Remember Mona Lisa? What was she thinking about?

There is more to a smile than what we usually think. Research has shown that smiling & laughing can reduce stress, improve the immune system, and even could help with recovering from certain diseases. The most famous case is Norman Cousins’ recovery from (what is now thought to be) reactive arthritis which he claims in his book “Anatomy of an Illness” he cured with mega-doses of Vitamin C and heavy doses of daily laughter. He mentions : “I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep,” he reported. “When the pain-killing effect of the laughter wore off, we would switch on the motion picture projector again and not infrequently, it would lead to another pain-free interval.”

Many Eastern traditions have also incorporated laughter as part of a daily set of practices such as Laughing Yoga and Laughing Qi Gong. The power of the Taoist ‘Inner Smile’ meditations has been well documented (we teach some of those practices during our Beat Stress, Pill Free half day workshop. Check date for the next one on the schedule of all courses webpage)

Watch the Ted video below where Ron Gutman reviews a number of studies about smiling, and reveals some unexpected results.

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Astro Coach Academy is an Astro eCourse for coaches and anyone eager to learn tools to know oneself better & become more effective.

Psychological astrology looks at a zodiac chart to discover potentials, talents and challenges that are hidden in our psyche or, to use a NLP & Hypnosis vocabulary, our unconscious mind.

Unlike traditional astrology, psychological astrology does not make predictions. Why? because we believe that to a large degree, we create our own reality, and therefore have the power to influence the unfolding of our own life.

How? By constantly filtering our experience through our own unconscious maps. Some information is deleted, some information is allowed to come in and register in our consciousness. The choice is made outside of our awareness. The meaning we give to the world, to people and situations results from this filtering process.

The information that is allowed in becomes our ‘focus’.

Predictions, when made by someone we consider as an authority in their field, whom we believe and respect (such as an astrologer), can often become self fulfilling prophecies. How? By installing what has been predicted as a point of focus for our conscious awareness. Once this is done, we literally look for it outside of us.

Example: Ms. X goes to see a fortune teller she considers an expert in his field (i.e. “he knows something that I don’t”). Every time she went to him he told her something that ‘was true’. This time, after a careful examination, he tells her that she should be careful this year, because there is a high probability that she will have an accident. Where does her mind focus after she comes out of her session? What is she unconsciously looking for in the outside world?

From our point of view, an astrological chart only shows psychological frames, not real life events. When used skilfully and within the context of a dialogue rather than by imposing knowledge onto a person, the chart becomes an invaluable tool to assist someone (or ourselves) to uncover part of our personalities that we are not aware of. In a way, it works in a similar fashion to a psychological or personality assessment.

Want to know more? Sign up on the Astro Coaching Academy website. You will receive regular tips and articles about the Astro tools. You can also request articles on topics that interest you, and answers to your most pressing questions.

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Like the Astro Coach Academy FB page.

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Sometimes, mis­un­der­stand­ing arises when we do not under­stand other people’s map of the world, or in other words, when we can­not put our­selves in their shoes. Each person reacts to the other, the sit­u­a­tion esca­lates, emo­tions inten­sify, and the chance of reach­ing a mutu­ally ben­e­fi­cial agree­ment dis­ap­pears in a puff of smoke.

One of the most effective ways to solve conflicts is to be able to see the other person’s perspective. Many times, this is all that is needed to defuse tension, initiate a different mind-frame, and open the path to a solution to the conflict or argument.

Whether you’re prepar­ing for a meet­ing, deal­ing with fam­ily mem­bers, sell­ing, nego­ti­at­ing, coach­ing, or giv­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion, the abil­ity to consciously choose the perspective you want to have on the situation massively increases the like­li­hood of success. This is what in NLP we call ‘Perceptual Positions’, i.e. different perspective from which you perceive a situation or problem which involves several people.

In this short audio, I’ll take you through the 3 Perceptual Positions. Leave comments at the bottom of this page if you have any. Click on the little arrow below to start the audio player.

Want to know more? The schedule of all courses can be found here. Look for NLP Practitioner, Coach & Hypnosis Certification Training.

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… the human unconscious mind has an irresistible need for closure, you’d understand why you have felt an involuntary, maybe overwhelming urge to keep going after you read the title of this post.

In 1927, Gestalt psychologist Kurt Lewin noticed that waiters has a much clearer recollection of still unpaid orders. His student at the time, Russian psychologist Blyuma Zeigarnik went on to study the phenomenon. What she found is: People remember incomplete tasks much more easily than completed ones. This is now called the “Zeigarnik effect”.

