Practical Wellbeing

Last year I wrote a couple of articles – New Year’s Clarifications and Sorting the wheat from the chaff -  about clarifying values. What values are, why they are important and why it might be useful to work on them.

Here’s a reminder of why understanding and aligning our values is so important.

Because they are associated with worth, meaning and desire, values are a primary source of motivation in people’s lives. When peoples values are met or matched, they feel a sense of satisfaction, harmony or rapport. When  their values are not met, people often feel dissatisfied, incongruent or violated

Robert Dilts

Those articles described my first attempts to work with values in a systematic way. Since I wrote them  I have been lucky enough to attend a Values Intensive workshop with Steve Wells.  That workshop went way beyond the processes I suggested in those articles. Not only did we elicit our values, we resolved conflicts within and between them in a variety of ways using EFT.

I enjoyed and benefited so much from that workshop that I have have decided to run a course based on that event here on Tyneside.

Our values govern our behaviour and we are not usually aware of them. They play out in our behaviour or goals but are seldom examined. Lining up with our values is a great way to end the struggles with ourselves.

So ,if you wondered why you do the things you do, or find yourself pulled in different directions when you want to do some things. Now is a chance to find out why and, more importantly, how to do something about it.

The Aligning Your Values Workshop will help you find out what’s important to you, then show you how your values align and conflict and then how to change them. Clarifying your values is a hugely important step in clearing up your internal clutter, lining yourself up with what is important, and enjoying a purposeful life.

The two day workshop is split into 4 parts.

Part 1 – Identifying what is important to you

Part 2 – Resolving conflicts within values

Part 3 – Resolving conflicts between values

Part 4 – Lessening the power of those values or states we avoid

The workshop will be run at the Angel View Inn, Gateshead on Saturday February 6th & Sunday February 7th 2010.

Book now on the Aligning Your Values Workshop page or email andy@practicalwellbeing.co.uk for an application form or more information.

Note: You need to know some EFT to attend this workshop.

Why would anyone bother to take an NLP Practitioner Training? After all it’s a weird thing from California and it costs money. On one level it’s a completely understandable question, time and money can feel like scarce commodities. Why spend 10 weekends over 10 months learning personal and professional transformation skills?

Most people want to learn to drive and they spend a lot of time and money learning. They don’t even think about it. Driving is an obvious skill with obvious benefits and everyone else is doing it as well.

The benefits of an NLP training are not quite so obvious, but what you can learn on an NLP Practitioner training will certainly change your life in far more ways than learning to drive.

What if?

• You could change all those old unhelpful patterns of emotions, beliefs and behaviours you have picked up along your way through life. The ones that make life much harder than it needs to be. The ones that stop you doing what you would really like to do. Over 6 months you have a lot of opportunities to undo old patterns in ways that are surprisingly easy and gentle.
• You could put down all the old junk from the past and choose the kind of future you had always wanted. The memories of old disasters seem to carry around those old debilitating emotional reactions. It doesn’t have to be that way. There are ways of taking the charge out of old memories so that they become just memories. Free of old clutter it’s possible to move into a new future greater ease.
• There were ways you could get on with people. People are tricky aren’t they? If you could really connect with people in an honest and powerful way things would just get so much easier. You learn how to improve on this skill (you already have it to some degree or another) on the very first weekend.
• You could be far more influential than you had ever imagined possible. If you can connect with people in a direct and resourceful way then you can be so much more influential than you imagined. After all it’s just what the influential people you know are doing. They are human beings just like you. If they can do it, so can you.
• Other people’s behaviour and your reactions to it made sense, and better still could be changed? Once you understand that people’s behaviour is just an expression of a positive intention. Then it’s possible to find new ways to meet that intention and enjoy much greater success. This can include your apparently less than useful behaviour.
• You had far more resources than you had ever imagined. It’s funny how some people have boundless energy or confidence or happiness or courage or …. (what would be a very long list of resources). We all have these resources to one degree or another, some people seem to have them close at hand whenever they need them. What if you had ways to draw on (and amplify) your positive resources?

You don’t have to take our word for it.

Reading about NLP led me to believe that there were many ways to change myself and others so that life would be ‘better’. What surprised me was how easy it was to change everyday habits and responses and it was the little changes rather than the deeper applications that really impressed me and I’ve never worn my socks in bed since !! The changes didn’t involve willpower and work just an NLP process and all of a sudden the habit was over.

Heather

I have begun to incorporate nlp methods into my every day life – without realizing it. I feel much more able to change states – particularly if I am in a sad mood – I visualise a bright cloud and step into it – or I think of sometime in the past when I was much happier and soon my mood lifts.

I notice the words and the language people use in everyday speech more, and I have started to be careful about my own choice of language. … But I think the biggest thing for me is using rapport skills – I do find myself practising down the local pub on some unassuming stranger – and I am always so amazed how it often leads to much more of a connection with the person that I am in rapport with.

Lisa

The next IntegrityNLP Practitioner Training starts in January 2010. If you are already an NLP Practitioner then you can always take the next step with our NLP Master Practitioner Training.

Just to let you know that the December Beginner’s EFT has been cancelled.

The Beginner’s EFT format is being revamped and will be re-launched in the New Year. So if you want to find out about EFT and do St Oswald’s Hospice a favour at the same time stay tuned.

