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Change your Language - Change your Life
Sounds like a BIG statement. It is. Some of you are desperate to create BIG changes, but you talk to yourself and about yourself in a way that reinforces the exact thing you want to change.
Listen... I have watched and listened to people doing this over and over again. People say they want CHANGE, but that change is going to come at a cost. Change = discomfort. You wouldn't be 'stuck' in your current pattern if you didn't gain something from that pattern. That sounds harsh when we apply it to certain circumstances, but it is always the case. People will meet their human needs - even if the cost is expensive! Change comes at a cost because you have to be brave enough to see yourself without judgment, see you for who you are currently being in the world and make some choices for your future you.
How does language come into this? It is simply an access point. Being more aware of how you speak and the language you use is a practical way to catch the way you are thinking about yourself and the world around you.
Using certain language has a certain impact on and reflects the way you view yourself and the world around you.
Let me just point out here that when we really see ourselves, the healing can really start. Because whilst we don't see ourselves we are looking to place blame on things outside of our control and we are not fully accepting ourselves or capable of self love unless we are willing to love ourselves with all the things we still want to work on. Seeing ourselves is never about self criticism or self judgement. One of the ways you can start to change your life is through getting clear on how you speak to yourself and making real changes.
The Quality of Your Life is Determined by the Quality of Your Emotions and the Quality of Your Emotions is Determined by the Quality of Your Thoughts
Tony Robbins
And guess what your thoughts are - mostly SELF TALK.
That's why changing your SELF TALK - or your LANGUAGE - Can in fact Change your Life. Because how you relate to yourself as who you are dictates every action you take and don't take. It affects every relationship you have and ultimately shapes your life.
" I help you see your self-talk, understand the impact and then help you expand your options. It is about giving you clarity, truth and choice."
Sarah J. Chapman
Breakthrough
If you feel that negative self talk is something that affects your life and you want change - get in touch, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Helping people is what I do.
A linguist relies on data rather than intuition. Talk is data. Discussing your area of concern with a trained linguist who is also a certified Master Practitioner NLP and Breakthrough Coach ensures that you get to the information you need quickly. My three step method creates the Breakthrough to getting you 'unstuck'. Once you've had the breakthrough, everything you need to move forward from there is already within your grasp. It will all become clear once you expose what is holding you back and keeping you 'stuck'. You can't know why you are stuck whilst you are stuck, you don't know what you don't know. Once the subconscious driver is exposed through the language patterns you use, it is something you can work through.
- I work with you to uncover your hopes, aspirations and look at what is working and what is missing. We get clear on what you really want.
- We gather information based on language and with that we can create a fuller picture. The fuller picture allows you to see the blind spots. We get you to the information you need as quickly as possible to get you clear on what is reality, as opposed to what previously felt like reality.
- We get clear on your actual options and you get to create an Action Plan with newfound empowered FREEDOM and self belief.
I offer a full money back guarantee if a breakthrough is not obtained within the first three hours of coaching (this does not include your discovery session) and you are unsatisfied with your progress. *In order for the money back guarantee to stand we have to have established clarity on the exact nature of the challenge and what you are aware of about and around that challenge at the point of our first meeting. Once this clarity is established any new information gained which allows you to question the truth of held beliefs previously unseen will be classed as a breakthrough as the new information provides empowerment as it creates clarity on what is reality as opposed to what is experienced as reality.
Personal Growth
- We will work out what works in your life and what doesn't
- We will get clear on what is missing for you .
- We will get really clear on the stories and strategies that keep you 'stuck'
- And then - we clear the roadblocks out of the way!
Business Growth
- Optimise productivity through training with a twist that creates data on the best possible employee communication collaborations
- Liven your business literature with a linguist
- Ensure your documents deliver the intended impact
How do I help you?
