Powerchange

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Standing at the doorway of the year (what I’m doing next)

Dreams are like angels (Joseph Mallord William Turner - The Angel Standing in the Sun 1846)

It’s good to be connected. The human being thrives in community and dies apart. You are connected to me. It might be through business, family, socially or some other variation on the serendipitous interaction of email. Connection is good.

Today is Christmas Eve when we traditionally wait for stars to come into alignment, precursor angels to whisper in our ear and a sense of imminent goodness to happen. Sure, 2010 was a tough year and some aspirations have had to be put on a ventilator for a while – but day by day that infant we call hope will grow imperceptibly into a thriving new year.

In two very happy years at Powerchange.com I have seen the advent of Auto-Response Psychology within a new neuro-scientific approach (recognising that it is our brain that is telling us that we just can’t help it) and help nudge forward the frontiers of new Psychology. As part of this process I’ve walked the ancient paths of Sussex Downland and gazed in wonder at the hills and vistas of Sussex, stopping along the way at Slindon to see lambs being born, sometimes on the very same day as squealing, mewling ideas. I’ve learned how the human mind works and laughed out loud as I’ve seen those ideas work out in practice in sleepy country pubs. I’ve risen before dawn to make the journey to South West London to communicate these ideas to others. I’ve worked with hundreds of individuals to enable them to take back control of their lives.

Who wouldn’t want to improve the way they think?

And in thinking differently, I am moving on. Helping others to change has changed me. Understanding why people do what they do and helping them to change (if they want to) has led to a better understanding of myself. Enabling individuals to reclaim control over the levers of their lives has shown me that I am the master of my own destiny. Healer, heal thyself.

The apocryphal tale is told of an elderly lady living in Moscow at the end of the Communist era. With Glasnost thawing, she was left with the inheritance of fifty years of municipal neglect. A radiator in her lounge had been live electrically for the whole time she had lived in the high-rise apartment block. If she touched it, she received a shock. After a while she had adjusted to this by arranging the furniture around the radiator so that she didn’t have to go near it. Fifty years had passed. One day, there was a knock on the door. A man in a boiler suit was standing there. “Have you had problems with your heating system?” She nodded. “I am here to rectify this. I will only take a few minutes.” She allowed him in and watched as he went to the cupboard under the stairs and reversed the live and earth wiring at the fuse box. “It’s fixed now – go and touch the radiator.” She couldn’t. The habits of fifty years prevented her from touching the offending radiator. The electrician walked up to the unit and touched it. Her eyes widened and tentatively she walked up to the radiator and put her hand on it. In that instant fifty years of avoidance and fear departed.

As human beings of habit, the neurological pathways in our brain will constantly bypass areas of fear (I’ll protect you from the hooded claw, keep the vampires from your door) often with a big ‘hands off’ warning. As soon as the individual realises that they are in control of these feelings and that the feelings are there to protect them, they adjust. The radiator can be touched again.

Perhaps it was watching Series Three of ‘Mad Men’ on TV that did it.    The enigmatic/open, cerebral /animalistic, alpha male/fragile egomaniac Don Draper reminded me of why I entered the advertising industry all those years ago. The eureka moments, the knowledge that only my fevered brain could come up with those ideas. Perhaps it was feeling the loss of not working in a creative team; perhaps I had just felt the overwhelming reservoir tank of creative thinking build up for too long.

Perhaps I just love the feint/thrust/lunge/riposte of advertising, so I was inspired recently to send an email to half a dozen ad agencies whose work I respect and admire (sorry, I’m not naming them here, you know who you are).

Here’s the weird part. One of the companies I had admired from a distance turns out to be run by someone who is also trained in Psychology – and who has run a radio station (Radio Mercury). Historical note: I co-founded and then ran Splash FM in Worthing in 2003-6.

I walked into Zero-FiftyOne after meeting with Neil Macadam and felt like I had been there for years. After talking with Neil Macadam, David Smith and Jon Dudley of Zero FiftyOne I knew that it was time to return to the lodestone and create more words. The thing is, I now know where to send those words to really make a difference. The buzz in the room was familiar. We speak the same language. The glove fitted.

I join Zero FiftyOne on the 4th January. My email will be roy@zerofiftyone.com My landline: 01273 587446; mobile 07803 269154 and the website: www.zerofiftyone.co.uk

The market is like a tough vocal judge waiting for you to hit the right note. It acknowledges your brave, but off-key attempts, smiling patronizingly as you miss the mark. However, the only time it will sit up and take notice is when you hit that note. The one that makes a difference. The exciting thing is that you and you alone can do that. It’s not always obvious before you start what the right note, pitch, scale or emotion is, what the right product is, what the right strategy is. It’s frightening and inspiring realising that you and no-one else knows when that note will appear. Hitting it is a heart-stopping, unpredictable experience. But only you have the talent to give it a shot.

