You Don’t Deserve Love (and how knowing this will improve your life)

Tale of the Day: Deserving

Jan was sad over the loss of her long-time friendship with Hannah. Hannah was still pleasant to Jan, but after a period of being much less available, Jan asked Hannah what was up. Hannah explained that while she valued their friendship, she no longer had the time to spend with Jan in the deeply connected way they had been there for each other over the last twenty years.

This felt like a betrayal to Jan, almost as if Hannah had been manipulating her all along and now she was dropping Jan after two decades. In a pleading voicetone, Jan told me there was a part of her that really wanted to be loved, cared about, valued, enjoyed, liked, appreciated, adored, cherished... These verbs just kept on coming, so I could tell that this part of Jan felt an extreme lack of all these things, as well as a great need for them.

I began guiding Jan through the Core Transformation process and invited her to ask this part of her to step into what it would be like to have what it wanted: to be loved, cared about, valued, enjoyed, liked, appreciated, adored, cherished...

Jan started to relax, but then she said, "There's another part of me saying, 'You don't deserve this.' I feel it here in my left shoulder." She gestured with her hand.

When we do Core Transformation (CT), and an objection emerges like this, this shows us there are two parts involved, and we do the CT Process with both of them. Each has something of value to offer.

After completing CT with the first part, I turned to the second:

"Now notice this part of you that says, 'You don't deserve this.' Notice where you feel this part of you in your left shoulder. You can thank this part for being here, because you can trust it wants something positive in saying 'You don't deserve this.' Now ask this part of you, 'What do you want?'"

The CT process guides us in discovering deeper and deeper layers of what each part wants, until we get to something that can often be quite profound. In this case the part wanted “OKness.” In one sense OKness may seem at first to be quite ordinary, yet I could see Jan’s state shift to something much more at peace as this part began to get in touch with “OKness.”

The next step with CT is to turn things around and ask the part if it would like to go ahead and just step into having OKness as a beginning, in an ongoing way. Since the part liked this idea, we continued with the process by inviting the part to notice how already having OKness as a way of being naturally enriched or transformed each of the previous things the part had wanted.

When we finished the process Jan said, “It feels really great now, but there’s still this little voice threatening to say, 'You don’t deserve it.' [Note: I could have continued using CT with this “little voice” as a third part, but this time I took a different tack]

“Oh, well I agree," I said right away. "You don’t deserve it.”

Jan laughed, but when I didn’t say anything more she looked at me, realizing I was serious. She became more thoughtful.

“So thank this part of you for recognizing that you don’t deserve it," I suggested, "And you can ask this part, 'Now that you think about it, how does not deserving it actually not matter?'”

“Wow," she said, "That’s like a Zen Koan." Her face relaxed and I could see she was in a deep internal state of processing. “Wow,” she added, “I don’t think I’ll need to see you for several months after this, this is going to be with me for a while.”

I smiled. “It’s like, here we are,” I gestured to our seats. “Do we deserve it? No. Does that Matter? No.”

Jan shook her head in wonderment, “Just take it off the table.”

“I don’t deserve the life I’ve had,” I said, “but I still enjoy it.”

She said, “You know that’s interesting, because all the positive affirmations are about deserving, ‘You deserve love’ ‘You deserve enjoyment,’ ‘You deserve appreciation…’”

“Yep. It turns out you don’t deserve any of those things!”

“This is what your next book should be called.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, well, something like, ‘You don’t deserve love.’” She grinned.

“Oooh, I like that. I’m going to write that down. If not a book, I’ll at least write a blog post.”

When I checked in with Jan six weeks later, she wrote me:

Mark, when you said to me, "Yeah. That's right. You don't deserve it." That was the "show stopper" for me. And you went on to say, "I feel I have a happy life, but I don't deserve it; I just have it. If I ‘deserved’ my happiness, that would mean someone else ‘deserved’ their unhappiness."

So, ‘deserving’ is irrelevant. It's not about deserving love or happiness. Happiness/love just is. (From earliest babyhood, of all the "good" things in the world, love is held up as the greatest reward. If you do what Mom/Dad want they will love you. Love is always paired with deserving it. So how radical to separate love from deserving it. Again, love just is.) That's it.

I also understood you to be asking me what may have followed in my life after this session. I have found it really useful to consider the question. And I wish I could give you specifics of how this "reframing" has impacted my life. I can't pinpoint it exactly because it was part of a mosaic of healing experiences over about 6 wks. which seemed to lead to a profound shift for me around my codependency--and in particular what I would call my codependency with Hannah. Literally all that pain and grief has been lifted!!!!! (And I recently spent a very enjoyable evening with her! I would still like more opportunities to connect with her--no change there--but somehow there is no pain about it!??!! Who'da thunk?!) I'm 180 degrees from where I have been… And I have been experiencing a lot of equanimity for some weeks now…And, I do know 100% that that whole session with you was profoundly impactful.

So, I'm in awe of the healing process. And I'm so grateful for your working with me, Mark.

Tool of the day: Negative affirmations

If you have one minute, you can do this right now. Choose three qualities you would like more of in your life, or three needs you have that you would like others to fulfill. For example, “Three qualities I want more of/needs I want fulfilled are joy, relaxation, connection with others.”

Then relax, close your eyes, and repeat to yourself in a voice that is compassionate, matter of fact, or perhaps with a hint of a knowing smile: “I don’t deserve joy...” “I don’t deserve relaxation…” “I don’t deserve connection with others…” As you say this, you can appreciate how important these three things are that you sometimes get to experience despite not deserving them. Try this out for yourself now before reading on.

Now that you have your own experience as a reference point, I want to share my experience with you. When I say to myself, “I deserve Joy,” or “I deserve connection” there is an implicit “should” in there. If I deserve it, I should be getting it. So if I’m not getting joy and I talk to myself in a way that presupposes that I should be getting it, this is a recipe for feeling unhappiness—I should be feeling joy, but I’m not. Also, if I'm already experiencing joy, it's just as pointless to say, "I deserve joy," which only serves to separate me from enjoying it.

In contrast, when I say to myself in a neutral or matter-of-fact or compassionate voice tone, “I don’t deserve joy.” I am able to experience all the joyful parts of my life with huge gratitude for this undeserved gift. And for all the non-joyful parts of my life, there is no mismatch between what “should” be and what is.

The trick to making negative affirmations work is ensuring the voice tone is truly neutral or positive. If you get a negative result from a negative affirmation, it’s likely due to the voice tone you were using. To help with this, after each negative affirmation, include a negative affirmation about the opposite of the quality you chose. For example:

"I don’t deserve joy…” “I don’t deserve non-joy.”
"I don’t deserve relaxation…” “I don’t deserve non-relaxation.”
"I don’t deserve connection with others…” “I don’t deserve not connecting with others.”

Another thing that can help negative affirmations work for you is to explore shifting which words have the emphasis. For example, try out the difference between, "I don't deserve joy," and "I don't deserve joy." For me the first emphasis is more common, and so it is how I would first read the sentence off a page. But the second emphasis creates a strong implication that I'm experiencing joy even if I don't deserve it. The beauty of implication is that it doesn't come right out and say that I am experiencing joy, so there is nothing in the implication that will mis-match my experience, even if I'm having the worst day in my life.

Try this out, and let me know what you find. Are there variations in emphasis or voice tone that work particularly well for you?

To book a private session with Mark over Skype or in person, visit www.markandreas.com

Clarity through Curiosity

Tale of the Day:
Sometimes all that’s needed is the right kind of listening

Last month I taught the Meta Model in the Real World NLP Practitioner Training in Winter Park, CO. For those of you unfamiliar with the Meta Model, in a nutshell the Meta Model is all about being curious and gathering detailed information about someone else’s experience, rather than simply filling in the gaps ourselves and assuming we know what the other person is talking about. For example, When someone tells you “I just went on vacation,” you get a certain image in your mind. Then when they say, “It was great, I just wish I’d brought another down parka,” you may be wondering what the heck they’re talking about. Likely as not you didn’t start off by picturing a vacation place cold enough to require even a single down parka, much less two, but it turns out their vacation was climbing Mount Everest. Information gathering is key before beginning any personal change process so that we make sure we don’t try to “fix” something that wasn’t ever broken.

