When working with a therapist, coach or counselor, you may get asked to questions that make no sense.  Those questions actually are indicative of how you think and what’s going on in your head.   Sometimes the question seems off the wall, but it’s actually not.

Generally something you said triggered a thought in your therapist, coach or counselor’s mind.  To verify that thought, your coach or counselor might ask a question that seems strange.

For example, suppose you say that you really aren’t sure what to do about something.  Your coach might ask, “When you come into a situation do you usually act quickly after sizing it up, or do you do a complete study of all the consequences and then act?”

Your answer indicates whether you are active, reflective or both.  If you are active, it means that you make decisions quickly and jump into things with little information.  If you’re reflective, it means that you like to know as much as possible before you make a decision.  If you’re both, it means that you’ll make a decision quickly and like to follow up with facts and data to ensure you’ve made the best decision.

When your answer to the question that you’ve been asked doesn’t match what’s expected, then your coaching session might take a different turn.  It could be indicative of the root cause of the problem.

The challenge is knowing what questions to ask.  Fortunately, a Master Practitioner does know the right questions to ask at the right time.

To learn more about how asking the right questions can benefit you, talk to a Master Practitioner today.

From a Neuro-Linguistic Programming standpoint, there are only a couple of reasons why relationships fail; unsatisfied love strategies, negative anchors and the inability to communicate.

We use strategies for everything. We have a strategy for knowing that we’re loved, a strategy for making a purchase, even a strategy for brushing our teeth. Our strategies, or steps, help insure that everything is as it should be for us.

When it comes to romantic relationships, there are basically three ways that we communicate love; visually by taken someone places or buying them things, auditorially by telling them we love them or kinesthetically by touching them in that special way. When we first start our relationship, we do it all. Over time we revert back to our preferred mode of expressing love … which is not necessarily the same as our partner. Fortunately, if you always “date” your partner like you did when you first met, you’ll never have this problem.

Anchors, or more accurately emotional anchors, are created all the time when you are in a peak emotional state and receive some stimulus. For example, most people have some reaction when looking at their countries flag or listening to certain songs.

A negative anchor is one that is counterproductive. For example, if you hate your job and are angry when you come home and then you see your lovers face, you may transfer that anger to them so that just seeing their face makes you angry.

You can collapse a negative anchor by triggering a powerful positive anchor, like your favorite song, at the same time as the negative anchor. This has the effect of diluting the negative anchor like cream does to coffee. The more powerful the positive anchor, the better the result.

When it comes to communicating with others, it’s important to realize that we all have our own individual language. Part of our language is the meaning of words and another part is whether we are thinking and speaking from an auditory, kinesthetic, or visual mode. If you are working auditorially and the person you are trying to communicate with is visual, you may find that you don’t understand each other even though you may be saying the same things.

To help with communication mismatches, listen to the words that are being used and echo similar words back. A person who’s in visual mode will use words like see, look, picture, and imagine. Auditory people will use words like hear, click, and sound. Kinesthetic or feeling people will use words like feel, concrete, thick or heavy.

To learn more about how to improve communication, contact us to register to become an NLP Practitioner.

• Anxiety disorders are frequently diagnosed with other disorders such as depression and bi-polar disorders, eating disorders, or substance abuse.
• Many people are said to suffer from more than one anxiety disorder.
• Approximately twice as many women as men have been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder.
• Anxiety disorders are the most common mental health problem in the United States today.

What does all this mean? It means that there are a number of people in the world who have or believe they have some variety of anxiety disorder.  Many of these people think they don’t have a choice.  Do you?

If you go to the doctor with a mental health issue such as anxiety, you are likely to end up with a prescription medication. You could also treat the issue naturopathically through holistic medicines.  There are many who choose to ignore the issue hoping it will go away.

For some the anxiety disorder is chemical in nature, the result of some other medication or improper nutrition. Good nutrition will go a long way to helping resolving these types of anxiety issues.  There are a number of texts on the subject.

Using Time Line Therapy®, you can effectively release anxiety, depression, and resolve eating disorders and substance abuse. That’s because Time Line Therapy® gives you choices.

By going back to the decisions made in the past and re-evaluating them, you get more choices.  In fact, you get the ability to train your unconscious mind to handle anxiety, to overcome depression, and to be free of anxiety disorders.

If you’d like to find out more about how a Time Line Therapy® Master Practitioner can help you or a loved one with Anxiety Disorders, feel free to contact The New You Academy at (888) 505-1399 for more information.

