By definition, a belief is a principle accepted as true without proof.  A beliefs is a thought or idea that we do not question – most of the time we are not even aware of them either.  Our beliefs are the most powerful force that govern our attitudes, outlook and actions.  They are nurtured  and formed by our culture, religion, upbringing, society, teachers as well as every influencing factor in our surrounding environment.  The media, our boss, family and social phrases such as “ Mondays are always horrible” tend to have a far more influencing effect than we’d like to admit.  After all our unconscious mind is just like a 3 year old child that does not negate.  It accepts everything it hears.  In fact for the next 5 seconds think of anything other than a white tiger.  Chances are you already thought of a white tiger.  For our mind to identify what not to do, it must first process what that “it” exactly is.

Phrases such as: “I’m horrible at maths”, “I never win anything” or “I’m a horrible dancer” may sound trivial, but if repeated enough, evolve into a belief, then a behaviour.  So one will grow to be convinced that they cannot add, and avoid balancing their cheque books, or never even consider dancing because they’re afraid of embarrassing themselves.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with believing in a variety of things.  Some believe in God, others don’t, some believe in vegetarianism, others don’t.  After all, it is a free world, and we have the right to live our lives as we wish.  The issue that needs to be examined here is not beliefs in general, but beliefs that limit the human ability and nurture fear within the minds of very capable people out there. This is where a belief becomes a limiting belief, and only then prevents individuals from maximising their potential in order to achieve their goals.

What we choose to believe about the world and ourselves determines the quality of life we have.  Our beliefs dictate how well we perform, interact, grow our businesses and  spot opportunities.  Ironically, what we believe has a greater affect on us than the truths that surround us.  Unfortunately, we also tend to take on board other people’s beliefs such as relatives, friends, colleagues at work,  not to mention the media with what it tactfully feeds us through their catchy headlines and Hollywood like news reporting.  The truth has almost become veiled in layers of opinion that we no longer see clearly. The truth of the matter is that we are all amazing creatures with infinite potential that’s just aching to come out.  Sadly, most of the time our limiting beliefs prevent that side from flourishing and growing.

I recently had a client who was convinced that he would not be considered for the upcoming promotion  at the company he worked for because of his ethnic background.  After careful probing, he admitted that he acquired this limiting belief from his much older father who was naturally of a different generation.  As soon as he let go of this belief, his eyes lit up, his posture improved and came to realise that he had exactly what this upcoming position required – if not more !  When it was time for his appraisal, he presented a side no one in the office had ever seen.  A side that demonstrated vision, ambition, determination and confidence.  Much to his surprise at the end, he was promoted to this senior position and is now a much freer individual who accesses his vast potential on a daily bases.

The internal representation of the outside world we make to ourselves is greatly influenced by our beliefs.  Our limiting beliefs are just like filters that disallow opportunities and positive signals from the world around us to penetrate our minds and expose us to the wonders around.  And before we know it, we’re missing out on so much that we could be benefiting from, or acting on.

Most of the time, our greatest fear is failure.  We tend to believe that we will fail at something even if there is no evidence to back that up.  When Christopher Columbus set sail for the other side – did he fear failure?  When Mahatma Ghandi stood against the biggest empire of that time, did he fear failure?  The answer to both questions is an obvious NO.  What kept them going is their beliefs.  Their main objective was to achieve what they believed in.  No soul on earth could have altered their faith in themselves, nor could anyone discourage them from their path.  Failure to them was  non existent.  Let’s look at that statement for a second – failure to them was non existent.  Perhaps that is true, after all what is failure other than a bad result that you’d avoid on the next attempt.  People generally try doing something once, twice maybe even three times then quit.  Perseverance and determination are what make dreams come true, in other words the belief in ourselves.  Would have Alexander the great ploughed into the east and west to expand his empire if he didn’t believe in his vision? Clearly not.  Naturally, it is all a matter of perspective, it is how we view the world around us.  Reality is a rather funny thing.  There never really is one reality, but a variety of them that simultaneously exist together.  Let’s look at a well known city such as London for a minute.  Some may say it’s a very cruel and lonely city with rude people, some may say that it’s a very cultured and historically rich city with lots to offer.  Some may say that it’s a filthy crime infested city with poor air quality,  and others may say it’s the most happening city in the world with one of the biggest financial markets on this globe – opportunities are everywhere!   Every statement can be true, or real, but it simply is a matter of perspective.  The key is to focus on the perspective that can help you achieve the right attitude in order to move forward in what you wish to do.

