by Kay Cooke | Jan 30, 2023 | be well
“If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.”
Henry Ford
Does that make sense to you?
Where are the ‘problem-repeats’ in your life?
You know it’s often easier to notice those patterns in other people’s lives, but when you cast your your mind back through your timeline, which problems keep repeating?
Did you ever try to change them?
Did you ever find a really good coach to help you harness the superpower of imagineering?
Your future starts in imagination – whether you are imagining what you are going to do later today, tomorrow, or next year – you’re setting your brain’s GPS.
We walked on the moon thanks to someone’s imagination. Yet some people terrorise and limit their future selves with wayward imaginineering! And so it needs to be harnessed and handled with precision. NLP is an amazing tool to help you do this easily.
For now, you could start by imagining what would happen if a mysterious force extinguished ‘problem-repeats’ from your world and breathed new life-energy into your life. What differences shine through? What does not change at all?
Imagination is a super skill, learn to use it with super precision. Isn’t it time to shine?
by Kay Cooke | Sep 29, 2022 | be well, mental health, mind-body, psychology, resilience, work well
Balance – it’s in our nature.
In 1995 fourteen wolves were released into Yellowstone National Park.
At first deer numbers drastically reduced and then deer behaviour changed as they moved into areas less visible to the wolves.
In the absence of deer foraging, flowers and trees began flourishing, which led to berries, bugs and insects, which in turn attracted more birds. And then beavers returned, building dams that provided habitat for otters, muskrats, and reptiles. Coyote numbers reduced causing proliferation of rabbit and mice, which in turn attracted hawks, red foxes, badgers, and weasels.
And once a ‘balance’ between predator and prey was established, the park’s physical geography had changed as (previously eroded) riverbanks were now stabilised by the new vegetation.
What’s this got to do with NLP?
Have you ever noticed how the mind’s internal environment can house both predator AND prey? And although people come to us seeking ‘balance’ between work, home, and play, learning to ‘balance’ their internal habitat, always positively affects management of the outside world.
What are the mechanisms for restoring the mind’s habitat to flourishing vitality? Solutions start with awareness of possibility and an attitude of willingness to seek ‘balance’.
To do this we must think on purpose! Because thoughts alone either deplete or nourish brain-body chemistry, which in turn can cause erosion OR restoration of sustainable balances within.
Keep feeding thoughts that nurture thriving, that’s all. This alone will starve what no longer needs to exist in that place.
NLP is a system for sustainable inner balance! Do more of it! And if you can’t easily do it for yourself – do it so that others in your social system may thrive. Humanity is in great need of ‘balance’. And nature teaches us all we need to know.
Discover how we can help you balance your thoughts, feelings and behaviours and change your internal geography: HERE
by Kay Cooke | Aug 30, 2022 | next generation, NLP, parenting, work well
Looking for a fun ice-breaker, pattern interrupt, or warm-up for your team of colleagues or students? Or a new idea for having fun and making people smile? Here’s a game you can play with your students, colleagues, coachees, or family. It has scope to be as purposeful as you choose!
This game involves letters of the alphabet A-Z, some pens, some paper or flip chart, or white board. It can be done individually or in groups and you can even add some flavoursome competition.
Choose one of the themes below and assign a word to each letter.
Theme 1: Positive/happy/fun words e.g. amazing, brilliant, cuddly …
Theme 2: Nouns (things) e.g. apple, bat, crib …
Theme 3: Verbs (actions) e.g. admiring, bowling, crocheting …
Theme 4: Nonsensical (made up) brain ticklers e.g. artummyful, brainbutt, crumtonly…
Theme 6: NLP nominalisations e.g. adoration, bliss, confidence …
Theme 7: Colours e.g. apple-green, baby-blue, crimson …
Or make up your own theme!
Or create a themed word-bank somewhere prominent where people can keep adding new words.
