CHARIS NLP transforming lives

Deep breath

So, lots has been happening. We are now working from lovely premises in Bothwell, near Glasgow. The Bothwell Clinic is one of those places where you just feel the outside world dropping away as you walk in the door.

Our latest cohort of students are just about to graduate as INLPTA practitioners of NLP, and as Practitioners of Hypnosis. They've all done so well, and I'm proud of every one of them.

As I write, my web designer is probably updating the main website. We've decided to change the format of our most popular courses, to make them even better. So the accelerated practioner programme is now nine days long, and includes certification in Memory Resolution, which is a form of Time Code intervention.To make it easier for students who work full time, this course will be delivered over three long weekends from now on. Another exciting development is the Diploma Course in Life Coaching, which includes a diploma in NLP, thereby giving students some of the most powerful change tools at their fingertips.

Additionally, I've been spending some time in the recording studio, to meet the demand for CDs to support the training, and also for students to use with their hypnosis clients. That demanded rather a lot from me in terms of state management, and I'm delighted with the results.

Looking forward now to a few weeks with the family (including the rather gorgeous new puppy!), before starting the Body and Soul Exhibitions in August.

Playing catch up

We've had a very exciting three months.

After a great deal of um-ing and ah-ing, we are nearly at the point of signing the lease on our own training suite in Glasgow. We are unbelievably excited about this, and it will be a massive relief not to have to depend on hotel venues. The last time we used a hotel, they moved us three times over the course of a 7 day training. While I'm all for behavioural flexibility, I did feel that it detracted from the power of the stage anchors we establish during training - not to mention that the flip charts around the wall were looking a little tatty by the end, they'd been moved so often. we also believe the new venue will give us the opportunity to develop our courses - at the moment, the pressure on venues mean we are sticking pretty much with the main certificate courses. So I am looking forward to reinstating the popular Zest for Life programme, which I love running, and being able to meet the demand for Stand and Deliver training. Whoever said that public speaking is more feared than death seems to have been speaking the truth, given the interest we have in this course.

Another exciting development is a Life Coaching programme, which we intend to launch in the summer.

In amongst all of that, we shut the business for a month in March, and visited Florida - very lovely to get away from a driech Scottish winter for a few weeks!

I know that one of the things you are going to love.....

My daughter is planning a new bedroom. Her current room was decorated for her 4th birthday, and at 11, she's grown out of the ballerinas that so caught her imagination then. She's spent the day in her room putting together a mood board, and when she brought it to her dad and I, she told us that one of the things we were going to love about her suggestions were that they were flexible. And I realised that without any direct input on the subject, she was using an NLP presupposition with remarkable skill. In talking about one thing we were going to love, the presupposition was that there were many other things we would also love, and we might love them even more. Listening to her, it once again brought into conscious awareness how we can influence others with our langauge patterns. Like all NLP skills, the importance lies in the intent - when we use them to influence with integrity, we can help people access resources to which they may have previously been unaware. "One of the ways in which you can learn this quickly and easily", implies there are many options for learning - a powerful message for anyone challenged by a new skill, idea or behaviour.

It's been a while since I posted here. Since then, Charis NLP has seen the Diploma in Clinical Hypnosis students complete their training with flying colours. We've also completed two more NLP practitioner programmes, one an open course, another an NLP for coaches training, run within an organisation.

The business is growing well, and we are now looking for training rooms in Edinburgh, to open the market up further.

Nearing graduation

It's been a very busy few days, with our Diploma in Hypnosis students completing their second last module yesterday. It's fabulous to see how people develop in skill and confidence throughout the training. They only have one short final module to go, and I think their attention is now fully on completing their written assignments!

A final booking this morning means that our NLP Practitioner programme starting next month is also full, which I am delighted about.

And I have just done two media interviews, as a result of press releases I sent out last week, to announce that the General Hypnotherapy Standards Council has accredited our hypnosis training, so it will be interesting to see what the coverage is like. It's all coming together nicely.

Who's calling?

Last week, someone suggested to me that we should have a phone meeting. Which was fine, except they wanted to have it at 7.00am, a time when I am in the middle of the morning commute. I explained that I would be unavailable then, as I would be driving, and got met with an initial gob-smacked silence, followed by a hushed “Oh, god, is your hands-free broken?” The clear implication being that this would be the only acceptable reason for not being available 90 minutes before my working day actually starts.