I just read a short article Fear of Apples by Seth Godin. He suggests that there are two reasons that people might not be taking advantage of a product or service.

… Whatever you sell, there are two big reasons people aren’t buying it:

1. They don’t know about it.

2. They’re afraid of it.

If you can get over those two, then you get the chance to prove that they need it and it’s a good value. But as long as people are afraid of what you sell, you’re stuck.

People are afraid of tax accountants, iPods, chiropractors, non-profits, insurance brokers and fancy hotels. They’re afraid of anything with too many choices, too many opportunities to look foolish or to waste time or money.

This got me thinking about the various ways that people may be afraid of approaching a therapist to solve a problem and to improve their lives

Fear of the process

If you have never been to a therapist before, the chances are you will assume it’s going to be like something you’ve seen at the movies or on TV.

Perhaps lying on a couch with a bearded guy with a Viennese accent sitting in an old leather armchair asking you to tell him about your potty training.

Maybe it’s going to be like One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest with Nurse Ratchett at full power, or worse.

Perhaps it will be a lot of talking, re-hashing old hurts and working your way through a couple of  boxes of paper tissues during each session.

There are so many different kinds of therapies each with their own style and form that it would be impossible for anyone to know, without previous experience, what to expect.

Fear of judgment

If you have a problem and you are contemplating therapy, then it’s quite common to think: “It’s just me that has the problem. All the ‘normal’ people will think I’m mad”. That somehow you are different from all the ‘normal’ people who don’t have this problem.

It can be easy to imagine that you might be the only one who thinks or feels this way. No one else has ever had that kind of thought or feeling or done those things. It might even be possible that you think you are mad. In fact most of my clients at one point or another will say: “You will think I’m mad but …”,  and I’ve never had any reason to agree with any of them about this, and they wouldn’t have been the first people to think they were the first person to think this way.

Fear of being taken advantage of.

Private therapy is not the cheap option for most people. You might well be afraid that a short term expense is going to turn into a long drawn out process that costs a lot of money. Especially if your idea of therapy is that it will involve months or even years of talking and very slow progress.

What is there to stop the therapist leading you on for their own benefit?

What if it’s worse than being financially abused?

You don’t have to wait too long to find an article in the media about how a doctor, nurse, health care professional or therapist has taken advantage of a client’s trust and misused them. How do you know you can trust the therapist to be ethical?

If the issue you want help with is getting over some abuse in childhood or later and you are thinking of coming to see someone of the same gender as the abuser it’s not hard to imagine how difficult that might be.

Fear of exposure

For most clients therapy is an expedition into unknown and frightening territory and they don’t know whether they can trust their guide’s integrity or competence. How can you tell if someone is a worthy guide before you have even met them.

What if on this journey you have to bring your darkness into the light and the therapist sees it? If all your fears and closely held secrets are brought into the light what will the therapist think?

Fear of failure

Many people feel stupid or inadequate having to bring a problem to a therapist. To have a problem for any length of time you’ve probably been struggling with your attempts to sort it out. At least those attempts have been in private. What if this therapy thing doesn’t work? Will going to a therapist be just another opportunity to fail?

Maybe it is worse than that if you have been to many therapists and had no relief then each subsequent attempt to change may amplify the fear that you won’t be able to change. You might even begin to think “nothing I do works”. In this case seeing someone else might be an opportunity for a further loss of hope.

Fear of success
On the face of it this fear is surprising, surely you are going to a therapist to get better. What if it does work? What if I do change?

How will I cope with being a different person and how will those around me cope? If my family and friends are used to me being one way and might even prefer it that way, how will they cope?

It might even feel that it’s safer to stay with an unhappy situation than risk the uncertainty of a new and better life.

It takes courage to bring your fear and share it with a stranger.
- Karen Ellis, Psychological Therapist.

With all those potential fears ranged against them it’s a miracle that anyone picks up the courage to seek help from a mental health professional in either the private or public sector. It can take a lot of courage to approach someone for help with painful difficulties.

However, it’s important to remember that if you have had enough courage to go through everything you have been through up to now, and you probably have enough to spare to go through the process of getting better.

I have not ceased being fearful, but I have ceased to let fear control me.
I have accepted fear as a part of life -
specifically the fear of change, the fear of the unknown;
and I have gone ahead despite the pounding in my heart that says:
turn back, turn back, you’ll die if you venture too far.
- Erica Jong, author.

For a variety of reasons I’ve had to reschedule the EFT Level 1 Training that was to have been this Saturday 31st October. This training will now be on Saturday December 5th at St Oswald’s Hospice Teaching Centre

It’s still a bargain at £60 for a full day’s training.

Thanks to everyone who came to the Autumn edition of ChangeCamp in Gosforth High School on Saturday. It was a great day for me and from what I’ve been told an excellent day for many of the attendees.

I’d like to thank Karen, Felicity, Mike, Harry, Lorna, Marian, and others who helped me get things sorted out. Their assistance was invaluable. This event can’t happen without the goodwill and help of all involved.

Thanks for everyone who brought food for the shared meal. Especially to those who cooked special dishes for us. The shared meal adds to the pleasure and community of the event

It’s my intention to arrange the next ChangeCamp for March 20th 2010 put it in your diary.

Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you.
- Hafiz of Persia