The Secret to the Quality of Your Life

On 09.27.09, In coach. coach montreal, coaching, nlp, personal development, self-improvement, By David Kynan

Ever wondered what causes one to live a life of joy and success, and another to struggle and suffer constantly? I think I figured it out.

A unique capacity all humans have is the ability to make decisions. In nearly every moment of our existence we are making decisions. We decide what we are going to wear, what to have for breakfast, which way we are going to drive to work, and on and on. Although it is out of our awareness we are also constantly deciding what to focus on, what to think, how to respond and how to feel.

In order to make decisions we engage in a mental process that runs through a number of steps until the decision is made and action is taken. For each of us this sequence or decision making strategy is mostly out of our awareness- it goes on behind the scenes and under the radar. Also, for each of us this process is highly individual- we each make decisions in our own unique way.

But besides decisions in the now, we have been making decisions all our lives. As soon as our mental and intellectual capacities begin to develop, the unconscious decision making process gets underway. Without even being aware of it, at a very young age we begin to decide what we want, what to value, what things mean to us, what to believe, what to think and feel and how to respond to various circumstances. These early decisions become set and when we are older we find ourselves thinking and behaving in preset ways and wondering why. Even the way in which we make decisions was set with a decision.

The quality of our lives is a direct result of our decision making strategy. Some people live extraordinary lives filled with love, abundance and happiness while others struggle for these things day in and day out. I believe that the difference that makes the difference in the quality of people’s lives is the quality of the decision making strategy that has guided each one of us through every day of our lives.

Here’s why. Throughout life, whenever we are faced with new circumstances or challenges, the mind runs a process to decide how to respond. The mind begins to shuffle through possible responses until it settles on one that is appropriate. Your mind has done this ever since you were extremely young. Once it settles on a response it thinks it appropriate, it puts it into practice. The responses it chooses become habituated- we end up with habitual ways of thinking, feeling and behaving. So what makes the difference in the quality of life?

Some people have excellent decision making strategies. When this process runs, the end result is empowering and enables the individual to respond to situations and circumstances in a way that enhances life. But there are those whose decision making strategy is flawed. The responses chosen at the end of the sequence leave them disempowered and at the mercy of their thoughts, their emotions and their life circumstances.

Today, many in the field of psychology and personal development agree that whatever we experience is, on some level, a choice, whether conscious or unconscious. If someone experiences depression, for example, this was likely an unconscious choice of how to respond to a given set of circumstances. The person’s mind ran through the possibilities of how to respond to challenges and the best possibility it found was the one it implemented. When the decision making process ends with such a disempowering result, I would say the strategy is flawed.

So what makes the difference between someone who ends up with resilience and empowerment and someone who ends up with the opposite?

There are two vital factors. The first is creativity. As the mind shuffles through possibilities, how creative is it in generating options? Does it just consider old default options that didn’t work in the past or does it generate new possibilities that might work better in the future?

Imagine going through life constantly making decisions with no access to your creative resources. You will constantly react out of old patterns and end up with the same results you have always ended up with. As you go through life you gain wisdom and experience, you learn from others around you and even have options and possibilities presented to you from books, television and movies. All these things can be drawn on to increase your creative potential for responding to different circumstances.

The most important aspect of the decision making strategy is what I call anti-virus software. When a decision is made and an appropriate response is settled upon, does the mind run a quality control check to make sure this is really the best response? In strategies that lead to disempowerment it does not and there are negative consequences. If the strategy ends with, “Ya, this will do” without a bit of “Hm, what might be wrong with this? Is there anything better?” life will be pretty rocky. This final step weeds out responses that disempower like depression, worry, anxiety, frustration, stress, overwhelm etc.

I realized one day as I looked back on the past on how I had become who I had become that in my own decision making strategy all throughout life there was both a lack of creativity and a lack of quality control. This left with responses to the challenges of life that were less empowering. I had to update my internal software and program in a new strategy that would enhance the quality of my life from that point on.
If your life isn’t the way you want it, take a look at how you have been making decisions about how to respond to life. You can always choose new and better ways of responding to what life sends your way.