If I want to start my own business in London, and then begin feeding my mind language that depresses me about the people around me, the crime rate and pollution – I’ll probably not go very far with my goals.  On the other hand, if I was to focus on what huge potential I am surrounded by, not to mention the purchasing power of the market around me – I will be far more determined and eager to achieve the success level I want.  This brings us back to whether the glass is half empty or half full.  Research has proven to us that the key to success comes down to attitude.  This reminds me of something Thomas Jefferson once said: ” Nothing can stop a man [or Woman] with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal ; nothing on earth can help a man [or Woman] with the wrong mental attitude”. How many successful achievers do you know of out there who made it through doubt, fear, negativity or limiting beliefs that ignite self-sabotage?  Attitude is the result of your beliefs, so if you believe you’re a loser who’s going to fall flat on his face every time you decide to achieve anything – you probably will.  We determine the result in our minds before we even take the first step.  When I asked a client of mine once how he painted so well, he simply said “I see it in my mind clearly, then I allow my hand to be the vessel of transport that brings out what I see in my mind”.  This is a similar analogy to what most successful people have said throughout history.  They tend to visualise what exactly it is they want and maintain strong focus on their goal as they jump every hurdle along the way.  Even if they fall over and over again, the determination fuelled by both attitude and self-belief keeps them on their path until they achieve their desired goal.  Another way to look at this is to imagine a flight that has just left Heathrow airport for New York.  Along the way it will face high pressure weather patches, stormy clouds and other aircrafts in its path; but in order to reach it’s destination successfully it constantly adjusts its course and altitude to reach New York with ease.   The same applies to achieving success.  Flexibility is a key ingredient that must be practiced in order to overcome obstacles and dodge mishaps along the way.  As Confucius once said: “Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall”.  Achiever everywhere have had to fall a number of times before they completed what they were out to do.  Falls or bad results are simply lessons that teach us what does not work, it is vital to be flexible enough and learn from them rather than get discouraged.

Refining your external dialogue with people around you is not enough, it is paramount that you clean the language you feed yourself in order to shift your beliefs.  Beliefs come to exist because we have habitually repeated a thought, statement or perspective to ourselves over and over again.  After all, we’re all creatures of habit and we stick to the familiar even if it’s hurting us and preventing us from moving ahead.  Before we know it we have unconsciously conditioned our thinking.  However we reach a point of breakthrough in our lives when we realise that our way of life is actually harming us, and limiting us.  It is at this moment of breakthrough that we consciously decide to alter out path.  When a battered wife runs out of her marriage and never looks back, or when a heavy smoker throwers their pack in the bin and never touches another cigarette  are both clear evidence that when we take a dedicated conscious decision to change, we override the programming we have done for years.  This re-programming does not require an astronomical amount of effort, just a small shift that takes places within our belief system.  This shift is similar to the small switches in a huge shipping tanker that leaves Portsmouth for Miami.  Once the small switches in the control room are moved ever so slightly, the destination will shift to Venezuela.

The pre-requisite to identifying one’s limiting belief successfully is honesty with one’s self.  To begin with ask yourself what it is you wish to achieve, in other words what’s your goal?  It could be anything, whether losing a stone, starting your own business or meeting your targets at your sales job.  Write down your goal on a clean sheet of paper.  Look at what you’ve written, make sure it’s a realistic goal.  What I mean by realistic is that if you’re a restaurant manager today, and your goal is to buy a Beverly Hills mansion in 12 months – chances are you won’t achieve that unless you win the lottery.  Keep it realistic and doable.  Next, ask yourself the following questions and answer after careful processing and honesty with yourself.

1)     What’s stopping me from achieving this goal ?

2)     Where did this belief come from ?

3)     Who gave you this belief ?

4)     How do you feel about that person? Do you regard them highly and respect them?

5)     What does this belief do for you?

6)     What is this belief costing you?

7)     How will your life be different if you were to let go of this limiting belief?

8)     What concrete evidence do you have to back this belief ?

9)     What is the positive intention behind keeping this limiting belief ?

10) How else can you satisfy this positive intention without relying on this limiting belief ?

These 10 questions are designed to help identify limiting beliefs and their roots to help you gain the clarity you need in order to understand how you’ve come to believe what you do.  Just because we’re hearing about terrorism on the media more than ever before, some people unconsciously have started to believe that all Muslims are evil terrorists.  The simple reason behind this is that our minds tend to generalise circumstances in order to process situations better.  We hear and see things on a daily bases that bombard our unconscious mind with new information.  In order to successfully process such a vast amount of new information the unconscious mind generalizes, distorts and deletes some of that in order to process it more efficiently.  I was recently in a restaurant with a client of mine, and Tom Cruise walked in with some friends.  My client turned around and commented on his vertically challenged stature. I smiled and recalled that our unconscious mind distorts a lot of the information it receives.  Tom has always been this height throughout his career, we just see him bigger than his true size. We also delete and leave out a lot of information.  A person may give you directions to a destination and leave out many pieces of information that another person might include, and vice versa.

Since this is how our mind works, it is important to make a conscious effort and look at things with new perspectives in order to make the most of our world.  So, just because we unsuccessfully attempted a task or goal once, and we felt emotionally bad about it,  our mind generalises this experience by associating pain with it.  Naturally, we start to avoid a second, third or fourth attempt because we believe that we won’t succeed at it.  We believe this because of how our minds work.  It is at this point that we need to challenge ourselves and eliminate failure from our vocabulary.  As mentioned earlier, it is a matter of perspective and in order to learn helpful lessons we must look at successful people and see how they overcame the hurdles they faced.  They merely saw setbacks as lesson, and not failure.  As Richard Branson once said: “ I have learned more from my failures that my successes”.  It is crucial that we persevere with determination and gusto and not doubt ourselves.  Self-belief must come from within, and it can only be achieved once you cleanse your self from the limiting beliefs you’ve piled on over the years.

Copyright © 2005 Positive Health Magazine

I will not die an unlived life

I will not live in fear of falling

Or of catching fire

I choose to inhabit my days

To allow my living to open me

Making me less afraid

More accessible

To loosen my heart

So that it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise

I choose to risk my significance

To live so that that which comes to me as seed

Goes to the next as blossom

Goes on as fruit.

