Blog :: NLP Practitioner Training North London

Back again…

By mackaysolutions on May 26, 2012 No Comments

It’s been a while since my last blog, but now I’m back.

I’ve just arrived back from the USA where I had a great time learning some martial arts and enjoying the sun. Now I’m back and it is a heatwave here too!

One thing I rally noticed (that I always tend to in the USA) is that people generally seem a lot more positive. Even in giving feedback the experience is completely different. For example, in learning a new technique the feedback often started with words like ‘amazing’ or ‘inedible’. To an English person these powerful words often seem out of place – in fact my first thought was even ‘are you kidding’!

But the positive feedback really pays off and it helps motivate people to really learn from their mistakes rather than feel bad and not want to keep going, which is often what I see in British education.

Categories : Uncategorized

The truth about lies – can you tell if someone is really lying with NLP?

By mackaysolutions on September 14, 2011 No Comments

I keep hearing people saying how they’ve heard NLP can help you tell if someone is lying by looking at their eye movements…

It sounds like a pretty neat trick – I mean most people have seen shows like ‘Lie To Me’ and thought how amazing it would be to be able to read someone like that.

In fact, if you search the internet for lie detecting and NLP, you’ll find loads of different websites telling you how to tell if someone is lying by watching their eyes and other movements.

Most of the myth about lie detection with NLP comes down to the eye patterns. Basically, as you look at someone (who is normally organized – explained in depth on an NLP training), if as you look at them their eyes move up and right, that reveals that they are remembering a picture. If their eyes move up and left as you watch them, that is what we call visual construct, which reveals they are ‘constructing’ an image.

And that’s where the gross oversimplification comes into play, where if someone sees someones eyes move up to the left as they are talking, they think they are lying because they are ‘constructing’ an image.

In fact, I had a student who was on my course who went for a job interview where the interviewer had told him he was glad he was not lying in the interview, because he didn’t see his eyes move up left.

Now, this really is a dangerous oversimplification of the whole thing.

First, many psychologists say that remembering events involves a ‘reconstruction’ of the experience – which some people may do by rebuilding experiences and it may involve construction as part of this – therefore the eyes may move to the left for this reason.

Second, many people have memories where they see themselves in the memory (what we call dissociated in NLP). Now in any experience you have had in life, you never see yourself in it as you do it, because you are looking through your own eyes (associated). So if your memory has you in the picture, you’ve done some construction to get it – again construction may involved eyes moving up left.

Third, someone who is highly creative may spend a lot of time in ‘construct mode’ so their eyes tend to move up there a lot, but it’s not lying.

Well – I could keep going and going on with this – there’s lots more reasons it doesn’t work like this!

Also, there are no universal hand gestures or physiology for lying – if people say putting your hand to the mouth means lying, it’s really another oversimplification. In fact, the research into lie detection shows that people who are trained in lie detection perform hardly any better than at a level of chance – some of them actually worse! For example, metaanalysis by DePaulo et al (2003).

Now, there are cues that allow us to understand what is going on inside someone else, and these are things that you learn on a good NLP training, but it doesn’t oversimplify human behaviour, which is highly complex!

In fact, if you find a website claiming that it can turn you into a lie detector, if you are a real lie detector you’ll know instantly that site is lying! (Or maybe just not really understanding it!)

Oversimplifications like this can be dangerous – imagine the consequences in law of condemning someone as a liar because their eyes moved in a certain way, when they really are not lying!

That’s why a little knowledge in the wrong hands can be an issue – and that’s a key reason I encourage people who want to learn NLP to find an experienced NLP trainer.

Our next NLP Practitioner course is October 15 – 21 in Islington, London, and I’ll be covering some of those finer distinctions in NLP that really help you deliver excellent results.

Categories : NLP

Tags : NLP, NLP Training, personal development

NLP and Health

By mackaysolutions on July 17, 2011 No Comments

So it’s been a little while since my last blog…

Previously I’d been blogging pretty much every week, but things have been really busy over the last few months so I let it slip – but I’m back now!

And I’ve been busy exploring some really important areas – particularly NLP, hypnosis and health.

Just take an example – have you ever been working really hard and you never catch any sort of bugs, but what happens when you take time off – people often come down with something then.

It’s like your body knows when it’s appropriate to get something because you have time to relax!

That also doesn’t mean that a solution is just to work really hard for the rest of your life and never take time off because you think that will prevent getting any bugs! That would probably be a sure fire way to burn out fast and lead to worse problems!

Most people know that when they are under stress, the immune system gets lowered. Not only are people more likely to catch bugs, but research shows that stress will even negatively impact the DNA and cause premature aging!

