From Traumatic Times To Peaceful Minds

"The best thing about the past is that it's over"

-Richard Bandler, Co-Developer of NLP

This weeks tip comes to you in the spirit of Halloween, which is today here in the States. Halloween has become a holiday that is based primarily on two things, candy and fear.  This article will be focusing on the latter. If the candy part is more of a problem for you, you may want to check out one of my recent articles titled How To Actually Lose Weight & Keep It Off.  

I was sharing with a friend recently the irony of how, on days like Halloween, people often fork out money to scare themselves, and then they turn around and pay me to help them overcome their fears in life... it's a strange world out there.  In this article I'm going to be talking about a specific kind of fear that is generated from a trauma; known as either a phobia, or as post traumatic stress disorder(PTSD).  

Besides being a coach, I am also a certified practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming(NLP), which is a personal change technology that is particularly adept at overcoming and eliminating fears and traumas quickly and permanently. So in this article I'm going to be speaking from my expertise in this field.  

Alright, my handy dictionary defines a trauma as, "An extremely distressing experience that causes severe emotional shock and may have long-lasting psychological effects."  So, in other words, something really scary and potentially life threatening happens, our emotions and physical sensations get peaked to the max, and then there's what we call an imprint or an anchor that is formed.  This simply means an association is formed between the emotional state at the time of the event, and an external trigger. For example if somebody were to get into a serious scary car accident, afterwards, the person may associate cars with fear, so that every time they see a car, or get in a car they experience that fear again. This is also true of positive emotions.  Our strongest memories are formed based on our strongest emotional experiences.

Next, let's briefly distinguish what fear is in this context (if you want a longer, more detailed discussion, check out my past article titled The Source of All Fear). It's important to make the distinction that all fear is being generated not from the external circumstance, but from our thinking.  If there was actually an inherently scary situation, then every single person in that situation would experience the same fear.  We know right away that that is not true, because if you talk to trauma victims, they very often have completely different experiences and emotions.  Another way of looking at it is that we can only ever experience our thinking not our circumstances.  The external trigger can only set off the thought process.  A famous psychologist once said, "Whether there is actually a poisonous snake by my foot, or I just think there is, I react the same."  It's the thinking that makes all the difference.  

Our thoughts aren't just generating the fear either, they are keeping that traumatic experience alive in the present moment. When the crash has past, or the battle is over, or the spider is gone; replaying the event over and over again in our minds keeps us trapped in the trauma.  If you have ever been traumatized, or know somebody that has, you'll recognize just how debilitating this can be for people.  

Now for the cool part.  Most people actually learn to be traumatized based on a single experience, often referred to as 'one-trial learning.'  What most people don't immediately recognize is that this is actually a testament to how quickly the mind can learn something really well. So think about somebody who has a phobia of elevators.  If you talk to them, you'll figure out that they likely had one bad experience, and then they have never ever forgotten to be afraid of elevators since then.  You don't hear about elevator phobics accidentally getting in an elevator and then half-way up remember to be afraid.  No, it is 100% of the time, every time.  This capacity to learn very quickly and very well, means that we can actually learn a new response just as quickly!   All you need are the tools and some know how!

Okay, let's look at how to actually create a new more empowering response.  We know it's all in our heads, but what then?  Well, the first thing to recognize is that there is a method to the madness.  There is a structure to your internal experience and how you are currently 'doing' fear.  In order to create fear, you actually need to replay your memories in a very specific way.  In other words it's not just the content that you are playing back; what we call the submodalities, things such as the size, brightness, speed, direction, and association of the images have a huge impact on how scared we get, or if we even get frightened at all.  Because our experience is based on our thinking, I can actually guide people through a process and literally create a new experience for them by changing the submodalities.  Often times simple one-trial trauma's and phobias can be cleared up in a single hour long session.  I recommend that you not try this on your own without the supervision of a professional so as not to re-experience the trauma unnecessarily.  So, if this is relevant for you, or someone you know, please contact me and we can schedule a session to actually guide you through the process.  *Note: This is not immersion therapy where somebody is slowly introduced to the stimulus over a period of time and attempting to desensitize them to it. Having people re-play the trauma is what's causing the problem, not the solution!*

Also, a word of warning, anything to do with repetitive trauma over time often has a much more complicated structure that takes more time to work through. 