First published in Wired Magazine, issue 13.02, Feb. 2005

When I was a kid – growing up in a middle-class family, in the middle of America, in the middle of the 1970s – parents dished out a familiar plate of advice to their children: Get good grades, go to college, and pursue a profession that offers a decent standard of living and perhaps a dollop of prestige. If you were good at math and science, become a doctor. If you were better at English and history, become a lawyer. If blood grossed you out and your verbal skills needed work, become an accountant. Later, as computers appeared on desktops and CEOs on magazine covers, the youngsters who were really good at math and science chose high tech, while others flocked to business school, thinking that success was spelled MBA.

Tax attorneys. Radiologists. Financial analysts. Software engineers. Management guru Peter Drucker gave this cadre of professionals an enduring, if somewhat wonky, name: knowledge workers. These are, he wrote, “people who get paid for putting to work what one learns in school rather than for their physical strength or manual skill.” What distinguished members of this group and enabled them to reap society’s greatest rewards, was their “ability to acquire and to apply theoretical and analytic knowledge.” And any of us could join their ranks. All we had to do was study hard and play by the rules of the meritocratic regime. That was the path to professional success and personal fulfillment.

But a funny thing happened while we were pressing our noses to the grindstone: The world changed. The future no longer belongs to people who can reason with computer-like logic, speed, and precision. It belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind. Today – amid the uncertainties of an economy that has gone from boom to bust to blah – there’s a metaphor that explains what’s going on. And it’s right inside our heads.

Scientists have long known that a neurological Mason-Dixon line cleaves our brains into two regions – the left and right hemispheres. But in the last 10 years, thanks in part to advances in functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers have begun to identify more precisely how the two sides divide responsibilities. The left hemisphere handles sequence, literalness, and analysis. The right hemisphere, meanwhile, takes care of context, emotional expression, and synthesis. Of course, the human brain, with its 100 billion cells forging 1 quadrillion connections, is breathtakingly complex. The two hemispheres work in concert, and we enlist both sides for nearly everything we do. But the structure of our brains can help explain the contours of our times.

Until recently, the abilities that led to success in school, work, and business were characteristic of the left hemisphere. They were the sorts of linear, logical, analytical talents measured by SATs and deployed by CPAs. Today, those capabilities are still necessary. But they’re no longer sufficient. In a world upended by outsourcing, deluged with data, and choked with choices, the abilities that matter most are now closer in spirit to the specialties of the right hemisphere – artistry, empathy, seeing the big picture, and pursuing the transcendent.

Beneath the nervous clatter of our half-completed decade stirs a slow but seismic shift. The Information Age we all prepared for is ending. Rising in its place is what I call the Conceptual Age, an era in which mastery of abilities that we’ve often overlooked and undervalued marks the fault line between who gets ahead and who falls behind.

To some of you, this shift – from an economy built on the logical, sequential abilities of the Information Age to an economy built on the inventive, empathic abilities of the Conceptual Age – sounds delightful. “You had me at hello!” I can hear the painters and nurses exulting. But to others, this sounds like a crock. “Prove it!” I hear the programmers and lawyers demanding.

OK. To convince you, I’ll explain the reasons for this shift, using the mechanistic language of cause and effect.

The effect: the scales tilting in favor of right brain-style thinking. The causes: Asia, automation, and abundance.

Asia

Few issues today spark more controversy than outsourcing. Those squadrons of white-collar workers in India, the Philippines, and China are scaring the bejesus out of software jockeys across North America and Europe. According to Forrester Research, 1 in 9 jobs in the US information technology industry will move overseas by 2010. And it’s not just tech work. Visit India’s office parks and you’ll see chartered accountants preparing American tax returns, lawyers researching American lawsuits, and radiologists reading CAT scans for US hospitals.

The reality behind the alarm is this: Outsourcing to Asia is overhyped in the short term, but underhyped in the long term. We’re not all going to lose our jobs tomorrow. (The total number of jobs lost to offshoring so far represents less than 1 percent of the US labor force.) But as the cost of communicating with the other side of the globe falls essentially to zero, as India becomes (by 2010) the country with the most English speakers in the world, and as developing nations continue to mint millions of extremely capable knowledge workers, the professional lives of people in the West will change dramatically. If number crunching, chart reading, and code writing can be done for a lot less overseas and delivered to clients instantly via fiber-optic cable, that’s where the work will go.

But these gusts of comparative advantage are blowing away only certain kinds of white-collar jobs – those that can be reduced to a set of rules, routines, and instructions. That’s why narrow left-brain work such as basic computer coding, accounting, legal research, and financial analysis is migrating across the oceans. But that’s also why plenty of opportunities remain for people and companies doing less routine work – programmers who can design entire systems, accountants who serve as life planners, and bankers expert less in the intricacies of Excel than in the art of the deal. Now that foreigners can do left-brain work cheaper, we in the US must do right-brain work better.

Last century, machines proved they could replace human muscle. This century, technologies are proving they can outperform human left brains – they can execute sequential, reductive, computational work better, faster, and more accurately than even those with the highest IQs. (Just ask chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov.)

Consider jobs in financial services. Stockbrokers who merely execute transactions are history. Online trading services and market makers do such work far more efficiently. The brokers who survived have morphed from routine order-takers to less easily replicated advisers, who can understand a client’s broader financial objectives and even the client’s emotions and dreams.