So when would now be a good time to do that?

It would be nice to catch up and hear how you are.  If you would like to stay in touch professionally, socially or personally, that would be great. Dreams are like angels, they keep bad at bay. Let’s make 2011 a really good year.

‘The Power Of Love’ by Frankie Goes to Hollywood

 
I’ll protect you from the hooded claw
Keep the vampires from your door
Feels like fire
I’m so in love with you
Dreams are like angels
They keep bad at bay-bad at bay
Love is the light
Scaring darkness away-yeah
I’m so in love with you
Purge the soul
Make love your goal
 
[1]-The power of love
A force from above
Cleaning my soul
Flame on burn desire
Love with tongues of fire
Purge the soul
Make love your goal
I’ll protect you from the hooded claw
Keep the vampires from your door
When the chips are down I’ll be around
With my undying, death-defying
Love for you
Envy will hurt itself
Let yourself be beautiful
Sparkling love, flowers
And pearls and pretty girls
Love is like an energy
Rushin’ rushin’ inside of me
[Repeat 1]
This time we go sublime
Lovers entwine-divine divine
Love is danger, love is pleasure
Love is pure-the only treasure
I’m so in love with you
Purge the soul
Make love your goal
The power of love
A force from above
Cleaning my soul
The power of love
A force from above
A sky-scraping dove
Flame on burn desire
Love with tongues of fire
Purge the soul
Make love your goal
I’ll protect you from the hooded claw
Keep the vampires from your door
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Time to Leave the Basement

The Skylight Question

Left to our own devices, we like the basement. It’s cosy, warm and undemanding. We have thrown cushions all over the floor, there is a widescreen TV and DVD with surround sound and the floor is littered with our favourite films. After heading in through the front door it’s easy to fall down the steps to this subterranean den filled with our favourite things. The hi-fi goes on at the press of a button and our lifetime soundtrack plays.

This is especially true after a hard day. We arrive home weary, bruised, feeling like a trapped animal. All we want to do is find the familiar dent in the cushions in our favourite room and fall into it.

Our brains are structured that way too. We may have a billion neurons per square millimetre in our brains but we have familiar cosy places there too. The axon that connects one neuron to another (communicating information, memory and feelings like an electrical conductor) tells it that there’s no point doing anything different because the outcome will always be the same. This reinforces the myelin sheath that surrounds the axon that transmits the behaviour that we always display at these times. The more often we exhibit this behaviour, the more embedded it becomes and the less likely it is that we will change it.  Hence red anger spasms; habitual behaviour, automatic responses, addiction, violent ‘away-from’ reactions, childish behaviour when confronted by familiar threats.

Down in the basement the comfortable music plays and even when we don’t like the décor any more and the music has worn thin and repetitive we still go there because we don’t know where else to go.

One day it becomes unbearable. It’s as if a fire has broken out in our well-worn den and the flames are licking at our nest. We run up the stairs, a decision forced upon us by circumstance, but a meta-action – not really our choice. The arguments for and against making a life-changing decision have just been transferred up a level. We desperately hope as we run that the fire down below will be contained and we can recreate our comfort zone on the floor above.

But the fire doesn’t stop. It follows up the stairs and forces us to move up another flight. We could fight but it’s easier to run and we move up again, desperate to find safety, non-aggression, non-confrontation, the status quo again.

The fire pursues us. All the decisions we’ve been putting off for years are being dragged behind us in a hastily grabbed blanket. As we move up floor by floor they become a little heavier.

Finally we get to the attic. And our bag of pluses and minuses, ‘if I do this then I lose that’ stalemates is dragged up with us. The flames and heat are also climbing the stairs behind us. That really big decision about that activity, relationship, life decision, ‘I can’t help it’ action is trying to suffocate us. The heat is becoming unbearable. If I do that, then this will happen. What do I value most?

Then you spot the skylight. Through it the stars twinkle unperturbed by your plight. Outside the night sky is cool, clean and free.

Inside, the flames are moving up a step at a time. You open your bag of indecision and look inside. The ‘Either/Or’ option is already smouldering. The skylight beckons. Beyond it lies just one question.

‘What do you value more than any of this?’

As you open the skylight and climb through, leaving your bundle of old contradictions behind, there is room for you and the answer to that question. Nothing else.

When you climb through into the fresh air and freedom, you realise that you knew the answer to that question all along.

And you take it with you.