And what happens when that other shoe drops? Often, that feeling of dread, the feeling that everything is going wrong is dependent on two things; your focus and your ability to handled overwhelm.

As a general rule, overwhelm is relatively simple to resolve. Simply, ask yourself what specifically you’re overwhelmed about. Make a list. Generally, you’ll find that what seems to be a huge mountain is actually a small mole hill.

Focus on the other hand is another issue. What you tend to see in the world is what you’re focusing on. If everything appears to be going wrong, take a look at what you’re focusing on. Is everything really as bad as it seems? Can you find at least one good thing in the situation?

Changing your focus and you change your outlook. Of course it’s not always an easy task. Fortunately Time Line Therapy® can help you get past the negativity in your life that causes your outlook to be something other than you want.

To find out more about how Time Line Therapy® can help you overcome the negatives in your life, contact The New You Academy

On the other hand, you could be focusing on all the positive qualities about someone or something while ignoring the red flags, the issues that might indicate a problem down the line.

The important thing is to realize what your focusing on and to expand your focus to encompass all aspects of the situation. By being objective, by expanding your focus, you gain the ability to choose what is in your best interest, what serves you.

If you’re not where you want to be in life, if you’re not with who you want to be with, take a look at what you are focusing on. Because your focus determines what you get and what you have.

Your focus is determined in part by the choices you had and the decisions you made along the way. Those decisions color your focus and may blind you to other possibilities. Fortunately, you can do something about it.

Simply re-evaluate your choices and make new decisions; ones that support you. If you need help, consider a session with a Master Practitioner of Time Line Therapy®.

To find out more, contact The New You Academy today.

Why does it have to hurt so bad? The reason for the pain actually depends on many things including your point of view, how many other times you’ve been hurt, and what decisions you’ve made in the past.

Your point of view, or how important other people’s opinions are to you plays an important role in how badly you get hurt, if you get hurt. In Neuro-Linguistic Programming, it’s called your frame of reference. If you’re externally referenced, other peoples opinions are very important to you. The more important other people are to you, the more likely you are to get hurt.

Of course, having been hurt before also plays an important part. This is because of the way we store and process emotions. The technical term is “Gestalt”, which means as a collection of related items.

When we experienced hurt for the first time, our unconscious mind stored it for future reference. The next time we had a similar experience, it was stored with the first one. After a while, we have a chain of hurt stored. When we experience it again, our unconscious recognizes the feeling and brings all the other instances to bear as well.

The decisions you’ve made about other people and how you are to be treated plays a part as well. If, in your past, you decided that when people get too close, they end up hurting you, you’ll create, unconsciously, instances where that’s true.

Using NLP, we might reframe the instances of hurt that you can recall to teach your unconscious a new perspective, a new way to look at hurt. Using Time Line Therapy®, we would guide you to releasing the hurt and any related limiting decisions that you hold allowing you to grow from the experience.

To learn how you can release the hurt of the past and live a happier life, contact The New You Academy to schedule a complimentary session with a Master Practitioner.

Often, we create the situations or events of our lives by the conversations that we have with ourselves, our self talk.  Those conversations describe our focus.  Our focus defines what happens in our lives and how we respond to it.

Our focus is largely a product of what we believe about ourselves.  Once a belief is formed, we unconsciously find ways to prove that it’s true.

For example, let’s say you wake up thinking “Today is going to be a terrible day!”  You get dressed, get your coffee and spill a bit.  A bad omen!  You step outside to a torrential downpour.  As expected, everyone is driving slower than normal because of the rain.  You get to the work only to find out that nothing is happening as you expect it!  The coffee is burnt and you’ve got way too much to do and too little time to do it in.  Lunch time rolls around and you realize that you don’t have time to eat because of pressing deadlines.  When the day is over, you feel like you’ve got nothing accomplished.

Tomorrow, you wake up thinking “Today is going to be a great day!”  You get dressed, get your coffee and spill a bit.  Without thinking, you grab a paper towel and wipe up the spill.  You step outside to a torrential downpour and stop and take a deep breath, inhaling the rain moistened air.  As expected, everyone is driving slower than normal because of the rain and you are thankful that everyone is being so careful.  When you get to work, you find out that nothing is as you expect it and so you take a moment to regroup and enjoy the chaos.  Lunch time rolls around and you realize that you don’t have time to eat because of the pressing deadlines, so you grab a quick snack and continue working.  When the day is over you feel like you got a lot done.