I help you see you, exactly as you are and your life exactly as it is so you can decide what comes next
We Identify
We identify what you see as the missing aspect in your life, relationship, career and finances
Clarify
Here we dig deeper and CLARIFY if there are conflicting goals. We get unapologetically precise about YOUR DESIRES
Strategise & Realise
Once we get clear, we create a personalised road map that will help you take immediate action.
Getting you to the destination, but loving the journey!
The reason I talk about language 'so much' is because it is key to every relationship (including the one you have with your self). How you talk, choices you make with your language, structural choices - even the intonation and speed you use reveals your thought patterns (internal dialogue) and further compounds your experience of the world around you. So here's the thing... I think right now we would all agree that we want a world with more peace, more unity and more love. How does my use of language have anything to do with that? Read the whole blog to find out. In brief, I believe that more peace is the same as less conflict and that starts with each of us individually. It is about how we interact with the people around us, it's the butterfly effect. My interactions in my daily life affect every human being I come into contact with which in turns affects (or has the potential to) every person they come into contact with and so on. Discovering the secrets in everyday interaction and understanding self-talk will one hundred percent help you understand yourself and others better. It is one of the keys to unlocking a way to greater peace in your life, greater possibility for unity rather than division and conflict and the ability to love yourself and others more. And, yes it is all possible through a greater understanding of the way we use language.
There is one word that fascinates me. You might be surprised which one it is. JUST...
Thoughts will come and go - you choose which to engage with
How Do We Actually Become Better and What even is BETTER? That is up to you! But… if you can read this you will have already decided, many years ago. Going after other versions of Better (other than the one you already decided at a subconscious) may be difficult due to undiscovered conflicting beliefs. So, if you are not doing this with a trained coach who can help you remove internal conflicting beliefs, here is where to start - with what you already decide BETTER is to you. ‘Actions Express Priorities’ – Mahatma Ghandi Ghandi was my first hero and role model as a child. Watching the film with Ben King had a significant effect on me personally. I know now as an adult that the film was produced, whereas as a child that awareness did not exist. I remember watching it, it was as if I was watching the exact real-life events as they happened. I was deeply moved, and I did not realise until the last few years that this was so significant for me, that it shaped my version of ‘better’ for the past 30 years. When I saw Ghandi, I saw someone who inspired me. I saw: Discipline. Kindness. Compassion. Fairness. Justice. Equality. Standards. Strength. Goodness. Doing Hard Things to Achieve Better Things. Resilience. Peace. Understanding. Intelligence. Service. Whilst people may disagree about who Ghandi was, they cannot disagree with who he is to me. This is what I experienced as I watched his actions. The expression of his priorities. My focus has always been – be a better version, a more knowledgeable version and then serve better. Until recently I didn’t understand how one experience could have such a significant effect on the way we then go on to live our life and judge ourselves as to whether or not we are enough. Whether or not we are meeting our own expectations. BETTER is individualised, commonalities will be present due to social context, but they will be specific to you according to and creating your values and beliefs. So first of all: Step 1 Get clear on what BETTER is to you and WHY. Autopilot? Perhaps now we have assembled one or two ideas about what action we can take in one area of our betterment process. Once we have an action plan, then it comes down to scheduling and following through. Segue from Betterness to Habits! Stay with me – I will bring it back together. Studies show that around half of our day is not consciously chosen action but rather autopilot. Otherwise known as a habit! 