For example, I had a client come and see me and the first thing he said was, “I want to get my acupuncture business going, but I can’t get motivated to start it.” At this point I could have asked no more and simply jumped right in using one of a number of NLP change processes to give him the motivation he lacked. Instead, I started by being curious about this other person’s unique experience, and I asked questions to gather more information about him rather than assuming I already understood.

“What stops you from being motivated?” I asked.

He told me he already had another full-time business that he ran, and a family with three kids with whom he wanted to spend more time. He also had travel goals he wanted to accomplish, a daily health and fitness plan that was important to him… The more I listened, the more I realized this was not an unmotivated person. If I hadn’t asked these questions, I might have pictured him sitting around on the couch all day watching TV, but in fact he was doing all sorts of things that were important to him. He simply didn’t have the time to do everything he wanted to do. This wasn’t about motivation, it was about prioritization.

“It sounds like you have a lot you’re already doing,” I said, “And stepping into your shoes, I’m starting to feel pretty unmotivated myself. If I were living your life I don’t think I’d want to add a whole new business into the mix, unless I let go of something else. But as I listen to you, it sounds like everything else you’re doing in your life is really important to you. So I’m wondering, what would happen if you simply decided to wait 6 months to even think about starting that acupuncture business? What would happen if you wrote a note in your calendar six months out that says, “Check in about acupuncture business.” Then you could forget about it for six months, knowing that 6 months from now you’ll see that note and be able to decide then whether it’s the right time to start it, or whether it still makes sense to postpone it another 6 months.”

“Oh, man,” he said, “I feel relieved already!” We were talking on the phone, and I could hear the relief in his voice. “I’ve had this anxious knot in my chest for the last couple months,” he added. “When you offered that suggestion the knot just relaxed and melted away. I feel great! You’re right. Everything else in my life is more important to me right now, and as much as I’d love to start that new acupuncture business, now’s just not the right time. Thank you so much!”

That was all we did. If I had rushed on to an NLP change process to give him motivation, it would have either failed due to not being a good match for his actual problem, or worse it might have succeeded, adding much more conflict and stress into his life by taking time away from his wife and kids as well as his other business and his personal goals.

Tool of the Day:
Helping others gain clarity by listening with curiosity

The next time you encounter a friend who has a problem, pause before trying to challenge it (“That’s not true, people love you”) or fix it (“Well, what I do is this…”). First, see what happens when you simply listen with curiosity and empathy while asking clarifying, information-gathering questions such as:

“What happened…?” “When exactly…?” “Where…?” “Who specifically was there…?” “How did it happen…?” “How did he make you angry…?” “How do you know productivity is down…?” “Who is producing what and how are they doing it…?” “What stops you from already getting what you want…?” “What would happen if you did do it…?” “According to whom…? Who said it was impossible to heal…?” “Always…? Are there any times when it’s different…?”

Most people like sharing their experience, and will feel good when you ask more details about it rather than assuming you already know what they’re talking about. Let’s say a friend says, “All men are total jerks!” Instead of challenging the statement or offering a solution, see what happens when you ask clarifying, information-gathering questions like, “What men are jerks…? Was someone a jerk to you today…? Who…? How was he a jerk…?” When I ask these questions to get a clear picture of someone else’s experience, not only does it show them I’m interested in what they have to say, but it starts to clarify the picture for them also. They have to see a clearer picture in order to answer the questions. So just listening, and asking the right questions, is in itself a powerful intervention. The other person will begin to make more distinctions, such as who specifically was a jerk to them, and how. This clearer picture is something they can begin to do something about, whereas, “All men are jerks,” is a problem that no one can solve.

I hope you play with this and let me know what you discover.

A bit more about asking clarifying, information-gathering questions:

The right kind of information gathering ensures that we don’t work toward solving something that isn’t actually a problem, or give someone a “solution” they think they want, but which may actually make their life worse. While gathering this information, it’s important to do it from a place of connection and curiosity about the other person’s experience. This may seem obvious, but it wasn’t always taught this way.

Historically, the NLP Meta Model information-gathering questions have been taught as questions that can be used to “challenge” what the speaker is saying, and thus get the speaker to acknowledge a clearer and more detailed picture of reality. But “challenging” someone often doesn’t go over very well. No one likes to be cross examined. (Many people know what this is like from when their parents did it to them as kids.) If we use these clarifying questions with an agenda, or with a challenging or judgmental tone of voice, they will tend to backfire. The other person will tend to get defensive, concluding something like: “This person is being pretty insensitive, why should I listen to them?” or, “Yep, all men are jerks, and you are too!”

Luckily there is nothing inherently challenging or judgmental about any of the information-gathering questions. It’s all a matter of how you ask them. They can be experienced as an Inquisition, but they can also be experienced as the deepest form of empathy and care and connection. It all depends on the voice tone, body language and intent of the person asking the questions. Just remember a time when you had intense curiosity about an incredible story someone told you. A time when you just couldn’t stop asking questions about this story because you had to know all the details. Without knowing it, you were naturally using many of the Meta Model information-gathering questions. My guess is you were using these questions not in a challenging way, but with deep curiosity and connection with the storyteller.

When asked from a place of curiosity and connection, these information-gathering questions can be one of the best ways you can gain rapport with someone else. Sometimes the other person will even solve their problem on their own, due to the clarity they gained by responding to your curiosity.

Core Transformation

Tale of the Day:
Core Transformation

I met over Skype (this was before Zoom) with a young woman living in Italy. Danielle told me, “I want to become more confident with myself and be more courageous in following my goals, and I want to get free from this blocking sensation that is preventing me from signing up for a study abroad program I want to go on.” I asked her how she would know when she had what she wanted. The first thing she said was, “I’ll sign up for the program tomorrow.” Then Danielle also added that she’d “feel it,” when things had changed.

In this first and only session, I guided Danielle through the Core Transformation process. I invited her to step back into a specific memory of when the blocking sensation occurred. Then I said, “You can relive this experience now, seeing through your eyes, hearing through your ears, and feeling the feelings you felt at the time. Since you didn’t consciously decide to have this blocking sensation, it’s as if some unconscious part of you generated it. You can begin to sense this part of you in your body or around you. Where do you sense this part?”

“In my hands and legs,” she said, opening and closing her hands.

“Great, now thank this part for being here, because you can trust that it wants something positive, even if you have no idea what it wants. Ask this part, ‘What do you want?’ Then relax and turn inward, and notice what response comes back from this part. The response may come in an image, feeling, sounds or words.”

“To be safe,” she said.

“Great, now thank this part for this response and invite it to step or breathe into what it’s like to already be safe, fully and completely.” She took a breath in, visibly relaxing. I continued: “And now ask this part, when you are safe, fully and completely, what is it you want through being safe that’s even deeper or more important?”

“Not to feel pain or get injured,” she said.

“Great, thank the part for this response, and invite it to step into what it’s like to already not feel pain or get injured, just the way it wants. Now ask the part, ‘When you already don’t feel pain or get injured, what is it you want through having this that’s even deeper or more important?”

“To run and Jump.”

“Great, thank it for this response.” I guided her to continue thanking this part for its responses, inviting it to step into having what it wanted, and asking it, ‘When you have this, what is it you want through having this that’s even deeper or more important or more core?’ Here are the rest of the answers Danielle received back from the part:

Feeling free
Going wherever I want
Independence
My life
Being able to feel it deeply (shivers)
Transmit it
Necessarily cool

When Danielle’s part had the experience of necessarily cool fully and completely, and I invited her to ask the part what it wanted through having this that was even deeper or more core, Danielle said, “that’s the deepest.”

This interested me, because usually the deepest level is described as Peace, Oneness, Being, Okayness, Love, etc. We refer to these as Core States. What they all have in common is that they are states of being that can be experienced regardless of what happens or doesn’t happen. Necessarily cool didn’t sound to me like a Core State, but because English was Danielle’s second language, I suspected that this could in fact be a Core State that she was describing in English in the best way she knew how. Her experience was what mattered, not the words she used to describe it. So I asked her, “Is necessarily cool a state of being that just is? Is it a state of being that can be experienced regardless of what happens or doesn’t happen?”

