Integrate!

 It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon and I'd worked all weekend. So I got up from my computer and went for a long walk. I was looking for stress management through fresh air and exercise. And I was looking for something more. One important, invisible problem with knowing we have an impact is that we are not really sure who "we" are. We call the part of our mind that makes most of our choice the "unconscious." This is not because it lacks consciousness (it's always wide awake) but because we are not conscious of it within us. How can we trust ourselves when we can't even know ourselves? It's the fundamental insecurity of life as a human. And the answer, is that we cannot see or know our unconscious selves, but we can observe their connection to the world around us. You can notice how the things around yous resonate with the things in you. You can develop awareness of how you show up in your relationships with people and with the problems you like to s...

What do you get to choose? It's too easy to say that you cannot choose what happens to you, but you can choose how you respond. That turns choice into a consolation prize. We think we "have to" choose instead of we "can choose!" We get to choose our actions and reactions without being fully aware of how they will make change in the world. That sounds dangerous, and it is. But it is also the seed of optimism. No matter what happens to us and around us, there are choices we can make.  Identifying the choices that you have the ability and resources to make pushes you to be more self-aware: more aware of the feelings, perceptions, biases, memories and hopes that combine to keep  you moving. Self-awareness is fundamental to both feeling better and having better influence on others. When life knocks you down, you look up and say "so what can I do next?" You can change your mind, your communication, your actions. You can begin with an impulse or an inventory....

Have you been stuck in a waiting room for the past three months, or have you been building something? The lockdown has changed a lot of things, but it hasn't change this basic choice. We are always either circling or growing. Usually when we are circling, we are running from one thing we know to another in a cycle. Other people look and see busy. We see busy. But that doesn't always mean growth. It can mean wearing a rut in our thinking. The lockdown grabbed us by the shoulders and said "sit still." It felt like being plunked into a room and being told "wait here." Wait for the news that will change your life. Wait for the principal. Wait for the dentist's drill. Kill time until you get back to your real life. Many people were already living in the waiting room. They were hoping something would change around them, that something would  open up new possibilities. But their minds kept running in the same patterns, so they kept seeing and doing the same thi...

I've recently had discussions with people who were worried that they could never be all of one piece, that choosing a different path meant that they would be permanently severed from their old selves. It's a worry that can keep all of us stuck from time to time. If I change, what will I lose? The answer is to stop thinking that you are your path. You can only walk one path at a time, but you can choose lots of different paths over time, learning and growing and exploring without losing any part of the self. The brain does not have to cut off old connections to make new ones. A new path doesn't make the old path bad or wrong. That's not to say that your new path might not be bumpy, or go through swamps or run into impossibly steep cliffs. One of the more difficult truths about human life is that we often grow strength and flexibility by confronting obstacles. Achievement is wonderful, but failure is a teacher who  often sticks with us until we get the point. The ...

When I look at this picture, I see one speaker. It's me. I don't see a personal me and a work me. I don't see the brave me and the hidden me. I see me. I know you've read that you should have boundaries between your work life and your private life. There is wisdom in allowing yourself to experience all of yourself and that can mean creating time and space to be present wherever you are. There is no wisdom in sending a version of yourself to work and keeping a different version at home. What do you see when you look at a picture of you at work? People often call me at NLP Canada Training  and say something like "It's just for me." or "I'm interested for work." The problem is there is no such thing. You are one person and who you are changes your influence on the people who connect with you. The reverse is also true. If you don't change your own thinking or responses, you are unlikely to make change in the way you lead and influence....

I really enjoy sitting down with a flight of beverages and doing a tasting. It doesn’t matter to me if I’m tasting wine or beer or scotch. I love the activity of responding and balancing choices and noticing how what comes before or after changes my perception of a particular sip. But knowing what I know from both research and personal experience, I am cautious about generalizing my evaluation based on just a small sample. Once we needed to buy new chairs for the boardroom at our office. We put a line of about ten different chairs out and people sat in each one in turn and voted on their favourites. We bought the favourites and discovered that sitting in a chair for just a few minutes is very different than sitting in the same chair for several hours. We tested, but we didn’t get a reliable result. When I was in grade 1, I took some tests as a demo for teachers who had to learn to administer them. They asked me what I would like to do while the rest of the class took the t...

I wonder if what frustrates people so much about elections like the one we are having in Ontario now is that they are reminded of how often they have to make choices between alternatives that just aren't good enough. https://www.elections.on.ca/en.html We often want a change because what we have isn't working for us, only to decide that none of the options available are good enough either. And then we say something like, "Why bother?" Here are three reasons to bother. It is worth making a choice, even when - especially when - you don't like any of the options: Shift happens.  Very small changes add up to larger impacts.  It does matter even if one choice is only slightly better than another. You don't have to vote. But there will be many times when you have to make a choice in your own life when you don't like your options. Practice will make the process easier.  Life will often take choices away from you. In those moments, you will want to fi...