In fact, maybe you know someone who seems to be stressed all the time and by the age of 40 they look about 10 years older than they actually are.

An opposite example would be a former Karate teacher of mine who clearly lived an incredibly healthy life and when I received an invitation to his 60^th birthday, everybody who went there had thought he was in his 40s!

So maybe people could forget the face lifts! A secret to staying young could well be to deal with stress effectively…

In fact on one NLP Practitioner training in London that I was running, someone had been holding onto some resentment about something that had happened many years ago and was still causing her to feel stressed. She had been holding onto that stress for so long that you could see the tension in her body and her face. I took her through a process to let go of the negative emotion and within 10 minutes she really felt it had totally gone.

In fact, not only did she experience the emotion disappearing, by her whole physiology shifted – it was like all the tension suddenly dissolved from her body. And her face also dramatically changed – it was really like she had had a face lift! Everyone in the room thought she looked 10 or 15 years younger. All the tension she had had in her face had caused her to appear older and more wrinkled, but the release let go of all of this incredibly rapidly.

If you want to know more about NLP, or if you are experienced already in NLP, reading and learning is an essential part of development. So I’ve put up a reading list with suggestions of some great books to read – follow this link for recommended NLP books.

Categories : NLP, NLP in Business, NLP Personal Development

Tags : NLP, NLP Training

How to love the things you used to hate!

By mackaysolutions on April 27, 2011 No Comments

Have you ever wanted to enjoy doing the things you put off because you don’t want to do them?!?

It’s a common issue, for example tax returns – I mean who really looks forward to those!

Well NLP is all about how to be more in charge over how you think or feel – and there’s even a pattern that was developed to help you feel more compulsion to do the things you hate!

Its called the Godiva pattern – because originally the thing used to create the powerful positive feeling was Godiva chocolate.

And by the way, this process isn’t taught on many NLP courses – it’s an application of submodalities that you will learn all about on an NLP course.

Just please remember, don’t use it for silly things – this can be a pretty powerful process.

Just before the process – here are dates of our upcoming trainings.

Glasgow Hypnotherapy Training – May 19 – 21 & June 3 – 5

Glasgow NLP Coach Practitioner – June 20 – 22

Glasgow NLP Practitioner – July 10 -15

London NLP Practitioner Training – June 13 – 19

London NLP Master Practitioner training – 23 – 26 June, 7-9 July, 21 24 July, 15th 18th September

NLP Training is a great way to take control of your life!

1. Desired picture: make a fully associated picture of the something you REALLY like – something that gives you real feelings of desire

Break your state – what did you have for dinner last night?

2. Intended Picture: Make a dissociated image of something you have congruently decided you ARE going to do! Make sure you see yourself doing the task in the picture.

3. Check ecology – ask yourself if there is any part of you that objects to enjoy doing this – if so, you’ll need to do a bit of internal negotiation!

4. Do the Godiva pattern!

a. Bring back image 2 (Intended), with picture #1(Desired) right behind it. As quickly as you can open up a small hole in the centre of image 2 so that you can see image 1 through it and quickly make the hole as big as you need to until you get a fully feeling of please to the image number 1.
b. Next, start to shrink the hole down again as fast as possible, but only at a speed that allows you to hold onto the pleasure feeling you got from image 1
Repeat several times as fast as possible, until you find you start to attach the desired feelings from picture 1 to picture 2

5. Test: When you think of image 2 – do you get those pleasurable feelings?

Enjoy doing the things you used to hate!

If you want to learn NLP in depth, attend one of our trainings – contact us now for details…

Categories : NLP, NLP in Business

Tags : NLP, NLP Training, personal development

Hypnosis, NLP and your mind….

By mackaysolutions on March 17, 2011 No Comments

When I first trained in hypnotherapy, NLP and psychotherapy back in 1990, I took a course that was part time over 3 years. I learned lots of really great things, much of which I will never use! However at some level even those things I’ll never use consciously still have a positive effect on my work because they gave me a greater understanding into people and problems that arise within us.

But one thing I remember more than anything was one of the tutors saying how that when he was at university he had first learned hypnosis and had used it so that he could he could get by with only a few hours sleep every night. Basically he would use self hypnosis to suggest that he would benefit from the equivalent of several hours sleep in the few minutes he was doing self hypnosis.

I thought that was really cool! This was when I really first discovered hypnosis and NLP training and it opened up a world of possibilities to me!

