Eliminate Problems with the Legendary Unsticker

I was working on the navigation for a website last week, but I kept getting stuck. While it didn’t seem like an overly complex task, there were lots of options & details to be catered for, & I kept running up against a brick wall.

After trying my default approach (“Think harder!”) for a while, I decided to take a different angle, & use an approach that always helps get things moving when they’ve been feeling stuck: The Legendary Unsticker.

The first step for using the Unsticker is this: Think about your problem and define it in a single sentence. The sentence I came up with was this:

“I have been having difficulty coming up with a rational & solid structure for the website that will appeal to people, be useful to them & be logically organised.”

Then I started using the Unsticker. The Unsticker is the creation of NLP Trainer & published NLP author, Peter Freeth. As well as being a superb NLP trainer, one of the things I love about Peter is the creative & innovative way he applies NLP (that’s part of why I asked him to be my co-trainer in Salad).

Here’s an example: Peter doesn’t focus on solving problems – he focuses on “breaking” problems so the problem doesn’t work anymore!

Huh!?!

Here’s how it works. When a person says they have “a problem” or that they’re “stuck”, what they’re really saying is “When I think about this situation in this way, I can’t see/hear/feel a workable solution.”

From an NLP perspective, problems don’t tend to exist in “the world” but in a person’s map of the world. When they enrich their map, the “problem” disappears (see my article NLP Presuppositions Part One – Maps & Models for more details).

The Unsticker uses carefully designed questions to influence the way a person represents their problem. As the internal representations of what used to be called a problem begin to change, the person no longer experiences it as “a problem”, & solutions begin to emerge. Cool huh!

You can take it for a trial run at http://www.ciauk.com/changemagic/unstick.php

Before you begin: Think about your problem and define it in a single sentence. You might even like to write it down – it can be kind of fun to look back at something you used to perceive as a problem & realise just how easily you have made changes.

I used The Unsticker for about 15 minutes, making a few notes as I went along. Then I started creating the navigation design with renewed vigour, & a sense of fluidity. I was no longer stuck!

Next time you notice that you’ve been perceiving something as a problem, have a go on The Unsticker & enjoy discovering just how quickly you begin to notice new solutions & possibilities emerging.

Rapid Belief Change Using the "Pen & Paper" Technique

I was doing an informal coaching session with a colleague the other day who wanted to lose weight. Early on in our conversation, he said "I've always thought of myself as a slightly overweight person."

My spidey-senses started tingling, & asked "Who would you be if you were not a slightly overweight person."

"I don't know" he said.

Our self-perception has great power over our experiences. This person had been watching what he ate, exercising for an hour at a time, 4 or 5 times a week. What's more, he'd been doing it for ages. So why couldn't he seem to shift this excess weight?

His self-perception: "I've always thought of myself as a slightly overweight person."

This is an identity statement, & reflected his sense of "Who I am". We all like to be somebody, & we all havea desire to remain consistent with that sense of identity. In my colleague's case, he didn't have a sense of who he would be if he weren't that slightly overweight person! On one level, "losing weight" would equal "losing self".

Wild, huh!

That's why no matter how sensibly he ate or how much he exercised, his weight didn't shift - he didn't want to lose himself!

(Well, that was my hypothesis after the first two minutes, anyway. I have been known to leap wildly to conclusions, but the conclusions I leap to tend to be fairly well-informed :-) ).

After thinking about it some more, he decided that rather than being "a slightly overweight person", he would like to be "of average weight".

So I had him do a simple exercise. I asked him to take two pieces of paper & write one of the following sentence-stems at the top of each.

• Losing weight is...
• Being average weight is...
• People who are average weight are...

Then I got him to brainstorm ways of completing the sentences for a couple of minutes (I helped out by saying the sentence-stems above with various tonalities, then waiting for him to complete them).

He started out with "party-approved" ideas like:

• People who are average weight are...healthy, happy, fit

But after a while, some unexpected conclusions started popping out, like:

• People who are average weight are...boring, stupid, nasty, with daft trousers

Suddenly, he started laughing as he remembered various incidents from his school days involving people of average weight, whom he'd sworn to himself that he'd never be like.

While at a conscious level, he'd wanted to become slim & fit, his unconscious mind was holding various negative associations with those ideas. With the process of remembering them & laughing about them, he seemed to be making some significant shifts, but I wanted to be sure, so I invited him to say "I am a person of average weight", then notice & accept any thoughts or sensations that arose.

He did this various times, & I did a bit of future pacing to lock in the changes.

While I was using this simple technique for making changes around weight, you can use it to explore & alter your beliefs around:

• Money & wealth (something I've done on various occasions: "Money is...", "Dealing with money is...", "Wealthy people are...")
  
  
• Relationships (I got a woman who was keen to have a relationship to do this exercise, & she came out with "People in relationships are smug & miserable!", among other things: "Men/Women are...", "Relationships are...", "People in relationships are...")
  