I made all the cookies in the picture, although I had some help decorating the gingerbread men. From the frenzy of your holiday, year-end preparations, you might look at this and think "there's someone with a lot of time on her hands." In fact, I don't have much time. this year, I decided to make some. I made it by making cookies, by volunteering, by wrapping presents, by spending a half day being a tourist to enjoy Christmas in my own city. I made time, knowing that there is business to be done and that I will be up far too late getting all my marking done before January 3. I did it because this year, I am choosing celebration. Are you old enough to have forgotten how many days you worked too late, got up too early, and ached with the fatigue of carrying everyone else's expectations?  Me, too. This year, I am choosing celebration. You can choose celebration, too. You can choose to do one thing today just because it brings back a good memory or ma...

© Can Stock Photo / Evgeniy_p When we had small children and busy schedules, my husband would say "cherish dull moments." But moments can stretch and become uncomfortably long. I teach in a system that has been on strike for about 5 weeks. The end may or may not be in sight, and even if it is, the results of the waiting are unpredictable. For me, it is not a matter of life or death, but it does impact my ability to plan for my business and my life. I don't know if I'll get paid again or when. I don't know how I will manage a too-heavy schedule with few breaks. I don't know when I will decide it's time to make a change, since life is risky either way. Does this sound familiar? On any given day, many of the people you encounter are playing a waiting game for something not quite predictable and possibly unpleasant. While I've been waiting out the strike, I've been observing the way waiting influences my states and choices. Here are three t...

Is this what confidence looks like to you? Some people think confidence comes from deep roots in tradition and thought and money. Some people think it comes from looking like people and institutions that are backed by authority. They think confidence looks like long-held power. If this is what you think you need to achieve in order to feel confident, then confidence can seem impossible.  I think confidence looks like a two-year-old shouting bus! I think it looks like someone in a kitchen, peeling potatoes without thought because she's peeled a million before that. I think it looks like the grin before the shot gets taken.  There's a lot you don't know and will never know. That doesn't stop you from enjoying the thing you have just learned. It doesn't stop you from knowing what you know right down to the bones because you've practiced it forever. It doesn't stop you from taking joy in playing the game. The thing that stops you from having...

When you need to base a choice on the truth, how do you find it? Most of us believe that we let real information - facts - drive our decision making. Some scientists suggest that we are much more likely to be moved by emotions and suggestions than we are by information. They make these claims as if it is possible to find facts, know the truth, and weigh different options objectively. This may be true in books or in laboratories. It is seldom true where you work or where you live. What is more likely is that you often find yourself faced with choices where the truth is impossible to determine. We are bad at predicting the future, and yet we have to make decisions every day that depend on knowing how people will act and react before they have done either. This is true for coaches, teachers, sales people, and business leaders. It’s true for everyone who wants to shape the future and not just react to what has already happened. So how do we do it? It’s clear that people make c...

"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."   Victor Frankl It's hard to feel comfortable in the space between stimulus and response. It's a passageway, not a resting place and not a highway. As this fall turns into winter, we are aware of being in that space of uncertainty and possibility. It is time to make some choices, to move through the passageway and into new action. A new season, a new year and, possibly, a new era are almost upon us. It is time to choose. If you're not sure what choices are possible, begin to label what is real right now. What do you feel? What do you know? What do you want? Find a way to record your answers: write on paper or on a computer, sketch them, talk them through with a friend. Then look at what you have written and ask for each point: "Are you sure this is real? What else could be true?" Record those ...

There are weeks and months when it feels we are called to stretch our consciousness to extremes. We encounter fear and sadness and excitement and laughter all within a short walk of each other. In the back of our minds, all the regular concerns about work and family and life keep running. The statue of Jesus as a homeless person outside Regis College Waiting for Santa Claus to come I took these pictures last Sunday morning. They ended up being thematic. All day inside the training we encountered the same strange mixture of excitement and connection and old grief and new confusion. It's the nature of the work that people find they are ready to deal with stuff they have left just outside their awareness while they got on with their lives. Life is this crazy mixture and we either stretch to reach all of it or shut ourselves off from information that we could use to make better choices. If you ignored all the world's crises this week because they are overwhelming ...

