Do your best

Have you ever done your best?

Have you ever tried as hard as you possibly can?

Have you done all of the preparation work that you possibly could?

Have you trained as hard as you could have?

Have you reread and rewritten your work enough?

Have you been focussed enough?

Have you tried every possible way to get it done?

Have you sought professional help or expertise?

Have you eliminated distractions?

Have you avoided all temptation?

Have you given it everything you’ve got?

Chances are that the answer is a big fat NO.

That’s OK.

(almost everyone else will say no to that too)

Stop beating yourself up. Accept that your not perfect and be a little nicer to yourself

There are, of course, exceptions – maybe you’re one of them – and if you are – Well Done.

I’m very impressed and all that but seriously – get a life!

Smile, relax, have fun, eat a cake, daydream, watch silly TV, make up stories in your head – it’s all really cool stuff 🙂

So maybe do your best, but then again, maybe don’t.

Try to be happy…

…but don’t try too hard!

Magical Metaphor

I’m over the moon to be writing about metaphors. You know – metaphorically speaking.

A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.

Metaphors are also described as figures of speech, allegories, parables, analogies, word pictures and symbols.

They creep into our everyday life without most of us even noticing.

Have you ever really been as sick as a parrot? (I didn’t even know parrots were particularly prone to sickness).

Do you ever get run off your feet?

Have you ever actually been on cloud 9? (or clouds 1-8 for that matter)

Does your head get foggy? (or rainy, snowy or windy?)

When was the last time you said something was amazing or awesome? When was the last time you were genuinely amazed or in awe?

Is the world a stage?

Have you ever drowned in debt?

Metaphors are everywhere.

Personally I rather like looking out for them? When you start to spot them you can start to notice the language people are using with regards to their metaphors – it can be quite revealing.

As a hypnotherapist I deal a lot with metaphors and symbolism. The subconscious mind is much better at changing things if you give it symbols to work with.

You might want to give this little exercise a go.

Let’s imagine you have something coming up that you feel uncomfortable with. Maybe it’s a test or exam, maybe it’s a meeting that you are worried about, maybe it’s a conversation you are not looking forward to having. What ever it is try to think of a symbol that represents how you feel about it at the moment. The symbol can be a shape, a colour, a character, an object – whatever works for you. Now think about a symbol that represents how you would LIKE to feel about it – easy, relaxed, confident – whatever is best for you.

Once you’ve got the new improved symbol in your mind, make it destroy the other, less useful symbol. It can squash it, rub it out, fade it away, blow it up, burn it down, screw it up and throw it away – what ever suits you – just make your new improved symbol the only one that left afterwards.

Now – ask yourself how you feel about the thing that you were concerned about….

…better?

Using this technique along with hypnosis can and does make powerful changes for people – you should give it a try – it could leave you feeling on top of the world!

(metaphorically speaking of course)

Know yourself

Hi, my name is Sue.

I’m good at some things and not so good at others.

I am easily distracted – I think I may have been a magpie in a former incarnation. Shiny things (shiny ideas, toys, time wasters) can grab my attention.

I am good at finding creative solutions to problems.

For instance I get very excited at the start of a project – I come up with lots of ideas and think of imaginative and creative ways to do things. As time goes by I can become bored with my ideas and / or lose confidence in them and some of my plans and ideas fall by the wayside – my long term consistency can be lacking.

Other people can struggle with coming up with a plan, but once it’s made they will see it through to the finish, no matter what.

We are all different.

Now, of course, you can try to mould yourself into the person you want to be, but if you are fighting against your nature, then you are going to find it a difficult task to achieve.

The trick to achieving want you want is to understand yourself and try to work with your strengths.

Whenever I see a client who wants to change their life in some way, I ask them what they are good at, and what they are not so good at.

It constantly surprises me how difficult people find these questions to answer.

So – What are you good at?

– What are you not so good at?

Now think about a goal or plan that you have for yourself – maybe it’s to lose weight, get fitter, get a promotion, start your own business, grow your blog, change your relationship – whatever it is, think about how you can use your strengths to help you to achieve it. When you’ve worked out how you can get things changed, think about what might go wrong. Go back and look at the things you don’t do so well, and try to use your strengths to find solutions to overcome these potential obstacles.

This achieves two things.

Firstly you are working to your strengths – even when dealing with the things you don’t do so well. This means you are far more likely to succeed than if you are trying to change the things you struggle with.

Secondly – you have a plan. I know it’s a cheesy old saying but ‘Fail to plan and you plan to fail’. We are all at risk of forgetting what our goal is for thinking about what we want/don’t want right now. By having a plan – and writing it down – you achieve a different mindset. You keep your eyes on the prize and don’t forget about the overall aim so easily. If you set yourself mini goals within your overall goal it also helps to keep you focussed and motivated as you tick off the things that you have achieved.

Anyone can do anything the set their mind to – it takes work and dedication, but it can be done. I just think knowing yourself and acting accordingly makes it so much easier.

