Thirteen minutes to change your life

Its perfectly normal, isn’t it, to want a better life, achieve your ambitions and fulfil your desires, solve problems, let go some baggage, drop a few unnecessary habits – especially the more expensive ones! Lose a few fears or phobias. Funny enough, once we’ve started on something it seems to spread into other areas, a kind of vicious cycle of well-being, satisfaction, achievement, from the magnificent to the mundane.

I’ve often wondered what greater achievement than to change someone’s life for the better. Could it be to change our own? To help someone change we first understand them, then inspire, even start an avalanche in the mind. Einstein said to understand the universe he wanted to know how God thinks. To understand a human being we find out how we think - what motivates them. To discover that, we must earn their trust. And to earn their trust we must offer them safety – safety to confide in us, safety to express yourself, to show the feelings of your heart, the songs in your head, the thoughts in your mind.

And to change ourself?

I had a client once, a musician, who wanted to change an out-of-date way of thinking. He told me he couldlose himself in playing, but really found himself in conducting. ‘Ah, now then, I am God!’

It was enough to suggest he imagine himself as one of his orchestra, watching and following the instructions of the conductor, himself. He made his change, ‘by frequent rehearsal,’ he told me. It was just a tweak, really. Entering his world, speaking his language, the language of the senses, in his case the sense of hearing. Not surprising for a musician, I guess. We just had to suggest adding the visual sense - watching the conductor.

We are sensual beings, we humans. We love to watch movies, our favourite movie star, our football team, even our favourite soap, to see our favourite picture – would that be the one on the bathroom wall? To be seen in our favourite fashion, our new heels or sneakers. Appearance is all – ask any hairdresser!

What were the pictures populating your mind as you read my words describing what we like to see?

And those we love to watch like to appeal to our own sense of style by wearing theirs - Jennifer Lopez, Kate Moss, Victoria Beckham.

And do we not love to hear music, Mozart to Gaga, certain voices, sounds of nature or songs of the city, we love to taste, good food – good drink.

We love to smell, fragrances, scents, flowers, perfumes. Britney and Madonna like to be associated with their own fragrance, to bring out their own fashion lines, the power of appearance. And don’t singers love to act, crossing the edge from auditory to visual. Abba made the first pop videos, motivated by the desire not to travel – Agnethe hated leaving her kids!

And we love to learn!

And we love to laugh

The power of the senses is easily understood when we look at the obscene amounts of money put into them: movies, tv, sports, music, perfumes, food … and the language of the senses is how we each express our own world. Understanding this helps us change - change what we want to change and keep what we want to keep. Before we do that we need to know why, the motivation for change. Knowing this, we can choose the right technique.

Motivation is the key to changing our lives, habits, our way of being, offering realizations. A friend, a woman, a peace-loving pacifist who would never harm anything, but wanting to learn a martial art, but baulking at the idea of violence. It took just one question to redden her face and bare her strong white teeth as her eyes flashed fire, her hair stood on end and her hands seemed to grow claws of a tigress. And what was that question? Well, you’ve maybe guessed that it was about her children being threatened. Violence had a place in her brain that she didn’t even know was there, but the limbic memory would have sprung her into action without pause for thought. Now, for a mother, isn’t this perfectly normal?

Some people had difficult childhood experiences. Now it’s obviously not possible to change the past, but what about changing our perception of the past? That or those childhood experiences colour one’s perception of the world in which you live today, your world in the here and now, and that, please understand, is PERFECTLY NORMAL, because are we not the sum of all that has ever happened? The good we have done, the bad we have done, the good done to us, and the bad done to us?

How might you have reacted to a situation in that childhood that formed you, then, had you possessed the resources of now? The knowledge, the experience, the mental strength – even the physical strength? It is but a small step to do the impossible – to help yourself, or the client, imagine themself in that same situation, but with their clear and present grown-up resources.