When you ask yourself: "What do I want more of?" the first answer that comes to mind is often something like "vacations!" It's easy to want more time away, more adventures to beautiful places, more freedom. Yes. All good. And yet, how does that change what you are doing in the next hour?  When you think "What do I want more of in this day?" the answers change. For me, the answers are: more wonderfully engaging connections and conversations more control over my state and my choices more focus and more energy so that I can accomplish more And all of these are achievable. I have the knowledge and the resources to seek out better connections, to choose better experiences for myself, to take care of mind and body so that I have the energy I need to do what I want to do. Every step is a simple step, and still it is hard. Still the road has curves and bumps that make it easy to say "I can't. I won't. It's not my fault." ...

I will always remember the training where I first realized that what I teach is sometimes a matter of life and death. One of the participants was a young soldier preparing for deployment to a war zone. His ability to anticipate the actions of others and to control his own state would, quite literally, be a matter of life or death. It's rare to think of self-development, self-reflection or communication in this way. Maybe it should be much less rare. Yesterday we held our annual NLP retreat, in which a small group gathers in a wonderfully inspiring location to reflect, share and practice. Our theme yesterday was "Finding Your Voice" and in many ways it looked like we were working on how to speak more effectively in conversation or presentations. While knowing yourself is a requirement for speaking with power and presence, we didn't seem to be doing any change work or tackling any major life issues. Except that there were some really big back stories in the room...

The hardest part of the holidays is the expectation that they are supposed to be easy and fun. The very word "holiday" suggests a lovely break from work, a time when the world is a happy place full of lovely people, good food, and fun things to do. Occasionally, happiness happens. There are nice surprises when we are looking the other way. They are truly lovely breaks, moments to celebrate and remember that the world can be a really great place.  Most of the time, happiness develops slowly and with effort. We make choices and notice results and make an effort, and sometimes we notice that we're making progress and it feels good. Holidays are happy when we think about what has made us happy and do more of that. It snowed today. People worry that we won't have snow for Christmas and they complain bitterly when it snows before Christmas.  Some of them are frustrated and unhappy because weather changes their plans. It's quite inconvenient. This ...

I've noticed that we do not often talk about sadness. We talk about depression (it's a disease) sometimes about grief (there's counselling for that). We do not talk about what it's like to be sad or how sadness enriches our lives and perspectives. We do not talk about how sadness slows us down and interrupts our thought patterns and makes a change in us. I'm sad today. There are lots of reasons, good reasons. Some are old reasons, anchored to this time of year. Others are current heartaches. Some are not really my own, but they are close enough. And some are things that have not happened yet (but they will happen one day). One of my most firmly held beliefs in life (and presuppositions in my work in NLP) is that we are here to live our lives, not escape from them. Sadness has a place in my life because I have (almost always) stopped trying to outthink my life or work around it. So today, I am agreeing to feel the tightness and tenderness around my heart, to be...

It all started with a marketing exercise on search terms that would lead someone to my website at www.nlpcanada.com . I dutifully made a list of the kinds of keywords Google suggests and realized that they didn't fit the way I write on the site and they didn't fit the way people talk when they first connect with me on the phone or at a program. So I made a list of what I think is really going on when people say, "I heard about NLP and I've been interested for a long time. . ." I’m stuck I want to know me better I wonder where (else) I fit I need my kids/partner/employees to understand my priorities  I have to learn more/better/faster I need to make adjustments I need to get it together Could I communicate more clearly? Could I get other people to do what I want them to do? How do I help other people without suffocating their independence? How do I teach people to “get it” faster? What do I really believe about success? What should ...

The people I teach at NLP Canada Training come from many different backgrounds, locations, and fields. They are therapists, entrepreneurs, managers, explorers, teachers and coaches. They are between 20 and 60 years old (mostly). They have been Canadian for many generations and they are new to Canada.  It doesn't look like they have enough in common to be a market or a tribe. What makes them a tribe is that they really want to make a difference in their own lives. They don't want to shut down, opt out, or settle for less. They want to be able to end each day feeling that they made good choices and at the very end of the day, they want to know they lived a life that was satisfying to them and that they will leave a legacy that furthers what they value. Some of them are highly successful and some of them are at a crossroads.  All of them believe that it matters that they want to feel good and to do good. All of them believe that our choices make a difference.  If they...

What difference does it make if work is just a little bit fun?  Logically, fun is a distraction and there's no particular reason that a day with a little fun in it would be more productive than a day of focused, serious work.  Practically, we all know that we're more likely to be productive if we're having a little fun mingled into our task focus.  How does that work exactly? First, it helps us remember that people are not computers and they don't work the way computers do. Our thinking is a complex weaving of reason and memory and sensory awareness and emotion. Fun can involve three of those, and that means that it's actually quite a rich form of thinking. A little fun is likely to be using a lot of your brain, and that wakes up more resources for applying to your work. Next, it's useful to think about the patterns in your thought and work. Patterns work the same way over and over.  Real productivity involves doing more than repeating the same patterns: it ...