Wednesday 25 February 2015

The Code

In Life you should have a code of conduct that you live by just as you have in business.

You should have a 'mission statement' for yourself so that everyone who knows you understands who you are and what you expect.  It's the very essence of your being.  It's how you walk through the world.  So...

If you feel happy, smile.

If you feel daring, act.

If you receive good service, compliment.

If you feel energetic, do something positive.

If you know a good joke, tell it.

If you feel generous, give.

If you are interested in getting wealthy, save and invest.

If someone needs help, lend them your strong hands or soft voice.

If you give your word, keep it.

If you can say something nice, say it.

If you can stand up for the weak, do it.


But, also consider this.....


If someone says something you don’t agree with, tell them.

If you see behaviour you don’t like, stop it.

If someone is rude to you or someone else, call them on their bullshit.

If someone is bad towards you, show them.

If someone lies to you, tell them you know.

The Power of Passion, Energy and Ownership

Words. Affirmations.

How many times do we use words and affirmations when we 'reach for the stars' only to find that we never even get off the ground?

When we use empowering words without any emotion it’s like a broken pencil: pointless. Just like the old saying of comparing a toothpick with a spear. Words with no emotion are toothpicks, but words with emotion behind them are like a spear.

Be positive sounds like a blood group but being positive isn't everything, as some people would have you believe. Being positive just isn't enough. We can all be positive about something if we choose to be. We can be as positive as we like. But is just 'being positive' enough on it's own?  From the research we have conducted over the years, just saying something, just using the word(s) is not enough.

Just being positive will not make something change, or happen, or become achievable. It is better than the alternative, negativity. Positivity is a great context to work out of, far better than a negative one, but just 'doing' positive stuff will not make it happen.

We can use affirmations all day, again and again if we choose. We need to realise that positivity and affirmations alone will change NOTHING. Take an empowering affirmation like ‘I am Powerful’ and repeat it 20 times, 30 times, or maybe just 10 times and you will notice how the word loses all meaning.

But when we say an empowering word, like ‘Powerful’ once and we stand shoulders back, head up and punch the air with as much ownership and passion as we can muster, as much energy as possible, we start to feel a change immediately. Now imagine the feeling of being powerful, embody it, and own it. Feel power coursing through your veins, feel it tingling on the surface of your body, feel it, see it and hear it in your mind, and own it. Now say the word ‘Powerful’ again and feel the difference.

Saying things once, or hundreds of times, without passion, energy or ownership is pointless. Engaging with it, owning it, feeling it and using the energy of it is the point.

Saying something again and again, louder and louder will not make it the truth.

Saying it from a context of truth just once will make it a reality to you.

Monday 23 February 2015

The Kindest Cut

Talking of Language...as I was before I started writing this (it's ok, you weren't part of the
conversation), I wanted to share something with you all.

I have just had a meal with some friends who also work in the NLP and Persuasion field and we were discussing language and conversation.

It seems that some conversations, or lines of questioning, are acceptable in certain situations but not others. What appears quite incongrous and innocent can be intrusive and freakin' creepy in others

I told them that when I had my haircut the other day, the hairdressers I use offer you tea/coffee/water/glass of wine or beer while you are having your hair cut.  After your hair is washed they offer a complimentary neck and back massage.  It's a top notch joint.  Fact is, they cut your hair and concentrate on doing a great job. The girl that cut it was talking to me and asked me a few questions to pass the time of day while she sharpened my head.

It struck us that no other job could warrant the questioning.  You would not get away with it.

"Do you live nearby?"
"What do you do?"
"Are you married?"
"Is that your car outside?  Nice."
"Where are you going on holiday?"

I responded to her questions but then asked her...

"Have you worked here long?"
"Who does YOUR hair?"
"How long have you been doing this?"
"Wow, those are long hours,are you married?"
"How many of you work here?"

Can you imagine the trouble you would be in having that kind of conversation, the kind everyone has with a hairdresser, somewhere else.

There you are ladies, sitting at the bar having a quiet, chill out, drink after a long day and a guy walks in, you smile at each other and to break the silence he asks...
"Do you live nearby?"
"What do you do?"
"Are you married?"
"Is that your car outside? Nice."

