Brain training - banish negativity to get results

January is a good time for new beginnings, as is Spring/Easter and also, maybe surprisingly, September.

I have a lot of enquiries at the moment regarding stopping smoking and weight loss. Have any of you watched the programme on Sky1 called, "Obese - a Year to Change My Life" ? (Stay with me, it IS relevant!

If not, here is a link to watch it on your computer:
http://sky1.sky.com/obese-a-year-to-save-my-life/obese-a-year-to-save-my-life-announced">

Many people who are giving something up talk a lot about loss - LOSING weight, GIVING UP smoking, QUITTING etc

Yet the words we use to ourselves and others can be incredibly powerful. Have you noticed how negative those words above are? Many of us have been through plenty of losses and grieving in our lives already, why would we want to lose anything else? Why would we want to quit at anything?

For this reason we have to focus on what we WANT, focus on our goals, focus on the end result. In these cases being healthy, non-smoking, slim people. In that way, we end up looking at what we can gain, not what we have to give up to get there.

Try this one simple thing if you are overweight. Don't put up a picture on the fridge of you at your heaviest in order to shock yourself into keeping away from the fatty snacks. That will perpetuate your vision of yourself as an overweight person. Put up a picture of you being slim or of someone else whose body you could aspire to. Maybe cut out your face and put it on the slim body. You will be surprised how effective this is.

Nothing difficult - just brain training. More on this in another blog post.

Sports Psychology

I met someone on Friday who was very interested in sports psychology and how hypnotherapy can help. Let me give you a bit of a blunt introduction.

On Thursday evening I was watching Rugby Club on Sky Sports. It's a magazine type programme that rounds up all the news, views and features in rugby union. There was of course a long feature and discussion about the forthcoming England vs New Zealand game on Saturday. From the commentary and the profiles presented, it looked like it would be an exciting game and England had every chance of winning.

Every chance that is until the head coach, Martin Johnson spoke. He said, "Yes, we'll give it a good try." A good try! A good TRY???!!! At that moment I knew that England were going to lose.

It wouldn't matter what they tried to do on the pitch. If their coach is seeing the game in terms of trying to win, then the players will pick that up and will also play to try when they should be playing to win.

It's quite a simple thing to learn and put into practice. Tell your team, your employees, your managers exactly what you want them to do and their brains will process exactly what you have told them. If Martin Johnson had told his team that they were a stronger team (and they probably were) and that he expected them to go out there and play their best rugby in order to see a score in the twenties whilst defending hard in order to stop the opposition from scoring, then I suspect strongly that we would have seen a win. Perhaps Johnson did say that to the team that afternoon, but by then it was too late. He had beenon national TV telling the nation that his team were going to try hard. Players are not immune to that talk and that attitude.

This is not a criticism of Martin Johnson, I am just using the situation as an example. Use positive language, the language of winning, in order to influence your team and it will pay off. Use it on yourself too in your "self-talk," that dialogue that runs through your head and see the dividends.

The Patter of Tiny Feet

I have been so excited and busy with moving to Willow Tree that I have forgotten to post some very exciting news.

Not for me, but a client with "unexplained infertility" is now pregnant! After just 5 sessions, she conceived around the time of the 6th session, with no extra help from the fertility clinic. And this from a standing start of her and her husband being extremely depressed and upset and grieving when they first came to see me.

I feel so proud and privileged to have helped this fantastic couple. A very happy 9 months is what I now wish for them

*Beaming* :O)

Surfing the wave

I have written this on my Facebook page but my head is BUZZING with ideas since my detox. I feel I'm on fire with things to do. Completely enthused about what I do and how to reach out to more people.

My re-branding has started, which is very exciting. My wonderful marketing helpers Archie, Louise and Simon at create-a-brand have done some amazing design for me. You can see it on my Facebook page, it hasn't migrated to the blog or the website yet.

I have also launched "Belief. Bump. Baby" which is a totally new service dedicated to family creation from pre-conception through to parenthood. "Belief.Bump.Baby" is going to take off and it's almost a case of reining it in! There is so much to be achieved in this area - pre-conception counselling, fertility counselling and advice, support to IVF and assisted conception treatment, emotional support through pregnancy and pregnancy loss, and the courses in "hypnobirthing", a practice that is gathering pace thank heaven.

