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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

Laughter is the best Medicine

There are challenges every day and if not every day, at least from time to time in life. Knowing what tickles your funny bone is a great way to reset your emotions and to receive tension.

Today I have been writing a short biography, about my early history in preparation for a breakthrough session that I’m having. You might be thinking, ‘Hang on, Gemma knows all that NLP stuff why does she need a breakthrough session?’ Well the truth is life still shows up, and towards the end of last year, I had some significant challenges and I want to make sure that I have addressed those properly before go out there and spend my time training and coaching other people. The truth is, is that as much as I use my NLP on myself on a day to day basis, sometimes, when the issues are a bit bigger, it’s easier to work with someone else because they can be more objective about what’s going on for you.

So I write my biography, got to the end of it and kind of went “Urgh!” Sometimes when you look back on the challenging stuff, it can feel a bit emotionally draining. What you have to do then, is to get yourself back on track by making sure that you have plenty of LOL moments to reference back to pick yourself up – or at least to know where to go out and find them if your memories do not work effectively for you.

One of the places that go to to find LOL moments is something called DYAC which is “Damn You AutoCorrect.”

I would love to share some with you but they are a bit too rude very often. You know that thing when you are texting and then your phone autocorrects one of the words and changes it to something else and then the message has a whole different meaning. Well, I make a lot of those myself but other people who have made them too, upload them to this website, which is www.DYAC.com. I find it hilarious to sit there and read through them. So for me, if I spend a few minutes scanning through those after I’ve just done something which is emotionally exhausting, or draining, I’ll get a sense of re-energising from that and I’ll also have good a giggle at the same time.

There was another one that I saw recently, that particularly appeals to me because of having worked with children. Children that have said spooky stuff to their parents and, but they’re quite funny spooky things or kids that have done really silly stuff. So, you can go google that one to if you need a pick me up. But, the key thing is it that you need to be creating LOL moments in your life.

I’m really lucky, I’ve got some very good friends, we’ve got a very tight-knit group. And, we’ve got a load of case references, case studies of funny things that have happened in the past. And, I’ve shared one of them previously on the people building podcast, but I’ll share it again here with you today.

I went to Vegas with a couple of friends and there were 4 of us in total, and what happened was, we were going to a shopping mall one day. We’d got about 3/4 of the way to the mall and my friend Chris suddenly got up out of his seat, with all this certainty, as we approached a bus stop and he said ‘This is our stop.’

And we all said ‘OK Chris.’

We all got up and we followed him without hesitation or question, and actually it wasn’t our stop at all.

In fact, we were in the middle of the desert and we were probably half a mile away from the nearest building and it was a government building, so it was nothing like our stop whatsoever. We then had to stand in the desert for another half an hour waiting for the next bus to come.

I do like a quiz night once a month and every now again Chris will say an answer to a question. If we’re maybe not too sure that it’s the right answer and we just have to double-check that we’re not having another ‘following Chris off the bus’ moment. It’s just an in-joke within us and it’s probably not all that funny for anyone else but it’s always funny for me when I reflect on it.

So you want to make sure that what you’re doing in life is creating lots of LOL moments so that when there is a bit of a down day or an emotionally zapping moment, you’ve got some case studies to fall back to. Or, you at least have some reference points for yourself. Where do you go when you need to laugh out loud? It could be somewhere like DYAC or it could be something completely different. Whatever floats your boat. But, the key thing is, is that you must laugh out loud.

By Gemma Bailey

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Tuning into your ‘Funny’ Feeling

If you’re someone who is new to (for example) NLP, it takes a while to begin trusting your gut feeling; or to tune into it, or to realise that you even have one.

It takes time because you need to let your confidence in yourself and your methods develop, but most of all you need the experience of dealing with young people and to start noticing the patterns in the behaviour and what the clues they give you mean. Some people would say that the funny feeling you get (when you get it) comes from picking up on somebody’s energy or aura. Some believe it comes to them through telepathy or from being a little psychic.