1 The definition of a habit in psychology, is an action that is triggered automatically in response to contextual cues that are associated with performance: e.g., automatically putting on a seatbelt (action) after getting into the car (contextual cue). Half my week is me in autopilot! It is not an individual thing it is an inevitable thing. The brain is built to categorise and file to save power (that’s why biases are inevitable) and automate wherever possible. We would not get much done if this were not the case – but - the question remains – out of the 50-55% of the day I am not in autopilot – how well am I using that time? And, here is the connection – how much of my effort in that conscious time is moving me towards BETTER? As I see it we have a two pronged attack here – 1. Create some betterment habits so that they are autipilot but also move us towards a BETTER version of ourselves. 2. Use the conscious time CONSCIOUSLY. How am I consciously using my non-autopilot time to help me get to my own version of BETTER? What tools or structure do I have in place to help me and how efficiently am I using them? Here is one way to utilise the power of habits. Take any healthy habit that is going to improve your day, week, year, life. Then decide where and how you will include it. AWE WALKS. Here is my example of a healthy habit I want to include every day. Here’s why: A recent study2 that assessed the difference between walking for 15 minutes quietly and walking for 15 minutes consciously aware and thankful for nature. It found that the group that focused their minds on nature around them showed a significant boost in ‘positive prosocial emotions such as compassion and gratitude’. The study even showed that when the two groups took selfies, the image of the person on the AWE WALK would have that person’s image as smaller and the nature as the focus whereas the control group selfies did not follow this pattern. Maybe the best data was that the AWE WALKERS had significantly increased smiles in their selfies. How awesome! How do we improve our habits? A study on the development of habit formation carried out by Lally P et al. 3 suggested that the often quoted anecdotal 21 days to form a new habit was inaccurate. Instead, it has been demonstrated that the real number is more like 66 days as an average. Health professionals concluded people should expect the habit to embed at around 10 -12 weeks. Dr Rangan Chaterjee in his book Feel Better in 5, addresses the effectiveness of forming a new habit by using the piggy-back effect. Linking a new habit to the already familiar increases our chance of success. Remember – a habit is an action that is prompted by a contextual cue. Any action we are already in the habit of doing can therefore become the contextual cue, for example I walk my dogs everyday so if I want to successfully add an awe walk to my day it makes sense to piggy-back the awe walk onto the dog walking. The dog walk becomes the contextual cue therefore I need less will power and less change is needed. 1. Decide what a BETTER you is to you. 2. Can you identify the origin of why that became your BETTER (if not don’t worry) 3. Decide what one action you would choose to take that would move you towards that version of a BETTER you. 4. What are you already doing that could be your Contextual Cue – Piggy Back it 5. Continue for the next 10 weeks 6. Enjoy the BETTER you References 1.Lally P, van Jaarsveld CHM, Potts HWW, Wardle J. How are habits formed: modelling habit formation in the real world. Euro J Soc Psychol. 2010;40:998–1009 2. Weller, N (2020). Awe walks boost emotional well being. San Fran, CA Weill Institute for Neurosciences. Sturm, V.E et al. (2020) Big smile, small self: Awe walks promote prosocial positive emotions in older adults. Emotion Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037emo0000876 3. Quinn, J.M., & Wood, W. (2005).Habits across the lifespan. Unpublished manuscript, Duke University; Wood, W., Quinn, J.M., & Kashy, D. (2002). Habits in everyday life: Thought, emotion, and action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 1281–1297.
Can you spot a liar? There are different ways that psychologists, neurologists, and other departments have looked for tell-tale signs. Such an approach relies on information from the physiological aspects. Sweat, heart rate, eye movements, body language and more. But… the question here is - can a linguist spot a liar through language alone? The language research says – Yes, we can! And it could be argued to be a more reliable way! Any Dr Who fans, think Matt Smith and his Bow ties. Linguistics is cool!