Have a very happy Halloween, and remember that the fear really is all in your head!

Until next week, have fun and live from you essence.

Love and Light,

Coach Ty

  

The Sea Of Cubicles

"Miracles are shifts in perception"

-A Course In Miracles

Several days ago, I was speaking with one of my clients and he was describing to me what it was like working at a company where the main offices consist of a huge sea of cubicles.  He shared with me that when shorter people walked through the halls of the cubicles, all they would see is walls, and it was like an endless maze that was very difficult to navigate without assistance.  He said that he was personally at just the right height so that when walked, on the low point of his stride he would see nothing but walls, but on the high point, he could see above the entire maze; describing it to me as though he was seeing a whole new world.  When he took the time to look around on the high point of his step, he could see across the entire sea of cubicles, and it became infinitely easier to navigate his way through them.  He could see where he wanted to go, and he could choose any number of routes that were to his liking to get there.  There was no panic or urgency either, because the simple ability to see the truth, was enough to put him at ease.

For my client, all it took was a slight shift in perception for his entire experience to change.  I recognized this phenomenon right away, because it is eerily similar to the stages that I see people go through in my work as a Transformative Coach.  

At the first level there are people who are just plain lost, and they are completely unwilling to admit it or ask for assistance, so they just wander around their lives aimlessly, hoping they find what it is that they are looking for.  

On another level, there are people who are still pretty lost, but are willing to stop and ask for support or directions, and if they ask the right person they can, with some effort and struggle, navigate their way through the maze of life.  

Then there is the third level, where something happens to the individual to facilitate a shift in perception.  Perhaps, they read a book that inspires them, or work with a coach to guide them, or maybe it's as simple as putting on a slightly taller pair of shoes that day.  Whatever the cause, that ever so slight growth, can create an enormous shift in perception.  They find themselves with altitude, seeing more clearly, and navigating what used to be a maze, which now appears to be just a path of their choosing  

This is what transformation looks like.  It can be very subtle at first, with nothing appearing to change on the outside, all the while, everything is different with our internal experience.  Over time, this internal shift begins to be reflected in the world around us as people, places and things begin to shift and change and rearrange.  

Let me share with you some of the principles that I've found give people that little boost that allows them to see and experience the world in an all new creative and empowering way!  If you don't want to change your life for good, I suggest you stop reading now.

Transformative Coaching Principles

1. There is nothing you need to do, be, have, or change, in order to be happy and experience well-being.
2. 100% of your experience of life is being created through the way that you think about it.
3. Unkind words and actions are NEVER EVER personal.
4. The essence of who you are is Love.
5. Real Love bears no grievances.
6. You are not your story, character, persona, actions, or body.
7. Forgiveness is always appropriate.
8. Holding grudges is like drinking poison and hoping the other person will die.
9. There is no point in arguing about matters of personal taste, and you'll find that almost everything is a matter of personal taste.
10. Suffering is always a result of arguing with what is and mistaking your miserable thoughts for reality.
11. You will always tend to see, whatever it is you are looking for, so start looking for good stuff.
12. Listen for, trust, and follow your inner wisdom. 

And finally let me end with one of the most beautiful things I've ever read from Michael Neill, in his brilliant book SuperCoach.  

"You have a wisdom inside you - listen for it, and give it voice.  You have a light inside you - feel it's glow, and let it shine.  You have the power to speak and act and make things manifest in the world, let your wisdom and light guide you as you do." 

If you are interested in making these kinds of shifts and taking these principles on in your own life, then please go to my contact page and get in touch with me to set up a complimentary coaching session.  It is my life's passion and work to facilitate people seeing the world with new eyes, and in turn having their outer worlds transform.