Want to know the whole story? Watch the short video below. And if you want to become a master communicator, check out the NLP Practitioner and Coach Certification training in March. This is part of what we’ll learn.

If I Told You That…

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Susan Blackmore is dedicated to understanding the scientific nature of consciousness. Her latest work centers on the existence of memes — little bits of knowledge, lore, habit that seem to spread themselves using human brains as mere carriers. She’s exploring the existence of a new class of meme, spread by human technology. It’s temporarily named the “teme.”

[ted id=269]

If ‘Memes’ are ideas, habits, attitudes, knowledge … ‘vMemes’ are their container, the way we think about Memes. These vMemes are the foundation of our values, what we hold true, important, which we are not conscious about, and which drive ALL our actions and thoughts.

To learn more, discover your and other people’s vMemes, understand what deeply motivates people, and improve communication and therefore effectiveness, register for the ‘Thinking Styles’ week end course (which includes 3 online assessments, free if you sign up before the deadline). Click HERE and select “Thinking Styles” course in the schedule of workshops. This course is a must if you work with people (coach, HR management, trainer, recruiter, educator…)

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This is THE time of the year again! Looking back on what happened in 2009, good resolutions and new goals for 2010.
Here are a few things you’ll want to know to set goals THAT WORK for 2010. Remember, your Unconscious Mind is the goal getter and it needs precision, so read on.

When you set them, make sure your goals are SMART:

S for Specific
Make sure you say PRECISELY what you want: “making more money” is too fuzzy. Where is the money coming from specifically? “exercising” is too vague, what type of exercise, and where?

M for Measured
“Going to the gym” is not good enough, “going to the gym 4 times a week for a 2 hours workout each time” is much better. “Making more money” won’t work, making $xxx” will.

A for “As If Now“
Write your goals in the present tense: “I am making $xxx”. “I go to the gym…”

R for Realistic and Responsible
If the last violin class you took was 35 years ago, it may not be realistic to set as a goal: “successfully auditioning for the London Symphony Orchestra” (well you get the idea). Responsible means that it’s good for you and for your family and your environment as well.

T for Timed
Give a date. “The end of July” is not a date (when is the end of July?). “July 31st, 2010″ is a date!

Write your goals on a paper or in a file in your computer, read through to make sure they are SMART.

Then, go through the keys to achievable outcomes:

1. Stated in the positive. “What specifically do you want?”

2. Specify present situation. “Where are you now?” (Associated)

3. Specify outcome. “What will you see, hear, feel, etc., when you have it?”

4. Specify evidence procedure. “How will you know when you have it?”

5. Is it congruently desirable?“What will this outcome get for you or allow you to do?”

6. Is it self-initiated and self-maintained? “Is it only for you?” (you cannot set goals for others).

7. Is it appropriately contextualized? “Where, when, how, and with whom do you want it?”

8. What resources are needed?
“What do you have now, and what do you need to get your outcome?”
“Have you ever had or done this before?”
“Do you know anyone who has?”
“Can you act as if you have it?”

9. Is it ecological?
“For what purpose do you want this?”
“What will you gain or lose if you have it?”

Happy Holidays!

PS: Want to know more? Visit the public area of the MasterMinds NLP Tutorials website, where we post some useful tips and “how to” step-by-step guide to lead a more effective and fulfilling life.

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You may not know, but the 20th Century had its very own Merlin the Wizard.

His name was Milton Erickson, Dr. Milton Erickson. Dr. Erickson was a trained medical doctor and a hypnotherapist who had absolutely prodigious results with his patients.

The funny thing is: everyone thought that Erickson was a nice old man who said funny things. He would speak to his clients about tomatoes and their problems would disappear! But then videotapes were invented, and people started to realise what Dr. Erickson was doing. There are many things we learned about communication from Dr. Erickson (I will reveal what in subsequent articles), and what I want to focus on today is his most astonishing observation skill.

Not many people know that but Erickson had polio when he was young. He spent 1 whole year sitting in his mother’s kitchen watching people go by, and he could not move, the only thing he could do was to watch, and he developed some amazing powers of observation. He could see things that other people could not see. At age 18, he learned how to walk again by watching his baby sister learning to walk.

He would know exactly what was going on in his patients head. There was a particular woman client who did not show any sign, but when people asked him how he knew when she was in trance, he said, “Well, I knew because the pulse on her ankle slowed down”.

So what does this mean for us?

Think about it for a minute.

How useful would it be if you knew exactly what’s going on in someone’s head? We can use your observation skills in all areas of our life, whether you’re a coach or a trainer, a teacher, a doctor, a parent, a spouse, in business (with clients, with your boss), in sales, and in therapy as well. Using your observation skills, you can see whether you are having the impact you want, and utilise this information to get the results you desire.