I am so excited by what I am doing right now. Charles gave me a fantastic phrase - "Surfing the wave." I love it and I'm surfing!

Progress after Perseverence

It sounds like a chapter from "Pilgrims Progress" doesn't it!

Well I have had my patience tested over the last weeks. I started working with a teenage boy who I think it is fair to say is quite a way over on the autistic spectrum (ASD). His father describes his communication difficulties as "severe."

Anyway I started working with him a few months ago and it has been tough, for all of us I think. At the start I gave his parents no illusions of my expectation of a successful treatment. It was clearly going to be experimental and I did not know how much impact, if any, my work would have on their son. And yet over the last 2 weeks, his parents have reported distinct signs of progress. His mum was so much happier and he must surely feel happier to be going through less distress, even if he can't express it to us.

I have worked mainly with Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) using quite a lot of the "Choices" or "Alternate Phrase" technique, after Dr Patricia Carrington. I then started to blend a little eye movement therapy into my tapping sequences, from EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing.) I worked very instinctively as we went and I had little indication of any progress.

And now, after weeks of work with both me and his parents we have some signs of a distinct improvement. I am so thrilled for us all! And I so want this to be a lasting change.

So, in this case perseverence has been key I think. Some of my clients don't quite understand this point!

The ball is rolling

It's amazing what a new project can do for your general motivation. My Retreat project is gathering momentum. I feel at the moment that I hardly need do anything, like it will run on it's own legs! It;s not quite the case of course. There's plenty of work that I need to actually complete but when momentum picks up it's hard to stop, and that's a good thing.

I hope you are enjoyingthe sunshine even if, like me, you are shivering in the cold north winds.

Social Conscience

I have done some interesting work recently, helping adult victims of child abuse. My clients were a young couple in their twenties, with 4 children under the age of 8, who had 3 different fathers. The children were the subject of court proceedings, with the objective of deciding whether to remove the children from the parents "under the category of neglect."

Both parents had been poorly parented themselves so they had no decent example on which to model themselves as parents. The man had been badly abused as a child. So while the court case had been adjourned, Social Services were attempting to improve the parenting skills of the couple in order that they stood a chance of keeping the children. They wanted to show the court that they had done everything possible to help the parents.

Now some would say that if they were incapbable of looking after 4 children, then the couple should lose the children and they should be taken into care and looked after properly and given a better chance in life. I will admit that I had a similar viewpoint. On closer inspection, it is not quite as simple as that. Firstly, it benefits Social Services to leave children with parents because a child in care costs a fortune. To place a single, simple child with no additional needs into any sort of care costs over £400 per week. Yes, per week! Care is VERY expensive for the taxpayer.

The second reason why Social Workers like to leave children with parents is that children in care tend to do badly throughout their lives. Most of the British prison population have been in care as children. Taking children away from parents is a marker for future social problems, which have to dealt with and paid for by the state. So the arguments for children remaining with families are quite persuasive - current cost, future cost and short and long-term wellbeing of the children.

So my role was to help these two parents come to an understanding and an acceptance of what happened to them as children. The aim was that they could move on from the trauma, enabling them to lead easier, happier lives. And Social Services aim then was to help them to learn improved parenting skills, once they had more of a blank canvas to work with. Someone who has been abused as a child has multiple problems and hang-ups that they have to deal with and they can often be quite traumatic.

The man in particular had been through a hell of a childhood and really had suffered, which was affecting him day to day. After several weeks of work, both individuals were feeling much happier and calmer. They both reported a great improvement in their relationships with each other and the children, they played with the children more and were more positive and optimistic in general.

I was absolutely thrilled. To have such a result for these people was fantastic for me and so rewarding. I saw both parents change for the better over time and I loved seeing it. Ultimately I don't know whether they will keep the children. I am just glad that I could play a small part in helping these people to enjoy their lives.

The Blog Post I wish I had written

The title says it all, but this blog post from Kim Ayres (Ramblings of the Bearded One) describes in one post what I am trying to achieve for you in my own blog. Please read it as I don't want to copy and paste, and I cannot take credit for Kim's work.

http://kimayres.blogspot.com/2010/01/this-is-for-you.html

You may enjoy his blog too.