“Yes,” she said. Her face was relaxed and her voice tone congruent, so in fact this was the Core State.

“Great. Invite this part of you to just enjoy having necessarily cool fully and completely as a way of being. Often our parts think that we need to first do certain things, or get certain things before we can experience a Core State such as necessarily cool. But the good news is that these Core States are states of being, not states of doing, and the best way to experience a state of being is just to step into it and have it, as this part is already experiencing now. So ask this part, ‘When you have necessarily cool fully and completely as a way of being, how does this make things different?’ ”

“Things are easy!” She said with a smile. “Life is like a natural flow.”

I continued guiding her through the next part of the Core Transformation process, inviting the part to discover how having necessarily cool as a way of being, transformed or enriched each of the other things the part had wanted. We went back up the list in reverse order until we got to: “And ask the part, ‘How does having necessarily cool as an ongoing way of being, enrich and support you being even safer than you were before?”

It did.

I guided her through the additional Core Transformation processes of Growing up the Part, Timeline Generalization, and Parental Timeline Reimprinting (all of which you can learn in the live-online Core Transformation Foundation Training.

A week later, on March 3^rd Danielle wrote:

“Hey Mark, I’m good, you? It has been good! I booked for this summer and for another experience in the forest :): Really happy … I told my mom the session was really useful and I feel it’s working a lot and I’m so satisfied and positive!”

On March 23^rd Danielle added:

“Hello, how are you? 🙂 I wanted to tell you that I really feel the changing. Thank you very much. Probably I’m gonna ask you for another session in a month to work on a new goal.”

[All names and identifying information have been changed to protect the privacy of my clients]

Tool of the Day:
Core Transformation Exercise:

As you’re going through the day and you notice a feeling, behavior, or thought that isn’t working well for you, realize that since you didn’t consciously decide to generate this feeling, behavior, or thought, it’s as if some unconscious (meaning automatic) part of you generated it.
Where, in your body or around you, do you sense this unconscious/automatic part of you? If you’re not sure just guess, or ask, “If there were a part of me generating this feeling, behavior, or thought, where would that part of me be?”
If you want you can place a hand over the area where you experience the part. Thank this part for being here, because even though you don’t know what it’s positive purpose is, you can trust that it has some positive purpose for being here. (This is one of the basic presuppositions in NLP, and this alone can be profound for someone who has been thinking they needed to “get rid” of parts of themselves). You can stop here if you only have a few minutes, or go to step 4 if you have more time.
Ask this part of you, “What do you want?” then relax and turn inward, and notice what response you get back (this response may be in an image, feeling, sound, or words). Thank the part for its response, and invite it to step into experiencing what it’s like to already have what it wants fully and completely. Ask, “When you have this, what do you want through having this that’s even deeper or more core?” Again relax and turn inward and notice the first response that comes back from the part. Repeat this as long as you want, or until the part can go no deeper. Invite the part to notice how already having this deep-level experience enriches, transforms and radiates through each of its previous answers, and the initial experience you started with.

Click here to learn about the live-online Core Transformation Foundation training.

Musical Performance Anxiety

Tale of the Day:

Eliminating Performance Anxiety

“I finished the audition and only when I walked out did I realize: I had no teeth chattering, no sweating, no shaking at all! It was just so crazy. I didn’t expect it at all!”

Let’s rewind back to when I first met Maya. She was a bright high school student who played trombone in a highly-competitive orchestra. She was a great musician, and told me, “The number one thing I care about is music.” Whenever she had to audition or play solo during orchestra practice, she got intense performance anxiety. She started sweating, shaking, and her teeth would chatter—not at all helpful when playing a brass instrument!

She was about to graduate and apply to music schools, where the pressure to perform and audition well would matter a lot. Understandably she wanted this solved.

Since she lived in another state, I met with Maya over Skype. During our first meeting I showed her the spinning feelings process. This got a great result for her. “This is like sorcery!” she said. But at our next meeting she told me, “When I had to solo twelve bars in orchestra practice, I couldn’t calm down quick enough. I can’t meditate for an hour before that type of situation; I need a quicker way.”

Though the spinning feelings process can be done quite quickly, in just a few minutes, I understood how it might be tough for her to focus while surrounded by people in the middle of a class. I asked her when the anxiety first started in the day. She said, “It’s here when I first wake up,” and she gestured to her sternum.

I decided to do some parts work with her. I told her the story from World War II about how Japanese soldiers were left on many different islands in the Pacific and told to defend the country no matter what. Isolated and cut off from their command, many of these soldiers continued to defend these islands long after the war was over. Now and then one would be found when he shot at a passing fishing boat. The last soldier was found some 18 years after the war had ended. All that time he had managed to survive, alone and isolated, while continuing to loyally fight to defend the safety of his country. The Japanese government could have laughed at him when they found him for continuing to fight when the war was over, but instead they thanked him for his loyal service, brought him home, held a ceremony in his honor. Only then did they begin to gently tell the soldier that the war was over, and he could now serve the country in other ways.

I told Maya, “We all have parts of ourselves that are like these Japanese soldiers, still fighting loyally on to protect us from a war that is long since over. And so we have an opportunity to thank them for their service and invite them back home.”

Maya gestured to her sternum again, where the anxiety had been, “Now it’s like there’s a plane there,” she said. “And it’s like there are tiny little Thors [Norse God of Thunder] getting off the plane. They started out one color, and as they got of the plane they turned to different colors: green, yellow, orange, red. It’s like all these tiny little Thors have new jobs.”

Well I hadn’t even started the parts work I had planned, and all this was already happening spontaneously. This is a testament to the power of telling stories. I could have simply communicated the conclusion of the story: “In NLP we have a presupposition that all parts of us create behaviors for some positive purpose, even if the behavior (anxiety) is causing us major problems.” If I had done this, it would have taken less time, but it would have only spoken to her conscious mind. Telling the story gave her an experience of the truth of the statement.

“There is clearly some nice shifting going on, and so you can already appreciate that, and be curious how the new jobs of these tiny Thors will benefit you,” I said. It would have been interesting just to leave it at this, and see what happened just from telling her the story. I gave her the option: “We could leave it at this for now, with the tiny Thors with their new jobs, that may be all that’s needed for this session. Or if you want to do more, we can explore something in addition to what’s already happened.”

“Let’s explore,” she said.

“Up until now [presupposition that it can be different in the future] you’ve had a part of you that has generated anxiety, and you’ve had another part of you that doesn’t want to be anxious, haven’t you.”

“Yep.”

“So you can notice, in your body or around you, the part of you that up until now has generated anxiety, and you can invite it out into one of your hands. This part of you will know which is the hand that it wants to be in.”

Maya nodded, “It’s like Thor, coming into my right hand.”

“Great. Thank this Thor part for coming into your right hand. From what you said before, this part may have already found lots of great new jobs to do. Or maybe those were other Thor parts that found new jobs, and this one still wants new and better ways of getting what it wants for you. Either way is fine and you don’t even need to know consciously which it is. Just thank this Thor part for being here.”

She closed her eyes and nodded.

I said, “Now you can also notice the part of you that doesn’t want to be anxious, and you can invite this part of you to come into your other hand. ”

She said, “It’s like Loki [Norse trickster god].”

“Great, now we are going to find out what each of these parts really wants for you. Turn to your right hand and thank Thor for being there, and ask him, ‘What do you want?’ Then relax and notice what he responds with.

She nodded and closed her eyes, then said, “Thor wants me to do the right thing, all the time.”

“Great. Thank him for this response, and invite him to step into what it’s like to already have you doing the right thing, all the time.”

“Ok,”

“Now ask Thor, ‘When I’m doing the right thing all the time, what does this get for me that’s even more important?’ ”

“Peace of mind,” she answered.

“Thank this Thor part of you for this response, and now ask him, ‘When I have peace of mind, what does that get me that’s even more important?’ ”

“Then I have a clear view of what needs to happen.”

“Great, so what this part really wants for you, is for you to have a clear view of what needs to happen. Is this something you also agree is worth having?”

“Yes, totally.”

“Great. Now turn to the Loki part in your left hand, and ask Loki, ‘What do you want?’ ”

Maya turned to her left hand and closed her eyes. When she opened her eyes again, she said, “Loki wants me to just speak my mind, and other people can just suck it!”

