Created in 2010, these fun, easy to follow brain training activities are ideal for young families and primary classrooms.
Instant Calm – Belly Breathing
Quietly Clear – Building Confidence
Brainy learning – Balance Body & Mind
Brain balance – Finger Play
Personal power – Heartful
Choose feelings – Spinning Feelings
Perfect peacefulness – White Feather
Brain boost – Eyes Around
Chaos to calm – Glitter Ball
Power up – Power Pack
Reassure an anxious mind – Finger Chat
Welcome to these practical activities that help you minimise stress and create feelings of calm and confidence. You will find increased self-esteem
and smarter thinking are very pleasant by-products.
This kit will train your nervous system to be calmer and to stay calm and confident in challenging situations. Practising them regularly will mean that you’ll get better at being able to do them whenever you really need to.
There are 11 fun activities for you to experiment with, each one is proven to help develop resilience. CLICK HERE
“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?
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
Do you have an attitude for ‘how will I get through this?’ To summon determination so that you keep going until you get to the other side of something stressful.
That’s resilience. It’s training your brain to push through adversity rather than fold into helplessness when the going gets tough.
I consider myself pretty resilient and I’m tenacious in finding new ways to thrive, but I want to share with you a time when I was really tested to think out of the box and rapidly come up with a brand-new coping strategy. I was lying in the MRI scanner about to have my head and neck scanned.
“Soothing music?” they asked.
“Of course,” I replied, knowing how such music positively affects brainwaves.
“Here’s the panic button. Press it and we’ll get you out as quickly as possible”
“Oh, I won’t need that, I’m an accomplished meditator” my Hubris responded, after all I was making clear pictures of myself lying flat and relaxed.
And so, it began. I lay still, calm, and ready to remain relaxed.
But no sooner than the machine began its vibrating sound, my reptilian brain immediately shifted into a primitive fight/flight reaction.
No problem I thought, understanding that I just needed to adjust my autonomic nervous system reaction. So I aimed all attention on soothing basal brain through a calming breathing technique. But as visceral fear surged through me I panicked, pressed the button and they brought me out. I was unable to override a fearful amygdala.
Truly bemused, I tried again a few moments later. This time, I decided to activate my brain’s creative centres through visualisation of my happy place with full sensory association – an excellent way to switch on calm. But no, as cortisol and adrenaline misdirected my body, reptilian brain pressed the button again…
Damn it. Now I was cross and somewhat shocked at how my body and mind had stopped talking to each other.
Last chance. I could either validate the fear reaction and retreat into failure, or find a new solution. “This is your brain, drive it on purpose” I thought calmly and clearly.
“How else can you drive your brain through fear and get to beyond?”
I made a mental checklist of what hadn’t worked and searched for something different. Numbers! Maths! My sure way to zone out!
And so I began counting back from 500, out loud while visualising each number. It required intense concentration and I frequently had to start again whenever I lost that focus. But it worked, the strategy worked! I had pushed through adversity and discovered a new strategy. Learning through doing something different.
I’m thinking a lot these days about the things that children and teens tell us adults and how easy it is to advise or correct them from the adult world-view, rather than guide inner growth.
You may hear phrases like “I can’t” or “I’m stupid” and immediately, rush to correct; “yes you can” or “no, you’re not stupid”…
Imprinting a young brain with the adult world-view can cause confusion if the external voice contradicts their internal voice. That forces a decision about who the young mind should listen to and steals their opportunity to learn the cause-and-effect patterns of self-responsibility that build self-esteem.
Of course, influence or compliance has its place, but it is growth limiting.
Insisting that children adopt adult-only rules for living, means they either ‘rinse and repeat’ the patterns of the past, or they reject them in polarity. Both strategies are mentally restrictive and emotionally sticky.
We must do better for our young people, than require them to do things our way.
Like giving them opportunities to explore other perspectives, figure internal stuff out, and learn to adjust their responses each time they get something right, or wrong. But let this be based in reality.
So your child comes home and says
“Mary was mean to me…” What do you say? “That bitch Mary really has in for you …”
“I’ll call her mother …”
“I’ll speak to the teacher …”
“You must have done something to upset her …”
Or:
“What did you see/hear that you felt was mean?”
“What was happening just before you felt upset?”
“Do you think something specific upset her?”
“What upset you about her behaviour?”
These responses are not a prescription by the way, they simply highlight the difference between training closed thinking and open (thrive) thinking.
This month’s tip for supporting resilience in children and teens, is to get curious about the unique reality of a young mind. Don’t fear a reality that doesn’t mirror yours, don’t challenge it because you judge it wrong according to the way you were indoctrinated. Don’t tell them they are wrong (that sets up messy thinking further downstream). Don’t ask them to justify their beliefs, that sets up stress in everyone.
Be part of a revolution that helps young minds expand into new perspectives and figure personal solutions. Build self-responsibility, crucial for a healthier society where people are not easily offended or expect the world to revolve around them.
Top Tip: Don’t Tell – Ask
When you hear “I can’t”
Try these questions:
“You can’t?” Reflect the precise words in parrot fashion.
“Oh tell me more …” Enable them to expand their own thinking rather than justify their ideas. Sometimes just voicing an opinion with an outside voice, helps it to make more sense.
“Is that because you don’t want to, or because you don’t know how to?” Guide them towards facts that support action.
“If you don’t want to, then what is it that you would prefer to do instead?” Let the negative emotion transfer to a thrive energy. People see clearer and make better decisions in thrive mode.
“Is this something that you have to do and therefore figure a way to do it more easily?”
Presuppose the capability was the issue.
“How would you like me to help you?” Teach them it’s OK to ask for help and that collaboration is beneficial.
Help young people discover their unique aspects of their happy brains. Don’t just give them yours.
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