New Year's Resolutions and how to keep them

Happy New Year to you all in 2010. Today's blog is about how to get to the end of the year feeling great, having achieved what you wanted to achieve.

In common with many others born before the 1980s, I do think that the year 2010 still sounds a long way in the future rather than really today. Do you remember that programme "Space 1999" where they lived on the moon or some such planet?

But I digress....

How to start the year and carry on in a good groove? I find that there are a few big depression points in the year. One is when the clocks go back in October and it feels like winter. The next is Christmas for some, then New Year, which some people detest. Thereafter the stretch from the Christmas holidays to Easter and the clocks going forward again can seem very long and cold.

When you add to that stretch the disappointment that many people feel when they realise that they have failed in their New Years resolutions, it can make for dark days indeed. So how can you make those resolutions and actually stick to them this year?

The first option is not to bother at all! This will achieve the aim but may also set you up for a depressing New Years eve at the end of the year. I'm going to give you a new alternative.

I now assume that you have a few "resolutions" for the year ahead. Firstly, don't put yourself under pressure. There is no magic about the date of 1st January. How many smokers have resolved to quit and by the morning of 2nd January are back ont he smokes? Mainly because there was too much pressure put on a date that is only a mark in the calendar after all and the smoker was not ready on that day. That's why I am writing this post today. If you have alreday slipped up, don't sweat, start again tomorrow, or on Wednesday, it really doesn't matter so much.

Your first task is to get hold of a blank book, notebook, a small folder, file, page in your filofax, note in your Blueberry etc. The next is to note down your goals for the year on the front page. Write them quite briefly and succinctly eg. Improve my fitness, Lose weight etc.

Then take another page for each of your goals and now comes the interesting part. Each goal now needs to be made SMART. Smart goals are:

S - Specific
M - Measurable
A - Achievable
R - Realistic
T - Timebound

So my weight loss goal is to lose 12lb (specific & measurable) by Easter (timebound). Now I do my reality check and ask whether I CAN achieve this goal. Is it a realistic goal to set? Don't over-stretch yourself or you will set yourself up for failure. You want to be setting yourself up for success at this point. The question to ask is, "If I put some effort in, which does not impact negatively on the rest of my life, can I do this?"

If you have a goal which has a negative impact elsewhere in your life, it might not be a goal that you really want to achieve. Hence you most likely won't see it through. If running a marathon means that you spend a lot of time at weekends running and don't see your family, you may have derailed one of your values of spending time together. At some point this conflict will result in a change and the change may be that the marathon is not as important as family therefore you drop the marathon and feel disapointed in yourself. Goals MUST be realistic and fit in with your values and beliefs.

Now you have your SMART goal, put some detail into your plans as to how you are going to achieve this goal. It's all very well to have a goal but you do ned to understand HOW you will achieve it. A goal on it's own is not enough. So plan all the parts and tasks that have to come together to get to the timebound end with your goal having been achieved.

Again, each part of the plan must be SMART. For my weight loss goal I might write down that I will go to the gym. I will go once per week in January, twice per week in February, building up to a habit of going to the gym 3 times per week, which I want to achieve by May. Think about everything that surrounds these plans, make them achievable. I know for a fact that if I try to start off by going to the gym 3 times per week from today, I won't be able to keep it up. So my goal is realistic and increases with time. Too much change at once is not realistic for our poor little brains!

We are creatures of habit and the mind loves habit. So if you have a couch potato habit, the mind is going to be very resistant to a sudden change to a gym bunny habit. It will do everything in it's power to stop you going to the gym and holding on to it's couch potato life. After all, you have survived this long by lying on the couch.

Go through each goal in excatly the same way so you end up with a few pages of SMART plans, one for each goal. Now you are ready to put it all into action.

Every day or two, look at your plans and goals and check whether you have made prgress today or this week on your goals. If you do this systematically, you will jog yourself into taking action. The idea is to make progress weekly so you must review weekly at least. It is a good idea to set time in your diary to do this, just 15 minutes is enough. If you do it at the same time every week, you will soon establish this as a habit too.