 
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Our Changing Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of the Mind

On 04.08.09, In coaching, coaching montreal, neuroplasticity, neuroplasticity montreal, neuroscience, neuroscience montreal, nlp montreal, nlp personal change, By David Kynan

I got a call the other night from my friend Charles in Virginia.

“Dave, The brain is plastic.”

Charles has a few PhDs so I tend to listen to what he has to say.

“Neuroscience is proving that the brain is not fixed, it’s not hardwired like we once thought. We’ve found that the brain is constantly rewiring itself. The brain is like clay, and we can mould it how we want.”

“What?” I asked. “Clay?”

Charles went on: “The brain is malleable, it’s flexible, it’s constantly changing, which means we have an even greater capacity to change than we ever thought.”

I couldn’t wait to start to explore what Neuroscience is calling “neuroplasticity,” the capacity of the brain to change and form new neural pathways.

What I discovered is fascinating. The brain is likely the most complex structure in the world, and it is one of the greatest mysteries waiting to be unraveled by modern science. Despite endless research, we are far from fully understanding it secrets.

Yet now we may be closer than ever. The discovery of neuroplasticity may revolutionize the fields of medicine, psychology and countless others.

Traditionally the human brain has been seen as relatively hardwired and fixed, an immutable structure that is, for the most part, unchangeable. This perception led to the belief that our most common psychological problems were irremediable. Common issues such as anxiety or bi-polar disorder were deemed incurable, life-long conditions that one would have to learn to live with. The effects of accidents, strokes and other medical problems were seen as untreatable, conditions one would have to manage but could never resolve.

But the discovery of neuroplasticity has raised the question: Are we prisoners of our hard wiring and doomed to suffer because of the structure of our brain or can untreatable condition actually be treated?

Named “one of the most extraordinary discoveries of the twentieth century” by Canadian psychiatrist Norman Doidge, neuroplasticity refers to ability of the brain’s to alter its structure in response to experience. Neuroscience demonstrates that the brain is constantly forming new neural pathways, removing old ones, and altering the strength of existing connections. This means that the brain is able to adjust and adapt physically at any age to compensate for an injury or illness and to adapt to new situations or changes in the environment. The brain is not fixed, but rather, it’s like clay – a malleable structure that moulds itself in response to information and experience.

In the past, it was believed that if one had a stroke and lost movement of an arm for example, they would never be able to regain motion. No efforts for treatment were made because it was believed that the brain was irreparably damaged in a certain area. Yet now we know that if someone has a stroke and is rehabilitated, the damaged area may forever remain damaged, but another part of the brain will change and adapt to take over the functioning for the affected limb. The brain adapts!

It is now known that through repetition and practice of behaviours the brain changes. New neurons grow or connections between existing neurons are strengthened. If you practice a new skill, the area of the brain responsible will change. For practice to make perfect, the brain actually alters its physical structure. Even into old age, learning a new skill changes the structure and function of the brain.

But we don’t actually have to “do” anything to rewire the brain. Through decades of work treating patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), Jeffrey Schwarz, author of “The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force,” made an extraordinary finding while using the therapy he developed. Schwartz discovered that his patients were effecting significant and lasting changes in their own neural pathways. It was a scientific first: by actively focusing their attention away from negative behaviours and toward more positive ones, Schwartz’s patients were using their minds to reshape their brains. They used their mind to change their brain.

One of the main tenets of neuroplasticity is that the brain can be rewired through stimuli that is either external or internal. Experience, learning and behaviour can cause changes in the brain, but so can thought and imagination. The implications of this are striking: if your brain changes due to thought and imagination, you can use your mind to rewire it for positive change. It’s not just the brain that controls the mind – it’s the mind that controls the brain.