I don’t believe it’s any of those. I think that actually people give off clues, usually via their words, tone or physiology that are almost under the radar, but not quite. Consciously we may have no idea what the clue was. But our unconscious mind does spot the clue and transmits to us an internal message that some would call their gut feeling or instinct. Or in my case, I just say “I feel funny.”

Over the years, I’ve started to pay more attention to what gave me a funny feeling. Obviously depending on the situation, there may be different things.

The very first time I trusted my gut it wasn’t with a client, it was in a safe environment. With my friends in the pub. I was with my two good friends Chris and Matthew. Matthew was going to the bar to buy the drinks (this in itself is an event and a bit like the chances of seeing an albino stag) and he asked Chris and I what we wanted to drink. To be honest, asking the question was a little redundant as he already knew what the answer would be, as we always drank the same thing. However, it was a good thing he did as despite Chris always requesting a vodka-Redbull, this day he paused. It was a tiny pause followed by an “Umm”.

This was enough for my funny feeling to kick in and for me to jump in and say, “He wants pear cider today.”

Poor Chris nearly fell off his chair. He started exclaiming. “How did you know?! How did you know? You’re doing your weird mind ninja tricks on me!”

Then I had to ask myself the question, “How did I know?” The fact I felt a very strong feeling wasn’t really explanation enough. So I rewound the event and considered what clues might have shone out of Chris to give me a strong enough funny feeling that I felt confident to order his drink for him.

When I replayed it in my mind, this was the series of events:

He paused a millisecond. When Chris is sure he just goes for it. One time on a bus in Las Vegas we ended up in the middle of the Nevada desert because he was so quick and assertive at saying “This is our stop!” that we all followed him off of the bus. It wasn’t our stop at all and I’ve no idea why none of us twigged.

2. He said “Umm” which meant he was considering something.

3. His eyes flicked away from Matthew for a minuscule moment and towards an advert on the inside of the door of the pub. It was an advert for pear cider.

When it comes to working with clients, you’ll start to get funny feelings about why they might be thinking or feeling. But a funny feeling on its own is not enough. Start getting tuned into what’s behind you getting that funny feeling. Is it the way someone said something? Is it how they looked when they said it?

The more you can begin to corroborate your funny feeling with real evidence the more you can begin to trust it.

By Gemma Bailey

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Team Work

There’s that saying that ‘there’s no ‘I’ in team’ There is, however, a ‘me’ in team and that’s relevant because it’s important that you’re thinking about everyone and not just about yourself.

Consider how you show up within your team – when you do you’ll actually make that teamwork a lot better. Knowing your role, your contribution and your motivations within your team is incredibly important. NLP can be very valuable to companies to create cohesion within your working teams.

As a team, you can make stuff happen faster, more powerfully and more magically than you can on your own. Most people are aware of the cheesy team acronym: Together Everyone Achieves More. Well, it’s true. Think about the speed at which a simple task can be completed if there are more hands-on-deck suddenly putting IKEA furniture together isn’t as daunting as it was when you had to do it on your own. Your team could be the people you work with. It could be a group of friends or even your family. The challenge though is getting your team to understand exactly what functions, behaviours and acts you want them to do that fits in with the goal you have in mind.

The problem is exactly as the sentence states. The ideas are in your mind and somehow you need to transfer them into the minds of your team members without losing any of the details as you do it. People have different preferences for what might otherwise be thought of as the same experience as yours.

For example, if I say to you ‘red’ you might think of a deep red, like the one from your old school uniform, perhaps. If I said it to someone else they might think of a pinky red because that’s their favourite shade of that colour. Other people might imagine a rainbow and see a multitude of different colours as well as the red.

In addition, people’s state affects the way in which they hear directions. If you’ve ever been in a rush to get somewhere and got lost at the same time, you know what I mean, you can ask for all the clues in the world about where you’re going but if you’re in a panic, you’ll miss the signs that show you the way. It’s the same when you’re directing a team. If someone’s in a bad state because of a misunderstanding with you with another team member or simply because they stubbed their toe that morning, you may find that they hear information differently to the way that you intended them to.

