Shifts Work

Look at Halloween through NLP eyes

What does NLP allow us to see happening at this scary time of year? Look at how Halloween reveals the best way to approach our deep fears and find the resources to deal with them.

You don't need a fresh start: you need to make compost

It's the season when fresh starts seems possible. We look at flowers and green buds and think: "that's what I want. A fresh start."

But go for a walk in the woods and you'll come back spattered with mud. Nature doesn't start fresh: she starts with the muck of dead leaves and fallen branches and other things that decompose near the roots of trees. You've got the raw material for emotional compost: the hurt, the frustration, the guilt.  You don't need to make them disappear, you need to let them decompose and be transformed into the stuff that nurtures growth.

You don't have to keep your eyes on the muck: just find the compost pile and stir things up once in a while. The rest of the time, focus on warmth and light and air. You can be sure that chemistry works, and the muck will decompose into something useful.

Celebrate Like It's the Most Important Choice You'll Make

Celebrations are fun - but are they important? Listen to find out why celebration is one of the most important choices we make as human beings. Anyone will pay attention and remember times of threat or suffering. We have to consciously make an effort to pay equal attention to times of achievement and satisfaction. When we do, we store the light we need in dark times.

I wish you enough: an exercise in choosing a more resourceful self

Many NLP trainers will talk about powerful anchors. An anchor is an object or physical sensation that is connected to a particular state or experience. 

Here's the truth: it's not the anchor that is powerful. It is the choice to connect with the best in yourself that is powerful.

But for many people, your best, most resourceful self seems out of reach. When you ask yourself for a time you were brave and clever and amazing, you come up blank. So let's start with something simpler, something easy to find, something potentially more useful.

Let's explore times when you had enough strength, enough flexibility, enough energy to do the thing you wanted to do in that moment. And then you can explore what difference it makes when you remind yourself that you can hold enough in the palm of your hand. . . because you are already enough.