How flexible is your mind?

I have decided that Monday is the new Sunday, after all it’s good to have a flexible mind, right?

But how do you get one? Zen Buddhists would say: Meditation. Globetrotters: Travelling. Jamie Smart: Insightful Understanding. He is one of the leading figures in the world of NLP, but recently discovered a different approach for himself, Sydney Bank’s Three Principles. Sydney Banks was a welder in Scottland, but was lucky enough to become enlightened and discover the above mentioned three principles of Mind, Consciousness and Thought. So he quit welding and travelled the world instead, teaching and writing about his philosophy. (I’m thinking about getting a welding job, too. It’s all about having a kick-ass bio nowadays.)

The easiest way to explain the three principles is comparing them to watching a movie: Mind is the movie projector (the universal energy that animates all life), Consciousness is the light that throws the images on the screen (the ability to be aware of one’s life) and Thought is what you see on the screen, the movie (the power to think and to create one’s experience of reality). The key assumption is that reality is what we experience inside our heads. (A bit like Matrix only without the computers.) Therefore we can change it. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Understanding the three principles intellectually is only the first step, though. And this is where my beloved emotions come into play.

As Jamie Smart explains in his new book “Effortless Evolution” the learning and understanding we’ve been taught at school and university is purely intellectual. We analyze what we hear or read and then decide whether it fits in our model of the world or not. That’s why it’s not enough to tell someone with an eating disorder: “You have to eat more/less/not throw up after every meal”. They know that. Rationally. Just not emotionally. So how do we arrive at an emotional or as Jamie calls it insightful understanding of the world and ourselves? I don’t have the answer, but there are a few things you can do.

Patience for example. Remember how much patience you had as a child? That’s because the future lay sprawled out like the sea in front of your nose, no end in sight. Time? You had lots. As you grew older however people told you that the sea is more like Lake Ontario: It seems to be borderless, but it is not. (Of course the sea isn’t borderless either, but you know what I mean.) And you suddenly felt rushed, in a hurry. At least I did. The thing is that complex processes take time as I pointed out in my blog post “Why it’s sometimes best to do nothing” from June 12. New insights need time to sink in. That’s why it doesn’t make sense to have a psychotherapy session every day. You need the gaps in between for the new realizations to take root in your unconscious.

Then there is openness. You would think that the older you get the more rigid are your views. In my case the opposite is the case. In high school I was a true pighead. My model of the world was made of iron: unbendable, indestructible. In short – I was always right. (Yes, remnants of this are still alive, but hey – I’m still young!) It took me years and years to knock down the walls surrounding my cast-iron house. (Now I’m working on the iron itself – heat seems to be the best strategy; it simply melts.)

We all know that the learning is in the doing so yes, you actually need to practice patience and openness, ideally on a daily basis. A good starting point is to copy others: Why not give meditation and travelling a try? The former at least doesn’t require big expenses. And the latter can be done in your imagination if your budget’s too tight for buying an actual flight ticket – it’s all in our heads anyway, right?

Are you handcuffed yet?

Yes, I know, it’s Monday. Which means that I should have written this blog post yesterday. I do have a really good excuse, though: I stuffed myself with crepes and escargots. In Paris. Why should I be interested, you’re asking? (Sorry for the mind read, but unless you actually tell me what you think I have no choice.) That’s a good question. I will tell you the answer in a moment. Wait ... now. Actually – there is none. I just created an expectation inside your brain to hear a logical or at least convincing explanation for my faux-pas (I’m afraid there’ll be lots of French words casually slipped in today, I hope you don’t mind). And then deliberately disappointed it. Why would I do such a thing? To make a point, of course.

When I arrived in Paris a couple of days ago I expected to get lost on the way to my friend’s house. And I did. (She found me scrutinizing the mail boxes in the lobby of the adjacent house.) I also expected les parisiens to be very helpful, generous and charming. Which they were. This phenomenon is called a self-fulfilling prophecy. It means that our expectations (a direct result of our beliefs) make us look out for experiences and information that confirm them. So of course there were people with grumpy faces and “another one of these stupid tourists” looks around me, but I or rather my expectation chose not to see them. Pretty neat, eh? Unfortunately this also works in the negative as my above mentioned lobby adventure shows. The problem is that this becomes extremely limiting when we habitually expect failure. Do I really have a bad sense of orientation? Or do I just not have enough trust in it?

