Tag Archives: Clear Thinking

Boost Your Creativity

The Encarta dictionary defines creativity as “the ability to use the imagination to develop new and original ideas or things, especially in an artistic context.”

Creativity and imagination are largely linked with right brain functions, whereas analytic and rationalised thinking is more associated with the left brain.

As individuals, we may tend to be more inclined to naturally use one side of the brain more than the other, which would define the ability we have to tap into our creative talents. Of course, there are influences in our lives as we grow up, that are responsible for either nurturing or stifling our creativity. For example, most of our schooling tends to focus much more on learning via the left brain, encouraging logical and objective learning, as opposed to holistic experiential learning which is related to the right brain.

Creating can lead to a deep sense of satisfaction and there are many different ways that people can express creativity. The common factors tend to be that a great feeling of compulsion to do something. Then throughout the process of doing it, a connection with oneself, or even a feeling of motivation or trance-like experience. If the person remains motivated to continue their project until completion, they will feel a great sense of pride once the process is successfully completed. Just imagine if it was a requirement of your job to feel this good every day! In fact, those who set up their own business often do so as an extension of a hobby or creative process that they already enjoy.

If you are not a natural creator, how can you develop this skill to create more wholeness and inspiration?

Here are some tips:

1. Have a few sessions of Life Coaching to help uncover the things you value most in your life and begin shaping your dreams. Motivational techniques can also be applied if a sense of uncertainty prevents you from taking the steps you need to make.

2. Listen to music that makes you feel good and switch off the news! Often the news is depressing and can put you in a bad state.

3. Make lots of notes. You never know when those good ideas will sneak up on you and if you don’t jot them down, they may be forgotten.

4. Get inspired. Look at other people’s creative work, either in the field you are interested in, or just in the natural environment around you.

5. Do some brainstorming around your chosen idea. This will move it from pie in the sky to the specific steps you will need to make.

6. Read books. Books are great for expanding ideas and are “healthier” for your brain than watching the telly all the darn time!

7. Keep your brain fit by doing crosswords, and quizzes and participating in creative and intelligent conversations.

8. Be healthy in your body. Your mind and your body are linked so you need to look after both. Feed them healthy food and exercise them both.

9. Write a list of how you will feel and how your life will be affected by expressing your creativity. What will it mean to you?

10. When you get an idea, do something about it, before someone else beats you to it!

“Thank you all so much, this has made a positive change in my life.”

 

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk 

Headaches and Migraines

I started having migraines when I was about 7 years old and found them a very scary experience. There is something quite frightening about experiencing that degree of pain in the part of the body where the brain is stored!

Luckily, my migraines would disappear after I had vomited, and gone to sleep – painkillers wouldn’t touch them at all. I was also fortunate to not experience distorted vision (sometimes called a warning aura) or prolonged nausea or the kind of migraines that last for several days.

I recently experienced a headache after visiting a friend who lives around 45 miles from my home. On the way back, the oncoming headlights of the cars began to irritate me, and I sensed that my headache was going to develop into a migraine. I knew that if I allowed that to happen I would certainly be stuck a long way from home, so I made the decision to stop at a service station, park my car and lay in a hypnotic trance in the back seat for about 20 minutes. Hey presto, 20 minutes later I was fit to continue my journey.

The reason why migraines occur is largely to do with chemicals within the body. Your body is like a laboratory, and the chemical within it have an impact on your physical body. When a person has a migraine, there is a change in the serotonin levels in the body (it drops) and this causes the blood vessels to swell. It is the swelling that causes the pain.

People experience migraines for different reasons, emotional stress or tiredness are often factors, some foods may also be a trigger, or in my example above bright lights were a factor and loud noises can be too. Going without food can cause a migraine. to start, menstruation or even changes in the weather!

Hypnosis is a wonderful way to escape from the pain of migraine for several reasons. Firstly the trance can be laced with suggestions for controlling and lowering the level of pain experienced. The simple relaxation is also hugely beneficial- if the migraine. was not caused by stress, you can expect that after the onset of the pain there is definitely going to be some stress and relief that can only be a good thing. For reoccurring migraines, suggestions can be given to help the patient become more aware of the subtle warning signs that a headache or migraine. is on the way. Then self-hypnosis or relaxation can be used to prevent the symptoms from increasing.

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

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

How to React When Under Attack

This month’s article is all about how to manage situations where you feel under attack. I’m talking about where you suddenly get back footed – in a meeting or a conversation and you were not expecting that to happen. I had this happen to me really recently and I want to tell you about it…

Here’s my story: Two social workers came to see me as I had some safeguarding concerns that had arisen in my mother’s care home. However, when I sat down with them it became apparent that they did not really want to talk about that, in fact, what they wanted to talk to me about was the fact that my Mum had moved into a care home and whether or not I had put her there against her will. I very quickly realised that this was not a ‘let’s talk about the safeguarding issue’, but in fact, it was an interrogation of me!

