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The 5 Factor Model & Hexaco

The five-factor model is a commonly used model within psychotherapy and psychology in order to assess people’s personalities. It has also evolved into another assessment tool for personalities which is called HEXACO.

This article examines the original 5-factor model which has the acronym OCEAN:

  • Openness
  • Conscientiousness
  • Extroversion 
  • Agreeableness
  • Neuroticism 

The HEXACO model has changed this slightly – the X now stands for extroversion, the E is for emotionality and the H is for honesty and humility.

Openness relates to how imaginative you are and how much of a daydreamer you are and how much you might have artistic interests.  

Conscientiousness could mean you are someone who likes to complete tasks successfully or if you tend to misjudge situations. Whether you like things in order or if you can work in a mess, whether you like to break or follow the rules, whether you are someone who does enough to get by or if you really like hard work.

Extraversion relates to whether you are warm and friendly easy to get to know or whether, you know, maybe you’ve got a little bit of a cold shoulder and a bit more difficult to get to know. If you are gregarious and love large gatherings or if you prefer to be alone. If you’re assertive and take charge or if you hang back and wait for others to take the lead.

Agreeableness relates to whether you are trusting or distrusting whether you comply or not, whether you make people feel welcome or if you tend to look down on others. If you are straightforward or cooperative. If you are modest or you like being the centre of attention and if you sympathise with others.

Neuroticism – whether you get anxious and worry about things or if you tend to be quite relaxed most of the time. If you’re hostile or get easily irritated depressed or comfortable with yourself self-conscious so whether you’re easily intimidated or embarrassed.

What you will have noticed with those different elements that I’ve just shared with you is that they’re not all on a ‘this’ or ‘that’ kind of scale. For example, we could say with openness, that you are an open person and open to new experiences or maybe you’re more closed off so that’s kind of a ‘this’ or ‘that’ choice. Whereas, with conscientiousness, you are not completely conscientious or not at all. You can be partially so. What I found really interesting from going through the five-factor model for myself today is that it’s relatively accurate in representing my personality. It’s got me thinking to about my new employees who are going to be coming through as to how I might profile them to make sure that they are suitable for my company.

Something like ‘openness to new experience’ is really important in my organisation because we switch things up a lot. Whilst I want someone who can do the job I also want someone who is open to completely changing what they’re doing too.

If someone is looking for a romantic partner and you want someone who is open to new experiences and a bit of an adventurer versus someone who is happy to do the same thing day in and day out and has a more routine behind them. This is a really useful tool for both work and relationship purposes. 

The 5-factor personality model can be found here: https://www.truity.com/test/big-five-personality-test-std

I’m interested to hear if your scores reflect who you think you are!

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk 

You Have Everything You Need

I am going to be revisiting a presupposition of NLP. I want to share one of those NLP presuppositions with you today but tie it into a real-life experience that I had last year. The presupposition in question ‘is all of the resources that you need to succeed are already within you’. 

Let me begin by telling you my story, last year I had a plumbing incident. It was was my first weekend off since NLP4Kids training. I was looking forward to having a nice relaxing time but my washing machine decided that I needed to learn plumbing instead so here’s what happened I’d put the washing machine on the night before when I went to bed but I programmed it to come on early hours of the morning. A good tip for saving yourself a bit of money, your electricity is more expensive during peak hours. When I got up in the morning and the washing cycle had completed and the kitchen floor had a puddle on it because I have a very old building all the floors are a little bit sloped, you know, so I didn’t actually realise at the time the water had come from the washing machine because it was nowhere near the washing machine so I stuck on another wash cycle and then it became very clear that the water was coming from the washing machine.

I didn’t want to call out an emergency plumber on the weekend because that was going to get pricey and there is a little bit of me that thinks I can do DIY pretty well. I like to think I’m the man of this house, mainly because I’m the only one who lives here but the point was that I wanted to at least give it a shot so I did some you know googling and looked up videos on youtube. The very first thing that happened was that I tightened up some joints on the pipes and I ran the washing machine again. It leaked even worse so then I realised that the fact that one of the joints had been a bit loose was not the source of the problem then I did a bit more googling and this led me to realise maybe the issue is that my waste pipe is blocked.

I remove the U-bend and check that the blockage isn’t in there, it was not but this then left me with a further problem because then I know the U-bend is clear so it could be in the part where it starts to come across and go down into the proper drain but the problem with that is how do I get the drain on the blocker to pour horizontally? In my brain, I thought there’s going to be something in this house to help you solve this problem.