“Great!” I said, “Now thank Loki for this response, and ask Loki, ‘When I speak my mind, and other people can just suck it, what does this get for me that’s even more important?’ ”

“It earns me confidence.”

“Ok, great. Thank Loki for this response. So what Loki really wants for you, is to earn you confidence. Is confidence something that you also agree is worth having?”

“Of course!”

“Great, now invite Thor and Loki each to have a look over at the other one. Up until now, they have both been struggling with each other, but now we know that what Loki really wants for you is confidence, and what Thor really wants for you is a clear view of what needs to happen. Ask Thor if confidence will also help him with what he wants: having a clear view of what needs to happen.”

“Yeah, it does.”

“Great. Now ask Loki if having a clear view of what needs to happen is in support of the confidence that Loki wants.”

“Absolutely!”

“So by working together, Loki and Thor can each get what they want for you much more easily. Go ahead and allow your hands to come together only as fast as Loki and Thor learn how to work together to support each other in getting what both want for you.”

“Yeah…” She kept her eyes closed for a while, clearly processing. When she opened her eyes she said, “Thor and Loki turned into Sherlock and Watson! It’s like they’re working together now, untying knots. Like solving the puzzles.”

“Wow, wonderful! Now go ahead and bring Sherlock and Watson into your body, so that they can integrate and become a natural part of you, working together in this new way.”

She did so.

Then I said, “Now, mentally step into a past situation where you used to have performance anxiety, and notice how it goes now, with this new way of being?”

“Now it’s just no big deal,” she said.

I then asked her to step into a future example, and she also said of that: “It’s no big deal.”

“Now,” I said, “It’s likely that some echoes of the old anxiety will happen in the future, but that they will become less frequent and less intense. If something comes back more intense, it’s just a sign that you have another part that also wants something positive for you, and also wants to be included.”

Before ending the session, Maya agreed she would continue to do the spinning feelings process at night when she went to bed, to help her relax for sleep (which she often struggled with, staying up really late).

The third time we met, Maya said the spinning feelings helped her go to sleep easily at night. “When I came back home from work I just went right to sleep,” she said, which was very different from her prior pattern of staying up late before managing to fall asleep.

As far as the performance anxiety, she hadn’t yet had any more auditions or solo performances, so we still didn’t have a real-world test of the work we’d done last session. Because of this, we focused on some other goals of hers. One thing she wanted was a solution to her headaches. She told me she sometimes got headaches that commonly lasted around three hours, making her feel numb, numbing her left hand, and causing her to temporarily lose vision in her left eye. I taught her the rewinding process to try for her headaches, telling her how much it had helped me with my Athsma-like condition that the doctors hadn’t been able to diagnose.

The fourth time I met with Maya was a week before a big audition for a local youth symphony. To test the previous work we had done, I asked her to close her eyes and imagine waking up on the morning of the audition. “Now just play through the day and find out how it goes.”

“It was like I was just practicing,” Maya said.

“Great. I know that you play beautifully when you practice, so if it can be like that, that sounds like a good thing to me.” To be thorough and find if there were any additional resources that would help her, I got even more specific, “Do you know where the audition will take place?”

“Yes.”

“Great, do you know the room?”

“Yes.”

“Great, now close your eyes and imagine going through this whole week, waking up on audition day and going to the place where it will be held and finding the room. Now, as you walk through the door, how does it feel?”

When she opened her eyes she said, “One fourth great, one fourth real, one fourth I don’t know, and one fourth get me out.”

We did Core Transformation with this remaining “get me out” fourth, and concluded the session.

When I met with Maya the fifth time, she was really excited to tell me what had happened the previous week: “Ok,” She said. “I have a lot to tell you. So when I went to my audition, first off I had the audition at 8:42, but I arrived at 8:00am. When I got there, my headache started, so I’m like, Seriously? Is this really happening right now? Anyway I did the rewinding thing you taught me, and it totally improved it, and the headache went away completely after about 45 minutes rather than the usual around 3 hours!”

“So anyway,” Maya continued, “not long after I did the rewinding I was called for my audition. For some reason they called me like 15 minutes earlier than my scheduled time! Normally I would have protested this, but I just went with it. Then on top of this unexpected timing, the judge was pretty grumpy, and I still had a little of the headache happening. Anyway, I finished the audition and only when I walked out did I realize: I had no teeth chattering, no sweating, no shaking at all! It was just so crazy. I didn’t expect it at all!”

We met a few more times after this, working on some other goals of hers. Since then I’ve tried to get long-term feedback on her experience with auditions and playing solo, but so far I haven’t heard back from her.

Tool of the Day:
Parts Integration (See the book Heart of the Mind for an in-depth version of this process):

When you find yourself wanting something that you don’t yet have (especially if it’s a bit extreme), often there will be another part that wants the opposite. For example: a part that wants to exercise all the time, and a part that wants to be lazy and lie around all day; a part that wants to eat all raw, organic, grass-fed, omega-3 foods, and a part that wants to pig out on Doritos, soda, and pizza hut; a part that wants to be polite and friendly, and a part that just wants to say screw you; a part that feels anxious, and a part that wants to be calm.
Notice where you feel each part, in your body or around you. Thank each of these parts for being here, because you can trust that they each have something positive they want for you.
Open your hands, palms upward, and invite one part to flow into one hand, and the other part to flow into the other hand. It doesn’t matter which part is in which hand, though each will tend to go to the hand that feels right for it.
Now start with one part and ask it, “What do you want?” Then relax, close your eyes, and notice what response comes back from that part. Thank it for this response, and ask it, “And when you get what you want, what does this get for me that’s even more important?” Thank it for this response, and continue this cycle until the part arrives at a value (such as happiness, peace, health, integrity) that is something you can agree on, and that the other part is likely to also agree is a good thing. (Hint: the longer you do this cycle, the more likely it will be that you arrive at a value that is also appreciated by yourself and the other part, so when in doubt, keep going.)
Repeat step 4 with the other part in the other hand.
Now invite each part to look over at the other part. Ask each part if it recognizes the value in what the other part is really wanting to get for you. If you have gone to a deep enough (or high enough) value, each part will recognize that the value of the other part is also a good thing, and not in conflict with it’s own value.
Say to the parts, “Now that you both see and recognize what each of you are really trying to get, and you both agree that both of these values are worth having, how would you like to work together in mutual support of achieving these values?
If the answer is “no,” first satisfy the objection, or look back at what might have been missed in a previous step. If the answer is “yes” (which it usually is), invite both of your hands to come together only as quickly as these two parts of yourself learn to work together in new ways—many of them unconscious to you—to achieve both values.
Once your hands come together, bring them into your body wherever feels right, usually the heart or chest area, so these cooperating parts can integrate back in with you.
Test back in the initial scenario and find out how it goes now, with the cooperating parts within you. If it goes well, great! If not, address any concerns or objections until it goes well.
Step into future situations, noticing what is changed for you now that these parts are working together in this new way.

Sign up for a session with Mark at www.markandreas.com or call 303-810-9611 for a free 15-minute consult.

Where do you want to HAVE your “problem?”

Tale of the Day:
Our problems are solutions

After having spent a lot of his time focusing on his family, a client of mine from Alaska wanted to get back into focusing on his business and bringing in an income again. He said he wanted to get back into that laser-like focus and flow with his business that he used to have before the family trouble pulled him away from it. He also said he wanted that experience of flow he got when he was skiing.

Many people at this point would simply try to transfer his resource state of flow from skiing over into his business, assuming that would be an appropriate solution. Instead I said, “Now, I know your family is very important to you, that’s the reason you dropped everything business-wise, so you could focus on solving your family trouble. At the same time, it’s important to keep food on the table, so it’s important to also have a business or some way of bringing in an income.”

“Yes,” he said, “I used to get so absorbed in my business that nothing else mattered. That’s why I had to stop so I could actually pay attention to my family.”

“So is it possible to have both of these together? Maybe you make half as much money, but you still have time to be with your family.”

“I don’t know…”

I let that sit for a while as I found out more about his business. He had already been successful as a salesman in the past, so he knew his business well. He already had the necessary skill, it was just a matter of how to put that skill into action. “So what stops you from already working on your business in the way that you want?” I asked him.