If someone has spent the day thinking “My partner is too demanding and expects me to do all the chores” and then you innocently ask them if they’d mind making you a cup of coffee whilst you are busy on the phone, they made categorise your behaviour as the same as the behaviour of their partner that upset them earlier.

It’s important to know and understand your team so that you can ensure you have a clear insight into the certain behaviours that they do, which are giving you clues about their emotional state.

It is important to understand the motivations of your team. Let’s say for example that you have a report that needs completing by 6 pm on Thursday and that you’ve given it to a team member who is more than capable of being able to achieve that. Let’s also say that the team member has overspent on their credit card a little bit and they need some overtime. In an ideal world, the team member is very aware of the importance of that document being needed by 6 pm on Thursday and has spoken to the boss about being able to get some overtime at some stage to raise the extra cash they need.

In an ideal world, the boss has been very clear about the document deadline and is considering other tasks that could be worked on as a way to give that over time that’s needed. Without this communication though, the boss and the team member might have motivations that are not in alignment with each other. The team member could slow down their production with a plan to complete the report during the overtime they’ve been given.

Understanding the motivations of your team and making your motivations clear to your team can ensure that you’re all working towards the same common goal and that what you all value from one mission to the next is in alignment with each other. Using NLP training for your staff is a great way to get everyone working in a synchronised way and to elevate the productivity of your employees.

By Gemma Bailey

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Take Control of Bad Habits and Magical Hypnosis

The topic today is all about stopping those compulsions and taking control of feeling better, about giving up those bad habits and this is in response to an e-mail from someone who sent in a great big list of things and so this is one of those things off of that list.

So, I am not going to cover any specific N.L.P. techniques with this today or any specific hypnosis techniques but I am going to give you a brief idea of what those could be and also some more general stuff and kind of low-level stuff for actually sorting these sorts of problems out. The thing with stuff like habits and compulsions is that if you view this as a problem that is bigger than you, are more powerful than you, then it probably will be. But if you know that this is just something that is going to get sorted and you’re going to be able to sort it easily, then guess what you’re going to have a whole different ride.

Now here’s a suggestion for you if you are having some problems with these habits and compulsions and you’re on the verge of doing the thing that you don’t want to do. You’re on the verge of reaching for that cigarette. You’re on the verge of putting that fingernail in your mouth or whatever it might be, I want you to give yourself some time out. So, you know like you do with your kids when the kids are misbehaving and you need to separate them and you say right timeout. Go sit yourself on the naughty step. I want you to stay there for five minutes and I want you to have a think about the way that you’re behaving and when you’ve come to the right conclusions about your behaviour and you’ve decided how you’re going to behave better, I want you to come back and tell me that you’re sorry and tell me what you’re going to do even better next time. Stay there until you’ve made your mind up. So, we do this for our kids right. Now here’s the thing sometimes you need to do that for yourself.

Sometimes you need to give yourself a bit of time out before you go and do something silly. So that silly thing could be smoking the cigarette but you really, really you don’t want to smoke because you don’t want to smoke anymore. Now I’m not saying you have to go and sit yourself on the naughty step and give yourself a telling off, but you can have a word with yourself every now and again. You can sit there and think to yourself: okay, so how am I behaving. What do I really want and how can I now make the right decision about the right way to behave better? You can do that to yourself and when you’ve given yourself that little bit of a talking to, you’ll probably find that you come up with a much better reaction than the automatic one of just going ahead and doing it anyway. Give yourself some time out sometimes.

Now Tony Robbins says that in order to give ourselves leverage to move away from a problem we need to apply massive immediate pain to that problem and something like power and pleasure to the solution.

So, I want you to think about what pain you can add to the thing that you don’t want, to that habit or compulsion that you don’t want to have. It could be ‘this thing makes me unhealthy, it’s making me unattractive. I don’t actually like it. It’s slowing me down. It’s making me feel old’.

All of those things are going to be applying pain to the thing that you no longer want to do. Now when we look at pleasure you can be thinking: ‘well when I’ve done this or now that I am doing it, I am in control of my life. I’m feeling like more of an achiever. I’m feeling fitter and I’m going to look better’. So, think about the language that you’re using in implying pain to this problem and also then applying pleasure to the fact that you’ve moved on from it and that you’re going to do something different in the future.