Or take lawyers. Dozens of inexpensive information and advice services are reshaping law practice. At CompleteCase.com, you can get an uncontested divorce for $249, less than a 10th of the cost of a divorce lawyer. Meanwhile, the Web is cracking the information monopoly that has long been the source of many lawyers’ high incomes and professional mystique. Go to USlegalforms.com and you can download – for the price of two movie tickets – fill-in-the-blank wills, contracts, and articles of incorporation that used to reside exclusively on lawyers’ hard drives. Instead of hiring a lawyer for 10 hours to craft a contract, consumers can fill out the form themselves and hire a lawyer for one hour to look it over. Consequently, legal abilities that can’t be digitized – convincing a jury or understanding the subtleties of a negotiation – become more valuable.

Even computer programmers may feel the pinch. “In the old days,” legendary computer scientist Vernor Vinge has said, “anybody with even routine skills could get a job as a programmer. That isn’t true anymore. The routine functions are increasingly being turned over to machines.” The result: As the scut work gets offloaded, engineers will have to master different aptitudes, relying more on creativity than competence.

Any job that can be reduced to a set of rules is at risk. If a $500-a-month accountant in India doesn’t swipe your accounting job, TurboTax will. Now that computers can emulate left-hemisphere skills, we’ll have to rely ever more on our right hemispheres.

Abundance

Our left brains have made us rich. Powered by armies of Drucker’s knowledge workers, the information economy has produced a standard of living that would have been unfathomable in our grandparents’ youth. Their lives were defined by scarcity. Ours are shaped by abundance. Want evidence? Spend five minutes at Best Buy. Or look in your garage. Owning a car used to be a grand American aspiration. Today, there are more automobiles in the US than there are licensed drivers – which means that, on average, everybody who can drive has a car of their own. And if your garage is also piled with excess consumer goods, you’re not alone. Self-storage – a business devoted to housing our extra crap – is now a $17 billion annual industry in the US, nearly double Hollywood’s yearly box office take.

But abundance has produced an ironic result. The Information Age has unleashed a prosperity that in turn places a premium on less rational sensibilities – beauty, spirituality, emotion. For companies and entrepreneurs, it’s no longer enough to create a product, a service, or an experience that’s reasonably priced and adequately functional. In an age of abundance, consumers demand something more. Check out your bathroom. If you’re like a few million Americans, you’ve got a Michael Graves toilet brush or a Karim Rashid trash can that you bought at Target. Try explaining a designer garbage pail to the left side of your brain! Or consider illumination. Electric lighting was rare a century ago, but now it’s commonplace. Yet in the US, candles are a $2 billion a year business – for reasons that stretch beyond the logical need for luminosity to a prosperous country’s more inchoate desire for pleasure and transcendence.

Liberated by this prosperity but not fulfilled by it, more people are searching for meaning. From the mainstream embrace of such once-exotic practices as yoga and meditation to the rise of spirituality in the workplace to the influence of evangelism in pop culture and politics, the quest for meaning and purpose has become an integral part of everyday life. And that will only intensify as the first children of abundance, the baby boomers, realize that they have more of their lives behind them than ahead. In both business and personal life, now that our left-brain needs have largely been sated, our right-brain yearnings will demand to be fed.

As the forces of Asia, automation, and abundance strengthen and accelerate, the curtain is rising on a new era, the Conceptual Age. If the Industrial Age was built on people’s backs, and the Information Age on people’s left hemispheres, the Conceptual Age is being built on people’s right hemispheres. We’ve progressed from a society of farmers to a society of factory workers to a society of knowledge workers. And now we’re progressing yet again – to a society of creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers.

But let me be clear: The future is not some Manichaean landscape in which individuals are either left-brained and extinct or right-brained and ecstatic – a land in which millionaire yoga instructors drive BMWs and programmers scrub counters at Chick-fil-A. Logical, linear, analytic thinking remains indispensable. But it’s no longer enough.

To flourish in this age, we’ll need to supplement our well-developed high tech abilities with aptitudes that are “high concept” and “high touch.” High concept involves the ability to create artistic and emotional beauty, to detect patterns and opportunities, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to come up with inventions the world didn’t know it was missing. High touch involves the capacity to empathize, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one’s self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning.

Developing these high concept, high touch abilities won’t be easy for everyone. For some, the prospect seems unattainable. Fear not (or at least fear less). The sorts of abilities that now matter most are fundamentally human attributes. After all, back on the savannah, our caveperson ancestors weren’t plugging numbers into spreadsheets or debugging code. But they were telling stories, demonstrating empathy, and designing innovations. These abilities have always been part of what it means to be human. It’s just that after a few generations in the Information Age, many of our high concept, high touch muscles have atrophied. The challenge is to work them back into shape.

Want to get ahead today? Forget what your parents told you. Instead, do something foreigners can’t do cheaper. Something computers can’t do faster. And something that fills one of the nonmaterial, transcendent desires of an abundant age. In other words, go right, young man and woman, go right.

Adapted from A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age, copyright © by Daniel H. Pink, to be published in March by Riverhead Books. Printed with permission of the publisher.
Contributing editor Daniel H. Pink (dp@danpink.com) wrote about Gross National Happiness in issue 12.12.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/brain.html?tw=wn_tophead_6

Dealing with relationship issues, money problems or family complications, we can all identify plenty sources of stress.

We can spend hours discussing how that was different in the old days when life was more structured by the roles and traditions and nostalgically sigh as we see that it is simpler to be told what to do.

