Half Empty or Half Full?

In looking at this photograph, what question do you think I am going to ask you?

Remember, I am a Psychologist, NLP trainer and Transformation trainer so what question about a glass that has an amount of water in it could I possibly ask you?....

No! Not that one....(Have I ever been THAT obvious?) 

I know the question 'is it half full or half empty' is a great way of determining if someone is an optimist or a pessimist but then I always subscribe to the alternative version and that is, while the optimist and pessimist argued about it, the realist drank it!

I sometimes hold up a glass of water like this in seminars and I see the reaction from the crowd as one of 'not that old chestnut again?' but then they are surprised by my question...so here it is for you...

How heavy do you think that glass of water is?

Truth is, it really doesn't matter how heavy it is...it's how long you hold on to it that matters.

If I hold onto it for a minute it isn't a problem.
If I hold onto it for an hour I may get a little arm or shoulder ache.
If I hold onto it for a day then my arm is going to feel dead and paralyzed.
If I hold onto it forever, and an opportunity comes along I will never see the opportunity because I am focusing on the glass.  What's more, I won't be able to grasp opportunity because my hand is already holding on to something...maybe something I don't need to keep holding on to!

In all those cases, the weight of the glass does not change, but the longer I hold onto it, the heavier it becomes.  It becomes a dead weight because my strength is debilitated and my focus cannot be 100% fixed on anything else. 

The stresses and worries you have in life are just like that glass.
Any grudges or complaints you have are just like that glass also.

Think about them for a while and there's no problem but if you think about them for longer then they will become painful.  Think about them for a day or so and you will begin to feel paralyzed by them and they will take over your whole life.

It is important to remember to let go.  Let go of your anger, your hatred, your confusion, your complaints, your grudges.  Put your burdens down as soon as you can.

I met someone who had a dental appointment a few weeks later and they told me they were worried.
Another friend told me they were worried in case they got bad news from their doctor.
Another told me they were worried about how the job interview had gone.
Another had applied for a loan and was worried about being turned down.

In all those cases I asked two simple questions.  Two questions that I have been told are so shocking to the person that they cannot come up with a rational answer.  I now have philosophy teachers, Psychology students, clients, telling me the simplicity is brilliant but then again, I think the questions are obvious....

Each time I have been told by someone they are worried about something I always ask...

"Has worrying about something in the past ever EVER changed the outcome?"
The answer is always, once they analyse it, no...
"Then why do you worry?"
And then...silence......

We can be caring, we can be concerned but our worry does one thing only, it makes US feel bad.

Remember to put that glass down!  Let go.

Here is the +SkyWire  chat in full:

Building Your Future

Transformation is a different thing entirely from change.
It doesn't take the past and change it, add to
it or re-organise it.  It creates a new context.  Possibilities that didn't exist now come into being.  The future is built on possibility.  The future is constant.

If we carry our past with us into the future, we are limiting the amount of space we have in our future because it is taken up with the past we bring into it.  If what we have in our future is our past, our future is going to be consistent with what we had in our past.

If we can take the past OUT of our future, we create an empty space which we can fill with all manner of possibilities and opportunities that are not governed or linked to any past activity. If you do not empty out your past from your future right now then all you are doing is changing your past.

Childhood experiences that have been traumatic.  It can be one experience that was big enough to be traumatic, or a series of experiences.

An example would be: If you have been bullied at school, it's probably not the one time but more likely a period of bullying over time.  That begins to shape who you are, and who you need to be, to become, to survive.  You can't do much at the time about that but you have to do something to defend yourself.  And that leads you into continuing to be that person who has built up defence mechanisms to deal with bullying but at some point you have to find a way to take that past OUT of your future and put it back IN the past.

We all have excess baggage.  We carry it around in our heads.  It's there even when we don't see it.
We are concerned about excess baggage when we go on vacation.  We don't want it then, so we weigh our bags to make sure we are below the requirement.  Trouble is, we carry it around at all other times.

At any given moment of any given day, we reference the excess baggage for information.  Even worse than that, we carry it into our future.  We expect to be able to function and plan and build strategies for a brighter future when we carry our past around with us.