The good news is that we now know exactly how Erickson did it! We know exactly what he was looking at when he observed people. So here are the 5 things to look at that will make a major difference in your ability to see difference in other people.

The skin colour: That is a shift from light to dark. The best way is to imagine that you are seeing people in black & white.

Skin tonus: You can look for the shine on the skin. You can notice the difference in light bouncing off the face even for ladies wearing make up. You can also pay attention to the symmetry of the face.

Breathing: It can change pace or location, fast or slow, or high or low in the body. Try it! Your breathing can be way right up on your chest, now around your rib cage, or you can be breathing way down deep in the belly. Fast to slow, down to low are not always linked but many times they are.

Lower lip size: Many people do not know that the lower lip changes from moment to moment. What happens is that the blood flows or not to the lower lip. Check the lines and the thickness of the lip.

The eyes: Focused or defocused and pupil dilation.

So what do you do with this information? The process is called “Calibration”, that’s a technical term which means that we compare between a baseline picture (i.e. the person at rest, i.e. before you have an interaction with them) and the change compared to that baseline.

Then you can notice the relationship between the 2 pictures and notice what is going on.

As with everything, practice makes perfect. If you exercise your observation skills all the time, you will begin to see things that people have not seen before, like a magician, like Milton Erickson; and as you practise more and more, you will become a master at this and you’ll be able to dramatically improve your results!

Want to learn the secrets to Erickson success? The NLP Foundation 1 day introductory course (July 11th 2009), and NLP Practitioner, Coaching & Hypnosis Certification Training (September 2009)

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The One Step To Successful Negotiation & Problem Solving

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Negotiation is the process of getting into Agreement. Problem-Solving requires what’s commonly called Lateral Thinking. Here are THE two secrets that will make both processes easy and smooth, and that will bring results every time!

It has to do with our ability to think at different logical levels. It’s very simple, and it goes like this:

Let’s imagine that I want to buy a computer (by the way, I’m thinking of buying an iMac, so, it’s a real life example). And let’s imagine that I am asking you for advice about my options.

If you know anything about computers, it is likely that you are going to go into details, look at the different parts and explain about CPUs, types of RAM, and hard disk sizes. And if I ask about the types of RAM, you could go into more details still, and advise me to buy a DDG3 RAM because that will boost the processing speed.

If your tech knowledge is more limited, you may prefer to explain about different categories, whether I should purchase a MAC, or a PC, and if I choose a PC, shall I go for Windows Vista (nooooooooo!!!!!) or wait for Windows 2007 to come out.

In both cases, you’d go into more details about computers. This what we call CHUNKING DOWN. Computer>MAC or PC>Windows Vista or Windows 2007 etc…

The question you want to ask to chunk down is “what (or how) specifically?”, or “what’s another example of this?”

Now, let’s imagine that I am not even sure whether I want to buy a computer, and I ask you whether I should buy one or not. Then, you would probably ask me what is the reason why I am thinking about buying one, for what purpose. I may tell you, “well, because I want to keep in contact with my friends”, but that would not necessarily give you enough information to provide an answer, so you may ask “keep in contact with your friends, yes, and for what purpose?”, and I may tell you “well, to communicate with a large number of people” and so on.

In this case, what you’d be doing is trying to get my higher intention, what is the big picture reason behind my thinking about buying a computer. Once you know the higher purpose, you can advise whether a computer is the best choice for me.

This process is called CHUNKING UP, which means going toward the bigger picture.

So starting from computer, if we chunk down and go into more details, we get to parts (CPU, RAM, hard disk) or categories (PC or MAC) and if we chunk up, we go toward the larger picture (computer>networking>communication) You’ll notice that if we chunk up high enough, we always end up at “existence” or “universe” because in order to communicate, we have to exist right?

The question you want to ask to chunk up is “for what purpose, what’s the intention?”, “what’s this an example of?”

Now, I know you are thinking what does this have to do with the negotiation table? well… EVERYTHING!

Negotiation is the process of getting into Agreement, we said that at the beginning. Well, you know what? if you chunk high enough, it is IMPOSSIBLE not to get into agreement. Differences of opinion only exist at chunking levels where there are enough details to disagree upon. So what you’d do is to chunk up in the discussions, to a level where both parties would have to agree, then chunk back down (go into more details) only as quickly as everyone could keep a background focus on the higher intention.