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The Trouble with Rock Pools

 

 

A life in the shallows (c) Callum Stannard Photography

The Trouble with Rock Pools

The trouble with rock pools

Lies in their ability to amuse for hours

Within the umbilical of the shore

Brand new worlds in a bucket

Full of small, perfectly formed life

Not going very far.

Toe-dipping experience, warm, comfortable

Filled with tiny creatures of no moment

Inching their way around pebbles

Winking at you with their baby claws

Raised in small battlefield surrender

Our shadows fly over the surface, somehow

More courageous, yet not immersed

The seaweed is a figleaf not a forest,

Easy to look beneath and the silver shadows

darting hint at more but we always get less.

The sun shines on the familiar, warming and dispersing

A step away from condensation, the tide runs half a lap

The seagulls move in different circles

The first wind never quite gets its second

We are safe where we can see, sure

That we will never be out of our depth

We paddle, not plunge

The trails of our life idle on the surface

Too small even for horizons

Learned in an instant, available the same time tomorrow

Same time, same place, same me

Asking is this a small break in the beach

Or a taste of the ocean?

The trouble with rock pools

Lies with our fascination with life in the shallows

Instead of the land out to sea.

 

 

Roy Stannard

7th October 2010

 

Life and depth (c) Callum Stannard photography

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Faith in a Big Society


Faith that we're going somewhere

The Big Society as defined by David Cameron and the new Right puts the wider community ahead of narrow self-interest. Without faith this won’t work.

Faith tells us:

  • That when we flick a switch there will be electricity
  • That paying into a mortgage is an investment in the future
  • That this is not all there is
  • That tomorrow will arrive as usual
  • That the future will be better than the past
  • That it is worth helping our neighbour
  • That we are not just the sum of our chemical components
  • That Society (Big or otherwise) has a future

We negotiate life hoping that the future will bear fruit. Without faith, family planning would be a family gamble. Without faith, we wouldn’t sacrifice for the future – the present would be a cynical, nihlistic pig’s trough of satiated appetites. Nothing to hold onto – or for.

The opposite of faith is worthlessness, helplessness and hopelessness. Or put it another way – despair.

Human Beings need faith

How God changes your brain (2009) / Born to Believe (2006) – Andrew Newberg MD and Mark Robert Waldman

These very astute Psychologists have produced research to show how human beings are wired for a belief in and an antenna for God. Humans need to believe in something. Time spent meditating improves memory and slows down neurological damage caused by growing old. They show that energy spent dwelling on negative thoughts for any longer than 20 seconds starts to damage the physiology of the brain. At Powerchange we call this the 19 seconds theory. Spend any longer than that on bad stuff and it will take ten times as long to repair the damage. Newberg and Waldman argue that we have a God neuron in the brain that expands the more we contemplate spiritual matters. The more we tune in, the better the reception.

Maybe that’s why, for many, God is more of a feeling than an idea. God came to earth because he was lonely and missed us and was prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to get us back. Logically, this seems absurd. Delusional. But there is a wellspring of desire in our hearts that wants it to be true. Faith and hope speak to our hearts more than to our heads.

People with faith tend to live longer, live happier lives, have longer marriages, divorce less and have less illness. Oh yes, and they have fewer heart attacks..

Even atheists think faith is a good idea.

Matthew Parris – ‘As an Atheist I truly believe that Africa needs God’ published in The Sunday Times Dec 28th 2008

“Christianity .. offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.”

Joan McGregor, Professor of philosophy and bioethics at Arizona State University, contends that the mind can influence the body, citing the power of prayer, meditation and social groups.

“We waste a lot of money on drugs and invasive therapies when we could go in another direction,” she says, “We ought to be studying this and harnessing the power of the mind.”

Professor Tor Wager, Professor of Psychology at Columbia University has researched the role of placebo in the human brain:

“The human brain is not like a machine, but like a river with a lot of ongoing processes,” said Wager. “What you do when you give someone a drug is you nudge that and produce all sorts of ripple effects.”

Wager has shown how the neurochemistry of the placebo effect can relieve pain in humans. He found that the placebo effect caused the brains of test volunteers to release more of a natural painkiller.

The placebo effect is an improvement in a medical condition caused by a patient’s belief as opposed to actual treatment.

The human being naturally generates faith in the process of healing. Healing results even when no actual chemical or clinical intervention is made. Our psychology needs faith wired into it. Take it away and illness, darkness and death result.

Why do We Need Faith?

Because jumping over the ledge into the unknown is better than certain death in the burning building.

Even if God were a placebo, we would still keep a packet of him on our person. What Dawkins and the selfish mob fail to realise is that the human race is better off believing in the idea of God.

Take that away and you take away hope.

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A letter to the six year old me

'One sees clearly only with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eyes.''

There are many things it would have been useful to know back then..

