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Conversational Hypnosis

Monday, August 30th, 2010

Conversational hypnosis

What’s all the hype about?

I keep getting enquiries about conversational hypnosis asking whether I teach it on my hypnotherapy courses.

The enquiries often make it sound like it’s some sort of ‘holy grail’ that allows you to hypnotise anyone at anytime without their knowledge!

Just before going any further, ask yourself ‘would I like someone to be able to hypnotise me at any time without me knowing?’.

Chances are, probably not!

In fact, who would!

Because it’s one of people’s biggest fears about hypnosis – that you can make people do things without their knowing it!

Well, the good news is that there are some simple truths about hypnosis:

1 You cannot make anyone do anything they do not want to do under hypnosis

2 Being suggestible is not gullible – in fact, being suggestible hypnotically means you have greater control over yourself! If you are suggestible, you can influence your heart rate, blood pressure and even blood flow.

People who are making out you can have some sort of control over people are very good marketers, however it doesn’t work like that!

In fact, one person offering a conversational hypnosis course was showing a clip of Derren Brown doing a mental magic performance where he seems to be influencing someone covertly.

Well, Derren Brown is a highly skilled magician and much of his work is magic, not mind control.

The only people who get taken in by the hypnosis mind control claims are simply naïve and not knowing the truth about hypnosis.

To be hypnotized, there are 3 key criteria that must be met:

1 You have to want it to happen

2 You have to expect it to happen

3 You have to allow it to happen

So going back to the beginning of this article – what’s all this about conversational hypnosis?

Does it exist?

Of course!

But it’s been around for decades. The first person most people attribute it to was Milton Erickson – a highly gifted psychiatrist and hypnotherapist in the USA in the last century.

He would just talk ‘casually’ rather than do formal inductions and his patients would go into hypnosis and achieve incredible results.

But still, it’s only those people that are expecting, wanting and allowing hypnosis to happen that it would work for.

We all have incredible potential within us waiting to be untapped, and that was something Milton Erickson was great at releasing from people – but it was in no way having power over someone – in fact the reverse – it was about empowering people.

And that’s the great thing about hypnosis and NLP – it is about empowering all of us to help us reach our full potential.

I can hardly begin to say all the results I’ve seen with hypnosis. In fact, I am a professionally trained musician and used to practice hours a day. After learning NLP I cut that time right down and my skill level must have doubled within weeks – it was all about learning the right mental game, which NLP and hypnosis is all about.

Join our NLP Practitioner training in October or our Hypnotherapy training starting in September to learn the real secrets…

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Managing Stress With NLP

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

Dealing With Stress

I run a lot of business programs in stress management and thought I’d write this NLP blog about using NLP and stress.

Stress affects everyone. And it’s not just stress at work, but it’s also in other areas of life.

In fact, the truth is we need some stress to function effectively. Stress gets us going in the morning and keeps us working optimally.

However when we have too much stress or have high levels for prolongued periods of time, it can have dire consequences on our health, emotional well-being and happiness.

Companies lose billions of pounds/ dollars every year as a result of stress.

Many absentee days from work are a direct or indirect result of stress.

Studies have even shown how extreme stress will cause our bodies to age prematurely at a cellular level!

So what can we do about stress?

NLP teaches some really valuable techniques and strategies to help us deal with stress more effectively.

In fact many things people lean on an NLP training even help reduce stress without direct awareness of how it happens!

Take for example some students who cam on our course several years ago. They worked for a large manufacturing plant that experienced several serious accidents every year.

From learning about how to use language effectively they went back to their organization and rewrote some of the training guides and signs and within a year had virtually cut out all serious injuries. This was purely through awareness of how to use language effectively!

Language and communicating is often a major source of stress for people. Just the other day I opened up a new light I had purchased and looked at the instructions for fitting it together. It might has well have been written in Russian – I couldn’t understand a word of it!

What did I experience? Stress!!!

When we experience unclear communication or instructions it can be exceedingly stressful, however in reality people experience this all too often at work.

One of the first keys to communicating effectively is to say exactly what you want – not what you don’t want. Most people know what they don’t want, but aren’t clear about exactly what they do want!

People will come for a coaching session and say ‘I don’t want to feel stressed’ but not know what they DO want. And as a result they end up focusing on the thing they don’t want.