I am not talking about forgetting your past, or where you come from, or your history, or the people in it...

I am talking about today being the day when you stop paying for your bags of excess baggage, and go forward with your hands open to grasp the opportunities that will come your way.

You CANNOT grab opportunity if your hands are full!!

We human beings don't leave the past in the past.  We have the past in the future. When you do that it appears as if the past gives you who you are, and who you are in the present.

Lets imagine the past and the future as two filing cabinets.

If you take the past out of the filing cabinet marked FUTURE, and put it in the filing cabinet marked PAST, what have you got in the FUTURE?  NOTHING!  Which is wonderful. Fantastic!!!!

Why?

Because if, WHO I AM in the present, is determined by the future into which I am living, I can CREATE a future for myself that gives me, in the present, a life of being, joy, happiness, accomplishment...a life worth living.

Check out our website, click on  HPT-Transformation  or our Google+ community to find out how YOU can get to one of my seminars where you will discover just HOW to empty that future filing cabinet, HOW to take the past out of your future and HOW to free up the potential and become the person you were destined to be.

SPECIFY

Getting what you want in life, or a more positive outcome at least, is just like enjoying your favourite cup of Java in the mornings.

Have you got a voice in your head telling you to do things?

Yeah, that's the one!  That voice in your head that just went 'Voice in my head? Ha! I am not admitting to that!'...or maybe it went, 'Voice in my head?  Nah!'

We all have a voice in our head.  It's called THINKING!

SO, there you are...thinking.  All day, thinking.  You drive to work and you are...thinking. You sit at your desk...thinking.  You drive home...thinking.

You do a lot of thinking.  We all do.  We think about good things.  We think about bad things.
Good, bad, funny, sad, pointless, important.  You name it!

When you are cruising through your day, there is a voice in your head telling you stuff, telling you what to do, telling you to do things.  Don't panic.  You're not going mad.  That's thinking.

Are you thinking good stuff or bad stuff because you need to check.  Bad stuff can make you SO depressed you are going to believe that it isn't worth even attempting something.  Why?  Because you have already predetermined that failure.

Hey, do something different.  Predetermine your success.

How many times have you worried about something, like a dental appointment, only to find that there was no pain, minimum amount of work needed, and on reflection, not a too shabby way of spending your morning?

Then again, it may have hurt, you needed root canal and it wasn't a great experience.  But think about it.  Would worrying have changed that?  Would being negative about it have changed that?  NO!

Here is a shock: Worrying about something has never changed a damn thing in your life!

The conversations you have with yourself are the key driver to the outcome of whatever it is you are doing.

How many times have you gone into a meeting and thought, or even muttered to yourself, 'This is going to be a COMPLETE waste of time'?  Guess what?  Yeah, it was wasn't it?

'Why am I driving down here? There will be no parking spaces!'
'I won't be able to get a table at that restaurant tonight.'
'That person won't be interested in me.'
Ever thought any of those?

I asked a group of salespeople once: 'What do you want to achieve this month?'
The first guy said, 'I don't want to miss my target this month!'
I asked him the same question 5 times before he realised he was thinking and focusing on 'missing the target'....

If you have ever thought like that then you are focusing on the negative.  You are focusing on what you DON'T want rather than what you DO.

Why do you do that in your head when you wouldn't dream of doing it out loud.

When you go into Starbucks and the Barista asks you what you want do you say, "Well, I don't want a Latte, and I don't want a Mocha, and a certainly don't want a Tea"?

That would be stupid right?

You ask for what you want.  "I'll have a Cappucino please."

So why don't you keep that mindset in everything?

Be positive sounds like a bloodgroup: but it's more than that.  Can you imagine what sort of life you are going to enjoy if you continue to focus on the negative stuff?  Maybe you are already suffering that lifestyle.  Well STOP.  Right now.

Be specific about what you want and be determined to get what you want from situations.

'I am going to enjoy this meeting and get my points across'
'I am going to park the car down here and then go to the restaurant'
'I am going to make some sales today'
'I am going to get every single piece of information I can from this seminar'
'I am going to get a table at the restaurant tonight'
'I am going to have fun talking to that person'

Go for Cappucino in your life.  Be Specific!

