Ultimate Mind NLP Blog: Vitamins for Mind

A woman came out of her house and saw 3 old men with long white beards sitting in her front yard. She did not recognize them.

She said “I don’t think I know you, but you must be hungry. Please come in and have something to eat.”

“Is the man of the house home?”, they asked.

“No”, she said. “He’s out.”

“Then we cannot come in”, they replied.

In the evening when her husband came home, she told him what had happened. “Go tell them I am home and invite them in!” The woman went out and invited the men in.

“We do not go into a House together,” they replied. “Why is that?” she wanted to know. One of the old men explained: “His name is Wealth,” he said pointing to one of his friends, and said pointing to another one, “He is Success, and I am Love.” Then he added, “Now go in and discuss with your husband which one of us you want in your home.”

The woman went in and told her husband what was said. Her husband was overjoyed. “How nice!!”, he said. “Since that is the case, let us invite Wealth. Let him come and fill our home with wealth!” His wife disagreed. “My dear, why don’t we invite Success?” Their daughter-in-law was listening from the other corner of the house. She jumped in with her own suggestion: “Would it not be better to invite Love? Our home will then be filled with love!” “Let us agree to our daughter-in-law’s advice,” said the husband to his wife. “Go out and invite Love to be our guest.”

The woman went out and asked the 3 old men, “Which one of you is Love Please come in and be our guest.” Love got up and started walking toward the house. The other 2 also got up and followed him.

Surprised, the lady asked Wealth and Success: “I only invited Love, Why are you coming in?” The old men replied together: “If you had invited Wealth or Success the other two of us would’ve stayed out. But since you invited Love, we all must go. Because wherever He goes, we go with him.”

Syreta Stewart, one of our brand new NLP Trainers, shares her amazing experience starting two years ago with her NLP Practitioner Training…

Two years ago, I was ready for a new adventures something that was going to be different.  I was at a turning point in my life in regards to career.  I was searching for something new and I truly found it.

For the last 12years of my life I had completed many courses and worked two jobs.  I have a degree in Psychology with Honors, a Masters in Youth justice and Applied Criminology and many more qualifications.

When I graduated from doing my degree and masters I chose to work in a residential home.  Then I moved onto working in a secure unit for young people and continued in the direction of working with young people in all different settings and capacities.  I have worked in the private sector and the public sector in regards to the different role and jobs I have had across youth services.

Roughly 2 years ago, I decided that I wanted to continue working with young people but under a different pretext.  I mean I wanted to design my own workshops and deliver them to schools and train teachers.  I felt limited in as to how much can I do as an employee.  I expressed my feelings to a colleague that I worked with and then she said that she was just about to start a course in NLP.

Well forgive my ignorance, I was not aware or had never heard of NLP before that.  After she explained what NLP was, I decided that I would investigate it further so I rang a lady called Lenka who was the trainer for the course. After speaking to her for an hour, we decided that I would join the next NLP Practitioner’s course, which started in three weeks.

The first day of the course started, I was not sure exactly what to expect the first day or for the next 7 days.  After the seven days I noticed a wonderful change within myself, I couldn’t believe how I felt.  I was motivated, happy and ready to ‘face the world’ and all my financial difficulties.

I felt empowered.  For a long time I had felt like I was in a dark tunnel and I could now see the light. Now I certainly could see it!

The next step for me naturally was to continue on this path so I decided to do the  Time Line Therapy™ and Hypnosis Practitioner Course. After completing this course a realization hit me and that was that I had been given a box of tools which would enable me to help people and myself with lightning fast techniques and results could be seen there and then! I would see huge changes happening with my first coaching clients, when  using these powerful techniques, in fact, those changes would happen immediately, in front of my very eyes!

This gave me a warm feeling inside and for the first time in years I knew I was on the right path. I was not just clear about my career path but I was clear in regards to all other areas of my life.  To be honest I never expected it to be what I call a ‘clear about my life and wher I’m going’ .

In short amount of time, I went through a huge curve of personal development and it was taking place at an unconscious level, rather than trying to do it consciously.  I just felt (and still feel) alive and full of energy.

What I had once considered dreams could now become reality.  I knew that I had to continue on this path so I also did my Masters in NLP and that included my masters in Time Line  Therapy™ and Hypnosis.  The feeling after completing this was of complete freedom.

I have received many certificates in regards to achievements such as my degree in Psychology and My Masters in Youth Justice and Applied Criminology but nothing had made me feel like this ever before.