I was a cute kid, light brown hair with bright, wide open eyes, curious about everything, trusting about a lot more. I was a first born so for the first four years of my life I was Le Petit Prince, the centre of attention and the focus of everything – except that for the first five years I didn’t speak. I don’t know why. I was bright, inquisitive, played inside and outside the home with brave abandon. I just didn’t communicate in the dimension we call language.

Maybe I was scared, fearful of something deep inside. Afraid of being wrong, of mistakes that I wasn’t fully conscious of, but knew I could make if I wasn’t careful. I think I was told I was wrong a lot, but that could be a retrospectively imposed memory because I was told off a lot later. I think I was happy, but I can’t be sure which probably says it all.

For more than fifty years I have stored my only memory of this period in my life. I have a recollection – in fact, more than that, a dramatic video clip in my head of me on a tricycle pedalling furiously around the block where we lived in Southend, trying to get home before the storm broke. The black clouds were gathering like bullfrogs in the sky above and that heavy feeling in the air that gathers before a thunderstorm was pressing down on me. I could hear a distant rumble, like a chest of drawers being pulled forcibly across next door’s landing. The first spots of rain started to fall out of the sky and my urge to get home or at least out of the storm led me to propel the pedals faster. I was no more than a street away yet I felt as if I had accidentally drifted into a foreign country. I started crying, still pedalling furiously, in an attempt to beat the storm, to keep ahead of it, to work harder in order to beat it. But however hard I turned the wheels of my tricycle, I could not overtake the storm. The clouds opened, the rain fell, the thunder tumbled out of the sky and the lightning whipped across my retinas in a way I hadn’t experienced before. It was my first storm. I didn’t know that it wasn’t the end of the world. It would have been good to have been told that.

Earlier today I learned some lines by rote to use them in a minor drama. I learned them assiduously in order to be able to perform a two-handed piece with a friend who had also learned his lines. The cues were important. I assembled the script in my head. I could recite it word for word perfectly. In rehearsal I could speak and act like Gielgud – with no hesitation. When it came to it in front of an audience, my mind went blank in the middle of the piece – almost as if a piece of my brain had decided to bolt for the door.  Afterwards, I realised that I had unconsciously gone back to when I was six at Bournemouth Park Junior School in Southend where I was performing T.S. Eliot’s Macavity the Mystery Cat in its entirety on stage. I lost my way half way through and was castigated in a most unpleasant way for it by my class teacher. Since then, I have had a block about performing learned lines on stage. I have excused this by saying that I am a free spirit, that lines represent restraints, that I am an improviser, a spontaneous speaker, a kind of frontiersman of the performing world. That’s why I have worked in radio. No script. That’s why I have been a teacher. No script. That’s why I love to speak unrehearsed on stage to anyone who will listen. No script. My life as a whole has been lived without a script. All because a misguided Mrs Squeers gave me a hard time when I was six years old.

No script, ergo no safety net, no balance wheels, no seat belt, no contingency plan, no pension, does make for a more interesting life. But having cues simply means you can ignore them if you want to. Maybe I went off the rails because the rails resembled lines. ‘You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.‘

Now that the six year old me and I have got acquainted, here are some things that I could share with him.

Just to make him feel a little better.

You are loved, little guy. There is no-one else in the world like you. You will give a whole lot of pleasure to a lot of people before you’re done. You will make mistakes but these won’t matter that much, not compared with the good you’ll do. All those mistaken ideas about not being worth very much are wrong. They were put into you by people who were damaged themselves. In fact, you’re priceless. Priceless in a way that might lead to people dying for you, perhaps even God himself. The love that you missed out on as a kid will be made up to you many times over, because you will hand it out plentifully to others. You will make an integral and unique difference to other people’s lives. You will brighten up many people’s days, every day. You will feel the black heart of other’s prejudices and blame yourself before understanding that it is their heart, not yours, that is hurt. You will have a place that you can call home in your own heart. You will cry, you will despair, but you will never be worthless. You will think you’ve failed, but that will just be another step towards success. You may feel lost, but that will just be exploration. You may feel like you have gone down dead ends but these will be just be paths less trodden. You will experience fear, but it will seem much better when you call it excitement instead. You will feel driven, but you will realise that no-one can drive like you, and it was you driving all along. Your ambition will feel out of reach until you understand that it is your ambition and you can do what you like with it. You will feel like a failure, but you will also feel like another hug, and have that instead. You will find out that the difference between depression and happiness is just a raising of the eyes from the ground into the eyes of another and smiling. Anything you decide to do will be your decision, even though you may feel guided by someone one else. There is no-one to blame. But the credit belongs to you as well. All of it. However hard you try, you will never stop being a human being of infinite worth.