The tutor went on to show how hypnosis can even help to influence blood flow – something which I started to use with myself for amazing results. I used to get nosebleeds that would last for hours, but after learning how to do self hypnosis and use suggestions, I was able to stop nosebleeds in a matter of seconds. I even found that when I once picked up a hot plate from the oven without gloves (by accident of course!) that I immediately suggested my hand was packed with ice and the skin would return to normal – and sure enough, almost right in front of my eyes I saw the burn disappear.

Many people hear about how hypnosis and NLP can teach someone how to influence people, but the most important area is how to use hypnosis to have a positive influence on yourself.

You can have amazing influence on your own physiology – you can influence your body and health at so many different levels that you probably couldn’t even imagine! You can help alleviate headaches, pain, migraine, stomach problems, your immune system and so many other areas as well!

Hypnosis and NLP can literally change your life! From improving your health right through to teaching how to develop charisma.

It can be one of the most powerful learnings that anyone will discover in their lives, but the journey starts when you learn in the right way. There are so many different places you can learn NLP and hypnosis now because it has become so popular. But remember you are working with your mind, so choose very carefully.

Categories : NLP, NLP Personal Development

Tags : charisma, hypnotherapy training, NLP, NLP Training

Shh…keep it quiet!

By mackaysolutions on February 23, 2011 No Comments

I’m busy at the moment studying in my spare time on a Masters programme. One area is about selection and recruitment, which really is a fascinating area – it’s amazing to see the various strategies organisations use in hiring people, and how they are open to so many different types of error.

In fact it seems as though nobody really knows the best way to find the right person who will be the best at the job!

There are all sorts of methods – different types of psychometric tests, ability assessment, cognitive assessment, personality tests, interviews, references, cvs and lots of other things.

And research shows really mixed results as to what really works best to find a good long term employee for an organisation.

In NLP, Neuro Linguistic Programming, we’ve been teaching our own personality profiling system which offers some pretty unique ways of exploring how people think, feel and react.

On NLP trainings it is called metaprogrammes – unconscious filters to our perception. There are other labels to them also that some people learn, such as People Patterns or LAB profile.

The premise behind metaprogrammes is that we are all unique combinations of lots of these ‘tendencies’ which can be elicited through observing and listening to the other person.

What makes metaprogrammes different from many other personality profiling systems is that there is not pen and paper test used as a medium for delivering the questions.

Instead we do it mainly verbally, as well as observing the other person’s behaviour.

The advantage with this is that in pen and paper tests there is a risk that the other person will try to tailor their responses according to what they think the other person is looking for.

But if we are doing it verbally, this is much trickier to do.

Metaprogrammes (which we teach on our NLP Master Practitioner training) are also a major way of understanding motivation.

For example, one metaprogramme is ‘towards or away from’ which is all about the fact that in life our behaviours are motivated by moving towards the things we want in life, or away from the things we don’t want. Basically it’s about the carrot and the stick!

And you cannot motivate someone unless you know the other person’s unique motivation metaprogrammes.

That’s why trying to apply a universal system of rewards or punishments doesn’t work for everyone – because we all get motivated differently.

I’ll go into this a little bit more in a later blog – in fact I’m going to be releasing an audio programme of our unique metaprogramme training shortly where we cover all of this in HUGE depth – in fact it is really a pretty unique programme you won’t learn anywhere else.

Categories : NLP, NLP in Business, Uncategorized

Tags : NLP, NLP Training, personal development

Breaking your limits!

By mackaysolutions on February 16, 2011 No Comments

How many times have you seen someone do something amazing and thought ‘I wish I could do that!’
Well, in NLP we often say ‘if someone else can do it, then so can you!’
And although that may be a bit of a generalization, there’s also a lot of truth in it.
I mean, how many times do people limit their own experience through limiting beliefs?
I remember when I was about 16, I had a friend who was in his late 20′s. Once he said something about wishing he had taken up running, but he was too old to start now!
I mean, being too old to start in your late 20′s – what is all that about!
I wondered if that meant I would be past it when I got to my late 20′s!
Some time afterwards, I was reading this great book – Zen in the Martial Arts – a really lovely book, even if you are not into martial arts. There was a story about a woman who took up Karate in her early 70′s and by the age of 78 had her black belt!
I mean, how amazing is that!
So a friend of mine who was in his 20′s thought he was too old to exercise, but this 70 year old lady could excel in an intense martial art!
People can really limit themselves in so many ways by the limiting beliefs they have.
Limiting beliefs are basically those beliefs that somehow limit us – they are like the boundaries that define the limits of our existence, capabilities or other things in some way.
People can have all sorts of limiting beliefs – things like – I’m too young to be successful, I’m too old to be successful, I’ll never meet the right person, I’ll never have the life I want, people will always let me down…..etc
And the thing is, these beliefs pretty much determine what they will experience.
You see, beliefs are like filters to our experience.
For example, if you believe that people will let you down, then you’ll find examples of this throughout your life.
The weird thing is that other people have the same experience, but don’t see people as letting them down because they don’t have that belief.
But the belief causes us to distort the experience in a way that it has that other meaning.
I know someone who had a belief that people lie and would find cases of it all around him. In fact, when he was working with clients, he would keep experiencing them lying to him – even when it clearly was not the case.
For example, if he asked his client a question and they didn’t know the answer, then he would automatically assume that they were lying to him.
It was such a major issue that he got into someone real problems.
Henry Ford once said something like ‘whether you believe you can, or whether you think you cannot, you’re probably right’
On a NLP training you learn a lot about changing beliefs.
Neuro Linguistic Programming is a key way to look at shifting beliefs – our next Practitioner training is March 20 – 26 and we are offering a special early rate at the moment!