In his bestselling book, “The Brain the Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science,” Normad Doidge details countless examples of extraordinary feats of brain rewiring. The New York Times made the following comment: “The power of positive thinking finally gains scientific credibility. Mind-bending, miracle-making, reality-busting stuff…with implications for all human beings, not to mention human culture, human learning and human history.”

Want an example of the power of the mind? The December 2007 issue of Men’s Health detailed a study in which participants were asked to visualize themselves doing bicep curls. They did no weightlifting whatsoever, yet their average bicep size grew by 13%!

To make it to the Olympics athletes often spend just as much as or more time visualizing their performance as they do practicing. They know that we can train the body through the mind, but why have we limited this extraordinary human ability to the world of sports?

Imagine: every time you learn or experience something new, your brain is being rewired. New connections are forming and old ones are withering away. Recent connections are strengthening and ones you no longer need are disappearing. In every moment you have the capacity to reinvent yourself. If you choose what to put in your mind you can decide what to reinforce and what patterns and habits of thinking, emotion and behaviour you will no longer nurture.

As a personal trainer for the mind, each day I help clients rewire their brains to remove the neural pathways that lead to anxiety, depression, fear and form new connections that automatically leads to peace, joy, passion, wealth and success. Through an active and dynamic process of “mind coaching” we provide the brain with new stimuli – new experience and information that translate into new mental programming. We literally train the brain. Even in my free coaching session for those who want to have the experience, clients feel what it is like to rewire their brain.

As a result of neuroplasticity, people recover from strokes, overcome learning disabilities, free themselves of emotional conditions and train their minds for greater success. Neuroplasticity reveals that we have the power to rewire our brain by providing it with the right information and experience.


 
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The Dance of the Mind: The Key to Superior Performance

On 02.06.09, In business coach, coaching, executive coaching, life coach, life coaching, neuro linguistic programming, neuro-semantics, neurosemantics, nlp, nlp coach, success coaching, By David Kynan

In the quest for health, wealth and happiness, there seem to be a few obstacles. Some of us make it and enjoy abundance, love and success… while others don’t. What’s the deal? What is it that causes one to produce mediocre results while another achieves massive success? What is it that lies behind excellence? What is the key to making it? Is it due to luck and chance? Being born into the right family? Having the right genes? The economy?

If you don’t subscribe to the belief that success is the result of chance, it seems evident that the results you produce in life arise from your behaviour: if you make the right decisions and do the right things, you get the results you want. Logically we can then deduce that if you want the right results, all you have to do is do the right things.

Many approaches to coaching and mentoring rely on this principle. A mentor is someone who has done what you have done and can tell you what to do to achieve the same. In the past, coaching in businesses was performance-based, meaning that organizations tried to squeeze more performance out of employees by getting them to engage in the right behaviours. In essence, according to this approach, to produce superior results, people simply need to be told what to do. Hopefully they will be able to do what they are told and with a bit of luck they actually will do what they have been told to do.

The results with such approaches are often mediocre. If someone told you exactly what to do to make a million dollars, how easy do you think it would be to make it? It’s not always easy to make the right choices and engage in the right behaviours. How often has it occurred that you knew exactly what to do but you didn’t do it? How often do you know exactly what not to do, but you do it anyway? We want to boost our income, but we put important things off until later and enjoy the temporary relief of watching TV. We want to lose weight but we just can’t resist the chocolate cake. And I am sure you have countless personal examples you can add.

It’s common knowledge that it’s tough to change behaviour. Ever tried to kick a habit or change your emotions? It’s hard because emotions and behaviour don’t just come out of nowhere. They are the effect of some cause. To change emotions and behaviour you have to get to the source.
But what is that source? What is it that lies behind behaviour? What lies behind superior performance and success? What makes the difference between star performers and the rest?

The answer is in the mind. Performance is the behavioural manifestation of aspects of cognitive functioning. Your behaviour and the quality of your life are a result of what’s going on in your mind, the factors underlying behaviour: drives, thinking, attitudes, emotions, values, beliefs, assumptions and perceptions.