In this way we change our world, for what is our world but our perception of it? Helping others to make life a rich rewarding lesson, ah! Someone told me I was lucky to have had the experiences I have had, been to the places, met the people, done the things. Was I lucky? Was I lucky that I lost my father when I was a toddler? Was I was lucky in my stepfather who raised me and my brother as his own – and abandoned us? My view of the world was perfectly normal for someone who had those early experiences.And when I took the conscious decision to change it, my new world became perfectly normal. But it took me fifty years! You don’t have to wait so long, unless you’re there already, and then it’s never too late and no dog learns new tricks so well as an old dog who simply learns to adapt the old tricks.

And its not just scars from childhood, is it? That more recent past, not so far behind us, the wounds of betrayal or cruelty, deception and disappointment, heartbreak or humiliation, can we let these too distort our view of the world or can these too be placed in perspective, processed and dealt with. Some might call this a life of suffering but those same also say we cause that suffering for ourselves. Let me tell you, calling out from the depths of a vale of tears holds us in those depths, and we can leave them, and we can learn how. We have a choice, to dwell in the past, to long for the future, but meanwhile the present slips by, unnoticed.

It is a simple process, to find motive, and then to associate it with a desire. Imagine now, or remember, a moment of total pleasure, or a peak of achievement. Think of a time when you felt wonderful, any time, from a moment ago to years ago, any moment when everything was right, perfect, in that moment, for however long or short a time. In your mind’s eye, see what you saw in that moment, the picture, and see where it is, in front of you or all around, colourful or black-and-white, moving or still, framed or panoramic – yes, that’s right, see what you see – are you in the picture or looking at it? Hear what you heard in that moment, feel what you felt, and where did you feel it? Where in your being? Was there fragrance, a smell or a taste? Re-live that moment with all your senses and now, and now, double the size of the picture and turn up the volume, double the feeling, the smell or the taste, and double again and again and again until your whole being is filled with that moment, that’s right, all your senses, be there, in it all around, capture that look, that feeling, all those sensations, savour them, let them linger in your being, your mind, your body … that’s right … and now, just be aware, back now, be aware of how far you went, how deep, how you lived that moment as if it were now!

And now, of course, you will have noticed, won’t you, that moment was your moment, entirely personal to you. I did not know where you were or what you saw or how you felt or what you heard – but you did!

And then we take that peak moment and anchor it, yes, anchor it, so that it can be revived and relived, at will! Then we associate that moment with something you want to do, something you want to achieve, something you want to change, and that instills the motivation deep inside you. Imagine now, how effective this can be in helping others change, help others achieve what they want and sometimes desperately need, freedom from negative programs that might have been instilled in them from childhood,freedom from unnecessary habits or out-of-date ways of thinking, freedom even from the past – the past is where it belongs, behind us! Freedom to move on, to achieve what we want and help others do the same.Freedom. Yes, freedom. That’s what we teach. The ways of letting go, cutting the chains of the free.

We learn to speak each other’s language, the language of the visual, if you see what I mean, or the language of the auditory if you hear what I’m saying, the language of the kinesthetic if you catch my drift, yes, smell the freedom – how does it taste? The sweet smell of success, the taste of achievement, the sound of letting go, the feeling of a weight off your chest, seeing yourself, as you really want to be, the past in place – a place to learn from and move on. That’s right.

Of course I don’t know your personal situation, problems, difficulties, hopes and dreams but I do know that at some deep level within us we have the resources to make the change you need to make and its just a matter of learning how to help yourself and others make those changes and make a decent living at it too.

Take a break - eight days hard work by day, private study by night, relentless concentration, tough challenges, exhaustive practice and thorough testing, all made well worth it by your NLP Practitioner Certificate signed by Richard Bandler, John LaValle and me, Kris Deva North, your Licensed Trainer, internationally recognised, accredited by the Society of Neurolinguistic programming. If you are prepared to step out of the box, invest eight days in YOU. You may find that success, fulfilment and happiness can be ... perfectly normal!

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