A recent UK survey indicates that on average 54% of the population has a significant fear of public speaking. This is alarming because we all need to deliver a speech or presentation in public more than once in our lives. In many professions, public speaking skills count when being considered for promotion because confident public speaking is considered to be a defining leadership skill. Yet over half the population live in fear of delivering a speech.

As a former shy speaker I know how to change this, so I created ‘Presenting Power’ as the solution to that problem – a new book based on my tried-and-tested methods. This approach is different from any other because you can become a great speaker by doing less than before. You will become free from fear and develop your skill as a speaker by following the simple instructions I give you in the book.

What is it possible to achieve? Imagine this: You are asked to deliver an important presentation – and this time it feels different. Maybe you will describe your work, outline an important proposal or champion a cause. You feel excited at the thought of connecting with an audience and know exactly what you need to do to prepare your material. On the day, you speak easily and confidently without notes, because you only need to hold two things in your memory. You can see the audience sit up and take notice of you while you speak and revel in the applause when you conclude powerfully. You might even think to yourself “life doesn’t get much better than this!”

I know that you can have that success if you follow the methods detailed in Presenting Power.

Or you could remain as one of the 54%. I know that some of you believe that there’s safety in numbers. That may be some comfort until the inevitable day when you have to stand in front of an audience – alone.

If you want to find out more about public speaking success instead, go here now: www.presentingpower.com

When I started out with NLP, my first experiences were motivated by an interest in communication, so I focused most on those aspects of my development. From a scientific perspective, I was thoroughly intrigued by the NLP methodology.

I had some skills and very few specific techniques, so I got very good at asking questions and exploring through feedback. In many cases this is the best way to learn something, as the distinctions formed through experience are the most persistent and personal type of learning. In this way, NLP becomes part of experience and part of life.

Experiencing NLP
Since NLP is a way of working and a way of looking at the world, a good way to begin is to start to notice many of the things that NLP training aims to make us more aware of.

Above all, approach this in a playful way. Have fun exploring the new world this opens out.

One thing about memory is that we tend to recall things when we’re in the same state in which we learned them.

So if you’re putting yourself under a bit of pressure, then stop…

Take a deep breath.

Take your mind back to the ‘where and when’ of that learning

and re-connect with it.

Playfulness and fun are two of the states we use a lot in the process of teaching NLP. This is one of the many reasons we do that.

To read on, go here;

NLP Awareness

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It’s that time of year again, where many are striving (and often struggling) to achieve their New Year’s Resolutions.

And the news is not good – 99% of New Year’s Resolutions fall flat within weeks. And it’s easy to see why.

The common choices people make are to:

1. Give up something they like.
2. Take up something they don’t normally enjoy.

It’s not difficult to see why these choices fail most of the time. In the first case, they’re trying to move away from pleasure and in the second, they’re trying to move towards discomfort and pain!

In either case, it’s a step in the wrong direction. Enough said.

It’s often not enough to know what you want and go for it. In addition to knowing what you want, a plan of action has two vital aspects, both of which must be sufficiently appealing.

They are the journey and the destination.

Most people only look at the destination when deciding if they want something. I’ve run into this issue time and again when coaching people for success.

Let me give you an example. As part of their life balance, many people want to improve their health and vitality. So they imagine the desired destination – they picture themselves being fit and healthy.

Do they want that? You bet they do! Yet that, by itself, probably won’t get them there.

Why not? Read on.

> Achieving success

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When I meet new people and tell them that I do life coaching, every once in a while, someone voices the opinion that I get paid rather well just to have a ‘nice chat.’

They totally miss the point that during a coaching conversation, I’m actually bringing my full attention, focus and skill to bear. Additionally, most people I’ve met are reasonably uninformed about what those skills might be.

As someone who trains coaches, what bothers me most is the suggestion that reading a book on coaching is as good as having a life coach. It isn’t.

In my opinion, the whole ‘little life coach in your pocket’ turn of mind is sloppy thinking disguised as convenience and self-sufficiency. And it sells really well.

Some facts
Several years ago, I participated in an international survey about coaching. Coaching clients were also part of the survey and the findings revealed several key facts.

Firstly, life coaches were most valued as a sounding board for their clients. As human beings we’re designed to work best around people, in that many of our thought processes are focused purely on interaction. We talk, share new information and bounce ideas off each other.

It’s difficult to bounce ideas off yourself, as the whole point of the process is to reinterpret the same information through different filters, in comparison with a different set of reference experiences and feed back the result. It’s fairly obvious then that anyone who suggests that such perspective can be achieved through a simple step-by-step written process is kidding themselves.

Another key characteristic of an effective coach is that they make you aware of your own ‘blind spots.’ While you’ve probably heard the term, I define a blind spot as something that other people know about you that you don’t know about yourself. It takes a lot of awareness and skill in directing the ‘conversation’ to knowledge of the blind spot or sensitivity in delivering the news. You can’t do it yourself by the very definition of the term and a book will not change that.

A further important feature of the coaching process is that the ‘conversation’ should be provocative and challenging in a way that opens up new awareness of possibilities. To do this, one must spot and challenge faulty thinking, test perceived limits and coax, cajole and persuade them to greater awareness.

The top 1%
As a further convincer, let’s look at the really successful people – the top 1%. Life coaching is the distant cousin of sports coaching, so it’s time to talk about athletes. The cream of the crop are Olympic athletes and every last one of them has a coach.

The smart people at the high-performance end of the spectrum know that the extra insight, feedback and motivation that only a coach can provide is the difference between success and failure.

And they value that difference. How about you?

Books and goals
Coaching reveals the hidden things about our thinking or our perceptions. There are plenty of things we don’t know about ourselves. To take a mundane example, what does the back of your head look like? You can’t know by yourself. You need the help of a camera or mirrors.

