Shifts Work

This exercise takes less than 10 minutes to demonstrate that mindful attention in response to language allows you to find the edge to your experience of pain. As you do, you'll find your breathing settles, your mind clears, and you develop the ability to choose to focus on your pain or to focus on what is on the other side of the edges of your pain.  And if you do focus on your pain, you will find that human focus blurs, so that paying attention to only one thing creates a sense of calm and space, even when what you give your focus is painful at first. And you will notice that on the other side of the edges of your pain, you are calm and centred and you have what you need to move forward.

In this ten minute podcast episode, Linda Ferguson walks you through a three steps to move you from stressed to energized. You'll learn how matching the intensity and tension of states can allow for small, incremental changes that teach your mind to see stress as part of a process you've experienced successfully in the past.

When you look at a picture of your life, do you see calm or chaos? Most of us get caught up in the nots: not clear, not comfortable, not on purpose.  Take five minutes to look for grounded, specific, and true. You'll find your way to calm, no matter what's in the picture. 

Manage your language to manage your attention to manage your mindset.

What do you think it takes to master language? Have you been looking for new vocabulary so that you will have the very best words? Maybe you've been searching for a script or formula to memorize so that you will always pull out just the right words at just the right moment. Somewhere, you suspect that this isn't quite right.

Language is not a thing: it's a connection. It connects experience with ideas, and people with other people, and you with the bigger self that produces most of your words. A master of language focuses attention on the connection they want to make, and then greet the words that come to them with expectation and curiosity. When you control your focus and your intention, you'll find that you pick words that give you important information about the connections you most want to make.

In 5 minutes, you'll understand metaphor than you ever understood it in high school. Metaphor isn't just a concept from literature: it's the language of full engagement, the language that uses the most of your brain and reaches out to activate the most of someone else's brain/body/mind system. Using it better consciously takes a little time. It's like making change in the way you walk or pronounce words or breathe. You use metaphor so naturally, it's hard to change. The rewards for changing make it worth the effort. You'll become better at understanding your own thinking and changing other people's.

Learn more at www.nlpcanada.com (where you can download our free ebook on Fully Engaged living).

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.

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.

Maybe you're stuck. You've been hurt or disappointed and you don't know what to do next. You're reaching for something you can't quite define. You're doing well, but you've hit the edge of your interest and there's no clear path ahead.  

Take 10 minutes and imagine that you have the chance to sit with 3 people, someone you trust, someone you admire, someone who loves you. If you could see through their eyes, what would you discover that you don't know now? What new attitude or information would come into your awareness to help you find that next step?

When the Buddhists call it "monkey mind" they mean that the ideas, emotions, memories, passions and connections in your head act like a troop of monkeys, bouncing, climbing, feeding, interacting and making mischief. Use this brief exercise to help your monkeys settle into connection and prepare to work together.

Sometimes it's hard to feel thankful on cue. You might know that mindful gratitude is a wonderful attitude that leads to all kinds of benefits. It does, but how do you get there? For many people, thanksgiving holidays are a reminder that they are alone, or that their families are nuts, or that they have way too much to do. You might be stressed or insecure or tired. What's the best way to put all that aside and notice that you are already thankful? What's the best way to get from grumpy to glad?