  
• Success in general: "Success is...", "Becoming successful is...", "Successful people are..."
  
  
• Any other area of your life

The wording is optional - you can tune it to whatever your situation is. But keep writing responses until nothing else comes out - then do a little more. :-)

I received a call from my colleague two weeks later, who reported that he'd lost eight pounds, but the strange thing was, he hadn't even been thinking about it! This is often the case with NLP & Hypnosis - something which had been perceived as a problem, & had been a focal point for worry etc, isn't any longer!

I can vouch for that - I can't believe the things I used to think!

How To Have An Amazingly Exciting Life Full of Cool Experiences & Stuff

Hi all,

For the past week, I've been reading & listening to my new favourite book, The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris, a 29 year-old entrepreneur who went from working 12-hour days, 7 days a week to travelling the world having exciting adventures, while still drawing a substantial income. His superb, reality-tunnel-busting book tells you how how he did it, & how you can do it too.

So what does it all have to do with NLP & Hypnosis?

Plenty. For example, when I started my company Salad nearly 5 years ago, I had several goals:

• To help lots of people realise they're capable of more than they thought they were & learn NLP.
• To spend my working time doing something I love doing.
• To create fininacial freedom & time freedom

I've been doing the first two of these pretty much from the first Salad was in business, but the third one has been more elusive. Let's look at it more closely:

To create financial freedom & time freedom

Financial freedom is an abstract concept, but what it means to me is being able to have all your expenses covered by passive income - income that comes in without you having to do anything. Examples of passive income might include:

• Dividends from investments
• Interest paid to you by the bank
• Royalties from songs, books or other intellectual property
• Revenue from a business that runs without your involvement

The big idea is that financial freedom resulting from passive income leads to time freedom. I've always defined time freedom as "not having to work". The regular response I get from people when I talk about "not having to work" is a variation of the following:

• But I like my work!
• I would get bored if I wasn't working!
• It's bad not to work, etc.

I then explain that it's not all about working, but about not HAVING to work.

Anyway, that's all by the by, because after nearly five years in busines, & having built a successful business which generates residual income, I suddenly realised that:

• I work full time
• I take few holidays
• I have not been experiencing time freedom, quite the opposite in fact!

So why is this? There are several reasons:

People like what's familiar
Human beings like what's familiar. While we might have dreams of an exciting future, what we did yesterday has a proven track record - after all, it helped us survive until today! This 'familiarity factor' is sometimes referred to as your comfort zone. The comfort zone gets established whenever things have been a certain way over a significant period of time (sometimes as short as 3 weeks). While I've been talking about time freedom for years, what I'm familiar with is working. I've been working full-time since I was a teenager. Not only that, my dad & my grandfathers & the rest of my ancestors have been working full-time since the industrial revolution. That's hundreds of years of genetics, imprinting, conditioning, learning & social factors. For me, working full-time has been familiar, & highly rewarded.


Time freedom is an attractive but abstract concept
Time freedom is abstract - I like the idea of it, but it doesn't have anywhere near the same amount of substance as my day to day working life. Plus, it's non-specific. If you were planning a holiday, & your destination was "Peace & relaxation", you'd have to get way more specific before you can book your ticket.

"Peace & relaxation" sounds good, but it's an abstract concept. It's tough to buy that ticket. On the other hand, a three-week trip to the Maldives next June is something that can actually happen.

"Time freedom" sounds good too, but it's an abstract concept. It's tough to buy that ticket. Oops!


There are no voids at the unconscious level
You've probably heard people say that the unconscious doesn't process negatives (you can't not think of a pink elephant etc). Top NLP trainer Chris Hall says "there are no voids at the unconscious level", & uses the metaphor of the blind spot.

Check this out:













Cover your right eye with your hand, then (using your left eye) look at the small cross to the right side of the image. Slowly moving your head towards the screen, while looking at the cross, & at a certain point, the red dot will disappear.

That's because the red dot is now in your blind spot, where the optic nerve joins the back of your eye. But here's the cool bit: the space where the red dot was gets filled in with the blue lines around it. Your brain fills in the space with what it thinks should be there, using whatever is around it!

This is what my brain did with the 'void' that I created when I focused on the abstract concept of 'time freedom' - filled it in with what was all around it. And what was all around it? Work!