I haven’t met many people who claim to be stress free, most people I deal with complain about having too much stress, suffer from stress related illnesses or symptoms, such as irritable bowels, mood swings. Fatigue etc. I am convinced that stress has existed even in the good old days, but it may have been known under different names.

Being stressed has become a life-style and I have experienced this first hand. Good stress and bad stress, I have felt the kick and I know tension. I heard the “relax a bit, take it easy, and don’t be so hard on yourself” too often, but I see that successful people tend to be busy. I have always prioritized being successful.

Taking action means doing things; doing things can become doing a lot of things.

Stress also seems to offer a sense of validation and provides us with a feel-good factor of being busy ( can you hear that:” main thing is your keeping busy”)

Stress seems to act like caffeine, giving you the kick that makes you feel alert. You get nervous on it, you feel more nervous without it. I have thrived on the energy derived from my busyness which in turn leads to a higher breathing pattern, less rest, tense shoulders and no desire to do Yoga or any other relaxation thank you very much.

It feels hard to change because I found myself really enjoying this.

It is easy to associate this overtly busy life-style with our image of success and hence being slightly stressed can make us feel like we are on the way to reaching our goals. “There is loads’ going on at the moment. It’s all happening” Only when the wave of busyness recedes do we realize what it has left us with.

But don’t we all feel life gets a bit much at times, everybody gets tired, has low energy phases, surely everybody has it tough sometimes. Who am I to relax when I am young and energetic? Shouldn’t I rather use it while it lasts? Aren’t I meant to work hard, so that I deserve my success, my happiness and wealth I am trying to accumulate?

It was my experience in hospital that made me change my thinking Stomach cramps, that is not what I wanted and yet they were painfully real. So were the commitments for next week. Oops.

Do successful people really need stress? Does anybody really need stress? What makes it so hard to live in a balanced way? Do we have to get ill before we live healthily? Wouldn’t it be nice to have enough energy to enjoy what you’re doing, rather than running out of batteries all the time?

Stress is highly addictive and likely to self perpetuate.

However, lot of stress can be prevented by a little organizational effort. I observed a music manager who was under such stress that he postponed paying his bills; his account gave him grief as he had not moved funds in time, calls to the bank took up more time as was dealing with people complaining about missing funds on his account. He could hardly sleep at night because he felt so stressed he couldn’t switch off. All this could have been prevented so easily by taking the necessary action on time in the first place.

The effect of stress on the voice can be multiple: Tensions in the throat and neck area are more than common, leading to vocal restrictions or limitations.

Do you find it difficult to speak up and be heard without feeling vocal strain afterwards? Do you find speaking for a longer time makes your voice tired? Is your voice hoarse or croaky? Those are definite indicators for tensions in your throat musculature.

Supporting the voice is essential to keep the instrument healthy and strong especially when speaking up; learning how to project is a useful technique in speaking and singing.

However the tensions referred to tend to get in the way of accessing the supporting mechanisms.

A main part of my vocal training has been undoing tensions. As tensions are released in conjunction with voice exercise, your voice will feel and sound freer increasing in resonance and warmth.

At this point, a sound technique will be as useful as building your muscles is in sports promoting safe and long lasting vocal production.

Your voice however doesn’t just react to tension; it can help you release tension as well.Doesn’t it feel good to go: “ouch” when you hurt yourself to scream out a well articulated swearword in a well audible volume (**!?#***).

Have you ever tried humming through pain and feel it easing off? I have successfully “sung” through my wisdom teeth operation. It was a novelty to all but I insisted on using my walkman to guide me through my favorite songs I then howled along to according to the discomfort. The result:  surprised doctors and a good memory for me.

Vocalizing can also be easing period pains. I am a great believer in facing the facts, so when it hurts, I like matching it with sound. It’s good to have the appropriate surroundings for that; busy offices are not recommended; not even for a group session.

A vocal workout can make you feel very relaxed, centered and warm inside.

I always check the mental state of my clients at the beginning of a session to draw their attention to the difference they will be feeling. How many headaches and fatigues have vanished, bad moods dissolved, smiles emerge.

People often comment on me as being a happy person or having a good day when they hear me singing. But I go as far as to say: sing and you will find yourself having a good day!

The vibrations created by using your voice can serve as an internal massage, which relaxes organs and the mind.

The effects are also beneficial on the energetic level balancing your chakras (energy fields); you will feel literally in tune.

Now what can your voice do for you and your stress levels?

Simply and literally voicing concerns can do a whole lot for you.

But you don’t even need words: The power of an “ahhhh” has overwhelmed many: try sitting on a chair “aaahing” as you feel into your different body parts. It can even feel scary when you realize how much emotion you can feel coming up through your voice.

We know that your voice says a lot about your emotional state; an attuned ear can hear the way a person feels by listening to their voice quality. Why not turn this around and increase the tone quality to make you feel better?

Singing is a great way to release stress and getting in touch with your inner world. Awakening your intrinsic awareness leaves you feeling more alive and energetic.

Singing is not only for professionals. Everybody can sing. I am not saying it will sound great but it will feel good. There is a lot of expectation attached to singing in terms of sound, success and status. The good news: you don’t have to sing to use your voice, toning and chanting requires far less pitching than Bach cantatas.

Find yourself a safe place to experiment and play with your voice and to find out how much pleasure it can give you. There are workshops for non- singers as well as singers, sound healing and chanting groups.

Using your voice is a natural, inexpensive and highly effective way to feel good.

Feeling good releases stress, brings life back into perspective.

