You may not be competing in the Olympics this year but the summer is often a good time to enjoy re-evaluating your own goals & to get curious about what great things you want to achieve next in your life. While we might often clear out outmoded clothes and throw out things that we no longer need, we can also turn our thoughts productively (a little more often) to clearing out some of the cobwebbed ideas and beliefs we have about what’s possible for us, what we want to focus on and what is most important to us right now. So time to get out that brush (yes I’m going to sweat this metaphor!)  sweep clean your mind and create a clear space for new ideas, thoughts, goals, plans and challenges to start rushing in. What things do you believe just because you always have, because your parents told you or because the 7 year old you decided it must be true in response to some set of conditions that are no longer true for you now? As the start of the new academic year September is often a time for starting new things and beginning new courses of action. What do you want to do this year that will get you closer to the happiness in all areas of your life that you so richly deserve?

If  you’re looking for a new challenge in the Autumn that will really help you get more of what you want , you may well be interested  in the NLP courses Sea Star has planned for September. NLP is an amazing set of tools , originally modelled from excellent practice in many areas of psychology,  which will help you get the most out of your life and work. It can seriously impact your success in relationships and most importantly your relationship with yourself so that you handle life’s challenges more easily and increase your level of happiness and confidence.

I am holding a free evening’s introduction to NLP at Cedar farm on Thursday 6th September from 7.30 – 9.30. The focus of the evening is for you to understand what NLP is and what it can do for you.  Why not come, bring a friend and have a fun evening out learning something new.  If you’d like to come please just let me know and I’ll reserve you a place.

If you’d like to go into NLP in a bit more detail, there are also still a few places on the weekend introduction which is certificated and will give a comprehensive outline of the building blocks of NLP. The weekend is fun, interactive and The weekend will be on the 29th & 30th of September and will cost £150. This weekend also counts as weekend 1 of the full Practitioner training which will continue from November, one weekend per month through to July. All the dates are available here on the website (www.seastartraining.co.uk)

So why not join us, meet some great people, learn something new & exciting that can benefit you and have some fun while you’re doing it. You never know what you can achieve until you decide to give it a go.

Now back to the Olympics. Yay!

Going to another country for the first time gives us a unique perspective on the country’s value system because we are immediately aware of the sharp contrast with our own. On a personal level it’s like going on holiday with another family and realising that some things that are of paramount importance in your own family (high class restaurants, total chill out) are in some degree of conflict with theirs (value food & sightseeing). It’s easy to spot when there’s a values clash – judgements start to come thick and fast if you’re not careful you may find yourselves in a less than benevolent state of mind. All judgements stem from a lack of ability to step into the other person’s shoes and this is the structure of predjudice. And having spent a few sobering hours in the Anne Frank house on Sunday, I’m pretty up for doing something to lessen that.

So how to turn your judgements to your advantage? As soon as you  spot the first symptoms of  judgementalism (a tendency to think things which sound like stuff Catherine Tate’s Harrogate couple would say : “Chips with mayonnaise? Of all the dirty evil….” The  interesting thing to do from an NLP perspective is to stop the judgement in it’s tracks for a minute and get really curious. If we were to hold the mirror up to ourselves right now what would it reflect about our own cultural values and indeed our personal ones? What would the Dutch lady in the window have to say if she showed up on our street or examined our lives. What would her knee-jerk reactions and judgements be to us? What places in our own psyches do we not yet understand and what unexplored corners of ourselves might we be projecting onto others? Because what we reject in ourselves we project onto others. And if we were to elicit OUR  country’s values  what would we find out about what’s important in the UK now and what is missing? Still and all though chips with mayo – what’s that about?

If NLP teaches us anything its that we need to be  flexible and ingenious in how we deal with problems.  My favourite trick is a form of sleight of hand -  if you’ve got something to do that seems overwhelming, sneak up on yourself and start small. I read that great writers such as Ernest Hemingway  would sit down to write every day without fail and if temporarily uninspired would begin by writing  anything (even his name over and over) until the words started to flow. Some people copy out work from the day before.  Just getting started is the key but why not get really clever and use your own preferred way to procrastinate as a way in? My chosen method of procrastination is often visual (TV, Internet), so if I have seminars to write or written work to do (or blog to write) I deliberately go and find something inspiring on TV or t’internet to watch to put me in the right state.  Once you get in the right state, those ideas just start coming and before you know it you’re off!  You will know your own way in, and  you could apply this to anything. Rather than say “I’m going to do those accounts now” Tell yourself “I’ll just read up how to do a great spread sheet, or look through my receipts, or file that one bank statement or read or listen to something motivating and hey presto you’re up and running before your conscious mind has chance to object.

And imagine how happy you will be with yourself once its all out of the way, finished and completed successfully and you’re enjoying the positive consequences of that? That’s right. Do it now.

For more tips on writing from famous authors check out : http://writetodone.com/2008/09/04/learn-from-the-greats-7-writing-habits-of-amazing-writers/