Until next time

Love and Light,

Coach Ty

How To Actually Lose Weight And Keep It Off

"True health requires a lifestyle dedicated to the wellness of the mind and the body.  Without one, you cannot truly enjoy the other!"

-Unknown Source

Let's talk about weight loss shall we?  Recent estimates by the CDC place the United States average obesity rate at 33.8%.  That's 1 out of every 3 adults in this country that are over weight or obese.  Now, as a transformative coach, I want people to live happy, healthy, love filled lives.  If people are genuinely able to do that with large bodies, then I'm all for it.  I also think it is entirely possible to experience inner peace in the midst of difficult circumstances, and yes, having large bodies that don't work as well as we like, are difficult circumstances.  Let me just start by putting that out there.  There are plenty of miserable people in thin bodies, and plenty in fluffy bodies.  Given that, let me speak about my experience in working with people both as a personal trainer and as a life coach.

First, here's my quick disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor, and so nothing I say should be taken as medical advice.  You should always check with your physician if you are unsure if something is appropriate for you. Always trust your own inner wisdom over my advice.

Warning: The information I'm about to share, is useful for most people most of the time.  If you aren't interested in losing weight, keeping it off, and enjoying your life more and more of the time, then don't read any further.  

The first question I will inevitably ask people who are interested in losing weight is, 'for what purpose?'  Now, at first glance this may seem obvious, but I think you'll find upon further reflection, it's not as simple as it sounds.  Go ahead and answer this question for yourself if it's relevant, and you're going to want to be really honest about this.  Here's a few of the answers I get from people:

I want to lose weight because:   It will make me happy.  Other people will like me better. I will be able to get a better partner.  My life genuinely will be better.  Then I'll be able to do what I really want.  I'll feel better in my body.  I won't hate myself so much.  It will make everything okay.  I won't have to be depressed anymore.  I don't want to die young.  And this list goes on and on.

The purpose of this question is intended to draw your attention to what you think having a smaller body will do for you.  If it's anything other than feeling lighter and getting around easier, than you are tricking yourself.  A thin body will not make you happier, it won't make everything okay, and it won't get you more love.  It won't make your self-esteem issues go away, and it won't make you like yourself anymore.  Sorry to burst the bubble folks, but that is not how it works.  Sure you can get more attention and approval from the people around you, but do you really want to hang out with people who only like you because of your body?  Even if you have an attractive body, how long will it be attractive, 20 years tops?  What then?  Why do you think so many people have affairs later on in life with younger people, because they identify with the body... but it's awfully fleeting.

Here's the next question I ask people, 'Are you your body?'  Most people have some sense that they aren't their nose, or their arm, or their toes we simply have a nose and arms and toes.  Are you your body, or do you just have a body?  Let's pretend for a minute that you aren't your body.  Who are you then?  Are you your brain, or do you just have a brain?  Are you your Mind?  Are you your Spirit?  Obviously, this quickly becomes a spiritual conversation.  For purposes of this article, I invite you to consider that you are not your body, and spend some time asking yourself the question, who am I?  For me this question has yielded many answers over the years, the one I keep coming back to is, that I must be whatever part of myself that is changeless.  To me, that part is love.  I invite you to do your own exploration though.

My experience is that when we begin to let go of identifying ourselves as bodies, it takes much of the charge out of the whole weight loss conversation.

Next, I want you to put down the big stick that you've been beating yourself over the head with in an attempt to motivate yourself into action.  We often attempt to motivate ourselves by telling ourselves that we are terrible for being fat, or we are a horrible ugly people that just need to get up off the couch, or if we don't put the bag of chips away, we're a worthless piece of $&!?.  This kind of self talk can admittedly work in the short term.  But ultimately it is just demoralizing.  For most people it doesn't work at all, and if it does, they lose a couple pounds and say you know what, I'm still a horrible ugly person, and then give up.

