Monday, August 29, 2011

The Power Of Words, Turned Outside In.


The video above is touching.  It contains a great message, that often times it is not what we say, but rather, how we say it, that makes the difference.  I watched this video several times, thought about the implications when creating marketing to deliver a particular message about a particular product or service and wondered how many great products, services and ideas never saw success because of a poorly worded message.  I imagine the number is in the millions.

How many messages do we process on a daily basis?  Some studies indicate that the number is in the thousands.  What if each one was worded as well as this one, each one had an effective impact?  What if the most important messages we process through the day could have this impact?  What are the most important messages we process through the day? The ones we tell ourselves all day long, they have the most impact on what manifests in our lives on a day to day basis.

Our self talk is the single most important thing to be aware of.  Our self talk not only reveals our mindset, it determines how we are going to react throughout the day and it is what makes it possible (or impossible) for us to recognize opportunity when it comes our way. If you have never observed your self talk, it may be surprising.  We are our harshest critics, we manipulate the past to make it feel better, and we project into the future our worries and concerns. We have imaginary conversations that will never come to pass.  We use language with ourselves we would never use with anyone else. We misinterpret other people's reactions, we assume the wrong answers (though often times we delude ourselves into thinking we are mind readers), and we filter everything that comes to us through our self talk.  If our self talk is negative and debasing, what we experience will be negative and debasing, but if our self talk is healthy and supportive, there is no limit to what we can accomplish.  Our challenges become rewarding, and life's twists and turns become a source for excitement. Gratitude replaces regret, accountability replaces victim hood. The key to all self improvement begins with an inventory of and changing of your self talk.

Saturday, August 27, 2011

A Letter To A Heart In Pain.



Often times the things we think we need to be happy are the very things that bring us pain later on. Xxxxxx, I have known you a long time and I KNOW that you need no one to complete yourself, but I am not sure you do. I agree with you, now probably is the time to put the walls up, sit with yourself and by yourself and get to know yourself better than ever before. Loving oneself is the first and only step needed to truly be able to love someone else.

Intimacy is tricky. I like to break the word down like this IN-TO-ME-SEE. That is why loving yourself is so important. If you can't look at yourself and love yourself, you will be incapable of allowing someone else to, or in other words, until you see into yourself, start to like what you see about yourself, you will never be able to find someone else who loves themselves and will allow you to get close to them. The neat thing about loving yourself is it gets easier and easier to see the people who don't love themselves and avoid getting involved with them, because invariably they will always hurt you, even when they don't intentionally mean to. Many of the women you have gotten involved with didn't mean to hurt you, they were just incapable of loving themselves so they couldn't ever really love you. When you love yourself you need no one else to love you, though it seems when you love yourself, you can never run out of people who do love you, it's as if by loving yourself you become a magnet for people to love you as well.

Another saying I have is "Expectations are just premeditated resentments." When you love yourself and can depend on that, you have no need to expect anything from anyone else. Thus, you avoid the resentment, because you never make the expectation. I have no expectations of the people I love, I just love them. If they choose a different path than the one we are sharing, it may be sad to see them go, but I know that I love myself so I will be okay, it is not life ending. Shortly after they go on their path, another joins me to share the time on the path that I am walking. Eventually they will grow a different direction and I will continue on my path. I think a major part of growth is change, and unfortunately, two people don't always grow the same way.

Remember when you came to Florida 23 years ago? In Springfield we were not even close to the friends we were in Florida. Florida was the time that our paths converged. Being new to Florida, we only had each other as friends, we depended on each other and had each other's backs. Then you grew one way, and I grew a different way. It wasn't a bad thing, after all, your fantastic career came as a result of your growth. Relationships are a lot like that, let it go, continue on your path and life will reward you with the rewards that come with accepting change.

Trust me Xxxxxx, you are okay. You don't need anyone else to love you, to be able to love yourself, you can do it all by yourself. Focus on you, let the details work themselves out and enjoy the fantastic life you have, because from where I am sitting, it appears to me that you have a fantastic life that lots of people would trade you theirs for yours.

Get your ass to Tucson, we will discuss it more. Take care buddy.

Friday, August 26, 2011

What the hypnotist told you...


  Imagine together we go to a hypnotist's stage show.  As we sit in the audience, he calls you up to the stage to participate in a demonstration.  He points you to a chair to sit in, and after you sit down, he proceeds to hypnotize you. While you are hypnotized, he sets an instruction in your subconscious that anytime you hear him say the word 'duck' you will stand up, start to flap your arms as if they were wings, and loudly quack like a duck.  After this, he instructs that you will have no recall of the time while you were hypnotized.  As you awake from the hypnotized state, you have no recall of what just happened and he instructs you to take your seat in the audience.
     After a few minutes, the hypnotist starts to talk about duck hunting, and as he does, you can't help it, you stand up, start to flap your arms like wings, and loudly quack like a duck, the whole time thinking to yourself "what am I doing? I am going crazy!" One of the interesting things about human behavior is that as we become more and more stressed, we fall further and further back into our subconscious programming, so as you stress about flapping and quacking, you fall back to your subconsciousness more and more, making you flap faster and quack louder. Needless to say, you are embarrassed and become very self-conscious at that point.  After leaving you on the hook for a couple of minutes, the hypnotist quits saying the word duck, and you are able to sit down and allow the stress to subside, though the confusion never really leaves.
     We all have been hypnotized. We had parents, grandparents, siblings, other family, other authority figures all show and explain the world to us.  Just as your capacity for reason is suspended during hypnotism and it cannot filter out/re-contextualize anything before it reaches your subconscious, a child's capacity for reason is non-existent at first, so a lot of the first beliefs you heard your parents talk about, became a reality for you.  Without exploring and questioning these "realities" we have carried since being infants, we cannot discover which ones are healthy for our development nor can we discover the ones that interfere with our goals and inspirations for ourselves.
     Now let's imagine the above story a little different.  Let's imagine that when you came off the stage and sat back down next to me, I leaned over to you and told you that he had hypnotized you, I then proceeded to tell you the instructions he placed in your subconscious.  Then when he starts talking about duck hunting a few minutes later, you now have a choice.  Your reaction/inclination will be to stand up, flap, and quack, but because you now know about the instruction that was placed in your subconscious, you are able to make a choice to do something different, mainly because your awareness of the instruction allows you to look at your behavior without stressing, without intensifying the instruction. Awareness eventually leads to change, but first it provides the confidence one needs to move forward and try something new.
     We have helped lots of people learn what the hypnotist told them.  Are you ready to learn what your early hypnotists told you and how it is limiting your life?  If you have the courage and the want to produce real change into your life, call us today, we will help you discover what the hypnotist told you. 520-329-1969