You are now and will always be loved, little Prince.

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England’s Dreaming

We'll meet again, don't know how, don't know when..

“I think the best place to work in football is England”

Jose Mourinho

“My mortal foe can no ways wish me a greater harm than England’s hate; neither should death be less welcome unto me than such a mishap betide me”

Elizabeth I

“There’ll always be an England, even if it’s in Hollywood”

Bob Hope

“In England we have come to rely upon a comfortable time-lag of 50 years or a century intervening between the perception that something ought to be done and a serious attempt to do it”

H.G. Wells

‘England expects that every man will do his duty’. With Nelson’s words ringing in my ear, I terminated a training course I was running prior to kick-off at 3pm Sunday 27th June.

I was working in London. I dismissed the delegates early so that they could repair to the hotel bar in order to watch the game. The feeling of anticipation mixed with a layer of fear (Germany..penalties..average age of their team 4 years younger than ours) was palpable.

When Lampard’s goal was disallowed there was a sense of surreal Truffautesque comedy surrounding it – as if we were all shortly going to appear on an edition of Candid Camera or You’ve been Framed – or that Rio Ferdinand was going to say that he’d arranged the whole thing as a Merk (sick joke) on his team mates – and the Nation.

I was feeling unwell anyway so the drive home from London was a bit of a blur, interspersed by Rob Green on Radio Five Live fielding grief-stricken calls from fans who kept repeating the mantra – ‘Fabio, six million a year’ and ‘what are we going to do now?’

People who support Man U or Arsenal or Chelsea (even Liverpool) don’t understand what it is like for a Southend United Supporter (newly relegated to Division Two) to be let down by England as well. The Manchesters and the Chelseas will sail on next season to cup and league glory.

Lower division urchin supporters will have to make do with scraps of good news along the lines of ‘Youth Team Coach has accepted a new Contract’ and ‘Two senior players who were paid more than is allowed in Division Two have been released on free transfers’. It’s a different world.

For us goal line technology consists of a mobile phone strapped to a goalpost in case the goalkeeper is called away to his second job as an undertaker.

The term team strip has a different meaning as well. In Southend United’s case it means key members of the team being stripped by other clubs as we move into the lower subterranean reaches of the Football League where fans arrive with their kit bags because there’s always the outside chance of being asked to play if the Centre Forward doesn’t turn up because he’s had a better offer from Colchester United.

Our longsuffering Manager Steve Tilson (subsequently moved upstairs to be replaced by the old school die-hard Scot Paul Sturrock) is particularly philosophical considering that even after retiring from the game ten years ago he knows he could still play better than half his team. It is especially appropriate that a major supermarket is funding the replacement ground to Roots Hall as most of our team are now officially on the shelf – available on a Buy One Get One Free offer (BOGOF).

The one redeeming fact about all this is that after watching England play like a Cromer Women’s Institute Sunday outing, Southend United will look quite good next season.

Disappointment? It’s all relative..

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Extinguishing the desire to smoke

Take a deep breath and go for it..

You are not a ‘smoker’, you are someone who smokes.

After four hours of coaching Miss Y was set to go, but something seemed not to be right. It was clear that she still harboured a desire to have a cigarette and that this was troubling her. The smoking habit had become a barrier to her doing anything else. If she couldn’t give up smoking how could she expect to achieve her other goals?

Nothing's too big to kick..

I asked her to light up a cigarette and smoke in front of me. She refused. I persisted. She said that she could not smoke in my house. Despite her desire to smoke she could conquer her habit in order to conform with her interpretation of the ‘rules’ of the house. The competing commitment not to offend me and my house rules was greater than her desire to smoke.

I pointed out that this meant that she and not her habit were in control of her smoking behaviour. That she could NOT smoke if she chose. This meant that she could choose not to smoke if she wished. We then made the cigarettes the villains of the piece and then focused on what she wanted more. The answer to that question was – ‘Life’. What did life consist of? Marriage, children, love, happiness, independence and a good job. These are things she wanted more. In the arena of competing commitments, these would win.

What do you want more?

I asked her again if she would like to smoke. She declined. I asked if she wanted to go outside to smoke. She again declined. I asked her to imagine a situation in the future similar to one in the past where she would be confronted by a situation that in the past would have led to her smoking. She said that she would not smoke – that the desire to smoke had gone. She left her packet of cigarettes and lighter on the table and said that she would not need these anymore.