You put down the stick by practicing self acceptance and self love.  Most people want to lose weight to get more acceptance and more love and just feel better about themselves.  What I'm suggesting is to make that the beginning and now the end.  Start by giving yourself acceptance and love right now.  Take a minute at this very moment, go get in front of a mirror, or close your eyes, and just imagine giving yourself acceptance and love.  You can even throw in an affirmation if you want like 'I deeply love and accept myself.'  I've seen people begin to lose weight over time from just this step alone, so don't skip it!

When you are no longer attempting to lose weight to get more happiness, love and acceptance, losing that weight gets really simple really quick.

Okay, now that you've put down the big stick, started to accept yourself just as you are now, and are no longer identifying yourself as just a body; you're going to want to create a vision for your life that is inspirational and compelling.  In that vision you might want to include things that involve having a healthy fit body.  If it's not sufficiently compelling, it won't propel you forward to make the changes you want to make.

The next piece of the weight loss puzzle, is examining how you got there in the first place.  The extremely rare answer is an unalterable metabolic problem, in which case, if it really is unalterable, you might as well spend your time focused on something else anyway.  The vast majority of people have simply taken in more calories(units of energy) than they consume.  In other words, you have an eating strategy that doesn't match how much you move your body, which has a direct impact on your metabolism.

Addressing the first part of the equation is simple.  Move your body more.  Find something you love doing where you move your body continuously for a period of time, 20-30min preferably, and you get your heart rate up.  That's it.  If you haven't found something you love yet, explore, try new things.  Go dancing, try hula hooping, or bike riding.  If you haven't found an activity it's likely because you haven't spent much time searching and experimenting.

The other half of the equation is your eating strategy.  In my field of NLP(Neuro-Linguistic Programming) we talk about how as humans we have unconscious strategies for just about everything.  We have buying strategies, selling strategies, emotional strategies, success strategies, and the list goes on.  There are actually naturally thin eating strategies that work for most people.  Usually when I bring this up, people think I'm speaking about for instance a low calorie diet, which is an actual strategy that can work for a time... if you want to feel starved all the time and have a miserable relationship with food.  I personally prefer the gentler more enjoyable approach to eating healthy.

If you are interested, you can elicit your current eating strategy by asking questions like how do you know when it's time to eat, how do you know how fast to eat; how do you know how much to eat, and how do you know when to stop eating?  However, in the end, knowing your old strategy isn't particularly relevant to creating a new one.

The most useful eating strategy for people waning to lose weight and keeping it off that I've ever seen, comes from Paul Mckenna's best selling weight loss book, I Can Make You Thin. I'll outline the basic four step process, but if you want more details, I highly recommend you go read Paul's book.  I don't get anything for recommending it, it's just the best I've found available.

Step 1. Eat When You Are Hungry.  Starving yourself can actually make you fat by creating a horrible yo yo affect with your metabolism.  When your body get's less food than it needs, it actually goes into starvation mode, and starts storing as much fat as possible, because it doesn't know when it will get more food.  And then if you go back to eating normally, you will actually be storing even more fat than before.  Your body doesn't care if you are attractive, it just wants you to survive.  This is also why people who go a long time in between meals have predictably slow metabolisms, because their bodies are storing up for the next mini famine, from breakfast to dinner.

Step 2. Eat What You Actually Want, Not What You Think You Should Eat.  When we create forbidden foods for ourselves, they begin to have power over us.  These unnatural cravings come from self imposed limitations and that then blocks our bodies own natural intuition about what foods it wants and needs.  Paul McKenna references a study done in the 1930's where kids were allowed to select from a huge array of foods with 24/7 access for a 30 day period, and what they found is that over that 30 day period the kids naturally ate a healthy balanced diet, even though they ate different things day in and day out.  So it's time to get rid of the whole notion of forbidden foods.

Step 3. Eat CONSCIOUSLY, and Enjoy Every Mouthful.  Essentially, slow down. Also stop with the distractions like TV,  or reading the paper, or listening to the radio while you eat.  When we aren't paying attention, we often will eat so quickly that we will not give our bodies enough time to get the 'full' signal to our brain, before we put an extra 8 or 10 bites in.  And by that time it's too late, we've over eaten.  Try slowing down to eating at about 1 quarter of the speed that you were at before.  Also be sure to thoroughly chew every bite.

