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How to stop anxiety and improve your success

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How to stop anxiety and improve your success

How to stop anxiety

Everyone gets anxiety

One of my NLP Practitioner  students asked me how to stop anxiety that her children had when they went to interviews. She wanted to know how to use NLP to make a difference. It struck me that it would be great to share my thoughts with you! I know that I suffer some mild anxiety in certain situations (usually around organisation of my business) and I use the techniques in this post to help.

Remember that “Anxiety is a warning from the unconscious mind to focus on what you want” Tad James

1)      Make sure that you are not suffering with fear from events in the past – this can lead to limiting beliefs and negative hooks to events. These can be easily resolved using NLP and is very easy to do.  Anxiety about specific events is future based and can be present without fear from the past.

2)      Ask yourself whether the event that you are anxious about is something that you need to do on the way to really important goals for you. I had a client recently who was anxious about meeting someone who had a reputation of being aggressive and she was concerned and quite anxious about this. However, when we talked through her goals, it turned out that it wasn’t important to meet the person for her goals and was more important for her to do other things that would be really helpful. She cancelled the meeting and felt fine about it. By the way; she reached her goals really quickly by reminding herself of them.

3)      Find out what the problem is in order to find out how to stop anxiety. So consider the statement “I’m worried about the interview”. If you ask What specifically are you worried about? The answer could be:-

  •  I don’t know enough
  •  I don’t know if I’ m good enough (fear of failure or needing someone to tell them they do a good job or lack of self- belief)
  •  I don’t know if it’s the right job for me  (Not knowing what important in a job for them (values) or whether it suits how they work )
  • I might have to do something I don’t, deep down, want to do if I get the job (It’s better not to get it)
  •  What will people think if I don’t get the job? (Concern about Reputation)
  •  What will people think if I do get the job? (Fear of success)

Acknowledging what the problem is , is a great start resolving it!

4)      Knowing the purpose of the anxiety is also useful. There is always a purpose and it’s often about keeping yourself safe. The unconscious mind’s main function is to protect you and this is useful but frustrating at times. Have you ever noticed a situation where you know what you want and what you need to do, but your unconscious mind (that voice) keeps nudging you and saying “remember what happened last time or what people said – wouldn’t you be better not doing it?” Working through how else you can protect yourself is the way to overcome this.

How to stop anxiety

1)      If you have fear from events that happened in the past, speak to me about it if it is stopping you from moving forward. Maybe you could say to yourself, the past is the past and I can move on and be the best I can be now and in the future. Maybeyou will need help to work this through. Access a free session here to discuss this.

2)      Make sure that you have goals that are specific and ask yourself, does what I’m anxious about get me towards them? Make sure your goals are always where you notice them – on a vision board, in your journal, on your screen saver, securely in your mind.

3)      Work out what is important to you – your core values so that you can measure what you are planning to do against them. There is One Key Question that you can ask (link to blog about this)

4)      Discover what the real problem is – be honest with yourself. Have a think and fill a form in here if you want to talk through the problem

5)      Acknowledge the unconscious mind’s wish to keep you safe and realise that there are many ways of keeping you safe, including going for your goals and what you want in life! Your unconscious mind will agree with you and relax.

6)      Anxiety is on the same spectrum of moods as excitement. So you can try turning up your mild anxiety and noticing  that you become excited about the event

7)      Speak to me about what specific anxiety techniques I can help you with that you will find helpful.

Consider undertaking NLP Practitioner training

My trainings include coaching to get you to the outcomes that you want and you will learn about:-

  • Compelling goal setting – how to MAKE SURE you get what you want
  • Values- what’s important to you
  • How your mind works
  • Techniques to  avoid internal conflict
  • Removing limitations from your mind
  • Communicating with yourself and others in an effective way.
  • And overcoming anxiety of course!

Here’s the link to have a chat with me about the value to you of doing the course.

 

 

5 Tips on How To Stop Procrastination-Once And For All

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How to Stop Procrastination Once and For All – 5 tips 

 

5 Tips for stopping procrastination,once and for all

5 Tips for stopping procrastination,once and for all

Procrastination – One of the biggest challenges my clients have is lack of effective action  which leads to frustration and lack of fulfillment. That’s why they get in touch with me, an NLP and life coach, because they know they need someone to help them to stop procrastination, once and for all. Elsie-Rose was about to write a blog and decided to have a nap instead! What do you do instead of what you need to do? Here are 5 tips for you to consider, reflect on and use  

 

Tip 1

Find your BIG WHY If you find yourself procrastinating and being easily distracted by things that don’t get you to your goal, ask yourself why you want to reach your goal in the 1st place.?What will your goal get you and what will that then get you? I can use myself as an example. When I stopped being a GP, the big why for starting my business was to avoid becoming bored. Now I know that I want to help people to reach their full potential  and also to enjoy every moment of every day –I know that’s my real BIG WHY!! My Purpose!