Here’s what happened I found a piece of old pipe then I was going to use that to kind of thread it through the pipe and pour the drain on the blocker like through the end of it. The problem was the pipe was so stiff and the drain unblocker was so thick that it was never going to pour through now. The only solution that I could come up with was to sit on the kitchen floor and have a little cry and that is what I did and then I realised ‘hang on a moment you are an educated, resourceful, human being and the presupposition came to me – everything you need to succeed is already inside of you. You have all of the resources that you need’.  

Eventually, I realised that I could screw the U-bend on the other way up and a half-hour later my drain made a burp at which point I knew that my drain was unblocked. The moral of the story is that you do have everything you need to succeed, to be able to achieve your desired, outcomes in your life. The trick is to tell yourself with absolute certainty that that is the case and to get your brain looking for those particular solutions now I’ve said this before and I shall say it again – you need to ask yourself the right questions in these situations that you come up against!

We want to avoid ‘why’ questions ‘why can’t I do it?’ or ‘why isn’t it working?’ those questions will just direct your brain to look for all of the reasons why you can’t do it can’t solve it and can’t find the answer this is not helpful for us. The best questions to ask yourself is ‘how’ question. A good question always will start with ‘how’. For example, “how can I solve this?” “How can I find what I need?” and “how can I come up with a creative idea here?” When you ask yourself ‘how’ questions, it gets your brain looking into the outside world to find ideas, experiences, resources that you perhaps hadn’t tuned into yet. Those solutions, ideas and resources they were already out there. They already existed but what you have to do is to program your brain to go find them and bring them into your awareness and you do that by asking yourself good quality questions.

When you talk to yourself even though it’s only inside your head (I mean feel free to do it out loud) but assuming you’re going to do it inside your own head, tone of voice is still important in there. You need to ask the question in the right way so these are the things that I want to challenge you to utilise over the course of the next few months is to remind yourself whenever you may need to that all of the resources that you need to succeed are already inside of you and if you cannot find them and you really want to tap into them you’re going to do that by asking yourself a ‘how’ question.

By Gemma Bailey 

www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk 

How to Raise Mental Health Concerns

I’m going to be talking to you about how to express if indeed you should express to someone else that you think they’ve got a problem with their mental health. When I say ‘if indeed you should’ there are some things that we don’t flag up with other people and there are some things that we don’t raise the issue with them. For example, even if you are clinically qualified to do so you don’t tell your friend that you think that they’re autistic. We don’t go there, that’s something that somebody needs to find out as a result of deciding to go on a journey themselves. This is not your place to just kind of randomly throw into the conversation even if you think it’s for their benefit.

Here’s the very first thing that is super important before we even consider sitting down with someone and having a bit of a chat with them. Firstly, has something changed? I don’t mean do we know something in their life has changed. I mean in terms of these new behaviours, reactions and emotions that they’re displaying; these things that are troubling us about this person – is it different to how they used to be before? 

If it’s not, then actually we might not have a problem they might just be a bit quirky and a bit odd because those people do exist. If you notice that the person you’re concerned about has changed that there has been a notable change in how they are thinking, how they are behaving or how they are feeling then we’ve got grounds to proceed.

If it’s not those things maybe they’re not the one with the problem maybe it’s you, you know, maybe it’s your thinking that has changed about them but not necessarily them that’s changed and sometimes that happens in life. Sometimes we have a relationship with someone and the stuff that never used to bother us about them suddenly starts really annoying us and then it suddenly seems like they’re annoying us on purpose but they’re not they’ve always been that way but your tolerance levels have changed so if it’s that we don’t need to talk to them about it we need to work on our own problems, with our own tolerance levels and decide whether or not we still want this person in our life that’s a different thing but when the change has happened in the other person and it is having a significant impact on how they are thinking, behaving or feeling then we need to start thinking about sitting down with them, having a conversation and saying ‘I think there might be a problem here’ and having a look at it together.

From establishing that ‘yes, something has changed’ only then can we start thinking about how do we actually approach this interaction with them and have this further conversation with them. My first suggestion is that no matter whether this is an employee or a family member you start by keeping notes. You’re going to have to start keeping some evidence because if this is a relative that you’re concerned about and you maybe are going to end up being the person who accompanies them to the doctors at some stage and so to be able to have some history around when this has started and what’s been happening, what sorts of incidents you’ve noticed is going to serve you really well. 

You need to be keeping records of what’s going on with this person that you care about so that in an attempt to get them the right treatment you’ve got as much information as possible. One of the things that are really difficult with mental illness is describing your symptoms because you only see life from your own perspective and particularly when people get frightened about their mental health they’ll really downplay what their symptoms are or brush things off to one side or if they’re suffering from something up that higher end of the mental illness spectrum they might actually forget stuff that they’ve ever done.