Why has it all become so popular? What these ‘coaching’ books do is not life coaching. They deal with goal-getting, which is a process that can be done from a goal getting book. There is a big difference between coaching and goal-getting, which I’m sure you’re beginning to appreciate.

Who finds coaching useful?

There is always room for improvement. What is 100% anyway? The truth is that nobody knows. Goal-getting is like a journey. I’ve seen old signs made during the Second World War that say “Is your journey necessary?”

That wisdom applies here too. If you really want to achieve something, know yourself and know your limits. Then you can decide when you can help yourself and when you need help. I think coaching can get you there far more quickly and easily.

You decide.

Isn’t it curious how everyday incidents can spark deep insight when you are in the right state of awareness?

For example, I noticed that the outside light on our house was not looking very bright. I decided to take it apart to have a look at what was going on. It’s a fairly simple device – a bulb surrounded by glass, suspended on a bracket.

However, before I had a look inside, I was aware of three possibilities in my mind that would explain the light’s current state:

1. The bulb needs replacing
2. The glass needs cleaning
3. The bulb needs replacing and the glass needs cleaning

As I was taking the lamp apart to explore those options, I though of Tim Gallwey’s Inner Game approach.

You see, when Gallwey was studying the way that people learned sports, he discovered something very important about the way teaching and learning combined.

To read more, go here:

Training or Coaching?

There are several common mental pitfalls that we have to avoid throughout our personal evolution.

Many of these result in the Big Questions that we all pursue at some point. To the experienced eye, these questions serve as great examples of someone stuck in a model – trapped by a way of thinking that had previously been useful and liberating.

It’s important to remember that your model of the world isn’t reality and that it’s on the inside of our heads. Sometimes we outgrow our current model of the world and don’t yet have any better reality to replace it with. So these Big Questions basically translate into “help me, I’m stuck”.

Fortunately, help is at hand. There are a number of presuppositions involved in these Big Questions which can hide a solution. When learning, those presuppositions form the domain within which one can comfortably grow and develop. Sooner or later, you will outgrow that domain. It’s only natural. The presuppositions must then be redefined or removed at that point for growth to continue.

The model that binds many of us at one point is the notion of Fate, usually resulting in the question “What is my Life Purpose?” Let’s look at the presuppositions involved in that statement.

To read more, go here:

The Myth of Fate

When I was a kid, I used to play pool with my friends. Some in particular seemed to win far more often than I did. At the time, I put this down to luck. They would sink a ball and the next shot would be easy too. When I played, I tended to end up with difficult shots following good ones, so I rarely had a long run of successes.

Years later, it’s apparent to me that no luck was involved – just good planning. The key was to hit the ball so that it would end up in a position where the next shot would be easy. This is something that one can gain control over through practice. To the uninitiated, it seems like uncommonly good fortune. The difference is something that can be learned through practice and feedback.

I’m not suggesting that you can learn to be lucky. What I am saying is that looking at events through the frame of good/bad luck can be a defining limit on success in life. By definition, luck is something that you have little or no control over, putting the responsibility for your success in the hands of fate, impersonal cosmic forces, or the deity of your choice.

If you look at the world through the eyes of luck, the mechanism for your success becomes placed in hands other than your own. As a result, there is no possibility for you to improve that mechanism through feedback from your life experience in order to improve your chances in future. In that sense, luck can be a disempowering myth.

To read more, go here:

Beyond Luck

Let me ask you a direct question: Isn’t it time to move your plans into action this year?

Think about all the plans you made for 2008. Which of those produced results – and which of those are still just plans?

For those of you who haven’t moved on, do you really want to be in this exact same position at the beginning of 2010? How would that feel?

You might tell yourself that a year can seem like a long time. One thing I do know is that time passes quickly when we idle away the moments.

And we can’t blame it on our fast-paced culture either. Failure to move into action is not a modern problem.

“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Being willing is not enough; we must do.”

- Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

Listen to da Vinci. Information is not enough. Intent is not enough. There’s something fundamentally different about action which greatly outstrips mere knowledge or willingness.

Some of you might think that da Vinci sat around all day figuring things out. Far from it. He accomplished an immense amount in his lifetime.

So where is the problem and how do we solve it? How can you learn to move into action more of the time?

If you want to read on, go here:

2009 Challenge

There are a lot of popular myths about hypnosis, many of which have come from a misunderstanding of the process, from dramatic literature or films, or from the ‘air of mystery’ that stage hypnotists tend to cultivate.

I’ve highlighted some of those myths below.

MYTH 1 – Hypnosis is like being asleep

Hypnosis is very different from sleep, as you will be aware of your surroundings while in trance. Many people find that through hypnosis they become more aware of smells, sounds and feelings than usual.

MYTH 2 – The hypnotist can make you do things against your will.

This is completely untrue. If the hypnotist were to make a suggestion that you did not want to follow, you could easily ignore it. Hypnosis is a process that requires an atmosphere of trust.

MYTH 3 – You won’t remember what happened while you were hypnotised.

Most people remember what has taken place while they were in trance, with the obvious exception being that they have accepted a suggestion to remember nothing that took place…

You can find the rest here:

10 Hypnotic Myths

In the field of personal change we hear an awful lot about success. That’s all fine and good – we should concentrate on what we want, as we tend to get what we focus on. Then I came across this quote and it made me think…

“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people
into thinking they can’t lose.”

- Bill Gates

You may be thinking to yourself, “That’s alright for a multi-millionaire to say. Personally, I’d rather be successful and never put a foot wrong”.

The big question is – can you realistically expect that? That everything will always go according to plan? Think about it for a moment, and you’ll realise there are certain consequences to getting an easy time…

To read more, go here:

Transforming failure