We have a 2-million-year-old brain with a job to keep us alive. Looking for relevant information as directed by our thoughts. We are thinking machines, constant thoughts – mostly questions and statements to ourselves. Those thoughts prompt the brain on what is the most relevant information (RAS – reticular activating system). What to be fearful of and what to seek more of. We are motivated to move away from pain and towards pleasure. That is why we love the comfort zone. Sometimes we are in an unhealthy cycle with our thoughts, undirected thoughts that are negative or fear driven stimulate the RAS to look for danger. You will always find evidence to support what you believe you already know, and thus the cycle continues. Take for example a child is scared of a dog, the dog comes toward the child, the child screams and the parent quickly picks up the child and comforts them. The parent is unintentionally strengthening the child’s belief that they are unsafe in that situation and need to be rescued. As adults we do that to ourselves, I feel uncomfortable in a certain environment, I show up in that environment with an anxiety and fear and an expectation that I will have a negative experience there. Teaching my brain to look out for that specific threat. Guaranteed it will show up because my RAS and I were looking for it. How do we break it? Don’t pick the child up. Hold their hand as the dog walks past and pretend you didn’t know it was even there. If you are anxious, place the child to the other side of you so you can protect them if needed but you don’t action it unless necessary. If your anxiety isn’t about a dog and you aren’t a child, then you may need to ask better questions to direct your RAS. Have you ever heard of the phrase, if you want a better answer then ask a better question? Well, this is exactly why – if you want to find a solution – you will undoubtedly come up with better options if you ask: How can I create more time to spend with my children? As opposed to: Why can’t I spend more time with my children? If you ask the second question your brain will give you a list of reasons for your current problem, whereas if you ask the first instead you will start to produce possibilities. Even if they are ridiculous options that would require small miracles to achieve, if you keep asking the question and keep recording any ideas that come to you as you do – you will start to form real life possible solutions – it is inevitable. But, if you constantly ask the questions that lead to stacking the pain of what is ‘wrong’, you will not open the mind to possible solutions and instead will have the brain continually focused on the problem. This causes a lot of pain and is not productive but your brain thinks it is useful for keeping you away from the problem. You cannot rely on your brain to best direct your mind. One super effective way of directing it is through creating questions that best serve you specifically right now and ask openly how it is possible. Make sure that there are no negations such as: No Not Can’t Don’t Won’t Wasn’t Shouldn’t Ask your questions framed in the positive – change a question such as: Why don’t people like me? to How can I build better friendships? How can I be a better friend? How can I create deeper relationships? Why can’t I lose weight? Change it to: What could I do to increase my chance of weight loss? A change in the question, minus the negation and with the movement away from blame or placement that comes with ‘why’ to the more open ‘how’ which immediately suggests multiple options are available. It directs the brain towards a changed outcome. Change your questions, change your life. I have written in a previous blog about the fact that research has shown that 95% of your thoughts today are repeated thoughts that you have every day and 80% of those are negative, on average! Which means that if you just changed this one thing, note the questions – write them down and then convert them. Take out the negation, ask a question that starts with what or how and you have instantly changed that 95% into a reduced amount. You have taken something small and manageable and started to direct your mind’s thoughts. Below are a couple of links to that are brilliant demonstrations of why you can’t always trust your own experience as the trust. Before you watch those clips, let me frame this so you know my intention: my goal is to give high quality, science based, research supported information in order to expose the boxes. Watch the short clips now before we go any further, or at least the first one. https://youtu.be/UfA3ivLK_tE https://youtu.be/f_R9_xdhuNw This is a demonstration of the fact that what we look for we will find and our senses or beliefs are not always able to appreciate a situation in its fulness. Remember that we cannot ever expect to see the whole picture, but we can direct the part of the picture we see. Here is a short analogy to finish with for this week: If you grew up being told that green aliens steal, if you ever meet one, especially the ones with red shoes, be careful with your belongings around them. One day at the doctor’s surgery there is only one chair left and it is next to an alien – wearing red shoes! After you leave you go to get out your wallet to pay for your parking and you find your wallet missing, what are you likely to think? On the other side of town, your cousin grows up with green aliens with red shoes and has grown up playing out every night after school with these guys. In the games your cousin played with the green aliens, they never cheated at sports or games. If your cousin was at the surgery, sat next to a green alien, left and found their wallet missing – would they have the same immediate reaction as you? You know that one of you will call them a thief and the other will assume they left it somewhere. Perspective is everything. Direct it a little better this week by choosing your questions.