Where possible I would suggest using the softening phrases when approaching another person: ‘I feel like that’s not the way you used to behave,’ ‘I feel like it’s not okay to treat people like that’ or ‘I feel like you’re not looking after yourself very well at the moment. In using such phrases, it’s like you’re taking responsibility for what you’re seeing and experiencing and not just being blaming and putting it all on them. I feel softening frame can work really well and generally just think about your language and the softening frames that you might be using.

The other thing that is really useful to do which the police do all the time where they interview a suspect. The police tell the suspect that the questioning is just to rule you out from our enquiries so that phrasing around this is to rule out anything else is something that I have learned to use a lot both with my mom and with the clients that I see where I suspect that the mental health issue or illness that they are experiencing is beyond the realms of my reach and I want them to get treatment but it’s not going to be with me. 

One of the frames that you can use here is to say I’d recommend going to the doctor just to rule out anything else and then I’ll often suggest something quite low level that’s not particularly terrifying or treatable but would also help to put the like to kind of get them into the system and to get whoever it is that they end up engaging with exploring other things. For example, if you have someone with anxiety then you could recommend that they go to see their GP just to rule out. If someone has a long-term sleep problem then you could say to them, you know, it’s probably worth talking it through with your GP or a counsellor just to rule out the fact that there’s something else playing on your mind, that’s interfering with your sleep patterns. If someone is showing some signs of some more mental health illnesses it’s worth going to your doctor to get a urine check because sometimes with certain urine infections it can cause your brain to start tripping out and working in a different way. 

I can suggest for you as the carer, as the employer or as the facilitator of getting the ball rolling on having this issue explored, for whoever it is in your life, that currently has a problem is that you are really brave about it because it can be a thankless task to undertake. It can also be incredibly stressful because you might see what is best for them but they may not see it for themselves. It might feel as if you’re kind of like going at it alone in some ways but when you do get them on the right track when they do get access to the help or the treatment that they need then you can give yourself a pat on the back and know that you did the best that you could.

Don’t underestimate the impact that things like stress, anxiety and depression can have on a person. Some things that might seem to be much more severe mental health issues actually just boil down to either stress, anxiety or depression or a combination of the three of them in some way and these can really change a person’s personality and they are recoverable so where you can support people in accessing the treatment that they need getting on the right path so that they can begin to live a healthier, happier life going forward with your assistance there by their side.

I hope that this was a useful and interesting one I know it’s the stuff that might not be relevant to you at this exact moment in your life but trust me if you ever interact with another human being at some point in the new or distant future you’re going to need this stuff because of everybody has a mental health issue at some point in their life and with the ageing population that we have, we’ve got more and more people that are going to be prone to mental illnesses and neurological issues later on in life so we need to know how to have these conversations knowing that they probably won’t be comfortable but facing up to them anyway.

 

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

How to deal with Stress and Anxiety

Would you like to reduce the severity of distress and discomfort that comes with negative experiences by making some simple little shifts in language and how we communicate?

There are two things to mention here: 1) We shrink down what we are communicating because we want to communicate more quickly, swiftly and easily. We talk about using generalisations. We make assumptions that the other person that we are communicating to is going to have an idea about what we’re talking about. That is not always the case and that’s when it can lead to problems. An NLP Practitioner can help you to understand the different ways to ask questions that will uncover hidden generalisations. 

Imagine I asked my colleague to go to the shops and get a bag of sugar because we have guests coming this afternoon and they may want tea or coffee but my colleague is from a family of bakers and they bake beautiful cakes. There is always icing sugar knocking about in their house so instead of buying granulated sugar, she buys icing sugar because that’s what sugar means in her world. If comment that she has bought the wrong kind of sugar it’s my communication that is at fault. I did not express my instruction in a level of detail and specificity that would fit in with the way that she thinks. That’s on me as the communicator. It’s a challenging thing to take responsibility for because we don’t always know what other people are thinking and how other people think. Often we just assume that they think in the same way that we do; it turns out that they don’t.

When one person has one idea and the other person understands it in a completely different way there is a misunderstanding because of it. There are definitely times when detail more emphasis more information are particularly helpful to us. A Hertfordshire NLP therapist can help with communication in this instance. 

However, when someone is in a negative state or a state of anxiety, I propose to you that in those instances to minimise communication – not just the amount and degree of what we say but within the terminology too. The terms and statements that we use should be shrunk, dissolved and reduced to reduce the problems that we are experiencing.

For example, if you have a tendency to be a little bit dramatic when things are starting to go horribly wrong and you do that in the quiet of your own mind, if you have a tendency to go worst-case scenario or to just over amplify stuff and make things have more significance than they needed to be then this tactic is going to be really important for you.