This achievement means a lot to me and it had equipped me to live a life of freedom and passion in what I wanted to do.  I already knew that I would be able to carry out what ever I wanted to do.  Life and the world just seemed a brighter place to live in.

After all this training I decided that I know wanted to go to Australia and complete my Trainers Trainer, which I successfully completed.

My journey has been joy able one and an inspirational one, I know now that there are no limits to what I can achieve and the things that I want in life. I know what and how to be happy and through the tools and the resources that I have I now see my life as a wonderful, adventurous and fulfilling life,  with boundless opportunities ahead.

Some say there is no magic but in a way if you could feel the way that I feel living in this world then you would understand that there is magic.

I’m grateful and thankful for finding NLP and most all my teacher as she passed on those wonderful qualities on me.  Lenka is a grounded wonderful human being who has integrity and honesty at the top of her list and also I love her passion and compassion when dealing with people.

My life ambition, which I believe is also hers, is to help people and equip them with the right tools for a happier and more productive life.  This has been the most profound journey of my life to date and what a wonderful life it is!

Recently, I’ve been asked how do I deal with stress and if there is a simple ’stress coping’ strategy.

As stress is one of the common issues of today fast moving world, it reminded me that I should share this simple stress coping strategy with you too. This mind game takes only couple of minutes to complete, it takes in account principles of NLP and how our mind works, and most importantly, it works. I’ve been using this mental exercise for some years now and I found it very helpful. I hope you will too.

Whenever you feel stressed, follow these 5 steps:

1.) Ask yourself: What specifically am I stressed about?

Write these things down. No matter how stressed you think you are, I could bet you that you will not come up with more than 7 major things (be it problems, unsolved issues or uncompleted projects) that contribute to this uncomfortable feeling.

2.) Allocate each of the projects on the list approximate time of completion

You will find allocating time to these projects easy if it’s something that you’ve done (or something similar) before. However, if some of those things on your list are major challenges that you have no idea how to go about, simply allocate generous time scale to find solution; or overcome this problem.

3.) Imagine yourself walking on your path of happiness.

Close your eyes and find yourself walking on your path of happiness walking towards something unknown, yet extremely nice. You’re walking towards your future.

If happiness is a too strong word for you, choose a feeling that you know you can do (you felt that way in past) and it is feeling you enjoy; e.g. path of focus, productivity, contentment, excitement, love.

4.) Put your problems in separate boxes

As you stand there on your path of happiness, take each of those things you listed in step 1 and put them in separate boxes. Give each box a colour of your choice. Close the boxes and put them on the grass surrounding your path, so you can see them from the corner of your eye, but they are not obstacle for you to move forward.

By now, you will have a certain number of colourful boxes sitting on the grass, on you far left, or far right. You know what is inside of them, and boxes are closed, sealed, and look nice.

5. Give yourself supportive self – talk.

Lastly, imagine yourself walking on your path of happiness towards exciting future, seeing these boxes only from the corner of your eye. Tell yourself something along these lines:

“Well, I know I have these challenges and I know that all of these need attention. However, they are now organised, and each of them will receive full attention in timely manner. They are safe in those boxes and now they can’t prevent me to walk forward in happiness. I can walk forward feeling the way I want to feel, and when the time is right, I will take one box at the time, and deal with it, giving it my full focus. For now, I’m going ahead feeling the way I want to feel, and, I’m sorry boxes – you’re off the hook, you’re not going to decide how I feel, I can do that myself. Happy waiting.”

Open your eyes and you’re done, ready to take action by focusing on one of those boxes, taking that project out, putting your head down, and do it, giving it all your focus!

If you really felt certain degree of stress and went through this short mental exercise, you will find that you feel much better now. This is because you you have mentally went through the process of:

• Organising your problems and projects
• Planning for resolution in timely manner
• Disassociation – in other words, your mind now knows that ‘you are not the problem’, they are separate from ‘you’
• Changing the way your mind codes these experiences. In NLP, we call this process ’submodality change’. By putting your challenges in colourful boxes your mind recoded the way it stores these challenges, hence your feeling will change too.
• Lastly, you ‘anchored’ yourself into constructed positive state of mind, which always helps!

Lastly, I will briefly tell you about one extraordinary achievement of one lady with this seemingly simple technique. I was working with this fantastic woman who suffered from low self esteem couple of years ago. We went through the whole process of Personal Breakthrough Session (about 8 ours of intensive therapy) and then we said good bye to each other. Six months later, when following up to make sure that she made a long lasting change, she admitted that this session not only helped her to feel much better, but she now also completely got rid of her eating disorder (which was not a primary aim of our therapy). When questioning this lady further, I found that she simply put her eating disorder  into a colourful box, and somehow forgot about it!