If you would like to quit smoking try asking yourself these questions:

  1. How do you know that you are addicted to smoking?
  2. What advantages are there in calling it an addiction? If it wasn’t an addiction what would it be instead?
  3. Do you smoke when you are asleep?
  4. Do you smoke in front of children?
  5. Do you smoke indoors?
  6. How clean does the air have to be before you will consider not polluting it?
  7. Were you born with a habit? Did you have a habit before you were born?
  8. When did you first decide that this behaviour would give you what you wanted?
  9. Who are you surrendering to when you give in?
  10. Does anyone else make you behave this way?
  11. Whose rules are you living your life by?
  12. Who benefits from your repeated behaviour?
  13. Who decides when you repeat this behaviour and when you don’t?
  14. Whose hand creates this behaviour?
  15. It’s interesting that as we grow up we leave learned behaviour behind when it stops being useful – like using a potty or crossing a road with an adult – what could you leave behind?
  16. What does this behaviour that you learned much earlier in your life still give you?
  17. Assuming you don’t behave like this all the time, what do you decide when you don’t behave this way?
  18. What are the hidden advantages of continuing to do what you are doing?
  19. If the advantages are cancelling out the disadvantages leaving you in stalemate, what does this mean?
  20. If you were the rulemaker what would you change to break the stalemate?
  21. What rules are there that people can apply when they can’t decide between two equally powerful options?
  22. When might you decide that stalemate is a good place to be?
  23. What do you do when you think you can’t win?
  24. If this is a game, what game would you rather be playing?
  25. If you noticed that you have been hiding something, how is hiding helping you?
  26. What would honesty give you instead?
  27. Could honesty help you create a set of new rules?
  28. How have your goals, longings and aspirations changed since you started this behaviour?
  29. What was the difference between behaviours that lasted and those that didn’t?
  30. Supposing that you could draw upon energy any time that you needed it, what difference would that make?
  31. How do people who DON’T succumb to habitual behaviour not do it?
  32. When did you first notice that you were doing this behaviour?
  33. Who made this decision for you?
  34. What would happen if this behaviour were so unique to you that only you could control it?
  35. When you DON’T do repeated behaviour who makes that decision?
  36. If you control the decision not to do it, who controls your decision to do it?
  37. What would it be like to put out one of your fears instead?
  38. Looking back in six months time what did you decide today that changed everything?
  39. Do you want to do something better instead? What could that be?
  40. Supposing freedom meant fresh air?
  41. What would happen if you had to accept responsibility for what you do and how you do it?
  42. When would a good time be to start?
  43. What would happen if someone like you made a good decision for and about themselves?
  44. What do you want more than to just carry on as you are?
  45. Think of a situation in the future where you would have reacted as you did in the past. How are you reacting now?

Smoking is not an illness in the conventional sense. It’s a learned automatic behaviour – at Powerchange.com we call it Auto-Response Psychology. You decided to start. This may have been prompted by a trauma or even an absence of something in your life. Since then, when that original feeling has repeated itself, you reach automatically for a cigarette. The pre-conditions may be boredom, loneliness, stress, hunger, looking cool. These are the triggers – or they used to be. The questions above will have re-wired these responses. You decide when you smoke. You do not smoke continuously (certainly not when you are asleep) and so you already make choices.

Why not choose life instead?

The cigarette is not a person, not a controlling, sentient being. It does not make decisions. It is a passive object. It only lights when you light it. Other people have given up easily when they realise this. You can too.

You are not a ‘smoker’, you are a human being who used to smoke.

You are in control. How does it feel to be someone who has regained control?

Now go and do that thing you wanted to do instead.

More information on addiction and phobia release at www.powerchange.com 

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The Art of Self-Presentation

Spot the light. Then reflect it back.

Ok, you have been asked to present a training seminar. Or make a speech.
You. The You that normally chokes when asked for the time. Lost for words? More like abandoned in a huge wide open space called low self esteem.

It'll all come out in the mouthwash..

We’ll deal with the self-worth issue elsewhere – but let’s get you through that presentation and then you can ask me later about how to rewire your self-worth to 100%. It should take about 30 minutes.

So let’s assume that you have the responsibility to populate the Seminar. How do you get an audience? Simples.

Contact

How will they hear about your event in the first place?

Quality of initial contact is very important. ‘You only have one opportunity to make a first impression.’
Was it Facebook, Linked In or Meetup.com – is it your immediate circle or a little wider. Remember that they have chosen to attend.
That’s quite a compliment to little ol’ you.

Connect

Warming up is essential to any worthwhile connection. This is about demonstrating your trustworthiness in the early part of the Seminar. Create an honest, unsophisticated atmosphere, taking time to honour them, love them, honour their commitment and interest (they have chosen to come). Never overestimate their knowledge – or underestimate their intelligence.