The reason why it’s so important is that we need our brains to see the problems and anxieties that we experience as being simple and solvable so that it feels super motivated to find the solutions for us. If we represent problems to ourselves as being big scary complicated and overwhelming then quite frankly your brain just wants to go hide under the duvet. We want to think about it in as logical and small wording as we possibly can!

A few weeks back I had come home from work. I was really tired. it was late and I still needed to cook dinner and there was a lot of ‘I still need to do’ is happening in my head which was causing me a certain level of stress and anxiety but first I needed to do the washing up so I resentfully did the washing up and having done it I then turned around and had the experience of seeing a plate that I’d missed. 

By this point, I’d already emptied the bowl out of the water and so it was quite frustrating for me to see that there was something I’d forgotten and that whilst I had psychologically checked washing the dishes off of my list, actually, the job was not finished yet and what I caught myself saying to myself inside my head was “damn it, there’s a whole other plate that needs washing up and now. I’m going to have to fill up the entire bowl all over again”.

I caught myself in the flow of this internal dialogue and interrupted myself by saying “It’s just washing up a plate though isn’t it?” and then I made myself giggle because I realised that I was doing something that I always forewarn my clients against doing in my hypnotherapy clinic, particularly those with stress and anxiety which is to over amplify the severity of the issue at hand. I was really going for it and it made me chuckle because, you know, even when you know this stuff you can still get caught out by it. The most important thing, however, is that you catch it and when you do you correct it.

Over the coming weeks and months, I am challenging you to identify where you blow up and over amplify problematic things that are occurring and to reframe them by which I mean rephrase them to yourself. State them in more simplistic terms or at least more realistic ones and do the same with those around you too because very often when you start practising with these skills it’s easier to identify them in other people than it is to identify that you do it to yourself. So if they say ‘this is horrendous, it’s an absolute disaster’ then you say ‘you’re right, it’s pretty bad isn’t it’, so you’re not disagreeing but at the same time you are not going up at that high level that they’re going in with. You’re going to take it down.

You’re going to bring it down a notch and you can even start paying attention to your intonation. The tone of voice that you use as you say it because if they’re throwing around a ton of emphasis like this then you can just take a breath and restate what you want to say in a slightly slower more pause filled and more considerate way so that again you start to drain the drama away from what’s going on! There are times when we want to add in more detail so that we are super clear in what we’re saying and helping others to understand our communication as thoroughly as possible but when those times relate to high drama, high anxiety, high pressure were adding in even more is not going to be favourable in those instances.

We want to be shrinking minimising and reducing the level of that we add into what we are saying by using language which is reducing the impact of the severity of the thing that we’re talking about!

By Gemma Bailey

www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk 

Dealing with Annoying People

At the Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire, I provide some practical steps to my clients in how they can best deal with selfish and annoying people. I would like to share these steps with you today.

Firstly, if this annoying person is annoying you on social media, a simple solution: unfollow them. You are not obliged to keep following people on social media. You can also “take a break” on Facebook for a number of days. It doesn’t mean that you unfriended or unfollowed but it just gives you a little bit of respite and distance from them. 

If we’re in a workplace environment, pop some headphones in and listen to a podcast and take your attention away from the annoyance. In my hypnotherapy and NLP clinic in Hertfordshire, and like other therapy clinics around the world, there is something that all therapists are very conscious of doing and I am going to explain it to you now because I want you to do the opposite with that annoying or selfish person.

In the Hypnotherapy and NLP clinic in Hertfordshire, when we are working with a client we are conscious of making sure that we stay on the topic, that they have raised because if part way through communicating with them you suddenly change the subject, it can make the client feel as if you’re not really invested or you’re not really listening to them. 

Now that is different to times when in NLP we might use something called a pattern interrupt to deliberately throw them off-topic because what they were talking about was really harmful to them and it was getting them into a really bad state.

In a consultation stage where they’re telling us more about what the problem is; we are very clear about staying on point and not saying anything that’s going to kind of take them off of the subject matter or distract them in some way.

Let me give you a working example of when this didn’t happen for me in a personal exchange. I went round to see a friend of mine and I was explaining to my friend about my mother’s behaviour which I was quite upset about. In speaking with my friend, I was trying to wrap my head around how to sort out some practical issues which included some beefy topics such as her debts and selling her house and getting her into a care home.

I was feeling really overwhelmed and in the middle of what at that moment in time felt to me quite intense, my friend exclaimed “huh look! A squirrel!”

It made me want to not talk to her about it anymore because it felt in that moment like my subject and my emotions about that subject were not important and it really threw me off . When people come to therapy and we’re exploring the problem so that they don’t get that sense that we’re not interested in them.