Here are a few keys to follow:

Be clear about the outcome of your message. Formulate what to say specifically without any risk of ambiguity.

Make sure it is framed in terms of what you want and not what you don’t want. If you’ve said something like, ‘I don’t want…..’ then ask yourself what you do want instead.

Communicate it in a way that the other person will understand – remember it’s about them understanding, not about you saying what you think is important!

Most lack of understanding comes from the way we communicate the message, not from the other person, so if we don’t get the outcome we want after communicating with someone, work on changing your communication.

NLP Training is probably the best way to learn outstanding communication skills as well as the most powerful ways to manage your emotional state. We have regular NLP Practitioner courses in London and Scotland.

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Secrets of communicating

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

NLP is all about communicating. In communicating with other people, the way you say it is the difference that makes the difference.

What is the real difference between average communication and excellent communication?

It’s commonly thought by most people that excellent communication is all about the words that you use.

Yet, the words are only a small part of communication.

So that’s one part of communication – what’s the other?

It’s all about the way you say it.

I’m sure you’ve experienced a salesperson who clearly didn’t believe in the thing they were selling, but was determined to try to convince you that something very average was actually worth buying?

Was it the language that they used that let you know they didn’t believe it?

That’s not it, is it?

It’s all in the way they say it.

Salespeople may know the most excellent lines and words to sell their products, however the words don’t matter if you don’t put it across it in the right way.

It’s all about the other elements of communication – voice tonality, the physiology and all the other non-verbals.

If you don’t get those correct, it’s finished from the start!

The deep principles to successful communication are how you say it AND what you say!

Take leaders – what makes an excellent  leader? You might say it’s about having intelligent and great things to say. However in reality, a leader could be the most intelligent and well meaning person in the world, but if they talk in a monotone and look at the floor the whole time, no one will want to listen to them!

They have to put the message across in an compelling and believable way also, or people will turn off!

Similarly, the message also should be well written. A really average message said with conviction still won’t do the job either – although unfortunately even an average message said well will tend to win over a great message said badly.

So how can you increase your cability to be great at communicating your message?

These are a few important steps:

1      Know your outcome – if you want people to really relate to your communication, you need to have a very clear vision. Having this very clear vision will develop your charisma as a leader

2      Believe totally in your outcome / message / or service. If you don’t believe in your outcome, people will pick up on it, and they’ll switch off to your communication – it’s really that simple!

3      Write out the basics of your message and tell it to people you trust. Ask them for feedback. The journey from being mediocre to being great is about learning from feedback and getting feedback from people you trust to be honest is a great way to develop this skill.

Attending an NLP course is also going to help with your outstanding communication skills. To build your confidence, hypnosis is also a way many of my clients have succeeded powerfully.

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Developing charisma – a personal development blog

Friday, June 11th, 2010

What makes charisma?

I was having a discussion the other day with a friend and wondered what is it that makes charisma?

One argument someone was having was a thought on why no British politicians seem to have the same level of charisma as American politicians, such as Obama?

The other person thought this a really odd thing to say as they didn’t think Obama was at all charismatic but found the British political leaders highly charismatic.

Clearly at some level charisma is a highly personal thing.

There is nobody in the entire world that everyone would view as charismatic, however in reality anyone can develop charisma which can positively shape their interactions and success.

If you have an outcome that requires communicating with other people, developing your charisma could be a really important tool.

So what is charisma?

Charisma is largely about confidence and conviction.

When you think about some of the most successful entrepreneurs, you probably would consider most of them have what most people call charisma.

The question is – did the charisma make them successful, or does their success give them charisma?

Successful people (who get their through their own work!) have a very clear focus. They know their outcome and don’t get distracted. They are committed and flexible – if you only have one way of doing something, it may not work – you need to have more than one possible path to your desired outcome.

Charismatic people also have a real self-confidence and belief in what they are doing as well as being good at what they do (after confidence without competence is essentially delusion, but in a lot of NLP I’ve seen taught, that seems to be what is installed!).

So how can you grow your own confidence?

