Let's Talk About Context

The following blog is an article I wrote for a guest slot on www.coachingconfidence.co.uk which is website for coaches run by Jen Waller.

One of the reasons each Friday sees a guest post, here at Coaching Confidence, is to have a mix of different approaches, techniques and opinions shared.

This week, Lenny Deverill-West talks about context. We invite you to consider how you use, or could use, context in your work.

Let’s Talk About Context

“A problem well stated is a problem half solved”
(Charles Kettering)

Lets talk about context specifically the importance of context when working with a client, which I have come to understand training as a Cognitive Hypnotherapist at The Quest Institute. One the things I do when I first see a client is a history take. I have noticed over time that often when client’s come back to see me after the history take, they have already begun to move forward with their issue, goal, problem etc.

I think the reason for this is clarity; once they understand specifically what the issue, goal or problem really is, their wisdom, mind or unconscious can set about solving it.

For me, a big part of getting clarity is in understanding the context surrounding what is stopping the client from having what they want. (Along with Structure, Process and Consequence, which I’ll save for another day)

What is Context?

Context is about when the client has their problem and why, which is normally connected to what they have interpreted about a past event.

I have always been fascinated that a lot of the events that shape our beliefs in adult life happened when we are children.

This was also true of a former client who I will call Bob (not his real name), Bob was literally gripped with fear about the prospect of giving a best man’s speech to friends and family who only wished him the best.

The reason for this was that during school he had reading difficulties, and he had been made to read in front of the class whereby he was laughed at by all the other kids.

Clearly this event actually happened but what this event has come to mean was made up when he was a child. I think it would be fair to say that getting laughed at by a bunch of kids would not have the same effect now as it did back then.

So when I’m finding out the context I’m not really interested the facts so to speak just what the event meant to the client. And I’ll use a combination of the following questions to get to the “why now?” to establish a pattern between the past and the present.

Do you always have this problem?
Are there times when it’s better or worse?
What is different about those times?
Have you always had this problem?
What was different before you had it?
What was happening in your life when this problem started?
What is happening in your life when you have this problem that is similar to when the problem began?

*If you’re not keen on the word problem, you can use barrier, issue or whatever else you would prefer.

I know that exploring the ‘why’ is frowned upon in some coaching circles and with good reason. So the idea is not to dwell on why something happened, but just to discover the significant event connected to the client’s problem in order to reframe the meaning of it.

Context Mapping

Context Mapping is about finding the edge of the problem, at what point does it tip and what other contexts does it map across to. Are there other situations that make them feel the same way?

So if we go back to Bob, Bob would only start to get nervous if he had to talk in front of four people or more. At three people he was fine, but in front of four he would get a horrible feeling unless it was close friends and then he was ok again.

As hypnotherapist I was able to use key information to create a suggestion aimed at producing a type of trance phenomena known as negative hallucination, which is really just way of getting the client not to notice something. In the case of Bob not to notice how many people are in the room, by drawing his attention to their ‘friendly faces’.

And as you begin talking, you might be surprised at how calm and relaxed you’ve started to feel as you’re only aware of the friendly faces looking back at you.

Exception Mapping

Bob actually came to see me for “no confidence” as he put it, now I don’t think I have ever met anyone who experiences their problem all of the time.

So Exception Mapping is about discovering the exceptions, when they don’t experience their problem. This is useful because like Bob people will often gerneralise their problem. E.G. I’m not confident is actually I’m not confident talk in front 4 or more people.

The exceptions to the rule let you know how big or small a problem is and understanding what is different about those times is another key piece of information that you can use.

Ok so next time you’re working with a client take some time to understand the context surrounding whatever you’re working on. If context is a key driver for their issue, it would make sense to use context interventions.

The interventions you can use will depend upon your background, I have found that techniques that get people to see a situation differently work particularly well. If you are familiar with NLP/hypnosis terminology then Meta Mirror, Coaching, Reframing, Metaphor and Timeline Reframing are just a few but there are many others.

About the Author/Further Resources

Lenny Deverill-West is a Cognitive Hypnotherapist, NLP Practitioner, Coach and Corporate Trainer based in Southampton.

Lenny spends most his time seeing clients at his Southampton practice and is also developing trainings courses and Hypnotherapy products that are due out early next year. For more information about Lenny Deverill-West visit www.startlivingtoday.co.uk

How Do I Get The Relationship I Want?