Self Help? No! It should be called SHELF Help!

Self Help is a weird thing.

I have never understood why bookshops like Foyles or Waterstones have a Self Help section.  They should take the sign down and let people find it themselves!

Whats more, the books in the Self Help section, though very informative, should be called Shelf Help books because that's where the majority of them end up: on a shelf.  And sooner than you think too because the other name they should go by is 'I could help you if you can be bothered to read past page 22' books.

A whole variety of Self Help events are at your disposal.

Mountaineering. (Didn't see the point)
Parachuting. (done it)
Rock climbing. (Didn't see the point)
Waterfall climbing. (done it)
White Water Rafting. (done it)
Walking through a forest blindfolded and tied to 8 other people. (done it - don't ask!)
Problem solving exercises. (done it)
Bungee jumping. (done it)
Abseiling. (done it)
Zip line. (done it)

and of course...

Firewalking, Glasswalking and Board Breaking. (done it and train people to do it)

Self Help is like Self Abuse...you have to do it yourself.  No book can really help you unless you take action and put the teachings into practice.

One of my core beliefs that I impress upon my clients is that they should stop buying self help books and look at what books they already have and courses they have attended.  The answers they are looking for are probably in there already.  What's more, they probably haven't read them through anyway!

I remember taking a group of people in the Lake District in 1999.  We were about to climb a waterfall.  We met another group that was there and they were abseiling.  They were a group of Double Glazing Salesmen.

I watched one of them slowly making his way down a cliff edge to the ground.  He was exhilerated by the experience.  He was really charged up.  He started pacing around and ended up standing near me.

"You look really pumped after that." I told him.
"Wow, that was really something", he replied.
"Exhillerating?" I asked.
"Definitely! Definitely!" he said, punching the air.
"Do you think it will help you sell more windows?" I asked him.
"Definitely!" he said again.
Pause.
"How?" I asked him.
He suddenly froze and then started to grimace as he stood there silently.  He had no answer.  I could see his eyes flicking all over the place as the question bounced around in his brain, like a ricocheting bullet, as it looked for an answer.
In the meantime he started to deflate.  He started to calm down.  There was a visible slump.
Finally he came up with an answer.
"I don't know how, but I am sure it will!" he stammered.

Did I rain on that guys parade?

No.

You see there is something about the Self Help movement, of which I am part, that is like no other movement on earth.

It is almost impossible to quantify the benefit.

The dividends or benefits of any self help program are largely inexpressible.  You SENSE something inside you has just CLICKED over.  You can't articulate it.  You just have to go with it.

Firewalking and Glasswalking, areas that I was very active in for a number of years, are also unquantifiable areas of achievement.

There is normally a 2 hour training session before the fire or glass walk.  Well, there is when I train it.  But NO amount of mind altering and conscious expanding exercises and belief system manipulation will make walking on fire or glass possible.  It already IS possible.  What the training session does is make you believe you can do it and therefore be confident to take that first step onto the fire or glass.  The rest is just physics.  The state of mind is the belief to take the first step.

It's all to do with heat conduction and transference.

The result of a firewalk, glasswalk, board break, abseil, zip line, waterfall climb etc?  That's down to you.

One thing is for certain.  You will not be the same afterwards.  You will sense, in fact you will know, that SOMETHING inside you has changed.  It's as if a large dial, like the one on your oven or washing machine, has been turned to a different setting.

Just go with it!  Go all the way with it!

You may not know how it will help you but just be sure of one thing....IT WILL!

Perception is in the Eye of the Beholder!

PERCEPTION
Perception isn't the reality. It is what we perceive the reality to be.

 It's a belief. 

A belief is your perception of the reality, not the actuality of the reality.

The actuality of the reality is experience.

How we believe and understand something is based upon the context in which we work from and how we see, hear, even read, something.

I look forward to the +SkyWire  chat on Perception this week and this graphic, used in my seminars to explain that there are many ways we can use and engage with information just by the context of approaching or receiving we use, is a case in point!