Here are a few simple steps to boost your confidence

1 Have a very clear outcome – know what you want and create a powerful vision of it. Really spend time thinking about what it will look like, sound like and feel like to have it

2 Think about WHY it is so important for you to have it – charismatic people have a strong sense of purpose. Knowing the reasons for what you do will help drive you into action

3 Create a plan – have a series of easy steps to take action on and constantly review your outcome and reasons for doing it

4 Think about your resources – what are your strengths, skills and abilities that will help you get your outcome. If you aren’t sure, ask a friend what they think your strengths are. It’s often amazing that we don’t recognize to ourselves our true qualities and strengths

5 Enroll others in your vision – get excited about your outcome and share it with other people – get them excited about the outcome also. When you have rapport with other people and get excited about your outcome, other people will get excited also – you’ll discover a real charisma starting to flow from you.

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Becoming a leader…

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

What makes a leader?

An important part of personal development and growth can be to help find the inner leader within.

I remember years ago at school I took part in the army cadets at school and constantly experienced getting shouted at. This was one of my earliest experiences about leadership and as a result I thought that leaders basically were people that shouted a lot and told people what to do!

However, in reality I later discovered that that was not necessarily a good example of good leadership, in fact for most of our experience that is an example of poor leadership. I have know some ‘leaders’ who try to get their own way by shouting and bullying, but they rarely last long and don’t produce happy staff.

Many of us seem to have that concept of leaders as being aggressive and shouting, but would you consider that good leadership?

Think back over your past for good examples of great leaders. Who are some of the greatest leaders you can think of? Did they have to shout to get their way?

Two examples of recent great leaders I can think of are President Obama and Clinton. Did they ever have to resort to shouting and bullying?

Of course not!

Because a true leader helps to inspire people to want to take action themselves rather than force them to. This is what both Obama and Clinton have been able to do so successfully.

Some people seem to have been giving Obama a hard time recently, but few people could really doubt his ability to inspire. Being in a position of power in the current economic climate is one of the toughest deals anyone could be served.

If things are going well in the world, people love the leader. If things aren’t going well, people tend to blame the leader, even though they may have little to do with it! However the mark of a true leader is someone who holds on to his principles and ideals no matter what other people might do to dissuade them.

Being popular is not the priority for the leader, but wanting the best for the people who follow the leader is crucial.

Obama is a good example of this – he holds on to his ideals which he believes are for the best of the nation, even though initially the ideas might not be popular. In fact, many of the greatest leaders had ideas which were initially scorned, however later on became accepted as something that couldn’t be done without.

So developing yourself as a leader is a crucial part of your own personal development and it isn’t about shouting and screaming.

For myself, learning NLP helped me to awaken my inner leader, as has my work as a hypnotherapist in London. We have an NLP Practitioner training starting on June 13 in London and after that in October. This is a great way to awaken your ‘inner leader’. More on leadership in the next NLP blog…

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What happens when negotiations work – could BA learn from NLP?

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

What the hey is going on with BA?

How could NLP help with the BA negotiation?

Everyone’s talking about the BA strike and the chaos that ensue. Now, not only are there threats of strikes, but lots of planes being cancelled because of the volcanic ash from Iceland. The potential impact is huge.

When you talk to people from the different sides you’ll hear arguments that show that each side is totally convinced with their own reasoning. What is stranger is that if you are on the other side, you’re likely to think that the other peoples’ arguments are insane and even criminal!

How come there is such a divide?

Well, first of all it is largely to do with values – the things that are most important to us. To one side the most important value would be something like the success of the company. To them, with the economic crisis the only way forward is to do whatever it takes for this to happen – whether it makes cuts or changes to the benefits of employees. Naturally they think the thought of striking is crazy because it could threaten the whole company.

On the other side, the employee’s main focus could be their safety and security – making sure they have a safe job with benefits – their focus is on maintaining the safety and security and striking to make their case acknowledged is the way they believe will get them heard.

So how do you negotiate with conflict?

The NLP model includes many distinctions, too many to fully outline here and they  include

1: Separate intention from behaviour

If you get stuck on the specific details of the argument, you will never find agreement. You need to find a level for agreement, which you do by:

2: Find the intention behind the arguments/behaviour by chunking up

Ask questions such as ‘For what purpose? What is the intention? What is that an example of?’ – these ‘chunk up’ the specific behaviours to higher levels and you keep going until you can find a level of agreement. For example, in the nuclear arms race, one side would be for total disarmament and the other side wanted more nukes. However if you chunked each side up high enough, their higher intention would be similar – peace

3: Once you have a level of agreement, start to chunk back down only as quickly as you can maintain agreement

Start to work on other ways to maintain the highest intention by finding more specific alternatives.

