Personal Development NLP Singapore

I decided to add a new category because there have been a number of people who have in recent months been asking me about career development advice.  If you have questions regarding a specific type of career or career development advice, just drop a comment here.

It’s quite intriguing to pick up on this topic after an absence of a couple of weeks.  Someone dropped me a message and said that the content that I had mentioned in a previous  procrastination post had too much common sense and the reader demanded that I put up information that doesn’t contain such motherhood statements.

photo credit: Firesam!

I thought about it for some time, and I began to reflect on certain situations that people tend to leave themselves in.  For example, it was fascinating to see how someone would be interested in an article on stomping procrastination and found that might advice was common sense.  It just didn’t compute.  If it was common sense, you wouldn’t have to read it.  If one did need to read it, then most obviously one would continue to be procrastinating up to a point where you accept and utilized the advice.

So I had an internal arguments with myself to figure out what was going on.  Upon reviewing “How To Stop Procrastinating #1″, I discovered that it was true that most of the information there appears to be quite straightforward and a whole bunch of common sense.  It therefore dawned on me that there are individuals who will read it, but can’t use it.

The concept of vicious cycles tells us that there is far more than meets the eye from the behavior standpoint.  You want something, but the more you want it, the further away from it you get. For example, it is highly likely that someone who needs a set of behavioral interventions will read the first article and find it useful.  they will go out and execute the behaviors.  However, several people who have a deeper rooted issues beyond the ‘behavior’ level may find that a behavioral intervention will be insufficient, hence, “common sense “.

As much as I’d like to avoid diving into two large detail, which Watzlawick mentioned in his book “The Language of Change”, and is the cause of many interventions going wild, and being seemingly without end, I believe that for the raw knowledge of people reading this could be beneficial.

Suppose someone is procrastinating.  It could be that he wants to invite a girl  out on a date, and he stops short. There are a number of things that we logically knows he should do.  For example, he’s got to simply ask.  And if he gets rejected, he should ask again, preferably in a different way.  However, we know that there must be something else that’s preventing him from accomplishing his goal.  One such invisible force could be his hidden understanding of rejection.  For example, he might believe that rejection is the end of the world.  This, indicates the need for a deeper rooted intervention dealing with the reframing of his belief patterns.  Alternatively, it might have to do with his inability to come to terms with his parents’ divorce when he was five years old.  This might indicate an issue with his self concept, or identity.  In this instance, it would be possible to institute a Change Personal History session to help him reconfigure his identity.

However, before we get ahead of ourselves, it is essential that such strategies are implemented by someone who is well versed in interventions.  A lot of the time deeper rooted issues may have a backlash – if we attempt to push against it in usually pushes back , causing even more procrastination.

most of the time therefore, we need to find the right kinds of emotional triggers.  For example, the reader who sent me this irate message probably did not realize that he was able to procrastinate getting certain things done, but didn’t hesitate sending me and irate message.  It is the ability to control and manage our emotional states that enables us to shift from state to state.

One of the ways to do this is by understanding anchoring.  Anchoring, which is a behavioral process of association, and literally eliminate your feelings of procrastination.  In the context where you are procrastinating, you can use that environmental stimulus to trigger off facilitative negative emotions such as frustration, anxiety, and fear. Or these could be facilitative positive emotions like enthusiasm, motivation and drive.

It takes a little bit of practice to know where these emotions reside. Reliving these emotions can set one on the pathway to realizing that emotions are our achievement joystick. Test it – whenever you don’t get something done, use an appropriate emotional state and link with it by intensifying the image, sounds and feelings of negative faciliation. You might see yourself failing or hear people mocking you. When you get closer toward your goal, associate it with positive emotions by viewing the images and intensifying those. You could possibly  view yourself as happier, and hear sounds of cheering or acknolwedgement.

Do note that these are only possibilities, and the best way for you to really take charge of these emotional states is to learn the skills that are taught in NLP. Some readings to learn NLP are here. My detailed Practitioner training program can also be taken up online by staying tune to that website.

I took a look at this video, and understood how someone who strives for excellence needs an achievement mindset. Oscar Pistorius fought an uphill battle to make his way to the Beijing Olympics and even without legs, he shattered paralympic records. Achieving in spite of apparent barriers – are we able to do this?

After all, some of our barriers are mere excuses: no time, no energy, no support, no confidence…

If you have already overcome these barriers, that’s awesome. If you haven’t, when will it end? When will you stop listening to such voices and keep moving forward?

To do well in any business, or endeavor (even a relationship) one must first begin from changing the “you” inside. Do this in simple steps.

First, make a choice you want to do it.

Second, surround yourself with people who are doing it and learn from their experiences.

Third, build small results to further grease your achievement engine. Keep these in mind and never let up.

I received a question which I felt deserved a decent post.

Guy Brown asked:

“Why do certain people have the ability to engage and entice people when they talk, regardless of the topic of conversation?”