Categories : NLP, NLP Personal Development

Tags : NLP, NLP Training, personal development

What really drives your behaviour?

By mackaysolutions on February 9, 2011 No Comments

At the end of the day it all comes down to one thing….
That’s a line I’ve heard in several movies and it really is the basis for everything we do in life!
But I guess the question is what is the thing??
Well, that’s the million dollar question and it all comes down to values.
Values in NLP we define as those things that are most important to us – the things we are willing to invest our time, resources and energy into either having or avoiding.
At the end of the day, we’re only going to invest our energy or resources into the really important things in our lives.
At which point, w really common response is, well how come I’m not happy with my life at the moment then – I mean i spend loads of time at a job that I really hate!
Well, that’s because our ‘real’ values are largely unconscious.
A lot of people say they want freedom, or happiness or mention some other value as being most important to them, but at the end of the day don’t put any effort into getting it.
The thing they say they want is more of an idle dream, but it’s not something they’re actively pursuing every day.
Instead the response is often something like ‘sure I want that, but at the end of the day I’ve got to pay the bills – I mean my job isn’t important to me but I HAVE to do it!’
Well, in that case although they say happiness, or some other ‘ideal’ value is what is most important to them, in fact something like security is probably driving them at a higher level, or else they wouldn’t stay in a job they hate.
You see, there’s a difference between ‘ideals’ and ‘values’ and they often get mixed up – in fact even on an NLP training they are often confused and taught incorrectly.
But the distinction is key, because values are what is driving your behavior right now.
Our values are largely unconscious and at the core are emotional drivers to our behavior.
The real way to measure your values is to log how much time, energy, resources (money etc) you spend each day on all the different things you do.
When you compare your results with what you think are the most important things to you in life, you might get a shock – because most people find they’re not actually spending that long on those things they would like to think are most important to them!
Our ‘ideal’ are those consciously formed things that we like to think drive our behavior.
And they are useful too – because when we compare them with our real values that drive our behavior we can start to see when we are off track in our life and maybe need to make some adjustments.
Our values develop without us consciously creating them – right from birth we start to learn values in the context of our family, friends, relationships, the media, religious education, schooling, economy, politics – in fact the potential source of our development of our values is limitless.
We don’t create them directly ourselves…
But we can work at changing them – and that’s a major part of what we do on our NLP Master Practitioner training – we spend a couple of days eliciting values, aligning them and changing them if we need to.
And that’s no small thing – past student of mine have had astounding results after they changed their values.
I’ve known people double the turnover of their business within a year as a result of these sort of shifts.
I’ve known people create the relationship of their dreams after aligning their values about relationships.
It’s really powerful stuff.
And the place to get started is with the NLP Practitioner training – we have our next NLP Practitioner training in Islington, London between March 20 – 26.

Categories : NLP, NLP in Business, NLP Personal Development

Tags : NLP, NLP Training, outcomes

What are you prepared to do to get your outcomes?

By mackaysolutions on January 31, 2011 No Comments

What actions or changes are you prepared to take to achieve your outcomes?

In NLP we often say if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten…

Basically lots of people want to change their lives and get great results, but in reality how much are they prepared to do to get them?

I’ve worked with thousands of people over the last 20 years and there’s one thing that seems to hold people back more than anything else…

At the end of the day they are going to have to behave and think differently!

But the problem really comes when someone says ‘but that wouldn’t be me!’…

You see who they currently are and how they behave is what is causing the problem. If you really want to change how you are, then you’d better be prepared to stretch new boundaries in your behaviour and thinking.