So, if we look at particular N.L.P. techniques. Things like the swish pattern can be useful here. Things like Belief change. Compulsion blowouts, a horrible exercise that usually results in somebody throwing up and hypnosis is also particularly useful. It depends on what the problem is and who you’re working with as to which one of those techniques you might feel is most appropriate.

The most important thing I personally feel, the thing that can really create the tipping point on this is your own internal dialogue. Your own language, so depending on where you are at in terms of making the change, might depend on how you’re using your language. Now affirmations are very, very useful and very, very effective. It’s important though to use these affirmations correctly. So let me give you some ideas of the sorts of things that people might be affirming to themselves and how this might be useful or not so useful for them. So, let’s go with our smoking person. If they’re saying to themselves, I’m going to give up smoking. I’m going to give up smoking. What that statement tells us is that it’s something that’s going to happen in the future so they have not yet done it. And that also there’s this element of necessity. Okay, so it’s kind of essential that they do it, but they still haven’t done it yet.

Now, remember as well, every time we say the words smoking, even if it’s stop smoking, quit smoking, refrain from smoking, where is the focus going to be? Focus is going to be on smoking, isn’t it? So, it’s worthwhile remembering that. It’s probably not the best thing to affirm to yourself because if you’re doing that, you’re still bringing your attention back to smoking, even if you’re talking about not doing it.

So how about this one ‘I want to stop smoking’. Now this one again is in the future. They still haven’t done it yet and it’s more possibility than that necessity. It doesn’t have that sort of commitment sound to it does it? If we compare ‘I’m going to stop smoking’, there’s an element of certainty there, whereas if we have ‘I want to stop smoking’. It’s a bit like I want to but I might not. How about this one: ‘I will stop smoking’. Again, this one is in the future, it’s more essential, there’s more necessary to it, but the fact is they might stop smoking one day but that one day might be when they’re dead.

‘I will stop smoking’ – well when? Today, next week, next month, next year? So, it’s not as committal as we would really want to hear. ‘I’m trying to stop smoking’. That’s just the worst one, isn’t it. It’s in the present, which I guess is good, but the word ‘try’ don’t even get me started. If you want to know about the word ‘try’, listen to the previous podcast. Listen to the experiment on there and see if it works on you. Try is not essential. It’s definitely not committed. Okay how about this one: ‘I have stopped smoking’. Again, so this one is in the present ‘I have stopped smoking’. It implies that smoking did occur in the past but the word have has an element of possibility about it. So we could say there is still that option to smoke again in the future but I would say it’s certainly better than any of the others that we’ve said so far.

‘I do not smoke now and I will not smoke again’. Now this one is in the present. It implies permanence for the future even though there is a reference that smoking did occur in the past. This one sounds very definite doesn’t it? ‘I do not smoke now and I will not smoke again’. If somebody said that to you would be much more likely to believe them than any of the others that we’ve spoken about before.

So how about this one. ‘I’m going for a jog’. Now you’re probably wondering why that has nothing to do with it. Well really that’s my point because for this person smoking is not even in their focus. It’s not on their radar. It doesn’t exist in their universe. Their focus is nowhere near smoking so really who stands the best possible chance? Definitely the jogger and the fact that there jogging probably tells us that there are a whole lot fitter than the smokers are anyway.

Right so I hope that helps you out with regards to the compulsions and habits. There’s so much within that particular niche. There’s so many different ways of dealing with those problems but that’s a good thing because it means there’s lots and lots of different ways to move forward and there’s certainly something for everyone.

By Gemma Bailey

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How to Increase Self-Belief

I want you to imagine in your mind, that you have got a circle and within the outer edge of the circle there are four different labels. The 4 labels are linked together by the circle. In the first label, it says ‘potential’, on the right-hand side add a label that says ‘action’, at the bottom of the circle add a label that says ‘results’ and finally on the left, there is another label that says ‘belief’.