4: Check for agreement at each stage with conditional closes along the way

Only gradually get more specific solutions as long as agreement can be maintained – ask questions like ‘If you could have x, then would this be ok?’

This is an overview of some of the negotiation model. In NLP there are so many different methods of using language, negotiating and influencing it would take pages to into depth. The best way to learn more would be to attend an NLP Practitioner training in North London – find more details here…

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NLP Blog on coaching

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

How to measure coaching success…

Coaching has been a buzz word for the last few years. I remember when I started coaching and put up a website about 14 years ago, I was one of the few people offering coaching, and without trying I received lots of enquiries.

Now the market is swamped with people offering coaching of all sorts, particularly life coaching. In fact one party I once went to it seemed as if half the people there had been training to become life coaches.

Many of the life coach training programmes would be very short – even just a couple of days, and sometimes mainly be written assignments without much one to one practice (which sounds crazy when coaching is all about interacting with someone!).

Many companies I work with now view the term ‘life coach’ as almost a four letter word! Executive and performance coaches need a high level of training to deal with the needs of executives in an organisation. If involved in performance coaching, its often an advantage to know something about the area they are coaching also, although many coaching programmes say that knowledge of the area is unnecessary.

One important factor in business and executive coaching is in delivering results. Particularly in the current economic environment, results are critical to justify bringing in a coach.

There are both hard and soft benefits of coaching, however many coaches focus on the soft benefits, whereas organisations need to measure the hard benefits. Hard benefits are the measurable results that can be gained, such as increased sales figures, or reduced time taken for tasks. Soft benefits are things such as increased motivation and morale, which are more difficult to measure with figures.

Both types of benefits are very useful, however in business the hard benefits are usually most important to measure the success of coaching interventions.

Measuring hard benefits can be easier and quantative methodologies can be used to provide critical information about the success of the intervention.

What you measure will depend upon the purpose for the coaching. For example, one organisation I worked with wanted the partners of the organisation to increase their success in generating new business, when in the past they would never have wanted to be involved in this. Over a year, new business generated could directly be measured.

If the purpose is to increase sales, then this can be measures by sales figures directly.

However, the soft benefits are more challenging to measure because they usually requires more qualitative methods of research. Such methods may involve interviews, feedback forms and case studies where more of a ‘story’ is often formed revealing the benefits, such as job satisfaction and motivation.

Sometimes the soft benefits are most important, because a motivated and resourceful team will produce much better results, however because accurate measurement is more of a challenge is sometimes less appealing to organisations.

Therefore, how to measure the success of coaching interventions is largely down to the purpose of the coaching in the first place – are you looking for hard or soft benefits. Taking time to really consider the purpose and methodology to measure success is crucial to know if you are getting the results you want.

Our NLP Trainings and NLP Coaching Trainings offer people some of the most effective tools for coaching available. See our schedule for our next nlp trainings.

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Becoming a Master…

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

What is the difference that makes the difference – I mean a real Master Practitioner of NLP?

5 things that really can turn someone into an outstanding Master Practitioner of NLP…

  1. Be what you say…it is not just enough to know about NLP – what the techniques are and being able to do them. Probably most important is to ‘practice what you preach’. The place to start is with the ‘Presuppositions of NLP’ – eg ‘the Map is not the Territory’, ‘People make the best choices they can with the resources currently available to them’ and ‘There is no failure, only feedback’ are 3 really useful ones to consider every day in your interactions. On an NLP Practitioner training people learn these presuppositions – on the Master Practitioner you get to live them
  2. Practice doesn’t make perfect – perfect practice makes perfect! If you want to master something repetition is the key to success, however only if you are practicing the right thing! We sometimes have students attending our Master Practitioner training who learned as a Practitioner somewhere else and had been practicing incorrect technique – this only perfects errors! Keep practicing and make sure you are practicing precision!
  3. If you want to help other people be happy, practice happiness yourself first! – Deal with your own issues before you help other people. That is why when you attend an NLP Training you want to invest 100% into the training – don’t role play, but work on yourself and develop yourself as fully as possible! It is difficult to help a client with an issue if you have the issue yourself – for example if someone wants help with a phobia about spiders and every time they mention a spider YOU jump, that probably won’t help the client!
  4. Invest in yourself – how much time, energy and resources do you really invest in yourself? You have one life, so make the most of it! Most top entrepreneurs invest a large amount of resources in their own development because they know this is what drives them to greater success. You will reap the rewards for what you invest in yourself! How much time on an average day do you spend reading, watching or attending events for you own growth? Compare how much you spend over a year on coffee/smoothies/alcohol (just £3 per day is over £1000 per year!) with how much you spend on your own development and make sure you invest in yourself!
  5. Model success – to really become a master, model a master! The NLP Practitioner Training teaches the techniques for change, communication and success that were modeled from experts and you can immediately apply in your own life. The Master Practitioner training is about how to do modeling that allows people to model success from anyone in any field. Modelling short cuts the path to success! You still need to put in the work, but if you do you can reap the rewards more quickly and easily and above all you can do it!