I remember going to a birthday party with my parents years ago, I must have been 8 or 9. There were lots of other children and soon we had invented a new game called “Lost in the forest”. It consisted of venturing out into the woods behind the house until we felt lost and then to find our way back anyway. How? By listening to our guts. The best part was the sudden rush of exhilarating surprise when we finally saw the house and the sense of “we’ve done it!” that came with it. Although we weren’t consciously aware of it our brain had stored all the necessary information to find our way back and would release it in the form of intuitions. This actually happens all the time. Try it out. Play “Lost in the forest” (or big city if you don’t have one nearby) or invent your own version of it and be amazed by your brain.

OK, back to the expectations. People with commitment issues habitually expect to be hurt or disappointed and therefore create a wall around themselves by saying that they have commitment issues to avoid exactly that. Which in turn creates the expectation in their dating partners to get hurt or disappointed. Which they do. The question is: What came first – disappointment or expectation? Fortunately this one is not as tricky as Plato’s dilemma; it’s the expectations. They narrow your attention to what fits. It’s a safety mechanism because it makes the world predictable (just as stereotypes do). And it’s hard to get rid of because we like what we know, but you can do it. It just takes a little bit of will power and practice. And you’ll be able to surprise yourself all the time.

Why it’s sometimes best to do nothing

I’m sitting in front of the computer wrecking my brain for something to write about in today’s blog post. And ... nothing. It’s empty. Or so it seems. How is it possible that my usually überactive brain feels like I’ve run an intellectual marathon with it? Because I have. In the last couple of weeks ideas kept flying through my window in a constant stream so that I could hardly write them all down. My creative part was on fire. I felt as if I had thrown in some of these pills the guy in “Limitless” is taking. I felt great. Two days ago, however, things started to slow down and today they finally came to a standstill. I’m tired and don’t want to do ANYTHING. My first impulse was to force an activity upon me nevertheless. So I grabbed my guitar and started playing scales, but soon found myself distracted. (The cats needed to be cuddled.) A nap, a walk around the block and a cup of tea later I still feel exhausted at the mere thought of doing something. What’s going on?

The answer is simple: I’ve come to the end of a creative cycle. Cycles are built into our bodies and brains by default – we sleep, eat, grow and menstruate (well, only half of humanity) in cycles so it only makes sense to assume that we also think in cycles. Unfortunately modern life doesn’t exactly support this part of human nature. It used to be engrained in our way of life because our ancestors were subject to nature’s cycles: The seasons determined everything – when to sow and harvest, when to hunt, when to go fishing, when to build or fix our homes and when to expand the family. Then came urbanization, the Industrial Revolution and finally the technology revolution of the 20^th century culminating in web 2.0. In the course of which we have lost our connection to the rhythms of the earth. Instead of interweaving our daily activities with nature’s ups and downs we’ve created our own laws. Which is not a bad thing per se. Not a single day goes by without me being amazed at the possibilities of the internet: Be it the accessibility of knowledge and the DIY revolution that’s following in its wake or the innumerable ways to connect with people all over the world. But I’m digressing. The downside of all these human-made rhythms (i.e. the 8-hour day and the 40-hour work week) and inventions (electricity that makes us independent of day light, cell phones and social media that make direct interaction obsolete – that is if you let them) is that we have forgotten how to be in tune with ourselves.

Every complex cognitive or emotional process is cyclical. Why? Because of the involvement of the unconscious mind. In his book “Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention” psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi presents the findings of his 30 years of studying creativity. He interviewed a bunch of creative people – writers, painters, musicians, scientists, thinkers – and asked them about their work habits and general life experience. All of them described periods of incubation: Their conscious mind can’t solve the problem they are working on (be it a mathematical equation or how to depict the modern day loneliness in a sculpture) so they hand it over to their unconscious mind. How does that work? On way consists in engaging in a repetitive activity like swimming, gardening or even washing dishes – anything that keeps the conscious mind busy, but leaves enough cognitive capacity and energy for the unconscious mind to do its job. Or you could just do nothing at all. Lie on the beach and look at the sky, the changing configurations of the clouds and the stars. Or sit in the shade of your favourite tree and meditate about ... the sound of running water. (If that makes you want to pee, you can choose a different topic.) We need these phases of restoration and processing just like a computer needs to be shut down every now and then in order for newly installed updates to work.