Take time to make people feel good: laughter, looking at them easily – plenty of eye contact, so they can connect with you. Avoid using a lectern and having any furniture between you and them.  Trust yourself.
Take this time to introduce yourself and your organisation/interest/cause/department/whatever, some of the things you offer – and a comment on how being involved has changed your life (or at the very least, your week!). Be honest, without being negative or apologetic.
Thank people for being understanding about anything that goes awry. Love what you say. Say what you love.
Embrace your audience. Endorse, honour, value, praise, reassure, approve them.
Steer their attention to small gems that will change their thinking, rather than blanket knowledge that is easily ignored.
When possible, increase psychological buy-in by having participants sign a register: Name, email, phone, address, how they heard about you. This is ESSENTIAL for your future involvement with these people. Make sure EVERYTHING is perceived as to their advantage (and make sure it is!)

How to overcome the fluttery stuff..

Start this connect process at the moment of contact. This may be when someone meets you in the loo before you come into the room, or as you’re chatting with someone else. It is the peripheral information they will go with most convincingly.

Get some two-way connection. This is easily done by asking if it is too hot/cold in here, or setting some deliberately co-operative activities: Have people stand up, and/or do the Power of Pretend Exercise (Assume it, produce it – pretend you are happy, and lo and behold after five minutes of faking it you really are!). Passing round notes etc. is great. If you’re following another seminar, have them stretch and chat. Be ultra-sensitive and make space for people’s humanity.
Build unity by focusing on what the people in the room have in common. (Honour individuality too) Make notices work for you:
Where the toilets are. Phones: “It’s easy to forget to switch off your mobile phone so if you’re not sure, do feel completely free to check it now.”

Content

People have different learning styles. (You didn’t know that? Contact me if you want to know more).

Now is the time to enjoy using them! The major element of this is to start with the purpose of the seminar. Have something for each person.
Live your brand. What you are THINKING will come out. If you don’t want it to, change it.
What do you want people to absorb, pick up ‘through their skin’? Send it out through YOUR skin!
Do you really need notes? Avoid if you can.  Learn thoroughly what you have to do in the session, so it is part of you.

Continuity

What do YOU want out of this for the future?  Identify the multiple wins. There will be massive opportunities for you if you want to take them. Keep the purpose of the seminar at the front of your mind.

Remember the ‘silken thread’ of business development: most of your business comes from 20% (sometimes just 3%) of your effort – but you don’t know which 20% until later!
Offer several clearly different opportunities for participants to follow up the session. One expensive, one exclusive, one affordable.

Enjoy yourself. They will too. Promise.

The ultra-relaxed look - Roy Stannard with an audience in his pocket

This article is based on the methods used by Powerchange Ltd – the Company I am involved with – for more see www.powerchange.com
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Off the map?

Are you out there?

How often have you heard the expression ‘it’s off the map’, or ‘I haven’t planned for this’, or ‘there is no routemap for what I am going through?’ The language of life often delineates where we go and what we are prepared to try. ‘That’s off limits’, or ‘don’t go there’ have far more impact and meaning than the words first suggest. We hear expressions like that virtually from the womb. In fact, it comes as a surprise that the first words we hear as infants aren’t ‘Welcome to the world, don’t walk on the grass!’ 

As children we will hear exhortations to ‘be careful’, to ‘watch where we’re going’ or ‘look out!’ – the culture of childhood is not to explore or to go to places that we are not supposed to. If anything, this culture of carefulness has become more pronounced in recent years. We sensibly, oh so sensibly channel our kids into the Scout or Guides and allow them to discover new things under very managed circumstances. Nothing wrong with that at all, but kids need to test themselves against bigger, stronger opposition than the local five badges on my sleeve brigade.

Most of us stay on the map for most of our lives. We explore the map, we go the very edge of the map in certain circumstances and occasionally we deliberately get ourselves lost, just to prove that we can survive in the wild. However, we are not in the wild, we are at the edge of a very civilised map. We clutch our compass and probably the phone number of our favoured local cab firm and we stride out with a slight sense of adventure.

When Christopher Columbus discovered America he did not set out with the objective of discovering a place called America. True, there was a sense of a brave new world existing out there somewhere, but not one that was already charted. A true explorer is not someone who re-discovers the known. To find yourself, you have to first lose your bearings.

In American law, discovery is the pre-trial phase in a lawsuit in which each party through the law of civil procedure can request documents and other evidence from other parties and can compel the production of evidence by using a subpoena or requests for production of documents and depositions. The important point here is that the lawyer does not know in advance what this request might turn up. If they did the request would be superfluous and the trial would probably not be necessary.