Step 4.   When you THINK you are full, STOP Eating.  If you've been ignoring this signal for a while, it's going to take a couple weeks for your body to re-calibrate itself to what's natural.  Also the slowing down is key for this fourth step, because you'll have much clearer access to your full signal when you are going slow and paying attention.  Remember it's not, stop when you're about to puke, it's stop when you think you are full.  And then if you wait a while, and decide, oh I'm still hungry, then you can always go back for more.

One thing I want to invite you to keep in mind is that you can't just do a couple of these golden rules and skip the others.  It is a system that has to be done as a whole.  For instance you can't simply skip the slowing down part, or the stopping when you think you are full part because it won't work as a strategy unless all the pieces are working together.

Alright, the final piece of this weight loss puzzle is overcoming Emotional Eating.  That's right, stuffing our emotions with food to avoid them.  Let's face it, food, is America's drug of choice.  Just like people use other drugs to change how they feel, most American's use food in an attempt to change how they feel.  This has been one of the leading factors in the obesity epidemic.  It's actually more of an emotional avoidance epidemic because it goes far beyond just food... but we'll save that conversation for another time.

In order to change our tendency to eat or over eat in an attempt to stuff our feelings, we've got to find a healthy outlet for our emotions.  Paul Mckenna actually has a great CD in the back of his book that helps with this.  In addition though, I want to encourage you to brainstorm some different practices that you could begin to play around with in order for you to get your emotional needs met.  It could be anything from getting more hugs every day to writing in a journal, to telling your pet everything that went wrong that day.  I don't care what it is, just find something that works for you.  Because if you get the eating thing down, and you lose weight, but you don't address your emotions, a whole new problem will likely manifest.

Alright, there's quite a few different steps, so let's review.

Weekly Coaching Tip:

1. Acknowledge that losing weight and being thin will not give me more love, peace, happiness, or make everything okay.
2. Recognize that I am not my body
3. Get in touch with who you really are.  Essence, Spirit, Higher Self, Love, Joy... (explore)
4. Put down the stick and stop trying to motivate yourself with negative self-talk
5. Practice Self-Love and Self-Acceptance daily.  I like doing it in front of the mirror
6. Create an Inspiring and Compelling vision for your life.  What would make you go WOW!  It's useful if the creation of that life will be aided by you having a fit healthy body
7. Move your body 20-30 min. a day doing something you love and getting your heart rate up
8. Take on a natural intuitive eating strategy like Paul Mckenna's
9. Find new ways of meeting and expressing your emotional needs.  Write in a journal, hire a therapist, talk to your pet, practice saying what you feel, etc.
10. Watch as the pounds melt away, and at the same time you just find yourself caring less and less if they actually do.

Although this may seem like a lot of work right now, I promise this will be a project well worth your time and energy, because it will almost certainly positively influence all areas of your life.

And always remember, there's never a good reason not to love yourself, even having a few extra pounds.

Until next time,

Love and Light,

Coach Ty

On Getting It Right

“If you didn't musterbate, then you wouldn’t awefulize, terribilize, or catastrophize, say, ‘I can’t stand it,’ and put yourself down.  If you only stuck with, ‘I’d like very much to do well, but I never have to,’ you wouldn't then disturb yourself … musterbation is evil and pernicious.  

-Albert Ellis

Have you every asked yourself some variation of the question, what's the right thing to do here?  If you are a human living on earth and speak English, i'm going to guess that you have.  We have been taught to guide our lives based on should's.  This basically means we are trying to do the best/right/smartest thing in the situation that is before us.  In my experience, making decisions based on 'getting it right', can get us into a world of hurt.