And now for the solution
The solution is incredibly obvious: plan how you are going to fill your free time, with specific, scheduled goals. Here are some of the ones Timothy Ferris has already accomplished:

• Princeton University Guest Lecturer in Electrical Engineering and High-Tech Entrepreneurship
• No-Holds-Barred Cage Fighter, Vanquisher of Four World Champions
• Speaker of Six Foreign Languages: Japanese, Chinese, German, Spanish, Italian, and Korean
• First American in History to hold a Guiness World Record in Tango
• Trainer and Advisor to more than 30 World Record Holders in Professional and Olympic Sports
• Nutriceutical Designer and Glycemic Index Researcher
• National Chinese Kickboxing Champion
• Political Asylum Researcher and Activist
• Knight and Ordained Minister
• MTV Breakdancer in Taiwan
• Speedo Model in the Hamptons
• Actor on Hit TV Series in China and Hong Kong

Unbelievably inspirational, huh? So here are a few things I'm planning to fill my 'time freedom' with over the next few years:

• Get a standing ovation from a crowd of 50,000 people when I talk (if you know of an audience, I am willing to travel)
• Earn my black belt in Krav Maga
• Eat at one of the world's greatest restaurants each month
• Go on the fantasticable
• Get a massage each week
• Learn a foreign language

I'll keep you posted! In the meantime, I strongly suggest you check out The 4-Hour Workbook.

Cheers
Jamie

How Changing One Word Can Save Your Sanity

Hi guys

Hats off to Nikki Owen (Uber-assistant of my company, Salad) who saved my bacon (and quite possibly my sanity) this week with some classic Real World NLP.

A bit of background: I used to work managing large, mission-critical business projects for publishing companies. While I was good at my job, there was a minor problem: I really didn’t like it! So I quit my job, learned NLP & created Salad so I could do what I love.

So far so good.

The problem started when we set some new business goals, and I decided that we needed to use a ‘project’ to make them happen. We duly started having meetings, creating plans, and generally doing all the things you need to do when running a project.

And I started getting tense. Then I started getting tenser…

It came to a head the other day when Nikki told me that for the past week or two I’d been snippy with the people on my team. Now here’s the thing: I have an amazing team at Salad, and the last thing I want to do is be snippy with them.

Plus, being snippy totally messes with my preferred self-image as a wise and serene leader! We had to do something fast.

That’s when Nikki had one of her (not uncommon) flashes of brilliance: “Instead of calling it a project, we’re going to call it an adventure.”

Now, I know you may be saying “That’s just changing the name”, but it’s actually doing much much more.

You see, words don’t start at the mouth. When you hear or say a word, loads of associations are brought into your mind. If the words have quite a narrow focus (Eg. iPod, chair, towel) then the range of connections in your mind is typically quite small. But for words with a broader focus, or where you have a lot of emotionally-charged experience, the range of connections is much larger. (To learn more about how this works and how you can use it to your advantage, check out Watch Your Language, an article I wrote a few years ago).

In my case, describing something as a project activated certain skills & abilities (useful) and a whole bunch of unpleasant memories & emotions (less useful). In my mind, the word project was associated with a bunch of images, sounds, smells, tastes & feelings that was something like this:

The word adventure, on the other hand, was associated with a bunch of images, sounds, smells, tastes & feelings that was something like this:

Aaaah. And relax.

Now that I’ve finally figured this out, I’ll do some NLP to get access to all the project skills & other resources, while leaving all the nasty project feelings & associations in a box at the bottom of the ocean.

But I’ll keep calling it an adventure. After all, anything worth doing is worth getting excited about!

Instant Performance Enhancers

Hi guys

Welcome to my new Real World NLP & Hypnosis blog. I’ll be updating the blog regularly with real life examples of NLP & Hypnosis in action, as well as whatever else I happen to be exploring / pondering / obsessing about on the day.

I moved into my new house in Leicester the day before yesterday. Speaking of which, a million thank-yous to Nikki Owen (formerly Nikki Leigh), my amazing assistant for making the move a reality - I’m really grateful to have Nikki heading up such a fantastic team here at Salad.

Anyway, last night I was playing with the superb game, Bop It Extreme 2.

This seriously addictive game involves responding to spoken commands (“Flick it”, “Spin it”, “Twist it”, “Pull it” & “Bop it”) issues at high speed over a ‘beatbox’ soundtrack.

Because it requires both hands & both sides of the brain, as well as a combination of linguistic, rhythmic, visual & tactile senses, it’s great for inducing high-performance ‘flow’ states.

Anyway, I’ve been playing with it over the last week, getting scores of up to 70 or 80, when I suddenly realised I hadn’t set a specific goal. As an experiment, I set a goal to get a score of 200. I imagined getting a 200 score, imagined how I would feel, then started playing the game. Whenever my attention started to wander, I would say “200” to myself.

It seemed like I’d been playing for ages when I finally missed one, & the machine said “Game over – high score – 230”.

This was a potent reminder for me of just how powerful, practical & instantaneous the effects are when you set a goal. This isn’t because goals are “a good thing” – it’s because of the way that human neurology works. What you focus on increases. When I focused on getting a score over 200, my unconscious in ways that I couldn’t figure out consciously. mind took over & helped me to get it

When you set goals in your life, you instantly harness the awesome power of your unconscious mind to help you achieve them.