You go to your doctor and after he has examined you and is writing out a prescription for something you ask...
"Do you live nearby?"
"What do you do?"
"Are you married?"
"Is that your car outside? Nice."

There you are at the gym.  Pumping iron or in the jacuzzi, whatever, and the person next to you says,
"Do you live nearby?"
"What do you do?"
"Who does YOUR hair?"
"How long have you been doing this?"
"Are you married?"

It seems to me that some conversations are specific to certain situations and are a no go in others.

Can you think of any situations where you have been talking to someone and asked questions like that because I can't. We can't.  In fact the feedback on this from readers is that they can't either!

It's true when they say your hairdresser knows more about you than your friends.

Friday 20 February 2015

Kate Nasser - The People Skills Coach™

I thought I would take some time to make a recommendation to you...

Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™

Stop what you are doing and get along to www.katenasser.com and have a good look around for yourselves.  If you are in the market for Customer Service training or for solid gold info about what you need to do to keep customers, or maybe just some common sense techniques and training that works then you would be foolish to ignore this nudge to her site.

There are lots of video clips and there are also lots of interesting comments and information from a very clever, intelligent and knowledgeable Leader/ Teacher/ Trainer who really walks the walk as well as talk the talk.

One of the business models The Moore Consortium runs is a Sales Training program that shows you how to GET customers... but Kate Nasser shows you how to KEEP them with her cutting edge ideas.

Kate's techniques are embedded in a very funny and conversational style of presentation, which appeals to me as thats how I work.  It's a great way of pouring your message into the heads of the audience without them resorting to note taking.  If you have a team of people who need to step up to the next level, or if you need a reboot yourself, or if you just want to enhance your lifeskills, Kate is the person for you!

Kate also has a Google+ community called PeopleSkills.
I am honored to be one of the moderators on there as well as @ @ @ @ @CBechervaise  who are all worth following as they each have a unique style and ground breaking information they are willing to share on Social Media.

Tweetchats take place on Sundays at 10amEST and cover a different subject every week with an emphasis on the skill sets people need in life and business today.  Each Tweetchat is moderated and the main rule is: Respect for each other even when we disagree

There is a Facebook Group called People Skills That Really Matter which you will find HERE and that is monitored by +Hoda Maalouf It is well worth joining that group for some terrific interaction with other like minded people.

I also recommend that you check out the Google+ community PeopleSkills  HERE and join it today!!

It is not often that you find gold like this...but it is here...on her website www.katenasser.com
Contact on Twitter @katenasser



Thursday 19 February 2015

Reality or Construct? You Decide.

WHAT REALM DO YOU WORK OUT OF?

When something totally unexpected happens in our life, one normally wonders or asks: "how do I deal with it?"

A better question would be, "When I deal with situations like that, what Realm do I work out of?"

Consider: There are two different realms that human beings work from inside of.
A 'Reality' realm called 'What happened' and an imaginary realm called 'Story/Interpretation'.

The 'What happened' realm is Reality.  The facts. If you were a fly on the wall you would be able to see exactly what happened.  You would see the facts, you would know exactly what caused something, the content of conversations, the incidents...everything.

Then there is another realm totally unique to human beings because of language and imagination.  It is the interpretation of what may have happened.  A construction by our imagination that builds something totally incorrect.  A story we make up.

All of the interpretation or story you make up is is extremely powerful, and can even be useful as a tool for improving and expanding your mind through creativity as long as you remember that the story you make up, or your interpretation, is not the truth.

Ongoing, we link what happened to the story we create about what happened and we make them one and the same.

The only thing that really happens is the fact.  Let's look at a situation involving you.

Situation: He/ She didn't call me. Could be a client, could be a potential customer, could be someone you met and gave your phone number to...
Story: He/ She didn't like me, they were messing me about, I am not good enough for them, they lied to me, they found a better deal somewhere else, they have been injured and can't get to a phone...

The only thing that really happened was the...
Fact: They lost your number or are just busy and will call you soon, but there really is NO Problem.

Everything other than the fact is a story not based on anything real.
But, who created the story?  You did.

If you believe the story rather than what Really Happened then you will reinforce the fact with the story and you are locked in a vicious circle, over and over again.