Even 10 years ago, the delineation between personal life and work life seemed much clearer - now colleagues routinely tell me to call them on holiday, in the evening, or on their days off, and I feel slightly guilty when I don’t reciprocate. I DO have a Blackberry, and I do like being able to check my emails and keep up with people when I’m away from my PC. Yet I seem to be the only person I know who routinely turns it off in meetings, on the train, or when driving. I notice when I run training courses, people often will only reluctantly turn their phones off, and usually offer the compromise of putting it on vibrate – and then set it on the table so they can see it, and spend the breaks with it glued to their ear, or texting like mad.

The point is not really my peculiar need to be technology free at times. The point is about our ability to set boundaries – me time, work time, family time.  And my worry is that by being constantly available, we are perhaps constantly unavailable. Unavailable to the person talking to us face to face, who is always second best to that vibrating box on the table.  Never quite in the moment, as we clutch the electronic umbilical cord which connects us to any random demand. And yes, before you ask, I do have a young child, and I do want her to be able to contact me in an emergency: for me though, that doesn't mean I give the rest of the world 24/7 access.

Virginia Satir, a great family therapist, and one of the original people modelled by John Grinder and Richard Bandler, the co-developers of NLP, said it so much better than I can.

“I believe that the greatest gift I can conceive of having from anyone is to be seen by them, heard by them, to be understood and touched by them.

“The greatest gift I can give is to see, hear, touch and understand another person."

Exciting and busy time

Argh, didn't realise a month had passed! It's been an exciting few weeks. The students doing the Diploma in Clinical Hypnosis have finished the first module of their training, and the course seems to be going well. I was delighted the other week to be told that our hypnosis course has been approved by the General Hypnotherapy Standards Council. The submission had taken a fair bit of time to pull together, so I was delighted we were accredited on the first attempt.

I've just finished running a the first module of a corporate NLP practitioner programme, which was fantastic - great group of people, high energy, and masses of fun. I want to do more of these, and really looking forward to module 2.

The next thing on the radar is an open NLP practitioner course, starting in November. Life is good :-)

I'm trying!!

Over the last couple of weeks we've had a few appliance breakdowns in our house. As neither of us is really that into DIY, that meant we had a load of tradespeople involved. We had the plumber who was going to "try" to come out to review the leak in our water tank. We had the TV engineer who was going to "try" to pop out and look at the TV. And we had the washing machine repair service that was going to "try" to come and effect a permanent repair on our machine. Did any of these people do what they were going to try to do? Nope.

In desperation, my DH finally went up into the loft with a soldering iron repaired the water tank. The TV is still broken, and the washing machine operates with a plastic box behind it to catch the drips.

Contrast this with the carpet fitter who laid our carpets 10 days ago. After he went away, I realised I wasn't happen with the edge at one of the doors, and called him. He said his diary was full for 10 days, but he would definitely be round after work, no later than 8pm the next day.  Did he turn up?  Yes. And I knew he would.

"Try" is a word that offers a possibility of failure, a personal get out clause. I know I use it myself sometimes, and I know that when I do, I mean "I'll do this if I get round to it, but it's not my highest priority." When we continually tell ourselves we will "try", we are also at some level telling ourselves there is a good chance we won't do it. While that might not matter too much in some situations, what message are we giving ourselves if we constantly tell ourselves that there is a good chance we won't do what we set out to do.

If we want to be motivated to do something, I suggest we shouldn't use the word "try". think how much more powerful it is to say "will".  Action follows thoughts, and the commitment we make to ourselves and others when we WILL do something gives us real impetus. It doesn't necessarily meant we'll get it right the first time, it does mean that we are always programming our minds for success, and moving towards our goals.

If Dr Suess says it, it must be right!

It's been a few weeks! I've had some holiday with my family, and have been writing the course manual for my new Diploma in Clinical Hypnotherapy, which starts next month. I am so excited about it. It's going to run in one of the nicest parts of Scotland, and I think it will be a great course. If anyone is interested, remember the early bird booking  price is available for two more weeks.

One of the delegates from my Zest for Life weekends just got back to me. She felt she'd made great progress since coming on the course, was more optimisitc, had set herself some goals, and was working towards achieving them. And yet, she was disappointed that several people she'd considered friends were making fun of her progress, dissing the changes she had made, and were, in varying degrees of "niceness", trying to push her back into her box.

Very often we decide to make changes in our own lives, and find that other people aren't comfortable with the new person. They rather liked the old predictable us, stuck in a rut. We may have been someone they could moan with, or moan too. When they see you making a change, they may be forced to confront something in themselves that is making them uncomfortable.