But, we’re going do the opposite to that with our annoying people. With the annoying people we want to throw them off of whatever that behaviour is because we want to interrupt their pattern. We want to do the emotional equivalent of saying “ah squirrel” and pointing in another direction.

Let’s say that you’ve got someone in your office who chews chewing gum really loudly – then you might burst a balloon at the back of the room.

 We want something that’s going to break that interruption and if you break that interruption enough times they’re going to want to stop doing that thing around you and that is a slightly less delicate way of dealing with the problem than having that warm fuzzy conversation.

I hope this helps now that most of you are back to normality in working in an office environment.

By Gemma Bailey
www.HypnotherapyandNLPClinic.co.uk 

 

The Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic is a team of therapists who specialise in hypnotherapy, NLP, CBT and coaching in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and North London. We provide therapy sessions for adults and children wishing to overcome insomnia, stress and depression and for those who wish to overcome phobias or stop bad habits such as smoking. We specialise in working with NHS Staff and the Police. Call 0203 6677294 or email clinic@HypnotherapyandNLP.co.uk
Find out more about Hypnotherapy, NLP & CBT in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire or North London here: www.HypnotherapyandNLP.co.uk

 

How Honest Can You Be?

One of the main strategies I give to my clients at the Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire in dealing with annoying people, is to just tell them when they’re being really annoying. This is not always an easy thing to do because we’re worried about hurting people’s feelings. I’m going to give you an example of a time in the past when I did this and I did not do it in the right way because I didn’t manage my own emotional state as I delivered the message.

The best time for you to let someone know that they’re being annoying is not when they’re being annoying in that moment. Your state of annoyance is going to be high and that may come out in your inflexion and your intonation. Here’s my example: I used to work with a lady who who wore ugg boots.

This lady wore the boots whilst we were in Kuwait. Kuwait is the desert – it literally is never cold there but anyway that’s a different thing so she had these ugg boots and they were obviously very, very comfy and very well-loved which is a good thing. The heel of these ugg boots had been like squashed down – there was a crease there.

I used to work in a shoe shop which is maybe why this overly irritated me! The even more annoying thing (probably caused by her foot not being all the way down in the boot) was that she was a shuffler. She really shuffled in these boots. Everywhere in Kuwait was marble and air-conditioned because it’s so hot out there. You go to a shopping mall, It’s like marble flooring air-conditioned. You go to the hotel, marble flooring and air-conditioned like there are no carpets anywhere because it’s too hot.

I think we’re in a shopping centre and all I can tell you is I don’t think I handled this situation as diplomatically as I could have done but I did reach a point where I just abruptly said “Will you pick your feet up?” I snapped and she replied

“oh yeah, yeah these boots always slip off but I am lifting my foot up properly it just sounds like I’m shuffling them”.

I knew that was because her foot wasn’t properly in the boot and that’s why it was slipping off. They were never on in the first place so I kind of got it out of my system which was a good thing and for a little while she made an effort to pick those feet up a little better. The moral of the story is telling the person that they’re being annoying is the right thing to do but don’t do it when you’re feeling annoyed!! NLP therapy Hemel Hempstead can help you with this!

If you’ve got someone in your office who chews gum really loudly then you can tell them whilst they’re chewing the chewing gum but you’re going to have to really watch yourself to make sure that you don’t sound like a rude spiky person like I did when you come to raise the issue with them. Instead what you might choose to do is pick a moment when they’re not chewing, the chewing gum and say

 “I love you really deeply and I think that you’re an amazing person and I just have to tell you that when you chew chewing gum with your mouth open and it makes that chompy noise. It makes me want to kill you and I just thought that you should know that.”

It might be a good idea not to pick these exact words unless you are close friends, but otherwise, you can think of a more diplomatic way in which to get the message across but telling them is definitely a good suggestion. CBT Hemel Hempstead can give you the strategies you need.

by Gemma Bailey 

www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk 

The Question ‘Why’ in Dealing with Annoying People

At the Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire, I help clients to control their emotions and language in dealing with annoying people. Since the pandemic, lots of you have been working in a different way. Some of you may have noticed that the people within the office have been acting a bit differently because of the circumstances and effect of the covid the past year. You’ve perhaps got a partner a home now that you weren’t used to having around and you now notice how annoying that can be to have them around the house every day! Some of you have had your kids there, maybe, you’ve discovered that your children are actually quite annoying.

I’ve been inspired by Brianna Wiest who has written an article called ‘ways to deal with people who annoy the crap out of you’. I particularly like that title and this is from the thought catalogue they do have an app. I’m going to kind of use some of those points that have been mentioned in the thought catalogue. 