So instead of obsessing about how to deal with your new boss or how to find the best piano teacher for your child (or whatever it is that you’re worried about at the moment), give your conscious mind a break, sit back and relax. And the answer will find you.

It’s all a matter of attitude

I’m sitting in the park breathing in the delicious fresh air, listening to the cavalcade of sounds – birds, children, cars (I just imagine them to be gigantic bumble bees), the wind playing with the leaves – and wonder why things can’t always feel as light and easy as now. Wait – they can, isn’t it my choice what state I want to be in? I don’t know if you have ever thought about this, but when you use sentences like “You make me angry” you are – strictly speaking – telling a lie. Unless somebody has a direct line into your brain like in The Manchurian Candidate nobody makes you do or feel anything. You decide how you want to react, which thoughts you want to think, which words to say, what to feel. But we humans like to lay the blame for our misfortunes at the doors of others, be it our neighbours, the Gods or fate.

It doesn’t make it easier that we were taught to distort reality like this from an early age. Our parents and teachers did it and so we assumed that it must be right. It’s like what they say about shit: If millions of flies think it tastes delicious... (Millions? Probably billions. Come to think of it there are very likely more flies on this planet than humans. I should google that.)

Of course it’s painful to admit that every single bad mood, every time you fly into a rage, every listless and unmotivated day that you squander away has been your own doing. BUT it also means that you can change that. You can decide here and now not to be annoyed by your overwhelmingly talkative co-worker any more, not to be seduced by ads to buy things you don’t really need, not to let the weather get you down. It means that your attitude makes all the difference.

I’ve always admired people who stay calm no matter what. How do they do that? Are they never in a hurry when they are behind one of those snail drivers that seem to slow down when they have a green light? Do their computers never freeze? Their babies never cry? No, they experience the same frustrations as I do, but they choose to react differently. Why? Because them getting worked up wouldn’t change anything. It would most likely only make it worse. So they stay cool. Wait it out. Hum their favourite song. And that’s a very smart strategy.

In my last blog post I wrote about motivation and how ineffective a lot of the strategies that we use are. Take tidying up your room or doing your taxes for example: If you are determined to make these mosquito bites into broken legs then that’s what they’ll feel like. (I used to be an expert in this.) Including the cost for the cast and the weight of it slowing you down in everything you do. But wouldn’t it be better if you could just get them over with without having to argue with yourself for half an hour first? (Which is a stalling technique anyway.) Well – change your attitude. Be a bit like Pollyanna and see the positive, maybe you can even detect an adventurous side to what you have to do or a playful one. A good opportunity for you to flex your creativity muscle.

My father used to say that I should always aim for something a bit higher than what I actually want to achieve. So if your goal is to be more patient, train under the hardest circumstances. Think of the most boring or obnoxious person that you know and then spend a whole afternoon with them. Without snapping at them or cutting them off or showing any other sign of annoyance. If you don’t want to be moody all day just because it’s grey and rainy (yes, I am affected by the weather a lot so choose a sunny day if you have bad news for me), go out into the rain and find something fun to do. Put on your rubber boots and splash through every puddle on the way to work. So that the next time you are woken up by the sound of rain pattering on the window pane a big smile starts spreading on your face.

Motivation - the fickle beauty

How did you feel when you woke up today? Full of energy, ready for the day, ideas shooting through your mind with lightning speed? Or is Sunday Donothingday? Nothing wrong with that, you’ve spent all week working hard and deserve a day off. Or are you one of those people who collect things you want to do on the weekend throughout the week and end up with a 3-pages-long list on Friday evening? If so how does looking at that list make you feel? Defeated? I know that feeling. And whenever I experience it I ask myself: How can thinking of doing something and actually doing it lead to such completely different reactions inside of me? Namely enthusiasm and anticipation vs. resistance and listlessness? Allow me to introduce you to the fickle beauty motivation.

