by Kay Spare Login | Oct 1, 2024 | be well, brain aim, calm, Consciousness, focus, kids, mental health, mind-body, neurology, next generation, NLP, parenting, Personal growth, resilience, strategy, work well, workingwithkids
Every word, every utterance, carries an electro-chemical charge that affects your nervous system.
Words have power.
I can say the word ‘spider’ to 10 people and each person will build a unique image inside their minds. One that fits their personalised mental mapping/interpretation of that word.
I can say ‘vicious spider’ and some people will laugh; others will recoil in terror.
Some will imagine a cartoon spider, perhaps wielding a sword, others may see death jaws and claws.
The interpretation of any word is subjective. Yet that meaning will instigate a floodgate of FEELINGS i.e. neuro-chemicals.
Words are spells.
Many people are careless with words. Many people are wounded by words.
People are also strengthened by words.
Words carry powerful energies.
Tune into the intensity of your response to the following phrases.
- You should know better.
- You should have known better.
- You might know better next time.
If you don’t feel the shift in your brain’s processing of these word combinations, call me. You should. You should know the great power of word-smithing. Because you are being bombarded by wordsmiths.
Every. Single. Day. Be they cunning and manipulative OR sloppy and ignorant.
To know is to reclaim your brain.
TAKE AN EVERY DAY CONVERSATION ABOUT A NEWS ITEM:
“They were REALLY AWFULL. They are such ignorant bigots who deserve what they get.”
= Fact-less opinions with a poisoned arrow of invitation into heavy emotional entanglement.
“I didn’t enjoy that. I found myself willing them to open their hearts, but it didn’t happen.”
= Personal opinion with a tangle-free opportunity to respond.
“Well, that’s not for me!”
= Honest statement as a platform to move the conversation onward.
Know the difference between facts, feelings, opinion, and imagination.
FACTS
Verifiable by the outside world.
FEELINGS
The meaning that your brain interprets with positive or negative emotions.
OPINION
How you see the situation.
IMAGINATION
How the situation could become better or worse.
GET CLARITY! And help your young ones to know these differences!
But those words and phrases don’t just happen out loud. No! The most toxic words can happen inside your mind.
So you really should start listening to your everyday vocabulary. Make sure you include:
Owning your opinion (I think)
Owning your emotion (I feel)
Empower Yourself!
In week one of Happy Brain training, we include an exercise to wake up your word-smart filters. It’s called The Fun-Shine Alphabet. Try it!
Take each letter of the alphabet and find fabulous words that make your brain, mind and body feel shiny, happy and joyful. It’s a Mini Mind Spa. Flush some happy chemicals through your system each day and format some positive language into your auto-pilot.
The magic starts inside your mind.
In which direction you choose to utilise your word power is between you and your morality. But I wish for a more kind, compassionate, tolerant, peace-seeking, curious, explorative, loving, fun, happy, intelligent, and healthy society. And I hope you’ll join me in the intention and practice of positive transformation through word power.
Wouldn’t it be Amazing if we Aimed our brains in Beautiful, Creative, Displays of Energised, Feelings, Growing, Hopeful, Imaginations, Joyfully, Kind and Loving, with Marvellous, Nourishment, of Opulent Playfulness, Quirky Resilience, with Shiny,Terrific Understanding and Violet-light Wonderment that leads to X-cellent, Yummy, Zinging!!!
You’re welcome …
by Kay Spare Login | Nov 2, 2023 | be well, brain aim, mental health, next generation, NLP, parenting, psychology, resilience, work well, workingwithkids
Engineering The Mind
Working with young people (and their parents) means helping them understand the basics of designing a future self who is calm, confident, enjoying successful relationships, and is thankful for learning some basic secrets of happiness.
This process applies to any age!
“It is impossible to control any goal that requires other people to change.”
Case study: Lonely Lana
Moving schools had been a good decision for 14-year-old Lana but had left her yearning for her old group of pals. But her mind had played tricks on her, recalling the past in a kinder light, yet in truth, she had been quite unhappy with them. The NEW friendship group felt impermeable, and she came to see me asking for help with ‘social exclusion’.
We established that a couple of girls in the group were being really kind and friendly towards her, but this didn’t satisfy Lana and she found herself:
- Dismissive of easily available friendships.
