“In life you are not supposed to find yourself or anything else, you are supposed to create yourself” Bob Dylan.
In last week’s blog my client Flor Medina asked the question ¿what do you gain from your habits? It is a good question; have you ever heard some one say “Oh but I have always done it that way”? My favourite question to that answer is: “and how is that working out for you?”
If a habit is not good for you, then what is the purpose of repeating it? All too often we run around in circles repeating behaviour even when it is not good for us. As Joseph O’Connor and Andrea Lages say in their book Coaching the Brain “Every day we can take a victim position, reactive position or a creator active attitude”. For me, Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) is about creating choices. According to Dr. John Grinder (co-creator of NLP) you have “a choice” when you have three or more options. It has made life so much more interesting as I find out that I had the option to look for three or more options as I lived my life, it has made me more creative and more in charge of creating the life I want to live. During my course in Coaching the Brain, Neuroscience applied to Coaching, with Joseph O’Connor we looked at creativity and to my surprise, I learned that before we can be creative our brain has to be inhibitive and what it has to inhabit is our thought of habits. We have to stop our habitual thinking for us to create new thinking, or to create room for us to be able to create new thoughts.
The other day I was with a friend and client of mine and she gave an answer to a question I gave her, that very much sounded like she had rehearsed the answer. I know she hadn’t in the strictest interpretation of rehearsing, she had probably repeated it so many times to herself and others that by now seemed to be the only and absolute truth, it had become a habit. So when I asked her what would your answer be if you were not allowed to give the answer you have just given me? She looked surprised and confused so I knew my question had come at the right time. I repeated my question “what would your answer be if you were not allowed to answer that? I could see she was thinking, she looked at me and smiled, she changed her position in her chair, took a deep breath and looked me in the eyes, “I don’t know” she said, and then I asked, “and what would it be if you knew?” “Oh Ivie!” she exclaimed, in her pleasant high pitched voice and she got a special spark in her eyes “you are naughty, “she said (by the way, Ivie is my pet name here in Menorca). She pointed her finger at me and moved it forwards and backwards a tiny bit like she was saying no to a small child. What she was doing was buying time, while she was thinking. She gave me a new answer and I said the same thing “what would your answer be if you were not allowed to give me that answer either?” She giggled and thought again, and the game continued for a while and before she knew it, she had created more possibilities for herself that she never thought possible. She had stopped her habitual way of thinking and created new train of thoughts.
John Grinder likes to call Coaches agents of change, we help people change and as Joseph O’Connor and Andrea Lages explain in their book Coaching the brain, that means that we help people move from their present state to their desired state. It is in my experience a wonderful privilege to be the catalyst of that process and therefor I love my job. At the mind and body balance retreat this is some of the work we are going to do, we are going to find a way for you to reach your goals and to define what it is that you want.
I hope you have as a fantastic week as you would want to have and remember being kind is for free.
Best wishes
Ivalo