So, going around in a circle we have potential linking to action, linking to results, linking to belief and then linking back to potential. For anyone to learn, the potential to achieve it must exist. How much potential they have will determine then how much action they take.

That action will then dictate what kind of a result they get (or how they perceive their result), so depending on what kind of action you take and how much action you take will determine the result that you get. The result will then determine how much belief you have about how easy it is for you to continue to learn this new skill. The more belief you have the greater the potential you have to go on and take further (or better) actions.

When someone is operating from the belief of ‘I can learn’, they will have a certain degree of potential already. If they believe that they can learn it’s likely that they are going to take some positive action towards this. Which will lead them to a more positive result (or a way to view their results positively).

Let’s take someone who’s operating from the belief of ‘I can’t do this’ or ‘this is difficult’. This person still has potential but because they are operating of the belief of ‘I can’t do this, this is difficult’ they’re likely to find it less easy to access their potential or to take less, or reduced quality actions, leading to lower quality results. They will then see and experience those results which will affect the belief they have. If they have got poor results it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy with thoughts like ‘I knew I couldn’t do it, now look, it’s gone as wrong just as I thought it would’. There is less belief in their ability to be able to do this thing and that will lead to a reduction in potential and poor action, or no action at all will be taken.

Everything you can and can’t do is shaped by your beliefs and what you are telling yourself.

Changing beliefs that have been ingrained for years or from significantly emotional experiences can be daunting, but it is not by any means impossible to do. In fact on the NLP Practitioner training there are plenty of exercises and interventions you learn that help to change your beliefs rapidly. Sometimes though, it’s possible to begin reshaping your beliefs simply by challenging the negative ones that get in the way. If you slow down your thinking to notice the negative self-talk which tells you what these self-imposed limitations are, you can begin to come up with your own counter-examples of when you have been able to do the things (perhaps even in moderation) that you believe you cannot do.

By Gemma Bailey

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Quit Smoking

The benefits of stopping smoking are endless, so I will not even bother trying to list them! You will, of course, be generally much healthier, and of course, much more empowered when you are no longer at the mercy of a little white stick. In my hypnotherapy practice, I am dedicated to ensuring that you give up smoking with ease and speed. This is why I offer two choices to my clients who are interested in quitting smoking as well as a free consultation.

When you make the decision to use Hypnotherapy to help you quit smoking, I will initially want to make sure that you are completely motivated to do so and that you want to give up smoking for all the right reasons. For example, one of my clients said that he really enjoyed smoking but that his wife hated it and that he wanted to stop smoking for her. Fortunately, I identified this man’s lack of motivation to achieve the goal for himself. If I’d have carried out the hypnotherapy there is little chance that it would have been successful due to the fact that the client didn’t have the desire to want to quit smoking.

In my practice, I use a range of different hypnotherapy techniques to assist my clients so that they are able to stop smoking. Here are some example of how I do it:

Away from techniques- There are of course many off-putting facts about the negative impact smoking has on the mind and body. When your mind is overloaded with this information you will feel compelled to move away from smoking forever.

Moving towards techniques- I also have lots of information about the positive impact quitting smoking and remaining a non-smoker has. I am keen to help you set goals for the future that wouldn’t have been attainable whilst you were a smoker. Now that you are a non-smoker you can explore new ways to relax, to exercise and to spend your money.

Metaphors- I believe that if you can lay back and enjoy the experience of quitting smoking, then you should! That’s why I use tailor-made metaphors, which give very specific instructions to your subconscious mind and suggestions to give up smoking. However, consciously, you don’t even need to listen, you can just lay back and relax.

Empowering alternatives- Wouldn’t it be fantastic to know that you can, not only give up smoking but that you can also look forward to doing something really and truly meaningful to do instead. Such as spending time with your family, which, no doubt, if you didn’t quit smoking, an early grave would have prevented that opportunity.

Anchoring- As well as a qualified hypnotherapist I am also a qualified NLP Master Practitioner. This means that throughout your intervention there is a strong chance that I will also use some NLP techniques. One such NLP techniques is called anchoring. This allows the hypnotherapist to create for you, a really powerful positive resource that you can fire off at will, should you find yourself tempted by cigarettes.