Go for it. Free your voice and sing out!

For more information and workshops please contact Evelyne Brink, International coach for voice and stage performance.

ABC coaching Achievement builds confidence.

0207 7511199

07905 933227

www.evelynebrink.com

www.abccoaching.co.uk

“Love pain” is the commonest psychological trauma and probably affects millions of people in the UK at any given time. It is a universal experience . Listen to the lyrics of  most popular songs and you will find that this distressing condition is one of the most common topics. It has also inspired numerous plays, books and films.

“Love pain” is really just the same as any other trauma in terms of its symptoms . In fact it can be  considered as a form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The symptoms are anxiety, depression, insomnia and constant rumination about what went wrong in the relationship.   Some sufferers find they think constantly about the person they have lost while others discover  that they cannot imagine what their lost lover looks like – a phenomenon which is due to repression of the mental pain.

Many  sufferers, especially females,  turn to  “comfort eating” while others lose their appetite. In the worst cases sufferers commit suicide in an attempt to relieve their mental anguish.

Although losing a lover may not appear to be objectively the worst thing that can happen to an individual, the level of mental pain can actually be worse than following a bereavement.

Most people get over their symptoms in a few weeks while others take months or even years. There are even cases in which people never really get over the trauma and are still having symptoms 30 years later. Love pain can sometimes be the catalyst which triggers more serious mental illness such as agoraphobia and chronic depression.

Until the advent of Thought Field Therapy (TFT) there was no effective treatment for love pain and sufferers simply had to grin and bear it. However TFT can relieve symptoms in minutes. In some cases only a single treatment is required but if the relationship is not totally over and the patient is being continually re-traumatized then the treatment sequence may have to be repeated.

Dr Roger Callahan ,inventor of TFT. is also an expert on relationships and love pain and has written books on this subject. He also believes that untreated love pain can lead to a condition called amourophobia – literally a phobia or fear of further relationships. According to Callahan amourophobia is actually the commonest phobia. Amourophobia sufferers – usually female – will often sabotage their own relationships when they start to get serious in an attempt to avoid the pain and hurt of a future rejection.

CASE HISTORY No 1

Helen, a 29 year old single parent from Edinburgh, broke up with her boyfriend Tom three years ago. Since then her weight has ballooned  due to comfort eating and is she is now 5 stone overweight. Recently Helen attended a lecture / demonstration on Thought Field Therapy by Dr Colin Barron,who works at Glasgow’s Nuffield Hospital.

Towards the end of the evening Dr Barron asked for volunteers from the audience to come forward  for treatment and Helen put up her hand. She explained that she could not stop eating and even ate when she wasn’t hungry. Dr Barron immediately asked her if she had suffered a trauma in the past few years. She broke down sobbing as she explained how she had split up with her boyfriend and could not get him out of her mind.

Dr Barron then asked her to rate her level of mental  distress on a scale of 1 to 10. It was a 10.  Dr Barron then took Helen through a tapping sequence designed to relieve trauma symptoms. Within 7 minutes Helen’s anxiety had vanished and she was down to a  1 on the 1-10 scale. At this point she broke into a smile and laughed ,”I  am not thinking about him any more. I can’t believe it,” she said as the astonished audience broke into applause. Dr Barron then treated her comfort eating with another tapping sequence.

Helen is now eating normally and the pounds are coming off.

CASE HISTORY No 2

Alison, a 37 year old businesswoman from  Falkirk, was devastated when her husband left her for a younger woman recently.  She found it hard to sleep at night and when she did she had nightmares She  couldn’t concentrate at  work and she felt anxious and depressed. One day she even had a panic attack while driving .

She went to her G. P.  who put her on a 2 week course of sleeping tablets and  was referred to a clinical psychologist – but there was a 2 month waiting time for an appointment.

One day ,in desperation, she made an appointment to see Dr Colin Barron who works as a medically qualified hypnotherapist at Glasgow’s Nuffield Hospital. When she arrived for her appointment Dr Barron explained that she would be treated with a technique called Thought Field Therapy which is faster and more effective than hypnosis.

Within 10 minutes of starting treatment Alison felt much calmer. After treating the trauma of the break up, Dr Barron then gave her a treatment for depression which worked in minutes.

At the next appointment Alison was symptom – free. She was sleeping well and was no longer plagued by nightmares and panic attacks. She also reported that she had started dating again.

“ It is hard to believe that such a dramatic change could occur so quickly,” she said. “My G.P. was very sympathetic but there was really nothing he could do to help me. Thought Field Therapy has given me my life back!”.

Contact Details for Dr Barron

Website : www.colinbarron.co.uk

E Mail : colin.barron@ukonline.co.uk

Telephone : 01786 821019

You would imagine that if you were a ‘seer’, a psychic with a crystal clear ball, or your favourite deck of Tarot, the future would be at your fingers tips, there would be no problems, and life is as easy as pie. This is not the case!

Foretelling is half of the story, the other half is how to make things happen now that you do know they will. If you like, one half of the equation is ‘knowing’ the destination, the other half is having the map and charting the route. I often also mention to my clients that the future is like a garden; what grows in the future is dependant on what seeds we plant in the present. The future is really created in the experience of ‘now’.

Michael Brown, author of The Presence Process says “The quality of the seeds that we sow in any given moment is very different depending on whether we choose to react or to respond to our experiences.

Reacting to our experience means that we are making our decisions based on what we think happened to us yesterday and what we think may happen to us tomorrow.

We are only responding to our experience when we make choices based on what is happening to us right here, right now. It is only possible to respond to our experiences when we unlearn the behaviours and belief systems that lead us into reaction.”

Practising being in the now is what helps us do this ‘unlearning’. It is about holding our attention in the present and being mindful of our own thoughts, emotions and actions (before we take them). It is about observing our self and taking care of ‘that self’. Once we understand ourselves better, we would be better able to understand others better- making our life a little easier!

Just for now, focus on yourself, on being in this present moment. Forget for a few minutes your obligations, or other people’s expectations of you; or indeed your expectations as to what should happen.

If you are stressed, remember that within chaos, there is harmony. Think of the Yin Yang image, which is the symbol of the state of balance: where the two principals are in harmony, but also, within each principle is the seed of the other. Perhaps your ‘stressful’ or less-than-ideal situation is only trying to reflect to you what is harmony is.

Pointers to Being in the now

Jot down your answers, as you ask yourself:

• Who am I? Describe yourself in few words, as someone you might you know in your life.

• I am happiest when I am…?

• What I really want at this point in my life is…..?

• Consider repeating an affirmation to help you re-enforce your intention and new beliefs, for example: “I choose to use the power within my mind to remain peaceful and calm at all times”.

Note that quote

“The Presence Process is not about changing the nature of what the stars have marked on our forehead, hands, and feet. It is about waking into the fullest potential of each moment that is already destined. It is about responding to our life as it is unfolding right now and not reacting to it as if something else was supposed to be happening” Michael Brown, author of The Presence Process

Further info

Listen to Sahar’s inspirational podcasts, visit www.podcasts4life.com ,
psmagazine.com

A wonderful visual trick I have used in a few of my talks and seminars is the “coffee jar test” – have you heard of it?  I start by emptying all the coffee granules out of the jar. Then I fill the jar with “rocks” by which I mean decent sized stones, right up to the top.

Most people agree at this point that the jar is full. But then out comes a bag of tiny little stones, which can be dropped in and around the “rocks”, right up to the top.

Most people agree again now that the jar is full But then the fun part involves putting most of the coffee granules back in the jar. It’s amazing how many of them fit in. Just when you thought the jar was full, you can fit in more tiny little “bits” – sometimes I use sand to make it less messy!

The fascinating thing is that this is a very good illustration of how we fill our lives. Far too often we fill our lives with “sand” – you know the everyday “stuff” we all have to do, like checking our e-mails, the dash into town for something we forgot last week, laundry, washing up, fixing the car, grocery shopping, cleaning the windows.

And we don’t manage to fit in the “rocks” or the things that really matter to us, satisfy us, fulfil us in life and make us really feel we’re living a life of purpose but with fun and freedom too.

But if we prioritise the “rocks” and ensure they are allocated time in our busy schedules, and that time is protected for the truly important things in our lives, quality time with loved ones, learning a new skill, creating something new or whatever it is that feeds and nourishes us, then the smaller stones and the “sand” still somehow fits around them.

So how about spending 10 minutes flicking through your diary and thinking about whether you would “pass the coffee jar test”?

Do you generally find space for your “rocks” or do you allow your life to be filled with “sand”?

If you’d like help with this or with any other aspect of looking after your personal and professional life, and ensuring you’re living a life that is “true to you” please contact me for a free 20 minute consultation on how we can work together.

That can include working out how you can find the time in your schedule to work out a strategy to improve your life.

Wouldn’t that be a great “rock” to put in your jar?

Amanda Wise can be contacted on:

Tel:0845 226 2816

Email: Amanda@WiseLifeCoaching.com

Website: www.WiseLifeCoaching.com

How many times have you heard the term “panic attack”? Over the years the term has increased in usage as more and more people are suffering from overwhelming panic and are being driven to despair. In my client work, I’m often asked “When panic attacks, what’s the defence?”

So what is a panic attack?

Although there are lots of clinical definitions, in client work I’ve heard the term used to describe symptoms ranging from mild anxiety to nauseous hyperventilation. Sometimes leaving the client struggling to breathe, the symptoms spiral on top of themselves creating even more panic.

Often the symptoms cause clients to stay at home, unwilling to leave the house “just in case” they have a panic attack. In their attempt to reduce their symptoms, clients often make things worse by staying within the comfort zone of their home. The thought of going outside becomes fraught with the danger that an episode of panic will overwhelm them.

When I see a client, they often describe me as their last resort, at the end of their tether not knowing what else to do.

So what triggers the panic?

I’ve had clients reporting a diverse spectrum of situations ranging from supermarket queues to traffic lights, all causing panic in one form or another.

Underneath the panic there are many neurological and physiological processes going on, few of which I’m knowledgeable enough or qualified to mention.

The basic flight or flight response comes into play with the body releasing adrenaline in copious amounts to deal with a perceived threat, this overload being the cause of the nauseousness or shaking.

My interest is in the client’s perception of the threat. What is it that causes the release of adrenaline in the first place?

In my approach to the treatment of panic attacks, I often use the NLP technique of eliciting the internal strategy, finding the mental process that the client goes through to produce their panic.

After asking the client what I have to do in my mind to produce the feelings of panic, I am often told exactly what process to go through to produce panic. When I run this strategy through my own head I can usually  get some anxiety going and the whole problem becomes very obvious.

For example, I am often told that in order for the panic to start I would have to ask myself a question like “what would happen if I was suddenly to take ill right now?”.

Since the brain has a very useful habit of answering every question put to it, scary pictures often pop up in the client’s head, followed by bad feelings, which are then reinforced by even scarier questions. This process loops around and around until the client either makes the questions so ridiculous that they stop, or they are distracted by something else. Throughout this process, adrenaline is building up and producing the feelings of panic.

This by no means is the only way people can produce panic but I’ve found it’s a very common one. Merely making a client aware of this process that they often perform in microseconds often results in them getting control of the process. Altering the tone of their questioning internal voice can also short circuit the process well before the adrenaline has flooded the system and the panic is unleashed.

Adding a bit of humour also works a treat, you can’t panic while you’re laughing.

My own personal favourite, which I use when I find myself becoming anxious, is to remember Dad’s Army’s Corporal Jones shouting “Don’t panic Mr. Mainwaring, they don’t like it up em!”. That tends to shift my state!

So you may be reading this thinking well that’s all well and good for other people but that doesn’t sound like me. How true, this doesn’t apply to everyone but we haven’t finished yet.

Meridian Energy Therapy in whatever form its presented can also relieve panic attacks. Thought Field Therapy (TFT) has very high success rates with clients, often used as the first line of approach by therapists. Simply tapping points on energy meridians in a specific sequence can eliminate the panic symptoms and deal with the cause. Any good TFT practitioner is able to quickly and easily run clients through this process.

So there’s hope yet for the panic attack sufferer. If you are presently having any sort of problem with anxiety I highly recommend finding an experienced practitioner of NLP or Meridian Energy Therapy and release yourself from the grip of this very irrational but very real condition.

Copyright : Adrian Brown © 2007

Contact Details:

Adrian Brown ACMA C.P.AMT C.Hyp

www.beyondlimits.co.uk

Tel: 0870 478 9145 or 07908 465772

Email: info@beyondlimits.co.uk

As a Shamanic healer of the Inca tradition, a significant part of my work involves journeying into the Lower World in order to bring back to my clients their lost soul parts – a healing method called Soul Retrieval. Soul loss sounds terrifying, but it is extremely common and all of us have suffered soul loss in some form or another, either in this or a former lifetime.

In my view, true healing cannot take place until soul loss is rectified.  Soul loss usually occurs during situations of high trauma, a life – threatening accident or illness for example, losing a loved one unexpectedly, seeing a parent leave home, or most commonly, sexual abuse. However, soul loss can also occur for “lesser” and less dramatic incidents, such as hearing some bad news, feeling unloved by a parent, or going through a nasty divorce.

So, how does soul loss manifest itself? How does someone know that they are affected by this? In my experience, clients tend to make statements such as, “ I don’t feel all here” “ I feel lost” “I feel part of me is missing” “ A part of me died when she died” “I feel like I am constantly searching for something, but I don’t know what it is”– all these statements indicate soul loss to me. Sometimes, clients tend to go down what I call “rabbit holes” – they have suffered soul loss to some extent, but they do not associate the feeling with themselves, so I hear such things as “ I just can’t find the right spiritual path,” “ I am desperate to find my natural parents so I know who I am,” or “ I can never seem to find the right job/man/woman” – so subconsciously, these people know that something isn’t right, but mistakenly are looking outside of themselves. What they are really looking for is their whole self.

What I have come to understand with this work is that soul loss actually seems to occur as a form of protection mechanism. Sadly, many of us have read magazines articles written by women who have been seriously sexually assaulted. Most of the time the event is described like this “…. the strangest thing happened while the abuse was taking place, ….it was as if I was looking down upon myself, I could see it all taking place below me, but I was curiously detached from it.” This is actually describing the process of the soul leaving the physical body, because it did not want to experience what was happening to the physical body at that time. What then appears to happen is that part of the soul returns to the body, but part goes to a place of safety. My own philosophy on this is that firstly it may perhaps be too difficult for the person to cope if all the soul returned to the body, with all the memory of what happened, and secondly, the soul has realised, maybe for the first time, that it is not entirely safe within the physical body, so part of it leaves for the safety of the Lower World.

Now, I tend to be very careful mentioning the words “Lower World” to my clients. It almost always causes consternation – “What?!! You mean part of my soul is in HELL??” they cry. But this is not the case at all, in fact, it is quite the opposite. Shamanic traditions differ, but most work on the basis of three worlds. The Lower World (the earthly domain) the Middle World (“this” world) and the Upper World (the spirit and heavenly domains), which are different dimensions. So what seems to happen is that the soul parts tend to flee to the safety of Pachamama, – Mother Earth.

I journey to the Lower World on behalf of my client and visit the four chambers of the soul. I retrieve the lost soul part and a gift and sometimes an animal, bird, or insect will want to come back with me in order to be of assistance in some way. For example a butterfly may come back, to teach the person how to fly through life more lightly, how to taste the sweet nectar of life, to bring colour into the person life.

The second part of the session –“Mesa Proxy” is immensely healing for the client – we find out more on such a deep level and I never fail to marvel how connected everything turns out to be.  Clients often realise such great truths about themselves and seem to be given the tools they need in order to move forward with their lives. I always feel truly blessed to be able to assist my clients in this way.

Contact Details:

www.liberate-online.co.uk

dawn@liberate-online.co.uk

Te: +44 (0)1727 845 514

+44 (0)7748 361 1210

www.anthonyrobbins.com