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.

Very busy at HMcH HQ

Lots of Hs (aitches) involved there! But it seems like abbreviating things is the only way to get through all I have to do these days.

The phone has been red hot over the past fortnight and I have clients desperate to see me. So much so that it's tough to fit them all in. Tempting to book my son into a few more after school club sessions so I can accommodate them. But in a week where UNICEF has published a report condemning the British way of life for not giving our children enough of ourselves and our time, it's kind of put me off.

One thing that is not being abbreviated is my fitness sessions. My gym session with a trainer this week was so hard that I had the jelly legs and the flashbacks to my very first training session at my first unit in Germany. It was the fittest unit in the Garrison. The other subalterns had looked at me with pity when I told them which company I was joining. I was the only girl... And I was desperate after only the warm up! What a shock being thrown into circuit training with these fit young men, I couldn't quite believe how fast they were, how strong. I was a minnow in comparison. 12 years later I was diagnosed with asthma! What a laugh.

I could write something really clever now about mental toughness and how to develop it; about how to look on the surface as if nothing is a problem when all the time you are peddling like mad just to keep afloat; and about how EVERYONE is far more nervous and unsure of themselves than they look. I could write about how many of those incredible, tough, fit young men ended up crying on my shoulder. And then I could write about how many of my phone calls this week were from young men who get anxious and blush in meetings, presentations and interviews.

So what am I really saying here? That everyone gets anxious and nervous, everyone has at some time or other been tongue tied and that everyone just acts it out when they need to. So if you need to pretend, then do so. And if you get tongue tied, the person listening will have been in exactly the same place, and more than once. We're all human, all of us, all of the time.

2011 Salutation - If you haven't changed already - it IS time to change now!

My first blog post of the year and it is 12th January already. Apologies for being so tardy.

Hopefully you will have reprised what I said a few weeks ago AND what I said last January about resolutions and how to keep them. And seen my December's post called "Let's get emotional." If not, go there now. In old Army parlance (and also said in a gruff voice using RP) "I commend it to you!"

Time to change then. So what? It is time to change your attitude. Time to change your thoughts. We get what we think about, what we focus on don't we. We can pretty much accept that. That's why we always say to focus on the positive, use positive language. Here's a good example from the physical realm.

When you ride a motorbike, sometimes steering it is far harder than it looks. Trees, hedges, potholes all come up far quicker than they are meant to and leave you little time for evasive action. And if you look at the thing you are trying to avoid hitting, you tend to hit the darned thing after all. Obviously on a bike, this is to be avoided (ouch!). On your bike licence course they tell you, "Don't look at the hedge!" and it's true that when you ride, if there's a hedge looking a bit close and you tell yourself not to look at the hedge but, "Look at the road!" then you do end up leaning further and steering into the road and away from the hedge. Phew!

In the same way, you must stop negative thoughts now. Even seemingly innocuous ones can keep you trapped. How about if you are an ok weight but its not easy to stay that way. You are probably telling yourslef, "I'm an ok weight at the moment but its always a battle." Guess what, you are locking yourself into the belief that you have to have a battle to stay at a good weight for you. Your predominant thought is, "It's always a battle" so you perpetuate that belief, you take actions as if weight is a battle and hey presto, your weight is always a battle and always will be.

Now, change that thought. Change it to what you REALLY want and you'll start focussing on that thought instead and living like that. Take these people who go to "Fat Club" as they call it. Well, a Fat Club is surely a club where people go who are fat, just like Swim Club or Drama Club or Chess Club is a club for people who swim, act or play chess. So as long as they go to Fat Club, they will continue to be fat, perpetuating the focus and actions of being overweight. Why aren't they going to "Thin Club" if they want to be thin? And don't call it Slimming Club either - if you focus on slimming, you'll always be slimming! Celebrate "Thin Club"!!!!

Change your entire thoughts and you change your actions. Decide now exactly what you want, whether it is to be a size 10, to be rich, find a partner, whatever. Then think like it has already happened. Decide that you are already a size 10, do what size 10 people do, live like a size 10 person, eat like a size 10 person. Visualise putting on size 10 clothes, visualise your scales showing you the weight of a size 10 person. Then one day turn round and see that reality - you WILL.

Change your thoughts to change your life this year. Have a good one.

Let's get emotional

Yes, it's time to get emotional - really emotional! Forget the idea of balance and use all those feelings that we are used to hiding. I know, it's a bit of a step change but keep with me.

Last week I met a wonderful mentor and motivator called Sunil Bali and he reminded me of something I had totally forgotten. To place emotions on our goals. Huh??? If we use our emotions then we make something more real. If we link emotions to a memory then we recreate it for ourselves and can revivify that memory.

If we add emotions and feelings to goals in the future, the entire thing becomes more real for us. The more real it becomes, the more enthused we become with it because we do want to FEEL that emotion we have conjured, that emotional value that we have placed on a future event or situation. And let's make no mistake about this. We DO place more value on emotions than on money for example. (I'd be surprised if you have to think about that statement for long.)