“Well, I get started and then I get this part of me that’s like, “Wait, stop, slow down, think this through.”

“OK, great. Step into that experience now, feeling what it’s like to get started and have this part pop up that says ‘wait, stop, slow down and think this through.”

He nodded, “It’s like I feel it right here.” He gestured to his torso, so I knew he had a good access of the state, not just a mental idea of it.

I said, “Now thank this part of you for being here, the part of you that says ‘wait, stop, slow down and think this through.’ You can thank this part because this is one of your resources, this ability to be able to wait, slow down and think it through. Now, ask on the inside, ‘where in my life do I want to make sure I keep this resource of being able to wait, stop, slow down, and think it through?’ ”

When I asked him this his face and neck flushed and he leaned back as if rocked by the force of the idea. “Wow,” he said, “I want this with my three daughters.” [From what he had already told me about their rocky relationship, I could see how this resource of being able to slow down, wait, and think things through could be a big benefit both to himself and his three daughters.]

“Great, I said, go ahead and play through three scenarios in the past, one with each of your daughters, discovering how this resource of being able to wait, stop, and think things through just spreads through the whole experience, and you can just discover how things are different, now, with this resource present.” When he was finished with this, I invited him to choose one future situation with each of his daughters and do the same thing. After a while he opened his eyes and said, “I just want to keep going, it’s like experience after experience with my daughters keeps popping up and I want to do more.”

“Great, go ahead and do more now, do as many as you like, experiencing how your resource of being able to stop, wait, and think things through, supports your values and outcomes with your three daughters.”

He took a while longer to process, and finally nodded his head.

We found other areas where the resource of “being able to stop and think it through” would be helpful to him, such as certain specific areas in his business that he needed to learn more about. Then I told him to invite the resource “being able to stop, slow down, and think things through” to flow out of any area in his business life where it wasn’t needed, and into all the areas of his life where it would be really appropriate for him.

After discovering how his “problem” was actually a resource, now we returned to his desire for more focus and flow in his work. I asked him to step into what it’s like to be skiing, to be just acting and reacting and being in the flow of riding the moguls down those black diamonds. When he was in this experience, I invited him to allow this to flow into all the areas of his business that were no longer at the “wait and think about it” stage, but were ready for him to take action and get in the flow of moving forward.

If we had tried to bring his state of “skier flow” into the context of his work right away, without first identifying where it is useful for him to “stop, slow down, and think things through,” it wouldn’t have worked so well. Either he would have gotten flow in his work at a cost to his daughters and family, and certain areas of his work where he didn’t have all the information he needed. Or more likely it just wouldn’t have worked, because his unconscious would have rejected the incomplete solution of “I just want to be in my skier flow at work.”

Tool of the Day:
Discovering where your problems are solutions

1) Think of a behavior, feeling, or thought you’d like to change.

2) First, where are all the places in life where you want to be sure to keep this behavior, feeling, or thought? Make sure you find several contexts in life where you genuinely would want this behavior, feeling, or thought to happen.

3) Close your eyes and ask on the inside, “Now that I’ve identified the specific places where I want to be sure to keep this behavior, feeling, or thought, is there any part of me that objects to me not having this behavior, feeling, or thought in all the other places in my life. [If we’ve done the previous step thoroughly, the answer will be “no.” If you get any objections here, search for additional places in your life where you want to be sure to have the behavior, feeling, or thought.]

4) Once you have no objections, ask on the inside, “What new response do I want to have in the places where I will no longer have the old behavior, feeling, or thought? Whatever the answer is, try it out in your imagination first and make sure it works for you. Feel free to modify it until you get it the way you want it.

5) Now imagine yourself in at least three different future situations with the new response.

Sign up for a session with Mark at www.markandreas.com or call 303-810-9611 for a free 15-minute consult.

"Little Voices"

Tale of the Day:
Befriending Critical Internal Voices

Lucy was working on a manuscript and wanted to become more comfortable in her writing. She wanted to improve her ability to let the information flow easily into type when she sat down to write, instead of having it feel like she was “pulling teeth." She wanted to enjoy the process of writing and feel good about her work.

When I asked her more about her present experience she said, “I get stuck in old patterns of ‘writer’s block.’ I feel that I have all of the information in my head, but when I go to write it down ‘little voices’ often mess me up, and I am not able to get what is clear in my head down on paper because I get so caught in logistics.”

Lucy made this easy for me by literally telling me of the ‘little voices’ that messed her up. It was clear to me that working with these voices would be the perfect opportunity to get her what she wanted.

“So when you sit down to write, and you’re there typing, what do these voices say to you exactly?”

“They say, ‘It’s not good enough,’ and, ‘This information isn’t valid and won’t be useful to people.’

“Do you recognize these voices from someone or somewhere? Has anyone spoken to you like that before?”

“Yes, my mother and an editor who read my manuscript once.”

“OK, great. Let’s go ahead and fill in the different situations where these people said these things to you, so we get a sense of where they were coming from, limited by their own circumstances and incomplete knowledge.”

We explored the editor first, finding out more about where she’d been coming from in what she’d said to Lucy. With this added information we found that the editor had been doing what she thought was her job – critiquing the manuscript without holding back, in order to improve it. We found the positive purpose of the editor’s harsh words, and Lucy realized she had given her manuscript over before it was really ready for that stage of scrutiny.

“But what the editor said, it was like it just added to the voice of my mother that I’ve had since I was a little girl.”

We did the same thing and filled in the details of different times that her mother had said these kinds of things to her.

“Well, I was a pretty precocious little girl, and I’d sometimes get in a bit of trouble because of it. I was a bit of a free spirit, and that didn’t always fit with the world around me.”

I said, “Now that you remember these circumstances, what do you think your mother’s positive intent was behind saying what she did?”

“She wanted to protect me from taking risks. She wanted me to be normal and not rock the boat. She wanted me to fit in so life would be easier.”

“Great, so she wanted to protect you and make life easier for you?”

“Yeah, I think she was a little jealous of me too. She had a bunch of kids at an early age, and because of this she didn’t get to do some of the things she had wanted to do, like travel the world. She had to work hard to provide for us, so I think she was a little jealous of my free-spiritedness.”

“Interesting, so now you know that when your mother said things like, ‘You’re not good enough.’ and, ‘This isn’t valid and won’t be useful to people.’ She really wanted to protect you and make life easier for you, and she also actually wished she could have done some of the kinds of things you were doing.”

“Yeah.”

“Go ahead and thank your mother’s voice for looking out for you, in the best way it knew how. Ask this voice if it would like to use words and a tone of voice that you would enjoy listening to, so that it can do a really good job at getting across its positive message to you of making sure you are protected, and that life goes as easy as it can.”

“Yeah, that sounds good.”

“So just notice what this voice would like to say to support you now. It might use the voice tone of a trusted friend, or it might be a combination of the voice tones of various supportive people.”

“There are multiple voices, like before, but now they’re saying, ‘We’ll protect you through the process, and let it flow as long as you are protected.”

“And what is the voice tone like?”

“It’s really nice to listen too, relaxing.”

“Great, it sounds like these voices will help you know when to give a manuscript to someone for feedback and when it’s not ready for that stage. And you’ll know when it’s time for you to just let the words flow, and when it’s time for you to go back through what you’ve written and do all the fine-tuning.”

“Yeah.”

“Now imagine the next time you sit down to write, noticing what it’s like with all these supportive voices to help you.”

“It’s like I’m in the flow.” She gestured as if her hand were following the gentle falls and pools of a creek. “They’re saying, ‘We’ll help you find the path.’”

Go ahead and imagine all the different times you’ll sit down to write over the next weeks and months, and what it’s like each time with these voices naturally there to support you.

“It’s great!” Lucy kept making the flowing motion with her hand. Her face had more color in it, and her whole body looked relaxed into the new experience.

A month later Lucy said she got what she wanted. When she sat down to write she felt relaxed and confident and was able to let the writing flow.

Tool of the Day:
Clarifying Internal Voices

The following tool is from the up-coming book “More Transforming Negative Self Talk” by Steve Andreas, released Oct. 6th. and available for pre-order on Amazon.com.

