What Stops You?

I asked The EuroCoach List and NLP Connections what the common responses they hear to the question “what stops you?” and here is a summary of the answers that I got -

“I don’t know.” According to Chris Morris this was the most popular one he has heard. Chris works as a hypnotherapist and runs NLP Connections

“I haven’t got enough time.” This was mentioned by several people. As was “I don’t have what it takes,” and  “I’m not good enough bright enough/young enough/attractive enough…”

Jane Bromley of Peak Performance Business Coaching added these three -

“My family have to come first.”

“I have to do what I’m doing today because I need the money- and it doesn’t allow me to do what I want.”

“If I had done things differently when I was younger it would have been possible.”

Martin Goodyer  wrote:
“(IMHO) probably the most common factor is simply that of a lack of ‘directed thought’ toward the achievement of the goal. In other words the client…

• Isn’t clear what the goal is
• Isn’t able to imagine themselves in a new situation
• Isn’t actually desirous of change itself but is self deluded
• Isn’t convinced that they alone are responsible for the achievement of their goal
• Is unable to focus on a specific (single) representation of the goal
• Is more likely to focus on reasons why it can’t be achieved rather than why it can
• Is clear about the goal but not about the purpose behind its achievement”

Keith Collins  of Inner Coach wrote
“In my experience there are three things that stop us: -

• Lack of power or self worth that creates emotional needs.
• Lack of authority or self-confidence due to limiting beliefs.
• Lack of ability or self-esteem that creates role-playing dramas.” 

Alun Richards of Branding You! wrote 
A common pattern with many clients, especially for big changes, is they want that one big thing that they want, but want nothing else to change. I.e.: they don’t want to have to change anything else in their life. And for some, this includes actually doing some work to get it.
Using an ineffective plan/strategy to get what they want.

Others have a dilemma, and are stuck, like Burridan’s ass.  They don’t know which goal (of two or more) to go for, oscillate between the two, resulting in their taking no effective action.  These clients lack a good decision-making strategy and have often not sufficiently defined the criteria for that decision.

Some clients seem to like get overly attached to the story of why they can’t get what they want, more than resolving the root cause.

For all of these above, and many others, the (perceived) pain of changing is simply bigger than the pain of the current state.

Then there’s the not having defined the goal specifically enough.

And believing that there’s a dependency on something or someone, when actually there is no real

Not establishing what the very next step is towards getting their goal, or having established the one a couple of steps along, then not being able to action it, as there are other steps that are missing

“Not having enough time”.  If I had a penny for every time I’ve heard that – well, I’d have a lot of pennies.

The final four, are of course, coaches stock in trade, and usually easily resolved (at least in terms of process), while the others can be more fraught. The most common limiting belief I’ve seen is the variations on “I’m not good enough/bright enough/young enough/attractive enough…”  Oh, and “I don’t have enough time.”

So that’s an outline of some responses that seem to be quite common.

The next thing I’d like to do is outline the notion of The Five Difficulties that George Lakoff says are inherent in the metaphor of Life is a Journey. More on these later… 

“Limiting Beliefs”

A belief is a ‘thought’ that is constructed from the same elements as any other thought: pictures, sounds and self-talk. However, with a belief we will either do or not do something on the basis of it. Once a belief is established we will filter new information so that it fits with belief.

In NLP terms it could be said that we don’t actually have any limiting beliefs because in NLP ‘belief’ is a nominalisation – the result of a verb that has been turned into a noun. We don’t have limiting beliefs, it is that we believe in a way that limits us, except this sense of actually doing the believing is outside of our awareness.

If you make someone wrong they are honour bound to defend themselves. If you challenge their beliefs they will ‘fight you tooth and nail.’