I’ll give you an example of that. A few years back, I worked with 2 business partners who could not agree on anything! They had opposite opinions on where the business was heading, on business planning, they even did not agree on the colour of the room and the furniture! They decided to seek assistance, because they could see that the business was suffering. So we all sat down, and I asked both of them “what are you in business for, what’s your higher purpose?” Eventually they both got to “making a profit”. So from there, we chunked down while keeping the agreement. And what happened was magic! Once they had realised that they both had the same higher intention, they were much more willing to give up control over the smaller details. Both of them had gone into business together in the first place because they had very complementary skills, and through the process, they naturally allowed the other person to take decisions on whatever was their area of expertise.

You can see from here that this is not only useful in business, but in family mediation, relationships, and all areas where two parties want to reach an agrement.

A word of caution here: for an agreement to happen, there has to be a will to agree in the first place. Some negotiations are doomed from the start because one or both parties have already decided to get out anyway.

OK, so what does this have to do with problem solving? Well… EVERYTHING!

How?

Someone’s ability to problem-solve is proportional to his or her lateral thinking skills. How do you think laterally? Very simple. By chunking up first (asking yourself “what’s this an example of”), then chunking down (what is another example of that?”)

So for example, in our computer story, to chunk laterally from  “computer”, you’d ask yourself “what’s computer an example of?”, and you’d get to say, communication, then “what is another example of communication?”, and you could say “mobile phone”, but also “books” or “musical score” (which are other forms of communication). Then, you can become really creative, and connect things which are seemingly remote from each other. This is when you problem solving ability increases ten-fold!

Want to know more? Watch the video in the next post. There, I give other examples of why and when the chunking process can be useful. I also touch on one of the most powerful form of chunking up that’s used by politicians, public speakers and generally anyone in the business of convincing all over the world, and which is called “nominalisations”.

Liked this article? Leave your comment below, or email me helene@themastermindsgroup.com

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Sometimes, misunderstanding arises when we do not understand other people’s map of the world, or in other words, when we cannot put ourselves in their shoes.

Each person reacts to the other, the situation escalates, emotions intensify, and the chance of reaching a mutually beneficial agreement disappears in a puff of smoke.

Whether you’re preparing for a meeting, dealing with family members, selling, negotiating, coaching, or giving a presentation, the ability to put yourselves in other people’s shoes massively increases the likelihood of success.

When you are able to adopt a different point of view easily, you gain in your ability to detach from the immediate situation, and to keep your cool in challenging circumstances.

In a word.. you don’t go bananas!

Sounds good to me!

But not only that…

Your ability to look at things from a number of different perspective makes you more flexible, more adaptable, more able to see everything from a higher point of view, and therefore more likely to keep on the right track rather than get swallowed up in non-essential issues.

In a word, you make better choices and decisions.

Sounds really good to me!

The Background for the exercise

The idea is to adopt 3 different perspectives
1. Your own perspective (seeing through your own eyes, in NLP terms, it is called “Association”)
2. Another person’s perspective on the same situation (seeing through THEIR eyes)
3. The Fly on the Wall perspective (a totally detached, 3rd party perspective).

Now it’s important you actually DO IT! Understanding intellectually and experiencing and 2 VERY DIFFERENT THINGS! When you experience, you fix things at the unconscious level, and it is easy to get back into state.

The exercise

OK, so here’s how you do it. I’ll detail the process step by step below, read through it, and then go ahead!

So the first thing I’d like you to do is to recall an argument that you had with someone recently. Not necessarily a major argument, but chose something important enough that you can feel something when you recall the event.

Got that? Good!

OK, ready to go? Sit comfortably and close your eyes now.

1. See what happened through your own eyes, see the other person’s face, his/her facial expressions, what he/she looks like, how he/she moves, the gestures.

Hear the other person’s voice, the tone, the pitch, is it loud, is it soft?

And feel what you were feeling at that time.

Now, I’d like you to float up outside your body, and float down into the other person’s body. And when you do that

2. You see everything that person saw: he/she can see your face in front of him/her, so see your face right now, the facial expressions, the gestures, the body language.

And hear your voice as you are speaking to that person, the tone, the pitch, the volume.

Feel what that person is feeling at that time.

And now, float outside that person’s body, and go and adopt the 3rd party perspective, be the fly on the wall.

3. And see these 2 people there, see their gestures, their body language, their faces, the facial expressions.

Hear the voices, how they speak to each other, the volume of the voices, the different tones, the pitch.

Notice any feeling, or are they not there?

And now come back into your body and open your eyes.

Debrief

How was it, did you notice anything different as you were adopting different perceptual positions? How about your feelings?

What have you learned? What are your conclusions on that matter?

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