First of all, I am going to make a recommendation to you that you start to just slightly change your focus now. Very often, what can happen when we’re dealing with annoying people is that we focus an awful lot on the ‘what it is about them that’s so freaking annoying’ instead of the actual things that they do and we get down into the sort of nitty-gritty detail about the specific ways in which they do it, like the ways in which they do that annoying thing. You are putting your time and your energy and like just your thinking energy which is really valuable. You’re putting it into that annoying problem and it solves absolutely nothing. 

In the past, you may have heard of me mention the reticular activating system. This is something in your brain and it works like a radar so that whatever you’re thinking about and focusing on it draws more of that into your consciousness.

Something that I do in sessions with clients at the Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire is I’ll get them looking around the room saying the word ‘red’ to themselves. We call it the ‘Red Test’ at NLP4Kids. This works with adults and children. You get them looking around going red, red, red, red, and their brain gets tuned in to all the red stuff that they can see in the room or the red that’s here is just like bolder than everything else and then you say to them. If you ask them to tell you about all the blue stuff in the room, their minds are ‘blank’ because they hadn’t been looking for blue. Here’s the thing –  if that thing that annoys you about someone is like the red stuff, in that, you are constantly talking to yourself about it and like seeing it. If they’re doing it again and getting tuned into it then you’re going to end up seeing it everywhere. It’s going to feel like, it is, if not more consistent in the regularity at which it shows up.

One of the things that you can do is notice the blue stuff. Pick something that you can tune into and it doesn’t have to be something about that person, that annoying person but it could be so that it starts to divert your focus away from the annoying aspects onto something else and you get that reticular activating system working in a way that gets you to tune into more helpful stuff instead.

I’m going to share with you how I utilize the strategy I’ve just given you of going from red to blue with someone in a real-life scenario. We are going to stop focusing on the ‘why’ why do they do it, why do they do this annoying thing and why would they choose to do that. Here’s the thing when we think about anything in the format of a ‘why’ it doesn’t help you to come up with helpful answers. Let me give you an example, when we ask the question ‘why do they do that freaking annoying thing?’ or anything else that starts with a why it often gets us looking backwards into the past and negatively. 

If you ask yourself ‘why do they have to chew so loudly’? or something like that what that’s going to force your brain to do is to look back into the past to your memories, experiences and interactions with that person when they were doing that annoying thing. and if anything, if you’re going to come up with answers to that question like the answers typically speaking probably, won’t be all that favourable to them. They’re not going to be all that positive.

These actions are going to cause you to into a negative emotional state of annoyance all over again. One because you started reflecting back on times in the past where they’ve been doing that annoying thing and then you’ve gone and got yourself like when we recall stuff. When we recall certain memories they will trigger us back into the emotional state that we were feeling back at that time. If you think back to a time in the past when someone annoyed you; you can expect that your body is going to get a little tensed up or that your breathing is going to go a little bit squiffy or that you just start noticing negative emotions that you did not want to have again. 

Therefore, asking ‘why’ is bad for that reason but the other thing as I say is not just that it causes you to sort of reflect but it causes us to come up with answers to that why question which is most likely to be negative so unless you’re really checking yourself, like unless you’re being really conscious of the responses to that question if you just kind of like flippantly like go ‘oh I don’t have to be so annoying’ then your brain has a tendency to go well because they’ve never been taught good manners and to chew their food with their mouth shut because they like sitting close to you and seeing the look on your face when they make those chomping noises and it will come up like your own mind will come up with a list of really unhelpful reasons to answer that ‘why’ question so that’s why you shouldn’t ask why either of yourself or with anybody else.

In next month’s article, we will continue to focus on some tips and guidance in dealing with annoying people in your lives. 

By Gemma Bailey 

www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

A Good Day!

This article is all about finding power in the ordinary. This is something I’ve said before but I’m going to quote it again:

“Lower your expectations of a good day if you can, reduce what you expect a good day to be what the criteria is of a good day in order for you to feel that sense of goodness fulfilled in your system. If you can reduce those criteria and shrink it and make it smaller, it makes it much easier for you to achieve it.”

Let me give you an example, if you were to say “in order for me to have a good day –  I need to wake up on time, get ready for work without any hitches or interruptions that would cause me to be late. I need to get everything done on my to-do list and feel like I have completed all of my work for the day and I need to eat a healthy meal and get to bed on time and have a really decent night’s sleep. There is my definition of a good day.”

I’d be sat there, as your NLP therapist thinking “Well, in reality, how likely is it that going to happen?” If that’s possible for you then you go right ahead but I know for me in the context of the way that my life is structured and the likelihood of me being able to fulfil all of those things is slim to none! Therefore I need to reduce my level of expectation.