What’s the difference?  Certainly not the events of the day.  They were the same.  No, it was your attitude and your response to them.  In one case, you determined ahead of time that the day was going to be terrible, in the other great.  The interesting thing is that you can decide over and over again how your day is going to be.  You can choose to have a great day no matter what.

If you find that it is difficult for you to create a magnificent day for yourself, consider Time Line Therapy®.  Using Time Line Therapy®, a Master Practitioner can guide you to reevaluating the decisions of your past that have determined your focus so you can create great days.

To talk to a Master Practitioner, contact The New You Academy today.   In the space of thirty minutes, you will get all the information you need to make an educated and informed decision about whether or not Time Line Therapy® is right for you.

You are where you are today because of the choices you’ve had and the decisions you’ve made along the way. If you continue to make the same types of decisions you’ll get the same results, things will never change.  Or will they?

Often in order for us to grow, you need to fall from where you are. It’s like being on the precipice of a cliff with a deep crevice below you. Across the expanse is the change you are seeking. To get to where you want to go you need to cross the expanse. To do that, you need to go down into the crevice and back up the other side. The problem is that when we fall into the crevice we generally want to get back to where we were, rather than grow and change.

In Neuro-Linguisitic Programming, we call this the NLP Model of Change. It’s in the crevice where real growth occurs. That’s when we pull ourselves up the other side and life starts getting good again.

Unfortunately, you can’t get back to where you were, but this is where we spend most of our time. It’s only when you let go of the past, reevaluate your decisions and begin the climb, that you can grow.

So where your future is going is entirely dependent on your willingness to grow and to reevaluate the choices you’ve made on the way.

To learn how, you can reevalutate the choices you’ve had and the decisions you’ve made. Register for Unlocking the Secret to Your Success Today. Contact us for details.

Or … is it?

We all have unique internal languages because we represent information differently in our minds. Our unconscious stores information symbolically and we tend to represent that information visually, auditorially or kinesthetically. More importantly, different things have different meanings to each of us.

We derive meaning for words, phrases or ideas based upon the context in which they’re used.  We derive context from our experiences and since each of us have a different set of experiences we have different meanings.

That is not to say that the meanings are entirely different. After all, if they were, you wouldn’t be able to understand this article. And yet, it’s the subtle differences that make all the difference.

Purple to you might not mean the same as purple to the next person. After all there are different shades of purple. When does purple become lavender, deep purple, or royal purple?  You might say “Ah but they’re all shades of purple”, but are they? It’s all in what it means to you.

Much of what you do when you’re thinking is trying to apply meaning to words pictures, sounds, tastes, smells and effectively every aspect of your life. You do this through the experiences that you’ve had.  By comparing your experiences to the current situation you derive meaning.

Next time you’re in conversation with someone ask them what certain things mean to them. For example, what does it mean to be in love? Is anger the same as pissed off? Or is lavender the same as purple? The answer may surprise you. The lesson here is to never assume that you know what something means.

To learn more about how people think, register to become an NLP Practitioner. Contact us for details.

The truth is there are stages of hypnosis just like there are stages of consciousness.  In fact at some point in your life, you’ve been in a trance or an altered state of consciousness where your unconscious mind is more susceptible to suggestion and your conscious mind is less aware.

Many people come to a hypnotherapist thinking that there is something about a trance that is markedly different than their “normal” state of consciousness.  This is definitely not the case.  A light trance will feel no different from relaxation.  Since trance is a normal, natural state, then you will likely feel a feeling of familiarity, no matter how deep in a trance you go.

Roughly 20% of the population can go into a light trance only.  This is really a state relaxation.  You may have experienced this if you’ve been driving and suddenly thought “wait … where am I?”  Or, if you really get into a movie and get happy or sad at the appropriate times, or feel your heart pounding during an action sequence, you are in a trance.

Another 60% of the population will not get any deeper than a medium trance.  A medium trance more like that state that you’re in just before you wake up.  It’s a state where your conscious of not quite being fully awake and not being fully asleep.  Some call it the twilight state.

The remaining 20% of the population will go all the way into a deep trance.  These people will obtain that state where they are closer to sleep. Some have even said this state resembles a deep sleep or sleep walking.

Depending on the level of trance you can obtain, when working with a hypnotherapist, you can increase your focus and concentration, change the way that you feel about habits such as smoking or drinking, and change many other behaviors.  By consciously entering into a trance, you can improve your retention and recall, enhance your ability to relax and many other things.

So, can you be hypnotized?  Yes … the question is really, how will hypnosis improve your life?  To find out more, contact a Master Practitioner today to learn more about how you can use Hypnosis in your life.