So what we do is to attach an emotion to a goal and it becomes far more effective as a motivating force. We are giving the goal power – emotional power. Hopefully you have found the power of stating and committing to SMART goals this year. I know I have. Your challenge for next year is to add emotion to next years goals. How will you feel when you have achieved them? I know I felt stupidly, ridiculously happy and free and proud of myself when I submitted my tax return in November instead of on 31st January! OK, I'll pause for riotous laughter.... But it was something that I was honestly happy about because it freed my feelings. I had nothing hanging over me, I was able to stretch out and go forward without being dragged back by a nagging feeling that I had something very important to do.

So this year, goals will be SMARTE. Shall we add R for "Review Regularly"? This would make goals that are SMARTER. So to recap, goals should be:

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Time-bound
Emotional
Reviewed Regularly

I'm committing to this again for next year. Are you?

New Year's Resolutions

No not yet! Last year's goals is what I'm talking about.

Have you been keeping up with your SMART goals that you set at the beginning of the year? Have you been regularly reviewing them?

I'll admit that my regular reviews became a bit sketchy as the year went on BUT I have just done my year end review and I am really pleased with the results. I gave myself 5 top-level goals at the beginning of the year, both personal and work related. I am pleased to say that I have either made progress or substantially achieved 4 of the 5. The one for which I have made no progress at all really was the lowest priority and I don't mind the fact that it has stuck.

The best bit is my business goals, which have mainly been achieved this year. One of my big goals concerned marketing and branding and that goal is just reaching its zenith. Really it's all due to the fact that I got round to picking up the phone to a marketing company called Create-a-Brand who have worked some amazing magic. do just what they say on the tin and you can see the results on my new website VERY soon. It's an exciting time. I can honestly say that with the branding they have created, it has given me the impetus to go forward and grab some of those goals.

BUT, it all started with proper goal setting at the beginning of the year. It's vital to your work and your personal life. So dust off those goals from January, review them and start to formulate next year's. You will be amazed at what you can achieve if you start with this simple process.

Oh, and a very happy Hannukah to those that celebrate it

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.

New Venture

Since I was at university I have had so many ideas for business ventures. Many of them I have seen taken up successfully by others and it's a bit galling. At the moment I am on a creative streak. I have so many ideas bubbling away that I hardly think my life will be long enough to ever achieve all of them. Perhaps it's all about that period of growth that happens in the spring time.

The idea that I am acting upon though is concerning overcoming trauma. I seem to have been doing a lot of this work recently, for social services, for motor insurance companies as well as individuals.

My vision is to run a retreat for members of the Armed Forces who are getting over time spent on operational duty. In the First World War we called it shell-shock. In the second it was termed a "Lack of Moral Fibre." Instead of being shot for cowardice men were discharged with the acronym LMF written upon their records. We now call difficulties arising as a result of operational tours Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD.

PTSD gets quite a bit of publicity in relation to servicemen. No doubt the most seriously affected are being treated by the defence medical services. But not everyone who is struggling is getting the help they need. Sometimes PTSD comes on insidiously. The previously ambitious family man in his early thirties who is now listless and having too many arguments with his wife may be suffering. So too the young single soldier who is drinking too much, far too much and has taken to going out on his own at times rather than with his mates.

My retreat is aimed at these sort of people, for whom life is ok but not quite what is used to be before they returned from an operational tour. Who know that something may be wrong but can't quite put their finger on it. I am planning to run a week where guests have time to be themselves, to have some physical and emotional therapy, enjoy a few low key activities. In essence to start to recover a sense of who they are.

There is a lot of work to be done yet. I have to find a location and a house or hotel for the accommodation; the costings need to be done; I need to plan the therapies and activities; conduct some more market research. I have one colleague on board already and I think between us we can make it work.

It is a very exciting project for me and although I may have missed out on some ideas over the years, this is one that I want to make work.

Holiday Season Already?

The holiday season has started and with it, the prophecy from an aviation expert that planes will fall from the sky due to volcanic ash. This is not helpful to people who are nervous and already I had 2 clients book in last week for help with fear of flying. If this is you, or someone you know, it is a fear that can be helped. It takes a few sessions so please don’t contact me 10 days before you are due to fly – give us a chance!

On a different note, some of my blog posts in January revolved around goal setting and achieving for this year. If you haven’t reviewed things out for a while, go and take a look and have an update session. It shouldn’t take long, but it will help to get you back on track.

One of my goals this year was to submit my tax return at the beginning of the tax year and not get it to the accountant on 25 January again. Maybe this year I will be back on his Christmas card list! Anyway, it is going quite well so far. I have completed the easy parts, done most of the middling difficult bits and have not quite started on the hunting-for-information for the tough parts. And this is the crux of the matter – getting on with the things we don’t like very much.