You can note down your progress as you go through the months and then you can see, record and keep track. By the end of the year, perhaps you won't have achieved everything you set out to do but I know for sure that you will have made progress on each one. That will feel very satisfying to you by the time 2011 comes round.

OK, I'm off to the gym!

Celebrate Happiness

I feel like I'm in a confessional, "Bless me Father for I have sinned because it has been a few weeks since my last blog post." What can I say? Family and home pressures too numerous, not to mention the time I have to give to my clients, and actually it is right that I give more time to family and clients than to my blog.

Onwards with the blog!

My subject today is to celebrate happiness. I have a couple of very worthwhile clients at the moment who have both suffered difficult childhoods and difficult subsequent life experiences. If I let them dwell on these they could feel pretty depressed don't you think? So we are trying to stimulate their happy neural networks. Every day they have to think of and dwell on a positive memory or experience or feeling.

Thoughts are only flases of electrical stimulation and they go round the brain through networks. These networks are the ones they know, the ones they have been used to taking and using. A person who likes dogs will have a neural network set up so that each time he sees a dog he feels positive, happy, perhaps a nice memory may be sparked. Someone witha dog phobia would have a diferent, negative network of thoughts activated by the same stimulus. Each of these networks are in part habits. The brain is used to responding in this way os it always responds in a similar manner.

So if we keep prodding and stimulating the positive networks then we can develop more positive habitual ways of thinking. And if we have a habit of thinking positively then we become more positive overall.

Despite the tough times, everyone does have some positive memories or experiences to draw on. Any tiny memory will do - playing in the snow, a funny time with a friend, enjoying a certain TV programme - anything at all. If you train yourself to consider a happy or positive memory or a positive thing about yourself as a person every single day, you will be compounding and strengthening your positive view of yourself. You will improve your self-esteem slowly but surely.

There are positive parts of everyone and we need to strengthen these sides of ourselves in order to learn how to deal with the negative parts of life. Even something that started off badly will have a bit of good to build upon.

If you have been born into an unfortunate situation, it is not necessarily your destiny to stay in that mould. You CAN change your stars. I would like to recommend a film called "A Knights Tale" starring the late Heath Ledger, which describes how the unlikliest situations can turn around.

And remember, in your darkest hours, "I may be lying in the gutter, but I am looking up at the stars." I wish Heath Ledger had been able to see those stars.

The stars ARE there. All you need to do is open your eyes and look up.

Being Thankful

It's too long since I regularly "blogged" and I have lost many of my friends on the journey. But that's ok, perhaps I will make some new ones. I've not been in full health and there's a reason for that which I don't yet fully understand. Understanding will come though.

Today's post is about thankfulness and mindfulness. It will strike a chord with those of you who follow a religion. To others it will sound overtly "Pollyanna-ish" and perhaps some will want to scream at me. To let you in, I have been through all of those reactions so just accept your reaction fopr what it is. That's mindfulness.

So my subject is to be thankful. There definitely is something to be learned in every situation that life throws at us. When all is going our way, we rarely stop to consider what we are learning. Perhaps that is becuase the soul is not developing, perhaps it is too easy. When life is tough, sometimes a small voice nags us to understand that every part of life is a journey and that we will be picking up experiences and learning from them. Yet when we are in physical or emotional pain or mental anguish engulfs us, then how on earth can we take anything positive from where we are?

That's when the screaming voice can take over and want to cut down any self-righteous, patronising do-gooder who looks on sympathetically and tells us to "be positive."

AAAARRRRGGGHHH!!!!!!!!!!

But if you look closely, there is an ingredient missing from the recipe and it is TIME. In the thick of it, in the middle of the fight, all you can do is protect yourself from the blows and strike out when you get the opportunity. Only later when you analyse it with your coach and watch the video footage will you be able to gain the perspective you need to really learn from the mistakes you made in the ring.

So try this now. Look backwards in time and pick a time or situation or a person which you would rather miss out if you could play the film of your life again. With the perspective of time, examine the video footage and see if you can identify the positive aspects. What did you do well? But most of all, what are you thankful for?