Yesterday a friend gave me the book “Living the Good Life” by David Patchell-Evans, the founder of GoodLife Fitness. I started reading it and after a few pages felt really motivated to work out more often. “Tomorrow morning right after getting up you’ll do some push-ups and crunches and finish off with a bit of yoga.” I said to myself. It’s been a couple of hours since I got up, but I haven’t worked out one single muscle yet (apart from my index fingers by typing). What happened between making up my mind to be more active and now? Sleep? That can’t be it.

My motivation apparently decided to take a vacation. Without consulting me, of course. Extremely frustrating. Have I done something wrong? Have I not treated her (motivation has to be female obviously, at least mine is) respectfully and warmly? Actually ... probably not. Motivation needs to be nurtured and trained just like any other muscle. I find it extremely helpful to think of her as a part of my body instead of an elusive quality of mind. If you never use that muscle and then all of a sudden demand peak performances you’ll most likely just strain it. We all know that going for a run is a good cardiovascular training, but how do you train your motivation?

It’s easy – give her what she wants. There must be activities you like so much that it doesn’t take a lot of persuasion to do them. Reading a good book maybe? Or meeting a friend for a coffee? Going for a swim on a hot summer day? Whatever it is I want you to ask yourself how or rather what you feel right before you do these things. A pleasant warm feeling in my stomach would be my answer. Every feeling is triggered by a thought, only we aren’t aware of it most of the time. My feeling of comfort and gleeful anticipation (I’m thinking of reading one of my favourite books, The Count of Monte Christo, perfect if you have the travel bug, but can’t do anything about it) is the direct result of seeing myself cuddled up in a nice armchair, a cup of hot chocolate beside me, book in hand. (For those of you who are interested in NLP: The previous short paragraph shows you that my preferred senses are the visual and the kinaesthetic systems.) You probably do something similar. As far as we know humans are the only species on our lovely planet that have the gift of anticipation. We can make plans for the future and even imagine ourselves in it. That’s pretty powerful stuff!

Back to my resolution to work out more often. What do I see when I try to motivate myself for that? Exactly: me sweating and out of breath. Which in turn leads to me already feeling pain and exhaustion in my muscles, although I haven’t even changed into my gym clothes yet. No wonder I can’t bring myself to do it! What should I imagine instead? The good part, of course: Me vitalized and energetic AFTER the workout. That’ll do the trick.

And about those weekend to do lists – scrap them. They will only do one thing: de-motivate the crap out of you. And then make you feel guilty all weekend because you’re not doing what you’re supposed to. Instead when you think of something you want to or have to do on the weekend practise imagining the good part of it as often as you can. So that when the time comes to do it you can be sure she will not suddenly disappear and leave you hanging in mid-air – your beautiful friend motivation.

Why are we so resistant to change?

The other day I was thinking about bad habits and why it is so hard to change them, even though we know they’re bad. One would think that apart from addictions where a strong physical component is involved behaviours like biting your nails or eating too much chocolate should be easy to quit once you’ve decided they’re bad for you. There is no rational reason to keep doing it so why don’t we just stop? Because the rational insight is only the first step. According to NLP what needs to follow is disentangling the behaviour from its intention. (One of the presuppositions of NLP is that every behaviour has a positive intention.) Let’s stick with the chocolate example for a moment. I used to eat way too much chocolate (as well as pizza and fries and all kinds of unhealthy foods) and couldn’t get myself to stop, no matter how hard I tried. Why? Because I didn’t take into account what intention stood behind my cravings for fat and sugar. Now I know that eating these calorie bombs was a substitute for emotional comfort and satisfaction – I was in an unhappy relationship and literally ate myself happy or at least happier for a short while. As soon as I got out of it I changed my eating habits without any conscious effort. Or rather – they changed themselves.  

Of course these miracle self-healings are rare because most habits are caused and maintained by a multitude of factors that usually don’t change overnight. A good way to start is to ask yourself: “What does this habit/behaviour do for me? What do I gain?” Biting nails or any other kind of auto-aggression (harmful behaviour directed towards oneself) usually fulfills the purpose of reducing tension thereby venting some of the stress or anxiety you’re feeling. Once you’ve figured out what the positive intention is you can find a different behaviour that has the same effect. Like reading a good book instead of ordering a pizza or doing a relaxation exercise instead of biting your nails. At first it will be difficult and you will probably experience some resistance to the change. Developing habits is a survival strategy so your unconscious will naturally object to getting rid of one. Especially if it has invested years of careful grooming and polishing to make it the automatic response it is now. Keep at it, though, and your unconscious will learn and eventually help you implement the new habit. Why? Well, because man is a creature of habit!