Compared to all other methods, research suggests that Hypnotherapy can improve the chances of quitting smoking and remaining a non-smoker. Hypnotherapy works in several ways, including:

Reducing the anxiety associated with stopping smoking
Helping people to find the motivations for stopping
Installing coping mechanisms
Re-evaluate unconscious beliefs and behaviours associated to smoking
Installing positive beliefs so that weight gain is not inevitable.

I have successfully helped many people to quit smoking throughout my years of practice as a hypnotherapist. Few of those people have required follow up sessions, many quit after just one session.

Quit Smoking (1 session only required) with 6 months of free support.

Book a free consultation now, via my contact details below.

I still do not smoke and it’s the start of something great!

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Emotional Hunger

Foods high in dietary fibres such as bran cereals and wholemeal breads are suggested as
ideal for getting rid of fat cravings.

You need to start to identify whether the hunger that you’re feeling is hunger for food or
simply just for some kind of satisfaction. It might be emotional satisfaction, it might be
satisfaction to see the plate is empty, it might be satisfaction to just because you can. It
might be satisfaction because it’s that time of year and everybody else is doing it. It
might be satisfaction because you don’t want to appear impolite and rude if you’re at
somebody’s house so whatever the satisfaction is you need to identify what reason you
are eating for. The one that’s to be really wary of is the simple emotional satisfaction
and the way that you need to start monitoring this, something that to me can perhaps
be quite helpful to do is to do a bit of a food diary to write down what you eat, when
you eat, what time it is that you’re eating it and also to write down with that, how you
feel when you go to eat the food.

This can help to highlight when you have an emotional eating issue. And for all of those
other reasons, perhaps some of us might call them excuses, for eating when it is not
necessary quite simply the technique there is that you need to start getting a bit
tougher on yourself. You need to stop buying into all of those excuses that you give
yourself in those moments such as ‘oh but it doesn’t matter if I just have this one
because’ or ‘this is an exception because’ or that’ I never normally do this and so I will
this time because’. All of those sorts of statements that you might say to yourself that
justify taking the action of eating foods that you do not need to have and do not really
want to have, you need to start becoming aware of what you’re saying to yourself in
those moments and start dis- believing it because it’s just the excuses that you give
yourself that keep you going, that keep you giving yourself permission to take that
unnecessary action. And that’s what needs to change. When you start to give yourself
better quality reasons then you’ll start to feel a difference towards the things that
you’re compelled to do.

Now that’s not necessarily an easy step to make (which is why working with a
hypnotherapist in Hertfordshire, Essex or Coventry is a good idea) and it does mean in
need to start getting a bit firmer with yourself perhaps and recognising when you’re
giving yourself some kind of nonsense excuse and telling yourself inside with a very firm
voice that that is a nonsense excuse and that you have a greater love and greater selfworth
for yourself than to buy into that rubbish excuse. Ultimately by refusing that food
that you do not need to have, you are showing love and appreciation for yourself and
this is where many people go wrong with dieting and losing weight, is that they see the
diet as something negative. They see what it is that they are going to miss out on. They
recognise what they’re going to lack, what they’re going to lose as a result of doing that
diet and then it takes on the perception of being like a punishment.

The Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic provides Hypnotherapists and NLP coaches in
Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex and Coventry to help with the
management of stress, anxiety and depression.

For more information about our free consultations and sessions, contact us on 0203
6677294

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Well-being

Conducive to good health: in a way that promotes health and physical well-being (often used in combination.) Good health or fortune: a good, healthy, or comfortable state.

However another definition states:

A good or satisfactory condition of existence; a state characterized by health, happiness, and prosperity; welfare: to influence the well-being of the nation and its people.

This second definition places the emphasis of well-being on health, happiness and prosperity, rather than just one of these things. This, I feel is a better reflection of the state of well-being. If we assess each area of our lives (using a coaching technique such as the wheel of life click here) it is easy to understand how one aspect of our lives influences another. For example, worry about finances can induce ill health, having good relationships with a partner can make us more tolerant at work. Well-being exists when harmony is occurring in each aspect of our lives.