When you read it, it sounds depressing. When you read from bottom line to top, the same words and phrases become empowering.

SKYWIRE

SKYWIRE is a weekly google hangout that I take part in on an irregular basis.

It's a great chat as so many interesting and intelligent people take part like the host  +Marilyn Shannon and guests like +Katrina Pfannkuch +Adelheid Hörnlein +Margherita Crystal Lotus  +Gail Harris to name just a few.  It's on Thursdays at 4pm GMT so do the math or click on Google to work out your time zone to catch it.

Today was part two of Surrealism and the impact (or not) of surreal occurrences or surreal behaviours in our lives and how we deal with them.  It was a fantastic chat with so many different and diverse opinions of what surrealism is in reality.

In my Seminars I deal with reality. A persons' reality is usually different to how they see it themselves.  We live in a real world, and that is our reality.  A surreal occurrence happens occasionally.  Surreal is best described as a confection of totally incompatible forms or things, all occurring together .  When you think about it, life is exactly that.  There isn't necessarily any correlation between the things in our lives, apart from us.  We are the connector of the real and Surreal.  As long as we can identify the surreal and see that it may not be real we are OK.  There is always an explanation for things that are unknown, weird, synchronistic, etc but what if we just accepted them?  They happen, they occur, no reason to look for hidden meanings or rationality, just accept that they occur occasionally and use them, or discard them.

We can explain some things like synchronicity, seeing things again and again, or patterns of behaviours by choosing to lead with the Reticular Activating System that filters information into our brains.  Maybe we should just go with the flow.

We did a very brief exercise in surrealism where we discussed whether a table can run faster than a chair, or if a TV would beat a DVR player in a fight, and even what colour 'surprise' was.  Either side of that we were talking with logical, cogent, prescient thoughts and ideas.  It was a great example as to how the human brain can drop reality and freestyle in a Surreal manner as quickly as flicking on a switch.

As you can see, not only do we have fun, but we have a great set of minds on the guest list who stretch the boundaries of thought consistently on a weekly basis....Maybe you should join us?

Wouldn't it be Epic to just do this...?

Wouldn't it be great if we could just do this once in a while? Fail.


Because if we just did that, and realised that failing doesn't make us a failure, we can move on.

Unfortunately, we are in a society where we give things labels

Labels. Why oh why do we have give things labels?  I wondered where it would all end, this labelling.  It hasn't ended, but it has ventured into a dangerous area.

Because now we have a set of labels for failure!  A very empowering set of labels!!

Not only that, we actually elevate the fail to something else: an EPIC fail!!

I think it is great to be Epic in life.  If you live your life in an epic way it means you make a difference to yourself and all those around you but, your failures?  Why do we put a cloak on them and give them superpowers?

The predicate of Epic is not alone.  Massive, Super, Omni, Extreme and my personal favourite: UBER!!  Wow, how massive does that failure sound now?

If we make our failures big things we are also making it incredibly difficult for ourselves to get over, under, around or through them.

You see, people do not get stuck in what happened to them, They get stuck in the significance of the event.

There are certain things you can only know, believe, understand or live if you create them yourself.  If we are consciously creating a context of Epic for our failures and mistakes, we are making them significant events.  As I said, that failure becoming a significant event will mean we will be stuck. Replaying that movie in our mind, reliving again and again that significant 'epic' fail to such an extent that it will preclude us from starting again.

Choose your words carefully.  If you want to be epic, be an epic success.  Be an Epic person, friend, spouse or partner.  Keep the fails in the context they belong.

The Event is the Event

"Do I need to come back for an update?" is a question I get asked when anyone is considering coming to one of our events.

I never get asked it afterwards!

The simple answer is 'only if you choose to'.

I love seeing people and hearing from people who have been to one of our events and hearing about how their lives have changed.

It always gives me satisfaction that the work we do is of worth.

When people feel they are compelled to come back for a second or third event then I am honoured but it should really only be because the events are the same but with different content, and they want to find out more.  There should be no need to come back again to make the previous seminar work!