Again on our NLP training we talk about how the system with the most flexibility of behaviour controls the system…

The more flexible you are, the more ability you have to influence or control any situation you are in.

Take children, for example.

They have incredible flexibility in getting what they want.

If one strategy doesn’t work, they’ll try something else until they get the results they want.

There’s the old story told in Neuro Linguistic Prorgramming courses about how a woman who had learned NLP was in the supermarket with her young child who suddenly through himself on the floor and had a huge tantrum.

Now, most people would try to stop their child in ways that might unconsciously reward the child’s behaviour, like offering sweets or something if they stop – probably out of embarrassment.

But not this lady!

Being an NLP expert she knew that the best way to change the behaviour and have the change last would be to interrupt the pattern so that it wouldn’t run again.

So she decided to throw herself down on the floor next to her child and have a bigger tantrum than her child.

So what do you think happened?!?

Well her child was so chocked that he looks at his mother in total surprise and sure enough stopped his tantrum immediately!

Now that’s flexibility!

How many people would be prepared to do this sort of extreme behaviour?

Not many!

But if you knew that achieving your biggest outcomes involved throwing yourself on the floor and having a massive tantrum would you be prepared to do it?

Of course, that’s unlikely to get you your outcome, but acting and behaving in new ways is critical and it comes down to the same principle – you need to increase your flexibility in how you behave, think and communicate.

NLP is one of the fastest ways to increase your flexibility – most important is to find a good training. I often get communications from people saying they’ve just found an NLP course down the road from them that they’ll take because it’s local – one of the most dangerous reasons to take a course!

As I said, to get your biggest results, you’re going to need to go outside your comfort zone – and that means be prepared to travel, rearrange your schedule and more to get the right training.

Our next world class NLP Practitioner training is between March 20 – 26 in Islington, London and then we’ll hold an NLP Practitioner training in Glasgow, Scotland in June. Join us to find out how much you can achieve…

Categories : NLP, NLP in Business, NLP Personal Development

Tags : NLP, NLP Training, outcomes, personal development

More on Achieving your New Year Goals

By mackaysolutions on January 25, 2011 No Comments

Have you dreamed up great plans for 2011 yet?

If not, why not!

Many people see new year resolutions as a silly tradition and don’t do anything about them, but it can be a great time to take stock of where you are in business, personal and other goals.

Most people don’t set clear goals in the first place and just settle for getting by in life.

The result is that they are ‘reactive’ in life – they just go along with what happens.

But setting goals and pursuing them makes you proactive – you start to create the life you want. These are the leaders in life.

But it’s not just enough to set goals, you need to regularly review where you are with them. If you set your goals ad just sit back they probably will never happen or you’ll have no idea whether you’re getting closer or further away from them.

Also our lives and the society around us is constantly changing, so goals we have set in the past may no longer be valid, or what you want has changed.

So the new year can be a great time to reassess your current goals and plan fresh ones.

That’s where knowing NLP can be a huge help – because NLP offers some of the most sophisticated tools and techniques for achieving what you want.

One key area we explore is the evidence procedure – how you know when you have achieved your goal and just as important, how you know when you are getting closer.

Because most people have no idea where they are in terms of the journey to getting the results they want.

And the longer it takes to find out whether you are off track, the longer it takes you to undo the wrong you’ve taken in the meantime.

So the evidence procedure is a key piece in getting what you want.

The challenge is to find a good evidence procedure to let you know how you are doing.

This needs to be based on what we call sensory specific based evidence – ie it’s not enough to say that you just know!

So basically it is what you will see, hear and feel.

So business success for one person might be based on measuring an increase in sales figures.

Or your improving your running could be measured in covering a distance in a faster time.

Pretty easy…

But the challenge comes when you are measuring things that are less ‘physical’.

For example, to feel confident making a good presentation in front of a group at work next week.

You’ll have to specify how you would feel when you feel confident, or what you might see, hear or say to yourself.

Or maybe it would be based on feedback from the audience.

However you measure it is fine as long as you have some clear and specific method of measuring progress and successful completion.

So take some time to consider this in depth.

We cover all the steps to setting and achieving powerful outcomes on our NLP Training – the next one is March 20 – 26 in Islington, London – I’m also planning on putting on an NLP Training in Glasgow, Scotland in June.

If you want to keep informed when my next blog is out, follow me on Twitter – mackaynlp

Categories : NLP, NLP in Business, NLP Personal Development

Tags : goal setting, goals, NLP, NLP Training, outcomes, personal development