If you can find good in seeing a butterfly that day, if that can tick a good psychological box for you then it’s easy to make today a good day – because you saw a butterfly. If you can feel a sense of fascination and wonder in the dog that comes to greet you when you’re walking through the park (who isn’t your dog but is acting like you guys have been friends for years). If that, can give you a sense of loveliness inside and you can use that as your criteria for a good day. For the rest of that day achieving a good day is so much easier.

The real purpose of this article is to talk about the ordinary, not just having good days but actually the value in the ordinary. Sometimes in the work that I do in North London as an NLP practitioner as someone who is working in the world of personal development. I find that there is this sense of obligation or an expectation of how I should have complete and absolute positivity in my daily life. It’s kind of a big ask! I think that to have an expectation of complete positivity in all given situations is unrealistic. It’s almost like you put too much pressure on yourself. I put too much pressure on myself to be able to achieve that level in that sort of consistent form of positivity and I would like to suggest to you that having just normal mundane boring ordinary stuff is actually alright. In fact, it’s pretty good. NLP therapy has taught me to appreciate the ordinary.

In fact, I was talking to a client about this the other day, he attends sessions at my hypnotherapy and NLP clinic in Hertfordshire. This client experiences high levels of anxiety. I mean really high levels of anxiety such that it is not only affecting his psychological state but it’s having a very strong physiological impact on him and it is now causing his health to be at risk. In the past, I may have been inclined to suggest that in stressful situations the client should be aiming for confidence, he should be aiming for happiness, he should be aiming for peace and these are all beautiful big abstract ideas and sensations. To go from where he was to where I may have in the past suggested he should be is a huge jump and actually, to get out of anxiety-like crippling fear would it be okay to just be a bit bored. 

I mean if you are used to or if you become accustomed to crippling fear; boredom is probably quite a nice option! It’s a relatively safe option.

It isn’t as good as, you know beaming confidence. but it also gives us the message that movement is possible, that change is possible on this basis we can get from crippling fear to boredom.

My challenge to you is for you to show gratitude and appreciation and a sense of comfortable acceptance of the boring mundane dullness that life has to offer you because in those moments we can in all of its beauty take a moment to be really mindful and present in that state. To take a moment perhaps to just organise some boring thoughts and know that we’ve got that done off of our to-do list, enjoy the ordinary, make the most of it and appreciate those moments when they’re there but for now, that is everything I wanted to share with you for today. If you need some help, visit me for a therapy session using NLP in North London.

Arrange a FREE, NO OBLIGATION Consultation Session with a Fully Qualified Hypnotherapist, NLP Trainer or CBT Therapist.

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Finding Motivation in 2021: Part Three

At the Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire, a useful thing I do to help clients find their motivation is to recall times in the past when they have felt that feeling of achieving a goal, that happy and proud feeling or where they completed tasks that had had sitting in the back of their mind for months. It’s just that those memories may not be particularly fresh or they might not even be associated with positive things. Sometimes we get the feeling of being super motivated not because we want to do something but because we wanted to get away from something.

 

If you can remember a time when you felt like you just needed to get up and move even if it was just because you’ve got fed up and boldly frustrated with yourself that still is a sense of motivation. Remember that the word motivation has the word ‘move’ in it. It says ‘move’ so to touch back in with what motivation feels like you need to tune back into a time when you felt like you wanted to move, you felt like you wanted to get up and get something done and that’s not necessarily going to have been a positive time it could be associated with something like frustration. Hypnotherapy and NLP can help you achieve this.

 

The word ‘frustration’ sounds negative but the good thing about it is there is movement in it. No one is frustrated and kind of lethargic. If you’re frustrated, there’s some energy in there and we may be able to use it for a positive benefit. If you cannot immediately get yourself into a sense of motivation think of what other emotions there are that might lead you there and they’re going to be emotions that have ‘move’ within them.

The feeling of irritation, it’s itchy, it’s got movement in it. Therefore, it could lead you into the sense of being motivated all over again but if you can remember a time of pure motivation, a time from the past use that memory to sort of get yourself locked back into those feelings because if you can remember them you’ll start to get the feeling back and then you can utilize that and sort of applying it to the idea of doing the things that you want to go ahead and do. Therefore, get into the feeling and then think of the thing you want to do so you start to mesh the two together and start to create that association between them. At the Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire, we can teach you how.