I'm often asked relationship questions like 'how do I get the relationship I want?', sometimes by people in relationships, so they might not be happy with the relationship they are in, and by people looking for a great relationship because their experience thus far has not been great.

Often it comes down to a one of two things, and the first one is when people say something like 'I always seem to meet the wrong guy (or girl)'. Now it's very unlikely that this person only meets the wrong people, and often people use words like 'always' to generalise their whole experience, linguistically these words are known as universal quantifiers. Usually what it comes down to is the person's tendency to create their world from the outside in, meaning that they are looking for love to come from outside of them , in the this case from the 'wrong kind of guys (or girls)'. And it's when people are coming from a place of need that it sets up a pattern where they are looking for love to come from outside of them.

Michael Neill uses a great story around this which goes, there are two girl friends chatting over coffee and one of the woman has been telling the other about her lastest failed relationship and complaining that she never seems to meet the right guy and her friend who has no doubt heard this all before replies, 'honey it's not that you're meeting the wrong guys, it's that you're sleeping with them!'.. Which makes the choice nice and simple and that is, you go out with people you like and you don't go out with the people you don't like

Creating your world from the inside out is a wonderful and effective mindset for going into and being in a loving relationship. It's about understanding that you don't have get love from someone, because when you think about it you create those feelings internally and actually you bring that love to the relationship. When you get that you never have to come from place of need, you're going to find your relationships are going to improve because you will naturally gravitate and be around those people who want to share in this rather than use it like a bargining tool.

Which takes me on the this excellent metaphor of the 'Magical Kitchen' by Don Miguel Ruiz in his book The Mastery of Love. I have pasted the fully story below because it really captures why people put up with so much crap in their relationships and gives a way of 'being' in relationships.

Imagine that you have a magical kitchen in your home. In that magical kitchen, you can have any food you want from any place in the world in any quantity. You never worry about what to eat; whatever you wish for, you can have at your table. You are very generous with your food; you give your food unconditionally to others, not because you want something in return from them. Whoever comes to your home, you feed just for the pleasure of sharing your food, and your house is always full of people who come to eat the food from your magical kitchen.

Then one day someone knocks at your door, and it’s a person with a pizza. You open the door, and the person looks at you and says, "Hey, do you see this pizza? I’ll give you this pizza if you let me control your life, if you just do whatever I want you to do. You are never going to starve because I can bring pizza every day. You just have to be good to me."

Can you imagine your reaction? In your kitchen you can have the same pizza - even better. Yet this person comes to you and offers you food, if you just do whatever he wants you to do. You are going to laugh and say, "No, thank you! I don’t need your food; I have plenty of food. You can come into my house and eat whatever you want, and you don’t have to do anything. Don’t believe I’m going to do whatever you want me to do. No one will manipulate me with food."

Now imagine exactly the opposite. Several weeks have gone by, and you haven’t eaten. You are starving, and you have no money in your pocket to buy food. The person comes with the pizza and says, "Hey, there’s food here. You can have this food if you just do what I want you to do." You can smell the food, and you are starving. You decide to accept the food and do whatever that person asks of you. You eat some food, and he says, "If you want more, you can have more, but you have to keep doing what I want you to do."

You have food today, but tomorrow you may not have food, so you agree to do whatever you can for food. You can become a slave because of food, because you need food, because you don’t have it. Then after a certain time you have doubts. You say, "What am I going to do without my pizza? I cannot live without my pizza. What if my partner decides to give the pizza to someone else mypizza?"

Now imagine that instead of food, we are talking about love. You have an abundance of love in your heart. You have love not just for yourself, but for the whole world. You love so much that you don’t need anyone’s love. You share your love without condition; you don’t love if. You are a millionaire in love, and someone knocks on your door and says, "Hey, I have love for you here. You can have my love, if you just do whatever I want you to do."

When you are full of love, what is going to be your reaction? You will laugh and say, "Thank you, but I don’t need your love. I have the same love here in my heart, even bigger and better, and I share my love without condition."

But what is going to happen if you are starving for love, if you don’t have that love in your heart, and someone comes and says, "You want a little love? You can have my love if you just do what I want you to do." If you are starving for love, and you taste that love, you are going to do whatever you can for that love. You can even be so needy that you give your whole soul just for a little attention.
Your heart is like that magical kitchen. If you open your heart, you already have all the love you need. There’s no need to go around the world begging for love: "Please, someone love me, to prove that I’m worthy of love." We have love right here inside us, but we don’t see this love.