So how do you get someone to even consider another possibility? I found a great analogy from the Martial Arts that helped me understand how to approach this and I’ll post that next…

Teaching your wife to drive

Here is an extract from an interview I did with another coach who has been using the cards. One of the things that came up was that he had often said to his wife when she had issues in her business that they ought to do some coaching around it. He summed up her reluctance and the situation  as “a bit like teaching your spouse to drive” which seemed to be most appropriate. However when he got the cards and started using them he decided to introduce them to her and this is what happened…

“Do you want to have a look at this? This is real good fun and its interesting.” So I gave her an explanation of how it worked and I pretty well broke them down into the areas of the mode of transport, where you are and how you can devise a route and so on and obstacles in the way. Knowing that it was best not to intervene at all I just stood back and it was the most amazing thing to watch – the complete absorption in the process. Moving around, mentioned a couple of things. She didn’t really ask questions just made a couple of statements and observations and shared what she was seeing by using the cards. After about twenty minutes or so she became quite tearful in a nice way and she said “I can see where my problem has been,” and it was specifically to do with her business.  She identified the roundabout and felt that she had just been going round and round in circles and not getting anywhere and she needed to take an exit in order to go down another route to get somewhere. Rather than get frustrated and going round and round the roundabout as she has been. It was quite striking to watch how impactful the process was and I really did nothing more than introduce the cards and step back and let her get on and use them.

“I just need…”

The next time a did a session with the guy with the “timeline” it was around the issue of being more motivated now that he had got the job. The job wasn’t quite what he was expecting since it was only temporary but would be a stepping-stone for him towards something more. We had laid the cards out and he had created  a line of them and used the Traffic Lights Card to indicate where he was at with his motivation. Once he laid the cards out and was talking about the job (looking a few feet in front of him) he said the magic words that told me exactly what needed to happen next -

“I just need to see beyond it.”

Sometimes it’s just that simple…

Motivated or confused?

I have found that using techniques from NLP it’s pretty easy to get someone really motivated about something, and get them to agree to take action, but I’ve usually found that this kind of motivation subsides just as quickly and not much happens as a result. While working with one client on issues around an upcoming interview I got a great response at the of the session that really let me know that his thinking had changed.

He went from planning to mess up an interview because ”That’s what I end up doing when I really want something” to puzzled. He wasn’t all fired up and ready to go, he was puzzled as to why he had even been thinking about the interview like that. All volunteered to me in the past tense (“I don’t understand why I was even thinking like that”) and then gave a different cause and effect reasoning “I’m actually getting excited. I am looking forward to this because it’s something I really want.”

This guy was really fun to work with because he was so good at making internal pictures and the best bit was that he had never heard of NLP. At one point he was staring out beyond me (the image was about 6 feet away) and I said “So what are you seeing?” It was an image of the upcoming interview and I had to stop myself from laughing when he then explained to me that the space between him and the picture “Was like a timeline.”

He went for the interview with no worries and got the job.

We did another session later around being more motivated about the job itself, and what he said this time was even more revealing. I’ll tell you about that tommorrow.

Coaching Groups

A number of coaches have enquired about how to use the cards with a group of people. I recently presented the idea to a local coaching group and created a format where I could coach everyone on their individual isues all at the same. It worked out really well. There were six members in the group but it would have possible to do this with more.

The process is outlined in more detail here: Coaching Groups

We Are All Emotionally Intelligent…

I just got an email from a coach promoting a course of Emotional Intelligence which reminded me of a quote that I adapted from a martial arts instructor to become “We are all Emotionally Intelligent. What varies is our attacks of stupidity.” In NLP the emotions, or states, are dealt with from the perspective of “Here’s how to have another one,” and the actual function of emotional states is not looked at in any real depth.  What functions do the emotions perform? Well, that’s beyond the scope of a brief blogging, but I can outline what I think is relevant in terms of coaching.

We all have things that are important to us, things we want to have or keep. These can be physical possesions, values, opinions or beliefs. When these are threatened we defend them which is where we “get all emotional about nothing” from someone else’s perspective because whatever we are defending isn’t important to them.

One of the biggest mistakes people make when they have have been taught that ‘You choose how you feel,’ is to make a point of telling other people that. Especially when the other person is in an intense emotional state, they are angry or mad at something or someone else. It’s a nice idea that you have a choice about how you feel, but telling someone that is defintely not going to match their expereince. More likely they will ‘choose’ to be even more angry. At you. Even if you weren’t the source of their anger in the first place.

So, when you you see someone “over-reacting” to some “little thing” you might gain greater insight by asking yourself “What is it that is so important to them that provokes this reaction?”

The emotions work just fine as they are. When our values and beliefs are threatened it affects us emotionally. When we take the time to investigate what we believe and what is so important, that we can start to make sure that we have beliefs and values that serve us. I was fortunate enough to meet someone early in my life that I considered to be highly emotionally intelligent and blissfully unaware of it. I’ll let you know more about what I learned from her in another post.