what you want to be, do and have in your life and what achieving your ideal size will get you.

Hypnosis is then a perfect tool to cement in all of these changes and ensure that the changes are made at an unconscious and permanent level.

If you are looking for a cheap fix to solve your overweight problem then this is not it! Think about what you spent in the past, all of those diets and wasted opportunities… If only you sorted it right from the beginning then you wouldn’t have spent that money and you could have enjoyed the past few years.

Losing weight and staying slim is an investment in yourself and you will reap the rewards of it many times over I’m sure.

So take action today, works with a bullet points I’ve listed above and then when you are ready now give me a call and we can discuss a personalised program just few. Amazingly the weight change program I use takes only one and a half days with a six-week coaching period afterwards, no diets, no restricted foods simply losing weight in the most natural way possible.

Interested? Let’s talk…

Wikipedia says that NLP has made unsubstantiated claims that it is capable of addressing problems such as phobias, depression and other psychosomatic illnesses. They go on to cite research which they claim proves NLP doesn’t work saying it exhibits “pseudoscientific characteristics concepts and terminology”.

This may or may not be true and I welcome this kind of debate as it gives the opportunity to talk about NLP and all that I believe it has to offer.

My choice of words there is actually pretty deliberate, notice I use the word believe.

I do believe that NLP works and consequently so do my clients which means they get results. Some people may call this the placebo effect and would want to research the actual NLP techniques that are used, however what is important is that the client made the changes they wanted to make. If they had a phobia before we started therapy and they no longer have it, or if they had problems with anger before therapy and those angry tendencies have gone or perhaps they had an enormous fear over the future and after therapy the fear is gone – if all these happen and the client feels better, that’s all I care about.

If a client needs to lose a couple of stone in weight and after a few days of therapy by able to start to make these changes, then keep the changes up over a period of time so little way they want to then who cares about Wikipedia entry?

It absolutely could be that if a practitioner of NLP talks with such conviction about how the techniques can have enormous change then this conviction may enable the client to make changes they need, using NLP is a way of attributing those changes for the client.

Many clients have had fears, phobias and anxieties for many years and so have limiting beliefs within themselves, believing that they can’t change. NLP may be the external mechanism by which those clients are able to change, and when they do who is to say that NLP is discredited and doesn’t work?

Doctors often debate the use of placebos (please don’t get me wrong I’m not suggesting that NLP is a placebo) and Dr Arthur Caplan from NYU Langone Medical Center seems to agree. He suggests that there are times when a medical Dr could consider prescribing a placebo, if this is the case then surely he is considering the possibility that placebos work.

If Dr Kaplan’s experience suggests that prescribing a placebo works this could indeed confirm my points above, if patients have limiting beliefs and believe they can’t change, if a doctor prescribes a placebo the patient is able to attribute those changes to an outside force and therefore make the change.

Either way, the pain, fear, anxiety or phobia has gone – and that’s all I care about!

Interestingly as I was reading the negative comments on Wikipedia my wife came back from taking the children to the orthodontist. Every person at the orthodontic practice has been on one of my NLP taster days and she commented that they were singing the praises of those days and that simply attending the taster day has changed their outlook on life and made communication at the practice so much better.

Try telling them that NLP is discredited…

Do you say this kind of thing? Do you know others that say it?

What I would say to you is that surely you are more than this? How much more than just a housewife, nurse, builder or anything else are you? Is that all you are?

Many of us have habits of giving ourselves, and indeed others, labels. And often these labels are rather restrictive, using the word ‘just’ is an example of one of these restrictive labels. There is not one person in the world who is just a housewife, nurse, builder or anything else. Every single person in the world is so much more than that and so are you!

So here is my challenge to you today. Listen out for the word ‘just’ in your language, then question yourself and ask if that is all you really are? And if you hear someone else say I am just XYZ then challenge them, and ask them if that is all they really are?

This is a really simple NLP technique which can make a huge change in people’s lives if they understand that they give themselves labels which hold them back.

So watch your language, speak with precision and be aware of limiting labels everyday.

MySuccessfulLife is a life and business coaching company which enables individuals to resolve those internal conflicts which hold them back in life… You know the ones!