If you plant a tree and are not happy with the fruit it is producing, do you climb up the tree to see what’s going on and try to change the fruit, or do you go down to the roots? Most of us spend our lives climbing up the tree, pulling on the fruit, yelling at it and wondering why nothing changes. This is not exactly a strategy for success.

Our thoughts, values, perceptions, beliefs and drives lead to emotions and behaviours. It is what is behind the scenes, those aspects of who we are that are out of awareness, that lead to feelings and actions. For you to experience any emotion or produce any behaviour, what is going on behind the scenes must be perfectly aligned with that result. Take a moment to imagine what was going on in the back of Bill Gates’ mind that enabled him to produce one of the largest and most influential companies in the world? What beliefs, assumptions, values and perceptions were hiding in the background? What mindset and attitude were driving him? What emotions did he experience most that led him to do what he did? Now compare that to the inner world of Mother Theresa. What was in the back of her mind that led her to accomplish what she did? These are two very different people with different minds who produced very different results. If the difference is not in the mind, where is it?

The mind is a system, each aspect influencing the others. Change your thoughts and you change your emotions. Change your values, beliefs and perceptions and your feelings and behaviours change. Alter just one aspect of the system and the entire system changes; different beliefs, thoughts, perceptions and drives lead to different emotions and behaviours. Different behaviours lead to different results.

The key to superior performance is in the mind, but what is the mind? Although it sounds like a “thing,” the word “mind” really refers to a dynamic process of thinking, experiencing and feeling. The mind is never static. It is a constant flow of thoughts, images, words, ideas, perceptions and emotions. Mind is an unending dance of information. The question is, is it an expertly choreographed dance in which the dancers move in perfect harmony, or is it a mess of utter chaos and disorder?

The secret to producing results is to have the right things in your mind so you produce the behaviours and results you want effortlessly. Since performance is the behavioural manifestation of a person’s drives, values, beliefs, mindset, and emotions, by optimizing and aligning elements of cognitive functioning, we can program our mind for desired behaviour and results. When what’s in the mind is optimized and aligned, desired behaviours and results come naturally.

Trying to change behaviours and emotions without determining what is causing them is like trying to fill a leaky bucket. You can put in all the effort you want, but you won’t accomplish much until you get to the root of the problem.

When we know what behaviours or results we want to produce, we can backtrack. If you have a certain objective, we can ask: What beliefs would you need to have to produce that result? What drives and intentions would you need? What attitude or mindset would enable you to produce that behaviour? What would you need to value or hold as important to attain that objective? Since mind is in a state of constant flux, it’s easy to make changes to the dance of information. The first step is to take on your role as choreographer.

More and more, companies are realizing that performance-based coaching is not producing the desired results. The newest approaches to coaching facilitate the development of the mindset, attitudes, beliefs and practices for superior results and performance. More and more individuals are realizing that if they want to live the lives they want, they need to change their minds, literally.

What have you got in your mind?


 
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Beliefs: The Software of the Mind

On 11.17.08, In beliefs, coaching, goal setting, goals, life coach, neuro-semantics, nlp, nlp coach, personal development, self-help, self-sabotage, success, success coaching, By David Kynan

With every passing day I am more and more aware of the profound effects our beliefs have on our experience of life and the results we produce.

What is it that causes one to spend life on the streets and another who grew up in complete poverty to go on to make millions? What is it that leads someone to strap himself with explosives and walk into a crowded market place? Why do average people to join cults and end their lives in communal suicide? What is it that causes an athlete to persist despite massive obstacles and win the gold?

The answer is beliefs. Our beliefs function as the map we use to navigate reality, guiding and directing our choices and actions and directly affecting the results we produce in life. They make up the fibre of our experience running behind the scenes like the software of the mind. Without them we would be like a ship without a crew, aimlessly floating in the water with no direction at all.