1. Select voice “Remember a troublesome internal voice that has criticized your behavior in the present moment, reminded you of past failures or embarrassments, or foretold future failure, etc.”

2. Listen to the voice “Now listen carefully to the sound of this voice—the tonality, volume, tempo, hesitations, etc. that you hear—all the qualities that allow you to recognize someone’s voice on the phone instantly, out of all the thousands of voices you have heard.”

3. Identify voice “Whose voice is this? Is it your voice or someone else’s?” If it is someone else’s voice, go directly to step 4, below. If it is your own voice ask, “Who did you learn from to talk in this way?” If you can’t identify the voice, ask, “If you did know, who would it be?” or “Who does this voice remind you of?”

4. Add image of person “As you hear this voice, see the person who is speaking to you, and watch all their facial movements, expressions, gestures, etc., to find out what else you can learn about their experience as they talk to you.”

5. Larger context “Now expand the scope of what you see and hear to include the larger context in both space and time. Where are you, and what just happened that this person is responding to? View this event in detail, including what happened earlier that was relevant to this event, and also what happened later as a result, in order to understand it more fully and completely.”

6. Notice speaker’s limitations “Notice what that person was simply unable to do because of their upbringing, beliefs, frustrations, or other inadequacies or limitations. Realize that both what they said, and how they said it, may have had very little to do with you, and a great deal to do with their difficulty in communicating clearly and directly.”

7. Clarify message “Would you please clarify your message? What would you say to me if you had been able to express yourself fully, and talk honestly about all your experience of this situation? What is it that you really want me to hear?”

8. Give thanks for any clarification “Thank you for clarifying your communication.” If the communication is still unclear, ask again—as many times as necessary, thanking them for each response—until their communication is clear to you.

9. Ask for the positive intent “What is your positive intent in telling me this?” If the response doesn’t appear to be positive, ask for the intent of this intent. “Thank you; what is your positive intent in telling me that?” You may need to ask several times before you receive an answer that you think is positive, and that you can agree with. Usually the positive intent is some kind of protection, either for you, the voice, a third person, or a group.

10. Give sincere thanks for the positive intent “Thanks very much for telling me your positive intent.” Then ask, “Would you be willing to consider communicating in a different way, so that it would be much easier for me to pay full attention to what it is that you want me to hear?” Usually you will get a “Yes” answer, because this proposed change supports the positive intent in communicating with you even better than what it had been doing. If you get a “No” answer, that means that there has been some miscommunication. Back up one or more steps and clarify the miscommunication before moving forward again.

For additional steps and refinements to this process, see Steve’s up-coming book “More Transforming Negative Self Talk,” released Oct. 6th.

Click here to book a private session with Mark.

Trusting the Unconscious

Tale of the Day:
Trusting the unconscious

Recently I had a client come to me because of a “big black sea of emotions.” Frank told me he felt tense, like he didn’t even want to “go there.” I began by working with the part of him that felt tense, guiding him through the Core Transformation* process.

[For those of you unfamiliar with Core Transformation, the process works with any feeling, thought, or behavior we want to change. We find the part of us generating this feeling, thought, or behavior, and ask the part, “when you generate this behavior, what do you want?” We then invite the part to step into what it’s like to already have what it wants, and ask again, “when you have this, what is it you want through this that’s even deeper or more core?” We do this until arriving at what’s wanted at the deepest level, a Core State of being. Then we discover how already having this Core State transforms the initial feeling, behavior, or thought we wanted to change.]

In my next meeting with Frank we did Core Transformation with another part of him that he experienced as a limitation. In our third meeting he reported that we were getting to great outcomes in the sessions, and he felt great for a couple hours after, but then he would fall into a funk for up to a week. He said, “It feels like poking at it makes it worse.” I had never had a client respond in this way before. Core Transformation is the most gentle process I know, and yet some part of him was still feeling like we were “poking” at it.

“Well we certainly don’t want to poke at anything,” I said. “In fact this whole process is meant to support the part of you that we’re working with, so it’s important that we find a way that doesn’t feel like poking.” Frank nodded. Remembering his initial tension and reluctance to address the “big black sea of emotions” combined with this feeling of being “poked at,” I asked Frank if he would like to work on the unconscious level, where he wouldn’t have to “go there” at all. Not only would everything remain private from me, not even he would be conscious of any of the content we were working with. It would remain private from him as well.

“Yeah, that sounds great. How do we do that?”

This time when we did the Core Transformation process we began by establishing communication with the part of him that felt like it was “being poked at” asking this part if it was open to doing the process as long as it knew it could keep all its answers private, even from Frank. Frank’s part agreed, so we went through the Core Transformation process, but this time when we asked the part what it wanted, I asked it to answer only for itself, keeping the answer secret from both Frank and me.

Without any content, the process went quite quickly, and Frank seemed very comfortable the whole time. When we met two weeks later Frank told me, “After what we did last time, I got total transformation! A total change with how I feel. And not just a lack of the post-appointment depression I was having. Last session totally turned around how I feel, what I want, and knowing how I want to live my life.” He told me about his new clarity about plans for school, career, and life. He was sincerely motivated and on a clear path.

Click here for Mark’s next Core Transformation training in Austin TX.

*Core Transformation was developed by Connirae Andreas, and is available in book form here.

Tool of the Day:
Unconscious Core Transformation Exercise:

1) As you’re going through the day and you notice a feeling, behavior, or thought that isn’t working well for you, realize that since you didn’t consciously decide to generate this feeling, behavior, or thought, it’s as if some unconscious (meaning automatic) part of you generated it.

2) Where, in your body or around you, do you sense this unconscious/automatic part of you? If you’re not sure just guess, or ask, “If there were a part of me generating this feeling, behavior, or thought, where would that part of me be?”

3) If you want you can place a hand over the area where you experience the part. Thank this part for being here, because even though you don’t know what it’s positive purpose is, you can trust that this part has some positive purpose for being here. (This is one of the basic presuppositions in NLP, and this alone can be profound for someone who has been thinking they needed to “get rid” of parts of themselves). You can stop here if you only have a few minutes, or go to step 4 if you have more time.

4) Ask this part of you, “What do you want?” and invite it to answer for itself, outside of your conscious awareness. Then thank the part for its response, and invite it to step into experiencing what it’s like to already have what it wants fully and completely. Ask, “When you have this, what do you want through having this that’s even deeper or more core?” Again invite the part to answer for itself beyond your conscious awareness. Repeat this as long as you want, or until the part can go no deeper. Beyond your conscious awareness, invite the part to notice how already having this deep-level experience enriches, transforms and radiates through each of its previous answers, and the initial experience you started with.

Click here to book a private session with Mark.

Rewind Yourself

Tale of the Day:
Rewinding out of a bad experience

Did you ever wish you could press rewind and just reverse right out of a bad experience? Well it’s actually possible. I know because I do it about three times per year. And it works every time.

I used to get an intense asthma-like reaction about four times/year. It started when I was in my teens and I had no idea what caused it. It happened during the day, during the night, outdoors, indoors, in different locations, and even different countries. It began with a scratchy feeling in my left lung. Soon I’d be coughing, wheezing like I had bronchitis, and hacking up phlegm. I’d just wait it out, and in about two hours my system would calm down and get back to normal. But that two hours wasn’t something I looked forward to. At the hospital, a test for asthma came up negative; the doctor had no answers.

The problem persisted through my college years and into adulthood. During my NLP Practitioner Training I got curious. An element of the NLP phobia cure is to step into the end of the memory of trauma and feel yourself rewinding through it until you get to the beginning, where everything was fine. I thought about my asthma-like reaction and wondered, “What if I could rewind out of that too, but in real-time?” My physiology “knew” exactly how to get into the reaction, so why not rewind back out the same way?

The next time I felt that little bit of scratchy feeling in my left lung, I closed my eyes and pretended that someone pressed the rewind button on my life. In a second or two I felt myself rewinding (in that jerky motion we’ve all seen on TV) until ten minutes earlier when I was just fine. To be sure that the rewind had every chance to “set in” to my physiology, I repeated the process about 7 times, rewinding back to a different place each time: two hours earlier, a day earlier, a week earlier, a month earlier, etc. Each rewind took no more than a few seconds. Then I waited to see what would happen. The little scratchy feeling in my lung stayed for about ten minutes, without getting worse, and then faded away.