Now, forgetting surely won’t help with uncompleted projects or unpaid bills, but I tell you what – it’s sometimes useful to forget! But more about forgetting next time…

By the way – have you got some different ’stress coping’ strategy that wors for you very well? Share with me!

If you prefer text version, here it is:

Today I want to give you an overview of the NLP Communication Model because by understanding it you will:

• Know what to do to make your communication with others much more effective
• Understand the basis of personal change and what do you need to do if you want to change something about yourself or your life for better.
• Know how we create our reality and and how we make a subjective experience out of everything that is happening around us.

You see, our neurology is presented with huge amount of external events at any given moment. These are things that you process via your five senses – things that we see, hear, feel, smell and taste.

In fact, we are presented with no less than 2 000 000 bits of information per second.  Our conscious brain, however; can process only 134 bits of information per second, selected by process of deletion, distortion and generalisation. A huge amount of information goes simply unnoticed (processed only by our unconscious mind).

For example, right now, you may be fully aware of what you can see in front of you, but you may not be aware of how your back feels agains chair you’re sitting on, or how your feet feel against the floor – until I mentioned so.

At any given moment, we notice only very little in comparison to what is really happening around us. Which, on one hand, is very helpful, because if process of deletion, distortion and generalisation didn’t exist, we would be overwhelmed with huge amount of information and we could possibly function.

The trouble starts when we don’t notice what we want to experience – for example love, confidence, money making opportunities, or slimmer and healthier body.

So this begs a question: Out of 2 million bits of information that is presented to us every single second, which 134 do we actually notice? How does our mind chooses what to notice and what to ignore?

This selection process depends on what we call internal filters in our mind – our attitude, values, beliefs, past decisions, memories and many others. These filters determine our focus.

All of the information that comes from outside sift through these internal filters, resulting in creating a certain internal representation – picture we have in our mind.

This internal representation is intimately linked with our state (how we feel) and our physiology (how we use our body). All together, it produces a certain behaviour, certain reaction, action, and essentially, certain results.

So the basis of personal change is working on your internal filters. No matter what do you want to change, what do you want to become, do, or have, by working on your attitude, belief system, values and other internal filters in your mind, you will change your focus.

And when you change your focus, you will start noticing different things, you will produce different set of internal representations, you will change the way you feel, and subsequently, everything else will change too.

That is the power of personal development. If you work on yourself, there is absolutely nothing you can do, be or have.

Having more money seems to be on everyone’s lips nowadays. Creating financial independence is wish for many, definite goal for some.

And so it should be. The old saying ‘”There are far more important things than money” is certainly not 100 % true. Sure, we can’t buy happiness, health or love with money, but lack of it certainly doesn’t help either!

The good thing is that to become financially independent  is not a rocking science – all it requires is discipline and a good plan!

If you haven’t set yourself a goal to become financially independent, do it today – and here are the 3 simple things you DEFINITELY need to start with if you haven’t done so already:

1. Save 10 % of your income

“Pay yourself first” is principle that all self-made millionnaires swear by, yet only very few people have got enough discipline to do that.

Yes, it’s much easier to spend money on a good holiday, or the newest fashion item. Yet, in a long run, it won’t get you too far!

People who created their financial independence sacrificed pleasures of everyday life for a long term benefit – they drive used cars, wear not expensive watches, budget their spending, think twice about spending money that won’t earn them anything and they religiously save 10 % of every pound they earn.

Many people did that – so can you. Modest income is not a good excuse – it’s all about adjusting, budgeting and a little bit of discipline.

Learn to love idea of saving. Save 10 % of your income even when going gets tough or you must say ‘no’ to something you rally like. This will all come back to your many times over!

2. Get rid of your debts

If you have debts, make your priority to get rid of them. Credit cards, loans and car finance will forever keep you in never – ending ‘rat race’  – earning to pay your creditors!

Make a good plan to eliminate any debts you have, in reasonable time. And here is how you do it:

Learn to live on 70 % on your income. Remaining 30 % go towards creating your financial independence – 20 % towards settling your debts, 10 % towards your savings.

It’s as simple. You may think it’s impossible to live on 70 % of your income, yet EVERYONE who committed to do this simply found way how to do it. It’s all about reviewing your monthly income, outcome, and budgeting.