Good Luck with your goals 🙂

How to influence people

My Job is to influence people.

I’m a Hypnotherapist and people pay me to influence the way they think and feel, so I’ve learned a few tricks along the way.

One of the least successful methods to get anyone to change is to tell them to, yet that seems to be what most people do most of the time.

Another thing people think will work is to explain things to people. They believe that if the other person just understands that what they are thinking/doing is wrong then they will change their behaviour. Unfortunately, this rarely works either. Take smoking for instance. We all know that smoking is damaging to us, and that we are likely to suffer ill health if we do it, yet there are still millions of smokers in the world. Telling them so stop doesn’t work. Explaining that it is bad for them doesn’t work. So what does?

Generally speaking, the best way of influencing someone (who isn’t hypnotised) is by leading by example.

If someone has a phobia of spiders there is a pretty good chance they were influenced into this way of thinking by someone close to them who was also scared of spiders. They saw this person freak out and subconsciously decided that this was a good way to react. Conversely if a person with an existing phobia is surrounded by people who are calm and relaxed around spiders, they may start to feel more relaxed themselves.

I had a client the other day who desperately wanted their partner to come for a hypnotherapy session with me. The partner was adamant that it wasn’t for them and refused point blank to even think about it. So my client booked 3 sessions with me to work on an issue she had. She went home after each session and told her partner how good it was making her feel and how much she was gaining from it. By the third session, he was asking if he could take her place.

When I was 11 years old I was told by a headmaster that the best piece of advice he could give me was to choose my friends wisely. It was a great piece of advice. Not only have my friends helped me through some difficult times and made good times better, but they have also influenced me. They have shaped my ideas and beliefs, they have led by example and I have learned so much from them. If I had chosen other friends, who knows where my life would have taken me. My advice to you would be to choose friends you respect. Choose friends you care about. Choose friends you want to be like.

If you want to influence someone be the example. Be their friend and show them by your words and more importantly your actions how good life can be. Show them what it is to be strong, caring, committed, healthy, reliable, responsible, fun, interesting and non judgemental. It may take some time, but you will be amazed at the impact it can have.

Everyone said

Here’s my weekly poem – I hope you enjoy it

It Couldn’t Be Done

BY EDGAR ALBERT GUEST

Somebody said that it couldn’t be done

      But he with a chuckle replied

That “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one

      Who wouldn’t say so till he’d tried.

So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin

      On his face. If he worried he hid it.

He started to sing as he tackled the thing

      That couldn’t be done, and he did it!

Somebody scoffed: “Oh, you’ll never do that;

      At least no one ever has done it;”

But he took off his coat and he took off his hat

      And the first thing we knew he’d begun it.

With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,

      Without any doubting or quiddit,

He started to sing as he tackled the thing

      That couldn’t be done, and he did it.

There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,

      There are thousands to prophesy failure,

There are thousands to point out to you one by one,

      The dangers that wait to assail you.

But just buckle in with a bit of a grin,

      Just take off your coat and go to it;

Just start in to sing as you tackle the thing

      That “cannot be done,” and you’ll do it.

Sometimes you just need to get started

Morning my shiny happy people – how are you today?

It’s a beautiful sunny Monday morning here in Coventry, a bit on the nippy side, but lovely none the less.

I have to admit to something.

I’ve been procrastinating over a couple of things.

The first one was a paper work thing. I was a bit unsure about what I needed to do, so I found every excuse I could to avoid doing it. I found ‘busy’ work to do so that I could argue that I had been doing other things, I became very easily distracted by anything and everything that would take me away from it and I generally avoided having to get on with it. That has changed today and it makes me feel really good.

It feels great when you get something you have been putting off out of the way and you don’t have to think about it any more. If I do think about it, I think – well done me – I did that, rather than thinking that I should be doing it and feeling guilty and a bit rubbish about myself.

I bet you have one or two things that you are deliberately or subconsciously putting off…so what could be your trigger to getting them done?

Oddly, for me, it was getting on with something else that I had also been putting off.

My partner and I enjoy a good meal – maybe a little more than we should. Over the last few years the pounds have started to creep on and despite talking a lot about losing weight and using phases like ‘we could try this diet’ or ‘we should really do more exercise’ we hadn’t really committed to changing our habits at all – that is until this weekend. We stuck to a high protein, low carb meal plan and were quite impressed with the results – we both lost 4 pounds each. 4 pounds in 2 days is a hell of a kick start to a diet, and it made us both feel really good about sticking to it and achieving real results. This ‘win’ reminded me how good it feels to achieve something I’d been putting off and spurred me on to do my paperwork.

I was once told that the secret to getting things done is getting things started.

What are you going to start today?

Word of the Month – Persistence

Persistence

Lets be honest – this is where most of us fall down.

We start off with good intentions, full of enthusiasm for what we are about to do, the mountains we’ll climb, the heights we will reach, the success we’ll achieve.