 

Another thing that’s important to do is to prepare. For example, a Sunday night is when I am NOT feeling particularly motivated to come back to work on Monday. I know that Monday morning might be a bit of a struggle. One of the things that I might do if I’m feeling particularly demotivated about coming back to work on a Monday morning is to make sure that I’ve got things as prepared as possible for when Monday morning comes around and that might even be like a child laying out my clothes for the next day making sure that I’ve got the washing up done the night before and I don’t leave it for myself on Monday morning. I want to make that Monday morning as smooth and seamless as possible.

 

Some other practical things could eat well, sleep well and exercise. Do some of those fundamental basic things that we need as human beings to help us maintain our energy levels. We know that motivation is coming from energy so think about the things that you do. They either build you up or zap your energy. Get that back with Hypnotherapy and NLP in Hertfordshire.

 

The Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic is a team of therapists who specialise in hypnotherapy, NLP, CBT and coaching in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and North London. We provide therapy sessions for adults and children wishing to overcome insomnia, stress and depression and for those who wish to overcome phobias or stop bad habits such as smoking. We specialise in working with NHS Staff and the Police.

 

Call 0203 6677294 or email clinic@HypnotherapyandNLP.co.uk
Find out more about Hypnotherapy, NLP & CBT in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire or North London here: www.HypnotherapyandNLP.co.uk

 

By Gemma Bailey

www.hynotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Finding Motivation in 2021: Part Two

In last month’s article, we began discussing re-motivation and this is something we have all experience through the pandemic in 2020 and through 2021 presently. This has been the highlight of my work with my clients recently at the Hypnotherapy clinic in Hertfordshire. We confirm that some people need a reason ‘why’ to do things that they want to do and we also confirm a little bit about our own personal drivers in getting motivated. In this month’s article, we are thinking about our levels of motivation. Is whether what we’re doing; is it for ourselves if we’re doing it? Is it for other people or is it a combination of both?

When we talk about goal setting we talk about making sure that your goals are quite selfish, that you’re doing, what you’re doing for yourself only. However, very often, our motivation to actually do those goals may well come from a place of knowing that what we’re doing will actually make some kind of positive difference to others as well.

If you can feel motivated to do something because it gives you the buzz because it is going to pay off for you, in some particular way, then that is definitely going to be useful for you but failing that then definitely dig deep and start thinking about the ripple effect of what it is that you’re going to be doing on the wider world and we call that the study of ecology. That ‘digging deep’ is something we can explore together in our hypnotherapy and NLP sessions in my Hertfordshire clinic.

The study of ecology is when you think beyond yourself and say “is this good for me? Is it also going to be good for others? Does it serve the greater good in some way?” Potentially the answer could be ‘yes’ to all questions above. If we asked these questions in the context of getting a new job, a really hard job. For example, I have a funeral directors building across the street and something tells me that that, you know, it appears to not be a very good job to have to do. It might be a little bit depressing at times so imagine if that was going to be the new job that you were going into then you have to start thinking ‘well, how is this going to be good for others?’

Potentially, you’re going to be helping people in their time of need. You’re going to be making sure that you’re providing something that really honours and respects people that have passed on, that was loved by friends and families alike. This means you are considering the wider picture ‘how does what I’m doing actually help others in some way’ and normally you can find something.

I remember when I was doing a key-note speaker for Lloyds Bank which isn’t too far from the hypnotherapy clinic in Hertfordshire and it was at their education conference and so I had a room filled up with bankers. There were a bunch of bankers in the room and they were listening to me rambling on about this whole idea of ecology and how what you’re doing is in some way serving the greater good. I’ll be honest that when I was planning this particular presentation, I did have to dig deep to think about what good is it that these people are actually doing for the world. How are they contributing because obviously, they’re in quite a privileged position so what I ended up proposing is that actually, these guys are providing a service that enables other people to be able to maximise their money?

These bankers were specifically working with schools which made it relatively easy to make that connection because I was able to say:

“As a result of you going into a school and selling your product to them, you know, that you are either saving that school money or that you are helping them to be more productive with their finances in some way because you believe in the service that you are offering to them and as a result of doing that those schools are maybe financially free up. Perhaps they are just financially more robust or more financially competent. As a result of that, they’re going to be serving their children, families and communities in a much better way than they may have been able to do if they’d worked with the competition. In some way, you are helping those children and their families and their communities to be able to access more support from that school because you sold them the service that you offer now.”

It’s a little bit of a tenuous link to serving the greater good but if we want people to be able to tap into their motivation levels, to their optimum level, then we may need to do that extra bit of digging deep in order to, you know, really help you to see that what you’re doing actually has some positive ramifications beyond you and sometimes that’s where the real source of motivation is going to come from very often people will do more for others than they will be motivated to do for themselves.

By Gemma Bailey

www.Hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk