Hi there and welcome to my chocolate chunk of NLP talk,
All about beliefs.
Why do I call it a chocolate chunk?
It's because NLP to me is like a huge,
Intensely
delicious bar of chocolate where even the smallest piece can satisfy and change your
life.
So let's take a bite now.
I'm going to take you back in time to July 1975 and
I was just 16 when I started work at a high street bank.
Back then I didn't have the tools
and life changing awareness that learning NLP has given me.
So I had a boatload of beliefs
about myself that were not useful to me and also not true.
So what I will share with you
during this talk is a small but powerful chunk of NLP wisdom and that is that beliefs don't
have to be true to work,
They just have to be believed.
Because of that the advice is
to choose the ones that are loving and compassionate.
Let me share an example of how this played
out for me and you may recognise the same patterns in your past or present life.
Now
if I could turn back time there is one particular belief I would have dropped instantly.
That
belief helped me to make up stories that not only held me back in my work life but also
stopped me pursuing ideas,
Trying new roles and communicating with love and compassion.
The belief was that I could read minds.
My favourite mind read was that I knew what my
boss was thinking.
I just knew that he didn't rate me as much as the other employees.
Now
I had no evidence but mind reading doesn't need any real world evidence,
It just needs
to be believed.
So there I was,
A year on into the role and I had been overlooked for
promotion and because I believed that I already knew why,
It never occurred to me to ask or
challenge my thinking.
I mean why would I?
I could read my boss's mind and I knew he
didn't like me.
So what did I do?
I left the bank and got another job.
And then if I fast
forward us 12 months in that new role to when I get overlooked in this job,
What did I do?
I just read my boss's mind and I knew that through my magical powers it was because I
wasn't good enough.
Mind reading was easy for me but not useful.
It gave me reasons
to give up and move on without ever finding out the real story and learning from it.
It
made me resent my fate and not think very kindly of others and it took me years to realise
that the story in my head was just made up and holding me back.
So the question is have
you ever perhaps walked past someone you know and they ignored you as if you weren't there
and then decided that you know what they're thinking because of the look on their face
and then after that made up a whole story about why they ignored you,
Linking it to
a recent or past incident or even searched for a reason but couldn't find one so maybe
decided that they just don't like you.
Then the next time you see them you don't feel
quite right about the whole thing.
We do it all the time and it's a perfectly natural
human thing to do.
It helps us take clues from the people around us and make social
connections but mind reading gets in the way when we use it to fill in the gaps of
what we really know.
It colours our thoughts and reactions and just makes things more complicated.
The realisation that I can't read minds meant that I changed my approach.
Now when I catch
myself mind reading I stop and ask myself hmm how do I know that because quite often
I don't know.
Just knowing that means that I'm more relaxed and in control because I
have dismissed a made up story and written off my ability to read minds because the fact
is none of us can no matter how hard we try.
So the invitation is that the next time you
find yourself mind reading just ask yourself this hmm how do I know that and look for the
facts.
Working with reality is more compassionate and creates connection and there's no way you can
know the truth then believe something that is loving and compassionate.
Well thank you for
listening to this yummy chocolate chunk of NLP and why not explore others in this collection
creating choice and compassion in your life one small chunk at a time.
