Change Your Thinking

Aloha, and welcome to Hawaii which is where I’m giving this talk today from. Now normally when I’m in Hawaii I try and make the videos and the podcasts outside.

But there’s an awful not lot of noise going on today, there’s cutting of bushes, and trimming the hedges, and lawn mowing, and all sorts of things. And it’s making quite a noise, so you wouldn’t be able to hear me that well.

So I’m doing it inside. And hopefully while I’m here, I’ll be able to do several outside so you hear the sea, and just the wonderful noise of the place and get a sense of the energy of the place.

So what I wanted to talk about today is changing your thinking. I was having a chat with a good friend, mentor, former teacher of mine David Shepard, and we were talking about business models.

And one of the business models we were talking about was the licencing business model, and why that might go wrong.

And one of the main reasons it goes wrong is that people buy a licence, and then they don’t want to follow the instructions.

They don’t want to take the step-by-step programme that comes with the licence, and they want to do something differently.

And they tend to fail, because they’re not aware of the consequences of doing something differently. Now me, because I have a very strong creative urge, I really get why people might come a cropper this way.

I could quite see myself thinking a licence was a great idea and then struggling with implementing it because the step-by-step thing doesn’t work for me, I’m creative.

To which David’s comment was, quite reasonably, well, all you have to do is change your thinking. That’s what things like NLP can help you do.

NLP being your linguistic programming. And it made me think of what some responses that I’ve been giving to people who sign up for the complimentary email consultation.

Now if people don’t give me much information, there’s not an awful lot I can do for them for the complimentary email consultation.

If they just say oh it’s self esteem, or it’s money, then there’s not a lot I can help them with. But if they give me a bit more information, then I actually can make some suggestions.

And what I’m finding more and more is that one of the suggestions that I’m making is about changing your thinking.

Now, MLP and things like CBT, cognitive behavioural therapy are all about teaching you how to change your thinking.

Because if things aren’t going for you in the way that you would like, if you’re not having the happiness you want, if you’re feeling anxiety or fear or whatever it is,

but whatever it is and you’re not getting the results that you want in life, then one of the things you have to look about is how do you think about the world, what are your beliefs about the world?

What is it that you say to yourself in your head? And how can you change that so that you can actually find happiness, or money, or whatever it is that’s lacking in your life?

Now for some of the people who contact me, I know it’s a really hard one. They’ve lost loved ones, or they’ve had some pretty traumatic events in their life.

So me just sitting here and saying oh well all you gotta do is change your thinking, it’s a bit, it’s well how, and how’s that gonna make any difference?

The how is a bit of a longer story because the how is learning how to do it using things like MLP, or working with a coach.

But that it works, I can certainly testify to. Because one of the things that really worked for me in changing my own life was changing my thinking.

So what I’m really saying to here is, if you want to change things, if you’re not getting the results that you want, if you’re not feeling that happiness that you want,

if you’re feeling anxiety, if you feel, whatever it is, however it is that your life is out of kilter and not working well for you, then you’ve got to look at your thinking.

And there’s a couple of things that you can look at quite easily. And one is the relationship between your thinking, your fears, your thoughts, and your behaviour.

So, I’ll give you a for instance. You get up in the morning, or you wake up in the morning, and it’s one of those days when the duvet’s gonna just go snuggle under me, snuggle under me, don’t get up, you know the duvet’s holding on to you.

But finally you break free of the duvet’s hold, and as you’re getting out of bed you stub your toe. And then you go over to clean your teeth and you discover that you’ve run out of toothpaste.

And you go downstairs, and by now you’re starting to feel a bit grumpy because you never wanted to get out of bed in the first place because the duvet was trying to get you to stay,

and you go to make yourself a cup of tea and you’ve run out of milk, or maybe even worse, you’ve run out of tea.

And by this time, you’ve convinced yourself that this is gonna be a shit day. If you go around that day assuming that it’s gonna be a shit day, that’s the experience that you’re gonna have.

You’ll notice all those things that make it a bad day, a shit day, and you won’t notice the things that make it a good day. All you have to do then is to change your focus.

Rather than focusing on the awfulness, the misery, the oh it’s too much, oh I’m not happy, oh, oh, oh, change your focus. Listen out for, look out for, feel out for things that are showing you it’s a good day.

Things that are pleasant experiences. The smile on somebody’s face when they say hello, or the fact that somebody said thank you, or sent you a nice email, whatever it happens to be.

Focus on those things. Because when you start to focus on those things, then you’re thinking actually does start to change, and, even better, your experience starts to change.

The day starts to feel better. Another example that we use a lot when I’m working with women in my coaching practise is the one of you walk into a group of friends,

you’re meeting up with a group of friends, and you walk into the room where you are, and as you walk in, it all goes silent.

And you walk in, and you think, they’ve been talking about me, they’re bitching about me, there’s something going on, they’re talking about me.

And that’s why they’ve all gone quiet. But what if they were planning a surprise birthday party for you, and they didn’t wanna talk about it in front of you ’cause that would take away the surprise.

We make a lot of assumptions, and the assumptions that we make are based on our belief structures, they’re based on our values, some really deep level of motivation, and the way that we think about the world.

And if I go around assuming that every time I walk in a room if people go quiet then they must be saying something bad about me, that’s gonna affect how I behave, and it’s gonna effect how people react to me.

But if I go around assuming that the reason people have gone quiet is ’cause they’re planning nice things for me, then I’m gonna behave in a different way.

They’re gonna experience me differently, I’m gonna experience them differently.

So changing your thinking, it is so so important, particularly if you’re having a rough time of it. Particularly if you’re not getting the results that you want in life.

So, if you’d like help changing your thinking, then get on a call, SecretArtofHuna.com/diary is the place to book a call with me.

And we can talk about what you might do, how I might help you, whether I’ve got programmes, whether I can recommend other people’s programmes, but see what we can do to help you start to get the results that you want in life.

And I look forward to hearing from you very soon.

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