Then we start to get a bit bored.

It starts to seem like a bit too much work.

We forget what we wanted to achieve in the first place and start to think about what we want to do right at this particular moment.

Maybe a few obstacles have got in our way.

Maybe someone has said something that has demotivated us.

Maybe those mountains seem a bit too high right now.

You haven’t failed until you’ve stopped trying.

Persistence is King

It’s said that experts in a field have failed at it more times than most people have even tried.

Persistence

Mastering a skill – really mastering it – takes about 10,000 hours of practice.

Persistence

So, think back to the start of this year – what did you want to achieve?

Are you still on track?

If not, maybe it’s time to remember why you wanted to do it in the first place.

Pick yourself up, forgive yourself for not being as amazing as you had hoped you would be and get back on it.

Persistence

How do I change my Life?

How do I change my life?

I don’t

I change me

I change how I think

I change how I act

I change what I do

I change what I want

I change what I eat

I change what I know

I change what I feel

I change me

and then my life changes all on its own

A change is as good as a rest

Hello!

I’ve had long hair for a while now, but on Wednesday I decided it had to go.

I booked an appointment at the hairdressers and today I went and had it all (well not quite ALL, but a hell of a lot of it) cut off.

It feels great.

Big changes are often scary, and I know that getting your hair cut is not that big of a deal, but I think it can be representative of how we feel about ourselves.

Quite often we change styles, cuts or colours when we move to new phases of our lives. It’s a way of saying goodbye to the old you and starting afresh.

Personally, I’ve been happy with the last phase, and I hope to be happy with the next one, but I must admit, I’m a little bit excited to see where it goes.

I was working with a client today who feels that they are stuck in a phase of their life where they don’t want to be any more. They felt that they didn’t have the strength to let go and move on.

It didn’t take long to find where the self destructive patterns of behaviour were, and with just a few tweeks and a reminder of how good her life had been before she entered this phase, she left feeling confident, optimistic, positive and enthusiastic about how she could move forward.

Those are things we can all strive to feel.

C.O.P.E.

Confident

Optimistic

Positive

Enthusiastic.

That’s how we cope.

The Blogging Habit

Most of the people reading this will be bloggers.

There are many reasons for people to blog. Some want to shout into empty space, some want to unload to a place where no one knows who they are, some just want to share their stories, but most of us want followers.

So why do we want followers?

For some people it may be affirmation that what they are saying is interesting. For others it may be a boost to their egos. Others are using their blog to promote or sell something. Some may be trying to launch a writing career. What ever your personal reason to blog, if you want followers then you have to get into the habit of blogging regularly.

I know. I started this blog about 18 months ago and I had this silly idea that if I blogged once a month or so, somehow, people would magically find me and my stuff and would all want to know what was coming next. Some did, and for that I am genuinely grateful, but numbers were low. In retrospect, that wasn’t really very surprising. Firstly, there just wasn’t enough material there for people to get what they needed from my blog. Secondly, how were they supposed to know it was there?

In August last year I set myself a little blogging challenge. I decided that I was going to blog every day for 90 days. I didn’t have a goal for how may new followers or likes I wanted. I just knew I wanted to start a new blogging habit of writing EVERY DAY.

To start with it was relatively easy. I was full of enthusiasm and ideas that came pouring out. About 3 weeks in it started to get a little harder. I struggled to think what I would write about, I was worried about repeating myself, I started to make excuses for why I shouldn’t complete my 90 days.

Then I made a plan.

I wrote down a little blogging plan. I thought about topics that I could add to each week. I thought about big ideas that could run and run. I thought about fun things that I liked writing about. All of a sudden I had mapped out the next couple of months topics and I was back to feeling excited about it.

I’m not saying I always stuck to the plan. Sometimes a new and exciting idea would come along or maybe something would happen in the news that inspired me, but I always had something to write about.

Before I knew it my 90 days were up, and do you know what I did to celebrate this milestone? I blogged about it!

Blogging had become my new habit and I enjoyed it.

This works for blogging, but it also works for any other thing you might be wanting to change in your life. What we do is generally a matter of habit. So whether you are trying to make new habits or change old ones, make a plan, make it achievable and get on with it. Before you now it, it will just be something you do.

Then you get to reap the rewards.

If your habits change your body you’ll see it, If they change your mind, you’ll feel it, and if they change your wealth you’ll notice it.

What habits do you want to make or break that will leave you feeling better for 2015?

Here are some ideas.

Diet – eat 7 portions of fresh fruit and vegetables a day

Exercise – 30 minutes a day

Meditation – meditate daily

Blogging – blog daily

Business – build your online profile

Relationships – speak to at least one friend a day

Partner – compliment your partner at least once a day

Mindfulness – practice being in the moment daily

Hobby – spend some time each week doing something you enjoy

Experiences – try something new every week

Learning – learn a new skill

Little changes make large differences – where do you want to be in 2016? What are you doing to get there?