Performance Machine!

This morning, I received an interesting enquiry regarding coaching. I decided to share some of the conversation here because I know that many people who read this blog have an interest in 'high performance', 'state management', 'hypnosis' and 'unconscious programming'. Hi James

I am looking for coaching work which can help with establishing powerful triggers during my work. I manage money and trade financial markets and have used several modalities to assist with the emotional aspects of this work and all of them have helped. 

I am interested in being able to create more unconscious triggers that make more of my skills and talents available while I am working. 

Do you think this is something you would be able to help me with? 

Hi *****

Let me see if I can help a little right here...

First off, I would suggest that your outcome as presented here sets for itself a trap. You are specifying a particular means (unconscious triggers) to an end (make more of my skills and talents while working). So we already have a 'closed box' inside of which to work, and it is very rare that effective work happens inside of such a box.

So, let me offer you a shift in perspective here... whilst I'm not exactly sure what you mean by 'unconscious triggers', I seriously doubt that they (or lack thereof) are what are stopping you from manifesting your skills and talents at their best.

From the way your question is framed, it sounds like you are asking from a behaviourism based 'machine model' of how humans work, so let me say this right here:

You are not a machine - you are a human being!

Now, whilst it is certainly true that the 'machine model' (trigger-response) CAN serve up to a point, it is worth recognising its limitations as it is NOT a particularly far reaching or complete representation of how we work. As such it is pretty limited as a model for performance psychology.

To be yourself at your best you will need to understand that human performance is not machine performance. As such you will access your skills and talents at your best when you remove the blocks in thinking and understanding that are keeping you from it, and, in turn, refine the underpinning understandings that best support the expression of those skills and talents.

If you take any world class player of any game, whilst they may create sequences and rituals that support them in the execution of their skills, their real performance power comes from their connection with the game, and this connection comes from how they see it and make sense of it. If, for example, they experience un-useful emotions, these are arising from ideas they are holding (and/or thoughts they are running) that are not serving them... NOT from a deficiency in appropriate triggers!

So, my question here to you is:

What do you want?

I mean, what do you really want? What is the outcome beyond your outcome? When you make more of your skills and talents, what does that get for you?

I ask these things because I am happy to work with you in bringing more fulfilment, prosperity and enriching human experience into your life, but if it is just about turning you into a high performance machine and be-damned the rest then I am not going to be the right guy for you.

All the very best

James

'Truth' Versus 'Understanding'

There is a line that is pushed in some philosophies and self-help movements that there is no such thing as truth. everything we know is a lie, so we may as well make up whatever set of understandings - whatever 'lies' - best suits us. Of course, if this is true, then this perspective itself is a lie! :-) but is it a useful one?

Personally speaking, I believe in truth... but I also believe 'true truth' is ineffable and lays beyond perception. So all we are left with is our perceptions, perspectives and understandings. Or as Arthur Eddington so elegantly put it:

“Reality is not only stranger than you think, it's stranger than you CAN think."

In the coaching and training that I do, I often encourage people to stop seeking truth and to instead start shaping understandings that serve. Not because there isn't 'truth', just that we can't know it and therefor modest understanding is all we have.

So what is the relationship between 'understanding' and 'truth'? I believe that the best in understanding points us to something of the ineffable truth. And that the most profound understandings are those that get us closest to the truth that lies beyond understanding.

So, I wouldn't get hung up on the truth... you can't know it. But explore life, take multiple perspective and create and shape understandings that serve you and others deeply and profoundly, and you will be individual getting very close to it!

Best

James

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Image Courtesy of Stuart Mills

Systems and Results

The results you get in life emerge from the systems that produce them, and those systems work perfectly to get exactly those results. So... If you don't like the results your getting, you'd better be willing to change the system!

But, interestingly this is exactly where so many people fall down they attempt to keep the old system largely in place whilst trying to get different results from within it. And that just doesn't work.

The Reality of Personal Change

So… I am finally beginning the process of properly focusing this website (about time), and my housekeeping has begun by removing the comments sections from some of the pages (having decided to keep such conversations to the blog area). In beginning this process, I have came across this question about 'social anxiety'. Paul asked:

"What is your success with social anxiety – I’ve been studying Hypnosis, NLP, and every other modality I can find on the internet for the last 10 years. I am also personally trained in hypnosis under Igor Ledochowski as well as Jeff Stephens, but I am still burdened with social anxiety. What can you offer me? Also – would you recommend your Changework Applications product in order to personally learn the change work to do on myself? I hypnotize myself through recordings on a regular basis. Thanks"

So Paul asked a genuine question, which I felt warranted a genuine reply (and this is about a lot more than just 'social anxiety':

"Hi Paul

I have to say that, for personal reasons, 'social anxiety' is an area of particular interest for me.

What can I offer you? That question is a bit too open and broad to easily answer. The answer could be “nothing” or it could be “a path to being socially comfortable and erudite”, depending on where you are with your willingness to challenge your own assumptions and engage with a process of learning.

One thing I can tell you right off the bat is that you will probably not fix it with one or two quick hypnosis sessions – social anxiety is most often a problem of worldview rather than a simple stimulus-response pattern. To shift it takes many shifts in perspective AND attitude, as well as some skills based work around patterns of interaction.

If you are serious about changing this, PM me and I will arrange for you a discounted coaching/Changework session to give you some of the fundamentals. I am not saying that 1 session will fix the problem, but we can get for you some useful understanding of how your pattern works, along with some highly functional tools and a pathway for getting out of it.

You can PM me on James @ hypnosiswithouttrance.com or Skype me at captaintripp

All the very best

James

P.S. The Changework Applications set will not help you for this!"

As I have pointed out before, there are many changework practitioners of different varieties out there promising the magical quick fix. What they often promise is instant transformation right now, but mostly that isn't really how significant change happens (although there can be exceptions).

Yes we can have breakthrough moments, but it is how those breakthrough moments combine and feed forward into our futures to connect to yet more breakthrough moments that matters.

As human beings we are good at learning and change, and - unlike the majority of other known lifeforms - we have the ability to be self-authoring; to lead the process of our own personal evolution!

We have the faculties in place to do this - it is what we are good at!

Change comes from utilising and applying those faculties rather than trying to shortcut them with fancy techniques. And most significant change is the result of engaging in a developmental process - it is the people who get this and apply themselves to it are the ones who get rapid results.

So what of Hypnosis and NLP?

Well there is plenty of good stuff there in the toolkit - the trick is applying it strategically to encourage, develop, support and guide our natural learning and change 'mechanisms', rather than blindly applying 'techniques' and/or giving simplistic suggestions it the hope of bypassing our natural processes.

If you are interested in making some changes in your life and developing yourself - your thinking, your behaviour, your responses - get in touch and we can discuss what it is that you would like to change.

All the very best

James