- Keeping her sights fixed on getting attention from the big personalities.
- Negatively mind-reading the new group’s intentions.
- Negatively interpreting the body language of certain group members.
- Feeling awkward and self-conscious
- Fantasising that the old school friendship group was perfect.
We summarised our initial discussion in terms of her:
THOUGHTS – the group was unsure about her and viewed her with suspicion.
FEELINGS – self-conscious, unhappy, and awkward.
BEHAVIOUR – wanting to withdraw from the group.
Delving deeper into her thinking patterns she soon revealed some fundamental beliefs that were triggering her own unhappiness.
Trigger thoughts included:
“Making new friends is hard work and tiring”
“Why don’t they? …. (act the way I want them to act)”
“I have lost my perfect old friends”
These thoughts triggered her ‘feel-bad’ strategy.
She ran this strategy in her mind ‘on-repeat’.
Neural plasticity meant that those self-harming thoughts became automatic – because she had practiced paying attention to them.
Soon into our session, Lana realised that her true (unconscious) friendship goal had been to be the popular one amongst a large group of girls. But she didn’t yet realise that goal was impossible to achieve since it required:
- Exhausting effort to try to change the opinions and behaviours of others.
- The others to prioritise her needs above their natural ordering.
I invited her to understand that it is impossible to control any goal that requires other people to change. Trying to do that had been exhausting and frustrating, wasting energy and leading to disappointment in others and (self) generating feelings of unhappiness.
EXPLORING SOLUTIONS
I wondered if Lana could amend her friendship goal to “I want to feel relaxed and authentic around new people”. That would require her to expect nothing back from them, just to be curious and interested in the evolving relationships.
After all, a goal like this means being in charge of a goal you can actually control!
EXPERIMENT
We worked hypnotically to visualise Lana pitching up at school, looking for fun people to get to know while feeling relaxed, interested, humorous and happy. This imprinted a new neurological template which she could practise (through neural plasticity) until it became her autopilot.
FEEDBACK
We reframed her thinking so that SHE could reflect on, and positively adjust, her personal thoughts, feelings, and behaviours – it’s an inside job!
SKILLS
I taught her techniques for self-regulating wayward feelings.
FEED FORWARD
We looked through time to visit her future-self. The person who is calm, confident, enjoying a range of successful relationships, and thankful for learning some basic secrets of owning next-generation happiness.
Think this is just about children? Think again!
by Kay Spare Login | Jul 3, 2023 | be well, brain aim, kids, mental health, mind-body, resilience, work well, workingwithkids
Do you have your own definition of good mental health? Have you ever thought about this? What are your guiding principles?
According to the UK Mental Health Foundation, good mental health is:
- The ability to learn
- The ability to cope with AND manage change and uncertainty
- The ability to form AND maintain good relationships with others
- The ability to feel, express and manage a range of positive AND negative emotions
In which of these areas do you excel? And which one needs some development? Does this resonate with you?
I’m a big fan of wellbeing personal audits since all of these ‘abilities’ once brought to your conscious awareness, can be trained, and refined. Accountability helps balance the current trend of victimhood.
You probably know how important it is to get clarity about the future you are aiming your brain towards. Aiming your mind and body towards better mental health seems like time well spent, don’t you think?
With that in mind, I’ve adapted the MHF definition into an easy exercise to help you do review your own needs. I suggest you write out your answers as it has a stronger imprint on the sub-conscious mind.
- Is learning new things important for you? Is it easy? What would make it easier?
- How adaptable are you to change and uncertainty? Where in your life, would you like to grow more flexibility and how would the ‘future you’ benefit from doing this?
- Do you easily form new relationships? And how do you nurture longer term relationships? Where could you better connect with others?
- Are you comfortable with your full range of emotions? With which emotions do you need to get more comfortable? Which ones do you want more of and which ones do you need less of?
- Are you being the best you can be so that any time, any place anywhere you shine? Which aspects of your personal growth do you prioritise?
Is your ‘north star’ shining from the constellation called thrive?
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 | Jan 30, 2023 | work well
CLICK HERE to watch John and I discuss many important aspects of communicating to influence with integrity and precision, especially online!
John is President of the Society of NLP.
See more in John’s chapter in this book Inspirations for Thriving Through Chaos
Recent Comments