First of all, most people haven't spent much time asking themselves, 'get it right according to who?'  Honestly, who is the one that you are trying to get it right for.  Yourself?  If it was yourself, you'd think you would know already wouldn't you? So who then.  Is it your parents?  Friends? Co-workers? Spouse?... Is it God?  Does God have a carefully written rule book that if not followed to a tee, you are going to burn for all eternity?  Boy, talk about putting on the pressure.. and the heat.  I'm not here to challenge your beliefs, but that's doesn't fit my experience of an all loving and forgiving force in the universe.  Plus, even if there was a real divine rule book, which one is it?  How are we supposed to know?  Is it the Bible, The Qur'an, The Tao De Ching, The Upanishads, The Torah, A Course In Miracles?  If so, which version of these holy texts is the right one? Who is right?  And how many billions of people on the planet are wrong?

Let me be clear, I consider myself a pretty spiritual guy, and I do have a spiritual practice which brings me a tremendous amount of peace.  I'm all for it.  Choose whichever ones you like.  I'm just saying, life gets really complicated really quickly when you start trying to base your decisions on something external like a book or based on what another person thinks you should do.  You are the expert on you, not me, or anybody else.

I want to invite you to kick the tires on this idea with me.  Let's pretend that God(Higher Power, Spirit, Universe, Big Mind, etc.) Really doesn't care what we 'Do' and loves us no matter what.  I know it's radical, but go with me for a minute.  What if there was no such thing as getting it right?  And in turn there was no such thing as getting it wrong either.  What if all you had to go on, was that some result will come from this decision?  Let's also assume that you don't know what the future holds.  Often times that's what people are trying to do when they are shoulding themselves, they are attempting to know the future in advance, and unless you are a very gifted psychic, the best I can say is, good luck with that.

So, if we can't get it right, we can't get it wrong, and we don't know the future outcome what criteria do we use?  Well the most useful thing I've come across is, 'what would you like to do?'  What appeals to you?  What does your inner wisdom tell you?

Even though I don't believe we can really get it right, one of my favorite questions to ask myself in the moment is 'does this feel right, for me, for now?'

What if it was as simple as asking yourself, what do I want to do?  Now let me make a distinction before we go any further.  Let's distinguish between want, and feel like.  If I based every decision in my life on the criteria of what will feel good, my life would be a train wreck.  We don't always feel like doing the things that we really want to do.  Because our feelings change with our mood, and they are constantly shifting.

For example, I usually want to exercise, but I don't always feel like it.  I usually want to connect more with my family, but I don't always feel like it.  I usually want to call more people to talk to them about coaching, but I don't always feel like it.

Here's another really important element in making decisions.  Often times they seem so daunting because we think they are final.  There are very few decisions in life where we can't actually go back and say, 'you know what, I changed my mind.'  When you know that, it sure takes the pressure off.  Because if you know it's not absolutely 100% final, you're going to be much more peaceful as you make that decision.  And good internal states, always make for better decision making. Another way to say this is that what you decide is almost never as important as how you handle the consequences of that decision.  So if you take a job and realize it's not right for you, you can look for another one, or you can sit around and mope for the next 20 years.  If you ask someone out on a date and realize they are not the person for you, you can either continue dating them and resenting them, or you can end it and chalk it up as a learning experience.

Here's the last useful piece to the decision making puzzle.  Make sure you are paying attention to where you are making the decision from; and I'm not asking if you are making the decision from your home, or from work.  I'm speaking about our internal state.

A Course In Miracles says there are really only two different places we can come from, Love or Fear.  Always, always, but only always, check in with yourself and ask, 'am I making this decision out of fear, or from a place of love, well-being, and peace?'  If it's from love rest assured that it will be as good a decision as you can make in that moment.  If it's from fear, wait until you return to love.  One of the most useful things I've learned throughout my life and in working with other people is that when we make decisions in a panicked, rushed, or urgent state, they are almost always poor decisions.

So remember, always check in with love.  Some people call this intuition, insight, or inner wisdom.  The Quakers call it the still, small voice within.  Be sure to check in with that deeper place inside yourself. You might just find that it presents itself remarkably like common sense.

If you really do need an answer in a quick pinch, ask yourself, what would love do? (or read my past article titled 'What Would Love Say')

Until next week,

Love and Light,
Coach Ty