That was about 8 years ago. A few times each year I still get that scratchy feeling, but I just rewind out of it and I’m fine. Two times when I was deep asleep I didn’t wake up until the reaction had gotten into the beginning of the wheezing and coughing stage, but even then when I did the rewind, the reaction stopped progressing and went away. I’m curious what other unhelpful physiological responses this process might benefit. One I know it can work with is emotions. I teach this “real-time rewind” to my clients as a tool they can use to “back out” of over-reactive emotional responses (see below).

Tool of the Day:
Rewind in Real-time: Getting out the way you got in. (For use with over-reactive physiological or emotional responses).

1) If you are having a physiological or emotional response that is not helpful, first, if possible, find a private place to do the rewind. If you are in public this might mean going to sit in your car or a bathroom stall, etc.

2) Imagine someone presses the rewind button on your life. Rewind happens quickly, so in a second or two, you hear the sound of the rewinding and feel your body jerking backwards until you arrive in a moment when you were fine/normal/ordinary.

3) Open your eyes and feel your fine/normal/ordinary physiology fully present as a way of being now. (I get tingles through my spine and neck when I get a really embodied rewind experience).

4) Repeat the rewinding step as many times as feels useful, rewinding to different times in the past day, week, month, when you were just fine/normal/ordinary. Choose mundane experiences as opposed to peak experiences. We’re just getting back to a balanced, everyday state.

5) Recognize that physiological reactions and emotional feelings are both generated by chemical changes in your body. Even when the rewind is successful, any chemicals already released will take a certain amount of time to clear out of your system. This means that the earlier you can do the rewind, the better. For me, the scratchy feeling in my lung remained for about five or ten minutes before I couldn’t notice it any more.

6) Keep in mind that if the physical or emotional reaction is serving a useful function, the rewind may not work, and you wouldn’t want it to. For physical reactions, consult your doctor. For emotional reactions, make sure that eliminating the reaction is actually an improvement for you. You may need to preserve the useful intended outcomes of the emotional reaction (such as keeping you safe, standing up for yourself, etc.) by finding new behaviors that will work as well as or better than the old reaction.

Sign up for a session with Mark at www.markandreas.com or call 303-810-9611 for a free 15-minute consult.
Learn about Mark's Core Transformation training in Florida.

Additional tips that help me get a good rewind:
The key is to be in your body when the rewind happens (not watching a picture of yourself rewinding; this won’t work). Some things that help me be in my body are to focus on feeling as things happen in reverse. You won’t be able to visualize it all because it happens fast, so just feel it. Another thing that helps me be in my body during the rewind is to literally jerk my arms, shoulders and head backwards as I do the rewind. If I’m sitting this may only be a few inches. If I’m standing I may even go backwards a step or two. Don’t let your focus on the feeling slow you down, it has to happen fast, in just a second or two. Sometimes I focus on my whole spine being pulled or sucked backwards by an invisible force as I rewind. This helps me stay oriented forward even though I’m moving backward, which is an important part of the successful rewind. I’ve found this process easiest to do while sitting up or standing.

Sweet Dreams

Tale of the Day:
Sleepless Nights?

Lack of sleep negatively impacts all areas of life. Countless studies show lack of sleep correlated with huge losses in productivity, happiness, safety, and long-term health and longevity. “Sandy” came to me recently complaining of severe lack of sleep. It could take her three to four hours to get to sleep at night. When she finally did get to sleep, she wouldn’t get much rest before she had to be up again for the next day. She had been having trouble for such a long time that she described it as “I don’t know anything else,” and “I’m totally used to it.” When I asked her to rate her quality of sleep on a scale of one to ten, one being the worst possible sleep, she rated it at a two.

I found out more details about Sandy’s experience and gave her several tools that would be useful to her (see below in the “Tools” section). Then I guided Sandy through a simple yet highly impactful process (the Wholeness Process) recently developed by my mother Connirae Andreas. It results in a deep relaxation of the nervous system, and has helped many people with even life-long sleep issues. Sandy visibly relaxed in the chair in front of me as I guided her through the steps. Her breathing slowed; her muscle tone softened. After just enjoying it a while, she told me that this relaxed state was twice as restful as the best sleep she’d gotten in years.

A week later at our next session she rated her sleep over the last seven days at a six (up from a two). Her experience of sleep was already three times better after a single meeting. She said that each night she was going to sleep increasingly quickly, and that the last night it had only taken 20 minutes to fall asleep. This was despite her decision to stop taking Valerian and other herbal supplements for relaxation that she had been using previously. Now she was using the tools I gave her instead.

Tools of the Day:
Strategies for getting rest (not sleep).

Before we did the Wholeness Process, I offered Sandy several practical tips for better sleep. I suggest you start with these tools (shared below), which Sandy found very helpful in assisting her with getting improved rest over the next week. See how far they take you (or someone you are helping).

1. Out of your head and onto paper: write down the thoughts that would keep you awake.

When I asked Sandy a bit more about her experience of difficulty sleeping she told me: “It’s like I can’t get my brain to shut off. I just keep thinking of things to do, and other stuff.” This is very common among people who have trouble sleeping, and there is a very simple solution that usually works. Write it all down! The first task I gave Sandy was to make a “to do” list each night before getting into bed. This way she could let herself go to sleep feeling confident that everything that was important for her to remember to do the next day (or anything else she wanted to remember) was all written down on a list on her bedside table. I also told her that if she had anything else “pop up” while she was resting, to just get up and write that down on the list before going back to bed. When you do this, you don’t need to remember what to do. Your list will “remember” for you.

2. Change the goal: it’s not about sleep, it’s about rest.

When Sandy told me she wanted better sleep, I told her, “Often people feel they need to get sleep. They feel this pressure to sleep, because they know how difficult the next day can be if they don’t get it.” Sandy nodded, so I knew she was with me. I continued, “We often end up trying to make ourselves go to sleep, which is of course the best way to not get sleep. How do you consciously make yourself lose consciousness? It’s impossible. Do you have this experience too?” She nodded and said, “Yeah, all the time.” Great, so we know there’s no use in consciously trying to make sleep happen, so we can forget about that. Over the next week I want you to focus on getting rest, not sleep. Whether you sleep or not is unimportant. Have you ever had an experience of a really restless sleep? (Nodding). So you know that even sleep doesn’t guarantee rest! Would you be OK not getting sleep as long as you got rest?” “Yeah, that’s the whole point of sleep.” “Exactly. And can you remember a time when you didn’t sleep, but you just closed your eyes and relaxed and got great relaxation and rest? She looked thoughtful, but wasn’t nodding yet, so I shared an example of my own: “I was in a noisy packed car coming back from a camping trip and I was exhausted and felt like I might be coming down with a cold. I really wanted to sleep, but I knew there was no way it was going to happen sitting upright in the cramped back seat of this Subaru with music playing and four other people talking. So I just decided to close my eyes and let my body relax as much as possible, with my head perched on the vibrating shoulder strap of my seatbelt. I just sunk into the experience of restfulness as much as I could throughout my body. I was amazed at how rejuvenated I was after only ten or fifteen minutes of this. “OK,” Sandy said, “You’re right. I could get a whole night of restless sleep, or I could never go to sleep and as long as it was restful I would be WAY better off.”

3. Three simple ways to relax into a restful state.

Now that Sandy was on board with changing the goal from sleep, to rest, it was important to give her a few simple ways to get rest, which in contrast to sleep, can be achieved through conscious intention. Here are the three that I gave her to try on her own over the next week when she went to bed.

1) “As you’re lying in bed, allow your awareness to start at the roots of your hair and slowly move down through every part of your body (bones, ligaments, muscles, skin, organs). As you do this you can notice what you notice; where is there more tension and where more relaxation? You don’t need to change anything. The process of simply being aware will allow natural relaxation. It won’t always relax right away, and that’s fine, you can notice what it’s like to be relaxed about whatever tension is still in the process of letting go in its own way in its own time as you allow your awareness to spread slowly throughout your body.”

2) “Imagine that your body is a stick of butter put out in the sun. Feel the warmth of the sun slowly sinking in through the layers of your body, softening more and more until you start to melt in places, running out into warm pools.”

