Wow, another Bank Holiday weekend!  It is so nice to get back in the office for a rest.  I spent some time in the garden attacking a very thorny bush which had got a bit out of control.  I’m not quite sure who won!  It is about 3 ft (1mtr) shorter but my arms look like they have been put in a cage with a litter of angry kittens.  I also managed to cut the grass which was quite amazing after all the rain we have been having.

 

A few years ago I used to find it really difficult doing the gardening because I was very overweight and I suffered with severe arthritis pain.  I find it hard to believe the difference that loosing the weight has made to my life.  For me, when I was gaining weight, my mind was definitely not noticing the limitations the extra weight was having on my life.  I was eating for comfort, so I suppose you could say that my fat was my comfort blanket and all food was a ‘comforter.’

 

I can look back to the old ‘me’ and see that I was trying to dull the pain of the ‘trauma’ that had happened in my life.  None of the ‘trauma’ was of the earth shattering kind; it was more of the sharp intake of breath kind.  In the EFT world these two different types of trauma are referred to ‘Big T’ and ‘little t’, which describes it perfectly.  A ‘little t’ experience could be something like, a look that says ‘get out of my sight’.  Or you could be accused of something that you didn’t do.  You may witness an incident that shocks you, and causes you to take a ‘sharp intake of breath.’  If these experiences affect us, we could easily tell ourselves that we are being stupid and to forget it.  However if they have affected us, we really should deal with them because unless we do, they will always be there, like something we have brushed under the carpet, and we all know what happens if there is too much under the carpet, don’t we?  (It trips us up!)

 

I had a lot of ‘stuff’ under my carpet, and when I was doing my course we would practice on each other and my ‘stuff’ started to change as I was dealing with it, bit-by-bit.  As my ‘stuff’ became less painful, my view to food changed.  Food even tasted differently.

 

I remember the very first time I noticed this.  I was driving on the M11, coming back from a course weekend in London and I fancied an apple.  This may not sound odd to you but I had not eaten an apple or any fruit for about nine years.  The nearer I got home, the stronger this craving got.  I got off the motorway at junction 7, drove like a bat out of hell to get home as fast as I could, and the second I got in I grabbed an apple, cut off a chunk and put it in my mouth.  It tasted like pure nectar and I was in heaven.  I remember seeing the look on my sons face as he asked me if I was alright, he looked puzzled and shocked.  It was so funny!  Since then I think I can honestly say that ALL foods have changed their flavour for me.

 

It did not happen all together and it has not stopped happening, but without a doubt food has changed.  It is not the thing that is always in my mind, no-matter what I am doing.  It seems to have found its place as an enjoyable part of my life.  It is something that I manage and don’t think about in the same way.  It is easy!!!

 

From my heaviest I have lost about 10 stone (about 64kg), and I still have about 3 (about 19kg) to go.  I have lost all this without being on a diet or counting calories.  I do feel I am now on a plateau and that I may need to be a little more conscious of what I am doing to lose the last bit, but I feel it is something that I can easily do.

 

I now realise that unless we deal with the cause of our problem, losing weight will always be hard work, and I definitely think things should be done the easy way, if at all possible!

 

Quote

“Out past the barrier of your comfort zone lies everything your Heart desires – get out there!”

- Jackson Kiddard, author & polymath.

 I would love to hear your comments so please let me know!

Speak soon.  Barbara.

Hi!

Sorry for the delay.  Life just seems to get in the way sometimes, doesn’t it?

 

I promised that I would tell you how the whole family benefit if one member works on their issues.

 

Let us imagine that we are invisible and we can go into a family home and watch how they interact with each other.  Let us imagine that there are four people, a mum and dad, and two children of say 10 and 14, and let us imagine that they are what we call an average family (whatever that is) where the father works full time, the children go to school and the mother has a job outside the home, either full or part-time.

 

Look at the different personality traits in these four individuals.  They have different life requirement pressures, different personal requirements, different toleration levels and different understanding of the others.  The communication between them is influenced by all these different factors, so if one of the family members has something in particular that is affecting them, or on their mind, this will influence how they interact with the others and also outsiders they interact with during the day.  This in turn has implications as to how the others interact with them, and how the others may interact with outsiders that they interact with.  This could cause normal communications to be less ‘smooth or easy’ than they could be.

 

If the person with the issue got help and changed how they felt about their issue, that would change how they felt which would change how they communicated and that would also change how others would communicate with them.

 

So when I think about working with an individual, I imagine that the work I am doing is like a drip of change in a pond of unrest and eventually a molecule of my change will be a part of the each part of the pond.

 

See you next time.

Barbara.

Hi!

I have been thinking about how the skills I have learnt, have helped and changed me.

In my old life I was a mess.  I had no confidence or self-esteem and was the size of a house.  I managed to trip from one hick-up to another, just managing to cope.  I was, most definitely, a victim.

I think the most powerful thing I have learnt, and the thing I work hard to put across to my clients is, ‘OWN YOUR LIFE’.  Don’t be taken along with it – TAKE CONTROL.

This can’t be done overnight!  There are many aspects of you that make you unique and they are important and valuable.  Deal with each one and you will get there.

We are all a ‘WORK IN PROGRESS’

 

Next time:  How investing in one member of the family, helps and changes all the members.

Last week I mentioned the messages that you are putting out to the world.  I know that many years ago, statements like this would have made me role my eyes with disagreement.  I was convinced that I knew exactly what message I was giving out.  Oh, how wrong was I!!

 

Consciously we are able to give out the message and signals that we decide is appropriate, but unconsciously, or subconsciously as some refer to it, it is a totally different thing.

 

There is no precise percentage of conscious or unconscious areas of the brain, but the figures are around 2-7% conscious and 93-98% unconscious, so whichever figure you choose to go with, the unconscious mind is huge in comparison to the conscious.  So how exactly do we know what messages we are sending out?  The answer is, we don’t.  If you have some knowledge in ‘Body Language’ or ‘NLP’ you have a little more chance of understanding some of it.

 

Let me give you an analogy

 

Imagine you and I are standing in a corridor and we are by some double doors.  On the other side of these double doors, there is a hall which, for the past 30 minutes has contained 100 people, who before today had never met.  There are no chairs in this hall, so the people have been milling around chatting, finding people they feel comfortable to talk to.

 

You and I walk in and notice that these people are standing in small groups.  As we look around we have thoughts like, ‘I could talk to you’, ‘You look OK’, ‘Oh no, I couldn’t talk to you’, and as we look round the room we are unconsciously deciding who we would feel happy to talk to.  How do we do that, and how do we do it so quickly?

 

We do it quickly because Neurons travel quickly.   What our unconscious mind is doing is noticing body language that consciously we are unaware of, and running that past a ‘blueprint’ of behaviour we are familiar with.  When it finds behaviour that is familiar to what we have been exposed to in the past, it becomes comfortable with it and we feel that we could talk to these people.  Our unconscious mind does not filter for good, bad, positive or negative, it just knows familiar.

 

So that is how we are automatically drawn to ‘what we already have’.

 

I would love to hear your comments.