I would rather forget and miss out the experience of marriage to my first husband but on so many days I have reason to feel thankful for the time we spent together. He taught me to cook! To cook real, fresh food and to experiment, to not be afraid in the kitchen. I still have the cookery book he patronisingly bought me the week before our wedding - it is a firm favourite of mine.

If I take this concept further and extrapolate the effect of learning to cook, I can thank my ex-husband for my health. Ten years of eating unprocessed, fresh food has doubtless had a positive effect on my health. It is a strange feeling to thank him for that but I cannot deny it.

Finding something positive in a bad situation liberates us from the negative emotional effects of that unfortunate experience. For some people there may be much healing required but the exercise of thankfulness can be a start.

Try that today.

Anxiety

I had a really excellent day yesterday. My anxiety client has had a massive breakthrough. I never expect treatment to be quite this dramatic so as she finished telling me all about how wonderful she was feeling, I had to ask,"What can I actually do for you then?"

I felt like my work was finished, oh halleluyah, I love it when this happens! Actually it wasn't, there was more work to do for her. But what a brilliant session! This lady reported that all the usual anxiety inducing situations were just passing by so quickly without symptoms that she kept thinking, "Hang on, I've just done something that should have given me a panic attack." She wasn't even noticing what was happening. It was as if the anxiety had never even been there.

I think I have said this before but I got such a buzz. To think that the elimination of anxiety states really is possible, quickly, with no drugs just blows my mind. Mainly because it has such a positive effect on somebody's life.

My job is to help people to enjoy their lives. That is all there is.

Equilibrium

Lost my equilibrium for a short while. Had a wobbly blip. It happens, even though peeps think it doesn't. As I said in an earlier post, this is the real world and it's not quite as fluffy as we would all like. Anyhow, the status quo is mostly restored.

I was in London today and I managed to take a short walk in Regents Park. I loved seeing the wonderful old trees. I always feel very grounded by large trees; they are so old, it's as if the wisdom of the world is rising through their roots. I find the winter, bare branches look enables you to see their beauty best. It was quite restorative.

I was able to do a little people watching too, which I find is best in cities. I saw a few people who looked like the sort of people I might have been friends with if I had that sort of a city life and it got me thinking about the "turn of a sixpence" theme again. When I got my A level results I had dropped one grade which meant that I was no longer eligible for a place at City University in London. I was heartbroken. All I wanted was to escape my small-town country upbringing and get living!

I ended up going to a very second choice small-town campus university which I was never entirely happy with. Then my life went in some strange directions and about 15 years later I found myself writing a letter to my Grandma that I was enjoying living in my new house but it was in the middle of a large town. Luckily I was right next to a park and could see trees outside my study window. I spent a lot of time staring at those trees that year and I longed for more grass and mud.

And so I realised that in fact I was a bit of a country girl. So every time I visit London I am faced with the image of what might have been and I honestly feel glad that it wasn't. Yet that one dropped grade held the key and I never knew. Everything would have been different and I would have been a very different person, and I am not sure I would have been happy shoehorning myself in to that life.

I am fascinated that small events in our pasts shape our futures so much. Who knows what I am doing right now that seems insignificant, yet could change the course of events.

I think the key is making the best of the hand we are dealt. It is not what happens in our lives that shape us and give us happiness, it is our responses.

Ignore the Doom-Mongerers!

My accountant has been muttering darkly about 2009 since November last year. He has been wishing it were over already, wishing it was over before it was begun - doom, gloom, recession blah blah. But I am simply not listening, despite it being poor grammar to begin a sentence with a conjunction! We can create a lot of our own reality and if I think it's going to be a bad year then I fully expect it will be. But if I continue to look for the good times then I am more likely to see the good times when they happen, attract more good times in the future AND have a better year anyway just because I have a more optimistic outlook!

The year has started well for me and I am happily practising from my new rooms. I am continuing to attract clients and I am helping them to enjoy their lives. How could I ask for more?!

An update on the Patchwork Dog... she went for blood tests this morning and I will find out how they are later in the week. She is certainly a lively girl at the moment, was bouncing 2 feet in the air this morning off all 4 paws and she hasn't done that in years.