This is play, with purpose. For example, that purpose might be to:
• have fun
• engage with others
• embed learning
• calibrate people or situations
• …
#NLP #calibration #language #play #happybrain #fun #states #NLP submodalities #icebreaker #braintickle #trainingroom #teamtalk
by Kay Cooke | May 3, 2022 | work well
Speaking metaphorically and following the Star Wars (films) reference/ambiguity “May the 4th go with you…” Would you say your inner light-saber generally shines light and bright, or dull and dim?
And thinking about your shiniest days at work, do you know the critical factors that influence these? For example:
- Which thoughts are in your mind while you are a beacon of light at work?
- What emotions maintain your best flow state?
- How do others perceive your most vibrant behaviours?
Why should you care about this?
Well as you surely know, people talk avidly about the things that deplete them. Indeed, many an evening’s meal can centre around bitching and moaning about matters of work. And you know people get hooked into the dramas of (tradable) tales, bonding through intense emotions. That’s how, as social animals, we roll. But do remember you can choose to bond over positive emotions too!
That’s not to say it’s not helpful to express your frustrations of the day, just don’t stay there! Don’t train your brain to feel comfortable in that stress zone, it prepares your auto pilot to seek more of the same.
Tip 1:
Be proactive about engaging emotional states that serve your growth. Look for the positives in your life and design more positive spirals. The message in the Star Wars films is about igniting inner power and using it to grow a better world. Make your contribution count for good.
Tip 2:
Balance time spent expressing pissy niggles, with time spent expressing excitement, wonderment, and gratitude.
Tip 3:
Pattern on purpose – your brain likes patterns, why not choose to practise the upward spiral? Deliberately run a sequence of emotions from grotty to glowing e.g., feeling ‘argh, pah, meh, mmm, ahh’.
Tip 4:
Emotions are contagious – beware of passively absorbing other people’s S**t. Instead, proactively share your best positivity.
Tip 5:
Experiment with your personal power to calibrate how your vibrancy influences professional effectiveness and note how those around you respond to your glow-state.
Tip 6:
Curate your own shiny audit of the subtle qualities of your peak performance state? And practise. Build a shinier auto-pilot.
by Kay Cooke | Sep 27, 2021 | next generation
September brought us the Equinox, marking a moment of ‘balance’ in our yearly calendar, with day and night available to us, in equal measure.
I guess you know when you’re (metaphorically) tipping out of balance, right? When it seems all that’s left is to give up or give over to some external authority on your wellbeing?
Balance is one of our key themes when working with the next generation, we want them to trust that they can always find it, know how to achieve it, and don’t need to rely on an external authority to do the re-balancing for them. We call this RESILIENCE.
We must teach resilience as an ‘inside job’ so the next generation learns how to self-adjust their personal wellbeing rather than defaulting to the notion that the solution, or the blame, lies elsewhere.
Sometimes in our work, we find parents and teachers don’t believe it is possible for young people to self-manage wayward thoughts and emotions and make it their priority to step in at the first hint of challenge. Fast forward to a generation of teenagers who never learned to hardwire the skills of ‘doing’ resilience i.e., falling over, picking self-up, reflecting on what to do differently next time, taking responsibility for the results in life and adjusting mindset/behaviours to meet new needs. Simply put, this is the process of learning and a far cry from our ‘woke’ generation who want to blame or change others. How have we forgotten our nature as exquisite learners?
And those parents and teachers who DO believe it is possible for young people to self-manage wayward thoughts and emotions, often just don’t know how to teach these skills. Thankfully we do.
This month’s Resilience Tip is to help children imagine their future self as buoyant and able to respond to and rebalance after any of life’s whirlwinds. Imagineering (as we call it) is nature’s way of formatting neural pathways into codes of possibility. That’s how we landed on the moon – someone had the idea first … It was an imagined possibility that eventually became tangible actions.
I vote for more seeding of great ideas inside the minds of our next generation. Imaginings of a flourishing future. We cannot thrive as a species if we continue to fill young people’s imaginations with fear and helplessness.
We all become what we repeatedly do, so why not help your child habituate resilience inside their mind’s eye and set a clear direction for their brains and bodies to follow?
We all deserve a thriving next generation, don’t we?
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