Where do beliefs come from? We acquired most when we were children. At that time we had limited understanding, awareness and knowledge and formed beliefs based on limited information and evidence. We inherited many from parents, teachers and friends and adopted others from the religious and cultural influences. We also acquired beliefs from our own personal experiences and it was those negative and traumatic experiences that were most likely to help us form our most deeply held convictions. Unfortunately we have never taken the time to update our old programming, most of which is now obsolete.

A belief is formed when we generalize from an experience. We make conclusions about what things mean to us or what is true about reality and then use those as a compass to find our way in the world. A belief is more than just a thought or idea. It is a decision about what we think is true. Often we simply take on the interpretations and opinions of others or our culture at large. We accept what parents and teachers say without questioning their input and adopt ideas from society and religion without considering the consequences. When we are young it’s only natural. Although we think our beliefs are true, they are really just perceptions based on limited information and evidence. Once upon a time you believed that Santa Claus was real and that the tooth fairy paid you visits during the night. Luckily beliefs change with time and experience.

Most of our core beliefs formed as we attempted to make sense of important events that occurred long ago. With our limited knowledge and ability to reason we would analyze and interpret, trying to determine what they could mean. The ideas and meanings we came up with were merely thoughts. For them to become beliefs we would have to confirm them by saying, “Yes, that is true.” Those ideas and meanings we didn’t confirm were discarded and those we confirmed were added to our internal programming.

Why are beliefs so important? A belief functions as a command to the nervous system. When we believe something is true we give a signal to our mind and body about how to feel and behave. Our beliefs become self-fulfilling prophecies; we search for evidence to confirm our beliefs and discount evidence to the contrary. People used to believe the world was flat. That had so much faith in this belief and how did they act as a result? Like them, each of us goes through life with many such erroneous beliefs.

As we go through life, we interpret experience seeking to understand reality and discover what is true. We make decisions about what is about the world, but based on limited experience and through the limitations of our own sensory apparatus. No matter what we decide, our beliefs will always remain mere interpretations. They will only be true in a certain time and place and in certain circumstances. A belief is a generalization and no generalization is true 100% of the time. We may never really know what is true.

Instead of trying to find what is true, we need to choose beliefs that are useful. If our beliefs function as a command to the nervous system, we need beliefs that will give the right commands and help us produce the results we want. Beliefs can either be limiting or empowering. They can either prevent us from tapping into our capabilities or enable us to access our full potential to produce results.

If we want a greater quality of life, we need to update our internal software and choose programming that will serve us instead of hold us back. Most of our beliefs are out of awareness and as a result we have never questioned them. They guide our behaviour from behind the scenes and often we are unaware of the effect they are having on our life and the results we produce. To update our programming we need to bring them into awareness and run some anti-virus software. We need to weed out those that are toxic and replace them with new and empowering programs.

How do we bring our hidden programming to the surface? To uncover limiting beliefs, begin to look at the areas of your life that do not seem to be working the way you want. There will almost always be limiting beliefs that you were not aware of contributing to the problem. Once these beliefs are brought into consciousness you can begin to clear them out.

To update your programming take a belief that you feel is limiting you. First, ask yourself whether or not it is really true. Often you will find it is not and this realization will blow it out of the water. Next you can ask yourself, “How would I know if this were not true” or “Has there ever been a time when the opposite were true?” When we reassess old information many of our limiting beliefs cannot hold up.

If you want to produce specific results in any area of your life, once you have set your objective you need to align your beliefs with the result you want. You can backtrack from the result and choose beliefs that will propel you forward by asking yourself, “What do I need to believe to make this happen?”

What did Columbus need to believe to discover America? He let go of his flat world beliefs and chose ones that would lead him to greatness. If someone else is producing the results you would like for yourself, find out what they belief and install it in your own mind. When you have the right software and you are running the right program, you will find it much easier to produce the results you want.

www.mindworkscoaching.net


 
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