Lenny


For more information about Lenny Deverill-West and making changes with Cognitive Hypnotherapy & NLP check out www.startlivingtoday.co.uk

Nurturing Your Creativity!

Last week me and some of my fellow trainers were ask to come up with a team building exercise incorporating Belbin's Team Roles, and I think it fair to say we embraced the opportunity to put it together especially since we don’t often get the chance to work so closely together on something.  We quickly set about getting a meeting room to generate lots of ideas on how we were going to do this.  However, excitement quickly turned to frustration and 2 hours later we had only managed to talk every good idea we had off the table and we all left the meeting pretty dejected!
 
And there were a few for reasons for this:
 
It’s really difficult for ideas to flourish when the people are being creative, realistic and critical all at the same time. Which is one of the things Walt Disney worked out and as result set up 3 storyboarding rooms for his artists and writers the first being the Dreamer Room, where all ideas can flourish and no criticising is allowed, the Realist Room, how those ideas can be made possible again no criticising and the Critical Room where Walt himself would constructively criticise what had been created and they would move round all 3 of these rooms until a finished product was produced. 
 
If you spend long enough, you can talk even the best ideas off the table.  There was an Oscar nominated behind the scenes documentary released in 1993 called The War Room  which was about the Bill Clinton for President campaign.  There was one bit in the movie where all the spin doctors and Clinton himself would get together to discuss how they were going to run their campaign to get Clinton into the White House and then by the end of the meeting they would have rubbished every idea they came up with no matter how good.  What they did to get around this was to have a rule, and that was if an idea was still on the table an hour into the meeting then just go with it.  Knowing that sometimes the idea itself isn’t that important because whatever the idea is you’ll just find a way of making it work.
 
On the subject of being overly critical of good ideas I was reminded of some advice I was once given, sometimes it’s better to ask for forgiveness instead of permission.  I was talking to a Team Manager a few months ago who was telling me her frustration at manager meetings when she came up with what she thought were innovative and great ideas around improving her teams performance, only to be met with replies of ‘that won’t work’, ‘we tried that before and it didn’t work’ and ‘that’s not possible because of xyz’.  Which would result people doing exactly what had been done before whist expecting the result to change, which was also Einstein’s definition of insanity btw. My answer to this was unless you’re like one wage slip away from the sack and it’s not going to hurt anyone, then sometimes it’s better to ask for forgiveness instead of permission because results trump permission any day of the week.  Also, how would the meeting go if you said would you like me to show you how I improved my team’s performance?
 
 
Challenge
 
Put one of the following into practice:
 
Make your next creative project painless and productive by moving through the Dreamer, Realist and Critic roles individually until you have a finished product.
 
Implement one idea you have had but for some reason talked yourself into thinking it would never work, knowing that you’ll just find away of making it work.
 
Instead of telling deaf ears how your great idea would work for them, think about how you could get them to want to find out how you are getting your great results

Lenny


For more information about Lenny Deverill-West and making changes with Cognitive Hypnotherapy & NLP check out www.startlivingtoday.co.uk
 
 

Making a Difference

One thing that has always struck me is the way different people describe their jobs and to be more specific the way people who are passionate and love their work verses those who are not. Now some might say ‘well of course I’d be passionate or love what I do for a living if did what they do for a living’, would they? Really? Or if they had that job would they find some other of making it sound like they do the most unimportant thing in the world?

Here’s the thing it’s not the job or what’s on the outside that makes someone passionate or love what they do, it’s how you create passion on the inside and has nothing to do with the job that you do. I have met teachers, senior managers, trainers and charity workers who are passionate about what they do and you’d probably expect that given their line of work, however I have also met cleaners, waitresses, estates agents and insurance sales man who are equally if not more passionate about what they do.

So what’s the difference?

People who really enjoy their work and are passionate about what they do, no matter what it is, tend know the difference that they make in the world. For example a cleaner doesn’t ‘just’ clean the loos at work, they ensure the hygiene of 100s of people on a daily basis so those people can just go about their jobs and an insurance sales man doesn’t just sell insurance for a living they get the opportunity to let people know about something that could potentially take care of their families for the rest of their lives if something unforeseen should happen to them.

If you have never read The Starfish Story, it really sums up how anyone can make a difference to someone or something

One day a man was walking along the beach

when he noticed a boy picking something up and gently throwing it into the ocean.

Approaching the boy, he asked, “What are you doing?”