Immediately, in my brain, I could hear myself thinking ‘why they asking me all these questions?’ and as I got myself flustered I started to kind of loose information from my brain. In fact, there’d been one specific challenge that my Mum had been experiencing which was a great example of the safeguarding issue. As they began asking me questions, I was still so stunned that we were having a meeting about something else entirely, I couldn’t find any examples to back up what I wanted to say and as soon as they’ve left I had a ton of them!

What we need to be able to do in these situations is to keep calm and find ways to be able to come up with the right responses, even though we might have gone in to fight, flight or freeze mode. If you think that learning some skills like that would be useful to you then keep reading!

Number one is a really simple NLP and hypnotherapy technique! You can just start to tell a story around the thing that you are talking about, you know, maybe backtrack in history and start to give all of the information and fluff that you would ordinarily cut out. What this is – it’s you buying yourself some time. Whilst you’re coming up with fluff you can also be thinking in your head about other important things like the most important things that you want to be able to say about the situation. Another way that you can pad is to get halfway through doing that and then pause and go “I’m so sorry, I’ve completely forgotten what the question was?”

As part of our padding, we can also ask them to repeat the question because once again it buys you more time to think about what you’re saying to catch your breath and to calm yourself down. These are all communication strategies that you learn in NLP. The chances are that whilst you’re trying to think and talk at the same time you might get yourself built up into a bit more of a frenzy, whereas, if you ask them to repeat the question, you can catch your breath compose yourself and start to really think.

Number two is for you to ask questions of them. This serves two purposes! Once again, it gives you some thinking time whilst they reel off whatever the answer to your questions might be but most importantly from a psychological perspective that gives both you and them the opportunity to get the sense of regaining control of this interaction. In my therapy practice in Hertfordshire, we practice these skills together in NLP Sessions. Typically, we think of the person who is asking the questions is the one who is directing or leading the conversation so by you starting to ask some questions of your own it’s a bit like when your dog puts his paw on top of your hand and says ‘I’m taking charge here’. It’s the same sort of thing. You are saying actually I’m going to take charge of this situation for a moment so that you internally give yourself a bit of a confidence boost, in knowing that, you are taking control of this situation and maybe you start to get them to back off a little bit because they realise that perhaps you’re going to be a bit more feisty to deal with and anticipated.

Number three is to backtrack. If you suddenly remember stuff. The last thing you want to have happened is to walk away from that exchange as I did on Friday thinking “why didn’t I say this?, why didn’t I say that?”. What you should do at that moment is to say “sorry, but just actually, I just remembered something. I’m really sorry to interrupt you but in the beginning, you asked me about this and it’s just popped back into my brain that I didn’t add this in and I just wanted to add this because I think it might be important now”.

If the conversation is over and you have parted company go back to the conversation if you can. For me, it could be a follow-up email or a letter that I send where I say “remember when you asked me that question about the difference between NLP and Hypnosis and I didn’t seem to have an answer at the time. I’m sorry I just got myself a bit flustered because I wasn’t expecting the meeting to be going like that but here is the answer to your question just so that you have the information that you were looking for that day”.

Don’t be afraid to backtrack and go back to a point if you feel that you haven’t explained yourself properly. It could be really important that you do that!

My favourite tip is number four and that is to say “three things….” I do this a lot! It can sometimes shoot you in the foot because at the point when you say “three things…”, you probably haven’t got three things! You might have one but as a result of putting that little bit of pressure on your brain, it causes you at times to be able to generate some more ideas. I will start talking about whatever thing number one was which was probably the only one that I had in mind at that time but very often by the time I’ve got to talking about thing one my brain has come up with what thing two should be and then I can add that in.

Sometimes, if I haven’t got a thing number three I’ll go back to number one again and say it again. It causes your brain to go into more of a thinking and searching mode but it also means for the person that you are interacting with, that you’re not just kind of coming up with one of the answers. You are really thinking about what it is that they’re asking you, even though they might have completely caught you on the back foot and they were thinking that they were going to catch you out.

You’ve just shown them that mentally –  you are prepared for this and that you can come up with reasonable responses to what they are asking you. My final tip is, to be honest about your emotion at that moment. It’s okay for you to say ‘I’m sorry if my voice is starting to sound a bit shaking. I just wasn’t expecting to have this conversation today. I feel like you’ve caught me on the back foot and actually, now I feel unprepared. Don’t take it personally, but I just needed you to know that. Sorry, what was your question?”.

Express and share the emotion that you’re feeling with them because if you do then become upset at least you’ve re-framed it with them and have justified why is your feeling the way in which you are feeling – show your emotions and to explain why it is. At my NLP therapy practice in Hertfordshire, you’ll learn more about expressing emotions.

Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlpclinic.co.uk