In my 16 years of training and speaking, I’ve found that there are an extremely large number of people who are constantly fascinated by the charisma of leaders, people who have that “X” factor, and most of these people are under the spotlight very frequently.

photo credit: bisgovuk

When you watch a leader or a charismatic speaker on stage, you are wowed and you are all ears. So why is it that these people have the ability to draw you in?

After analyzing speakers in competitive settings, I’ve realized the following.

#1 – Dynamic and enticing speakers know how to move on stage.

Yes, I’m talking about physical motions and movements. In 2001, I spent a large portion of my time in the Toastmasters movement learning what makes good body language on stage. By 2002, I had developed a model now known as “SomaSemantics” which I premiered at NLP University in 2004 with Robert Dilts and Judith DeLozier in my audience.

This model basically identifies the stance, posture and body language that people take on in order to convey certain kinds of meaning, and emotion congruently. If I have the time, I’d share some of this in a video or something later.

#2 – Enticing speakers know how to initiate and sustain a conversation.

I used to have a problem with this and that’s why I started to study it. There’s always an entry point to a conversation, and it begins with getting someone to answer a question about themselves. Call it cheesy, but it’s the idea that to be interesting to others, you have to be interested in others.

#3 – Attractive speakers know how to vary emotional states.

You’ll realize how powerful some speakers are when they can shift you from emotion to emotion, making you feel certain things that you are aligned to. It is the essence of persuasion and you’ll see evidence of this in Presidential Debates (hint hint), church leaders and pastors and motivational speakers. The charisma did not just come out of the blue. It was deliberate, structured and planned. Even if someone were to be a “natural” at it, you can literally model the capabilities and then test it yourself, if you are able to understand the principles of modeling in NLP.

It’s a pretty fascinating area of study, and I’ve dedicated lots of my time to investigating and testing models out by modeling and applying them as practically as I can.

Charisma is a powerful trait that can be developed, and probably the best secret weapon you can have if you want to build a business as a starlet.

So I surfed the net and I found some people who are dishing out weird and odd ideas for beating procrastination. For example, someone suggested that if you hypnotize yourself, you will cause irreparable damage and prevent you from really taking control of yourself and your habits.

Hm.

Procrastination is habit, and I know that there are times we need to build a habit to save time. However, it’s also important for you to recognize the fact that if you were to ‘hypnotize’ yourself, you might as well do it right.

photo credit: ~ Maryam ~

Here’s what I might suggest:

• hypnotize yourself to make a to-do list everyday when you are at the breakfast table and spend 5-10 minutes reflecting on the top 3 things you need to get done for the day.
• Check your to-do checklist regularly and if possible, get it to remind you. Maybe you have an alarm in your PDA or phone. Set it and check it so you know you’re on track.
• Get the easiest things done first. This builds a greater level of confidence for the day, and you can recognize your ability to get things done. After all, looking at one thing you can get done today fuels the habit.

A lot of this seems like common sense, but I would recommend that if you really want to learn how to stop procrastinating, you really need to pick up the skills taught in NLP.

NLP is the skill set I use to take charge of my own patterns of behavior. I figure out what I need to change or a new skill I need to adopt, then program myself to get it done.

It took me about a year to write this post (just kidding).

photo credit: AdamKR

It’s a common disease. But it’s not in any medical journal ever. I believe, however, that chronic procrastination is a disease, and it is something that everyone experiences at some time or another.

So why do we procrastinate?

There are so many reasons behind procrastination. Who knows, it might be due to some traumatic experience you had as a child. A fear or a sense of self-doubt. Maybe the desire for a sense of freedom? A desire to just laze around? Maybe, ironically, a supreme level of (over)confidence?

The fact is, human inertia is probably one of the strongest forces of all, and if we succumb to it, we stop, and we might just stagnate.

I took a look at my on and off exercise routine recently and I discovered how easy it is to get distracted away from exercise simply because some other work was more pressing. So I decided to stop thinking so much and start doing it. Unfortunately, that was not going to work either. The best way would have been to focus on getting the exercise into some schedule or routine, where it becomes a part of life. When you plan it in, you start to make it happen and you have to battle inertia for some time before you realize that you’re doing it regularly.

Have there been simple things you had to do or decisions you had to make which made you get ’stuck’, or you ended sleeping on it for countless numbers of nights to shove it under the carpet?

I think the first step to stop procrastinating is actually acknowledging that we are wasting time and adding to our problems when taking things at the last minute. I’m not saying that we must always do things in advance and keep ourselves busy for the sake of finishing all of our work because I know work never ends. But I do know the difference between leading by example versus leading from the ivory tower, and a lot of the time, procrastination may not affect us as much as it affects the people around us.

Once we know that there could be consequences for this, then we have to build in our mind the benefits of really working toward the goals that we desire and make sure they carry a strong enough meaning beyond just the achievement of the result.

Then, get a good scheduler or planner and work that into your routine.

Once you complete the sequence, do it again. Finish something else. Get things done, and you’ll find that this cycle is even easier to complete.

Stay tuned for more… cos I gotta go for my run before I head off for dinner… xD