Quicker you get rid of debts, quicker you can start to invest money elsewhere – and good investments will bring you money back – many times multiplied.

I went through this exercise myself in past as I was in debt and I must say that although it was sometimes very tough, it proved to be one of the best things I did!

3.) Fix your attitude about money

“I need more money”

“Ooh, I can’t afford that!”

“Ooh, I’m forever broke!”

“How can I ever do anything in this crazy economy!”

Oh, stop that already, will you?

Moaning about your financial situation won’t get you anywhere. You see – when you moan and worry about money, your mind is focused on ‘lack of money’ rather than abundance of it. And here is the thing – you will ALWAYS get what you focus on, every single time.

Change your focus right away. Be grateful what you have – no matter how broke you think you are, you still belong to the richest third of this planet. There are millions of people who would never even dream of reading this on a computer screen!

Always look for better in your financial situation and look forward to what’s coming.

If you can’t afford something, don’t moan about not being able to afford it, tell yourself: “Ok, I can’t afford it just YET, but I look forward to short time in a future when I can afford many things like this. “

Be curious about HOW can you afford it. Our mind is goal orientated and if you focus on increasing your income, you will start noticing many other opportunities and possibilities to do just that.

Beware of your thinking patterns when spending money or thinking about it. Are you spending money with pleasure (after consideration of course) and gratitude or are you swearing when you find ‘another bill’ ? If you moan every time you need to pay something, you are thinking in a mode of ‘lack of money’.

Learn to think in a mode of ‘financial abundance’ – be grateful for what you have, spend with pleasure (even gratitude), knowing that you’ll get many times more back. Be proud of every penny that sits on your saving account and thankful for every penny you put towards settling your debts or investments.

When mastered, these 3 simple disciplines will  eventually bring you financial freedom you want. In fact, it is absolutely inevitable!

“Don’t Worry, Be Happy!”- This Bobby McFerrin’s tune became a classic long time ago, yet it seems that not many people are taking him very seriously!

When Bobby wrote this song, he may not realise that if EVERYBODY was listening to him, there would be no need to stress about the house prices or prices of electricity today. Am I exaggerating? Perhaps not that much.

You see, when you worry, what you’re really saying to your mind is: “Oh, I worry about this so much, can I please have more of that?” And it delivers.

Worrying is an unhelpful habit of focusing on what you don’t want and creates the focus of your mind that results in having more of that.

Worry or anxiety is a fear related to future, being fearful of something that has not happened yet! When you think about it, it is really a kind of ‘irrational’ fear. Our Future is driven by probability, of course, and you can influence it by redirecting your thoughts in productive way. How?

When you catch yourself worrying, always remember that:
‘Worrying is simply a warning from your unconscious mind to focus on what we WANT.”

Think about positive outcome of whatever you feel worried about, and what you find is that, if you’ve done that successfully, you cannot feel worried!

I wish you could appreciate fully the effect of not worrying and feeling happy at your will. I wish you would be one of those people that have experienced massive positive changes in their everyday life by adopting this mentality!

Have a worry free day today. Listen to this song again, and dance with me…do that for a month, with no worries at all, and your life will change. I promise!

According to Hungarian Biologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, we are presented with more than 2 000 000 bits of information every single second.

Out of this huge amount of information we can consciously process only 134 bits of information. The rest of the information is processed without our awareness. In other words, we do not notice those 1999866 (or so! ) bits of information that are presented to us!

A huge number of information that is presented to us is going simply unnoticed.

What does this mean practically?

If, for example, you are not happy (and wish you would be), it doesn’t mean that happiness is not there for you. All the happiness is there for you, however, your mind is programmed not to notice it. Your focus is set on those things that make you ‘not happy’.

What ever you’re not (and want to be) is all available to you, you just need to learn how to stop deleting those information that are relevant and useful. Essentially, you need to adjust your focus.

Our focus is determined by our internal filters – our beliefs, our values, our past decisions, our memories, our attitude and others.

Filters in our mind determine our focus. Our focus determines results.

Therefore, the basis for personal change is working / changing our internal filters so that they fully support our future outcomes and goals. We need to work on our past memories and decision that may effect our future – essentially this is about  dealing with our past fully; we need to work on our attitude, belief system, and values.

When you change your internal filters, your focus will change. When you change your internal filters, you will change. And when you change, the whole world around you changes with you.

So – how much don’t you notice?