If you can recognize that what you are concentrating on is a story you created and not the reality, what could you live like?  What could be possible for you?

Tuesday 17 February 2015

The Transformation

"This is all about becoming the person you were DESTINED to be! You need to release the REAL you! That's right! The REAL you, the one that you were, the one that all this useless 'stuff' is hiding.......We need to strip you back. Back to NOTHING...so that the person you were meant to be recognizes the person you really are, and takes you into a future of endless possibility!"
~ Dave Moore

My Transformation experience is no different from any of the transformation experiences the delegates at the HPT-Transformation seminars experience.  It happens in an instant.

All my life I had been searching for an answer to whatever was in my mind at the time.

Every thought or idea needs an answer, or so I thought.  I had no idea at that point in my life, at that stage of my learning, that answers would come without being searched for.

Answers, be they small or huge, are all around us and we fail to see them sometimes because they are so obvious or, on many occasions, we just have to understand that what we want sometimes comes dressed as something else and we need to unwrap it

I had been adding information to my 'store of information' throughout my life.  Experience built on experience.  In truth, these experiences, learnings, teachings, ideas had all been added in the hope that something magical or unknown would happen allowing me to get to a critical mass and there would be an explosion...or I would find the real secret.

Rain.

Rain on my face.

Even now, when most people run for cover when rain falls, I turn my face to the sky and let it hit my face.  I know what it means...it means I am alive.

Many people know of the slight accident a few weeks ago when I ended up upside down in the back of a taxi that was in a head on collision in central London.

After 36 hours of tests in a London hospital I was discharged.
Was I concerned? No.
Did I fear for my life? No.
It was just another adventure...

What do I mean by that?  I see everything as an adventure, something to experience, another incident that I can look back on, something I can draw strength from, something that I can grow from.

Where did THAT mindset come from?

In 2009 I was driving from Lyon to Paris in France.  I had been staying with friends and was on my way to visit some more in Paris before I boarded the Eurostar back to England a few days later.  It was late in the evening and raining quite heavily.  I had been asked to pick up a large strawberry gateaux from a patisserie in Lyon and it was sitting on the passenger seat of the hire car.  A leisurely drive to Paris was almost complete as the rain started to ease off on the country road.  The car headlights lit a sign telling me that there were only 35km left on my journey before I reached the Peripherique, the ring road around Paris.  I drove around the sharp right bend in the road when suddenly I was blinded by the headlights of a car directly in front of me on my side of the road.

I swerved to my left but the other car caught the rear wing of my car with a deafening crash and I was airborne over the steep bank that fell sharply from the left side of the road.

No sooner had my car hit the slope of the bank it started to roll down it.  It seemed endless.  It seemed in slow motion.  Memories were stored.  I remember as the car turned over and over the Gateaux hitting me and the windscreen.  I remember after turning over three times thinking to myself 'This is a bit excessive!'  I remember hitting my head on the steering wheel.  I remember the roof of the car compressing down onto me, the windows shattering.  I remember the roar of the engine, and the deafening, constant, sound of the horn.
Finally the car righted itself at the bottom of a 60ft bank...and silence.

I am told that it was twenty minutes before the emergency services arrived.  A crash team, fire service and paramedic team all descended on me as the car sat where it had finally come to rest, on a dirt road leading from who knows where, to a large house about 50ft away.

A very shocked looking man in a police uniform put his hand over his mouth as he looked into the car at me. "Le gars est mort, le cerveau et le sang partout!" he shouted.  Even my basic French told me he had shouted that I was dead and there was blood and brains everywhere...

"I'm not dead!" I shouted, "That's a strawberry gateaux"

I thought the car had caught fire or even worse, they were letting fireworks off (Thanks, how kind!), but it was an angle grinder that was cutting through the car to get me out.

Eventually I was out of the car and strapped to a stretcher on wheels.  I was given a neck brace that covered all of my head apart from my face.  I lay there, thankful that I was alive.

In what seemed like minutes but were more likely as not seconds, I changed.  I altered completely.

I can pinpoint that change to that very moment without any hesitation or uncertainty.  At that moment, lying on that stretcher, next to a dirt road near Paris, I had a realisation.