If you really want to become a Master Of NLP and your own life, then attend our world class NLP Master Practitioner – just click here for booking details, or if you haven’t been on the Practitioner training, attend this first.

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How to enjoy anything…

Sunday, April 11th, 2010

I’ve just been away in the USA. It is amazing to experience the different standards in service from the UK. For example, in the hotel the tap wasn’t working right – I told reception and popped out for ten minutes – before I was back it was fixed! I had problems with the internet connection for my work and they went out of their way to help.

In a diner they didn’t have quite the meal I wanted and the manager said they would custom make a meal! All said in a very friendly and helpful way.

When I have had problems in the UK, I usually get a few grunts from staff and am hopeful to get any issues resolved.

What makes the difference?

Sure, in the USA some staff often work on tips and commission, however it goes deeper than that.

In NLP we talk about the Map is Not The Territory – some that on any NLP Practitioner training should be constantly reinforced. In other words we all take meaning from events based on our past experience.

If someone works from the belief that the ‘customer is always right’ they are going to react differently than if they have a belief that the customer is ‘always a right w*****’! I often find that seems to be the different beliefs between UK and USA – in fact recently I saw an episode of ‘The Restaurant’ where people compete to run a restaurant directed by Raymond Blanc – on one episode one guy running the restaurant started getting really rude to a customer because she said something was wrong with her food! I really find it amazing that this could happen, however I have frequently had experiences like this!

Basically we can either choose to work just to live, or we can choose to enjoy our work – whatever it is! The staff in the USA restaurant who were very friendly don’t have to put on an act – actually by being friendly they enjoy their work more.

If we ask ourselves better questions, we can make our lives better. Like every morning ask yourself ‘how can I enjoy today even more?’ or ‘what can I do to grow as a person today?’.

NLP involves changing our focus – when we change our focus we change our lives!

If you’ve already taken an NLP Practitioner training, the Master Practitioner training goes into real depth about changing focus – our next one starts at the end of April. If you haven’t, then find out how the NLP Practitioner can change your life now!

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More negotiating…

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Negotiations can be challenging for many people. As in the last NLP blog, I talked about how with parts integration you want to chunk up both parts to a level where they can find some agreement, the same holds true in negotiations. Negotiations, when they work, involve finding some level of agreement and then working on specifics based around this. Negotiations with other people involve several other key areas to focus on. The first is the attitude you take before you start.

I once had a client who many people would describe as being completely ‘power mad’. His whole goal was to win every argument or sale at any cost. He frequently would win arguments through inducing fear in the other party. However, whether he won or lost left the other side feeling resentful and unhappy.

Going into any negotiation with a ‘win-lose’ attitude is never going to be the most successful. Have a ‘win-win’ focus, where both parties are left satisfied, is in the long term far more rewarding. This is also true in sales. Again, I have know many sales people who use ‘hard sales’ techniques which are like attacking someone with a sledgehammer! Even if they make a sale, they will leave the person unhappy and never find repeat customers. Buyer’s remorse is never a good situation (unless of course it is the thing that stops you buying lots of junk!). Satisfied customers are more likely to become long term customers and also recommend you to other people.

More about negotiations in the next blog…

If you want to learn powerful skills for negotiating, building rapport and resolving conflict, you can join us on the next NLP Practitioner training between March 14 – 20 in London.

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