In the same way, if we know in advance what we are going to discover then actually we have already discovered it and the process of exploration is redundant. When people talk about career and planning their life, what they are attempting to do is read a map that they do not own yet. Let’s consider the word career for a second. A career cannot exist in advance. By definition, a career exists in retrospect. It is printed on a CV. It is difficult to plot or calculate in advance. However, careering about in your job or life in general may have the unexpected consequence of touching the edges of what is possible. You may discover areas of the future that you didn’t know existed.

Staying on the map means that you will not discover what lies off the map, the other side of the horizon, where the places are when you wander off the beaten track. Do you want to live on a beaten track? Do you want to live on the wall or off it?  

You don’t have to subscribe to the National Geographic in order to explore. You don’t need to buy a tent and canoe down the Amazon. You don’t need to be Bear Grylls or Ray Mears. It’s a state of mind not a state of nation.

The first step of discovery is understanding that the door in front of you is locked on the inside, not the outside and that you hold the key. Step through it and breathe in the air. It looks unfamiliar but the sun is shining. Beyond the map, there is another map, undrawn.

Congratulations, you have just become an explorer.

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Loose tongues – can you trust what your voice is saying about you?

What do people hear – you or your voice?

Is your voice saying things about you without you knowing?

As someone who didn’t speak until I was five years old and who has intermittently lost my voice at times of stress in my life, I am interested in matters of the voice.

What does your voice say about you? Can it reveal things without you knowing? Does it attract or repel independently of the rest of our bodies?  Does it give away what we are really thinking without any cognizance from us?

I remember times when I have taken to the platform ready to deliver an inspiring speech, to rally the troops and persuade an audience of my fitness for a role and my voice has swung limply in the wind, cracked when it should have been solid, limped across the finishing line when it should have burst the tape.

The experts in body language will tell you that when your voice rises in pitch at the end of a sentence it means that you lack conviction in what you are saying. Controlling types are adept at making their voices close down like a mantrap at the end of a sentence in a tone that brooks no argument.

High, breathy tones denote turbo-charged emotional types who like facilitating the health and wellbeing of others, but do not inspire fear or respect.

The opening gambit in a sales call will either establish or destroy the same trust. A confident conversational tone will keep the listener on the end of the phone. A shouty sales pitch delivered in sheer desperation will inspire the ring tone. If the pitch of the voice that is speaking to you changes abruptly, there is fair chance that its owner is lying to you. Of course, it could mean that his underpants are too tight.

An extrovert is ‘outed’ by his or her voice which will be louder and more propulsive. An introvert will speak in a more muted and less speedy way – the voice will give away the fact that its owner is a highly analytical type unwilling to make quick decisions and deeply distrustful of  fast, emotional decision-making. An enthusing style personality will find such people irritating in the extreme as they themselves speak quickly, animatedly and without a great deal of forethought. The analyzer will find such people frivolous and unworthy of trust.

At Powerchange we find that the most important element to establish in manipulating the behaviour of others is the establishment of rapport. The voice is a key instrument in this endeavour. If we hear a voice that sounds like our own then we automatically feel at home with it. Not only do we prefer the voice, but we also veer towards believing what that voice is saying.

Research has also discovered that people with attractive voices enjoy better sex lives from an earlier age – and with more partners. Those with attractive voices are also likely to have better bodies – broader shoulders and narrower hips in men. Its equivalent in women would be an hourglass figure, curves and attractive face. That is why we are so disoriented when we encounter rare cases of beautiful voices attached to visually unappealing owners. A phenomenon that is often associated with radio.

When I was eighteen and working in the City of London as a Lloyds Broker I consciously made the decision to alter my voice from a working class quack from the Thames Estuary to that of a sophisticated public school drawl. The former would have held my career back; the latter ensured acceptance from the privileged sons of the land who occupied the underwriting chairs in the Lloyds of London Chamber of the 1970s. I sometimes wonder where my original voice went. Do tapes exist anywhere of me speaking with my untrammeled Southend vowels and Essex glottal stops? My voice allowed me a career in radio later in life and has sometimes afforded me an authority I probably haven’t deserved. It has quelled schoolchildren in classrooms and chaired business meetings. It has commanded platforms and serenaded women, delivered bulletins and bolstered egos. But I sometimes wonder who is speaking.

The voice is an important instrument of persuasion, reason, argument, flattery, anger and sorrow. I usually think before I use it in case something unintended slips out like a piece of kiss me quick doggerel.

It’s good to have an attractive voice. But attractive voices are more likely to be unfaithful – or at least their owners are. This may be connected with the fact that people with nice voices are perceived as having a more desirable personality.

Having a voice that you are comfortable with and sounds relaxed and at ease when it makes an appearance is usually interpreted as meaning that you are a person of worth, secure in your body, confident and great company.

A useful rapport builder and a pleasant bridge. But I’m listening to the voice within.