Another interesting point to consider about the definitions above is that the language used to describe the conditions for well-being are not “excellent,” “amazing” or “wonderful” but simply “good” or “satisfactory.” I believe it is absolutely essential that we all have goals, dreams, call them what you will. This is especially important for males, who tend to have a great deal of intense energy (as opposed to the softer, nurturing female energy) and this energy must be channelled in the form of setting and achieving goals. If a male does not have these, he will often find himself on the wrong path in his life. However I also feel it is important to have reasonable expectations. If every moment of every day had to be amazingly wonderful in order for you to achieve wellbeing, it could be a challenge to have your need for well-being met. Also, if you think that you will only experience well-being once your goals has been achieved, you will have a whole chunk of time whilst it is a work in progress where you will not allow yourself to feel that sense of well-being. Why not feel well-being whilst working towards your goal? The more achievable your expectations for feeling good are, the easier it will be to have your feeling of well-being. So what does this mean- give up on dreaming big? No. Dream big, but each day find happiness and achievement in the little things too.

For example:

Finances- A big Goal could be to earn £100,000 in 6 months, but if you can feel prosperous by finding £1.00 down the back of the sofa, you will tap into feelings of prosperity more easily.

Health and Fitness- A big goal could be to lose 3 stone in 8 months, but if you can feel the same sense of achievement with each individual pound you lose, you’ll be more motivated to continue working towards your goal.

Personal Relationships- A big Goal could be to get married, but a lower expectation that can make you feel good more easily could be to feel totally connected to your partner when on a date.

Spirituality- A big goal could be to feel total spiritual enlightenment, but if you can feel spiritual whilst having your questions about life and the universe unanswered you can feel spiritual all the time.

Personal Development- A big goal could be to attend a £1000 training course, but if you can feel you are developing yourself whilst reading a good book (like this one) then you can develop yourself must more easily.

Fun- A big goal could be to have a certain number of holidays each year, but you can also have fun when spending a lunch time with friends if you make it your intention to have that happen.

Career- A big goal could be to get a promotion, but an easily and immediately achievable way to have well-being could be to make someone that you work with feel valued by telling them that they’ve done a great job.

Family- A big goal could be to have a harmonious household, but an immediate sense of well-being could come from taking a walk with your family at the weekend.

In short, it’s important to have challenges in your life to help you to stretch and grow as a person, and it’s equally important to make life easy for yourself sometimes. (Some people really like to make life more difficult than it really needs to be. I’m not someone that subscribes to this idea.) Make it easy to feel good and the more likely it is that you will exist with a sense of well-being. In doing so, from an attraction point of view, you are not only practicing feeling successful, but in feeling success you are able to attract more of it on a larger scale.

“I feel so much better. Thank you so much, Gemma!”

By Gemma Bailey
www.GemmaBailey.com

For further treatment suggestions, click here.

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Trauma victims

As discussed in the article titled Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
http://www.gemmabailey.co.uk/PTSD.html both hypnosis and NLP can have a positive benefit to those dealing with trauma symptoms.

Of course each trauma should be dealt with based on the individuals circumstances and feelings at that time, so there are no hard and fast rules to follow. But here are some points to consider.

A person who has experienced a trauma is often in a victim state. This is because the incident that occurred gave them limited choices in the responses they could formulate at that particular time. They probably felt as if the circumstances that occurred were out of their control or were perhaps trapped and/or in danger. It important to highlight that these suggestion will only work for those whose trauma is in the past and is over. For those who are still living in a traumatic situation, a slightly different approach must be taken to help support that person in making some new decisions about how to react in that situation now and in the future.

It is essential that the trauma victim is able to access feeling of safety and security at any time during the work you do together. This is because of the risk of abreaction during the therapeutic processes you undertake. A resource anchor can be an effective way of getting the client into a positive and resourceful state quickly and easily though you must be sure that the intensity of the resource anchor is significantly stronger than that of any potential traumatic emotion that might show up during the sessions you have together.