The youth replied, “Throwing starfish back into the ocean.
The surf is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them back, they’ll die.”

“Son,” the man said, “don’t you realize there are miles and miles of beach and hundreds of starfish?
You can’t make a difference!”

After listening politely, the boy bent down, picked up another starfish,
and threw it back into the surf. Then, smiling at the man, he said…”
I made a difference for that one.”

Homework

Write down what is that you do for a job

Now write down difference you make to your customers, colleagues, your business, the world and notice the energy that creates on the inside

Lenny

For more information about Lenny Deverill-West and making changes with Cognitive Hypnotherapy & NLP check out www.startlivingtoday.co.uk

Why Knowing What You Want Is Like Spaghetti Sauce

I was watching the clip above on TED by Malcolm Gladwell about how Howard Moskowitz, a food scientist, discovered 1/3 of americans liked extra chunky spaghetti sauce. To cut a great story short Howard tested lots of different types of Spaghetti sauce and after testing every conceiveable type of sauce, Howard discovered that 1/3 of people liked extra chunky spaghetti sauce and that no other sauce company was servicing that need, by tapping into this gap in the market Prego, the brand he was working with, made $600 million.

What stuck out for me was that spaghetti sauce companies always researched their product by asking people what kind of sauce they like and no one ever said they liked extra chunky sauce, even though it turned out a 3rd of people actually did.

Which I think proves what Super Coach Michael Neill say's that most people do not really know what they want, and are just ordering off the menu for what they think they can have.

For example if you're someone who is thinking about a change of career, promotion or looking to start up a new busniess, are you thinking about doing something that really lights your fire, that you'd love to do and would make a difference to people or are you thinking about doing something that you think you can, something that is already on the menu and doesn't particular inspire you or make you happy?

I was talking to a colleague at work other day he mentioned that he wanted to build a career but did not know what he wanted to do, he mentioned that he was thinking or doing a qualification in carpentry, which is a great proffesion, hell we'll always need carpenters. When I asked why he wanted to be a carpenter, he said 'he had looked at the local college prospectus and that was the only thing he thought he would be able to do', in other words he had looked at the menu and picked what he thought he could have. I went on to ask what was he good at, and what did he enjoy? He explained he is just great at dealing with people, and putting on recruitment event and after a short conversation he discovered that in fact he'd love to get paid to do event management.

Howard Moskowitz says "The mind knows not what the tongue wants" but you could also say "The mind knows not what the person wants?"

It also struck me that in order to find out what kind of spaghetti sauce 1/3 of people liked, Howard and Prego had to create it because it previously didn't exist, at least not on supermarket shelves.

So rather than ordering off the menu of what you think makes you happy, ask yourself what would you love to create?

And go do that!


Lenny

For more information about Lenny Deverill-West and making changes with Cognitive Hypnotherapy & NLP check out www.startlivingtoday.co.uk

What did you Create in 2010?

This is my first Blog entry for my first Blog and as it is only recently 2010 I thought I would kick off with something around creating a great 2010.

I started training with the Trevor Silvester at the Quest Institute in Cognitive Hypnotherapy and one of the techniques we have learned on the course is what Trevor calls Timeline Reprocessing.

One of the cool things about Timeline Reprocessing is that it enables clients to go back significant emotional events (SEE) and gain new insights and understanding of those SEE. In many cases this is life changing and transforming as the clients are able to leave behind the negative beliefs that have held them back in life. Which is what main protagonists in the at least two of most famous Christmas stories, Scrooge in A Christmas Carol and Jimmy Stewart’s character in It’s A Wonderful Life, were able to do.

The thing I love about timeline is, this idea that you can go back in time and pass new insights and new learnings down to the younger you and it has the effect of changing your present perspective.

But what if you want to change your perspective about something that hasn’t happened yet? Like say in the next 12 months?

Today's Challenge

Imagine it’s 12 months from now and your sitting there looking back at what a great year 2010 was?

What was it that made 2010 so great?

What did you create in your relationships, family, business, job and anything else that is relevant to you in 2010?

How did you do it?

What was the very first thing you did? When did you do it?

If you could give the January 2010 You some advice that would help them create a great 2010 what would that advice be?

When you have played around with the above questions and written down your answers you should have plenty of ideas to get your 2010 moving in right direction. It might even be nice to review them a year from now.

Lenny


For more information about Lenny Deverill-West and making changes with Cognitive Hypnotherapy & NLP check out www.startlivingtoday.co.uk