Sometimes the relationship is recoverable, sometimes it's time to respectfully move on from that person, and make room for new people in your life. You don't have to make them believe that what are doing is right, YOU need to believe it's right, for you.

As Dr Suess said: Be who you are, and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.

Wanton curiosity

Have you ever watched how a little child learns? Without any "teaching", without any interference, a little child is so wantonly curious about their world that they cannot not learn. They want to know how, why, where things work. They want to sort and categorise their experience. They model those around them. They are insatiable in their need to learn, and they won't have anyone standing in their way. Somewhere along the line, many of us lose the wanton curiosity of childhood. Learning becomes synonymous with being taught things - things that may not interest us that much. Our questions go unanswered, we start to think that learning is boring, or maybe a bit uncool.

When I first started to study NLP, 20 years ago, one of the things I loved about it was it gave me total permission to be nosey. NLP explores the how of human experience. How we do what we do. How experts do things - not only in relation to what they do externally to produce a result, but what they do internally - how they move, stand, breathe, talk to themselves, how they experience the world through their senses.

Whether you chose to learn NLP or not, I would encourage you to get back in touch with that wanton curiosity to experienced as a child, and see where it takes you. You may discover things in yourself that amaze and delight you. You may discover things in the world that spark off new interests, new ideas, new ways of thinking. Being nosey will open up all sorts of avenues -so dump the politeness, and get curious!

Tell me what you really, really want.

When people come to see me, whether for coaching, self-development workshops, or for professional NLP training, one of the first things I ask them is “Why are you here? What do you want?”

I would say that 95% of the time, they tell me what they don’t want. That’s OK initially, as sometimes we do need a big push away from something we don’t want to start our change process. Overtime though, just think about that. It’s a bit like driving while looking the entire time in the rear view mirror.

One of the first thing I teach my clients and my students, is how to set a well formed outcome – how to know what they really want, decide how they are going to get it, and importantly, how they will know when they have it.

So what exactly is a well-formed outcome? This is the process I use with my clients, and it’s easy for you to either use by yourself, or with a friend to support you.

First of all it needs to be positive. There are two key questions I ask people to help them turn a negative into a positive. One is “What do you want instead?” and the other is “What will this do for you?”

The next point to think about is how will you know when you have it? In NLP, this is called an evidence frame. What will you see, hear, feel when you achieve your outcome? How will you monitor that it’s on track? When I set up my own business, my evidence for being a successful INLPTA  trainer was that I would see myself handing out practitioner certificates to my first class of students. I heard the applause that would follow each student’s name, and I felt the student’s hand in mine as we shook hands. Now it took me two years from setting that outcome to achieving it, and as I handed over that first certificate, and heard the applause, and felt the student’s hand, I absolutely knew I had achieved it. 

Well formed outcomes need to be specific. Who with, when and where do you want this outcome. This question is all about context.  Be as specific as you can.

Outcomes usually need resources. This may be money, though it can often be time, skills, role models. Think about what you need, and where you are going to get them. Look through your address book for people you can ask. Search the Internet. Do whatever you need to do to get your resources in place. A word of caution here: it can be easy to write an outcome off, and say “I could never achieve this as I don’t have enough time/money/skill etc”. Break it down into smaller steps so can achieve it. Be creative. I have on occasion bartered and done skill swaps with people to help me achieve my outcomes. And in turn, I have offered people skills swaps to enable them to achieve theirs. If the outcome is so large that there appears to be many obstacles, then set staged outcomes, which will keep you moving in the right direction. Baby steps are fine!

Your outcome needs to be under your own control. You cannot make an outcome for your boss to become a pussy cat. You can however set an outcome which will enable you to stay relaxed, focused and assertive in your dealings with her.

Ask yourself what the consequences of you pursuing and achieving this outcome are. In NLP terminology, this is called an ecology check. In my case, the consequence of me setting up my own training consultancy was that we could not immediately afford the new bathroom and kitchen we had been saving for. This was a consequence that my family were prepared to accept, as they understood how much my outcome meant to me.  Also check the consequences at an identity level. For example, if part of your image of yourself is as a family-orientated person, is it ecological for you to set an outcome that will take you away from home several nights a week? There is no right or wrong answer to this – it’s for you to explore and decide.

And finally, take action! Without action, your outcome will only ever be a dream. We’ll be talking more about action when we cover motivation. I ensured in the two years it took me to set up Charis NLP, that every single day I did at least one thing that moved me towards my goal. That included Christmas day! I took action again and again till I got where I wanted to be.