But what about more complex behavioural patterns? And highly emotionally charged ones? Some people fly into a temper regularly, others get shy and insecure in large groups and consequently don’t voice their opinion. Both usually regret their behaviour afterwards. And probably get angry at themselves. Which doesn’t help of course. Why can’t they just pull themselves together and not do it? Because they get a what psychologists call secondary gain that is a positive outcome from doing it. In the case of the choleric person it might be venting frustration that he or she habitually suppresses. In the case of the insecure person it’s probably avoiding the possibility of criticism and rejection. The approach would be the same: Find out what you gain by behaving like this, then think about different means of getting the same result.

I know that it’s not an easy thing to do because these topics usually are very emotional ones for us. I like to make use of another NLP principle called dissociation to make them less so. Dissociation means splitting off the emotions and looking at the problem from an outsider’s perspective. One way to do this is to imagine it’s a friend or acquaintance of yours who has the problem, not you. What would you advise them? Then step back into your own shoes and see how it feels. Does the proposed change make sense? Does it feel right?

Change is possible if we don’t just try to force ourselves into it, but get creative. Why not make venting frustration into a fun thing like – paintballing?

Emotions are contagious

So I sat down to write my blog as every Sunday and ... no internet. Restarted my computer. Nothing. Fiddled with the modem. Still nothing. Put my laptop right next to the modem (which is a really uncomfortable place in the hall of our house) and tried to directly plug it into the modem (good old pre- WLAN times...) – nada. And it was already too late for internet cafés and the likes. To cut a long story short: That’s why I’m posting this week’s blog today and not yesterday. But back to its actual content and topic ... psychology. Or to be more specific – emotions.

One of my upcoming workshops will revolve around effective communication. While I was working on the concept I asked myself: How do our emotions get in the way of successful communication? Well, 90% of our communication happens non-verbally. That’s a lot. And the problem is that most of the non-verbal communication is done by our unconscious. So we are not even aware of the signals we’re sending out. Think of a conversation with your boss for example: Let’s say you have an unresolved issue with him or her, you can be sure you’ll communicate that in one way or another. Which might, no, will cause trouble. So you could find yourself stuck in a downward spiral of negative interactions, although you just wanted to talk about something innocent like where to hold this year’s Christmas party. Just because your wayward emotions decided to stick their noses into this quite unemotional business of yours and MAKE IT EMOTIONAL.

Sometimes I think of my feelings as little children that just want attention. And they use the exact same strategies to get it. Like choosing the most inconvenient times to get crying fits or smear peanut butter (whatever the equivalent of emotional peanut butter may be...) all over your shirt. The exercises I will do with the workshop attendees help avoid this by making you aware of these feelings. And not only your own, but those of the other person as well. You just have to learn how to read the signs and clean up your own signal sending mechanisms. NLP uses eye movement patterns in order to “mind read”: Looking down, to the right for example usually means thinking about feelings.

So what about our own non-verbal communication? If you’ve got something on your mind while talking to somebody and you’re lucky they will see it and ask you about it. But most of the time people are not trained in reading other people’s facial expressions, voice tone, body posture etc. which sidelines that part of the communication to the realm of the unconscious. Not good. Because you have no control whatsoever over what is happening there. This could result in you talking to somebody about grocery shopping on the conscious (verbal) level, but about your disappointment about that person’s unreliability on the unconscious (non-verbal) level. Which would in turn lead to a corresponding conscious and unconscious response so that you have two totally different communications taking place at the same time. Chances are you won’t be able to agree on what to buy.

The bottom line is: Emotions are contagious. That’s why it’s so nice to be around happy, optimistic, energetic people. (Unless you feel it’s too much in your face cheerfulness. That happens to me when I’m in a bad mood and don’t want to be cheered up. Then I avoid these people if possible because I want to soak in my own unhappiness and don’t want to “catch” their good mood.) So if you plan to have an important conversation with someone and want a positive outcome you better take a closer look at the sidelines first – there might be a whole cheerleading team of emotions determined to salt your conversation with inappropriate remarks.