3) This third tip is a very small aspect of the Wholeness Process: “Notice where there is tension/stimulation in your body. (For me it is usually my heart beating too fast when I’m sick, a feeling of it working a little harder than ideal. It might also be something like muscle tension or a sense of your mind being active). Notice the size and shape of this area in your body. Notice if it has a texture or weight or movement or warmth to it. Now imagine that your entire physical body melts into and becomes this area in its size/shape/texture/weight/movement/warmth etc. Don’t try to change anything, just join with it and become it at the sensation level.”

The complete Wholeness Process involves much more than I can explain in a short blog post. It is a very exciting new development in NLP and personal growth, and has been used effectively with a wide range of life issues. It is particularly useful in dealing with stress and sleep issues. It is after I guided Sandy through the complete method that she experienced “this is twice as restful as the best “sleep” I’ve gotten in years.” If you don’t get consistent relaxation and more restful sleep from the above tips, you may need the in-depth Wholeness Process.

To learn and experience the full Wholeness Process recently developed by Connirae Andreas, sign up for a session with Mark at www.markandreas.com or call 303-810-9611 for a free 15-minute consult.

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Anxiety and Blood Pressure

Tale of the Day:
Bringing extreme blood pressure back into balance.

Diane came to me in late October of 2012 because of dangerously high blood pressure over the previous ten months. Her doctor had put her on medication (Labetalol) in an attempt to bring her blood pressure into the normal range, but even so her systolic blood pressure would spike nearly every afternoon, reaching as high as 210, and requiring additional emergency medication (Clonidine). An average of her highest reading each day over a period of four months was 181.

Diane told me she’d been living with a lifetime of anxiety resulting from being abused as a child. Traditional medicine and other disciplines were not working for her. We started meeting once a week, working together to transform and resolve each aspect of this issue. Her life was on the line, so it was important to work with this thoroughly. Each weekly meeting we took another step toward resolving issues from the past, changing ways of responding to stress in the present, and discovering/exploring how the new Diane wanted to organize her life for the present and future. After just one month, the highest reading of her systolic blood pressure each day came down to average 155 over the next 76 days, and soon she didn’t need the emergency med at all. We transitioned into meeting once every two or three weeks (with her doing NLP work on her own in between sessions). Things continued to improve for her, even during the Colorado flood which forced her out of her home and prevented us from meeting for two months. She recently gave me her average for the same 76-day period one year later (again using her highest systolic reading each day) and it was down to 134. She achieved an overall decrease of 47 points in her systolic pressure.

A psychiatrist colleague of mine asked whether Diane’s diastolic pressure had also come down. He wrote me, “The top number (systolic) is the one most immediately reflective of anxiety and of treatments for anxiety. Over the course of successful treatment of anxiety, the cardiovascular system would have less impact of the sympathetic drive and corticosteroid production that accompany stress and anxiety. So both numbers would hopefully decrease. The bottom number (diastolic) is the resting pressure of the system.” I asked Diane if there had also been a decrease in her diastolic pressure, so she calculated an average for the first 90-days we worked together, and another average for the same period a year later (the time of the flood when she was forced out of her home). The results were just as dramatic for the resting pressure of her system, which went from an average of 96.2 to 68.5, a 27.7 decrease (an even greater decrease by percentage than her systolic pressure).

A huge factor of Diane’s success has been her full engagement in using the NLP tools I taught her, and her use of them on her own between sessions. Below I describe what happened in my first session with Diane, as I taught her a very useful NLP tool as a first step. Try it out yourself for any area of your own life where you feel overly worried or anxious.

Tool of the Day:
Transforming Anxiety
(Adapted from a process developed by Nick Kemp. See Provocative Change Works Processes by Nick Kemp © 2008, www.nickkemp.com.)

When Diane first met with me, after I got to know her a bit I asked her, “What is the first thing you want to change?”

“The anxiety.”

I asked her if she was experiencing any anxiety right now. She said just a little bit. I asked her, if she felt comfortable doing so, to close her eyes and put herself back into a time when she felt the anxiety more than a little bit. I noticed her neck tighten and her face tense.

“And where do you experience the feeling of anxiety?” I asked. She said it was like a tight lump behind her breastbone. I asked her to tune into the sensation of the feeling and notice more details. “Where does it start and where does it go to?” I asked.

After a few moments she said, “It’s like it comes in through my nose and goes down into my chest and compacts right there.” (She gestured over the center of her breastbone).

“OK, great awareness. The feeling of anxiety goes in through your nose and down to compress in your chest area. This is the path of the feeling. Now, my next question may sound strange, and that’s because it is. As the feeling starts in your nose and goes down to your chest area, does it spin clockwise or counter-clockwise along this path?” To be extra clear I invited her to open her eyes as I gestured with my hand in front of my own body, showing the two options.

“Looking down from the top of my head, it goes counter-clockwise,” she said.

“Great, now close your eyes again, and notice the feeling in this counter-clockwise spin along the path starting at your nose and going to your chest.”

“Actually it doesn’t stop in my chest,” she said. “When it hits my chest it goes back up and out my mouth. It’s like it goes in my nose, spirals down like it’s compacting coal in my chest, and then the feeling comes up out my mouth leaving my chest all compacted.”

“Great awareness. So now, as you notice the spin along the path from your nose down to your chest and up out your mouth, you can allow the spin to begin to slow. Notice what happens when you allow the spin to slow a little more… [slowing my voice] until eventually… it will just stop for a moment… as if in limbo. And then it begins to spin in the new direction along the same path. Coming in through your nose and spinning in the new way down to your chest area and back up out your mouth. It can even speed up faster with this new spin, and then settle into the speed that’s most comfortable. As it does this you can notice if it would like to shift to a more comfortable color.”

At this point I could visibly see Diane’s neck and face relax, and she started taking bigger, deeper breaths. “Wow,” she said. “Now instead of compressing more coal down there, it’s like the new spin is sending down buckets that are digging up the coal and tossing it out my mouth!”

“Go ahead and give yourself as much time as you like to experience this new way, as things are decompressing,” I said.

After several minutes she took a breath, “I have a sense this is going to take a while.”

“That’s just fine. Now that it has this new direction, it can continue to operate with this new twist as long as is useful. Now, ask inside, ‘Is there any part of me that has any objection to having this new experience in place of the old anxiety?’ ”

After a few moments she said, “No. This is amazing. Now I realize my life has been chaotic and feeding this. I can change that.”

“Wonderful. Now, because all of you is happy to have this new way of being, you can imagine a future situation in which you used to feel the old anxiety. Go ahead and imagine that, and notice how it feels now.”

She closed her eyes and stayed visibly relaxed.

“It’s really different,” she said, breathing deeply.

“Great, now imagine another couple of situations, one at a time.”

She nodded when she’d finished.

“Now, it’s important to realize that this isn’t a process to use on your symptoms just like another drug,” I told her. “Some people use it that way and just get even more out of balance, continuing to do all the things that stress them out because they can get away with it for a little while longer. But there ends up being a high price. We don’t want that. Instead you can use this as a process to tune in more and more to the natural and important feedback your body is giving you about what it needs, such as the important feedback you already got about making your life a lot less chaotic. Once you learn to completely tune into and listen to your body’s feedback, you won’t need this process at all.”

She opened her eyes and nodded vigorously, so I could tell this made a lot of sense to her.

I invited Diane to practice this spin reversal process as a meditation each day, such as before drifting off to sleep, and especially to do it any time she felt anxiety starting to come on. I also gave her the task of tuning in more and more to her body so she could start to notice the barest hint of the anxiety. I suggested that once she got good at that she could see if she was able to notice the feeling that comes just before the feeling of anxiety. This way she could start getting the feedback her body was giving her before she ever got to the level of anxiety.

Note: Often people don’t believe this process will work until they try it themselves. Consciously, people often find this process doesn’t “make sense.” But our language reveals our unconscious internal experience all the time. People commonly say they are “wound up” or “spinning out.” Most of them simply don’t realize how accurately they are describing their internal experience. This process is one way to “unwind” and “put a new spin on things.” Email me if you want a step-by-step write up of the process described above.

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