We have a formal structure, a series of circumstances within a contextual framework that we proceed through to reach a personal transformation for the audience.  What happens WITHIN that framework is different every time and is down to the audience: their speed, their ability to question, their comments and interactions.  Each seminar has content, experiences and even training that is different from the last time and that will alter the plan for the next.  It is a constantly evolving entity...just like the universe.

I don't offer a 15 DVD plus workbook that you 'must have' to make the three day event work, only for you to realise that, at the end of the DVD, you have to buy more and more product.

The event is the event.

There is going to be a lot of additional product available, books, newsletters and CD/DVD sets, but none of it will need to be bought to make any other product work.  That is NOT the way we work.

We are all the same, in our own unique way.  People learn, understand, advance and move forward at different rates of speed and in different ways.  No 'one size fits all' system works.  If people feel they should come and see us again, or buy the CD/ DVD or books then that is their choice.  I have a real problem with trainers who make people buy things to make other things they have bought work.

I know that many years ago when we bought something it was built to last.  I have a clock in my office that was made in 1907 and it works just as well today as it did then.  It chimes each quarter and gives a full Westminster chime on the hour.  If it was made today it would need replacing in a few years!

The training is the same as that clock in my office.

Hidden Messages

This quote, which is attributed to a lot of people but I believe is by Wayne Dyer, seems to be very relevant when I speak to people.

So many people put their hand up and ask questions in the seminars about the things they are 'doing' in their lives that are not working for them and then I discover that they have a love, or a desire, or a talent to do something that they are NOT doing.

Sometimes I feel like the Idiot Whisperer!  I have said in my seminars that I feel like the Idiot Whisperer when I speak with people sometimes, so I am not saying this for the first time,  I truly feel like that.  I don't say it to be nasty or malicious, I say it because some people have all the answers in front of them, or in their head, on how to live the life they want, on how to be happy and successful and they STILL do something else, they focus elsewhere, and wonder why they failed.

I give them all the answers they need, all the tips, tools and techniques and I follow it up with a personal guarantee which is UNHEARD of in the personal development or Psychology world.
I tell them "I can GUARANTEE that if you do NOTHING with all the information I have given you, it will definitely not work!

People want to be happy, be a success, have money, have relationships, have a better job...whatever it is and yet...they focus on the perceived target, the bullseye, pull the arrow back, they stare at the target, then...they lose focus, fire, and miss the target, shooting some guy in the ass who was mowing his lawn in the next field!

A lot of the time, even MOST of the time, the answer is very simple.  Inside of you there is music playing, a song being sung....and you are not letting it out.

Nothing annoys me more than seeing and speaking with someone who knows exactly what to do to be happy, successful, rich, loved, surrounded by people, surrounded by family, and to see them do something else.  They know what they need to do but they just don't do it.  They get sidetracked, they lose focus.  They think if it is something they like doing, if it is something they enjoy then...that can't be it.  It is supposed to be hard work, sweat, tears, pain, torture...NO IT IS NOT!

Why don't people just do what they KNOW they should do?  Why make it more difficult than it is?

The difference between being an idiot and being stupid is simple.  Idiocy is not knowing what to do when you have all the opportunity in the world to find out.  Stupidity is simple: it's knowing what to do but not doing it.

So what is the hidden message in this?  Brace yourself, it's upsetting and it's a shocker.

It's laziness.  You don't perceive it as important enough for you to get off your backside and do something about it.  If you did see it as important enough then you would find a way, whatever it takes, to do it.

If your life, your wellbeing, your family, your health, your future depends on you doing this, what message are you sending out to your family, your partner, your kids, the universe?

The message you convey is this.
You can walk up to your partner or spouse, your kids, your family and say,
"This weekend I discovered how to be successful.  I was given the guide, the master plan of how to live the life we have been dreaming of.  I know what it takes to make sure we have a full bank account.  I know what I need to do to make sure all your college fees are paid for.  I know what it takes to make our lives successful and enriched.  I know what it takes to live the life we were destined to live, I know what it takes....but I don't love you enough to do what it takes!"

That is the hidden message.  And some people are unconsciously saying it to themselves every day when they look in the mirror.

If you don't know what to do, then that's a shame.
But if yo know what to do and you don't do it...shame on YOU!