Tasks that we don’t like rarely take as long as we expect them to. Getting started is the key because if we don’t start then we haven’t a hope of finishing and finishing is the goal. And have you noticed that unpleasant tasks have a habit of hanging over you? The black cloud of my tax return starts to hover in early April and by Christmas it’s pretty dark and dangerous. Thankfully my wonderful accountant (at Cottons by the way!) saved me from the thunder and lightning of the Revenue’s rage. This year I shall be wafting a summery parasol very shortly – and mainly because I determined my goals at the beginning of the year, wrote them down and keep checking up on progress.

Whatever your goals, get started on them. Getting started on the journey is often the hardest part because once you are on the road there tend to be signposts and rest stops which can keep you going. It’s the same for dreams, whether your dream is to weigh 6 stone less, combat a fear of flying or write a bestseller, I urge you to start, because that is the only way to the end point and realising your dream.

Enjoy the Spring

On Deprivation (and Lent)

My last post was a little spiritual, so I thought today I would follow through, go the whole hog and mention something from the Christian calendar. It is now Lent - the season of deprivation until Easter! Or is it? I have written a lot about weight loss recently and how it is better not to deprive yourself as it only leads to you craving the object of your deprivation. This of course for Christians is a little like self-flagellation. The deprivation reminds Christians of what Jesus went through for 40 days and nights in the desert without food, where surely he would have felt deprivation keenly, to say the least. So feeling deprived is what it's all about. If you don't feel deprived, you haven't chosen the right thing to go without for the 6 weeks. The idea is to feel Jesus' pain. But there is a way of doing this differently.

Many people resolve to give up something they enjoy like chocolate or alcohol but I once heard a clever sermon for Lent which provided a different twist. This minister's idea was to give up on a behaviour or an emotion that has negative consequences. To give up bitching about somebody, to give up always sniggering at the guy in the office with the appalling dress sense, to give up taking undeserved criticism, to refrain from thinking the worst, to give up always thinking that someone else could do that tedious task, when it could in fact be you.

It dovetails neatly into my work because my clients have all taken the decision to give up on an emotion or behaviour. I have been seeing very many trauma victims recently who don't want to carry the emotions around with them any more. It feels good for them to shake off the overwhelming negativity and anxiety that comes from having been abused as a child, been in a car accident, been bullied at school. They are giving up feeling bad about themselves. They are giving up on old emotions that serve no useful purpose.

But it lasts, it's not just for Lent, it won't disappear at Easter. And it isn't deprivation either.

Ban the D Word

Yes, ban the "Diet" word. It seems all-pervading at this time of year. But even if you are losing weight, please don't use the D word, it is far too dispiriting, far too negative for my world.

Firstly, it's a bastardised use of the word anyway, which means to eat a specific group of foods. My dog is "on a diet" - a restrictive diet to safeguard her liver. A diabetic is often "on a diet" as is a coeliac. A weight-loss diet however, is just a diet where the food going in is less than before and less than the enrgey being expended. Simple as that.

So don't "diet", don't restrict yourself. As soon as you ban foods or eat too little, all your mind wants to do is seek out the things you tell yourself you cannot have. Have you noticed that if ever you say you have given up chocolate, all you do is crave chocolate? It's because the mind finds it dificult to process a negative.

In order to process a negative, the mind first has to understand the positive before it can twist it into "don't." So to process the command, "Don't drop it!" the mind first has to work out what "Drop it" means in order to understand that it must do the opposite. This takes time and brain power and is more difficult than it at first appears.

The person who has given up something will always notice that thing eg. chocolate and the brain will then think, "Aha, there's the thing I cannot have," thus bringing the forbidden thing to your attention and adding to the craving. Sneaky huh?

Try it with small children. Their minds are still learning how to process language so they are that bit slower than us. As soon as you tell a child, "Don't touch that," the child will touch it. It's only a less well developed cognition than our chocolate craving.

Two lessons here. Firstly, give your children positive messages eg. "Only looking at the breakable china please"

Secondly, don't give yourself deprivation type commands like "I have given up chocolate because I'm dieting" Ugh! How many negative cognitions does that sentence have in it? Tell yourself that you can eat chocolate with a meal, if you are hungry. Trust me, you will barely notice that you are eating less chocolate.

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.

Progress your Goals

Did that title sound a little Americanised? Well never mind, it works!

How have you got on with SMARTening up your goals/resolutions for the year? By now you should have determined what your goals are and have them all written out, in SMART format. There should be details and timeframes for all your realistic and achievable goals that are going to fit in with your life.

Now comes the part where you make those goals happen.

Every week you must look at those goals and assess whether you have made progress on them. Write this down on the page. Write down what you managed to do - and NOT do. This will focus your mind. It will remind you to feel good about the things you have done and give you a pointer or reminder to make progress on other goals. There may be a good reason why you have not done certain things and that's fine too, just make sure you are not procrastinating and putting things off for no good reason.

It's a good idea to make time for this goal review. It really only takes 5 minutes. Try scheduling it for the same time every week, Monday morning or on the train home or any other convenient time. Scheduling it in your diary makes it far more sure that you will do this.

Do try and you are already on your way to achieving your 2010 goals. Good luck!

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!