Tip 2

Make sure  you are motivated by what you want to do Knowing your Big Why for the goal for is a huge motivator and you will also have other things that motivate you (your values). Your goals will then flow towards you  “like butter on a hot crumpet” (a Strictly Come Dancing Quote). My motivators (values) are – enjoying every moment of every day, having fun, developing people and having a purpose. If I make sure that I “tick” those values or motivators, I find that I stop procrastination once and for all. If you are really serious about finding out what  your values are I’ve got a super, no strings attached bonus for you – its a 45 minute free consultation (worth £125) and I’m giving you this free as an ongoing member of my community! Here’s where you can access your free session 

Tip 3

Get a system of planning and prioritising Write down your goal and then ask yourself what needs to be in place for you to reach it, then what needs to be in place for you to reach that etc etc until you get to the 1st thing that you need to do. This is working backwards from your goal and is a very helpful system for planning. An example from my business is – if I want to run another mastermind group as a goal, working backwards, I then need to decide how many people I want for the group, I interview them, I  find them , put a date in the diary, decide what marketing to do and to commit to doing it. So the 1st thing for me is to commit to doing it , then to decide on my marketing, then to put a date in the diary, then find the people, then interview them. I hope that makes sense. Give me a ring if not on 07973 635102

Tip 4

Become efficient Once you know what you have to do, make sure that everything you do is going to move you closer to your goal. There are many systems that you can use – I like Eat  That Frog by Brian Tracy. Do the most important and often the most difficult thing 1st . Only do the things you’d like to do, when you have done the things you have to do. Delegate where possible. 

Work out what your perfect day is and monitor against it. – This is how I do this:-  Write down 5 things that you need to do every day to get you to your goal. Score yourself against it and reflect on your successes and challenges so that you do things consistently and efficiently. Mine would be along the lines of:- 

  •  Get up at 7:30
  •  Work on my business for 90 minutes
  •  Journal
  •  Have fun
  • Celebrate successes at the end of the day

Of course, I’d be seeing clients and networking and growing my list with social media and many other things as well, but if I had to pick 5 things that make a difference, the above would be on my list. How about you? Leave me a comment so that we can share what makes the difference.

Tip 5

Get someone to hold you accountable Hold yourself accountable by using your perfect day tool and journaling. Also feedback to someone that will challenge you if you haven’t done what you said you will do. I have a system of holding clients accountable which I agree with them and then prompt them. If you’d like to talk to me about How to Stop Procrastination, once and for all, access a free session here.

Here’s to no more housework and ironing! Or mowing the lawn or watching telly or some DIY. Unless of course, that’s what your goal is!!!

Till next time, be productive! And many thanks to Elsie- Rose for contributing to my post!

Dr Bridget

 

What can we learn for our own success from Wales win against Italy (6 nations 2014)?

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 Success    Success!!!

Who or what can we learn from ? NLP is about modelling excellence and as I sat and watched Wales beat Italy yesterday (1/2/14), I wondered what key messages I gained? What could I use to make my life and my business even more successful?

Commitment to  goals and visions. So there are a lot of politics in the press about rugby in Wales and it was clear that they had put that aside in the lead up to and in the match itself. Concentrating on what they wanted and having absolute focus.

Innovation. Being happy to do something unexpected in order to get that goal. After all, I expect they don’t think that’s there’s failure- only learning, personal and team development. The first try was about giving something a go and seeing if it worked.

Team work. The players, the coaches, the rugby supporters in Wales all worked together to create immense motivation. I was bouncing up and down on the sofa! Imagine the coaching that has happened during the lead up to this series ! Leadership, change, support and being in the moment !

Practice. Leigh Halfpenny has a system which he practices on a daily basis and when he kicks for the posts, he knows that he has done his best. That’s what personal development is all about.

There are many more things that we can all learn from sport. Maybe other supporters and people who really want success can add to the discussion. Here’s looking  forward to the match and more success. Sign up to receive more tips on a regular basis —————————–

Gaining Agreement

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AgreementGaining Agreement

You may have noticed that people around you appear to continually disagree with each other, even though you know they want the same thing  really. Sometimes this is because people are operating at a different “chunk size”. They are filtering the huge amount of information that comes into their brain in different ways depending on whether they want to know the BIG picture or the DETAIL. Let me give you examples. I saw two people recently who were struggling to communicate well with others. Inevitably they both thought that they were right, but here’s the thing- the meaning of your communication is the result that you get AND you have 100% responsibility for your communication. So here are two examples:

1. Someone who was in partnership with a colleague and they argued a lot. The one partner was very focused on goals and the reason for being in partnership, whereas the other partner needed to know the detail of what he was doing and didn’t really need to know the big picture. So they continually had conversations where one wanted to know whether they had reached a target and the other one was focused on making phonecalls to get work for the company at a detailed level. And they were driving each other mad- literally.

2. Someone who’s mother was very negative about most things whereas the daughter just wanted to get on with her life and be happy. When the daughter tried to make suggestions and say that there were choices, the mother became more agitated and the daughter became frustrated.

Here’s one solution:-

Find a level at which people can agree. In both of the examples, if the two people agreed on the big picture (at a high chunk size) then that would have been “better” communication. In the first case, they could have agreed that they wanted the company to succeed and in the second case that both wanted to be happy. It is then possible to get more specific (reduce the chunk size) and see if agreement is still possible. So, in order for the company to succeed, the two partners could have agreed that they were both different and that they needed to find a way of working together for success. The mum and daughter could have agreed that happiness meant different things to them and that they could still respect each other’s model of the world. Staying at a more general level usually means that more agreement is possible.

Here’s an exercise for you to do. Click on the picture below to access it

Agreement

Let me know if you want any help with this and any comments and examples would be useful.

Dr Bridget