I had almost died but I no longer feared death, because I had stared it in the face and it had turned away.  I no longer fear death and never will.
I realised I still had so much to do in my life.  People to meet, places to go.  I resolved not to stop until all of my goals and dreams were realised and I knew that would be never, as new ones appear all the time.
I realised that time was precious and life was precious too.  Lives can change in a moment.  Every second of every day was meant to be enjoyed, explored and appreciated.
I realised I had wasted so much time in my life.  I hadn't done what I wanted or should have done on occasion.  I hadn't said what I wanted or should have said on occasion.
I realised that I would say and do exactly what I felt I needed to from now on.
If I liked someone I would tell them immediately.  If I wanted to do something I would do it.  If I delayed it, I may never get another chance.

I had become something other.  Something else from the person I had been until that moment.  I had a greater understanding and appreciation.  I had a far more powerful understanding of myself, and my capability.

As the rain hit my face I understood that it was great to be alive.  It was as if I was a different person from the old me, I was now the New Me!

I lay on that stretcher and realised that, as I felt the rain on my face, I was transformed.

After a month in hospital I was transferred to England and eventually, after a few weeks, went home.

I could philosophize about the accident.  Why it happened.  The reasons, the timing, the significance etc etc. Saying 'Why me?' was for other people to say.  The truth was that accident was one of the greatest events of my life.  It made me realise so much about myself.  It made me become the person I was meant to be.

I have a very small chipped piece of bone at the base of my spine that causes me pain now and then.  I can live with that.

When it rains I turn my face to the sky for a while to feel the raindrops on my face, and I relive that moment when I became the new me...
It was Transformational.

What happened on the day of my Transformation, after I had crashed my car and was lying on a stretcher in a French field with the rain landing on my face was like nothing else that had happened in my life.

It wasn't anything like 'new' information being given to me.  It wasn't that I had suddenly realised things.  

It was that the system in which my information was contained was touched, so I suddenly went from knowing these five billion things to knowing a totally different five billion things.

In other words, in one moment I knew nothing and came to know everything.  I am not being unhumble in this so take this in the spirit it is meant.  I REALLY knew what I already knew, I understood it, and I experienced it.  Experiencing is the key, it's the reality.

I went through this period where I absolutely didn't know anything, because I could see that every piece of information which I contained, even the information contained in my brain about how to function, were contained within a system or context that precluded aliveness.

My entire system of knowing - not what I knew, but the system or context in which I knew - fell away and I came out the other side and found everything in an instant.

I am so excited when the trainees at the seminars get the Transformation.  They all break free from their identification with their minds and bodies and glimpse who they REALLY are, which is actually who they have been all along.  They de-identify with their mind, they de-identify with their body, they de-identify with their emotions, they de-identify with their problems, they de-identify with their 'Maya', and they begin to see they are not this play, this performance, this fiction.  With this de-identification they relinquish this drama of their lives and see the person they were always destined to be.

Self is all there is, that's it.  We provide the crack in the wall through which the trainees see themselves and the world.  Sometimes, just a few bricks are all that's needed to be demolished, sometimes the whole wall. It is true enlightenment.  

This is the fundamental change that takes place in the mind in an instant but takes four days of awareness training, harmonic development and experiential expansion techniques to achieve.  The trainees are turned around 180 degrees, from who they are...to who they were destined to be.  The Real person!

This enlightenment is internal and is therefore called 'In Lightenment' within the HPT lexicon.

As a Zen master once put it, after this process everything is exactly as it was before, except two feet off the ground.

Monday 16 February 2015

Kate Nasser - Quick, Spot & Adapt (TM) Program

Have you ever felt like you were not really connecting with a co-worker, a team member, a member of your staff or even your Customer?  Have you had conversations with people where you feel like you are watching a foreign movie with the wrong subtitles?  Have you ever wished that you could determine just what would build a bond between you and another person so that you 'CONNECT'?
I highly recommend Kate Nasser, the #peopleskills coach, to be on your speed dial for cutting edge people skills training.  But here is the latest big news: Kate has launched a Workshop that puts you in control and firmly in the driving seat to make a positive change...Check out the information below and give her a call....
www.KateNasser.com
QUICK,SPOT & ADAPT
@KateNasser
#PeopleSkills