It is important to get the client to recognise the responsibility they have in creating their own thoughts and emotions. Acknowledge that the event happened and that it was (past tense) and very bad event. In addition, the event itself is no longer occurring, only the memory of what the event was or how the event affected the nervous system is reoccurring and this is something that the client is now doing to themselves, and is no longer something that is being forced upon them. In addition to this very important point, you must teach and share this in a sensitive way so that you do not appear to be blaming the client for their own thought and feelings. This is not useful for them. What is useful is to use words such as “empowerment” and “taking control now” and “choosing what emotions to feel and when to feel them.”

There are some things that no amount of NLP or Hypnosis training can provide. What you might call the X factor that some and few therapists possess. I have seen it very rarely in those that I have trained with. It’s the ability to totally and completely turn someone ideas and thinking on it’s head by providing a reframe (a new way of looking at the perspective they currently have.) In doing so you open up their mind to a new or many new ways of thinking. You’ve probably had a situation where you have got something stuck in you mind and you keep thinking about it, and the more you think about it the more unreasonable and hard done by you seem to be. Then someone says something to you about that thing that completely changes your ideas it. Every technique in NLP is really reframe because the general idea of NLP is that it gives you that “Aha!” moment. That insight of “Oh I’d never really though about it in that way before…” The challenge most therapists face is using this skill a) verbally without any “formal” change technique which is sometimes not appropriate. (There is a version of the NLP Change Personal History Technique which involves blowing up balloons full of the necessary emotional resources and giving them to the younger you at the time of the traumatic event. It’s a great technique and for that reason I think can be overused by therapists. You need to talk it through with your client. If they’re too worried about looking like a wally blowing up imaginary balloons, it just isn’t the right thing to do!)

b) Being comfortable using conversational change in a way that isn’t necessarily going to make the client feel immediately pleasant but perhaps gets them to feel sympathetic or understanding or any other range of emotions other than what they were stuck feeling before you started working with them.

I remember working with a man who had been abused as a child by another child. He spoke a lot of his hate for this other child and what they had done to him, how this other child had ruined his life. I thought that by getting him to associate back how it felt to be a child that he might start to consider that the abusing child was perhaps not evil, but perhaps confused, curious or scared. This didn’t happen. It made him even more adamant that the abusing child was evil. I then said to him “Who do you think was abusing the abusing child?” His face went white and tensed up. His eyes narrowed and he gasped for breath. “What do you mean?! No! I was the victim not them!” he gasped. Having recently undertaken some child protection training I was then able to back up my statement with some facts and figure about the numbers of children that abuse, who are doing so because they are being/have been abused themselves. Did he feel immediately positive- No. But it did break his pattern and get him thinking about his abuser in a whole new way. He was later able to think of his abuser as the victim and in feeling that way a lot of the feeling of hate dispersed.

There are a variety of ways in which hypnosis can be beneficial to treat trauma. Regression can be used to enable the client to notice details about the trauma that were not noticed before. This can offer them the new perspective they seek when remembering the event in the future as well as offering the opportunity to re-enact the event in a new way- saying or doing what should have been said or done that would have made the event a problem no longer. Hypnosis is obviously incredibly beneficial in generating calm and relieving negative emotions associated with the past. When this is done it also gives way to the opportunity to install positive suggestions that the client can utilise in the future. It is also, I feel important to have the client practice using these new positive resources. It is a welcome relief when a client recognises that the event is in the past and exists now only in their mind, but that is not to say that an event like that will not shop up in their lives again in some other way. It is important that the client feels confident that they could deal with a traumatic event in a different way to how they did before. That they can do so in an empowering way without experiencing it as another trauma. This is also something that can be done whilst in hypnosis.

“I am so grateful for your help, especially as previous psychotherapy failed to produce results.”

By Gemma Bailey
www.GemmaBailey.com

For further treatment suggestions, click here.

To view Qualifications and Registered Body details, click here.

For inspiration by email, please click here

For Hypnotherapy and NLP Scripts, Ebooks and MP3’s, click here