HOW TO NIP NEGATIVE THOUGHTS IN THE BUD

Everyone has negative thoughts. If you’re human you can’t help it. Even the most positive and inspirational people you know have the similar kind of negative thoughts that you have from time to time. Believe it or not they also make harsh unconscious judgements about people, things and events too! They criticise and self deprecate – but that doesn’t stop them being generally positive and inspirational, does it?

The truth about what goes on in our heads is that we don’t always get to choose the types of thoughts that take place. But we DO get to choose which of those thoughts we pay attention to and do something with.

The majority of the dialogue, imagery, ideas and scenarios that plays out in your thinking is just the stream of background noise your unconscious mind makes as it does its job of making sense of the world around you. It is absolutely harmless. All the time you just leave it be and let it get on with what ever it wants to think about (in which ever way it wants to think about it) there can be no reason for you to get disturbed. It is only when you inject life into a thought and give it wings - when you consciously ‘pick-up’ on innocent background negativity and bring it to the fore by consciously making it louder and potent to your senses - that things start to get a bit messy.

Here’s the thing:

The problem is not that you have the negative thought; the problem is that you take it seriously, like it actually means something.

One of the fundamental keys to having a more positive experience in any area of your life is to stop thinking your thoughts are telling you the truth, or even that they are telling you what you actually believe, for that matter!!!

This is my really simple model to NIP your consciously negative thoughts in the bud.

NIP stands for: Notice – Interrupt – Positive

This is how it works:

NOTICE - The first step is to catch yourself in the act of talking negatively with your internal voice. The very moment you realise you are ‘doing it again’ you can instantly move on to the next step.

INTERRUPT – This means doing or saying something deliberately different in your mind to break the flow of the negative thought. I’ve found one of the best ways to do this is to shout “STOP” in a forceful tone of voice (remember this is using your internal voice – you could get some rather strange looks otherwise!!). Another great way is to imagine you have a volume dial for your internal dialogue and hear the voice quieten all the way down to silence as you turn it.

POSTIVE – Once you’ve interrupted the negative voice you’ll notice there is a moment of silence. Use this space to generate choices for how you could view the thing you were thinking about in a positive way.

Example:

“I really don’t want to give that presentation tomorrow…. It’s taking up so much of my time and I’ve got other more important things to do…. And I’m rubbish at presentations anyway….. I’m going to make a real hash of it, I know it…. My boss’s boss is going to be there…. Everyone will think I don’t know what I’m talking about…………” (Notice)

“STOP!!!………..” (Interrupt)

“OK. Let me just imagine for a moment that the presentation goes perfectly…. Right, there I am standing confidently and talking clearly, making great eye contact. Just relax…. It feels a whole lot better when I visualise the positive and engaged looks on their faces… This could actually be quite a good opportunity for me to raise my profile…..” (Positive)

Try it out. Have fun playing around with that voice in your head, after all it IS yours and you can do what you want with it!!

NLP HELPS WOMAN OVERCOME STAGE FRIGHT

Even the people we consider to be the best in the business (whatever their field may be) are prone to mental sabotage sometimes. Many top entertainers and performers with years of experiences still go through the same old routine of “bricking it” before going on stage. Now, obviously in most cases there is no logical rationale as to why they should still get nervous, after all they are still in the business because the public love them. The reason why these pre-performance jitters continue to exist is because these individuals are anchored an automatic pattern of behaviour that lets them know its time to perform.

You’ve probably heard of actors redirecting their nervous energy into their performance and this can often bring them greater successful. For other talented people though, the mind plays such a tormenting game that they simply freeze and cannot function at all. Stage fright is common and also very understandable. As this article shows (from the 3News website) the key to overcoming it is to interrupt the automatic limiting behaviour and to install more calming and positive response choices. NLP is great for that!!

Most of us have suffered from stage fright to some extent. When people are
asked what they fear the most, speaking or singing in public is often rated in
the top 10.

Edwina Halliwell always loved amateur dramatics and singing, but in her
teens a horrible audition changed everything.

Two years ago she had planned to sing for her husband at their wedding.
Again the nerves returned and she froze.

Campbell Live followed Ms Halliwell on a personal journey to enter the
spotlight once more, as she prepared to enter her kind of hell by walking onto
the stage at the comedy classic in Auckland.

She is usually a bubbly, confident person, until I ask her to stand on
the stage.
"Feel really nervous, legs are like jelly," she says. "I
just want to get off the stage."
Many famous performers have suffered from
stage fright. At the peak of Sir Laurence Olivier's career he became worried he
would be too tired to remember his lines. Barbara Streisand did not sing in
public for 27 years after forgetting the lines to several songs at a concert in
1967.
Fifteen years ago Ms Halliwell loved performing and singing until she
went to an audition and froze when she tried to sing.

Karen Ross knows what she is going through. Ms Ross uses NLP or
neuro-linguistic programming techniques to help individuals and
organisations, here and overseas, change their behaviours.

It is about the brain and how it works with the body.

"It's about how we learn, our behaviours, our thoughts, our feelings,
our habits are created, and by knowing how they're created we know how we can
change them," says Ms Ross.
At the moment Ms Halliwell associates the stage
with fear.

"The way it's stored can be changed quite easily," says Ms Ross. "It
was probably set up in a matter of seconds, so that gives you can idea of how
quickly it can be changed," says Ms Ross.
First she helps Ms Halliwell
imagine what it will be like when she is performing and enjoying it. She then
introduces the idea of a 'trigger point' to help her relax.

Ms Ross identifies a point on Ms Halliwell's hand and connects that to a
sense of calm. She encourages Ms Halliwell to touch that point when nerves start
to take over.
But will it make a difference? Two weeks later we went
back.

It went "really well", says Ms Ross. "We've had two sessions together
and she's ready to sing."
So ready, she headed to the Ivory Lounge in
Auckland, determined to sing for her husband Duncan, something she had wanted to
do at their wedding two years before.
And as quickly as it came, her stage
fright disappeared. She sang to her husband, and while the nerves were still
there, the person who could not even stand on a stage was now singing to an
audience.

It was an incredible change, and even she could not quite believe it.
"Oh my god, I can't believe that, it's just amazing."

The therapy had helped Ms Halliwell confront her fear, and changed the
feelings associated with performing in public.

"When I'm working with a client I can't be sure until we make some
changes, whether that one thing will generalise and help the person feel relaxed
with everything or there might be more than one thing," says Ms Ross. "And in
Edwina's case, it was one thing."

"The difference between before the coaching and after is now, I really
just wanted to do it and I didn't care what it sounded like, it was just really
important for me to do it," says Ms Halliwell. "And it was just such a dream to
get up and sing in front of all those people."
It might not have been her
greatest performance but it was certainly one of, what she hopes, will be many
more.

"It's been really great to see and watch the confidence build up," says
her husband Duncan. "You couldn't hold her back this evening, which is a major
transformation from where it's been before."

www.lifehappens.co.uk